Outsourced Prelaunch + Eco Mofos!! Interview!

Jul 20, 2023

Oof, it’s July!! Hope it’s been enjoyable for you despite the blazing hot air.

I’m just now getting back into gear with things after welcoming our 4th baby into the world. I’m very happy I was able to take some time while Constant Downpour and A Butterfly Dies is out of my hands - damn logistics…(Good-ish update below). Looking forward to creating again and getting more of the awesome projects our teams have been working on finished andout into the wild.

Alright, let’s shred the brisket because this episode of The Guac has an awesome interview with none other than the Eco Mofos themselves, David Blandy and Daniel Locke!!

The Guac 013 Docket

Outsourced Prelaunch Page Is Live!! + Cover Reveal!
Exclusive “Tastier With Guac Sale” (Yucatan Tech Co Retro Catalogs 1 + 2 and Stims From the Dark Web)
Eco Mofos Interview
Other Spicy Tuna Project Updates
Inspiration from Sinestro by Cullen Bunn, Illustrated by Bradley Walker and Dale Eaglesham

Outsourced Prelaunch Is Live!!

We can’t wait to get this out into the world. Evangeline, Christian, Alfred, and Walt have done a ton of work on this during the first half of the year, and it’s ready to see the light!!

Here’s the prelaunch sign up

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcoserrano/outsourced-the-luko-fin-deception-for-mothership-1e

And, the cover! (art by Evangeline Gallagher)

This is the type of book we want to keep making!!

Fantastic adventure ready to play out of the book.
Toolkits to craft or enhance adventures.
Elements, corps, or NPCs that can be infused and interwoven into long-form campaigns and other modules.
All of it working cohesively for long-term play within the book.
Ties-in seamlessly with other Tunaverse modules (Outsourced can be used as a prequel or sequel to Constant Downpour Remastered, and it ties into Spicy Tuna Stories No.34, Yucatan Tech Co Retro Catalogs 1 and 2, Stims from the Dark Web).
Fantastically wonderful people writing, illustrating, editing, and making the game.

**Outsourced will be launching after the Mothership 1E PDFs are delivered (so we can have one more final fan through) most likely in late August or September.

Tastier With Guac Sale!!

We’ve revealed quite a bit from these releases in the past few months, but the pages weren’t live. So we’re doing our first “Tastier With Guac” Sale, exclusive to readers.

https://spicytunarpg.itch.io/tastierwithguac

Get any of our three newest PDF releases for 20% off! That’s $3.20 for each of our retro weapons catalogs - Blasters + Tactical Grenades, or High Utility Cryo + Recon Solar Tech, Venus 3 DNA infused Stim Packs!

All three player-facing compatible weapons and stims catalogs for $9.00!
20 illustrated retro scifi weapons and 10 transformative stims made from DNA and space horror remnants found on Venus 3!

*Sale will end at midnight next Thursday, July 27th.

If you would like to be notified the exact day of new releases and get more regular posts about Spicy Tuna publications you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram.

If you’re new here and want more exclusive deals, free modules, more detailed updates about Spicy Tuna modules, and/or more awesome creator interviews you can subscribe here

Eco Mofos Interview

Eco Mofos!! is a mid-future ecopunk ruin-delving survival game, as player characters seek a safe homestead to start a new community, Weirdhope not Grimdark. Rules lite gameplay based on Cairn and Into the Odd. See more on the Eco Mofos!! Kickstarter!

Here’s The Guac’s interview with David Blandy and Daniel Locke.

Hi, David and Dan!!

Thank you for being open to an interview. I’m looking forward to hearing more about the rad psychedelic solar punk game, Eco Mofos!! Let’s sear the steak!

Q: Character creation, magic, and the lot detail the technicolor world incredibly well! Starting adaptations are the most intriguing piece of world building to me. There’s a ton of variability and standout possibilities to start with including the technomancer, gumshoe, and fungalist. Can you tell us the ideation, process, and inspiration of the adaptations, and maybe tell us about a favorite of yours?

