We're approaching the last 48 hours!

Great news! We've unlocked the expanded Parallel Play mechanics by getting enough digital community copies to meet our goal. So i'll be finishing writing those this week.

Don't forget that the community share goal unlocks book plate stickers for all physical pledges and downloadable ones for digital, now is a great time to share and help us get our last few Stretch Goals met.

With the first draft submitted to Brent (our glorious editor) I took a short pause on writing and had a go at digitising some of my playthrough (you can see why Nala is the best person to do the game layout) as seen in the main campaign image.
 
I struggle with pain in my hands so cutting and sticking is not something I can personally do easily, same with handwriting for long stretches, so I keep the sources i'm using together in a folder and in some cases hand write or voice record and then type.

However you chose to make your journal is up to you, the key is to make something you can keep in some form.

 If I visually digitise the whole playthrough after finishing, I might remove the background images and print a copy on some fun paper, which I may very well see if sewn binding is something my hands will let me do, alternatively i'll get good with my stapler!

For a close up and to scroll through these as pages head over to thirdvaultyarns.com (this is a direct link to the playthrough which is hidden on the website otherwise).

The playthrough currently follows the initial set up where you establish your Curator, which will help you to start finding the voice your journal entries will take. Then task entries, with some of the entries for the mystery solving prompts interspersed with day to day tasks like building a window display and cataloguing an intake. 

Books that I've included in the digitised playthrough are Shigidi and the Brass Head of Olubafon by Wole Talabi and The Secrets of the First School by Tendai Huchu. I'm reading my next book We Set The Dark on Fire by Taylor Kay Mejia and hope to get more free time to finish it ahead of plans to roll a new task and pull a card to present my friends with, so I can borrow a book from their collection when I visit :P

In the game book there is an appendix section dedicated to finding books and a separate one about finding sources and how to use them. Especially when you might need to focus on preservation because they are rare or precious to you.

In my digitised playthrough i've scanned in the sources i'm using and digitally manipulated them - in this case a french pronounciation guide that I picked up in not amazing condition and a readers digest also picked up at the Barras market second hand bookstore in Glasgow. Along with a collection of musicals I acquired for free that you see on the first spread. The art for the window display on the last page was a bit of image manipulation, noun project icons and quick digital drawing. 

If you are working in a physical journal, you could do something along the same lines and photocopy the pages you'd like to use and then cut up the photocopies or take pictures of the items and include the pictures instead, saving you from destroying the original source if you don't want to.

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We'll be joining the Weird Place Zine Month Round Up Stream today along with several other great creators so swing by at 11am PST/ 2pm EST/7pm GMT/8pm CET youtube.com/@weird_place

I also had a chat with Todd of Third Kingdom Games in the latest episode of Sabre Rattlings. I apologise my laptop fans being a bit loud makes my audio quality not the best, but it was a great chat! so you can check that out here https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-j54rm-1a52d31

Happy Wednesday and much appreciation to you all!

We're at the point of having accomplished most of our pre-planned Stretch Goals and having over 10,000 pledged, i'm hoping that we'll unlock the Book List Note Pad soon!

So let's talk about Extra Stretch Goals!

The First ~ At 16,000 I'll allocate specific funds to improve the current tech situation and secure the likehood of me being able to make games and art for another 10 years. To celebrate Every Backer will recieve a digital "sticker" sheet for printing and cutting at home (different from the Bookshop curios sticker) as a thank you. Don't worry The Wanderer's Bookshop is all backed up and first draft is on it's way to Brent our editor this week!

The Second ~ At £18,500 we add a new bookshop task supplement. Surpassing this goal early on means we can also make sure to allocate funds to add it to the physical print and digital zine along with the already unlock Events supplement, including fancy layout from Nala J Wu.

What do you imagine you'll want to do as the curator of your own magical bookshop?  You get to choose our new task, Comment Below! I'll make a poll of all the non duplicate suggestions (including what doesn't already overlap with the current tasks).

The Third ~ At 21,000 we commision more art from our artists including Nala J. Wu.

Don't forget our Community Goals!

For example only 10 more Digital Community Copies to unlock expanded parallel play mechanics. What does that mean? Currently there is a short section on how you could parallel play if you wanted to. Expanded parallel play mechanics would include "relationship" building and how to establish some "rules/roles" in how you play together, aside from safety which is something that is discussed at the start. Also time and multiversal shenanigans.... it's fiction!

Join in the discussions to shout out Bookshops and i'll be drawing more cards today for more book recommendation prompts!

Zine Month Shout Out

If you're looking for to support a two player game, then check out 

Bring Down the Stars is a portal invasion hack of Godkiller: First Blood. In this duet TTRPG, take on the roles of a sadistic, otherworldly Game Master and player fighting to survive their death game. Bring Down the Stars is an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist love letter to overpowered protagonists, class solidarity, and the power of stories.

