August - State of the Struggle!

Howdy strugglers,

We hope everyone is enjoying their summer and playing lots of Dungeons and Dragons! This has been a wild month for us so far. Firstly, thank you all for hanging in with us through the posting irregularity. We're ironing out the kinks in our new schedule and once we've assessed how long different types of content takes we'll get back to posting regularly. We're tremendously grateful for your support while we delve down this new path.

Speaking of new content, we're collaborating with Eightfold Paper, The Fluffy Folio, and Seth Persson to bring you a campaign setting and adventure packed full of illustrations, battlemaps, items, monsters, and its own soundtrack!

In this adventure we'll explore the secluded island town of Sheercliff, which is being held hostage by a Tidal Hag coven, in a three-part series. The town used to abide by an ancient arrangement: sacrificing children born with a hag's mark to the coven for good fortune. Last year the child born with the mark is the lord's daughter, who refuses to obey the Old Way, and the town is paying the price.

Special thanks to Comrade Ronny Salami for the adventure inspiration!

Here's a snippet from the opening scene:

You stand on the deck of the Crusty Wanderer. A strong wind blows from the south, propelling you northwards. The crew is in full commotion, adjusting the sail and readying the ship’s cargo for offloading. Captain Crust, a portly human man with a perpetually groggy demeanor, barks an unintelligible order to his navigator, who joins him at the helm.

Lounging seals perk up as you breeze by a lone spit of rock, close enough to smell their musk and hear the bloop of the water when they roll over and slip beneath its surface.

The afternoon sun peeks through colossally fluffy clouds drifting low on the horizon. Before you looms a mountainous, towering sea stack. Its cliffside shimmers with hundreds of nesting seabirds and, from your southeastern approach, a shadowy cove reveals itself. You can just make out a vertical spiderwork of switchback paths and structures carved into the shaded banks of the hidden harbor. The town of Sheercliff, just as Captain Crust described it.

“Five minutes to landfall!”

Ill Tidings - Part 1 will be available to all patrons. Part 2 & 3 will be released later this month in the new $10 & $15 Patreon tiers: Naturalist & Loreseeker. Additionally, we're unpublishing the $3 Struggle Buddy tier and renaming the $5 Comrade Struggler tier to Plunderer.

Patrons in the Plunderer tier will have access to all item content, including hi-res art, item cards, item polls, Struggler's Trove, and the Struggler's Workshop.

Patrons in the Naturalist tier will have access to all monster content, including hi-res art, monster pages, and an all new Bestiary, as well as all previous tier rewards.

Patrons in the Loreseeker tier will have access to all narrative content, including campaign settings, adventures, side-quests, and encounters, as well as all previous tier rewards.

As a patron you will be able to vote on the destination for all Dungeon Strugglers. Every month, the chosen destination will determine the theme for next month's items, monsters, and narrative content. As we wrap up our exploration of Coasts and Open Ocean with the release of Ill Tidings, you get to choose where we'll go next.

If you have any questions about the new tier structure, don't hesitate to ask! Feel free to leave a comment on this post, send us a direct message here on Patreon or on Discord and we'll respond as soon as we can.

We hope you're as excited as we are for the new direction and again, thank you so much for making this all possible!

Love,
The Dungeon Strugglers