Mon Feb 13 '23 Announcement
about 1 year ago – Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 05:09:04 PM

What a busy and strange winter it's been. Philly (Go Birds) has been oddly warm, with gratefully little snow but bitter cold winds nipping through the buildings. I can imagine the Moon Prince having to bundle themself up in scarves and jackets on a walk to their job at Cafe Tiara, or Yazeba hard at work on some new spell while lying next to the radiator. It's been a tumultuous winter for me personally, as I spent a month of it with my father at Arte Sumapaz, an artist residency program in the countryside outside Fusagasuga. We've also been working on some big logistics stuff, which I'll talk about later in the update. For now though, let me walk you through what we've been up to, including some great new screencaps and a new team member!

Layout Is Nearly Done

Grubby's spent the past several months working really hard on getting the full book together, and within the next week or so the first draft of the layout will be entirely set! Clocking in at around 600 pages and with more than 400 illustrations, it's a behemoth. The next step is to go through and make sure every single page looks good, that every illustration is where it's supposed to be, and that the layout comes together in just the right way. It's a long process but it's well worth it, and the book is really transforming into a masterpiece of an object.

One More Multiverse Getting Polished

The incredible team at One More Multiverse has made something truly unique with Yazeba's Online. I've been playing with it for a couple weeks now and it's genuinely one of the coolest TTRPG experiences I've ever had. I'll be running games in my own 'verse for the next month or so over on the Possum Creek Patreon, if you join and connect your Discord you can come play too. The full version will be available to everyone in a couple months, and I'm looking forward to the full digital release of One More Multiverse + PDF.

Brand New Artist

We're excited to welcome a new artist to the team, Mar! Mar is an illustrator and cartoonist originally from South Florida, currently living and making things in Baltimore, Maryland on unceded Piscataway Land. They have a fondness for magical realism, urban fantasy, and anything reaching out of the ocean, and like to focus their personal work on close personal interactions, how the fantastic blends with the mundane in everyday lives, and mixed identities like their own. They’re also, occasionally, a florist.

They'll be working on the chapter illustrations alongside Ashanti and Val, and I love their art style. Here's some half-finished illustrations that I can't stop staring at.

Wanderhome Is Back In Stock

A lot of you are probably familiar with us through Wanderhome, our pastoral fantasy tabletop RPG about traveling animal folk. I'm excited to announce that it's back in stock! You can order both hardcovers and softcovers from our website. If you preordered a copy with your Yazeba's order, it will arrive alongside Yazeba's itself.

Also, Possum Creek is up to some other cool stuff as well. You can check out our newest release on Patreon (The Eventide Club, the newest draft of my ongoing dark academia RPG based on Apocalypse Keys) and my personal writing over on my Substack (including The Quarry's Secret Name, a short story about the life and death of a magical quarry, and more cool weird queer stuff on the way).

Take Care!

Over the next few months, we'll be working on Inscrutable Cities, Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, and continuing to grow and manage Possum Creek Games. Until next time, take care and I'll see you when the snow melts and a warm western wind brings springtime to the city.

— Jay

Fri Nov 11 '22 Announcement
over 1 year ago – Fri, Nov 11, 2022 at 11:57:34 AM

It's been a perfect Autumn in Philadelphia, yellow leaves caught up on street corners and spindly trees preparing for winter. Halloween came and went (Hey Kid, I imagine, went as a princess this year), and we're entering that period of deep November when Parish would bake pumpkin muffins with the leftover guts of the jack-o-lanterns, Amelie would get ready for the first snow-tracks in the halls, and Sal finds himself writing songs about his heavy heart.

And Yazeba's continues to chug away! Our beloved art director Grub has started the process of layout, as she takes the monstrous pile of text and turns it into a game you'll enjoy reading. I've gotten so used to Google Docs and the inoffensive Cambria font that looking at Grub's layout choices is like getting to read the game all over again. She's spent the past couple of months picking out fonts and getting the structure of the text in place, and now she's going through the text and setting it all up in Indesign, chapter by chapter.

