Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast

Tue Jan 23 '24 Announcement
3 months ago – Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 06:33:38 AM

Hello everyone! My name's Khyra, and I'm the office manager at Possum Creek Games. I’m here with a few quick updates on how the Indiegogo is going and the next step for Yazeba's.

To start, Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast is officially printed! We have tons of books in a warehouse in China to be brought over to our warehouse where we can start getting all your Yazeba delights out to you. And when I say tons I mean it literally, there are more than 30 tons of books getting ready for a long journey to us. Once they are here the process of shipping the books and pins and shirts, and all the other lovely merch you are expecting, begins. We're trying to get this part done as quickly as possible, but between the US and Chinese holidays, things are slower than we'd like. We're hoping to get books shipped out of China by March.

Here’s a little glance at what will be coming to you soon*

*Cat not for sale but keep an eye out for Parish plushies!

And while we work on transporting and shipping out books, please check out the amazing folks over at My First Dungeon! They have really cool actual plays of Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast on their podcast that you can find on apple, spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Wrapping up the end of this brief update, I know that news updates have been coming out at a slower pace than what we would like. Looking back at 2023 there are things we decided have to be improved on. One of those things is making a concerted effort to keep all of you in the loop of what's going on here at Possum Creek Games and project updates. Whether this be by way of big updates that you generally see or shorter ones like this. So I'll be writing more from here on out! 

Thanks for your patience while we work toward finalizing everything and everything to you!

• Khyra

Fri Sep 15 '23 Announcement
7 months ago – Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 06:29:48 AM

The muggy heat of the summer gives way to the softer nights of mid-September, and slowly the seasons turn once again to face Yazeba's favorite day of the year. She loves it so much that she bound the Bed & Breakfast to always be September 15th, no matter what else is going on outside. It's not clear why she likes it so much — rumors suggest it used to have some sort of special importance to her, but she rejects that utterly. I've heard her say it's the only day when it's not too hot or too cold inside, a fact which I need to verify for myself one of these days. 

It's also Gertrude's birthday, a fact which has proven to be rather inconvenient for the young witch, as it means her birthday is whenever people remember her birthday should happen.

Outside the Bed & Breakfast, though, we only get to celebrate Gertrude's Birthday once a year, so there's a bunch we're doing in her honor! So let's dig into what's been going on with Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, and what you can look forward to among the community for today and the coming weeks. 

My First Dungeon Presents: Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast

My First Dungeon is a tabletop roleplaying podcast where GMs learn new games from the creators themselves. Together, they build and run their very first one shot and then circle back around to discuss what went right, what went wrong, and how they can make their next game even better. And to celebrate Gertrude's birthday they've put together a whole Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast miniseries, featuring some incredible talent! Lin Codega, Connie Chang, Carolyn Page, Dr. Em Friedman, Drakoniques, and so many other fantastic creatives.

There's six episodes available for everyone and two that are patreon-exclusive, (and there's an interview with me, too!) so if you've been wanting to hear more Yazeba's and see it in action, this is a great place to go. And if you show your support you help make more crazy ventures like this possible, so please give the crew of My First Dungeon some love!

Updated Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast PDF

We've spent the past several months working to get the PDF entirely up to snuff for our needs, and I'm so relieved that I can finally provide all of you with the finished stable version. Here's a list of changes made:

• It's finally screenreader friendly, thanks to the incredible work of our brilliant consultant Kyra Helfrich. Here's their article on the process, if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of screenreader accessibility for this PDF. It was a bonkers process, and it was a work of magic that Kyra was able to get it all functioning.
• We fixed a bunch of typos, including some pages that were very strange, and even did some editing to one fiction snippet later in the book that was added somewhat last minute.
• My partner Beetle lovingly drew an additional 9 extremely cute rabbits to hide throughout the book, so that the scavenger hunt was actually functional.
• There's a copy of the ledger PDF and all the stickers you need, so if you want to print out materials to use during play, you now can! Later these PDF files will be available on our website.
• We took out Herobrine.

