The Overlord doth decree ‘tis time for another update on the status of The City State of the Invincible Overlord crowdfunding project.
As you’re about to see, layout continues and the light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter. We’re in the midst of not only checking for typos but confirming all the cross-references across the eight(!) books are all pointing to their proper places, hunting down the dreaded “see p. XX”s that litter the landscape, and otherwise tidying things up for the printer.
Art, and there is a substantial amount of it, continues to flow in, but as these images show, just because we don’t have all the art doesn’t mean layout has stalled. We just block out a section for it and keep proofing and cross-referencing. Once the final city state map is complete, we’ll make sure all the coordinates point to the right places on the map and it’ll be off to the printer.
Until then, let’s look at some of the pages from both the 5e and the DCC versions. Remember: these are all works in progress so if you see something a little funky, we just haven’t gotten around to stomping on it. But stomp it, we shall and deliver unto you an amazing gaming product filled with years of adventure.
A page spread from Book 1: The City State of the Invincible Overlord (5e version)
A page spread from Book 1: The City State of the Invincible Overlord (5e version)
A page spread from Book 4: The Dungeons of the Invincible Overlord (DCC version)
A page spread from Book 4: The Dungeons of the Invincible Overlord (DCC version)
A page spread from Book 4: The Dungeons of the Invincible Overlord (DCC version)
That's where things stand right now, and the CSIO teams are working hard to get things finished up and off to the printer. We'll be back next month with our next milestone and more news about getting things out the door. Until then, may the Black Lotus never hear you complain about the Overlord!
When we hit $49k, we'll choose four monsters, suggested by YOU, to vote on! The winner will be included in Codex Monstorum! Cast your vote and comment your preferred monster in the $48k Poll, or in our pinned Discussion Thread, now!
PDFs are dropping on August 25! We’re just as excited as you are to get these files into your hands, so we’ve created an update (this one) with instructions on redemption and what to expect.
Please review these detailed instructions on how you’ll access your redemption code and how to redeem and download your PDFs.
Did You Finish Your Survey? You will only be able to access the digital downloads page and the download codes on August 25th if you have completed your survey before 11:59 PM PST on Sunday August 23rd.
If you have not finished your survey before the above deadline you will not be able to access your files until we charge taxes/VAT/shipping in mid-to-late September.
Pay Over Time Backers who just completed their final installment had surveys sent out TODAY.
My final payment didn’t get withdrawn / My card errored / My stupid cocker spaniel ate my debit card. If your payment details aren’t up to date, BackerKit will continue attempting to charge your card periodically for up to 14 business days. Please update your card information as soon as possible. Once your final payment has been successfully processed and your survey is complete, you’ll see a link to your digital codes at the end of your survey.
How are 55,000+ Crawlers going to download these files at the same time? We asked ourselves that same question! And we came up with a plan we think even Mordecai would approve of. We’ll be sending the redemption codes in waves throughout the day on August 25th, starting early in the morning, to ensure that our system runs smoothly and we don’t create any frustrating bottlenecks. Redemption codes will be sent in the following order:
Celestial Backers — First wave
Legendary, Platinum, & Gold Backers — Next two waves
Silver, Bronze, & Tunnel Tuners — Final wave
We’ll give a couple hours between each wave, and everyone who has paid for their pledge and finished their survey before the Sunday August 23rd deadline will get their codes on August 25th.
Steps For Redemption
Step 1. Make Sure You Have a Renegade Webstore Account
You’ll need a Renegade Game Studios webstore account to redeem your coupon code and access your PDFs.
You can create your account now so you are ready to redeem your PDFs on August 25!
Be sure to create your account on the webstore that corresponds to your region:
On August 25, you’ll receive an email from Renegade Game Studios with the subject line: New Digital Content for Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG + Unstoppable on BackerKit.
In the email, click the Click Here link.
This will take you to your Downloads page on BackerKit, where you’ll find your unique code(s). If you purchased both the Core Rulebook and Starter Set, you will receive two redemption codes. If you purchased only one of these items, you’ll just see one code.
NOTE: If you have not completed your survey, you will first be prompted to complete your survey.