Digital Progress

While this is going on, we're also having some great meetings with the folks over at One More Multiverse. We're gearing up for public playtesting soon (which we'll be handling in a few different Discords, and I'll post information here once the online playtesting opens up) but in the meantime, we've gotten some amazing bits and pieces from them as they work to implement the entire game into a digital environment.

If you want a sense of what else OMM has created, check out their Blades In The Dark support, which has quickly become my favorite way to play that game.

Inscrutable Cities

At the end of November, we're going to be doing another crowdfunding project — Inscrutable Cities by Julian K. Jarboe. It's a solo RPG about wandering through a magical city, inspired by Italo Calvino. You can sign up to get notified here, and it's going to be launching on Backerkit. The goal is to complete a smaller project while we continue to work on Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, and stagger the production times so we can make sure Yazeba's is done on time while also making space for this book.

Twitter Is Dying

So as many of you might be aware, Twitter (the social media platform) is rapidly falling apart, and there's a real chance it'll shut down entirely. Historically, Possum Creek has relied heavily on Twitter to spread the word about our newest projects, and it's very unsettling to know that it could fall apart completely. I wanted to take a moment to remind you about some places you can still engage with us to stay in touch about upcoming projects.

Our Patreon and its associated Discord are the best place to learn about new projects, including a couple games which are currently Patreon-exclusive — the Seven-Part Pact and Midnight Oil. The Seven-Part Pact is about a group of wizards in an Earthsea-inspired fantasy world struggling to keep magic from destroying everything. Midnight Oil is a dark academia RPG inspired by Apocalypse Keys, about a group of college students succumbing to madness. Both are available on the Patreon at the $3 and $10 levels, respectively.

We also maintain a public Discord here, which is a more chill atmosphere and has some cool games of Yazeba's happening periodically!

You can also stay in touch with me personally on Tumblr and Tiktok, and you can support Possum Creek Games on Facebook and Instagram (although we're not that active there), as well as on our Tiktok, where our enterprising intern Mael continues to make thirst traps about Parish.

Also you can find us in real life! We're going to be at Pax Unplugged (as Philly locals, it's hard not to), and if you're masked and fully vaccinated, come swing by Booth 4157 and say hi.

More Art

Finally, as always, here's a bit of the art we've been getting from the phenomenal team of artists.

Thanks for reading, and take care. 

— Jay

Thu Sep 15 '22 Announcement
over 1 year ago – Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 05:35:53 AM

It's September 15th! It is always September 15th inside the Bed & Breakfast (even if it’s summer, spring or winter outside). September 15th is Yazeba’s favorite day of the year, and our darling Gertrude's birthday. In the real world, it's only September 15th once a year, so at Possum Creek we like to celebrate. Today M and I are going to work on some edits and have a picnic in Gertrude's honor, and the digital team are just starting the work of implementing Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast into One More Multiverse.

The Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast Jam

Some enterprising and creative fans of Yazeba's have made a Jam on Itch.io for the game, and there's already some amazing guests available!! It wraps up today so if you feel like doing a last minute or late submission, and making your own guests for Yazeba's, now's the time. 

Apocalypse Keys

Rae (a dear friend and associate of the Possum Creek) has launched his biggest Kickstarter to date, an incredibly kickass Hellboy-inspired game about dangerously queer monsters struggling between their feelings and the impending collapse of the world. It's called Apocalypse Keys and I wholeheartedly recommend you check it out. 

Short update!

That's all — I'll be back later next month with more news about how things are going. In the meantime, sit down, have some punch, and let's celebrate Gertrude's birthday (even if she's still a bit nervous about it).

