THE SUMMER OF HOLLOWS

Firstly, I’d like to extend a welcome to my new Patrons. For some reason, I’ve had a big influx of people joining this platform, so: hello. Lovely to see you. Pull up a... chair? Make yourself comfortable.

Secondly, I’d like to disappoint all my new Patrons by not releasing games for the next four months.

I WILL NOT CHARGE YOU ANY MONEY FOR THIS

The most important thing to mention is that I will not be charging you any money for this; as my Patreon is rigged to charge per creation, not per month, your debit cards are safe from my sticky little digital fingers. You can maintain your pledge and it will only kick in when I release something.

HOLLOWS IS VERY DIFFICULT TO WRITE

The reason I’m going on hiatus is HOLLOWS. Hollows is our next big thing - it’s been in development for about two years and change now - and we’re rapidly accelerating towards putting it on Kickstarter. This means that I have to enter a crunch period and get the extent of the book determined so we can cost out the production, which isn’t ideal, but it’s the situation in which I find myself. 

(HOLLOWS, by the way, is a full-length RPG with an entirely original setting and system, much in the manner of Spire. Unlike Spire it is a grim tactical monster-hunting game which talks a lot about toxic masculinity, the effects of trauma on the psyche and the fall of the British Empire.)

I want to be tremendously, aggressively, almost-too careful with this. I am a delicate soul, and as I stumble blindly towards 40 years of age I cannot push myself like I used to. (Also, I’m no longer suicidally depressed all the time, so I don’t feel the need to subsume my death wish in hours and hours of obsessive work!) If I’m going to enter a period of self-imposed crunch, I want to be as healthy and as sensible about it as I can.

I am suspending as much as possible that isn’t Hollows, because we need to make sure that it’s as good as it can be, and it represents probably the biggest games design challenge we’ve faced as a company. It’s a technical game, and it has a lot of moving parts and balance requirements, and it needs as much of my brain as possible. Which means that I’m not going to write any one-page games for the next four months until we hit Kickstarter.

I don’t want to have to work late nights. I don’t want to miss meals or neglect my relationships or run myself ragged. And I don’t have to, thankfully. So I’m cutting back on as much as possible to maintain the health that I’ve fought so hard (and spent so much fucking money on therapy) to earn.

ONE IMPORTANT CAVEAT

Look. Okay. Full disclosure: I might accidentally write a one-page roleplaying game.

I’m not perfect. They provide a much-needed outlet from my Big Serious Books About Something, and they’re a fascinating way to play around with new mechanics and strange ideas. So if I do one despite everything, I’ll still release it as normal. But don’t expect nothin’.

I mean, I’m halfway through the sequel to THE RAPID AND THE RIGHTEOUS entitled 2 RAPID 2 RIGHTEOUS and it’s very clever. So maybe I’ll finish it before the end of all this. I dunno.

HOLLOWING OUT A SPACE

However: I want to give you something. I want to try and keep this space going as a place to engage with my ideas, and also from a purely selfish point of view I want to be able to show off the things I’m working on and talk enthusiastically about them.

To that end: for the next four months I will use this Patreon as a Hollows development blog. Hopefully there’s some accountability there, but also I want to give you a bit of insight into how the sausage is made. My co-author Chris and I (he’s the guy who I did Spire and Heart with as well as about 75% of anything I’ve ever written) are going to be focusing our enormous and powerful and definitely malfunctioning brains on this and I would like to document the process a little.

Next week we’re doing the Weapons - malicious, malevolent spirits bound to the player characters that leach power into (and out of) the player characters. It’s lots of difficult rules writing but we’re keen to get to grips with it.

REMAINING DUTIES

I’ve got one move left on this Patreon before I can plunge headlong into Hollows - I need to finish the physical copies for those that are owed them. I’ve done back pages for THE ORC POPE IS DEAD and PLASTIC BASTARDS, and as god is my witness, I’m sure I can come up with fuckin something for IRREFUTABLE PROOF before long. Once that’s all sorted, I’ll ship the files off to Belmont as I did last time, and you should be receiving your prints around the end of June.

(Also I’m Kickstarting a game called EAT THE REICH in which you play vampire commandos tasked with drinking all of Hitler’s blood. But I’ve handed the text in already, so hopefully I won’t have to spend too much time on that. Will Kirkby’s doing all the art. It’s gorgeous. You should follow us on Kickstarter!)

Thank you, all, for your ongoing support. I’m so lucky to be able to do this for a living, and while I work hard at it and I’m really quite good at it as well, it’s support from you and people like you that allows me to not starve to death whilst making what is - for the lack of a more suitable word - art.

- Grant