Hey, everyone, Dutchmogul here. I’ve wanted to do a longform blog for a while, and I figured, hey, this might beat journaling. So yeah, let’s give this a shot and see how it feels. I always have a ton of work on my plate, and lots of ideas swirling around and basically pestering me into relative submission, so maybe this will be a good way to let you know what I’m working on and help to keep me on task in the process. I also thought it might be cool to release a bonus mini with each blog post. (More on that later.)

PASSAGE TO YONDOOR

Okay, so this is the biggest thing right at the moment. We’re in the midst of a short Kickstarter for a small print run and expansion of miniature/terrain STLs for our roguelike ttrpg dungeon crawler, Passage to Yondoor. The game started as a one-page RPG a while back and got the full core set release on Dec 25th.

This one has been a staple at our own game tables since we started working on it, and I suspect that it’s one we’ll be coming back to with relative frequency. It’s really fun to work on bite-sized bits of content (new monsters, dungeon features, treasure, character options, et cetera) and its a pretty fertile space for coming up with new printable designs. Keeping within some sort of OSR style themes but divorcing the setting from the usual fantasy tropes (elves, orcs, et cetera) has made it feel like my own little contribution to the old school tabletop zeitgeist while giving me space to make it my own. And I really hope that this one inspires others to make their own content for the game. It’s by far the most accessible CRUX game we’ve made. Speaking of CRUX…

CRUX: UNIVERSAL ROLEPLAYING (V2.1)

We just released a new (and fairly hefty) update to the core universal CRUX rules. This update doesn’t really smash previous system stuff, just expands on it with a ton of options. The book went from something like 36 pages to just under 70. In addition to random character creation tables (something I’ve wanted in there for a long time), we also added a bloat-load of new traits and spells.

Speaking of bloat, I should really stress that this is a toolset book. It’s full of options for truly adventurous players and world builders, but those looking to present this to players should really see it as such. Passage to Yondoor is a good example of a game that’s been created by cherry-picking elements that work well for the setting. That said, this book is the absolute backbone of all of the things we’re most passionate about when it comes to game development, so getting a new and stable version out there feels great and does a lot to help my own development process moving forward.

The next stage for this one is getting the wargaming rules updated. That one is going to be a lot more concise, playing off the foundation built in v2.1 to give a framework for making that stuff into a wargame. With the recent introduction of CRUX-based skirmish games like Bleak Pilgrimage, Hypersleep Saga, and New Dominion, we’ve already done a lot of the groundwork. Now it’s just a matter of getting that formatted into something digestible. Once I’ve finished that, we’re looking to make the combined flip-style double book (Roleplaying and Wargaming) available via print-on-demand from DriveThruRPG.

THE RUSHLIGHT CAULDRON IS BUBBLING…

With all of this CRUX work and the anniversary of Rushlight dropping, I've been fiddling with some ideas for Rushlight adventure modules and other supplements. Part of working on a setting agnostic rules engine means that my own inspirations bounce around from genre to genre (as you can probably glean from our various Kickstarter projects and rotating Patreon/subscription release themes), but it inevitably comes back around, and my brain is heading back toward horrorified medievalry (totally actual words). I don't want to promise anything concrete, but will be sure to keep you posted as that develops. I'm currently working with a couple of ideas for short adventures, and doing small-run campaigns for PDFs, some 3d printable miniatures (for those who do that), and maybe eventually collecting an annual for a short print run are ideas that we're toying with here.

CURRENT PROJECTS & GAME NIGHT

As per the general theme of the blog, my projects are currently all over the map. Splitting my time between genres and games has me in a pretty chaotic space. Thankfully, our regularly scheduled Monday night CRUX campaign (running for well over a decade and a half at this point) is helping to keep it all relative. We play a slipstream/multiverse style game as our core jam. This sort of “anything goes” narrative allows me to mix elements of whatever I’m working on into the story. Even when we break from that to play in a more focused setting, the events exist somewhere in the larger canon, which means characters or rules elements might eventually find their way into the ever-weirdening smorgasbord that is our mainline campaign.

We’re currently in the midst of a space-scum epic, with a cast of player characters that includes:

a renegade mech pilot
a psychic syndicate hitman
an Elfland princess
a cyborg with demon-haunted bionic implants
a sapient & pacifistic military robot
+ other weirdos

I’m really hoping that this campaign, along with the various character sketches that happen at the table, will bolster some more work on my long-gestating Scumhole project. It’s basically just a book full of those sketches with NPC rules and lore dumps. This is one that I’d really like to finish. Hopefully 2025 is the year. I want to come up with some miniatures as well, but we keep getting these interesting, randomly rolled NPCs who get killed off in horrible ways before I can get around to sculpting them. I might just have to take an inventory and go back and make them anyway. Decent a way to memorialize these folks, I suppose.

Not to pile things on the project list, but I’m also keen to start in on writing a supplement for psionic powers. We’ve been having a lot of fun developing those systems for our own campaign, and part of that has been finding ways to keep it unique from magic/spellcasting. Not sure if I have the energy right at the moment, but if the inspiration overtakes me (and if I can find a good visual style for the art), we might be seeing that soonish. (Snippet of a piece from Coils of Chaos by Ben Doane included above for relevance. Also… yeah, gotta update CoC too.)

MARCH PREVIEW

For those of you that are part of our subscription services (Patreon and Tribes), next month is looking to be Mage Guild heavy, with remasters of some old support-free guild mage miniatures, some new designs (including some themed terrain), and an updated/expanded version of the Mage Guild rules for CRUX formerly released in our Quadrivium article collection.

In storefront news, March will be seeing the release of our formerly Kickstarted Mister Widdershins miniature. I had a lot of fun scratch-building this one from twigs and greenstuff. When that was done, Jeremy scanned him for 3d printing, and now anyone can grab & print the design. The set should retail for $8 (but patrons and tribers will get that %50 off discount). I’m also hoping to release all of our previous Mage Guild sets, so keep an eye out for those.

FEBRUARY FREE MINIATURE: NEW DOMINION OFFICER

And, without further ado, let’s get to that new free mini...

With the New Dominion game rules getting a release earlier this month, the Mytho-Resistance got a free starter set, including a rules PDF with a fully statted-out warband (plus another WIP booklet introducing some additional mythological archetypes). It’s only fair that we give the villainous space-fascist opposition a warband of their own, so one for the New Dominion will be dropping as a freebie real soon. The set of four miniatures will be collected from previously released New Dominion characters, plus a couple of new ones.

And that brings me to the free mini for the blog; a variant on the New Dominion Officer, because you can never have too many versions of these scumbags. The more poses to toss into the Mytho-meatgrinder, the better. So, whether you’re printing the FDM support free STL, or using the pre-supported resin version, download the zip file below and get to printing!

NEW DOMINION OFFICER

That about does it for this entry. If you want to see this become a monthly thing, let us know in the comments. Hope you all have a great rest of the month,

Dutchmogul and the Ill Gotten Games team

2/25: ALL OVER THE PLACE