Happy New Year! January has been busy busy busy. All the artists received their art briefs for the week following the New Year, and I've already got some great initial sketches to share with y'all, check it out:

It's not only the artists who've been at it! Josh Domanski had extremely helpful notes for the Factions, Spacecrawl Procedures, and ending 1d100 tables (and other pertinent stuff too, but those were the big ones). Throughout the rounds of feedback, they may have convinced me to pump four more pages into this zine.

I'm finishing up revisions this week (between Johnson Squared dev editing!), and then I'll pass the manuscript back to Josh by Friday to receive their feedback on the refined Spacecrawl Procedures. After I implement whatever notes they may have for me there, gdoc goes to Marx Shepherd for copyediting!

Once I have sent this out to Josh, I will then send emails to the ten folk who backed at the Immortalize an NPC Scoundrel level (which honestly, I did NOT expect to sell out), so we can start working on those NPCs for inclusion in the zine! The good news there is that with the slight changes to the page count, we're going to have some more space for those Scoundrel deets, 😁 

Since this is such a cram-packed zine, it's been vital to swap between layout and gdocs, testing out sizing with the ship sketches, and all that.  This is all still very much a WIP. Most of the actual manuscript lives in a Google Doc right now, which is still undergoing revisions, but this templating has really helped to shape the form of the prose that's being written. In these screenshots, you can see the gutters and spacing I'm using to build the zine for y'all:

I hate to be too hopeful and have it bite me in the behind, but this is feeling like it'll be able to go to print much sooner than the initial estimate of July. I won't say anything officially, because as conventional business wisdom goes, it's the last 10% that takes 90% of the time! 

For folks who are new to the indie ttrpg scene, there's a yearly explosion of TTRPG Zines called Zine Month.  ZiMo is a fantastic time to seek out game designers you might not know of, making small games and zine adventures This year, there is one that has really caught my eye called Universe at Your Door - The Traveller.

It's a Solo and GMless ttrpg by Lola Johnson, using dice and a deck of cards to send your crew careening through space in search of a New Earth. Obviously because it's sci-fi, it's got me curious. And it's got a Community Stretch Goal featuring our very own Carly A-F! Click here to follow Lola's launch of Universe at Your Door!

The next update for Not Enough Scoundrels is coming your way on February 24th. We'll see where we stand in a month's time! I'm going to try to stick to roughly a monthly update schedule, and aim for Mondays as a rule. See ya then!

Chris Airiau

To all 1,266 of you, thanks a million! Literally! Mothership Month as a whole made 1mcr, it's incredible!

I am very thrilled that so many folk made such a show out for my humble 32 page zine! Like I said before, it's very invigorating to see my creative efforts hit the right vein for folks into Mothership RPG. So again, thank you all!

If you'd like to keep up to date on other projects I'm working on, I run a monthly newsletter called 5 Million Worlds: Rokaner Reports. I chat game design, interview other creators, and release small games/supplements in support of my upcoming space adventure game, 5 Million Worlds RPG (hence 5MW Press, hah). In 2025, the newsletter schedule is bumping up by one day to release on the 28th of every month.

A whopping 97% of pledges went through just fine. BUT if you are one of those 46 people whose payment transaction failed (like mine did for two projects; my bank did NOT like all those transactions coming at once, haha), you have until December 26th, 10 AM PST to correct your credit card information. Perhaps you may have to communicate with your bank to explain what BackerKit is, like I had to, and ask them not to block transactions.

Backerkit will attempt the transaction again on December 19th and December 26th. If you miss this window, you won't lose your place, but you will have to wait until the Pledge Manager is set up to correct the information and make your pledge payments.

The Pledge Manager will only open shortly before shipping and fulfillment is ready to go. At that point, you'll be able to adjust your pledges and shop through the add-ons from the RV Games catalogue. 

I have not been idle this month! Today, I'm turning the latest revision of the manuscript over to Josh Domanski of Liminal Horror RPG fame. Josh was part of a writer's workshop Christian Sorrell ran in early 2024. He was an early feedback reader of Twisting Unseen (forthcoming) and When in Rome, the latter he also served on as proofreader. Josh has a precise critical eye and a great skill of giving actionable feedback, so I am eager to read his thoughts on the spacecrawl, new ship types, and receive punch-up notes for the many tables.

During the holidays, I'll be finalizing the art briefs to hand over to Carly A-F and Lur Noise to kick off the New Year. I've already turned in art briefs to Tim Zygor, and I should be able to share some of those ship sketches in January, if not samples from all three artists!

Plan on hearing from me once a month. I want to keep these updates regular without spamming y'all. When the project starts hitting fulfillment, though, you'll hear from me a bit more often to communicate pledge manager set-up, shipping information, payment and shipping dates, all that. 

That's all for now. Take care folks, and happy holidays.

Chris Airiau