“I’ll relax once Apothecaria is done”

“I’ll take some time for myself after Apawthecaria is out”

“Everything will be fine once For Small Creatures Such As We is done”

“I’ll relax once…”

I’m not sure how to write this post without sounding like someone on r/linkdinlunatics but here goes.

I have an unhealthy work ethic that forces me to keep going despite multiple warning signs that I should stop. In previous years its been stress induced vomiting, nose bleeds, and an immune system so overloaded that I was getting sick at least once a month. This year I’ve had maybe two weeks of feeling fine and we’re in… damn, how is it already August.

For the most part I’ve been rationalising my declining health as “oh I had an infection” or “I’ve not been sleeping well since X”. The truth is I’ve been putting myself under a massive amount of mental and emotional stress for years and this is probably just my body finally breaking down under it.

After getting For Small Creatures Such As We out to Kickstarter backers I should have taken a few weeks. Months even, to rest and recover. Instead, I threw myself into another project and gave myself all of these artificially short deadlines to stress over. Before that was done, I foolishly decided to promise another game in 3 months! And I haven’t even been able to get started on it because I’m having to juggle so much between active projects, fixing our house post re-wiring (it’s been 2 months and I’m still working off of a folding table), and dealing with all of the admin stuff that being a small business owner requires.

A few months ago my partner confessed that she was genuinely scared I was going to die because my health has been getting that bad and somehow that wasn’t enough to make me stop. Vomiting blood on a weekly basis shouldn’t be anyone’s normal and somehow I let it become mine.

So, I’ve taken the drastic decision to do the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do: take a break.

I will continue to work on Spirit Tea but much slower and only when I want to.

The Patreon poll project, Downfoot Abbey is getting put on the shelf until Spirit Tea is done and I feel ready to start it.

I’ll still be at Tabletop Scotland next month and I’ll still be fulfilling orders from blackwellwriter.com

And still doing my taxes, promise x

But I’m going to slow down and not commit to anything for the rest of the year.

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A Quick Look Back

Fiona from Sleepy Sparrow Games keeps making the joke that I’ve released “a bajillion” games and actually, she’s not too far off.

In the 6 years I’ve been doing this I’ve released 32 games/expansions. That’s 5 and a bit games every year. Some years have had more while others have had less. Last year I released 6 games, this year I’ve released 3 and was trying to get a 4th and possibly 5th out.

That’s a lot of games and I am so proud of how far I’ve come.

So yeah, as much as part of me is going to be gnawing relentlessly like a corporate Gollum trying to convince me that I’m “going to lose its all precious.” I think there’s more than enough there to keep you all sated for now XD

I’d love to hear your thoughts about my games in the comments below. Who knows, maybe it will help me relax and remember that I’m not just feeding my games into a giant machine.

Shanice’s feedback on DELVE actually had to be interspersed with pictures of puppies and kittens because I was such a sensitive wee soul and was too afraid to open the document at first. Now I just get a big list of feedback like a big girl.

The feedback, while overall positive — there are plenty of actual mistakes and structural errors to be fixed which is why we do these passes — Shanice did point out one very interesting thing:

Spirit Tea feels corporatised. Specifically, in my attempts to write the rules as clear as possible, I’ve sacrificed the authorial voice that makes Apothecaria a joy to read. And in hindsight, I can fully see that.

I’m one person, not a company. I see the feedback I get online and when a small but vocal minority start complaining about something, it’s easy to get swayed by them. I do agree that aspects of Apothecaria are not explained as clearly as they could be but also, it’s a game, it’s meant to entertain. The manual for a tumble dryer is written clearly but I don’t trust anyone who has read it from cover to cover. But then again, a backflipping clown isn’t going to show me how to clean out the lint trap.

So now I’ve got this strange situation where I have to go through and turn my fictional tea manual into something that’s actually engaging to read while also trying not to muddy the waters too much and make the mechanics hard to follow.

To show what I’m talking about, here’s a section that I think is too formal and cold:

Functional, yes.

But also very boring.

This on the other hand is much more exciting. It gives the game some character while still clearly explaining the mechanic I’m talking about.

It does complicate things a teeny bit as you get to determine your shīfu’s personality and they might not be as sassy as the book makes them out to be but eh, the same was true for Apothecaria and it’s one of the few bits I haven’t heard anyone nitpick!

So while I had hoped to get Spirit Tea done in time for Tabletop Scotland in September, it seems I’ve underbrewed it and need to deal with the dark spirit known as the Second Draft.

Wish me luck!

Other News

I’ll be at Sequential Scotland on the 8th of August in Glasgow! I’ve got a table that I’m sharing with my friend Kayleigh who is selling some of her amazing handmade chainmail jewellery!

Next month we’ll be at Tabletop Scotland in Edinburgh.

And me and Shanice will be quest givers at Whispering Woods again for their September event! Exciting!

Shanice is making great progress on our front room. I’m so excited to get back in there but also gutted that my desk is going to hide some of this amazing mural she’s been doing!

Apothecaria X For Small Creatures Such As We Crossover

Right now we’re running a crossover event in the Blackwell Games Discord where a medical research starship has crashed into a valley near High Rannoc. It is up to crews from FSCSAW and the witch from Apothecaria to team up and solve this mess before it gets out of hand!

If you’d like to take part, head on over to the Discord and download the free expansion from either #event channel.

Media of the Week

Once again Frances Hardinge has blown me away with her storytelling abilities. She’s quickly climbed into my personal pantheon of writers and I can’t wait for her new book later this year. I’ve just finished Skinful of Shadows which is a historical fiction novel about a young girl in England during a war between the Parlimentarians and the Royalists. She doesn’t give a toss about any of that though because she’s got the much more pressing problem that she can see ghosts and they want to possess her.

Absolutely stellar writing that routinely kept me reading till 2 or 3am.

That’s me on the left in a costume that must have had about 30kg of wool in it. In the middle of Summer. I was the sweatiest I’ve ever been in my entire life after each stint. But on the plus side, people absolutely loved the sight of us and swarmed for pictures for the full 45 minutes of each stint!

And I only fell once 😎

Spirit Tea

My chinese mythology inspired tea-making Apothecaria hack is nearly finished! Just some final additions like Festivals and some symbols, page numbers and then we’re ready for playtesting!

If you wanna know more about it, go have a look at the free post on Patreon.

The game is about 100 pages and I am so pleased with how its come out :) Just look how pretty that spread is!

If you haven’t heard, this game is being designed so that all the profits from digital sales go to the Wandering Warrior Kung Fu school to help our shifu buy equipment, advertise, do extra classes, and generally support the school.

Other News

If you aren’t a member of the Patreon you will have missed out on our recent poll to determine which of these three game ideas I would make into an actual zine size game:

Toy Soldiers DELVE

Taking inspiration from everyone’s favourite green and tan toy soldiers, this will be a drawing game where you sketch out the rooms in your house and add fortifications, buildings, inventions, and the scars of war as these two valiant armies go footplate-to-footplate.

Fun points: Getting to draw a colourful map of your two armies going head to head. Getting to imagine how you would use your home and stuff in creative ways. Potentially getting to bust out your old toy soldiers and play with them again and to tell your partner that Anna made you do it.

Downfoot Abbey

As I’m making Shirefolk, a solo RPG about being a squat fantasy creature that lives in a cosy burrow in a peaceful(ish) countryside, I’ve been thinking about Hobbits a lot. Hence the roadtrip fueled idea of combining Shirefolk with the big fancy dramatics of Downton Abbey.

Play as posh shirelings and their servants in the fanciest burrow in all of the shire. Have scandalous affairs, deal with rumours and gossip, throw a trowel at your master’s head.

Of course, this one may just be a ruse so that I have an excuse to watch Downton Abbey which I have never actually watched.

Fun Points: Non-combat focused RPG with more personal dramatic stakes. Get to do funny voices and argue about things like your son wanting to marry a human girl. How would that even work?!

SexyBack

I’ve talked about this one before and I think this could be a great opportunity to actually sit down and get it made. The premise is that in the year 2004 the warrior poet Justin Timberlake ventured into the wastes to find and return the Sexy. He was never seen again. Society collapsed and in the new unsexy wasteland, tribal gangs seek to become sexy through misguided efforts. Half-Elvis rangers, Sons of Mumf, Kawaiimurais, and many more will oppose you as you seek to follow in the Timberlake’s well choreographed footsteps and finally Bring the Sexy Back!

Downfoot Abbey won with 45% of all votes and so I’ve been watching Downton Abbey and learning all about the sorts of drama and hijinks our fancy shirelings will be getting up to!

My goal is to spend the next 3 months making the game and posting updates on Patreon as I go so if you want to follow along, why not head over there and join for as little as $3?

Once Downfoot Abbey is complete, we’ll be hosting another poll so don’t miss your chance to make your voice heard!

Upcoming Conventions

8/8 — Sequential Scotland — Doubletree Hilton, Glasgow

4/9 - 6/9 — Tabletop Scotland — Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh

Media Of The Week

I have been bingeing Bob’s Burgers this past month. I can’t believe I completely ignored this show when it first came out, it’s one of my favourite cartoons now.

Gamey Bits

We got a few requests for more interactive Apothecaria stuff like the Castle Nowhere event we ran last year where players were encouraged to tackle parts of a multi-dimensional ailment across several real world weeks. As they dealt with each stage, a new part of the story would be unlocked until eventually players discovered Castle Nowhere, a mini-expansion we put out for free for Discord members.

If that sounds exciting to you, get your butt over onto the Discord because we’re going to start doing more stuff like that again real soon!

Step One - The Idea

Everything starts with an idea, see my previous newsletter for more on that. Whether that be the incredibly common “I wish D&D did X better” or something more personal to you. An idea can be a game mechanic, a setting, a vibe, a joke, whatever but it is the idea that the game coalesces around.

Let’s take my game Spirit Tea as our example as it’s what I’ve been working on the most recently.

The idea for that was “I want to make something that helps our kung fu school but I don’t want to make a martial arts game. Hmmm, glances down at cup of tea… if only there was another type of kung fu that could be made into a game… Tea! An Apothecaria hack about making tea!”

That core idea then spun out into making teas for spirits in order to fulfil requests for customers who come to your teahouse for help.

