A Rogue's Gallery Compendium of Weird Fantasy RPG Villains for Your OSR Games
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hello everyone!
Man, this update is very long overdue, and I am so sorry about that. I'm sure many of you have been wondering just what the hell happened... and where are your books? Well, I have answers and they're mostly trending towards the upbeat. Well, at least they are NOW because the last half-year has been pretty awful.
I was diagnosed with symptoms of an impending brain aneurysm by my family doctor in late November 2023. I had been feeling increasingly odd, exhibiting bizarre behavior. In addition, I was scaling more and more towards being overcome with lethargy and a noticeable difficulty thinking. I had a hard time making decisions and remembering details that should have been routine or easy for me. My wife got me to the doctor as quickly as possible and after some scans and consults, I was referred to a brain surgeon at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital near Washington DC.
I had a minor brain aneurysm in December of 2023, right in the middle of the development of this project. The aneurysm laid me low and put me in danger of another, far more dangerous one. After a brief consult at MedStar Georgetown, I was put on the docket for surgery. The brain surgery took place shortly before Christmas and I came through having avoided any hang-ups in surgery.
Unfortunately, with an aneurysm like mine, there is a difficult recovery period with an often-uncertain timetable for full recovery. Since late December 2023, I have been recovering. I launched no further Kickstarters and have cancelled all of my con appearances as a special guest (including both GaryCon and North Texas RPG Con - two of my all-time favorites). I did attend a con close to home (GameFace Con, in Maryland) back in March 2024, but had a measure of difficulty even with that. Of the two days I was scheduled to vend and play, I could only manage the first. Leading up to my initial diagnosis, I also had to cancel attending one of my favorite cons, Gamehole in Madison, WI because I was having difficulty functioning normally. Finally, I had to suspend all gaming and playtesting with my normal group here close to home.
To say the least, I was down and out for the count for awhile!
... but here we are in June of 2024 and many of my difficulties and side effects from the surgery have FINALLY either subsided or become somewhat manageable. Guys, I'm not exaggerating when I say this was a TOUGH recovery. Honestly, it was one of the most trying things I've ever had to deal with in my life. If you want to know more, google some of the mental side effects from this sort of surgery or just shoot me a private email. I'm here to tell you it was no fun at all and extremely trying for both myself (individually) and my family. Luckily, I was surrounded by wonderful folks who love and care for me, along with a loyal cadre of awesome friends who helped make it more manageable.
So now I am easing back into everything, and it is finally time to make good on the promises of this Kickstarter. And I gotta tell you guys...
This thing is AWESOME.
Not only is this a cool compendium of villains both deadly and bizarre but the knock-out, evocative art by Adrian Landeros is an absolute home run. He did the entire book and longtime Planet X fans will know what an awesome thing that is. All the killer game designers who lent their talents - John "Hambone" McGuire, Jayson "Rocky" Gardner, Skeeter Green, Casey Christofferson and others - really cranked up the heat and brought their A-game. These guys delivered!
Truly, this book is a special Planet X entry and I have absolutely no doubt that it will be a handy companion when you need a special, one-of-a-kind villain to crank up the heat on your players.
As touted in the Kickstarter, "Each villain is already built for you so that you can plug-n-play them directly from the page to the table. Whether you're running a one-shot or beginning an all new campaign, these villains are specifically designed to live on in your players' imaginations years after the game has wrapped."
I'm here to tell you guys that we did EXACTLY that. Everyone delivered and really turned in the good stuff.
Alright - enough with the explanation - so what now?
I'm replacing one piece of art and then this bad boy is gonna be ready for you. Once that is in hand and inserted into the PDF, we'll get FINAL PDFs out to everyone and ship this thing off for printing. Once I have the books in hand it will be Planet X PRIORITY ONE to get these shipped out to you. Successive updates after this one will keep you appraised of the timeline, and I welcome any and all communication to my personal email [email protected].
So that's where we are folks. I am on the better side of healing this rusty bucket of nuts, bolts and brains and the few books I have hanging in the air awaiting delivery are in full steam ahead mode. Adrian is prepared to replace and move around art if need be. Our fantastic graphic designer Tracey is ready to resume tackling the slick layout of the book. I'm ready to punch up any last-minute challenges that may come up. The printer is primed and wringing their hands to get the book in-house. Our distributor (the fantastic folks at Flying Cloud) will be ready to ship when the books print and arrive.
One more thing - THANK YOU ALL for being so patient with the delivery of this book. I haven't had a book take this long since Escape from Skullcano Island but I promise that I am devoted to getting you all what you paid for as efficiently as possible from here on out. I'm stoked for you guys to get your hands on this book and I am TRULY sorry that it took this long for things to get moving again.
-Levi
Hello everyone! I hope everyone has had a great holiday season so far and all is well in your world. Planet X is as busy as ever, so we wanted to drop a quick status update on Chainsaw Wizards, Hecatombs Creeps and Other Ungodly Bastards. Good news abounds!
As reported in earlier updates, the book just keeps getting bigger. From our original projected page count of 80(ish) pages, we are now at 130+ pages! Why might you ask? Well, to be honest, we just couldn't stop adding cool, weird bad guys to the book! This resource will definitely be living up to its hype of "bigger, badder, better"!
On the PDF front, our layout guru Tracey Steele is zeroing in on completing all of the primary backer-ready layout. We'll need to do last looks and maybe even tweak a small detail here or there, but the good news is that it's looking good, flows great and can easily be used at the table. Here's a sneak peek at one of the entries (a villain I submitted to WOTC's "create a villain" contest almost twenty years ago, revamped and freshly illustrated for this project). Check out Baron Mord, the Iron Tyrant!
Trust us - you're gonna have villains galore to terrorize your players with for years to come!
Lastly, I want to share an all-new project that we're launching on Kickstarter next week called ASSAULT ON WITCHGATE 13. This is a brand-new adventure compatible with Dungeon Crawl Classics and just about any OSR roleplaying game available. My good friend, fellow indie RPG publisher and peer Luau Lou Hoefer has written an awesome adventure that is so bad ass I can't wait to start running it at cons. With some additional writing by Jeff Scifert and yours truly, we've really pulled out all the stops while retaining a great price point for the community. There's some fantastic art in this module by Adrian Landeros, Chris Carman, Ed Bickford and JE Shields. I'm super stoked for you guys to see it!
Pretty sick, right? the pre-launch page is HERE - just smash that "Notify" me button to get a head's up when the project launches!
Thanks again for backing this project and helping to make sure this book comes alive. We're pretty proud of it and can't wait for you guys to get your hands on it. See you with a PDF soon!
-Levi, Planet X Games
Hello everyone!
Just wanted to drop a quick update for October and let you know we are rolling along. We have, however, encountered a bit of a "problem"... I JUST CAN'T STOP ADDING MORE CONTENT!
That's right! As we were prepping and plotting how to best lay the book out, I added two additional entries that I was actually going to use for another project but they jusy ended up making so much more sense for THIS project. So, yes, your books are coming along but they are getting bigger, badder, longer and all around more bad ass this month!
Otherwise, not much else is happening. We are still on track and you guys should be getting those PDFs as soon as we can actually finalize and stop adding more material. I suppose this is a pretty good problem to have, if you are indeed going to have one!
See you guys for another update soon. In the meantime, THANK YOU for supporting Chainsaw Wizards, Hecatomb Creeps and Other Ungodly Bastards!
-Levi
Hello everyone!
A quick update today, but an important one nevertheless!
Thanks a ton guys! Your support really helped this project to elevate itself to a new level.
-Levi