What fast-paced day it’s been—and it’s far from over! The Darkest Woods funded earlier today, and, as promised in our first update, we’re (perhaps foolishly) excited to push deeper into the woods to find stretch goals!

Let’s start with some bookmarks. But not just any old bookmarks. Bear with me here; this is a bit tricky to explain—but that’s because The Darkest Woods is such a unique product.

The Darkest Woods app is built to provide everything you need on a single screen, so that as you GM online you never have to flip back and forth between displays. The interactive environment lets us put content into accordions, on tabs, in pop-ups, or in other formats that make it handy when you need it, but keeps it out of your way when you don’t. And we can fit an almost infinite amount of content on a single screen.

We replicate a lot of that in the book through its unique layout, which is highly mindful of the GM’s needs and the way you use the encounters at the table. But for some elements—like an NPC who could potentially appear in many locations—it’s not practical, or a good use of the book’s space, to reprint material over and over. So, just like with a conventional RPG book, we’ll detail the item in one location. But now the GM has to flip pages and keep track of info from multiple parts of the book.

That’s where these bookmarks come in. Each one will have information about a recurring element of the Woods. Once the PCs are looking for Annie, for example, the GM would use the Annie bookmark to mark the page corresponding to her location, and if Annie shows up in that area, voila, the GM has her info right there. In some cases, you might be able to track info about the item or character right on the bookmark.

We want to add not one, but at least four of these bookmarks to The Darkest Woods. In the standard edition, these will be perforated on a single sheet, bound into the back of the book. In the expanded edition, they’ll be die-cut and perhaps a bit more deluxe in design. We’ll unlock these bookmarks at $120,000. Either way, if you’re getting the print book, you’ll get all four of these bookmarks.

Every crowdfunding campaign lives or dies by the enthusiasm its backers bring to it. If you’re excited about The Darkest Woods, sharing that excitement is the best way—the only way—to help us reach stretch goals.

At the current pace, we’ll need about 200 new backers to reach this goal. You can get us there by spreading the word. Just click these Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram posts to share them. The more people you help us reach, the faster we'll get to this stretch goal—and the many more we hope to unlock through this campaign!

We can’t wait to add the bookmarks to The Darkest Woods—and to start unlocking the many additional stretch goals we’re looking forward to!

Thanks for your support!
—Team MCG