If you are reading this after August 25th and can’t find this email, there are instructions for finding your redemption codes through your BackerKit profile at the end of this post!
Step 3: You’ve Got Your code(s)! Now Redeem Your PDF(s) on the Renegade Webstore
Make sure you are logged into your Renegade Game Studios webstore account and click on one of the links below that corresponds to your region:
Add either the Starter Set or Core Rulebook to your cart.
If you purchased both, do not add both to the same cart. You will only be able to input one coupon code per order. So if you have access to both the Starter Set PDFs and the Corebook PDFs you will need to place 2 separate orders. This is a technical limitation of the system and there is no workaround for this.
On the checkout screen there will be a section for a coupon code. Paste your code into that box and the price will drop to $0. Then finish the checkout process.
Without the code:
With the code:
(Optional) Step 4: Return to the Redemption Page and Redeem Your Second PDF Code
You will only be able to input one coupon code per order. So if you have access to both the Starter Set PDFs and the Corebook PDFs you will need to place 2 separate orders. This is a technical limitation of the system and there is no workaround for this.
Step 5: Download Your Files
Click on the order number and an itemized list will appear. You can also access this later by choosing “Orders” under your account. When logged in it will say “Hi, Your Name”
Click the small blue arrow next to the PDF on the list and then follow the onscreen directions to download your PDF.
You will now see a list of downloadable files associated with the item in your order.
Clicking on a file name will begin the automated watermarking process. You will see different messages as the watermarking process progresses.
Once the watermarking process is complete the PDF will either download or automatically open in your browser depending on how your browser is configured.
If the system is handling many watermarking requests at the same time, it may form a queue and the process may take some time. Under normal circumstances even larger files take only a few seconds, but please be patient as there will be many users attempting to download the PDFs in the first week of release.
Step 6: Kill, Kill, Kill!
Get out there. 😉
Best Practices
Being logged into your Renegade account when redeeming your code will help you in the future. If you forget to do this it is very difficult for you to find your order, and hence download your PDFs at a later date. Being logged into your account ensures that you will have easy access to your PDFs at any time.
Being on a strong, stable internet connection will help your experience of downloading your PDFs. If you are on a weak internet connection the watermarking/downloading process takes longer and may fail. We find this most often happens with customers attempting to download PDFs while they are on their mobile devices not connected to a stable WiFi connection.
Only click on each file one time. Clicking multiple times will add multiple files to the queue increasing the time for other people attempting to download their own PDFs.
Step 2A: I didn’t get my download email on August 25th
If you didn’t get your email or it got caught in a spam filter you can also find your code via your profile.
Head to your Backerkit profile and locate the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG + Unstoppable project link, either in Your Surveys or Past Surveys.
Click Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG + Unstoppable
The address/order confirmation page will also have a button that says Get Your Digital Downloads.
August is over, which means it's time to open the curtains again and show you what's been happening behind the scenes in Silent Læke.
And this month, one particularly big thread finally reached its end.
🧵 Book of Threads Is Finished
This one actually got its own update earlier this month, but it deserves its place here too:
Book of Threads is finished.
I had originally hoped to get there in July, but Silent Læke's mechanics turned out to need a little more time, care and refinement than my calendar would have liked.
So part of August went into finishing it properly.
And I'm very glad it did.
Book of Threads is the mechanical heart of Silent Læke. Scenes, spreads, the Oracle, Beautiful Darkness, Melancholic Horror, HOPE, Stuff, Conditions, Sex, Violence, Dialogue, Moxie... this is where all those individual threads finally become a game.
Now that the writing is complete, the Book has moved into the next stage.
✏️ Proofreading & Sensitive Reading
And this is already going very, very well.
My readers have been working hard on Book of Threads, helping me refine it from two different but equally important directions:
On one side, we're looking closely at the rules themselves: whether explanations are clear, whether procedures are easy to follow, and whether what makes perfect sense inside my head also makes perfect sense to someone encountering the game through the book.
On the other, we're refining the language: tone, sentence construction, idiomatic expressions and all those little things that separate understandable English from natural English. I am Portuguese, after all.
And writing an entire RPG in English occasionally means discovering that a perfectly reasonable sentence has apparently never been uttered by an English-speaking human being.
