We're in the final hours of the Downcrawl 2E crowdfunding campaign!! We've just hit $75K which is incredible... let's see how much more we can get the word out...
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Aaron A. Reed
4 days ago
Downcrawl Worlds: A Worldbuilding Card Game
We're in the final week of the Downcrawl campaign! I wanted to cross-post a fun update from the Downcrawl Digest blog about Downcrawl Worlds, the standalone wo...
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Aaron A. Reed
24 days ago
Week 2: Blogs, Big Bad, Beta (feed)Back
It's Week 2 of the Downcrawl 2E crowdfunding campaign, and we've passed $50K and 520 lovely backers! This is the traditional plodding middle period of crowdfunding (most excitem...
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Aaron A. Reed
about 1 month ago
What a Launch!
What an amazing first 48 hours for Downcrawl 2E! We blew past our funding goal on the first day and are creeping up on doubling it by the time this email goes out. Thanks to you...
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Aaron A. Reed
about 2 months ago
Download the Current Rules Draft Now!
Once you back the Downcrawl campaign at any pledge level, you'll immediately unlock access to the current draft of the rules. This early release is preliminary and work-in-pr...
We're in the final hours of the Downcrawl 2E crowdfunding campaign!! We've just hit $75K which is incredible... let's see how much more we can get the word out about this game in these last few hours!
It's actually fairly tricky to self-promote your own crowdfunding campaign these days. RPG sites don't want to cover them, many places only want to talk about shipping games rather than preorders, and even most TTRPG communities require posts about your own games to go to a "self-promo" channel which everyone has universally muted. Despite the fact that there've been dozens of discussions about the first edition of Downcrawl on the r/rpg Subreddit over the years, for instance, my attempt to post about it there was predictably smacked down:
All this is a slightly complainy way of saying: I'd really appreciate anything you could do to spread the word about Downcrawl 2E today to your followers and communities and friends. You can download a bunch of hi-res images here for easy sharing, and here are some posts on social media you can reshare as well:
I'll repeat my mantra from my first update: Word of mouth is the ultimate currency in our oversaturated media landscape, so thanks in advance for any recommendations you make. 🙏 ❤️
What's been happening on the game otherwise? This week I've been working on finalizing the Encounter Deck, one of the add-ons which helps with generating random encounters during journeys. As opposed to some other systems, while Downcrawl encounters can certainly be dangerous, they're often framed more as interesting side quests than just a list of random monsters you might fight.
The four kinds of Encounter (plus Fungal Foraging, sort of another kind of encounter) each have different instructions for how to draw other cards to "assemble" a final situation. I did a bunch of experimentation with layouts earlier this fall to find a way to position all of these "pieces" together in a way that helped your eye align them, no matter which configuration the cards were in. This took a lot of rejiggering since each card can appear in multiple configurations with other cards.
This week I've been going back to these mockups (which are the early ones you saw on the campaign page and in the Encounter Deck video there) and layering in the final artwork. The deck cards are created in InDesign, which has a helpful feature that lets you import one InDesign document into another; so I created a file showing cards laid out in all the major combinations which will auto-update as the card design and art is tweaked, so I can see how edges and lines were looking:
You can see how this helps me check that, for instance, the artwork on the Fungal Forgaging area aligns with a second card to produce a compound fungus name ("emerald funnels"):
Note: the "Side Effect" is upside down because you draw that later and separately... in general the text orientation is always trying to help guide your eye to what's relevant for a particular draw.
I'm really happy with how the Encounter Cards are working together and looking with this final art in place. I ordered another proof yesterday and will share pictures once I see them in action. (The Encounter Deck is included at the "Complete" pledge tier or as an add-on to any order.)
That's all for now! After the dust settles from the final campaign day, I'll probably share an update some time next week with my current thinking on timelines for production, shipping and fulfillment. A reminder that shipping is not included as part of your pledge, and will be charged separately shortly before your items ship, which allows me to keep the cost to you as close to the actual rates as possible. (You can review the "Shipping" section of the campaign page for my best estimates currently about what the shipping charge will be for your pledge and region.)
Thanks for being a fan of Downcrawl, and never stop exploring,
We're in the final week of the Downcrawl campaign! I wanted to cross-post a fun update from the Downcrawl Digest blog about Downcrawl Worlds, the standalone worldbuilding game you can play with the Downcrawl Deck cards. A couple quick updates before we get there:
The campaign ends this Friday! If you haven't backed yet, don't miss your chance to reserve a copy of Downcrawl 2E.
(The final moment is in theory Friday at 5:00pm PT, but I've turned on a BackerKit thing called "Overtime Mode" which will keep the campaign open as long as new pledges keep coming in at a steady clip. A stress amplification machine? Clever marketing technique? Swiftly-ending exercise in humiliation? We'll find out.)
I appeared on "How Books Are Made" (a podcast about the art and science of making books) to talk about what it takes to crowdfund, market, and self-publish an indie book. We had a lovely conversation about what I've learned running five crowdfunding campaigns, including for my prior books 50 Years of Text Games and Subcutanean, as well as a bit about Downcrawl 2E... definitely worth a listen if you're interested in how this kind of thing all comes together!
