With the year creeping towards being a quarter over, let's take stock of where we are at with this year's Bogus Cheesecake projects! This annual article is designed to be a snapshot of each of our current projects, their progress, and what I hope to accomplish as the year develops.
and of course, Happy Ides of March!
Let's talk games.
Open Frame
Our current project, Open Frame, is a GM-less cooperative storytelling game. The game takes place immediately after the climax of a large ordeal, and it is up to you and your fellow crew to retell the events that led you here between fames of bowling à la some fun dice mechanics.
Your interactions with other players will affect your bowling, and your bowling will affect the narrative. Each roll of the dice prompts your crew through the twists and turns of your recent adventure towards your eventual epilogue.
From a production standpoint, we're trying a lot of new things with Open Frame. I would like to make this a robust game, and we are exploring the possibility of physical printing and distribution for the first time. We are angling towards using crowdfunding to make these things possible, which will be a new experience for us.
If all goes well, Open Frame will be released before July, with more information released well before then.
Cyberpunk RED: Emara King's P.A.W.N. Shop Vol II
Cyberpunk RED remains an inspiration and I fully intend to continue creating fan content for the system. That said, creating cyberpunk content is lined with difficulties, so as with our first volume I will be approaching it deliberately and carefully and in line with R. Talsorian Game's policies.
As with our first volume, Vol II will be a collection of items accompanied by a oneshot module. The full extent is still under deliberation, but the theme and content has a focus: dogs. All about dogs. Volume II will see you getting content for all manner of fluffy pals to aid you in combat and comfort within your cyberpunk campaigns.
This time around, I am interested in bringing together additional creators and artists to create a more polished and robust piece of work. We are contemplating crowdfunding or the production of Emara King merch to help make that a reality. If you really want to see some Emara stickers, now's the time to let us know!
It's a sincere hope that Vol II will be in full production before July.
Pipeline Games: Archeology and Lab Rats
Multiple other games are in the works in various stages of development and planning. Currently, two games are solidified enough I feel comfortable mentioning them.
Codename Archeology is a solo journaling game that addresses the concept of a future digital dark age in a soft post-apocalyptic premise, where digital information has been wiped clean. Players uncover and preserve digital remains from our current decade in this contemplative future.
Codename Lab Rats (name undecided) is a solo choose-your-own-adventure game that is more akin to an experience piece than an rpg. An experimental game that I hope will explore the medium of PDFs. This is the indulgent one.
I have all the hope in the world these games will be released in 2023, but a lot could happen between now and the end of the year. Partially, it will depend on the success of our other titles to see how quickly these games can be produced. Properly creating a game to the standard at which I feel comfortable releasing it is a harsh process and often requires setting aside personal funds to see a project through, which can restrict our timeline.
Affinity Publisher Guides
TTRPG-focused guides for affinity publisher remain a large point of interest! We received a good amount of feedback on our prior guides, and I would love to continue working on that focus. That said, our next guide (whenever I sit down and write it) will be about Tables. How to make tables, utilize tables. How to use tables for personality and style. Tables are something everyone is likely to use at some point yet can easily become frustrating or uncooperative, so this should be a fun article!
When will this happen? Hopefully sooner than later. My original plan was to release these articles once a month, and I would love to get back to that. The future will tell.
What About Bolarius?
Bolarius (and DnD in general) has no planned releases from us in 2023. When I looked at the almighty whiteboard of projects at the beginning of the year, it was a dubious time for good ol' 5e. With limited resources, I made the decision to pull back our DnD efforts for the year to focus on the other projects mentioned above, and that isn't a choice easily overturned.
Are we abandoning Bolarius? Gods no! We love Bolarius and have tons of excitement for where it will go. Thankfully, our planned project of a Bolarius-themed DnD Fishing book was already in-progress, so we should be able to quickly pick things back up when we readdress Bolarius next year.
All in all, 2023 will be a busy year for us. I am hoping to try a lot of new things and work hard behind the curtains on some exciting projects. We hope to redouble our efforts on making a decent website for folks and making a mailing list worth subscribing to. As always, your support is instrumental in helping us try new things and make the things we love. I hope you'll be as excited as we are for everything down the line!
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