DAVID: The whole idea for Adaptations started with Micah Anderson’s bastards., the original version with 6 Classes, which you got assigned depending on your starting HP, rolled on a d6. ECO MOFOS!! is OSR colliding with NSR and a post-post-apocalyptic setting, so I wanted to reimagine how the basic classes of classic D&D might be in a weird future world. Then to spice things up, each Class had 6 variants. So d66! For each I’d picture the setting and place a figure there, existing in the overgrown ruins. What would help them get by? If they were a Rogue type? If they were a Fighter? If they were a Magic user? And then from that kernel, I’d give them a small ability, more like a flexible tool, something special they could do that set them apart, and a bunch of starting items that form a portrait of their life. So there’s fantasy, sci-fi, cyberpunk, Mad Max, British stuff like 2000ad and Rogue Trader, and more organic weirdness from Miyazaki (Nausicaa, Laputa, Mononoke) and Le Guin, all mixed up together into what I’ve called the Weirdhope vibe. I wanted every Adaptation to feel really unique, something you’d be happy to roll up. And also enticing enough that you’d want to look for the Key Items that give you those abilities on top of what you already have. It’s an integrated leveling system, leveling through finding rare items feather than GM fiat or Experience points or Gold. I wanted to encourage exploration for exploration’s sake.
DAN: Oh, David’s come up with so many awesome adaptations! I love this aspect of the game. It just adds so much flavour to the characters and the character creation element. I feel like I want to pick a favourite, but there’s loads that I like. I’m pretty into Mermon right now. I mean; breathing underwater? Yes Please. Swim as fast as I can run? I don’t mind if I do. Sing a siren song? Well, I already have a beautiful singing voice, but sure…

Q: LOOT!!! D66 and d666 tables of loot are brilliant. Another shining aspect of the setting (loot includes yellow mold, motorbike helmet, nano chameleon suit, glass jar full of hornets, rusty crowbar, ultraviolet torch and more), how was it you rested on d66 and d666 and what were you trying to accomplish and bring to the game while filling the tables?

DAVID: Thanks! It started, as the whole game did really, from a very dumb idea. d66 tables have become a staple of the OSR, so why not a d666 table, to lean into the absurd but still significant “number of the beast”? D66 tables are really interesting from a design standpoint, as you can divide them into discrete d6 tables, six lots of six similar things, and the d666 table takes that logic to the next step by having six compete d66 tables of different types of stuff, rarer things tucked away in further subtables. It also means the GM can choose to use a certain table for a certain table or situation. A cache of weapons? Roll a few times on the Weapons table. Something lying about in an abandoned building from the before times? Roll on the Old Stuff table. Or just a completely random thing? Roll on the full d666 table and it could be anything from a Broken Television to a Shining Orb, a Key Item that you can absorb into your body to gain a new adapation, a type of leveling up.
But the most important thing I wanted to achieve was to create the setting through these random tables, both for Loot, Creatures, Terrain and Location, so that everyone at the table discovers the world together as they explore. I wanted to embed the ideas of the setting into the writing that you actually use at the table, into the items you receive on character creation, and every description of places that you visit along the way.

Q: Y’all provided some amazing faction rules with 9 example factions! What were some of the inspirations for the sample factions and faction procedures? Have factions played larger roles in your home games and what was a standout moment where players fucked up faction plans or beefed up resistance?

DAVID: The faction rules were very influenced by the excellent Mausritter, but I wanted to cut down book-keeping, a principle I stuck to through the whole game. As a GM I hate book-keeping and preparation haha so with every rule I tried to reduce those aspects as much as possible. So Faction progress is decided by a roll every in-game week or game session, each Faction taking it in turns, one at a time. If the faction fails to progress their goal, something random happens to the world instead, so the game situation changes around the players every time they sit down. Just having factions has added so much more instant depth to my campaigns- it means there’s always something for the players to get involved in, or ignore, often with dire consequences. It lends a real sense of consequence to things. A silly failed plan by the Punks suddenly becomes significant, as a whole town is lost to the Corpos.

Q: Lastly, a bit outside of Eco Mofos and a bit more David and Dan, Copy and Paste. Can you tell us about your creative process as a collaborative act, if there have been any challenges, or anything you’ve done to avoid friction during the creative process together? How are you two making this art together?

