BackerKit is live soon
almost 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 03, 2023 at 08:42:50 AM

Howdy!

Quick update to say that the funds have been delivered by Kickstarter and we are currently processing them to all the folks involved in this project. In addition, we have already set up the campaign's BackerKit. We are doing a smoke test on Monday: this test randomly selects a small number of backers and sends surveys their way, so that we can fish out any errors or miscalculations. If it's all good, the general BackerKit should launch sometime next week. Please keep an eye out for incoming mails. 

A reminder that this BackerKit is operated by Exalted Funeral, so if you see any charges from EF in the future, please be reminded those may result from this campaign. 

THANKS!

Success!
about 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 03, 2023 at 09:02:55 AM

Thank you everyone, 

Once again, thank you so much everyone for the great campaign. It's always a gamble to launch campaigns for these highly conceptual and experimental projects, like a music LP vinyl that doubles down as a RPG setting/adventure. So, to have right around 1,000 backers (!) is something we don't take for granted. THANK YOU!

Before anyone asks, here are the next steps:

• October: processing funds. usually Kickstarter takes about 2-3 weeks to wire backers' money into our account. while we are waiting, we will take the opportunity to polish the print files and wrap up the music. we shall be communicative with you all about progress. 
•  November: setting up BackerKit with Exalted Funeral, our fulfilment partners. after the funds are received, we will set up the campaign's BackerKit, so that you may add extra books (either the black or red-ink print run) and LPs to your pledges. this is also where shipping shall be factored in. we expect to be in the position of sending digital files by then. please bear with us. 
•  December: send everything to print/press. as of today, production times with our printer and vinyl pressing factory are right around 2-3 months, so we expect to have the physical products finished by the end of March. 
• April: a big pallet goes via boat to the USA to Exalted Funeral's warehouse.
• May: fulfilment begins. 

If you have any questions or concerns, you may drop us a line at [email protected], but for now let's celebrate! 

THANK YOU!

The Rot that Came to Dredge-upon-Rock
about 3 years ago – Sun, Oct 01, 2023 at 08:04:48 AM

As we enter into the final 48 hours, I (Brian Yaksha) thought it would be fun to speak about the thought process and influences behind Tides of Rot and its placement within Frontier Scum.

It would be easy to describe Tides of Rot as a traditional zombie apocalypse entry, something we are intimately familiar with from popular culture. It is not a traditional zombie apocalypse where the cause of an egregious abomination upon nature is caused by a pathogen or a meteor passing overhead. The Rotters are not mindless entities who desire the consumption of brains and flesh for the sake of fueling a purely instinctual hunger. Those sorts of tropes and expectations are entirely fine, often fundamental to our idea of what allows for such an entry to feel ‘correct’ - but it lacks novelty that would make it feel interesting to place within the assumed time period of Frontier Scum’s Acid Western setting.

As an Acid Western is not a Weird Western. The dead aren't on the rise because there is a logical and common cause for such a thing to occur in the world. Things are bad because this is akin to a bad trip, because this is the worst possible thing that could happen to some of the worst possible people you could ever have the displeasure of meeting. A rot has come to Dredge-upon-Rock because nobody would believe you if you told them, were you to survive its corrupting touch.

Thus, Tides of Rot was, as a campaign, more influenced to feel like a ghost story. At least from the onset. It is about a curse, a town that is suffering from the sins of old and the cruelties of the now, and how anyone who enters it is subjected to a crucible to test their mettle and their soul. It would need to still play like a zombie apocalypse scenario; because those are notably more fun than waxing philosophical on the nature of sin --- but we didn’t want it to feel like you were wading through an episode of The Walking Dead.

The Rotters needed to feel like a threat, not from just their numbers but from their motivation; and thus cues were taken from John Carpenter’s 1980s film The Fog, wherein the small town of Antonio Bay is made to suffer for the cruelties of its founding. But. as that was not inherently fun to play through (and lacked the splatterous quality of a project initially simply titled SPLATTERCRAWL), it felt only appropriate to incorporate the sort of sadistic glee found in the Kandarian Demons or Deadites of the Evil Dead franchise. To then further differentiate from traditional zombie media, I reflected on my enjoyment of the 2010 remake of The Crazies, wherein the infected were designed to appear not undead but as hyper-alive; painfully alive; and thus driven to violence and repetitive action.

With regards to designing the rules for navigating the ruins of Dredge-upon-Rock, I thought of the fundamentally solid introductory cinematic for Valve’s 2008 video game Left 4 Dead. Characters who don’t necessarily like one another, trying to piece together information, trying to survive an onslaught, and then celebrating the disheartening truth that all they’ve done is “cross the street.” Scum venturing about in Tides of Rot are probably less amiable with one another than those survivors, and so making sure to incentivize treachery - or at least making sure you’re faster than someone else on your team - felt important as well.