— Jay

Thu Aug 18 '22 Announcement
over 1 year ago – Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 10:08:42 AM

Summertime here is a mythic process, long days where anything is possible and quiet cool evenings filled with the buzzing of cicadas and the flickering fireflies. It's miserably hot, the sort of days where Parish would take a nap in front of a fan or where Amelie would prefer to clean in the dark so their circuitboard doesn't overheat. They're fishin' days, swimmin' days, the sort of days we'll remember for the rest of our lives. For the crew at the Possum Creek, we've had a lot on our plate.

The past few months have all been editing. LD and Kazumi worked their way through document after document, tightening language, clarifying mechanics, and coming back to stuff the writing team wrote years ago. (I can't explain the mortification of seeing edits on a piece of text I wrote in December of 2019, which I never intended to be more than a placeholder, and which got overlooked while everything around it was edited, like a lonely rock in the middle of a garden). 

A lot of what's been happening right now has been waiting. The next step once the editing is done and all the art is in is layout, so until we reach that point, Possum Creek's administration has been focusing on other matters (reprinting Wanderhome, preparing for an upcoming soon-to-be-announced smaller-scale crowdfunding project, moving warehouses, etc.).

Timeline wise, we're all on the right track. One More Multiverse is just releasing their Blades In The Dark project, and once that's available they're going to start work on Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. Slowly the project lumbers towards the release date, a great behemoth which we toss new parts onto as it approaches.

Here's some more art and sketches from our various artists!

(Art by Val Wise, Ashanti Fortson, and Shannon Kao)

Thanks for reading, and take care! I'll be back next month, just in time for Gertrude's birthday.

— Jay

Sal tossed the cooler and an extra bag of chips onto the rocks, wiping the sweat from his brow. “I can’t believe we hiked all the way up a mountain at the crack of dawn. I thought fishing was supposed to be relaxing!”

Parish scoffed. “The early bird catches the worm, my friend!” He pulled out a box of bait and examined the wriggling nightcrawlers. “And the early worm catches the, er, fish.”

— Chapter 21: Gone Fishin'

Mon May 23 '22 Announcement
almost 2 years ago – Mon, May 23, 2022 at 08:38:13 AM

May is here, and here in the Hudson Valley the weather dances between the rainy days of April and the hot embrace of summer. It's the kind of weather that sparks creativity — one can imagine Sal practicing guitar on the porch, or Hey Kid working on a new comic sprawled out on the floor. This is the sort of weather that might prompt Amelie to start gardening, or for Parish to prepare a springtime feast. There's a lot of chapters about this time in Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast — it's a good time to go on an adventure. 

As most of you are aware, it took a bit longer than expected for the Backerkit and OMM emails to go out. This is mainly due to logistics — Backerkit had never worked with an Indiegogo project of our size before, so we had to spend more time than expected integrating everything. But now they've been sent out, and you should have emails from both One More Multiverse and Backerkit in your inbox ready for you to access awesome goodies and prepare for Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast!

This update is going to cover the OMM closed beta access, the Backerkit survey, and where we're currently at with the production of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast — including new art and updates on progress.

One More Multiverse Closed Beta

While it will be a while before the OMM Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast access is available for the general public, One More Multiverse has been kind enough to give every backer of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast who accessed a digital copy free access to One More Multiverse. It's an amazing platform — I've had the joy of playing a couple different games on there and exploring the worlds one can create in it, and it's a ton of fun. There's even a cute tutorial to help you orient yourself! I really recommend checking it out, so that you're ready the moment the Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast download key is available.

If you can't find the email, or you didn't receive it for some reason, you can access it on Backerkit in the digital downloads section (see below). There's a rate limit on how many people can use the link we provide, so if it doesn't work just give me a heads up on Indiegogo or via email.

Backerkit Surveys and FAQ

A couple days ago we sent out the Backerkit surveys to everyone! This took about a month of work to set up between me and the amazing folks at Backerkit, who have been super generous with their time to sort out the survey. On Backerkit you'll be able to change your address, make choices associated with your tier, choose add-ons to your order, or upgrade your pledge. I know there's been a lot of questions about all this, so I want to answer as many as I can here. 

