The Reveals Issue + Iko Interview from The Lost Bay Studios
Hi, all !! !!
I hope the day is starting out lovely! I’m very happy today because it’s The Guac day!
This issue will be light on text because I’ve been sick, but it’s packed with Cover Reveals and Interior Spread Reveals. Maybe the prettiest issue yet :)
On top of that, I’m doubly happy to share an interview with Iko, from The Lost Bay Studio, who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with this year.
There’s a ton of reveals because we’ve been working with a lot more writers, illustrators, and layout artists. Projects develop much quicker than doing them mostly in house and I’m grateful to be making increasingly more beautiful zines and books because of it. On The Guac side, I’ve been reaching out to more creators for interviews on The Guac and have a number of them lined up so interviews will be more consistent. These interviews have been a blast to do and very helpful to me as a writer and publisher. I hope they’ve been enjoyed by you all as well.
Moving forward, we’re going to try balancing the amount of news and interviews a bit better by having two issues every other month or so to keep issues a bit more focused, highlight Spicy Tuna release dates, offer more interviews, and keep the newsletter decluttered. (This will start in September when we talk more about how the Tunaverse will be evolving moving forward! And give a better update for all Spicy Tuna Projects in development).
Thanks for listening to that, here’s the docket for today!!
The Guac 014 Docket
Outsourced Layout Sneak Peek
Outer Rim: Uprising Bundle and Our Contributions
Knuckles Co + Professional Rebels Cover Reveals
Iko Interview
Greenhorns Cover Reveal
Special Free Shipping Discount From Our Friends at Peregrine Coast Press (SPICYTUNA)
Outsourced Layout Sneak Peak
I’m really stoked with how this is turning out! Since Outsourced provides a ton of standalone information that works well as a prequel and/or sequel to Constant Downpour Remastered I used the skeleton of the Constant Downpour layout for the book. That said, it manifested as a completely different design. I can’t wait to hold the two books together!
Outsourced: The Luko Fin Corp Deception goes live on Kickstarter on Sep. 5th. Get notified here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcoserrano/outsourced-the-luko-fin-deception-for-mothership-1e
Here are some more spreads from the book.
Outer Rim: Uprising Bundle and Our Contributions
We are contributing 2 new 8-page zines to the Outer Rim: Uprising Bundle by The Lost Bay Studios.
Knuckles Co: Details Knuckles Co, the go-to security-for-hire corporation. Ready to import security teams, specialty units and example patrols. Complete playable storyline with Knuckles Co security detail for the Faxxon Labs, ready for the crew to attempt infiltrating.
Professional Rebels: A collection of NPCs and major organizations aiding the rebellion across the sector. Meet Knob Adjustment and United Fleet Delivery. Easy to import and use in any game or campaign for detailing message and goods smuggling. List of secret partners and vendors and 8+ helpful NPCs to use.
This is the first large group project I’ve been on since Orbital Debris and I’m very happy to be a part of it.
Outer Rim: Uprising is going live on Kickstarter, October 3rd.
Here’s our interview with Iko with further details about the Outer Rim: Uprising Bundle.
Hi, Iko! Thank you for taking the time for an interview about the Outer Rim Uprising Bundle. I’m pretty ecstatic to be one of the creators in the bundle and excitement is ramping up as we’re approaching the launch date. I’m also excited for the chance to have you share more about the project here at The Guac. Let’s get to the inside scoop!
Q: Firstly, I want to ask about what people can expect from the bundle. Who’s working on it? What kind of collaboration is in it? And, what experience is the crew hoping to provide with the bundle as a total package?
A: Hi Marco, thanks for the invite. Yes excitement is high, I can’t wait to launch the bundle and reveal its full contents to Mothership enthusiasts.
With Outer Rim: Uprising we’re building an engaging and extensive Mothership framework, set at the fringes of the galaxy. Far from the scrutiny of the core words, corrupt mega corps push experimental tech beyond the limit and spawn abominations, rebel factions organize and rise up, and the horror lurks. In the Outer Rim, the stakes are high, clashes are routine, it’s a wonderful playground for adventure and RPG gaming.