My Advice — Get into the habit of jotting your ideas down in one big document. I tend to have one on my Notes app and another on Google Drive. The ones that interest me enough to get tinkered with end up on the Drive which is how games like Death Road Services ended up getting made.

I like to go for long walks and let my brain wander. It’s like a housecat and will often come back with little presents. Sometimes they’re duds, other times they’re the seeds of something.

Step Two - Getting Started

This is the hardest step for a lot of people and it’s usually because they’re skipping right to Step 10 - Become Rich and Famous and imagining all manner of hurdles that might get in their way. Usually they fear people stealing their Idea. You need to kill that fear and just get making it. No-one can make your game exactly the same way as you can and even if your game is incredibly niche and personal to you, chances are there are a million people out there who are looking for that exact combination of things.

I recommend creating a skeleton of what you think you’ll need to do. Work out what your most important mechanics are and build those. Usually that will show you what else you need to do and so on and so forth.

For Spirit Tea I started by making a list of all the mechanics I though I might want:

• Requests - The reskinned versions of Apothecaria’s Ailments. These drive the core gameplay loop.

• Ingredients - The stuff you need to find to make the teas.

• Locales - The places you need to go to find the Ingredients.

• Challenges - Okay, I wanted a little bit of martial arts in here. Sue me.

• Spirits - I wanted specific spirits that you could call upon.

• Sifu - Talking to your teacher seemed like a fun way of recapping the adventures you’ve been on.

• Tools and Upgrades - I wanted a way to improve yourself and the tea house without resorting to a levelling system.

More mechanics appeared along the way like the Brewing minigame and Tea Pets. The same thing happened with the original Apothecaria with the whole missing witch mechanic which was originally put in to give the joker cards something to do.

If your game has a lot of lore that you want to give the player then getting started might involve zooming in on one point and fleshing that out, filling in holes as you go and making connections with other parts of your setting OR you might prefer to start zoomed out and do the broadstrokes before diving in deeper as you go. There are loads of worldbuilding podcasts, articles, and videos that can be helpful for this sort of approach.

My Advice - At this stage, it’s more important that you are excited and actually work on your game but it is useful to have a little business person on your shoulder making sure that you aren’t biting off more than you can chew.

Your first game shouldn’t be your magnum opus.

If you don’t have loads of money to burn, start small.

Crowdfunding isn’t always reliable. For every mega success there are a hundred campaigns that fail to fund. (numbers made up but probably true).

Step Three - In The Weeds

All projects start with the exciting honeymoon phase which is replaced with the daunting task of actually making the thing real. This doesn’t have to be scary though. Tackle one thing at a time. That might be “playtest the combat mechanics” or “layout the kingdom management pages”.

Creating some sort of checklist is very useful here but I am wildly inconsistent with them and fail to do that every time.

This is the great filter of game designers though and it takes some determination to get through it. There will be a lot of frustration here unless you get very lucky.

Depending on your game the weeds are most likely to appear around:

• Playtesting — Getting people to play your game can be hard. I make solo RPGS so I can test it myself first then give it to my partner and then to my audience/ Patrons. I’m very lucky to have that. Thankfully there are a lot of friendly communities and a lot of indie RPG designers have sections on their Discords for budding designers to seek playtesters. We’ve got a whole Designer’s Corner section on our Discord if you ever need it.

• Layout — There’s no easy way around this unless you’re willing to pay someone else to do it. It’s like decorating. If you do it yourself, expect to spend a lot of time moving things back and forward and ultimately deciding to make it a circle instead. Learn from my mistakes and proofread before doing layout. Save yourself!

• Art — Artists are great and having someone match your vision with handcrafted art that shows exactly what you had in mind is the best. However, not everyone can afford to pay an artist and not everyone can draw to a level they’d feel comfortable putting in a book. Thankfully there is a wide world of stock art and public domain art you can use to create beautiful games on the cheap.

My Advice - When you reach the stage where you start to want to quit, remind yourself why you wanted to make a game in the first place. I like making things so my motivation is usually just getting to hold the book in my hands.

For a lot of my games I’ve gone to Kickstarter at the idea stage thanks to the annual Zinequest event and ended up having to make good on my promises. Crowdfunding guilt is not a good motivation in an emotional sense. It works wonders for actually getting the game made but I do not recommend it!

Step Four - Getting It Out The Door

If you listened to your little business person back in step two, you should hopefully have a game that won’t bankrupt you to produce. If not, you’ll have to throw yourself at the mercy of crowdfunding or go rob a bank (in Minecraft).

Like I said at the start, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. My tactic since DELVE has always been to print 1000 copies as that gives a decent per unit cost compared to a smaller print run. That means I get a better profit off of each unit sold.

I tend to print with Mixam UK though I don’t recommend it as their quality is inconsistent and some will come out fine while others will have weird mistakes. They’ve also recently started requesting that stock that arrives damaged be destroyed before they’ll send out replacements which is wasteful and is the biggest reason I’m looking for a new printing partner.

A thousand books is a lot to house though. I was lucky that we had a family member who had an external garage that she didn’t use so we could store books there while we lived in a 0 bedroom flat.

If money is tight, then you have the option of:

• Crowdfunding — Keep an eye out for events that might help improve your reach. Things like Zine Quest or Zine Month are great for small form RPGs (which is how I got my start) but there are others around too. Unfortunately this requires you to be active on social media and to build an online presence and promote your game relentlessly if you want to succeed.

• Print On Demand — Rather than coughing up a few hundred to a few thousand pounds on a print run, you can set up your game to be available P.O.D through DrivethruRPG and other websites. This makes your game more expensive to the customer but mitigates some of the risk to you.

• Digital Only — I’ve seen quite a few games that are digital only at first until they build up a bit of a following/ funding to make a print run. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a completely digital only game!

My Advice - Make your game before you even start thinking about this stage as it is the most likely to put you off. A lot of this seems daunting but in reality it’s more straightforward than you think.

Don’t be afraid to ask other designers for advice or help.

Breakdown

Making a game is easier than you think but it requires determination to push through the inevitable hurdles you’ll be faced with. Whether that be tricky layout, crowdfunding, art woes, or the dreaded editing pass, every project has its ups and downs. But if you can stick it through and get it made then I guarantee you that it will at least be one person’s favourite game.

You just have to find them.

Media of The Week

My computer is currently spread across three rooms while we redecorate so I’m writing this on my crappy laptop and have become obsessed with openfront.io. It’s a sort of 4X distilled to its barest bones. It’s like agar.io meets Civilisation and I suck so much at it and yet I’m going to go play it again the second I stop writing this. It’s free and browser based so give it a look.

Upcoming Conventions

I’m going to be at Sequential Scotland on the 8th of August. It’s based in Glasgow which is so handy :D

After that we’ll be at Tabletop Scotland from the 4th to the 6th of September.

Hopefully we’ll see some of you there!

I now know that I should have measured and adapted a pattern and blah blah blah but that sounds like a lot of effort and planning. Instead, I opted for my usual method of going for it and trying to fix it along the way. It works for games - mostly - surely it’ll work for this!

Except, it doesn’t really work, does it?

My planter box is wonky, my satyr legs are both different lengths, RISE shipped without an explanation on how to win…

My habit of throwing myself into something does mean that I try things which is probably the biggest hurdle for most people though. It means that I get to fill my life with cool things like circus and drums and stiltwalking and making games. I just wish I had the sort of brain that liked to sit down and plan things out properly first rather than the sort of brain that views any form of tutorial as propaganda by the machine that must be ignored!

Perhaps I’m just frustrated because I now also have to make satyr legs for my partner which will need to include some padding as she doesn’t have the benefit of custom stils to give her legs the right shape and I have no idea what I’m doing.

At the end of the day, I’m sure I’ll be able to put together something good enough which means we get to have fun volunteering and being NPCs in the Whispering Woods. But then another part of me, the bit that’s been conditioned by the constant shouting of side hustle Instagram that says the costume needs to be perfect so we can get professional videos and pictures so I can get more stilt work and-

Part of me is constantly assessing my life so it can optimise and monetise every hobby. If I manage to quieten that part of my mind, the nagging laundry list of chores and household needs pipes up. If I somehow get through them then I realise I need to take care of myself physically. And by the time all three have been sated for the day, it’s 10pm and I can, if I’m lucky, snatch one care-free hour before bed.

And I don’t think I’m the only one either.

I’m sure this isn’t a modern phenomenon. I’m sure this plight harkens back to some neolithic survival instinct that is now misfiring. I can’t placate my need for safety by sharpening sticks and setting them around my tree so I must engage in arcane rituals with words and electricity that somehow gives me the ability to buy food. I cannot just find a shelter, I must pay the big ape S’antan-der for the privilege of living in a house that needs extensive work done to stop it burning down.

We’re having to pay nearly £7000 to replace our wires which seem to be from the 1970s so please buy games off of blackwellwriter.com to help us not die in a house fire. /jk-not-jk

So What’s The Answer?

The great thing about costume stuff is that you can always fix it. It’s rare that you end up in a situation where you’re just S outta L and need to start over. Especially so when no-one actually knows what your costume is supposed to look like. If I was trying to be Mr Tumnus, fair, my wonky legs and janky butt might cause some die hard Narnia fans to beat me to death but no-one knows what my OC satyr is meant to look like so that works in my favour.

I’ve also resolved to get my daily routine back in order. To start doing yoga and meditating again. I had stopped for ages because I was in the circus and running around for 8 hours is great for the mind and body but then that stopped. My daily routine lately has been wake up, go on Instagram, check emails, go downstairs and get breakfast, check bluesky/emails/discord/itch/patreon, tackle one problem, check bluesky/emails/discord/itch/patreon, then usually be too sick to do much and get distracted by life stuff like electricians, MOTs, convention prep, gah.

That isn’t healthy and I can feel that it isn’t productive either.

I could chalk up my bad habits to the fact that I have been continually sick and or injured this whole year but then part of me wonders if the bad habits aren’t contributing heavily to that cycle.

Why Are You Writing This?

