We’re in the final days of the Old-School Solo Adventures Kickstarter. I wanted to recap some highlights.

Home-Stretch Goal and Add-ons

• In Update #14 I announced a “home-stretch” goal. If we hit 900 backers or more by the time the Kickstarter ends, everyone gets PDF copies of the new NPC/monster/PC cards that match the adventures they have selected. There are roughly 40 cards per adventure.
• Regardless, a physical deck of all the cards is available for $50. It comes with a PDF to print more of your own in case you want disposable cheat sheets. You may add this during the Kickstarter, you may add extra funds to cover it during the Kickstarter, or you may wait and add it in Backerkit.
• If the grappling and wrestling rules from various D&D games have left you cold, consider adding Dungeon Grappling to your cart. This roughly 50 page book contains grappling rules that don’t suck for OSR, Pathfinder RPG, and 5e in the same book. Not OSE explicitly, but the examples make it clear what to do.

Status and Schedule

Where are we?

• The project currently is my fourth-best ever, with 578 backers and 1,347 followers (of those total followers, 1,170 have not yet backed the project). That 1,170 is the number to watch: ultimately, whether or not we hit the home-strech goal at 900 backers and the final success state of the project depend on how many of those actually pledge. My best-ever is 685 backers…only 108 to go. It’s already the most-followed campaign I’ve ever done. By a lot.
• I would strongly encourage campaign followers who may pledge late or by Backerkit pre-order to jump on at least at the $1 level. This puts your name/email on the list so that you’re included in all Backerkit survey emails during that phase of the campaign.
• I am putting final touches on Till Death Do Us Part and Dark Lord’s Doom. Rob Conley (of Bat in the Attic) and I spent three hours (!!) yesterday using numeric simulations to ensure that the fights in Dark Lord’s Doom were properly set up to challenge the party and support the story properly based on the choices made. I’ll ensure I do the same thing with the other adventures as well. Today I shall start on Vampire Hunter Belladonna, leaving Dragon Hunt for last.
• Might need to get a third set of 50 books for the “OSE Hardcopy Starter Kit” for the US hub. Currently 71 out of 100 have been claimed. This is excellent. Over 130 “starter sets” in both physical and PDF form have already been claimed, which means 130 new people to playing OSE. Or at least 130 who want the Rules Tome.
• I will not be adding additional OSE Rules Tomes beyond my allocation during the Backerkit pre-order phase. Once my allocation is gone, it’s gone, as I have to order and then have delivered the hardcopies to pre-stage for fulfillment. If it looks like we’re getting a lot of $85 pledges by mid-morning on Friday, I’ll ask for more, but 10am my time on Friday is 4pm in the UK, and that’s where Exalted Funeral is located. So earlier is better for this pledge level!
• Setting up the Backerkit surveys won’t take very long, and the key bit is that I don’t have to know shipping information – including prices – until the “second wave” of Backerkit surveys when shipping is assessed and charged. I posted estimates (and they ARE estimates) in Update #4.
• Overall the schedule still looks good; I need to accelerate work on VHB and Dragon Hunt…but I’m getting faster at it the more I’m getting steeped in the rules minutia. A lot needs to happen this week…but a lot is planned to happen this week. So that’s according to plan!

That’s that. I’ll send out another update Thursday morning, the 48-hour bell sounds Thursday at 8pm Central…and then it’s just a whole lot of biting fingernails and hitting F5 until we end!

Jump On Board!