I've got a pretty big update for you this month, split between art and game design! Let's dig in!

First up, both Carly A-F and Lur Noise have turned in their art finals for the zine! Tim is making progress too, and I do have some more sketches to share. Note that the layout is a Work In Progress!

As I shared last month, Lur Noise blew the art brief outta the park. In addition to the NPC profiles, I also commissioned two other pieces. The first is a sort of chapter header at the split where the zine becomes tables tables tables.

The second piece is for the new cover, which I chose to change for two reasons: (1) I made the original cover when I wasn’t even confident this project hit its second stretch goal, and (2) working with Lur Noise has been amazing. I feel her art shows the zine’s heart, not to mention bringing a more unified art direction to tie the work together.

Not Enough Scoundrels was a much more modest project before launch, and the campaign success has given me the possibility to develop the zine for more longevity for which, again, I heartily thank you all, :) 

As I mentioned last month, Josh Domanski gave the most crucial feedback on the Campaign Framework and Spacecrawl. Cracking the issues he raised has been a lot more work than I expected, a process which took a ton of binned writing to finally figure out.

First, the Spacecrawl now has a new step: The Job Turn. As Josh rightly pointed out, the most crucial part of tramp freight work is finding the cargo, not drifting on the long road. The Job Turn provides guidance for Wardens on how to build out NPC-PC relations, how that works with the Faction dynamics, and getting those freight contracts. No one’s gonna give a bunch of nobodies their precious cargo, gotta do some Favors or maybe a little Job, yeah?

All of that keys into the new campaign framework. I binned the original framework centered around the Megafreighter, and now instead, invite your ship crew to the Sandcastle Sector:

The Sandcastle Sector is a sandbox of star systems, Ports and hyperlanes. This sandbox provides a Port’s Faction dynamics, hyperlane connections, and freight specialties to give your campaign the footing you need for all your space trucking and underhanded dealings.

The Ports on the Sandcastle Sector map are specifically only Trade Ports. There are other Ports within and hyperlanes out of the Sandcastle Sector. The campaign framework provides a dynamic gap to plug in other Mothership modules while being full enough of Scoundrels, Contraband, and Faction interplay to keep players engaged with the local social problems.

I’m very confident that this addition has made the zine a much better tool for space trucker and smuggling games, and most importantly, more immediately playable.

Last time I said I'd have the manuscript to Josh by the end of the week. That was before the Sandcastle Sector existed. It took a lot longer to figure out than I'd anticipated (while also, life was happening, hah). This time, I've already turned in the manuscript over to Josh for that second round of development. With the bulk of the changes made, I think the future revisions ought to be much smoother and quicker. 

To improve workflow on the digital assets, here's an update to the Project Timeline from the campaign page:

The next update for Not Enough Scoundrels is coming your way on March 24th. By then, I'm hoping that I’ll be working through copyediting. With most of the art complete, the visual updates will be focused on layout  progress and digital asset development. See ya after the equinox!

Chris Airiau