DAVID: It’s incredibly organic. We met at art school twenty (god I’m old haha!) years ago, and that sense of discovering the work through the process of making is still something we do. I make video art and Dan is a professional graphic novelist, but ttrpgs have been a place we’ve fallen in love with over the last decade. So we trust each other completely- I never say “Draw me a Tentacle Hell” or anything like that, I just give Dan the text and say, “maybe something to fit this vibe?” And then I’m seeing what Dan makes and that sparks ideas for other stuff I could add to the world. I think it helps that we’re literally best friends first, collaborators second. Building this thing with Dan has been totally awesome.

DAN: Yeah, I’d second everything David has just said there. We’ve worked together on large projects before, most notably our 2017 graphic novel, Out of Nothing, and the working relationship has always been an easy one. I think that’s primarily down to the trust that exists between us. I would say though, that this is the first project where I think we’ve really nailed a way of working that plays well to our different skill sets. It has felt super fun and exciting! I’d also add that the pair of us absolutely love the scene and I think we’re both just buzzing at being able to provide something that this awesome community seems to be responding so positively too.
With regard to Copy/Paste, David and I were thinking about how we might frame our collaboration and we played around with the idea of branding it or setting up a small press. To be honest, I wasn’t massively into the idea of mimicking the types of structures that exist in the mainstream, but then David suggested a co-operative and it seemed to make so much sense. At present it exists to hold this collaboration but I know we’re both very interested in how it might be of use to other artists working in the scene and how it might develop in the future.

Eco Mofos!! Kickstarter ends in 7 days!

Copy/Paste Coop has their own substack: substack.com/@copypastecoop

David Blandy can be found on Twitter, Threads + Instagram @davidblandyrpgs, Bluesky, and Mastodon.

Daniel Locke can be found on Twitter and on his website daniellocke.com

Check out more about Eco Mofos from our friends at Dieku Podcast on the Eco Mofos Game Pitch episode, an interview and actual play from our friends at Weekly Scroll/Adventure Archives on their Creator Cuts 09 (Weekly Scroll Spotify link) episode, and another interview from our friends at Hobos Collective on Episode 04: Geologist’s Primer and Eco Mofos.

Other Spicy Tuna Project Updates

A Butterfly Dies: In transit to the UK / with fulfillment partners in the US! Sending out in the US and ROW by the end of the month!! UK + EU in early August!
Constant Downpour Remastered: Hardcovers still in freight shipping :(. The books are scheduled to land in the US on July 21st. From there, it’s hopefully a quick turnaround to get to WOGD. All other zines and pieces are on the way to the UK!! Fulfillment soon.
Outsourced: Layout is going on now!! After that proofreading and we’re done!
Incorporated Vol.1: 2 adventures are in progress!! Each one incorporates 2 of the major corporations and 1-2 of the minor corporations in a thrilling deadly adventure.

Christian Sorrell is back and Chris Airiau (Bio-Drones & Cryo-Clones) is writing the second adventure! I’m ecstatic to be working with Chris for the first time and to have Christian back behind the pen for Spicy Tuna. Couldn’t ask for better adventure writers for this project. Editing lined up for August and layout lined up to start mid-September.
Greenhorns Creators of Worlds: Delayed till August/early September because I decided we should have it edited like our other projects…and I got a little too excited to get it out. Diego Acevedo is making a killer cover for the game! I can’t wait to share more next month!

Sinestro

Written by Cullen Bunn with Illustration from Bradley Walker, Dale Eaglesham and others (Credits. Vol.1, Vol.2, Vol.3, Vol.4)

All of DC’s lantern corps are a well of inspiration for anyone writing science fiction or creating games that take place in space. Lanterns travel to incredible places and the artists bring incredible possibilities from the unknown.

I’ve been using the Sinestro comics as inspiration for Greenhorns, and from the first week or so of the game stewing in my brain, I wanted one of the classes to be a constructionist of sorts. Lantern constructs are the best! I love how each one has go to constructs from gatling guns and missiles, to beasts and hammers. It would be my go-to class whenever it’s an option.

Here are several images from the Sinestro Series by Cullen Bunn.