Yazeba's Jam 2023

Just in time for the fixed-up PDF, people are making cool content for Yazeba's! Community member and friend of the Possum Creek Megan Maverick has organized a creative jam for people who want to make their own content for Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. It's a great chance to make your own guests and engage with the community as a creator, plus it's a ton of fun! There's themes and a supportive Discord and everything. You can also view last year's submissions here. 

Streamed In-Person Game of Yazeba's

I (me, Jay Dragon) will be playing a game of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast live on the Plus One XP Twitch channel with an awesome crew of friends local to Philly. This will be a chance to celebrate Gertrude's Birthday and hang out together, so please come on by and hang out in chat with us. It'll be a pretty relaxed and playful atmosphere, and you can tune in here at 7pm Eastern Standard Time (or thereabouts, based on when we all drive up to Manayunk). 

Yazeba's Photoshoot

Okay, finally, the part I'm most excited for. A few weeks ago we got the print proof of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast sent to us by the manufacturer, and the enterprising Grubby took it over to her friend Fox Murray, who did a fantastic photoshoot with our beautiful creation, and so! Here's some fantastic pictures of the book and the box set. 

Also, as of today, all of you should be getting charged for shipping and any preorders made. If you see a weird charge on your card, please don't dispute it! Check with us to see if it's us first. Disputes take a while to resolve and might result in you losing your pledge entirely. 

What's Coming Up For Possum Creek

Next week we're releasing the PDF version of Inscrutable Cities by Julian K Jarboe, a fabulist solo RPG about exploring dreamlike metropolises. 

Sometime in early October we're releasing the exploratory draft of The Prince of Hounds, an adventure RPG about a group of interdimensional privateers in a giant walking robot boat with only three laws, which also serve as their stats for trying to break the law. 

At the end of October we have a special Halloween creepy-scary TTRPG crowdfunding planned that you'll be hearing more about as we get closer. We're not ready to make the announcement just yet, but keep an eye out, because something wicked this way comes…

That's All For Now

Whew, what a long update! Thanks for sticking through to the end, and let's all wish Gertrude a big Happy Birthday. I'll be back next week, for more updates on the manufacturing process, and hopefully a timeline on when the books will be finished.

Take care,

Jay

Mon Sep 11 '23 Announcement
8 months ago – Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 07:19:02 AM

Hi all,

So as I'm sure all of you are aware, in just a few days it's going to be Gertrude's Birthday (the first time she's had the chance to celebrate it with everyone!) and while I have a big mega update planned for then with a ton of really exciting stuff, I wanted to give everyone some heads up that on Friday we're going to be charging cards for shipping and preorders on the Backerkit page, so please make sure you've gone over to https://yazeba.backerkit.com/ (or check the email I just sent to your inbox) and made sure that everything looks correct. To that end, I've unlocked everyone's addresses and orders so that you can make any final adjustments, if you want to pick up any goodies or make any changes to your order before Friday. 

Also! Just to excite all of you, here's some gorgeous pictures of the proof copies of Yazeba's that arrived at our doorsteps a couple weeks ago. I'll be talking through them more in the Friday update, but I wanted to show them off right now for your pleasure. 

Fri Jul 14 '23 Announcement
10 months ago – Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 08:54:30 AM

It's been a crazy few months over here at Possum Creek (but then again, when isn't it crazy?) Parish challenged Geno's Steaks to a hoagie-off, Amelie got arrested climbing a greased pole in Center City, and Hey Kid ate a whole rotisserie chicken at the pier behind the abandoned Walmart. There's also been more normal kinds of business as well—in case you didn't know, coordinating a 6-figure print run with representatives across three continents is kinda a big project, even if you've been working on it for years! Hence the lack of an update for the past couple of months—I kept holding out until I could get all of you more concrete information and provide a more interesting update than "stuff continues to trek along" but the weeks stretched into months, and I realized I'd rather tell you all what's going on and at least give you a sense of when things are going to be happening. This update will contain a bunch of news—some good, some bad, some mysterious and irrelevant. Let's go through what's been going on and provide a new timeline for the next half a year:

What's Been Happening

Since we released Yazeba's Online, the two big Yazeba-related activities have been about trying to get the PDF in a state we're truly happy with (i.e fixing all the typos and making it screenreader/ADA compliant) and getting all the materials to the printer so that they can actually print the damn thing. Both of these are a lot harder than we anticipated in our timeline. There's a few reasons for that: Yazeba's B&B is a lot bigger than anything we've ever done before, at least twice as big as Wanderhome, with four times as much art and eight times as convoluted. There's a bunch more merchandise than we've ever done before too. And it also turns out that some of the inventive design choices we made in the PDF don't translate well at all to a screenreader. So when we budgeted 1 month to this step, just like we did with Wanderhome, we weren't accounting for the fact that this game has a frog plushie, a deck of playing cards, and an entire chapter written backwards. 

So, we're running behind on all the things we wanted to get done by June. But we've managed to get a lot of stuff done, and our printer has been hard at work putting together proofs of our madness for all of you to see. Check out some of our favorites!

Timeline for 2023

I'm cautious to give a timeline and unknowingly jinx our operation into some further state of frustrating logistical hell. But! Here is how I hope (knocking on wood) the next chunks of time will go.

July 2023: Finish revising the PDF and post an update to One More Multiverse. along with black-and-white printouts for playing in person.

August 2023: Finalize all production choices and start manufacturing everything. Release shipping costs for backers and charge cards on Backerkit.

September 2023: Launch a Yazeba's Jam / do some fun promotional stuff on September 15th, while the factories continue to chug away. Get some more of the backer-exclusives together.

October 2023: Start printing the stuff we want to make in the USA, like t-shirts and the black-and-white version. Coordinate a big boat to go and pick up all the Yazeba's stuff that got manufactured and ship it over to the US & UK.

November 2023: Everything arrives at the warehouse (fingers crossed!), although I won't be surprised if this doesn't happen until December.

December 2023: If we're very lucky we'll be able to have copies at PAX Unplugged and do a book launch party there, if we're more reasonably unlucky this will be the catchall for November.

January 2024: Ship out Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. 

I'm sure you're wondering why the books aren't shipping out until January, if they might be arriving in December? The reason for that is holiday shipping woes. Christmas is a rough time to ship things, and if we planned for a December shipment we'd have to charge all of you ~20% more for shipping. If we then had to push shipping back to January anyway, then we'd have charged everyone way more then necessary, for no reason at all. So it's a high-risk low-reward time to be trying to move books out. If we do end up having copies of Yazeba's at PAX Unplugged, and you preordered it on Indiegogo or Backerkit, we'll do our best to work with you and make sure you can get a copy at the convention. But at this current rate it seems Yazeba won't be showing up for Christmas.

What Else Is Going On?

Truthfully, all of this would be a ton even if we didn't have anything else going on. But we're getting up to some important stuff! Now that Yazeba's has been handed off to the printer / our screenreader consultant, Grub is focusing her efforts on making Inscrutable Cities happen. I've got stuff to write and a business to run, as we've recently brought on board two part-time employees to help with logistics and accounting. I'm also trying to still make games and put out articles through all that, and you can always find those over at the Creekside Community Center on Patreon. [URL: patreon.com/possumcreek] And we have an office space! It's at the Bok Building in Philadelphia, a former school-turned-community arts space. We're going to be running more local events and connecting with more Philly-based creatives in the future, as part of our effort to integrate into our home community. We'll keep you updated about all of those, and how that'll connect to Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast in 2024!

Thank you all for being patient. I know crowdfunding can be a bumpy ride, but we're in the final stretch. I'll see y'all soon.

— Jay

Tue Mar 28 '23 Announcement
about 1 year ago – Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 09:00:42 AM

While it’s hard to say whether there’s any one particular day that’s best for running away from home, if forced to choose, one would probably say the 15th of September would be as good a day as any.  On the other hand, to the mud-soaked and waterlogged girl stumbling through the woods, the fifteenth didn’t feel particularly good for anything whatsoever.

