BackerKit Surveys + Printings
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 09:39:56 AM

Hi everyone, 

A few things in this short update. 

Pledge Manager

We're using BackerIt as our Pledge Manager for the project. If you backed the project, you should be getting a survey which will help you fill in shipping, buy add-ons or extra copies and more. Check your emails for info! 

If you didn't back and want in now, head on over to our pre-order store  hosted by the team at BackerKit and grab a copy. 

We're trying to keep shipping cheap and simple, which is why we've minimised the number of moving parts in our project by keeping the number of add-ons low. The project is already running 6 weeks behind, so we didn't want to add more things that could delay backers getting their books. 

If you fancy grabbing some other books, you can get them from the brand new SoulMuppet store, which has a fantastic array of RPG products from writers across the scene. 

Printing

The book is with the printers now and we're in the final stages of signing off the files. We're hoping the books will hit SoulMuppet HQ by the end of November, and then we'll be able to get as many books as possible in the hands of our customers as soon as possible. We're hoping to get everyone their book by the Christmas holidays. 

We'll keep you updated with more info as we have it. 

Thanks 

Zach

PDF's Soon + Pledge Manager This Week
over 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 02:33:10 PM

It's been a while since we last did an update, and we've been keeping you all dangling with the promise of PDF's soon.

As a time, deadlines got away with us. Everything took longer due to more art and more pages, but we're making the good things happen. 

The PDF is nearly, finally here. You should have it in the next day or two. 

While it may be late, it is really, really bloody good. 

This book is going to be hauntingly beautiful. 

We've added a black rim to the reference tables where you randomly generate rooms, events and details, so you can always find them in a pinch. 

 All but the most complicated rules and monsters have been beautifully arranged into a single page. We've ordered all the rooms alphabetically for ease of reference, and added some nice letters into the corner so you can find what you need fast. 

All of Alec's art is given buckets of glorious space to BREATH. 

Where possible, we blended the art in with the text. Matching theme and use.

All of these fancy looking pages are only possible thanks to the artifice of our layout wizard, David Wilkie. If you make books, hire him to lay them out. 

What's next? 

We're sorting out the pledge manager, to allow you folx (and any late backers) to add additional copies, give us your address info and pay for shipping. The should appear in the second half of this week, once the PDFs are in the wild. 

SOONNNN

Best Left Buried: Deeper

If you've backed the project, you probably like spooky fantasy RPGs particularly the Old-School-esque stuff. As well as doing books like Stygian Library, SoulMuppet Publishing make an RPG called Best Left Buried. 

Best Left Buried: Deeper is a rules-light, fantasy horror roleplaying game – where the monsters are scary, and you are scared. A new remastered version of our much beloved game is on Kickstarter right now!

Do check it out if you're a fan of the old-school, rules light RPG systems with kickass art head on over. 

You'll hear from us soon (hopefully later on this week), with info about the PDFs and the pledge manager. 

Thanks for your support, and thanks even more for your patience!!

Regards, 

Zach

Layout Update + Webtool
over 3 years ago – Sun, Oct 04, 2020 at 11:00:49 AM

Hey everyone, 

Short update here. Layout is progressing, and we're expecting to move to proofing in the next few weeks. Alec's killer art continues to pour in.

David Schirduan of Technical Grimoire has polished off a really fantastic webtool that will help players running the Library that you can find here. This is the first change for our backers to check out our new and improved manuscript. 

We're expecting to get our backers PDFs by the end of September, with hope for books to appear in late October/early November, slightly behind our original schedule, due to the increase time budgeted for art. 

That said, we reckon the art is good enough to be worth waiting for.  

Speak to you soon, 

Zach

24 Hours To Go + Sword Lady + Neurovore Gorumet
over 3 years ago – Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 05:14:18 AM

There's just 24 hours left on our wonderful Kickstarter. Please continue to share and spread the word, and in return we'll continue to supply you with wonderously fancy art. 

This lady has a huge sword and is fighting a book. It looks cool. She's wearing plate mail. I'm a fan. 

I know I said we wouldn't add any more words to the book, but we did manage to find this Stygian Library exclusive class scrawled in a fancy book on one of Emmy's shelves, alongside tasting notes for a meal called 'hippocampus, kidney beans and Chianti'.

The Neurovore Gourmet

Don’t eat to live, live to eat. That’s the philosophy you follow, and it serves you well.

You are one of the Neurovores; a tall, lanky, grey-skinned, tentacle faced race of people. Your people have made great advances in political philosophy, poetry, architecture and the esoteric, but outsiders don’t seem to care about that. Nor do they care about the great advances your people have made in the psychic arts. No, they mostly just get angry about your people’s brain-eating habits. It’s very unfair, really.

You’re a gourmand, an epicurean, a Neurovore of sophisticated palette. Not for you the bland brains of the tasteless masses. No, you seek something greater. A sort of transcendence through consumption, really. For every brain you consume, you absorb a little of it’s locked in potential. Memories, talents, instincts, insights, all of these can be unlocked by devouring the right brains.