Thanks to feedback from some lovely backers, I've released some updates over the past few weeks to the early rules draft available to anyone who backs the project. These are mostly typo fixes and broken links, but there have been a few rules clarifications and minor tweaks to systems as a result of this feedback (which is much appreciated!)
Thanks for following the project, and read on for a sneak peak at Downcrawl Worlds, which will be a great game to bust out on a game night where not everyone can make it or you want something a bit less crunchy than usual!
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Today I wanted to talk about Downcrawl Worlds, which is a whole second game you can play with your Downcrawl Deck cards.
Worlds emerged after I had good test proofs of the card deck, but was having trouble finding a satisfying way to quickly playtest with it at conventions. The idea finally struck me: what if there was a whole separate game you could play with just the cards, without the whole Downcrawl 2E rulebook?
What emerged was a fast-paced worldbuilding game about inventing strange, inspired ideas together. A game you could use to generate a campaign world for Downcrawl, or as a fun standalone evening of creativity. A game where you could invent something called the Godslime and explore how it survived through the Age of Sacred Shadows…
A Downcrawl Worlds game in progress. Yes, the Godslime was “oozy, but tasteful.”
In Downcrawl Worlds, you take turns proposing new elements of a weird, wondrous underworld you’re inventing from scratch. The current player chooses a turn type and plays one prompt word from their hand. For instance, if you’re playing the Create A Legend turn, which asks you to play an Idea, you might say “I think there should be legendary scorpions in this world,” and put down the scorpions card.
A “pointer” serves as both nametag, to cover parts of the card that aren’t relevant, and to see when every player has taken their turn.
In response, each other player will propose a possible modifier to your idea (again, guided by the current turn type). For Create a Legend the response category is Quality. One player might propose crimson: “I think these scorpions are huge and made of red gemstones. It sounds like a tinkling chandelier when they’re approaching.” Others might respond with:
elegant: “The scorpions are sort of angelic, graceful. Even a glance of them brings a tear to your eye.”
wind-up: “They’re mechanical scorpions created by some mad inventor long ago to patrol the lands. Legends say one day they will wind down and their reign of terror will end.”
riddle: “The Riddle Scorpions hide where you least expect them and paralyze you with quick strikes. If you can answer their riddle, they’ll let you go, but otherwise…”
A round of played cards, with the Downcrawl Deck in the center of the table.
The current player (who proposed scorpions) then says the phrase: “These are all great stories, but the truth is…” and picks one of these proposals. “The truth is they are wind-up scorpions. Great beasts of metal that are slow, but ruthless in their pursuit of any who try to wander freely. They seem to regard nearly any sentient creatures as enemies.” They take the card they selected and align it with their own:
Finally, they choose a turn type for the player on their left to play. “Elena, let’s Find a New Volume next…” thus beginning the next turn.
As you play, you record each idea on an Index (an index card). Some turn types propose new ideas, others continue to develop existing ideas (“let’s find out more about those wind-up scorpions…”) letting you add more info to an existing Index. You can reposition Indexes at will, picking them up to refresh your memory or clustering related elements together.
When you’ve built up and developed enough Indexes of the right types, you unlock Story Turns, which let you use these elements to tell different kinds of stories. For instance, in the Historic Summit story turn, you’ll discover what happens when two Folk (the peoples of your Down) come together. Other story turns explore strange goings-on in a particular Volume (a location in your Down), or create a hero and send them on an epic quest to confront the Legend of the Age.
Some Indexes for a Downcrawl Worlds playtest. One can always do with more heartless, unalive Shrimp Wraiths.
I’ve been playtesting Downcrawl Worlds extensively over the last few months (I’m on Draft 11 of the rules!), and can objectively say it’s always a ton of fun. (And has helped me iterate on the card design much more quickly.) It’s a great way to spend a couple of hours with a table of creative friends, or even friends who might just need a bit of prodding from the card prompts to bring their latent creativity out. Last weekend I ran a few games at the KublaCon Fall convention in San Jose, California, with players including young teenagers, hardcore D&D purists, and an elderly boardgamer all enjoying themselves immensely.
Downcrawl Worlds is a standalone game, but intersects with core Downcrawl in a couple fun ways:
You can use Worlds to build a Deep, Deep Down for your main Downcrawl game: Indexes become the main game’s Map and Folk Decks, and everything you create aligns nicely with what you’ll need for campaign play.
Like the main game, you can play Worlds with a group (up to 6 players) or solo (with variant rules for a 2-player game).
Also like the main game, Worlds can work with any combination of Downcrawl Decks: if you have the Even Deeper Deck (with slightly stranger prompts), you can use it alone, shuffle it together with the main deck, even remove cards with prompts you don’t like: the game will play just fine with any combination of cards.
You’ll get a PDF of the Downcrawl Worlds rules for free if you back the crowdfunding campaign at any level that includes a Downcrawl card deck! I didn’t foresee this fun little game existing during the initial design of 2E, but I’m so glad it’s come into being… it’s another lovely way to bring the magic of creating a curious underworld together to your table.
That's it for now! You'll probably hear from me a couple more times this week as I beat the drum for the final days of the campaign. I'll keep folks posted with regular updates once the campaign ends as we move forward towards the fulfillment stage, which I'm planning for early next year. Thanks for everything and take care,