After all; it was her birthday, and nothing good had ever happened on it before…

We did it, it's finally here! Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast has arrived to the world wide web. The PDF clocks in at 500 pages exactly, and includes the cumulative efforts of a team of writers, editors, artists, and Grub herself, weaving together a beautiful impossible story of a magical interdimensional Bed & Breakfast and the people who call it home. It's filled with over four hundred illustrations, fifty chapters, fifty guests, and more than enough stories to keep you satisfied for quite a long time.

If you've filled out your Backerkit survey you should have an access link to Yazeba's Online. You'll need to make a One More Multiverse account (although you can log in easily with either Google or Discord), but once inside you'll have full access to everything Yazeba's Online has to offer. 

This is the landing page for Yazeba's Online! If you want to access the PDF, click on the Download The Rules button. If you want to learn the basics of One More Multiverse and get oriented, click on the Play Tutorial button. If you want to jump straight into playing, click on the Play Game button and Invite Players to get your friends in there too. Your friends don't need a copy of Yazeba's, although they will also need One More Multiverse accounts. 

The PDF Is The Start

The PDF is out darling baby, at 500 pages and packed full of stories and illustrations and magic…and it's not quite done. There's still a couple things we want to pull together for later in the year, but we felt it was more important to get the game to you now at 99% perfect and worry about that last 1% later (once the Possum Creek team has had some time to recover). The biggest thing is that right now there's no files prepared for printing, whereas we hope to soon have versions of the PDF that you can easily print out and use in physical games. It's also not yet screenreader compatible, and there's fewer than 33 rabbits currently in the book.

If you find a typo in the Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast PDF that you want to let us know about, please use this link to report a typo so that we can fix it before the book goes out to print. Critically, please don't send us an email or message any of the team, because we're very forgetful and will forget!

A few known typos are:

• Hodag needs credit for the fantastic Heartsword illustration.
• The page numbers in the PDF don't align with the page numbers on the pages. 
• There are fewer than 33 rabbits hidden in the book. Also, the page where the associated scavenger hunt is explained has a weird text glitch. 

Everyone's Deluxe Now

One thing about how the digital version of Yazeba's was implemented is that we don't have the distinction between regular and deluxe anymore. We realized it would be easier and more fun if we just offered those special treats, like exclusive guests and such, to everyone! But unfortunately what that means is that some number of you, the folks who got a Deluxe copy of the game, were expecting additional stuff on top of what you already got! I want to make sure all of you feel supported too.

If you backed the Deluxe version of Yazeba's Digital on its own, I've included $15 in complimentary credit on your Backerkit account for use with anything in the preorder store (and unlocked your orders). If you were going to receive the Deluxe version as part of the Box Set or in some other context where it was already being included as a free perk, you have not received complimentary credit. I've also gone in and unlocked the orders so you can adjust your choices. Please use this credit as soon as you can, so that I can lock your orders again.

FAQ

I didn't get an email with the access key in it. What do I do?

First, go to Backerkit and make sure you've filled out everything properly, and that you're checking the right email address. Then, contact Backerkit for support at [email protected]. Then (and only then, once you've tried these other methods!) send us an email at [email protected] and we'll send you a download code.

A friend wants to buy Yazeba's Online! Where should they go?

Go to https://onemoremultiverse.itch.io/yazebas and pick up a copy there, or they should preorder Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast on the Possum Creek webstore. https://possumcreekgames.com/products/yazebas-bed-breakfast

I want to talk to people about Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. Where can I go?

There's a lot of great community spaces for hanging out and talking about Yazeba's. There's a few unofficial spaces, such as the Yazeba's Discord or Subreddit. There's also the Possum Creek Campsite and the One More Multiverse Discord which are both great places to talk about the project and meet people who want to play.

I want to play Yazeba's Online on my stream / podcast / AP / Tiktok / pantomime. Can I?

Yes! Go for it! Have fun!

I'm a news site / podcast / radio station / pantomime etc. and I want to do a special on Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. How can I contact you?

