Newsletter Issue #5

Welcome to all the new folks added via the GG#2: The Colour Out of Space Kickstarter campaign! ☄️

Good to have you on board! 🫡

During the last couple of weeks, Colour Out of Space zines have been reaching backers all around the globe. I’ve been getting lovely reports from the community almost every day as they land in people’s hands. For example, from Friday the 15th to today the 18th, backers in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ireland, and the UK have messaged me in celebration. I imagine it will be hitting continental Europe this week, if it hasn’t already. 🥳

I starting running the zine’s featured adventure for a new local group with a mix of old friends and new. We had an 8 person table so I made a few modifications as any GM does! We’re about halfway through the adventure. Can’t wait to have them experience the dramatic endgame with The Colour itself! ☄️

If you’re looking to start up The Colour Out of Space with your group as well, make sure to give my full adventure overview a watch. You might find my thoughts on running the game useful! 🎦 Be sure to hit subscribe if you haven’t yet. 🤗

Now that the Kickstarter is completed, I’ve updated my Ko-fi shop with options to buy my new zine for those that find Grim Games down the line. I always buy bulk stock from the printing press to lock in those good print rates! I’ll be able to fulfill future orders for a good while. If you have any friends that are interested in getting their own copy, feel free to send ‘em here! 🔗

If you were one of the print only backers, you’ll also find the free map pack here in case you’d like to download that and use it in a VTT in the future! 🗺️

In other news, I’ve also got The Colour Out of Space now up on DriveThru RPG as well. I don’t prioritize the platform because of the GIANT cut they take from every sell, but I understand it is popular with many folks, so I at least want to offer my pdfs through it. Just to give you some perspective, DriveThru takes 35% while Kickstarter takes only 5% (+3% for payment processing fees). It makes a huge difference. Especially when I’m trying to have my prints made in the USA, and locally in California - one of most expensive places to do business in the country. 😅

I’m about 10 pages into the next zine of Grim Games. 👀 Right now I’m working on a traditional Druid class, as some of my local friends are interested in playing a wild-shaping spell caster and I’m excited to try building a full caster for the first time in Shadowdark. One of my first thoughts was to really put the “wild” back into wild shape, by having the transformation done by rolling on a table. I feel like that really is in line with the vibes of Shadowdark honestly! Below you’ll see raw images from my current draft in Adobe InDesign. 🧝‍♀️

For my first pass at wild shape options, I’d like to keep it exclusively to the wild animals found in the Shadowdark core rulebook. At each druid level there will be a corresponding wild shape forms table that has a few monsters that are under leveled (like the jellyfish and rat are LV0), and then some peak creatures near the end of the table (like the badger which has 2 attacks as a LV1 creature with a rage power!). With the randomness also comes some occasional supercharged options when you access the table beyond your current level (rolling an 11 here).

I should have a playtestable version of the class ready in a week or two to take progression from LV1 to LV3. Those of you in this newsletter will be the first to get your hands on it! I’ll keep you posted! 📩