It’s not just an art-form, it’s a calling. Almost spiritual, really, uniting all those minds within you, blending them into a single greater whole. You integrate memories and personality traits from all those you devour, becoming a walking memorial to meals of the past. In your brain, the truly worthy live on. You allow them to become part of you, part of something greater than they were, greater than you were when you set out on this path.

One day, you expect, your brain will be eaten too, and you intend to cultivate a veritable neurological. smorgasbord for whoever gets to do that.

XP: As a Magic User

Hit Dice: d4

Saves: As a Magic User

To-hit: As a Fighter

If your system restricts weapons and armour, you can use equipment like a Thief. If your system has Prime Requisites, yours is Charisma. If your system restricts classes by alignment, you are firmly chaotic.

Odd Metabolism:

You cannot gain sustenance from any food except brains; one a day is enough to sustain you.

You do not heal naturally when you sleep; the only way you can regain HP (save through supernatural means) is by eating brains, which restores all lost HP.

Furthermore, you cannot gain the benefits of drinking potions unless they’re specially prepared by combining them with brain-fluids to make them palatable to your system.

Tentacles:

Your face is a ring of strong, dextrous tentacles. Instead of attacking with a weapon, in a melee you can try to grab a victim’s face with your tentacles. Roll to hit as normal to establish the grab; if you hit, one of your four tentacles is attached to their head, preventing them being able to escape you except by killing you or if you choose to release them, although they can otherwise still act normally. Subsequent similar attacks attach a second, third and fourth tentacle. Once all four are attached, your victim counts as helpless for the purpose of devouring their brain, but again is otherwise able to act normally until you do that. There are limits to this ability: you can’t grab things bigger than a human, or which lack a distinct head.

Brain Eating:

Against a helpless victim (one who is asleep, tied up, grappled, etc), you may eat their brain. When you do this, you heal all lost HP.

Doing so quickly takes a round; your tentacles rip into their skull, yank the brain out, and swallow it. Doing this kills the victim, for obvious reasons, but provides no other benefit.

Eating a brain properly is a delicate affair. The skill must be opened up, the brain exposed and then carefully removed whole to be devoured. The brain needs to be prepared; drained of blood, blood clots and callouses removed, and so on. Actually eating it likewise takes time, in order to savour the complex flavours and absorb the locked-in information. All in all, the meal takes a full exploration turn to complete.

When you do this, you gain 100XP for eating the brain. Add an extra 100 XP for each of the following that is true:

-The brain was from somebody capable of using language, not a dumb animal.

-The brain was from somebody unusually intelligent for their species.

-The brain was from somebody who had lived an interesting, weird or exciting life.

-The brain was from somebody with significant academic training.

-The brain was from somebody capable of memorizing spells.

-The brain was from somebody with psychic abilities.

-The brain was from somebody mentally ill, neurodivergent, not quite human or otherwise mentally atypical.

Psychic Hypnosis

Your brain – like those of all your people – is a finely honed thing, and your careful diet has unlocked a great deal of the potential that would otherwise go to waste. Your mind can extend outside your skull, influencing the brains of others with your psychic might. You are what you eat, and what you’ve eaten is impressive.

Instead of attacking normally, you can cast one of the following spells: Charm Person, Suggestion or Hold Person. Your victim gets a save vs magic to resist as normal.

You can use Psychic Hypnosis once per day. Every time you eat the brain of somebody with psychic abilities, the ability to cast spells, or otherwise supernatural mental powers, you can use Psychic Hypnosis an additional time that day.

No promises, but if we find some more weird classes around the place, we might include them in the final book. Thanks again for your continued support. Please continue to let other know about the project, so they can pick it up before we finish tomorrow.

Thanks, 

Zach 

Layout and More Art
almost 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 01:54:10 PM

Many of you have been asking for updates at SoulMuppet HQ, so here's an update with lots of funky stuff but no real news. At the minute, we'll still roughly on track for delivery, and we'll let you know how things are going as we progress. 

The manuscript has been finished for a few weeks. We didn't make many big changes, just some cleaning up of organisational stuff and a few wordflow issues, plus fixing the odd typo. 

Also, Alec has been busting out some art. It's good. Real good. 

The art and manuscript being done means we're now moving on to layout. Our layout master, David, has been hard at work getting all our work onto the page. Safe to say, it's looking really bloody good.

Where it makes sense, we're currently leaning towards one entry per page. This might bloom the page count a little, but it should give those big old fancy entries like this one some nice room to breath.

We're also exploring fulfillment options for the Kickstarter. No one at SoulMuppet HQ was really planning for the project to be this successful, so we're going to have to upscale a bit from our normal fulfilment methods. We're planning on using a Pledge Management system of sometimes, like BackerKit, and probably bringing in a dedicated fulfillment partner so our attics aren't filled with 2000 copies of Stygian Library. We'd probably end up opening a portal into the library itself with that many tomes in one place!

Those of you asking about retail supply, email drop an email to [email protected] and we can plan some kind of solution for you. This pledge manager will also allow us to add multiple copies to one order, or add other books, like Emmy's Esoteric Enterprises, to your pledge. 

Here is some more art cos Alec is a mastermind. 

We'll be back soon with more updates. 

Zach