While at the UK Games Expo, I had a surprising number of people thank me for talking about the stuff I’m going through in a honest way. I hadn’t really realised it but I suppose a lot of #content is written in such a way that it only highlights the positive aspects of being a creator. We then compare our lives to this fictional life we see on our screens and wonder why we’re finding things so hard. So I wanted to share this not as a way to whinge and moan about my inability to thread a needle - 25 minutes it took me, I would have accepted death if it had been offered - but as a way to share some honest behind the scenes stuff. Cause this is just a pair of furry legs, can you imagine how much hassle my lack of planning caused when I was making For Small Creatures Such As We?

Be kind to yourself.

Media of the Week

Accused

A BBC anthology series about people on trial for crimes they either did or did not commit. It’s fantastically put together and every episode I’ve watched so far has been amazing. Sean Bean’s episode in particular hit hard.

Give it a watch and be ready for some gut wrenching performances.

Gamey Bits

I recently put up a free post over on Patreon highlighting our two upcoming games about spirits. Go check it out: https://www.patreon.com/posts/thats-spirit-160137342

We’re already ahead of the curve ;)

What this isn’t, is a way to compare yourself to others. Comparison is the thief of joy and while one creator might be moving hundreds of games, that doesn’t mean that you’re not doing well.

Finally, before we get into the numbers, I am an extremely disorganised person. The numbers will be as correct as I can get them but this newsletter is going to take me a few hours to do as I’ll have to go and find everything XD I say this because you might be like me and feel a little pang of imposter syndrome when you look at other creator’s blog posts that look like they’re business wizards with all their facts and figures neatly laid out. Know that as I start writing this, I can only remember the vague total we made.

So let’s get into it!

The Drive

UKGE is hosted in the Birmingham NEC. We live in Paisley. On a good day, that’s a 5 hour drive but unfortunately its the M6 so there is never a good day. We left at 9:30am and arrived at 6pm with only one stop. As is tradition.

Thankfully - sort of - we only have a little Kia Rio so we can get there on a single tank of petrol which costs about £55. Emotionally though it’s a fortune and every year I vow to buy some sort of air-conditioned Mad Max war-rig in order to plow through the endless traffic jams.

Thankfully most of my games are zines so we can still fit everything into the back of our little car. Though we will need something bigger next year as we’re making even more games and bigger games too.

We arrived at 7pm after Shanice bravely fought through three traffic jams and had to abandon our stall setup because we were ravenous with hunger and delirious with thirst. Did I mention we don’t have air-con in our car? Or a radio?! Haha, good times.

The Stall

In all my ambition, I had originally ordered a ⭐ Premium ⭐ stall but ended up not getting it because they’d all been snatched up by November. Thankfully we got put in a relatively decent seeming spot next to the entrance of the newly created Hall 4.

In the end we ended up with a 3x3m stall which sort of feels like a waste as we need width rather than depth. Thankfully we were able to make a sort of stock room and staff room behind our banner.

The Stall cost us £702 and our furniture cost £34 (and wasn’t delivered to our stall so we only had 1 chair between 3 people and I had to carry both those tables the length of Halls 3 and 3a. Thank BrOdin I’ve been doing farmer’s carries in the gym!

Costs

• Stand Costs (3x3m): £736

• Travel: £110 (Roughly)

• Accomodation: £666. Spooky number. We stay at the Hilton next to the NEC because I like knowing there’s nothing stopping me from getting to the convention each day. This year’s big hurdle was a train strike on the sunday morning which caused a lot of stress for exhibitors staying in the city centre.

• Meals: £240 (roughly). There were 2 of us on Thursday and Friday and 3 of us for Saturday and Sunday. The food options around the NEC are pretty expensive so dinner is about £60 per day. Thankfully the Hilton does a buffet breakfast so I tend to eat most of the food I’ll need for the day at once and then sort of roll to the stall.

• Promotion: Our new 3x2m banner cost a whopping £491 - it would have been more but I was able to find a coupon for £100 off :D.
  We also made catalogues this year as we’ve now got so many different games on the stall that it’s hard to pitch them succinctly. We printed 500 catalogues for £167 (incl. shipping).

• Total Expenses: £2410

Sales

Like a cooking blog, this is the bit you’re probably looking for and which SEO demands that I bury under paragraph upon paragraph of needless waffle.

In total we made £5,300 which means we made a profit of £2890

Our best seller was still Apothecaria with 38 copies sold (£565)

For Small Creatures Such As We sold 34 copies (£1,012)

Apothecaria: Dragon’s Lair, the newest expansion, came third with 26 copies sold (£311)

FSCSAW: Guide To Fauna sold 21 copies (£311) and outsold FSCSAW: War by 1 copy (£296)

Interestingly, FSCSAW: Love and Lust only sold 14 copies (£164) which we half expected as people seemed embarrased about picking up a book with lust in the title.

Golf Quest, our dexterity based comedy RPG continues to sell really well at conventions when people are able to get their hands on it. We sold 9 (£135) which is great considering we haven’t sold any online this year.

Analysis

Usually we do best on the Saturday, quite well on the Friday, and tend to make about half as much on the Sunday. This year Friday and Saturday were only £5 apart. I’m not sure what caused the spike on Friday.

It’s hard to tell if the train strike on the Sunday morning caused such a drastic drop in sales but it is definitely a bigger difference this year than last year.

UKGE seems to have changed things up a bit from my perspective as the aisles seemed wide enough that I never felt like I was trapped in the crowd. It was possible to actually stop and look at things without getting jostled and apart from a bad patch on Saturday, the AC seemed to be managing quite well this year. At least for where we were.

Our catalogue gambit seemed to pay off as we had a lot of customers come to the stall after getting a catalogue and reading it during their lunch or at their hotel. Hopefully we’ll see some web sales from people who got a catalogue too. Fingers crossed.

Thoughts

We put a lot of effort into making our stall look good this year and it seems to have paid off. Our new big banner looks amazing and certainly seemed to be drawing people in and helping fans recognise the stall. In previous years we’ve had a lot of people say “we didn’t realise you were here!” or “we didn’t know this was your stall!” hence the need for a big banner.

The catalogues were an expense but it seemed like a decent cost. With 24 games/books on the stall, having a catalogue that explained everything really helped people browse and saved our throats the pain of doing a dozen pitches to every customer. Having our stand number on the front hopefully helped people remember where we were but it was hard to know for sure. If you got one, let me know what you thought!

Having a third person on the stall really helped as it meant each of us could take longer breaks and actually go explore the convention. For once I was able to go around for a few hours and talk to people. Sadly I didn’t get to see everyone despite doing my best to try and methodically comb through each hall. If I missed you this year, I’m sorry!

This year was also the first year I’ve been part of a panel at UKGE. I did the “Humour in RPGS” panel on the saturday morning and the less said about that the better.

Haul

• Flabbergasted: Mystified is an expansion to Flabbergasted, a comedic 1920s themed roleplaying game by The Wanderer’s Tome.

• The Last Caravan is an RPG about travelling across North America in the wake of an alien invasion and subsequent super winter.

• Space Gits is a wargame about drunken orcs where you don’t have direct control over your minis.

• The Coven of Midnight is a dark fantasy academia solo rpg about rival witches in a magic school who maybe kiss?

• Berserkr and Ronin are Mork Borg hacks that are all about Norse and Japanese mythology inspired worlds.

• The Field Guide To Floral Dragons is a 5E bestiary about dragons that evolved from flowers. The art was so beautiful and the idea so charming that I picked it up despite never playing 5E.

• Castles In The Air is a “coming of age RPG about who we are and who we become”. You start as children and grow up year by year as you play.

• All Falls Down Sorroborough is an english jubensha about surviving a plane crash. I’ve been so excited to try one of these that I actually bought two chinese jubensha games with the intention of translating them but then I realised I wouldn’t be able to play them if I did that so I’m really excited for this one.

• Page Turners is a collection of 1 on 1 RPGs with a huge selection inside.

• Tale: The role-playing game by Game Forlag looks to be a fantasy RPG that was given to me as a gift as the creator had really enjoyed Apothecaria. And he didn’t want to take too many copies of his sizeable book back through Norwegian customs which is very understandable XD

I also picked up a lot of cool stuff from Art of Arklin which you’ll get to see once my costume is complete ;)

I had originally pulled out all the stops and applied for a big premium space stall with the intention of going all out on our table decor. But it turns out they actually didn’t have any premium stalls left so we’ve got our usual sized stall.

I did get a proper banner printed this year though! And I’ve picked up wire boxes to help get everything on the table which is important because we’ve now got 23 games and expansions in print. That’s almost as many as some shops!

This year we’ve got a few new expansions that I’m really excited to show you.

Apothecaria: Dragon’s Lair
So hot off the presses, it’s currently cooling in our living room. This Apothecaria expansion tasks you with getting to the bottom of a case of identity fraud. See, someone tried to kidnap all of the great dragon’s babies but messed up the spell causing them to be scattered across the known world. Unfortunately that person looked exactly like you and the Great Dragon is furious.

Avoid an angry dragon, explore all new Locales, cure new Ailments, get a miniature volcano for your garden, rescue baby dragons, and solve the crime of the century!

For Small Creatures Such As We: Guide To Fauna
A decade ago the Galactic Council discovered a planet teeming with diverse wildlife. Now they have made the awful discovery that the planet is doomed by its own moon’s decaying orbit. Work with the Darwin researchers to study the animals of the galaxy and to find suitable new homes for these alien animals or earn your fortune as a poacher, run your own private zoo, or just use the expansion to flesh out your other research with new Expeditions.

Comes with a whole new map and 3 new Planets to explore!

For Small Creatures Such As We: Love & Lust
So many games focus on how aliens might kill each other but this expansion asks how they might love instead. Romance your crewmates and learn what they think of this human thing called love. Become a parent or just a babysitter as you deal with new child events. Earn your living running cruises or become a performer and explore a whole new galactic map trying to catch your big break.

For Small Creatures Such As We: War!
Peace is a fragile thing and despite the best efforts of the sentients in the Galactic Council, war has broken out. Make no mistakes, this isn’t a clear cut rebellion vs empire situation, both sides have valid points. Both sides want a better future. You can get involved in new military missions with a deeper combat system for more detailed battles or you can try to stay out of it and watch the war unfold naturally. See how war changes the galaxy and you.

FIEND Magazine
I hinted in a previous newsletter that I’ve been working on a secret project with friends and it’s finally here!