What's the difference between the regular Digital Bundle and the deluxe Digital Bundle?

The deluxe Digital Bundle was the first stretch goal we unlocked. It has some digital-exclusive guests and chapters, along with alternate outfits for the main characters and some cute extra online content. Both bundles include both the PDF and the OMM bundle. 

I backed Wanderhome and I don't have the Gertrude pin at checkout, what do I do? 

At the end of the survey, look over all the items in your cart and make sure the expected pin isn't there. If it's not, go to this form and fill it out — we'll add the pin if you're supposed to have it. [URL: https://forms.gle/uemQci2DSeAv3SjU9]

What if I'm missing something else, like an Early Bird reward?

Fill out this form or contact Backerkit customer support! They can help you.

How can I access my digital rewards (PDFs for Wanderhome, OMM closed beta, etc.)

You'll be able to access download keys on Backerkit under Digital Downloads. I've added download keys for all Possum Creek Games PDFs currently being sold on the Backerkit page, along with OMM closed beta access. You should have an email in your inbox with all of these links. If you can't access them, please contact Backerkit support through the Yazeba's B&B Backerkit portal.

What are the ledger and the deck of cards?

Both the ledger and the deck of cards are add-ons that were originally just in the box set, but we made the decision to distribute them to everyone. The ledger is a way to keep track of characters and stickers without putting stickers on the book (if that's a concern), and the deck of cards is really useful for some chapters that use a deck of playing cards. If you ordered the box set, you'll be getting both of those already.

Why can't I get a Black & White copy right now?

So the Black and White copies are a bit tricky. The price of paper is currently heavily fluctuating, and we're printing them pretty close to at-cost for the Indiegogo. Anyone who knows anything about manufacturing knows how risky that is, and we don't want to promise hundreds more Black & White copies and then not be able to pay for them. After the B&W copy is available, it can be purchased print-on-demand at DrivethruRPG and you can pick it up then. 

Does this include shipping?

You'll note that the survey doesn't currently include shipping. We'll be releasing a follow-up once we get closer to the shipping date with shipping rates for people to confirm. Shipping is extremely volatile right now, and we don't know what 2023 is going to look like.

What is the SKU that says "null"?

That's a null SKU that's generated automatically by certain question prompts. You can ignore it — it's a Backerkit glitch.

What if I have another question that's not here?

Contact Backerkit support! They're super helpful and they know how their own website works, way better than I do. If you can't access your survey or you want to pre-order Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, you can do so here on the portal home page.

What's Going On Right Now?

The contents of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, as a manuscript, is completely finished. Isn't that wild? I don't even know how many words it is, as it's across approximately 40 Google Docs, but my estimates are 90-100k words. It's awesome to have all that already finished. Over the past two weeks, Dominique Dickey and M Veselak have worked together to create a style guide and plan for how to edit this behemoth, and over the next month Kazumi and LD will start the process of editing every passage in the book. 

Meanwhile, art continues to pour in from the outstanding art team. with all elements of the book slowly coalescing together. Here's a few by Val Wise, Ashanti Fortson, and Shannon Kao. 

Until Next Time

That wraps up our May update. I'm really excited for Yazeba's B&B and I'm hyped to show you what's next. Take care everyone, and I'll see you next month!

— Jay

Amelie and Sal had both worked at the Bed & Breakfast long enough to know when Yazeba had gotten into one of her moods. The first warning sign was always Yazeba’s even further withdrawal from the daily goings-on of the Bed & Breakfast. The second warning sign was always mysterious packages containing books written in a variety of natural and unnatural languages being placed in the mailbox. And the third warning sign was always Yazeba’s cheerfulness.

A happy witch is far more dangerous than a grumpy witch.

And so, when Yazeba came whistling downstairs for the first time in weeks with a stack of books under one arm all titled such things like Barnabie Duke’s Officious Guide To Horticultural Production, Amelie and Sal knew exactly what was going on.

— Excerpt from Chapter 18: Who Knows How A Garden Grows