Please note that you must make a pledge for a physical reward in order select physical add-on items (like dice, coins, or the Investigator's Casebook). That's so we can charge you the appropriate shipping when the time comes and make sure well ahead of time that we actually ship to your home country.
The campaign is in its crucial final hours - it's a sprint to unlock that next stretch goal!
At $140k, Marek will create Ensemble Team Rules and a new Team playbook! And, like any good keeper, we have more waiting in the wings.
So keep sharing the campaign on socials (follow us on BlueSky if you're joining the current Twitter exodus) and lock in for those final 48 hours.
In the meantime, we're turning the rest of this update over to creator Michael Sands as he shares what it was like to bring these two massive books together.
Over to Michael...
When we first got started with this project, there was a huge amount of material from Luke and Marek, and it was obvious we weren't going to be able to use everything. (Or would we?? -more on this later). That meant that my first round of developmental editing was focused on working out what would be the most useful for the most people, and what could be dropped or combined.
On top of that, we had to polish what was there: tuning each move so it was as cool as possible, tightening up phrasing and word choices, arranging the sections to flow sensibly, and making sure the "voice" of the text was right for Monster of the Week (while still keeping Luke and Marek's voice too).
As part of this process I found things I knew I needed to add to the text: the Action Scientist, Good Monsters, and a few small advice and rules sections to address common play questions and issues.
That stuff is hard work, and although I've gotten pretty good at it over the years, it's draining to look over text in such detail. It took a few months. Once we had everything as close to perfection as possible, we handed it over to Karen Twelves for editing and then to Fred Hicks for layout.
Which is where the length of the text jumped out of the closet, giving us all a huge fright. It was too much to fit into a single hardcover! Our printer literally couldn't print it!
Which is the point where we decided to split it into two books.
Illustration by Fernando Salvaterra
...And that meant going through the careful arrangement of all of the sections and rearranging them to figure out what belonged in each book.
Slayer's Survival Kit became the expansion with all the new playbooks, optional rules, and general advice. The Hunter's Journal collected all the individual playbook advice and the new hunter stories for each.
Once we'd figured that out, we had to assess the structure all over again. Plus there was new cover art to commission and separate layouts to build for the two volumes.
And so, after this long journey, we've finally reached the point where we're crowdfunding not one, but two books for you, each packed with exciting new options for your games.
The BackerKit campaign is almost done, but the best part comes next: hearing the stories from your table and what you all do with this giant trove of new material! I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.