FIEND is a quarterly tabletop gaming zine with articles, comics, fiction, and other silliness by Fiona Ruthven & Sadie Woods (Dead Air) and me. We’ll have copies available at UKGE for the low, low price of 5 pounds.

The first issue even comes with a UKGE bingo sheet!

Blackwell Games Catalogue
With so many great games to choose from we actually put together a handy-dandy catalogue that tells you all about our games! It’s completely free so swing by and grab one then make exciting oohing and aahing noises in front of strangers so they come buy our games.

I think its fair to say that I make a looot of games. The picture above is from my itch.io profile and it doesn’t even contain everything I’ve made. There are games I made for Tabletop Gaming Magazine, there’s content I’ve made for other people, there’s stuff that’s still in the works, Patreon exclusives, small things I released straight to Discord, heck there’s even an alt account where I posted the text only version of my sexy-silly bondage game entry to the Effing Foundation’s anthology back in 2019.

But here’s the thing.

I love making things. Creating something out of nothing is such an exciting feeling and I love the process. It doesn’t even have to be games. I love cooking, baking, woodwork, sewing, making stuff out of clay.

Side Project

Whenever I chat with Fiona and Sadie from Sleepy Sparrow, there’s the running joke of asking what new side project I’ve started followed by some gentle ribbing. And it’s fair, to look back at the development cycle for For Small Creatures Such As We I started the following side projects:

• Shirefolk - About 150 pages done.

• Spirit Tea - About 3/4 done.

• Death Road Services - Completed and in Print

• A Conversation with Death - Completed and in Print

• Our Once Proud House - Completed and in Print

• Mistorical Museum - Completed and in Print

• Rad Rex’s Amazing Bases - Shelved

• Sexyback - Shelved

• Chef Saga - Shelved

• Songherd - Shelved but planning to start properly on it after Spirit Tea

• The Witch Market - Shelved

• Contain - Shelved

• Retronauts - Shelved

Of course, shelved doesn’t mean that it’s cancelled. There are some games in that list that I will definitely be working on in the future.

Some people might view this approach to game design as unfocused - and they’re probably right - but I find that having multiple projects on the go lets me work on whatever is most exciting to me at the time. Where the difficulty comes in is that final push. The editing, the layout tweaking, the print checking. When you’re designing something, you’re moulding it out of the wet clay and anything is possible. It’s exciting! There’s a sense of discovery there too as you find bits of the game you would never think about making until it’s staring you right in the face.

And then there’s the result. The reward of seeing the thing you worked on come to life. I just got the print copies of Apothecaria: Dragon’s Lair through the door and they are absolutely gorgeous.

And I’m as proud of that as I am of the pole bag I made last night or the planter I made out of a pallet - even if it is janky as hell - because it just feels good to make things.

And that’s what I want to put out into the world today. That unbridled excitement and enthusiasm for making things. If you’re reading this, I want you to make something. Anything. As long as it brings you joy. It could be a home-made meal, a bit of art, a game, a new gate, anything.

The Art of Just Doing It

There is a simple maxim:

If I don’t make Apothecaria: Spider Canyon, then we don’t get an Apothecaria expansions about spider ranches and magical duels and wild west nonsense.

It’s simple and yet life has a way of confusing things. Fear, doubt, perfectionism all get in the way of creativity.

For the past year or so I’ve been trying to help a couple of friends make their own TTRPGS. Both of them had great ideas and showed some real motivation at the start but life threw some bumps and the projects got put to the side. Occassionaly they’ll pick it up and look at it but for one reason or another, they can’t bring themselves to actually finish them. They both want to make their games but no matter what I try, they just can’t face doing it.

And I get it. For years I was the same with writing fiction. I had received some bad feedback on an early draft of my first novel from someone I respected and I lost the spark. Overtime I built up this fear and self-doubt around writing to the point that I’d start crying whenever I sat down to write. It was actually the realisation that I’d been writing through solo RPGS that gave me the confidence I needed to sit down and start writing the first Wolf & Fang Detective Agency book. It wasn’t easy but I knew that if I wanted to write, I needed to write. I challenged myself with NaNoWriMo and sat down to write 1,500 words a day come rain or shine. Some days the words came easy. Other days I’d be sat at the computer for hours with barely a sentence to show for it. But in the end, I did it and I’m so glad I did.

My advice for those of you who might be in a similar situation is to K.I.S.S.

Apothecaria is my favourite game to make expansions for because it is so simple. Everything revolves around the Ailment, the Timer, and the [TAGS] which gives me so much freedom to design Events.

If you’re setting out to make your first game, I highly recommend making a zine style game. Something that focuses on a small, focused experience just to let you get something made so that you can see how fun it is to make something and so that you’ve got that confidence boost from already having a completed project under your belt.

And don’t worry about it being good. Your first game is bound to have issues. No-one makes a best seller on their first try.

My first RPG - Those Who Play - was released in 2014 and was laid out in Microsoft Word. Most of the art was the wrong aspect ratio so I just stretched it to fit right. It was printed by a terrible printer, the cover was blurry and the rules were a mess.

But without those awkward, ugly baby steps, I wouldn’t be here writing this now.

Media of the Week

I got invited onto the Deadlock beta by a friend and I am weirdly into it. I hate MOBAs with a passion but this Hero-Shooter x MOBA seems to be working for me. Also, the character designs and the weird 1930s-ish urban fantasy setting are so up my alley that I’ve actually found myself wanting to write fan fiction about them. I don’t even write fan-fiction!

I hope the team behind Arcane step in to make a show set in this universe.

New Product Announcements

Apothecaria: Dragon’s Lair is now in print so it will be up on blackwellwriter.com and blackwellwriter.itch.io later today!

Sleepy Sparrow and I have put together a zine called FIEND with a bunch of cool RPG articles, comics, jokes, and more. It’s print only and will be available at UKGE from both of our stalls! We’ll also have it for sale afterwards… if there are any left ;)

Conventions

UKGE is in 3 weeks. Come find us at 4-T13. We’re just to the left of the Hall 4 entrance!

Heck, this year I don’t even have a car boot as my car decided to die a horrific death involving a snapped fanbelt, a burst coolant tank, and fried electricals.

My hope is that we will be able to scurry around and get everything sorted as we do every year. If not, we’ve managed fine without the accoutrements in the past and I’m sure we’ll manage again this year.

The good news is that we’ve sent Apothecaria: Dragon’s Lair to the printer and should have copies available in time for UKGE! Hopefully we’ll also have copies of Apothecaria: Dance of Seasons too but we’ll need to do some editing on that before committing it to print.

If you’re coming to UKGE, you can find us just to the left of Hall 4’s entrance!

What Have You Been Up To?

Well, since fulfilling the For Small Creatures Such As We Kickstarter I’ve been taking it easy to be honest. After nearly going to the hospital over a panic attack I figured it was best to give myself room to breathe and recover. Of course, trying to change from being a sole trader to a limited company is a headache in itself that is made all the worse by every step of the way basically saying that you’ll go to jail if you do it wrong but hey, I’m sure they’re just exaggerating.

Mostly what I’ve been doing is writing some stuff for a secret zine that I’ve been working on with Dead Air creators Fiona Ruthven and Sadie Woods. We should have our debut issue available at UKGE so come by our stalls and give the password — any suitably cryptic password with a tap of the nose will suffice.

Apart from that, I’ve been doing a bit of work on Spirit Tea and DELVE: Reforged which I’ve posted about over on Patreon. The big new thing being that we finally have a tea brewing minigame for Spirit Tea that I feel captures the brewing process well and adds a bit of challenge.

I’m hoping to have Spirit Tea ready for Autumn. The perfect season for settling down for a cup of tea and a cosy game.

Conpulsion 2026

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to be a guest speaker at the Edinburgh based Conpulsion convention. I hadn’t been to Conpulsion since 2013 when I took my first TTRPG, Those Who Play, over there for playtesting. During that test I met a game designer named Greggor Hutton who gave me some excellent feedback on the system and has been a constant distantly orbiting companion on my game design journey. Imagine my surprise then when after all the talks were over - less than 5 minutes after I had returned from getting dinner - that I was asked to come up to the stage so that he could present me with the Banquo Award. It took all my effort not to cry.

Thinking back on it, that first year at Conpulsion marked a real turning point in my life. I had just come out as trans to my parents and my home life - which was already pretty bad - had become unlivable. After one of my playtests, I was invited out for drinks by a Romanian student who dressed like a camp vampire and called everyone darling. I told him about my situation and he got me a room at his sister’s house in Glasgow less than a week later.

I often wonder how things would have panned out if I hadn’t gone to that convention. As Those Who Play released and then promptly flopped, as most first time projects do, I had forgotten all about tabletop games by the time I finished university. I’d gone down the videogame designer path then the journalist path and then, by chance, returned to RPGs and got lucky.

I think what I’m trying to say here is that my journey has been going on a lot longer than I realised. It’s not been 6 years. It hasn’t even been 13. I’ve just celebrated my 32nd birthday on Sunday and I’m sure that if I could open up the book of my life, I’d find the seeds of who I am sprinkled throughout it in the most unexpected of places.

Media of the Week

Shanice and I have been sinking a lot of hours into the survival/incremental game Planet Crafter.

Starting with an atmosphereless ball of rock, you must build all manner of heaters, drills, biodomes, algae rockets, tree spreaders, butterfly farms, and power plants to terraform the planet.

The subtly genius thing is that the world isn’t procedurally generated. It is a handmade map with a few proc-gen elements like spaceship crashes. As you terraform it though, you see these areas that you have become increasingly familiar with change. Grass grows, the sky turns blue, bugs start to appear, plants, trees, and eventually even fish and other animals!

It is incredibly chill and fills that monkey-brain need to see numbers going up in such a gratifying way.

There’s no combat, it’s multiplayer, and they’ve just launched their 2.0 update so check it out!

If you don’t know already, FSCSAW is my sci-fi journalling RPG heavily inspired by Becky Chamber’s Wayfarers series as well as Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, and Farscape. It gives you a galaxy to explore and systems to generate alien crewmates. As you play, you’ll learn about your crewmates’ cultures, biologies, backstories, and lives as you explore and take on missions to make ends meet. You can mine asteroids, undertake research missions, explore uncharted worlds, become a diplomat, cargo hauler, space detective, get embroiled in various alien MLMs or do about a kajillion other things because I got excited and packed it full of all my favourite stuff. The result was my initial Kickstarter promise of a 60 page zine became a 256 page B5 tome that has been nominated for several awards and generally been well received by customers for the past two years.