You are Frontier Scum, after all.

With regards to themes and locale, Stubbshead County is something close to my heart. It is the belligerent and recalcitrant past that scorns change, progress, and human decency - it is trapped in the belief that what has always been done is the best that anyone can ever expect. It is as much the American New England as it is the coalfield regions of Northumberland, the East Midlands, South Wales, and Durham; with shades of the Hebrides, and all the misery that befell the Wild Atlantic Way during the Great Hunger. It is a place where those who labor and those who toil are deeply disrespected by old money and political dynasties who have convinced them all that they too could rise to power if they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps rather than just gnawing on the leather to ease an aching hunger pang. 

This is not the freedom (i.e. isolation) of the greater Lost Frontier, this is the soul-crushing existence of a populated region where no one could be bothered to care about you. Frontier Scum is not the real world, it is just the echoes and the chorus of all the tragedies that befall an era where life is cheap and all too easily spent to destructive ends.

You conform and you keep your head down, or you’re a rabble-rouser and risk shaking the status quo - invalidating all that suffering everyone has been through and making them all die in vanity by demanding anything be even a tiny bit better. You are in the lobster bucket when you’re in Stubbshead County, and you’re not the liveliest looking of the sea roaches.

It is close to my heart because I’m from a miserable backwater port where the attitude of never asking for better lest it spit in the eye of those who had it as bad or worse, was the order of the day in my upbringing.

And therein lies some of the tragedy for the Rotters, because they are not the mindless dead. They have a chance now to get what they’ve always wanted; but they’ve scorned solidarity too many times to act in common cause. They hunger for flesh and offal, but also for coin; for petty luxuries and pleasures; for the death of those who denied them such things in their more humble lives before. But a horde is not a union, there is no true cooperation to be found; only gnashing teeth and cloying claws directed the same way as all the others.

The only living spared the curse are damned in their own way, left to witness the full scope of how much their neighbors were willing to destroy rather than have their backs.

But you’re not from here, you’re Frontier Scum. You’re here for sake of greed and glory, and so you’ll bring the curse upon you as easily as anyone else in this miserable place. It doesn’t take a bite or a scratch; though that certainly doesn’t help - nobody shows off their best nature after someone gnaws a pound of flesh out of them.

The Rot takes root easily because you are not good people. It will drive wedges and guide iron sights between even lovers and blooded siblings. 

Get in, get out, get your damn money. If not you, someone else will make the attempt.

One week left
about 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 26, 2023 at 07:59:45 AM

Hey!

Quick update to express, once again, our deepest gratitude for the amazing campaign you all made possible here. Thank you for continuing to support us, especially when it comes to these very unique and unconventional projects, such as designing a vinyl record as a setting/adventure! 

With one week left (!), we're excited to share more content from TIDES OF ROT with you all. This is how the interior gatefold will look like. The insert/booklet will have eight pages teeming with content just like this. There's enough material in here for a short campaign of 5-6 sessions. So even if you don't have a record player, you'll definitely want this in your hands! 

Feel free to share it around, let's get to $50k.

TIDES OF ROT PREVIEW
about 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 12:22:08 PM

Howdy folks!

Once again we would like to thank you all for a great campaign. We are currently over 300% funded with still two weeks to go. Today we're offering up a preview of TIDES OF ROT, our splattercrawl adventure set within the sodden backwater of Stubbshead County. TIDES OF ROT is bloated to the gills with content, all manner of crass local advertisement, dreadful circumstance, dreary Dredgefolk, and commentary upon the doom that damned Dredge-upon-Rock.

• Gatefold: What you'll see when you open up the album. Containing an introduction to the circumstances of our adventure, procedures for navigating a rotter-infested town, and a full page of Horrid Happenstances - random encounters and vicious escalations which plague the locale.  
• Booklet: Containing the adventure sites and further considerations of play such as the means of entering and escaping Dredge-Upon-Rock in pursuit of life-changing score, as well as one page layouts for sites of ill-repute in the town: the Stainton Estate, Whaleknuckle Cannery, Hopetoss University Hospital, and the BANK. Included also are a set of epilogues like those found in the Organ Rail - allowing scum to make a devastating impact upon the Lost Frontier, for good or for ill.  

No job is ever easy, no heist is ever simple - and as such we estimate there is content enough for at least 5-to-6 sessions of play within TIDES OF ROT. So even if you don't have a record player, you'll have yourself a mini-campaign for Frontier Scum.

THANKS!