👉 Pledge Here

and 

Our wonderful Cross-Collab partner Threads We Share!

Don't forget if you back both our games you get a printable meanings sheet for the Major Arcana, to support you whilst you play our games and save you flicking back and forth for support if you're generating your own prompts.

👉 Pledge Here

Happy Friday Folks, 

I firmly believe that Zine Month is all about celebrating the zines and games that creators put out for your delectation. So I'm giving a bit of shout out this week and next to games that need you and games you may need ;P

Three Projects to Help Fund

Three Punk Games - 3 small, angry, fast games, which stick to their own rules. I mean who doesn't love a GMless game of angry witches fighting against a personification of capitalism & patriarchy? Or an Epistolary game reconstructing the history of a punk band and the zine that talked about them. If that's not enough Rebel against the GM using a system based on rock/paper/scissors.

👉Pledge Here

The Deepest Dark - Taking inspiration from The Quiet Year and Ten Candles this turn-based GM-less oneshot makes you a group of scientists trapped by a cave-in, forced to explore underground mapping as you go... 

👉Pledge Here

H.O.M.E. - in Haven of Misplaced Existence become a group of misfit adventurers battling through the claustrophobic corridors of a dystopian science fiction metropolis. Cyberpunk Horror at its finest in this a tactical TTRPG. 

👉Pledge Here 

Doomed Villagers and Giant Robots

Blightfall - Doomed to darkness your group will sacrifice shreds of your humanity to defend against the blight(GM) and protect your home. Collaboratively world build and play through this narrative and combat engine to tell stories of hope and tragedy. 

👉Pledge Here 

Tales from the Cockpit Print Run - Two Solo games using Lost & Found and  Wretched & Alone systems to tell the stories of a Giant Robot  and a mecha mechanic. I can never resist a game involving giant robots, i'm just a massive pacific rim fan.
👉Pledge Here 

Supplements and resources for your campaigns

Fang Dungeon Bestiary - Use with Fangelsehala - A Monster Manual featuring monsters in a classic childrens book illustrated style, whimsical monsters for dungeon delving is where this supplement is at!  

👉Pledge Here

Great Hexpectations - System Agnostic - Ponder the Hexflower, roll on it for encounters and tables for your campaign. There's a hex for nearly everything (mostly), point crawls and hexy encounters of the hex kind.

👉Pledge Here 

Wildest Shape - 5E subclass - I'm a sucker for playing a Druid, so getting to Wild Shape into yourself, but from another universe? Absolutely! This is a fun, powerful, and playable 5E subclass plus new spells, items, and creatures!

👉Pledge Here

Worms Worms Worms - Mothership RPG - Worm-soaked disasters, parasites in pamphlets from these Five distinct sci-fi horror scenarios. Run them to not get infected as parasite fuelled one-shots or drop them into an ongoing campaign!

👉Pledge Here

Helllooo Everyone,

We had a fantastic first week and we're happily swimming through our second. As I keep saying, I'm so chuffed you all want The Wanderer's Bookshop in your lives.

We've unlocked our guest writers for the BackerKit Exclusive Ephemera and are well on our way to unlocking a beautiful layout by Nala J Wu. So let's talk more about Nala's work which you can peek at here .

I've worked with Nala on two of my previous games, The Tower and Universe At Your Door: The Traveller. Two completely different styles and both turned out amazingly. With The Tower we were working with 2 colour Risograph printing for the puzzle dungeon and each spread was designed to highlight the puzzle with art and layout. 

One of my favourite things about Nala's work is that every spread is different, designed to best highlight what's going on at that point with the text. 

They also brought their incredible style to Universe at Your Door: The Traveller. Creating new heads up display styles for every spread to best feature and provide good flow for the game text, which aids the understanding of heirachy and how to move through as you play.

Even though Nala knocked these out of the park with their amazing flexibility of style, they actually specialise in digital collage and I'm finally with The Wanderer's Bookshop giving them a project that yearns for that style.

The Brief: An old weathered journal, interwoven with watercolour, pen and ink wash illustrations, literary quotes, fragments of book pages, maps and more.

Of course we'll only get this kind of levelled up, varied and beautiful layout if we surpass our stretch goal at £9500.

So If you're still thinking about it get backing!

Another Zine Month Project to check out! 

I would be completely remiss if I didn't spotlight a Zinetopia game I've already backed, one featuring Nala's work as well. Nala has worked in their signature linocut style to make a cover design that feels rustic and folky at its core. The cover art is so good that they're offering a tier where Nala is doing a linocut print by hand for the covers with additional unique ink drawings.

How I Heard It is campfire storytelling game, GM- less and designed to be playable against the crackle of campfire, as 3 - 6 of you gather round and weave a tale of a folk hero; from their humble origins, to their great deeds and finally their somber end.