The Kickstarter’s main sticking point was that I had, foolishly, promised 3 in-print expansions and as the game grew, so did they. In the end I am very, very proud of the work I’ve done on FSCSAW and these expansions which allow you to explore concepts of love and sexuality; take part in a galactic war or try to stay out of it as the galaxy changes arounds you; or dive deep into the field of xenozoology and help the animals on a dying planet.

But my god was it a lot more work than I ever thought it would be.

Apothecaria expansions are pretty straightforward as the mechanics are quite simple and each one is pretty self contained. That wasn’t the case with these as each one can interact with the others and the base game and theoretical future expansions. And as FSCSAW has a lot of moving parts, trying to incorporate the new systems from these expansions in took a lot of time. The War! expansion I near enough started from scratch after realising the combat system I had wasn’t fun and had been beating my head against it for a year. Thankfully tearing it out and starting again meant I could include something much better but then that meant there was a load of editing to be done to catch all the bits that referenced old mechanics.

Basically what I’m saying is, make simple games. Complex games are hard to make and the designers behind things like Traveller deserve a hug and a raise.

Fulfillment alone for these Kickstarter rewards has taken a month. Mostly padded out by a deep desire to not pack orders as it is mentally, physically, and financially exhausting. Thankfully - excluding a handful that we missed - we have now shipped everything! It took 5 car trips to the post office, the last two of which we piled so many books in that my rear bumper was practically scraping along the road but it’s done!

There are some damaged copies we need to get Royal Mail to sort out but that’s to be expected when you send out 650+ orders.

Since starting this project I’ve gone through so many major life changes that I hardly feel like the same person. I started making games properly in 2020 and did the FSCSAW Kickstarter in 2022 which means it was closer to the start of my career than it is to now! Since starting FSCSAW I’ve learned to drive; bought a house; took up circus, did a month long course, stopped for a while then did a year long circus course; been to Gibraltar, America and Brazil; lost my dad to cancer; made new friends and rekindled old friendships; made who knows how many other games AND finally wrote my novel.

Cost

On Tuesday, I woke up feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I needed to get outside, to breathe fresh air and to try fix this tightness in my chest. Nothing was working. I could barely think straight and my speech was slow and laboured. Each word. feeling. like. it. took. effort. to. think of. I took our carbon monoxide detector up to the room to see if I’d been poisoned but it calmly informed me that there was nothing there. I searched my symptoms online - always a good idea /s - and found that I could be having some sort of heart attack. My family has a history of it, so I phoned 111 - the UK’s non-emergency helpline - and after talking to the nurse, they got me to visit the doctor and get some tests. Thankfully everything was fine. My oxygen levels were fine, lungs sounded okay, heartbeat was as normal as mine gets as I’ve got ectopic beats that go ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum-dumdum . . . . ba-dum ba- you get the picture.

Once the doctor had done his checks, he asked if I had been stressed lately and I mentioned that I’d just had to pay £15,000 to print and ship a load of books and that my house has been taken over by boxes for weeks. That the worry of paying for all this had been keeping me up at night not just recently but as far back as 2024. He determined that I wasn’t having a heart attack or other Googleitis. It was just a good old fashioned panic attack. That was good news but it made me stop and assess myself. Since 2024, maybe even further back but definitely 2024, I’ve had difficulty sleeping. I grind my teeth in my sleep to the point of headaches. I jump at the slightest noise and picture fires, floods, burglars, financial ruin, murderers, and whatever else I need to not be able to settle down. Before I made Apothecaria, I used to be afraid of witches and would picture evil old women creeping into my room at night. I don’t know why I was so scared of witches but I used roleplaying to get comfortable around them and now I picture gentle older women pottering around magical gardens rather than malicious mages making me choke on insects.

In the last year or so, I’ve been picking up more and more injuries. It turns out stress inhibits your body’s ability to heal so that explains that. It apparently also uses up your body’s reserves of certain things which explains why I’m getting injured so easily in the first place. In the lead up to F-Day - Fulfillment day for those of you not deployed to Fort Boxington with the rest of us - I had two solid weeks of headaches. I’d been feeling sick since November with barely a week’s break between bouts of illness. And all the while, I was pushing on with the belief that I just needed to get the project done.

In hindsight, I could have done a million things differently and I’m lucky that I’ve got a health minded partner who has done her best to make me take breaks, eat healthy, and exercise at an appropriate rate. Without her, I imagine I might have pushed myself into something a lot worse.

Thankfully, FSCSAW is done. Barring some new border closure by Trump or something, the final orders should be arriving with US backers this week or next. UK, Europe, and everywhere else should have theirs by now or at least be getting them soon. So now I can take some time off to rest and relax and focus on my health without a deadline looming over me.

Hopefully by the time the next newsletter goes out, I will be completely stress free and back to the picture of health I was a few years ago. If not, eh, I’ll try not to stress about it.

Media Of The Week

I’ve got two this week! Both bought for me by my partner as a “congratulations now sit down and play some videogames to de-stress” XD

Beast Breaker — A sort of mixture between Breakout and Monster Hunter where you play as a heroic young mouse called Skipper who must ping around, hitting the cores of these crystalline monsters that threaten their world. It’s got great humour, fun characters, and a very satisfying central mechanic of bouncing off the monsters’ bits to damage them.

And the other, still animal themed, is Raccoin which answers the question of “what if Balatro was about penny falls machines?” It is just as addictive and seeing a good run come together feels borderline euphoric.

Until next time, why not check out the Blackwell Games Patreon where you can pick up the currently Patreon exclusive Apothecaria: Dragon’s Lair.

To Patreon!

After 4 long years, we have finally started fulfilling For Small Creatures Such As We. This incredibly ambitious project has been a herculean task and has taught me a lot about crowdfunding. Mostly in the sense of what not to do.

Thankfully, we’ve had an incredibly supportive and patient audience who have not only been really kind throughout the design process but have also gone above and beyond and chipped in extra to help us get the game out to people without breaking the bank completely.

Thank you so much to all of you, I really couldn’t have done it without you and I’m so proud of how the books have turned out!

The major log-jam for the campaign was my promise of 3 expansion books in print. This made sense when the game was just a small zine but I let my ambitions get the better of me and each of these books are big enough to be perfect bound.

On the plus side, they look absolutely amazing!

What’s Next?

Later this month we’ll be releasing Apothecaria: Dragon’s Lair (which we spoke about in the last newsletter) and the print copies of War!, Guide To Fauna, and Love & Lust.

I also revealed in the last newsletter that my game Spirit Tea is being made to help fund the Wandering Warrior Kung Fu school where me and my partner train. At this point I’d say I’m about 80% of the way there. We’ve got most of the tea Ingredients, all of the good Spirits, and most of the Locales and Events done.

If you haven’t heard, Spirit Tea is an Apothecaria hack that has you running a tea house in a Chinese mythology inspired fantasy world. Customers come to you with requests that you must fulfil by brewing a tea to attract a spirit that can help. However, Foraging is rarely straightforward and on your travels you will meet all manner of people, animals, and spirits, not all of whom are friendly.

Spirit Ranger on the other hand is being developed by Shanice Fagan whose name you’ll recognise from many of the Apothecaria expansions. It is a completely new solo RPG about cleansing a corrupted world and helping the people and spirits that call it home. Inspired by Pokemon, Monster Hunter Stories, Princess Mononoke, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Digimon.

She’s currently working on a prototype version for some in-house testing before beginning the gargantuan task of illustrating all 108 spirits (and she plans to include even more in the final game).

I’ve been playtesting Spirit Ranger and I’m proud/raging at how good her game design skills are. The combat system is so unique and works so well that we’ve actually started using it for our group game nights and I’ve already tried to pinch it for other games XD

I can’t wait to see how Spirit Ranger progresses.

Shirefolk, my Hobbit-inspired solo RPG about living in a shire, remains ever patiently on my to-do pile. With FSCSAW nearly out the way, I’ll be blowing the dust off of it, reminding myself how everything works and continuing with that soon!

and lastly for now, DELVE: Reforged!

I announced a while back that I’d partnered with the amazing Dwarf Fortress Youtuber, Kruggsmash to make this epic sequel and it’s been a joy getting to work with his art. Things have been slow the past couple of months as I’ve been sorting out FSCSAW but now that we’re nearly clear of it, I can’t wait to dive in.

I really want DELVE: Reforged to provide everything players need to tell the story of their stronghold from first settling to last breath.

As always, if you want to read my dev logs on any of these games, hop on over to Patreon!

We’ve got 6000 books arriving this week and I’ve had to rent a storage unit and clear out my garage to make room for them and I still don’t know if it’s going to be enough.

The shipment apparently weighs 1.96 tonnes and that’s not including the 1000 Apothecaria, and 500 RISE, 500 UMBRA, and 200 Apawthecaria that have all arrived this month. I live in a world of boxes.

Once we’ve got all the books in, we can work out what size of mailer we need to order and order boxes of boxes to unpack our boxes into.

For now though, you can grab PDF copies of all 3 For Small Creatures Such As We expansions over at blackwellwriter.com or at Itch.io.

I also just revealed that my Chinese mythology inspired tea-making Apothecaria hack, Spirit Tea has had a secret agenda all along! I’ve been making it as a way to help fund the amazing Wandering Warrior Kung Fu school here in Glasgow. You can read more about that here. The TL;DR is that our teacher is awesome but running any sort of class nowadays is hard and I want to help him buy equipment, cover rent, and potentially fund more classes/ workshops.

And finally, the Apothecaria: Dragon’s Lair expansion is finished and will be up on itch and blackwellwriter.com later this month! This was one of the earliest expansions I started working on but for some reason it got sidelined for 4 years. I’m really proud of how it has turned out and want to thank Shanice for taking on so much of the design work on it. It was her idea to have the expansion be about rescuing baby dragons and I’m kicking myself for not having thought of that before as it is so good.