This stage isn't about changing what Silent Læke is. It's about making sure the book communicates it as clearly, naturally and confidently as possible.
And my readers are doing wonderful work.
🤫 Meanwhile... Book of Whispers
While Book of Threads is being scrutinised by people with considerably fresher eyes than mine, I've already moved on to Book of Whispers.
I had hoped to finish Whispers during August. That didn't happen, simply because part of the month still belonged to Threads.
But slowly isn't stopped.
And Whispers is now underway.
This is the fourth and final Book of Part I: For Everyone Who Conquers, covering the People, Places and Stuff that make Silent Læke more than a set of rules.
Once this Book is finished, the entire Player-facing portion of the core rulebook will be written.
And then we cross the line into Part II: By Demons Be Driven.
That's where Players should stop reading.
👕 T-Shirt Fulfilment
There's one piece of August business I didn't manage to move as far forward as I wanted.
There is still roughly one third of the t-shirt fulfilment left to complete.
I deliberately prioritised finishing Book of Threads this month, which meant some of the remaining fulfilment work had to wait a little longer.
That's next on the list, and I expect to get those remaining shirts moving very soon.
As before, this concerns the t-shirts included with Killer, Homecoming King and Homecoming Queen pledges, as well as those purchased as add-ons.
If you're still waiting for yours: I haven't forgotten you.
🌲 Looking Ahead
So August wasn't quite the month I had originally drawn on the calendar.
Book of Whispers isn't finished yet.
But Book of Threads is.
It's being proofread, challenged and refined.
The next Book is underway.
The first chapter divider sketches have been approved.
And Silent Læke is slowly making the transition from something that has existed in my notes, documents and imagination for years into the book you'll eventually hold in your hands.
September begins with Book of Whispers.
People to meet.
Places to go.
Stuff to find.
And plenty of things in Silent Læke that probably shouldn't be there at all.
Devagar não é parado.
Or, since I'm supposed to be improving my English:
One of the locations featured in the Dark beneath campaign for 5e and 5.5e is called the Hollow Sea. It’s an underground body of water comparable in size to a land locked sea on the surface.
There are several sources of rules and mechanics for ship to ship combat and water vehicles for 5e and usable in 5.5e. Some of the preexisting rules are complex, others are simplified. What types of water vehicle mechanics do you prefer? If you prefer alternative rules or your opinion doesn't fit the available options, please feel free to leave an alternative response in the comments.
We've been hard at work getting Lodestar shipshape and siltworthy this year, and we are very pleased to announce that we can finally pin some dates down for the voyage ahead! Without further ado, here is the roadmap for the remainder of 2026 and into the start of 2027:
TheRoadmap for 2026/27
⚓️ 24/08/26 - Legendary Shipwright Outreach That's this coming Monday! We will be reaching out to all Legendary Shipwright backers via email with a short survey to fill in. If that means you then please keep an eye on your inbox, and fill in the survey as soon as possible so that we can book you in for a call with myself to design your custom siltsail!
🐉 30/08/26 - State of the Vault | Lodestar Stream The Sunday after next we will be hosting another stream on Youtube! Me and Aston will be going over some of the exciting stuff awaiting you all in Lodestar, maybe doing some more ship & monster design, and answering any and all questions you have about the setting!
✨ 15/09/26 - Lodestar Digital Fulfilment Begins Just under a month from now digital rewards will start to be fulfilled! This won't mean all at once, and we aren't sure which will be first, but expect files to start arriving via Backerkit on this date.
🛠️ 5/10/26 - Lodestar Physical Manufacturing Begins Our first physical designs start going to prototype in early October. This is the beginning of getting things made, so we will be coordinating with our manufacturer to fine tune various goods and then signing off on them for mass manufacture!
🌟 12/10/26 - Lodestar Beta PDF Releases The beta PDF of Lodestar releases mid October! This version of the PDF will be released as a final balance, spelling, grammar and error check. It likely won't have most of the final art in it, but you will get to read the book cover to cover before we make necessary corrections, throw in all the beautiful artwork, and send it to print!
