Newsletter #2: MM25 Aftermath and Itch Sales

Since my last newsletter, I’ve been busy with cons, more writing for Flatline, and playing Over/Under. That megagame was a great distraction from watching the crowdfunding, that’s for sure!

Flatline on the Blocks

Since the last newsletter, Flatline on the Blocks completed its crowdfunding campaign. I’m in total amazement that we have 1,130 backers! The zine is a sprawling district within Prospero’s Dream for your players to explore, with four levels of interconnected blocks. The crowdfunding success means we’re able to add quite a bit more than the initial project offering, via some awesome stretch goals.

First, there’s the expanded companion zine, Organ Failure. There’s now five adventures that take players across the blocks, serving as a great way to draw the players into exploring more of Spinal Crux L.3-8. Each is about the size of a pamphlet adventure, but with the benefit of building on top of the setting and location within Flatline. Reece Carter (Dead in the Water, Distress Signals) is writing a funnel adventure!

The faction pages got a nice upgrade too. While we prepared for a tidy, single spread of factions, we’ve now got a little more room to give them more detailed goals and capabilities. This will really help flesh each out to be more interactive at the table.

One more call-out is a pamphlet take-out menu for Min’s Unending Bowl! This in-universe menu has 100 standard dishes and 10 specials with delivery information, franchise locations, and the like. With menu hacks like secret combinations, substitutions, and customizations, you gain access to a secret menu, things Min would never admit to selling across her restaurants. After all, no friendly public eatery would offer guns, drugs, and other contraband…

Over/Under

Alongside Mothership Month, Sam Sorensen ran a 1,500+ person LARP-meets-MMO-meets-wargame. Jack Shirai has one of the best overviews of the fever dream that was O/U. Check out his post below, as well as the in-character retrospectives he made as “Briefcase” Perković.

Over/Under - The Hotline

was a month-long Discord-based game set in the Mothership universe as a promotional tie-in and roleplaying experiment. Initially pitched

The Hotline

I played the role of Kiefer Justice, a man happy to quietly operate in the shadows. After a brief stint at game start operating a small intelligence shop, I was approached by the legendary Obshchak Sylvana, and agreed to join the Golyanovo II Bratva. Working my way up the criminal gang, I served as a buldroog (underboss) for the faction for most of the month.

Kiefer Justice, illustrated by Kyle Ferrin (*Root*, *Vast*, *Dungeon Mayhem*)

Beyond keeping tabs on some of our members in public channels, I acted as handler for a few of our spies within Tempest, the mercenary company faction. I found a way into the black market through an ARG puzzle. I made memes.

I also faked a bunch of screenshots. I got a little nervous when Sean McCoy, acting as mod, popped into the private thread I had with Sylvana, but it was only to give props on the level of effort.

Always stressful when the mods chime in!

Other news

Nova over at Playful Void reviewed Emergence after receiving her copy. I wrote a little more about it in a dedicated post, and expanded on my initial writing process in a second blog post too.

Back in October, I had the chance to go to Phantasm in Peterborough, ON. This small convention has been running for years and years, and I couldn’t get over how friendly and well organized it was. I’ll definitely be back next year. I got into games of Fallout 2d20, Call of Cthulhu, and Neon Rain.

I’ll be attending the Terminal City Tabletop Convention in Vancouver, BC on March 13–15, 2026. I’m also there to run three games of Mothership! It’ll be my first time as GM at a convention, and also my first time at TCTC. If you’re interested in attending, their early bird pricing ends November 30th.

Itch Creator Day & Black Friday deals

From today through December 3rd, Itch has thousands of game sales across the platform. Today only, until midnight Pacific time, Itch is reducing their platform fee to zero, too. If you’re looking to support an indie TTRPG writer, today would be a great day to do it. A number of Mothership writers have sales going on, and I’d like to highlight a few here.

First, if you or a friend is looking to pick up Emergence, this special is the first time it’s been marked on sale, down to the backer price during the crowdfunding campaign. You can pick it up for US$8, and it’ll come with my two pamphlet adventures, The Flora on Acyx and Burying Grounds on Pavel Theta.

And Tomorrow Games has The Dose Makes The Poison for 25% off. This is a fantastic art deco mystery inspired by Bioshock, and comes with some incredible art, in-game music, video, and voice note clues.

Joshua Justice has all of his Mothership content for 31% off. Three alternative character classes, a Karth-compatible trading post, an in-universe mixtape zine, and two adventures in the Hekate sector.

Magnum Galaxy has all of his published Mothership zines on for US$19.95. My personal favourite is Dying Hard on Hardlight Station, both as a great adventure and setting locale for a campaign. There’s also hits like Nirvana on Fire and The Cleaning of Prison Station Echo. And more!

LionHearth Games has all of his pamphlets on for half price if you pick them all up. This includes the latest, Neon Dream Girl, which was just published.

Chris Airiau has thirteen modules for 25% off, or the whole lot for US$40. There are classics like The Sleeper Crew pamphlet to his newest, Not Enough Scoundrels.