Like other Apothecaria expansions, Dragon’s Lair introduces a host of new Ailments, Reagents, Locales and a new storyline centred around a mysterious attempted kidnapping by someone that looked like you. All of the dragonlings have been scattered across the known world (you can find them in any Locale from any Apothecaria book) and it’s up to you to track them down and bring them back in order to help clear your name. As you play, you’ll discover clues much like you did with the missing witch in the base game and eventually manage to calm and maybe even befriend the Great Dragon.

What’s Next?

This week coming is going to be a lot of moving boxes then packing and sobbing over my bank account as shipping is going to be a nightmare.

Some KS backers have been incredibly generous and donated to my gofundme which is amazing. For USA backers alone we’re looking at a shipping bill between £6000 and £10,000 depending on whether or not we can get a few things to work out.

After that, I’ll be finishing off Spirit Tea with the hopes of getting it ready in time for UKGE.

And I’m making a fun zine with my friends at Sleepy Sparrow Games. It’s a nice mixture of articles, fiction, and games which we’re aiming to put out once a quarter with our first issue debuting at UKGE. We’re not quite ready for a proper reveal so keep it under your hat ;)

Media of The Week

Fiona from Sleepy Sparrow Games started up a Project Zomboid server to celebrate the new unstable multiplayer update (this game is like 15 years old and they’ve just sorta added multiplayer) and I have been obsessed with it.

My character is an ex-cook for the fast food chain Spiffos and has been trying to build one at the base as a sort of coping mechanism. It has taken a long time to even get to this point XD

Project Zomboid is a very tedious zombie survival game that goes in for realism in every aspect of its design which makes it a very hard sell for all but the most die-hard roleplayers in my experience.

Gamey Bits

Apothecaria
Intermediate Ailment

A) Zodithropy — [CURSE ⭐⭐⭐] [MOOD ⭐⭐] [SKIN ⭐⭐] — Timer: 8
This patient was cursed so that they transform into whatever animal matches the current calendar year. They’ve just had a tolerable animal but the next one promises to be something terrible.
Extra: If the potion isn’t drank at the end of this week, they will have to wait an entire year before they can try again!
Consequences: If you fail to cure them in time, they transform into the next animal in a zodiac of your choice or creation. How does this go for them? What troubles does the transformation cause?

Apawthecaria
5 — Forest
A Terrible Racket
Strange droning and wailing fills the forest here as some beasts have found an old pair of bagpipes and are trying to make music with them. They ask for your help. What are the animals who are trying to play like? Do they have any other instruments around? How did the bagpipes get here?

Conduct — If you agree to help, Draw a Card: Red — You manage to guide the pack of misguided musicians into making a bit of music! Gain 2 Reputation. Black — No matter what you do, it still just sounds like a racket! Lose 1 Reputation as the rest of the forest blames you for encouraging them.

If this is the first you’re hearing about it, let me explain!

What is Zinequest/Zinemonth?

Zinequest is Kickstarter’s zine specific festival where they encourage creators to put up their campaigns at the same time and serve as a sort of crowdfunding convention for potential backers to peruse and support.

When Kickstarter remembers to promote it, it can work great. I’ve had tremendous success out of it and would normally swear by it but I’m choosing to give it a miss this year and focus on making my projects at my own pace without the pressure a crowdfunder can bring.

Zinemonth is a more widespread event that formed after Zinequest’s organisers failed to communicate whether or not it would be running one year.

So if you see people talking about Zinequest, they (probably) mean the Kickstarter specific one while Zinemonth includes Indiegogo, Backerkit, and other crowdfunding websites but the general goal is the same:

Help indie designers make small, fun games.

So let’s have a look at some that have caught my eye!

Small Folk in Big Coats by Sam Armstrong

From the Kickstarter page itself:

“In this game you and a few friends will take the role of a stack of uncooperative smallfolk wearing big, human-sized clothes. Most of you will control a single member of this stack, you’re called “players”. One person will narrate everything else, that’s the GM. If you’ve played any other RPG before, this is a lot like one of those. Just with a lot less stakes.

Crucially, you aren’t working together. Each of the little guys in the big stack has a very different goal that they want to get out of the scenario. You’ll take it in turns playing various roles within the stack, hoping to capitalise on your time in charge before you all descend into squabbling.

After you’ve all had enough time in the spotlight, or at least the rest of you a bored with that one guy who keeps on dragging it out, you scatter and flee the scene. Whoever did the best job meeting their objectives is the winner.”

Sam has a catalogue full of silly party game RPGs like this. I’ve actually got a copy of Hello Wizard I Have a Problem which is all about using magic to solve problems with hilarious consequences. Sadly, I’ve not managed to get it to the table yet but I love the concept regardless!

Punderworld by Twice Rolled Tales

Doesn’t look like a zine but then again, For Small Creatures Such As We was meant to be a zine at first too…

I’m a sucker for wordplay. I love a good turn of phrase and a game that is centred on making puns in order to change the world around you? That sounds like it could be great or grating.

From the Kickstarter page:

“Most stories start in the City of Wit, whose razor sharp towers reach ever skyward. It’s a place of erudite wordplay and boisterous ripostes. However, not all is as it seems, and fowl play may be afoot in the Citadel of Cleverness. Pride goeth before a fall, and even the mightiest can be revealed a chicken.

Far beneath the ivory towers lies the Punderworld, where the difference between “literally” and “figuratively” can be life or death. A place where your wildest dreams can come true, or your deepest nightmares – here, a rose by any other name definitely will not smell as sweet, and being a man of your word means more than anything.

These are places of whimsy and wonder for those who can use their wit to bend wordplay to their will and, or a place of pain and punishment for those who cannot.”

Toe Beans by Fistful of Crits

I’ve been friends with the creator for a while and have my very own Toe Beans mug so obviously I have to include it here.

This new and improved edition ditches 5E D&D - thankfully, that was my only complaint - and moves it over to the new Daggerheart system which appears to be much more flexible judging by the variety of settings that have been coming out for it recently.

From the Kickstarter page:

“Toe Beans is a soft, magical café setting for Daggerheart. Originally created as a D&D5e module, it has now been lovingly rebuilt from the ground up to work with the narrative-forward structure of Daggerheart. Inside, you’ll find enchanted elixirs, magical cats, light-hearted mystery, and a warm setting your players won’t want to leave.

Intended as a drop-in friendly space that you can plug into any campaign or run as a standalone one-shot. Whether your heroes are looking for a place to rest, explore character bonds, or accidentally adopt a fey-touched kitten… Toe Beans is ready to welcome them.”

Bowerbird by Joel Salda

I love games that focus on things other than the tried and tested dungeons and/or dragons. A game about the romance between a pair of bowerbirds is just so wonderfully unique that I really hope it reaches its goal!

From the Kickstarter:

“Bowerbird is a project about love and crafted in that spirit. The narrative is lovingly written in the style of famous nature documentarians. Even now, I find myself speaking out the words of this paragraph in an enunciated English accent. Each page is beautifully presented as an early 1900’s scrapbook journal from naturalist who would have been onsite. Will you add your own observational notes to the scrapbook already full of odd mementos and useful notecards? Best to start your own. After all, this is a journaling game.”

Whispers of War by Paper Joust

This reminds me so much of a play-by-post sci-fi 4X game that me and my friends played in the 2010s and if it can provide even half the fun of that then it’s a must buy for me.

From the Kickstarter page:

“In Whispers of War, you rule a fragile kingdom in a game of secrets and survival. Each turn you’ll issue hidden orders, forge or betray alliances, and construct engines of war and wealth. But the battlefield is never clear, when the dust settles only vague reports and scattered rumors reach the realm.

Behind every curtain lies a story of deals struck, blades drawn, and intentions concealed. Can your kingdom outlast the whispers?

A Strategy Game for Busy Friends Who Still Want to Stay Connected

Whispers of War was born from a simple problem: my friends and I love playing games together, but real life kept getting in the way. People moved to new cities, work schedules clashed, and long game nights became a rare luxury. I wanted something we could all enjoy without needing to clear hours out of our week. A game that kept us talking, plotting, laughing, and arguing even when life got busy.

So, I designed Whispers of War:
A low-commitment, high-chaos kingdom-building game you can play from anywhere at any time.
It’s quick to learn, takes only a few minutes each week to participate, and still delivers that delicious mix of strategy, betrayal, alliances, and unexpected carnage that makes game nights unforgettable.

This is a game built for people like me (and maybe like you) who want to stay connected with their friends, no matter how far apart life has pulled them. Play on your lunch break. Submit your orders before bed. Check in each week to see who thrived, who schemed, and who set the world on fire.”

That’s it for my round up this week.

Let me know what games you’re looking forward to in the comments below!

The topic is “failure” and it’s on my mind because my book got rejected by an agent today. I expected it would as it turned out they didn’t accept things that had already been self-published but I didn’t know that and had been patiently and eagerly waiting for their submission window to open again.

Coupled with the stereotypical parent pressure where my mum only ever asks “is the book selling” has lead me to realise I need to interrogate my own definition of success and failure.

I am very fortunate that I have a hugely supportive audience. Thanks to dedicated Kickstarter backers, Patreon supporters, shops buying stock, and people recommending my games on social media, I’m in a position to take risks. And as hard as it is for me to accept it, I deserve some credit for that. I’ve made some bloody good games despite what I might say!

Thanks to all your support, I’ve made weird games like The Dig which was a journalling game about a paleontological dig with a dash of horror. The gimmick was that it was an A3 scratch-card poster and players would literally scratch off each square to reveal a prompt and a bit of art.

I loved the idea and had plans to make three more games like it with different themes but it turns out scratch cards have a shelf life of about six months. After which they harden and can’t be scratched anymore. After having to commit to a large print run and invest in poster tubes for shipping we were fortunate to just about break even.

After being introduced to the old game, pencil golf, which is apparently a type of folk game as it’s been around for so long, I had the idea for another game called Golf Quest. A dexterity based RPG about a high fantasy golf tournament with ridiculous characters and colourful courses with unique mechanics.

This one got a lot of raised eyebrows when I announced it and I’m grateful that some people trusted me enough to back it because I think it turned out great.

Thankfully there’s no shelf life on this one so I’m sure it will eventually break even but it is a hard sell. It does well at conventions when we can let players try it out and realise how fun the mechanics are but it barely moves online.

From a business sense, these could be considered failures.

From a creative sense, I consider them successes.