The bundle is a collection of twenty plus, zines, supplements, and player facing accessories. It’s designed by a roster of twelve international seasoned designers. Readers of the Guac might be familiar with several of them who have already run successful Mothership Kickstarters, like D. Kenny, Alfred Valley, Chris Airiau, Nyhur, Tim Obermueller, Christian Sorrel and yourself!. The other designers have all worked on horror or Sci-Fi projects, like Josh Domanski, Zach Hazard, David Blandy, and myself.
Each designer contributes to ORU with their own particular touch, the bundle has a great variety. But all the items featured in the bundle are tied together. They share a common theme: the conflicts between Corps and rebels. They share factions, NPCs, hideouts, events, and by doing so they build an emergent setting people will discover as they play, and dig further into the Outer Rim.
We’re bringing to the MoSh community a fantastic toolkit: all the bundle entries are designed to be usable as standalone supplements, or they can be articulated to craft a months-long campaign. And, at the heart of the bundle, lies the Campaign Handbook, the connective tissue of the bundle. It’s a beautiful zine with a Sci-Fi punkish vibe, and gorgeous illustrations by Evangeline Gallagher. The Campaign Handbook provides Wardens with a series of tools to craft Outer Rim adventures: a sector, custom classes, gear, hideouts, factions, and most importantly procedures to manage corporations and their response in the long run.
It’s a big bundle, and I want to add an important detail: we will offer several backing tiers, we want everybody to get a chance at enjoying the Outer Rim.
Q: A follow up on the campaign book, extras, and bundle packaging. Can you relay some of the standout details backers can expect?
A: The crew is tightly focused on baking the most effective gaming content. We want the bundle items to be useful, fun and exciting. But we are putting as much energy into how the zines look. And I can tell you, they look so good! We have top layout designers and artists like Gontijo, Holly Jencka, Vil, Jean Verne, Daniel Locke, Evangeline Gallagher. We’ve selected domestic printers and manufacturers (in the UK) that deliver high quality printing, use amazing papers and inks, and run eco responsible shops, and that point is super important to me as publisher. The bundle is going to be fun to play, beautiful to look at.
The two top tiers come with a hardshell box. The bundle includes several player-facing accessories like blueprints, flyers, tools the Wardens can drop on the table for a guaranteed shazam effect. I’m particularly excited by Sorry to bother you, a NPC card deck designed and illustrated by Victor Merino. It’s a collection of 40 NPC cards. Portrait on the front. Stat block on the back. Shuffle, drop a card: you’ve got your random encounters, and you’ve put a grin on the players’ faces.
Q: Last question about Outer Rim Uprising. Not to put you in a position of picking favorites, but knowing you’ll have other opportunities to share details on other zines in the bundle, can you share some details about one of the entries you’re excited about? Maybe an entry that you’ve been thinking about the most lately?
A: I love how the bundle items can work with one another to generate cool and unexpected results. It’s like doing experiments: what happens if I use this zine and that supplement together? And I’ve been thinking a lot about how decrypted/the.book.of.ghosts by D. Kenny could be used in conjunction with Rusted to the core by Chris Airiau. The former is a space ghost and horror generator. As soon as I read the draft I was hooked, and spooked. It doesn’t happen to me often to experience fear reading random tables, but decrypted/the.book.of.ghosts sparks fear in a unique way. Rusted to the core is an adventure set in a floating processing plant, in a giant gas planet. There are so many levels to it. Androids fighting for their rights, an exciting dungeon suspended mid-air, a mystery. The art is phenomenal. And the cool thing is that both zines could be an intro to the other one: a door opened in a world where supernatural horror lurks, prays on sentient beings, and transforms them.
Q: I want to step back and ask about the Lost Bay Studio bundles as a whole. This is your third multi-creator bundle, and I’m curious to hear what’s next and how often you plan on organizing these bundles?