Please email me at [email protected]. Please don't DM me on Twitter or message me here — I'm very forgetful, and I'll direct you back to my email anyway, where our office manager will remind me of all the things I've forgotten to reply to.

What Else Is Going On

I wanted to take a quick moment, before going on with whatever else is happening in this Indiegogo update, to shout out a couple new and upcoming projects — some of which I'm involved with, some of which I just think are really neat. Please do give these a look if you have a chance.

Trust The Process | The Arte Sumapaz Artbook is a wonderful collection of paintings, poetry, and illustrations by the artists and residents of Arte Sumapaz, an intentional community in the mountains of Colombia. They're working on raising money to secure more than 200 acres of land and restore it to its pre-colonial environment while also building a space for artists and creatives. I'm really proud of everything they're doing and I would love to see this project do well. 

Godkiller by Connie Chang is an awesome TTRPG about a group of eclectic warriors working together to kill god. The ashcan is coming out today (literally released an hour ago) and while I haven't had time to dig into it, I have been excitedly waiting for the official podcast series accompanying the game with bated breath. Connie is a fantastic creator and this ashcan is going to be my afternoon reading.

The Hitchhiker is a horror TTRPG from Hunters Entertainment being written by Possum Creek Games (that's us!) which will be coming out in 2024. It's going to draw on the same Upstate NY mythos that infuses and surrounds Yazeba's B&B, and even though it's quite a ways away, I can't wait until you all get to try it out and explore a Possum Creek take on Alice Is Missing. 

What's Next

So this is just the beginning. While all of you are enjoying the Bed & Breakfast, Possum Creek is going to continue scuttling away in the shadows, keeping things going as we work towards the next big component — a physical release. Over the next month and a half, we're going to be:

• Finalizing the print layout for the game, fixing typos and going over the PDF with a fine-tooth comb to make sure everything is perfect.
• Making designs for all the merchandise, ledger, play materials for the box set, quickstart, etc.
• Coordinating with our printing company to make sure we can get everything to you by the end of the year.

The current expected date for when we can start shipping books will be in November, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Today, let's enjoy the Bed & Breakfast we have in front of us, and once we've settled in we can start talking about the big next steps.

Thank You All

Normally during these sorts of big announcement updates I like to sit down and thank all the people who made this possible. The number of people I would have to show gratitude towards would be incalculable. Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast is a team venture, and its existence has only been able to happen thanks to the passion and care of scores upon scores of incredible visionary creatives. I do want to especially appreciate Ruby Lavin, the art director and layout designer who spent the past few months doing the impossible and turning Yazeba's B&B from a pile of google docs into a reality. She's had a really awful, unfair few months, and despite that she infused Yazeba's with a sense of whimsy and joy that radiates through every page she touched. She has been vital to its creation, as vital as any writer or artist if not more. Please go show her some love on Twitter [URL: https://twitter.com/rubylavin] or elsewhere.

Additionally, I want to thank the One More Multiverse team who took our vision of a Bed & Breakfast and brought it to life, creating something I genuinely don't think has ever been seen before in the TTRPG world. I've been playing a lot of Yazeba's Online lately, and the more I play the more I fall in love with their creativity and imagination, and how it's been used to turn a place I've always dreamed of into a beautiful funky dollhouse. A special shoutout to Janie Jaff, who managed to do what I thought was impossible and bring Yazeba's into the digital world, Meg McCurdy, whose sense of whimsy and delight has given every level a sense of true magic, and Tiffany, Monica, and Sara, who helped turn this from a pie in the sky idea to an actual functioning partnership. Thank you all.

When the book releases I'll have more thanks to give and love to share (trust me, there's a big sappy post for the writers artists and editors on its way) but this update is already growing long. Go read the game, play Yazeba's, explore the Bed & Breakfast. Wipe the mud off your shoes and toss your suitcase on the bed. Stay awhile, where the fire is warm and there's always food on the stove.

Make yourself at home. I hope you'll stay here for quite a while.

— Jay