Both games taught me something and allowed me to experiment. They’re both close to my usual solo RPG fare but with interesting twists that I’m proud of.

Then there’s my novel, Wolf & Fang Detective Agency: The God Thief.

Before I became a game designer, before I went to college, way back in primary school, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to tell stories and I wrote all the time. I got a lot of encouragement from friends and teachers but I was always warned that it isn’t easy and that I should have a “real job” to fall back on.

At some point I ended up making the decision to try and be a proper writer and ended up with such awful writers block that I didn’t write for years.

Being able to write and enjoy writing Wolf & Fang was amazing for me. It was my first full novel! And it was good. I could read it and not feel like I needed to rip it apart and bury my head in my hands because it wasn’t perfect.

Creatively and emotionally, it was a massive success. It was a milestone that I had wanted and needed to hit for a long time.

From a business angle though, I think I’ve sold about 120 copies since it launched last year which doesn’t even cover the cost of the cover art nevermind the print costs.

When I’m asked “is the book selling”, I feel like a failure. But that isn’t my sense of failure, it’s someone elses.

My metric for success isn’t, is this book selling, it’s are people enjoying it?

I’ve had people buy the book on day one of a convention and come back the next day to tell me how much they’ve enjoyed it. I’ve had several people say it’s their new comfort book. I’ve even had a gaming cafe here in Glasgow use it as their book club choice because the owner has been raving about it so much.

Most importantly though, I wrote this book for my partner. She asked me to write her a book for her birthday because she knew it would help me get over my writers block if I wasn’t thinking of it as my magnum opus. It was a story for us and thankfully, she loves it even after having to read the first, second, third, and fourth drafts!

That is a success in my book.

It is very easy to get caught up in the numbers in this life. Obviously, I need to make money to survive and I’m very grateful for every penny people throw my way. But no matter how well DELVE or Apothecaria sell, their greatest success to me is the effect they have on people. I am so happy that people have played DELVE with their kids, sharing the joy of creating and drawing together. I’m so grateful that people have been able to find comfort for both them and for sick friends and family with Apothecaria. And I am so humbled that people have sought me out at conventions to tell me that my games got them through the pandemic when they didn’t think they would.

That is what success is to me.

Okay, so that was an emotional one this week. Promise we’ll be back to stuff that doesn’t make me cry next time!

Media of the Week

We Are Legion, We Are Bob

A friend chose this for our newly founded book club and as luck would have it, I’d just picked up a copy the week before! I’ve since read through the first two books and will be reading more of the third the second I stop writing this.

I don’t even know how to explain this one. It has its flaws and each book feels like it just stops randomly but I’m engrossed.

If you like games like Stellaris or are a Star Trek fan and want to see how a single nerd/ space probe can save the galaxy, then definitely check it out.

News

For Small Creatures Such As We is so close to being done. The base game and Love & Lust expansion are finalised. Guide To Fauna is nearly there which just leaves War! to proofread then we’ll be going to print!

Terrifying.

Currently our release schedule has all 3 For Small Creatures Such As We Expansions and the long awaited Dragon’s Lair Expansion for Apothecaria.

We’ll also be re-printing copies of RISE and UMBRA, the sister games of DELVE which expand the map drawing gameplay into the realms of dungeon building and space colony management.

We’re also doing a reprint of Apawthecaria! We’re going to order 200 copies while we make plans for Apawthecaria’s future and you can pre-order yours now at https://www.blackwellwriter.com/products/apawthecaria-a-poultice-pounder-adventure.

Until then, I’m desperately trying to get some boards down in my attic to hold some of the 8000+ books that will be descending on my house next month.

Just need to wait for a dry day in order to cut the boards to size as they are too long to fit through our little attic hole.

Patreon Highlights

Over on Patreon I’ve been posting up some dev logs for Spirit Tea, my Apothecaria hack that puts you in charge of a tea house in a fantasy world heavily inspired by Chinese mythology.

This has been a really interesting project to work on as it has involved a tonne of different deep dives into things like Feng Shui, Buddhism, Taoism, folk lore, history, tea culture, language, and fiction. And while the game isn’t intended to be actual chinese mythology, I want to do my best to create something that captures the same feeling as that mythology.

One of the things I’ve been working on this month has been the Spirits themselves. As the game has customers come to you with a Request and your job is to summon a Spirit that can help by Brewing the right Tea, I wanted to give you a selection of Spirits with some personality.

The Money Frog is a type of spirit that loves money and is thought to be a bringer of wealth. To attract one of these money hungry Spirits, you’re going to need to drop a coin in the Tea.

Once it arrives, it will help the customer with their Request. Perhaps fulfilling their Request for Good Luck or to Help Their Business. Of course, being a journalling game, you get to decide exactly how that comes about.

The difficult part of Spirit Tea is finding the Ingredients for the Tea as you will have to head out to the various Locales in the game in order to Forage for Ingredients. To capture the feeling of a cultivation story, your character starts off with access to places like The Jade Cliffs and the Hungry Jungle and eventually end up able to visit the underwater palaces of the dragons or the Starlight Palace in the celestial realm!

Then of course, you have to Brew the Tea which can lead to… unexpected results. If you fail and make an Awful Brew then the result is that you attract a Dark Spirit or Yao Guai that will make things worse or help for a hefty price. That luck the customer wanted? They’ll get it but only because the Yao Guai that was attracted by your Tea stole the luck from someone else!

On the flipside, if you make an Exceptional Brew, you may attract an even more powerful Spirit. How happy do you think your customer with their failing restaurant would feel if the Starlight Sovereign - the head god - themselves came to help?

As always, I’m trying to keep all named characters gender neutral unless it is absolutely critical to their character concept.

If you want to keep up to date with Spirit Tea’s development, consider following along over on Patreon.

Media Of The Week

I’ve been playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 this month and I think it has changed me. It is so refreshing to see a setting that doesn’t fall neatly into any category. From the premise to the enemy designs and the beautiful levels to the so human moments, it has given me a new height to aim for with my own designs!

I’ve recently started tinkering with a Card based combat system that feels like a turn based JRPG and I really want to put it in a setting as creative and unique as Expedition 33. But there are issues with that which I will go into in the next newsletter ;)

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If you’ve played any of my games, especially Apothecaria or For Small Creatures Such As We you’ll notice that’s a lot of wiggle-room in the mechanics. Things aren’t pinned down as tightly as they would be in Dungeons & Dragons or even in a number of other indie RPGS and that’s a conscious choice.

I primarily make solo RPGs and part of the beauty in that particular medium is that you have so much control over your own fun. You don’t need to worry if bending the rules is going to upset someone else at the table because there is no-one else.

For me, that freedom to bend the rules to make a better story is a huge part of the appeal. It’s like how some videogames will let you change the difficulty during gameplay or allow you to reload a save and try again. Sure, sometimes you want to be forced to commit but sometimes you just want to relax and play a cool story.

And this is where TTRPGS can really shine. Without the limitations of a computer, your imagination can run wild. I see my job as a game designer as being a guide to a fun and immersive experience. One where you can decide “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I could use my magic to have a suit of armour carry my reagents for me” and not have the mechanics get in the way.

I design my games as a conversation where I provide context, mechanics, and goals to give your story enough structure and content to be engaging while still providing you space to bring your own ideas to the table.

I like to think of the relationship between a player and one of my games as being similar to that of a player and a GM. The game is there to provide a world and a challenge. The game will put interesting obstacles in your path that will hopefully make your story richer but at any point, you can decide that you want to change things up. You’re the director, actor, and audience all in one and I think that’s awesome because you can make an experience that is perfectly fitted to you in a way that no-one else ever could.

I’m always blown away by the creativity of players in our Discord community and I believe that making my games without that wiggle-room would discourage such creativity.

To give some real examples, when creating For Small Creatures Such As We I had to deal with the fact that players could end up with crewmates that - apart from their generated Traits - could be anything they could imagine. Trying to then bend Events around such a nebulous concept made for some tricky writing. If I wanted to ensure that every Event was 100% ironclad and could not be abused then I would have to cut down on the possibilites for Crewmates. And for another game, that would have been fine. I could have made species for each of the game’s Planets and given players some lore to help colour flesh them out but that wasn’t the point. I wanted to give players a sense of discovery and there’s little discovery to be had if it’s already written. So the solution was to trust the players. To give them the freedom to create anything and to react to Events in a way that is fun and interesting for them. To some players, that means having an unstoppable killer ghost that breezes through every event like a cool ninja. To others, that means having a soft-hearted chef with a difficult love triangle involving the pilot and the ship’s computer.

Is it perfect?

No, of course not. There’s no such thing. But it does make for experiences that excite me and like an ancient alchemist, I hope to spend many more years learning and refining!

TL;DR

My games will always have space in the rules for players to insert their own creativity. Places where I’ve decided a solid rule might not fit or where forcing players to do it one way would cut off a whole other player’s story.

I like that and I trust my players to be able to make a ruling in those spaces to make the game fit them.

Thanks for reading :)

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It was sheer luck that I came across the second Zinequest on Kickstarter and I’m so glad I decided to take a shot at making something. I think I had a week between learning about Zinequest - and zines in general - and launching the DELVE Kickstarter.

It feels like a lifetime ago and yet I can still remember it so vividly. The sheer excitement and fear as we flew past the funding goal and just kept climbing. Thankfully the TTRPG scene is full of incredible people who were able and willing to help guide this little newbie through those first few projects!

For those of you who might not be familiar with it, DELVE was my first (proper) game. It is a solo map drawing game where you dig into the earth and build your fortress. As you dig, you uncover resources, ruins, monsters, and more which you will have to deal with.

A huge inspiration for the game were people’s stories from their Dwarf Fortress playthroughs. Especially those done by the Youtuber, Kruggsmash as his characterful hand drawn art and colourful storytelling turned the randomly generated chaos of Dwarf Fortress into something amazing and I wanted to capture that.

I remember seeing the first DELVE Holds appearing on the Discord back in late 2020 as Kickstarter backers got their hands on the PDFs. Stories of dropping goblin armies down volcanic shafts, of flooding grand libraries, of fallen holds and hilarious mistakes.

Over the years, players have continued to amaze me with their creativity. Playing different species, making their own expansions, playing in Minecraft, or even trying to turn DELVE into a videogame!

