Bullets & Bourbon: A Fistful of Updates

Bullets & Bourbon Updates

Art by Francesco Accordi

I know I used that joke in a post title before, but it seems pretty fitting given the themes of the game and of this post. As of the time of my writing this post (Sunday), $664 has been raised for Bullets & Bourbon: Reloaded, with 21 physical backers, 4 digital backers, and 30 folks claiming community copies! A large chunk of this money was donated by a very generous friend of mine while another portion was added thanks to the sales I made during a local Comic Convention I attended where I sold copies of my two novels and the other games I’ve worked on. At this rate Bullets & Bourbon is well on its way to being printed and shipped out. Based on current sales, I’m expecting to do a 50 copy print run, but that number may change as the next few weeks come and go. Regardless, I’ll keep you posted.

A week or so ago I did an interview with Todd from Third Kingdom Games about B&B and crowdfunding in general, which went up over the weekend - take a look if you haven’t already!

I’m also working with HodagRPG to set up a simple add-on for physical backers. I have to look into a few things (and make sure Hodag has the time to dedicate to another illustration), but be on the lookout for a more official update in a week or two.

The Jefferson County Telegraph, Vol. 1

Now I’m not sure if I’m trying to get too cute with my naming conventions or not… Well anyway, let’s get to the meat of it, shall we?

I’ve seen a lot of amazing projects this year for Zine Month and I wanted to take a moment to share some of them. I hope to share more in the coming weeks as more and more projects roll out, so stay tuned there as well! This week I wanted to share the following games that have caught my eye (listed in no particular order) - titles double as links to their crowdfunding pages.

1- The Electrum Archive - Issue 02 by Emiel Boven

I, fool that I often am, passed up on this project last year. It felt a little too “out there” for my [lack of] tastes. But when I saw that Issue 02 was coming out and I actually decided to do more than just judge a zine by its cover (again it just seemed too goofy, which is rich coming from the co-creator of NUKED! where half the shit we put in was because it made us laugh) I realized that Boven’s world of Orn sounds amazing! The art is top-notch and the world itself is a love letter to Dark Sun and Morrowind.

But what really sold me on this project is that at certain levels you can get the first issue - so if you were a fool like me and skipped this last year, have no fear! All of Orn (so far) is at your fingertips. Check it out on Kickstarter.

2- Ailing Away by Justin Vandermeer

“The year is 1905 and you have tuberculosis.” That’s one hell of an introduction, right? I found Ailing Away on Discord when its creator was asking for feedback about the Crowdfundr page and I was immediately hooked. I’ve only played one solo-rpg (Thousand Year-Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings) and I had a lot of fun, so I figured I’d give another game a shot. Between the powerful introduction and the premise - a murder mystery while you’re ostensibly on a vacation - I immediately signed up to receive a notification when this game goes live on Feb. 7th.

I’m also hoping that the premise of this game will interest my girlfriend and I can begin her corruption… erm… introduction into TTRPGs with something that doesn’t involve a lot of complicated rules. Check it out on Crowdfundr.

3- MEKKAKONKRETE by Giuseppe Manfredi

I love robots and I love this art style. That’s pretty much all I have to say about this game. The fact that it’s a rules lite game is also excellent, because at the ripe age of 31 I’ve begun to run out of space to store several hundred pages of complex gaming rules. Bright colors, awesome robots, and rules so simple an idiot like me can understand them - the holy trinity of “Games Made for Mac.”

I believe this game goes live on Feb. 7th. Check it out on Crowdfundr.

4- Derelict Delvers by Cezar Capacle

Thanks to SoulMuppet’s Orbital Blues game I’ve been getting more and more into science fiction the last year or so and have been on the lookout for similar games. Derelict Delvers stood out to me originally as a game I can plunder ideas from for my OB campaign, but as I read more about it I began to think about running it as written for my weekly in-person group (but I’ll probably still crib ideas to use in said OB campaign), who are all a bunch of scifi nerds. This game looks fun, exciting, and dangerous.

This game is currently live. Check it out on Crowdfundr.