Lastly, what have been the best parts of running bundles with several creators and what advice do you have for others who wish to be involved in bundles or organize them.
A: Actually as we’ll run the Outer Rim: Uprising campaign it’s going to be the fourth! I’m releasing a small CY_Borg bundle this week. I’ve been publishing bundles every 2 to 3 months since October 2022. Some folks in the scene have started calling me The Bundler haha! ORU is going to be the first one on Kickstarter, the previous ones have been funded via pre-orders on my website. We’ll see how it goes, but funding with Kickstarter, instead of preorders, could significantly change what’s coming next. So I’ve got a lineup of several projects in development, but I’m not sure yet which one will come next. That said, you can expect two big bundles next year. A solo bundle, co-curated by Sam Leigh (Anamnesis, Outliers). And The Lost Bay RPG bundle, my own game! I’ve invited several designers to write zines for it, but I can’t say more about it right now. It’s top secret!
Honestly, I feel so lucky running bundles, having the opportunity to collaborate with so many cool creators, discovering their worlds, the way they work. That’s what I like the most about publishing. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing something very similar to curating and publishing bundles, by producing/coaching documentary directors. I feel grateful that my previous experience is useful for my TTRPG activity.
Working with a team of authors needs a delicate balance. You have to respect each designers’ boundaries, and everyone has different needs, and different ways of working, which you need to learn. You must be able to uplift them, and provide them support if they want it, but also give space when needed. But you have to remember that the final product is not just a collection of items, it’s the bundle, which must organize all the items organically to produce something new, something more, and something cool. At least, that’s what I’m aiming at haha!
Before saying goodbye, I’d like to send a big kudos to the backers of the first bundles. So far the bundles’ reception and the support have been just fantastic, thanks so much to both the scene and the backers, you’re awesome, I could not do this without you!
Now I must hyperjump to the secret off world facility where we’re designing Outer Rim: Uprising! Thanks Marco, bye!
Thank you again for interviewing with us! I’m excited to see the continued reveals until launch day in October.
The Guac subscribers will get monthly updates about the Outer Rim Uprising bundle through its release, but if you want sneak peaks and more ORU details give The Dispatch Substack a follow at
(PS The Dispatch is one of my favorite Substacks regardless, and continually publishes entertaining and informing gold)
If you’re new here, you can subscribe to The Guac here
Greenhorns Cover Reveal
Greenhorns is coming along, but it is paused frequently to make sure we are doing everything we need to for Outsourced before launch.
Expect the Ashcan Edition to drop sometime in September. This will be a fully playable game and give you a feel of what to expect from the fuller editions. Editions because we are going to invest in this game. Our November Kickstarter will release two separate editions of the game - more on that to come when the Ashcan Edition gets sent out.
Cover Illustrated by Diego Acevedo (Expect Unique Covers before the Kickstarter launches <3) You can see much more of Diego’s work on his Instagram or Patreon.
Special Free Shipping Discount From Our Friends at Peregrine Coast Press
Peregrine Coast Press is our fulfillment partner in the UK that helps us get much more affordable shipping pricing for UK and the EU. I really love what they do and I’m excited to say that they’ve offered Free Shipping from their store to anyone with the code SPICYTUNA.
PCP currently carries our first wave of releases including Familiar Faces Vol.1, Knights of Lazarus, Spicy Tuna Stories No.34, and Reviews.Books.Ads.
They also have other Mothership favorites such as Thousand Empty Light by Alfred Valley and Great Crossing Heresies by Chris Airiau and RV Games, as well as non-Mothership favorites.
Here’s the direct link that will automatically apply the Free Shipping
https://shop.peregrinecoast.press/discount/SPICYTUNA
That’s all for today! ! Thank you for reading. I hope you have a lovely day ahead.
If you would like more regular pings about everything Spicy Tuna, you can follow us @spicytunarpg
Threads
Hey Marco! Thanks so much for having me and the space. I dig The Guac, and I had a blast chatting with you