Fan Club “Blog” #15: Here's What You Don't See...

(Header image is from Tom Bloom's lovely game of happy teens, CAIN.)

Hello everyone! A cold snap in England means I'm writing this post to you while sat at my desk wearing a hat. A hat.

Most undignified. I also have a glass of wine but somehow that has a cheapening effect, too. This hat's really f*cking this whole thing up.

It's been a while since I gave you guys an update on season 2 of Quinns Quest, so I figured I'd let you know what I've been working on, what I'm thinking about and the different content that's ROCKETING its way down the Quinns Quest Questpipe towards you.

The soundtrack to this post is trndytrndy's marvelously vibey Virtua EP. A demented choice? Au contraire! It has everything to do with Season 2.

All will be revealed soon. 😊

"Where is Season 2?"

One mustn't be greedy, you big greedy baby. It's coming!

My current estimate is that that Season 2, Episode 1 will be dropping in late April. That said, anyone who has ever made anything, ever, would tell you that these sorts of dates can slip. To which I would adopt a haughty tone and tell that person that this particular date probably won't slip. And then they'd be like "Oh, so you think absolutely nothing is gonna go wrong?" and then I'd probably throw my wine at them and later send them a long apology on Whatsapp.

Progress on the season we've now made:

• I've probably had about... 75% of the game nights required to review all of the games coming in Season 2

• 2 of the 7 review scripts have been written, plus 1 of the 7 bonus video scripts (which doesn't sound like a lot but that's like 18,000 words) (I'm no longer trying to film ALL SEVEN EPISODES AT ONCE, what was I thinking, jesus)

• I've broken the back of the to-do list of props, digital assets and artwork required for this season's aesthetic

• Interviews with designers are being conducted

• Most importantly, I've got a date locked in to start shooting! To make season 2 pretty and grow Quinns Quest's reach, this time around I'm working with a videographer and a gaffer. Our first shoot together is in early April

So that's all peachy, and I'd like to take a second to thank you folks for your patience.

I've had a bit of a learning curve running this Patreon where I thought  it was mostly going to be me wittering about what I was doing behind the scenes, but actually, I can't do that!

In something that could be described as "Quinns learns Marketing 101", I want (arguably need) Quinns Quest videos to have excitement around them, and that doesn't work if I'm just... blabbing about all of my cool ideas or the game nights I can't wait to tell you about.

But rest assured, I'm extremely confident that thanks to your support, season 2 of Quinns Quest is gonna be an absolute blast. For you, and for me, and for all of the designers of these games.😘

"Can we expect anything else?"

You're insatiable, and I love it. Yes, you SHOULD expect a big extra something!

I've teased a couple of times on this Patreon that I was working on an official Quinns Quest Actual Play audio series where you could actually hear me actually GMing an honest-to-goodness pen and paper roleplaying game for two of my most talented players. I'm really proud of it! It's a whole f*ckin' thing! I'm especially proud of how it begins and how it ends.

So, what are we playing?

Here's a teaser image for you. If you know, you know.

(Weirdly? That guy is the spitting image of my real life dad.)

I'm being cagey about the specifics of the show because I want it to come as a fun surprise, but it was always the plan for this AP Series to tide the QQ audience over between season 1 and 2. However, while those recordings were handed to an extraordinarily talented audio producer late last year - seriously, I can't believe this person is working on Quinns Quest - to edit and score the series, this person then had a catastrophic hard disk failure and then got super sick. With the Quinns Quest AP being their side gig, that meant extended delays.

However! They inform me that the finished edit will be mine any day now. I might even be dropping episode 1 as soon as next week. We'll see.

I'm serious. It's a whole f*cking thing.

"Quinns, what is happening in your fabulous roleplay-life?"

While I'm uncertain about your use of a hyphen, I've got lots to share!

I don't want to tease a lot of what I'm playing because so far in 2025 I've learned that when I do that, it doesn't exactly take a successful Insight check to figure out what video reviews are coming up.

Instead, let me talk about some exciting games that I'm not yet excitedly playing, but I am excitedly reading (or I've read them and I'm still thinking about them) (or I'm thinking about when I'll get to read them)!

Doomsong and the accompanying enormous campaign book, Lord Have Mercy Upon Us, is just really special, and overdue some coverage on Quinns Quest. Frankly, it's overdue more coverage everywhere.

This is a repulsively bleak, wildly confident, marvellously-put together game about fantasy adventuring in a world where God is dead and God's children are running amok. The nearest touchstone is probably the much-beloved worldbuilding of Warhammer, but I'm talking about the Warhammer of the 1980s where everything felt like it was doodled on the back of a napkin by an unemployed poet (because it was).

One of the many cool things about Doomsong is that you might say "Ah, so it's part of roleplaying's Old-School Revival?" but actually, it just feels like its own thing. Very creative, very bold, very intriguing. Expect a post on this Patreon with some more of my thoughts as soon as I can manage it, but Doomsong might be the first game I put in front of my players for no other reason than I can't precisely picture what it feels like to play.

I've also just this week received my print copy of Oceania 2084, and, man. You wanna talk about games that are confidently doing their own thing?

This is an RPG that's been doing the con circuit for a while (always a good sign) where the GM takes on the role of Big Brother in an Orwellian society, and they are strictly the antagonist fighting against the players. I can't yet vouch for its quality, but my spidey-sense is telling me there's a solid 50% chance that when I finally have a long Sunday morning to crack it open and marinate in those ideas, I'll become obsessed.

What else? Resting by my right hand as I type these very words is a copy of Monty Python's Cocurricular Medieval Reenactment Program, which frames the entire RPG not as a game but as an educational resource teaching you about history. Hell yes.

I've also been hearing a lot of buzz about Desperation, and when I reached out to Bully Pulpit they also agreed to send me their boxed LARPs, which I'm just very, very in the mood for. I want more RPGs with fixed, scripted content that give me all of it in a single evening and I'm NOT KIDDING.

Phew. It's getting late and I need to be up early in the morning- outside of Quinns Quest a short-term freelance gig and my work at People Make Games has been kicking my ass. But before I go I should also mention that I'm now a player in my friend's game of CAIN, so expect some thoughts on that whole situation in the near future.

Also? Last month I had some kind of breakdown because I almost cancelled a perfectly-functional campaign of something very modern and vaunted in order to start playing Mutant Crawl Classics with the same group.

Not sure what I was thinking? But I'm not sure I've stopped thinking it, either.

Arrivederci!

-Quinns