☠️ 13/10/26 - Tempest Remaster BK Campaign Launches We've had a lot of spacers get in touch asking if there are physical copies of our first nautical/pirate setting Tempest: A Seafarer's Sourcebook available anywhere, so much that we've decided to do a remaster and rerelease to get the book brought up to date and reprinted as a hardback again! More information on this to follow, but anyone who missed our first campaign for Tempest (or who has Tempest but would like an even prettier version + a collector's edition), this is your chance!
💫 November/December 2026 - Lodestar Final PDF Releases We will round off the year of 2026 by releasing the full Lodestar PDF in all its silt shining glory. This will release via Backerkit, and then go up for general sale on dragonsvault.shop. For another early look at the book, I've attached some new page previews at the end of this update!
📦 February 2027 - Lodestar Physical Fulfilment Begins Christmas season is over, the new year begins, and so does physical fulfilment for Lodestar! February 2027 is when our goods will leave their place of origin and start sailing around the world to reach you guys. We are hard at work as we speak coordinating with our distributors to make sure we are doing everything we can to make this process as easy and painless as possible, and barring any more major global events we are confident things are going to be breezy!
☄️ Early 2027 - The Hunt for the Lost Corsair Releases The final release for Lodestar will be our stretch goal introductory adventure The Hunt for the Lost Corsair! This will release as a PDF via Backerkit, and then go up for general sale on dragonsvault.shop!
Monthly Playtest
Aston will be putting out an update on Monday with our next monthly playtest, as well as the survey for the previous. So if you've not had chance yet, check out last month's playtest in time to get your feedback ready!
Lodestar Page Previews
Finally, I have some more page previews today! As Aston has mentioned it's been a summer of lore for me, and boy have I got some fun stuff waiting for you guys out there in the Beyond. Todays page previews feature some of the spreads from the Realms & Rogues section of the book, which detail a few of the wilder places you might weigh anchor at in this strange galaxy of ours...
Chapter 3: Ship System | Subchapter: Using This System | Pages 171-172
Chapter 3: Ship System | Subchapter: Siltsails | Pages 179-180
That's all from me for today! We really appreciate you all being along for the journey, and a special thanks to those of you that are active in our Vault community Discord(come hang out if you're not there already)! As always if you have any questions or queries you can always reach us via [email protected]
Hello AU/NZ backers! We are about to ship! Address confirmations are going out over the weekend, so please keep an eye out and let us know if you have not received one by Monday.
I can hear the monstrous denizens rapidly approaching!
Layout is nearly complete at this point, though we have art arriving every day to beautify the entire assembly. We're excited for this one to take wing soon!
Behold!!! A couple of gorgeous layouts thanks to the Amazing Apes!
In our next update we'll show off some of the new art, so Stay Tuned!!!
Also... let's not forget that Goodman Games has some Gloriously Evil Offerings coming to Backerkit in 2027!
We have the first look at the factory's production samples ready to share today! Take a look at everything below:
Each of the Dinosaur Dice
The Campo del Cielo Meteorite D20
The Medieval Chain Mail D20
Each of the RWH pins
The Dinosaur Facts Playmat
These pictures come straight from the factory. We just couldn't wait to share this preview—it's too exciting to keep secret! Everything is looking fantastic. Once our photo team gets their hands on the items for the perfect shot, we'll share those as well.
Production Update
Outside of the samples, news has been uneventful but positive on the production side. Everything is running smoothly, and no hiccups have been reported. Last month, the factory received the final shipment of dinosaur inclusions. As we mentioned in previous updates, we chose to send the material in multiple shipments to avoid major losses of inclusion specimens due to shipping issues. Now that shipping is complete, nothing should slow the manufacturing of dice and add-ons. Everything is smooth sailing!
This is basically the best thing we could hear from the factory. We'll have a deeper update on production news once we are closer to completion!
Pledge Manager
There are still about 100 backers who have an open survey in the pledge manager—if that's you, then there is still time to complete the survey and share your shipping address. Please don't forget to do so soon!
Once we get closer to fulfilment we will begin locking down addresses. We'll be sure to put out a notice before this occurs!
That's all for now. We'll see you soon with another update!
