Hullo

Week2
Covers
Club
Canny
Bad
Links
Bye

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The DIE RPG: Metadungeon crowdfunding launched last week, and funded in six hours, which was really great. One of the core tactics in crowdfunders is having an initial target less than what you actually need, to fund as quickly as possible. RRD didn’t do that – the £55k is what it costs to do it, and to hit that in 6 hours is pretty amazing.

We’re just about to tip over £124k right now, with sixteen days to go, and hit the first two stretch goals. We’re getting a dungeon from me – an additional little bit of RPG history turned into a sub-dungeon. I’ve got a couple of ideas, and I’m trying to choose between them. Also, we’ve unlocked Dr Emily Friedman - which is good, as I was worried that we had kept her locked up in teh first place. She’ll be writing an essay about Play Culture.

The next one is a big one – at £135K Stephanie Hans will do chapter art for each of the six eras of the game. So six page size Stephanie Hans originals. Purr. No, that’s not the right word. Purrrrrrrrr. That’s better.

I said I’d walk through the backing options this tie, so let’s do a little cut and paste and edit, starting with the mock ups…

THE BOOK (Digital - £20, Standard £40, Special £100)

The Digital, Standard, and Special Edition pledges get you the Metadungeon in its entirety as either a PDF, a standard hardback edition or a special edition that will pair beautifully with the existing special edition DIE: RPG rulebook. If you buy a printed book, you'll get the PDF for free.

THE BOX (£70)

Or you can get the Metadungeon as a boxed set with the Ultimate Metadungeon Boxed Set pledge. Remember the Red Box? Remember the old AD&D boxes full of rules, adventures, and more? Fun, weren't they? The boxed set contains one book or pamphlet for each chapter of the book (meaning each level of the dungeon, plus supplementary material), and a sheaf of player handouts - the player aids that you have to buy separately with other editions. We might throw some fun little extras in there too, depending on how this crowdfunder goes. This boxed set's our favourite version of the Metadungeon: it lets us really go to town with the design, and bring each decade to life in everything from the colours we choose and the graphic design styles that call to mind each era, to the paper we print on. You'll get the PDF for free, too.

EVERYTHING NEW (£85)

OK, connoisseur. You've already got all the DIE: RPG books, you've been there, done that. But we've got NEW STUFF for you, and it's all here. The Return Visitor pledge gets you the Metadungeon boxed set, plus the new DIE: RPG demo kit.

NEW TO DIE (£85)

Take your first steps into Die with the First Timer pledge and get the core DIE: RPG rulebook, the standard hardback Metadungeon, plus the PDFs.

NEW TO DIE (BUT VERY ENTHUSIASTIC) (£140)

Opt for the Deep Delve pledge and get the core rulebook, plus the quickstart and GM screen, along with the Metadungeon and player aids, and of course the PDF.

THE COMPLETE COLLECTION (£265)

With the Everything DIE pledge, you will own all the DIE there is to own (except the £200 fancy dice set, but we have an add on for that). This pledge gets you the DIE: RPG special edition, GM screen, quickstart, all three volumes of DIE: RPG Scenarios (featuring adventures from Kieron Gillen and a host of exciting indie RPG authors), plus the Metadungeon boxed edition, player aids, and the brand new demo kit.

There’s also add ons you can afterwards.

You saw the mention of the demo kit – which is the OTHER new thing. Here’s the details on that…

THE DIE: RPG DEMO KIT

Learn as you play with a completely no-prep tool that takes you and your friends into Die for the first ever time. The demo kit takes you through character creation and a short adventure, with some useful tips for running DIE for the first time. It comes as a set of cards: place one on the table, follow the steps shown, and move on to the next one. It's a nice, neat, 60-90 minute experience (with tips for doing it even faster) to ease you into DIE - or convince your friends to finally play it with you.

Which is really neat – Grant’s developing this, with the lovely Voidheart Symphony Demokit being its model.

Anyway – that’s our crowdfunder. You can go here and nose more and back, with your money.

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I mentioned this last time – DIE’s fourth printing turned up, which eagle-eyed people have noted has a different cover. This seems a good time to talk about our journey with the covers.

In short: DIE’s covers have been interesting – Stephanie had all the expertise in the world at doing covers of comics, and DIE has always had some of the most beautiful. They’re perfect for single issues. However, there was a period of time when we were working out how to make a book cover work. They’re not the same beast – they’re for an overlapping but not-identical audience. They have to sell a whole concept rather than an issue. They have to, ideally, feel book-y.

These are the first two DIE covers, which we were happy with, but aware that they didn’t quite go as hard as the single issue covers. DIE #1 was an instant classic for me, for example – and the trade covers weren’t on that level.

