Hi Everyone!

We're in the last seven hours of the campaign, and I can't say enough how much I appreciate and am grateful for your support. Getting to create something that speaks from my heart to yours and to work with others to create something truly beautiful is everything to me. I hope that you get as much joy from playing it as I do from writing it, collaborating and reading books.

Join the discussions to help us unlock more things, we're over halfway to shouting out 30 Independent Bookshops and I have to add some shout outs for the shops that were willing to chat to me and inspired and supported my research.  The Book Nook and Category Is in Glasgow, Common Press and New Beacon books in London, Books & Books in Florida and a tiny little secondhand bookshop in France whose name I don't remember (it was half my lifetime ago) but the magical paved path that wended it's way through the bookshelves will stick with me forever.

I've drawn three new cards for book prompts, so share a book from your collection you feel aligns with the prompts and help us build a community resource of extra prompts and recommendations.

A book that fears the unknown, A book that obliterates the darkness and a book that confronts fear

Speaking of which if you're interested in hearing me ramble about books and also to check out the rest of the Weird Place stream (apologies that it didn't seem to be set up properly to view from here). See my chat here and watch the full stream here.

The Weird Place are funding Residue a Solo Survival Sci-Fi Horror TTRPG on Kickstarter about wandering endless landscapes, searching ruins, and trying to stay alive long enough to find meaning. It looks like a fantastic game and I ran to support it. Watch the stream to let Gabriel and Le tell you more about their game themselves. As well as games from so many other fantastic creators!

For an entirely different ramble on the inspirations behind The Wanderer's Bookshop check out the interview I did with Dan from The Fandomentals

For now share away and lets see if we can unlock the last Stretch Goals. We've got a little sun in Scotland (it's a bright day), that and you carry me through the rest of the day, I hope some of my joy can help carry you through yours.

Lola

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