March - June 2025
DURF Expanded, new TEA print run, and more books.
Hey friends!
The last few months were a bit chaotic, I traveled to Canada (marking my first time that side of the Atlantic) and my sister moved in with us for a bit while she is looking for a home in the area, so my apologies for the delay on this newsletter. Let’s get to it.
DURF Expanded
The writing for DURF Expanded is mostly done, there are a few tables left and some short appendices, but I would consider it pretty much feature complete. Over the last few months I’ve added a bunch of fun stuff, all of which can be found in the latest draft on the Patreon:
A chapter on how to create an overworld/hexcrawl for your players to explore.
A bunch of tables to help you populate those hexes with landmarks and settlements.
An overhauled treasure hoard generator consisting of three d100 tables of magic items and consumables.
An appendix covering various diseases players might become infected with
Some themed encounter tables the GM can use in a pinch to roll up an encounter.
Tables to give hirelings some character.
An “I Search the Body” table with some mundane items NPCs might be carrying.
A bunch more smaller changes and tables here and there.
With most of the writing done, I’ve moved on to sketching more illustrations for the book.
The DURF Expanded Kickstarter will go live in October during the 5th annual DURF Game Jam!
The Electrum Archive
With the copies I printed for the Kickstarter having run out, it was time to get a new print run produced of both issue 01 and 02 of The Electrum Archive.
The new print run looks incredible and will be available in stores soon. These new zines will also be available as add-ons during the DURF Expanded Kickstarter in October for those who missed them before :)
Breakout 2025
In March, I visited Canada to attend Breakout 2025 and meet my friend and co-writer Ava Islam in-person for the first time. It was great to spend a week with her and meet a bunch of other lovely folks during the con and the surrounding events. Ava ran two games of The Electrum Archive allowing us to playtest the yet unreleased TEA eldership-crawl “Veins Beneath the Sand”.
Cons like this (the same thing is true for Dragonmeet in the UK) are always really invigorating, and talking with so many interesting people makes me excited to create more cool games and art.
Books
I’ve been reading a variety of books over the last months. One of the standouts was Print Production by Margherita Mariano. I cannot stress how incredibly valuable this book is when you have to deal with larger scale printing houses. The amount of stuff this book taught me that I wished I knew earlier is insane. The book takes you through the whole journey and covers everything from paper choices to print techniques, and from pre-press and repro to packaging and delivery.
I’ve also been reading a lot of comics. I finally finished reading Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura. Such an incredible and emotional story and spectacular art. This one definitely will stay among the top of favorite things I’ve read for a long time.
One of the most inspired comics I’ve read lately has been Prophet. The re-boot/re-imagined run from 2012 by Brandon Graham, Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, and Giannis Milonogiannis. It is such an evocative sci-fi story, with stunning panels by each of the different artists.
Just incredible vibes.
Some other comics I read and thought were sweet:
The comic adaptions of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Howard Chaykin and Mike Mignola
Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka. The shapes and panel layout of these are amazing.
Garden Update
I planted some corn, sunflowers, beans, and pumpkin in my vegetable garden in late March. They have been doing quite well in the recent summer heat and have turned an empty patch in a veritable jungle, attracting lots of different bugs.
That’s all for now! Thank you for reading and take care!
Cheers,
- Emiel
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The garden looks great!!