I couldn’t have hoped for a better response to DELVE and to know that so many people have played it over the years has been mindblowing.

But with 5 years of experience under my belt now, I feel that it’s time to revisit the game that started it all.

Starting in January, I will be developing DELVE: Reforged. A full sequel to DELVE that aims to provide you with everything you need to create grand, storyfilled dwarven holds. With tonnes of new content, reworked mechanics, an actual tutorial, and so much art by Kruggsmash (Adam Palozie) and Mrs K (Ashley Palozie).

Coming full circle and working alongside my favourite Dwarf Fortress youtuber is a dream come true and I’m so excited to see what we can do.

Over the course of 2026, I will be releasing dev blogs on Patreon.com/AnnaBlackwell. If you want to keep up to date with what’s happening and potentially get access to test builds of the game, head on over and check it out!

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FSCSAW

I have been working on my massive sci-fi TTRPG, For Small Creatures Such As We for nearly 4 years and it is just about ready to go to print!

The feedback from playtesters has been very useful and I’ve been making my way through it at a decent pace. At this point I’d be happy to say that the core game and Love & Lust are done. Guide To Fauna still needs some work on the Expedition mechanics to make sure they’re fun and easy to understand and I haven’t tackled the War! feedback yet.

At my current speed though, I’m hoping to have them off to the printers in February which will be the 4 year mark.

Of course, this won’t be the end of FSCSAW. We’ve already got ideas for more expansions that dive into alien religions, crime and law, and even one where you get to start your own frontier settlement!

But first thing’s first, we need to get the Kickstarter fulfilled!

Shirefolk

My Hobbit inspired solo TTRPG about building your own burrow and living a relaxing life in the ‘shire had to get put on the backburner while I finalised FSCSAW but it won’t be long until I can get working on it again!

I’m not going to stress myself out by committing to a release window but I’ve done more of this than even I had realised! Again, if you want to follow its development, head on over to my Patreon :)

Your support is what makes it possible for me to make these games after all!

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Other Stuff

Outside of RPG design, I’m excited to explore some new creative outlets in 2026.

The big one being that I am now actually looking to get work as a stilt walker! I’ve been pointed at some awesome sounding opportunities and will hopefully have a costume prepared in time for festival season!

And the other is that I am planning on re-learning video game development! Before TTRPGs and before games journalism, I actually went to college and uni to study Video Game Design. It was… not the best. Mostly because the courses were out of date (we were learning Flash in 2015).

My goal is to spend one day a week learning how to make video games and who knows. Maybe I’ll be able to make an Apothecaria video game one day! XD

Until then, we here at Blackwell Games hope you have a great festive season and a happy new year!

Love,
- Anna & Shanice

So 2025 was an interesting year. I completed a year long circus skills course and got to perform in a show called The Veil which was all dark and dream themed and I got to perform quad stilts for the first time!

The skull mask fell over my eyes and I had to do my part basically blind! Thankfully I’m real good at stilts and didn’t step on anyone or trip over the speaker 😎.

I also went cliff diving for the first time, fractured my ankle for the first time, and published my first novel (Wolf & Fang Detective Agency: The God Thief, available now)

I ran a Kickstarter for a quadrio of zines loosely themed around Death and have now released Our Once Proud House, A Conversation With Death, Mistorical Museum, and Death Road Services.

I released the Love & Lust expansion for For Small Creatures Such As We and have released the Guide To Fauna and War! expansion to Kickstarter backers and Patreon subscribers.

I released Golf Quest which came out much better than I think anyone except me expected XD. To be fair, a high fantasy comedy golf game with a unique dexterity based golfing mechanic was a pretty niche pitch but I’m glad people trusted my vision enough to support it.

For Small Creatures Such As We got nominated for Best Solo TTRPG in the CRIT Awards.

That’s a lot of stuff… That’s not even including the conventions we did, the Dance of Seasons expansion release, writing for WOAD, working on the Wolf & Fang Detective Agency sequel, Spirit Tea, Shirefolk, Retronauts, and so much more.

It’s been an interesting year. It’s been a long year. I can’t wait to see what 2026 brings us.

Keep an eye out as I’ll do a looking forward post at the start of January that’ll talk all about my awesome plans for next year ;)

And thank you so much for reading!

I did attempt NaNoWriMo this year and managed a respectable 27,000 words (bringing Wolf & Fang Detective Agency: Dead Again to 169 pages) but I found myself getting stressed out about getting my words done each day and ended up not really relaxing the way I should have been. It turns out that burnout really affects your ability to create enjoyably.

I’ve also been dealing with recurring pains from not exercising enough which makes exercising hard which is an annoying slippery slope.

On the plus side, I’ve been playing a lot of Arc Raiders and a tonne of retro games for our annual Retro Replay - a month where we try to play as many old games as we can. It’s been fun. Especially getting to play old multiplayer games like Left 4 Dead which I hadn’t played since 2013. It was wild to see how much I remembered the paths through those levels even after more than a decade!

Blackwell Games wise, we got the Death & Pottery Collection Kickstarter fulfilled! All 4 Zines will be up for sale on the website this weekend so keep an eye out for that :)

Plans

So I’m not going to say anything concrete here but I thought it would be worth sharing a bit about what I’ve got on my horizon.

1. Spirit Tea — My asian-mythology inspired Apothecaria hack that has you running a tea house that connects people with spirits in order to help them with their requests. Each time I’ve sat down to work on this, whole sections have come together quickly.
   Right now, my big question is how to marry the old Ailment + Reagent [TAGS] with the more broad concept of Spirit tastes.
   Once that question is answered, I think it’ll fly in.

2. DELVE: Reforged — Starting in the new year, I’m going to be working on a sequel to DELVE and providing Patreon backers with monthly updates/ early access to the game as it comes together.

3. War! — The third expansion - and final Kickstarter expansion stretch goal - for For Small Creatures Such As We is basically finished. Like Death Road Services, it has been in the hands of playtesters and I’ve been getting some feedback documents which I’ll be taking a look at next week. Once we fulfill the Kickstarter, all three expansions will be available for sale on blackwellwriter.com

4. Shirefolk — My not-Hobbit solo RPG will be coming out next year (hopefully). It’s already mostly content complete and makes me smile everytime I look at it. I can’t wait to share more of that properly

   

5. Spirit Ranger — You know that feeling when your partner is really great at something that’s supposed to be your thing and it’s both awesome and frustrating? That’s what I’ve been getting with my partner’s first solo RPG project because she keeps hitting out with such awesome mechanics that it makes me feel like I need to up my game XD.
   If you haven’t heard us talk about this before, it is a creature collecting RPG set in a world where spirits and people used to live in harmony but not a mysterious corruption has made the spirits into monsters. As a Spirit Ranger, you will need to defeat spirits in order to cleanse their corruption, build up your spirit sanctuary, and eventually defeat all of the corrupted guardian spirits in order to cleanse the world.

   We will be aiming to put out a low-art prototype version next year that already has so much gameplay in it. If you like Pokemon or Digimon then definitely keep an eye out for this one!

   And there are many more projects. Some in the idea stage, some in the “maybe one day” bucket. Who knows what next year will bring in terms of inspiration!

Media of The Week

I have become obsessed with music that is made of weird noises and sounds and nothing scratches that itch better than Freshman Biology.

All of their tracks sound like you’re listening to a cavalcade of creatures who have turned everything and anything into instruments to tell a sort of noise story.

Part of me wants to incorporate it into a circus act, the other part wants to make a game about being in a goblin band.

Thanks for reading! :)

When I first Kickstarted FSCSAW it was to be a 60-ish page zine with 3 small stretch goal zines that expanded on the concepts of Love & Lust, Xenozoology, and War.

Shortly after starting on the project, my dad was diagnosed with throat cancer. He’d suspected it for a year but kept it secret. I only found out after he’d finally gone to hospital.

On November 30th 2022, my dad died and I ended up in an understandably weird headspace. I stopped working for a little while then threw myself back into the project and before I knew it, the game had ballooned from 60 pages to 260.

The expansions then had to grow in order to match the detail of the base game and before I knew it I had another 330 pages of expansion content unfolding in front of me. To the point that Kickstarter backers who originally paid just £12 are now getting 590 pages worth of sci-fi goodness.

Of course, such a massive increase in scope has caused significant delays. For the past few months I’ve had my nose to the grindstone on the final expansion, War! and only lifted my head to work on other games.

As of last month, War! is out in the hands of playtesters along with Love & Lust and A Guide To Fauna. And while it’s with the playtesters who are happily opening it up and beating it with hammers, I have a rare moment of freedom.

My other deadlined project Death Road Services has been sent to the printers. We’ll have to spend a day packing the Kickstarter rewards for the Death & Pottery Kickstarter I ran earlier this year but that’s an easy to manage 75 backers. FSCSAW is a terrifying 975… but we’ll worry about that once everything has been sent to the printers!

In the meantime, I’m taking something close to a break. All I’m doing this month is fulfilling orders from Blackwellwriter.com and doing my words for the now extinct NaNoWriMo. 1,500 words a day of the Wolf & Fang Detective Agency sequel. I’ve already got 136 pages of the first draft!

I am so incredibly lucky to have such a supportive audience. Every step of the way, from my dad’s diagnosis, to the constant delays as I skirt burnout, to my worries about shipping costs, people have been sending so many kind messages. I’m so grateful to each and every one of you for all of your support. And I’m not just talking about Kickstarter backers or Patreon supporters. Thank you to all of you who read this newsletter, to my fellow designers, to my friends, to casual customers and die hard fans.

Thank you to all of you who have helped me keep doing what I love <3

Media of the Week

I picked this up today as I’ve been wanting to play an extraction shooter for ages and this one just hit all the right boxes for me. Retro-futuristic aesthetic. Killer robots. Post-apocalyptic environments. The gameplay feels great and the graphics are gorgeous. Genuinely surprised by how nice the community seems as well!

Game News

My partner, Shanice Fagan, has been working on a creature collecting solo RPG called Spirit Ranger which sees you curing the world of corruption while forming bonds with and getting to know your new spirit friends. Everything I’ve seen of this so far has had me chomping at the bit to play it and she’s now gotten to her first in-house playtest.

I’m so excited!