Then we hit the third one and Stephanie did something else… which is instantly just a different beast. Adult, evocative, more abstract, but centering the horror and the role-playing aspects, and very much what a Book Cover needs to do. We loved it. So Stephanie explored the idea further with the fourth cover…

Which was also great, but creates a problem. Half our covers take one approach, and the other half took this. We decided that we’d do a new cover for the first two trades whenever we went to a new printing. The second trade came up first, and folks mostly haven’t noticed, as many shops haven’t updated it. I think the third printing of the first trade was after we decided this, but it happened so quickly that Stephanie had no time to do another cover. However, now, with the fourth printing, she did managed to complete the set.

Here’s the new covers for the first two trades...

Basically, we’re happy with them. Also, this approach continues to the first trade of DIE: LOADED – and the second, which Stephanie has just finished, but isn’t for sharing yet.

All DIE is available from your comic shops! More details on DIE: Loaded here.

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Okay – as promised, the next Script Club on (likely) April 31^st be…

The Power Fantasy #1.

I’ll have to go through the script and check for remove any spoilers for later. I don’t think there’s anything mentioned which we haven’t already revealed, but you never know.

Script Club is explained in this news letter, but basically me sending a monthly newsletter that includes one of my previous scripts (or similar length of writing). This is $5 per newsletter (So won’t be charged in a month I skip). I’ll always let folks know what the script is in advance, so they can nope out if they want. Oh – and it will be charged by Lemon Ink, our company. Thank you, everyone!

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My comp for this beast arrived this week. Just look at it.

It’s a compendium of my Uncanny X-men run, including SWORD and AvX Consequences (which I have been told is the Greatest Event Epilogue Mini Of All Time, which is both complimentary and perhaps something of a low bar.)

It really feels like a completely different life. I’m still a bit shocked I got to have two big runs on the X-men – that’s basically something no-one other than Claremont has done. That said, I am willing to bet Claremont didn’t write a significant chunk of his run on the back of bus-tickets on the 91 bus. Available from retailers and shops.

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Over at Old Men Running The World I did a post about how contrary to other research, only 5% of games played in a long standing gaming community were D&D 5^th Ed compatible.

I don’t get to shitpost as much as I did in my previous life, so this was a nice change. I also learned how to do pie-charts better in Open Office. Honestly, fucking around is something I recommend as a creator, just as it forces you to learn new things, which can then be brought back into play elsewhere.

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• Jules Scheele, clearly with a desire to make things as hard as he can for himself, has adapted Orlando into comics. I’ve read it and it’s really strong – interesting work, deeply ambitious, intensely queer. It’s kickstarting now, and you should back it.

• Lindsay Ellis doing a videoessay on the “Did Disney Steal Aladin?” which is “well, not really” but digging into a lot about creatives, what they do and what they do to themselves.

• Jim downloads his Skim about Coriolis: the Great Dark which got me thinking about “What is good writing in a TTRPG”. Includes a shot of my bookshelf, for “Why does kieron have so much one ring and has never played it?” fans.

• Popjustice’s forum closes at the end of the month. I was on it, but it feels like a passing of an age. Seth Bingo will be gnashing his teeth. But then again, when is Seth not?

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I was thinking this would end up being a short one, but it’s actually quite a length. It’s even got a small essay about covers, which is the best kind of essay because it has a lot of pictures.

So I’ll take this at velocity, and perhaps circle back further down the line. Basically, last week being shortened was a bit of a weak one in terms of work, but I managed to get one thing over, which is a significant enough a block that I felt better. This week is a lot more – I’m attacking the fourth script of a WFH thing, which is all assembling as one would hope. It should be wrapped by Friday.

Alongside that, I also had to get ready for the next actual real playtest of The Scions, my current big-in-development indie game. I’ve integrated and developed the tweak from the last set of playtests last year, and written a whole lot more of the actual content (as opposed to the mechanics).

It’s actually in a visibly better state – this is the first game where two players are repeat players, and they noticed it. Some of that is just that I’ve actually set up the play board better.

Here’s how it looked at the end of the first session.

But I’ll come back to talking about that, I’m sure. Let’s just end with the influences bit I was tweaking this morning.

INFLUENCES

• Warhammer 40k by many creators employed by Games Workshop. Specifically, the Great Crusade leading into the Horus Heresy.

• The end of the Roman Republic, the Civil Wars and the birth of Imperial Rome.

• The first Dune book by Frank Herbert and the videogame Dune II by Westwood games.

• Paradise Lost by Milton.

• Nemesis the Warlock by Pat Mills/Kevin O’Neil.

• The Metabarons series of Graphic Novels by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Juan Giménez.

• The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir.

• Solium Infernum by Cryptic Comet/League of Geeks.

• The Ludocrats by Jim Rossignol, Jeff Stokely and someone else.

You may spot the moment when I figured “Fuck it” possibly with a side-order “Maybe this gets it closer to being in the black?”

Kieron Gillen
Bath
15.4.2026