We’re in the final stages of putting the book together and going to layout. We have test versions of our sticker character sheets and found a new printer who could do them at a better quality, so the stickers should be more reusable.
It’s looking like the book is going to be more than 80 pages… maybe like 200. We’re hoping to cut a bit of that weight and maybe put some of it into a zine, but we will have to see. It definitely looks like you’ll be getting great value for money from this kickstarter either way.
Please enjoy some of the art whilst I go into more detail below.
Spilt T
So why’s the book so long?
After many rounds of playtesting, we actually adjusted the Mausritter rules a lot more than we initially intended. We were very committed to making it a game suitable for family play, so we had to make a more simplified ruleset for ages 5-11 (plus just anyone that prefers freeform roleplaying) that could be played alongside the regular rules.
We also wanted to make mech combat feel exciting and have a back-and-forth. While combat outside mechs is still very lethal, this isn’t the case within mechs, instead, mech pieces get destroyed in a few good hits. So it still has that high cost to combat but in a very different way. To produce that feeling of a swingy, aggressive mech battle we’ve overhauled initiative and changed elements of the combat system.
At that point, we figured the game was far enough away from Mausritter that we may as well update and reprint the entire SRD, and so we did that, in the process making changes to the information design of the game to make it a slightly more accessible play experience.
Then, of course, for an urban setting the inventory items, creatures, languages and character creation needed to be updated.
Then we have the world of the High Street itself. Kayla has written over 160 pages of setting including new rules for overland travel and six different adventure sites. The High Street itself is extremely full of life. Again, it’s based on a real high street in London, and we wanted to do it justice.
To keep the book from becoming a rulesfest, we have a huge amount of art by Gustavo Foletto and short fiction to break up each chapter.
Skate Park
Basically, the book is going to be way more than you paid for, but the price of that is a couple of months’ delay….
I won’t lie, I don’t see a world in which we go to print this month, but we’ve set a target to print at the end of September for an October fulfillment. This won’t be affected by the Junk City fulfillment as we are not on the big pledge manager with everyone else; we opted out of it as we felt our project would be too complex for what they were looking for.
