Yet Another Stretch Goal Unlocked! (And a Whole Lot of Art)
2 months ago
– Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 02:55:09 PM
Hello, family!
What a fast-paced week it’s been! We’re excited as a dog with two tails to announce that, after unlocking a stretch goal just yesterday afternoon, you’ve done it again. The Old Gods of Appalachia Prop Set is expanding, with new immersive props that will pull everyone in your game deeper (dare we say it: deeper still?) into your adventures. As promised, it will include canon props such as the Railroad Man’s business card, along with other items you can use in a variety of ways.
That’s certainly not the end of it—at this rate, we can easily unlock several more stretch goals before we draw this thing to a close. Let’s talk about that in a moment, family, but first:
Join Us Online Tomorrow!
BackerKit, our crowdfunding platform, has a nifty feature that allows us to livestream through the campaign page. Join us tomorrow in the closing hours of the campaign. Shanna, Cam, and Steve are liable to drop by and visit with us for a while, and perhaps we’ll see some of the other fine folk who help bring the Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game to your dining-room table.
Please Keep Spreadin’ the Word
The surge of backers making these stretch goals possible is nothing short of inspiring, friends. They’ve found their way to this campaign through your efforts. Let’s keep that up! Big campaigns don’t just happen on their own—they happen when backers help spread the word.
A few short social media posts go a long way. Tell your friends and followers why you love this RPG and Deeper Still, and send them to https://mymcg.info/deeper-still-social. We’ll add a few images to the bottom of this update you can share.
Just sharing a few of our posts helps, too. You can find them here:
Where Should Cam and Steve Take Us Next?
Cam Collins and Steve Shell are already, thanks to your support of earlier stretch goals, contributing directly to Come Hell or High Water, writing up a couple of key locations such as the Walker House. They’re busy people, but we’re eager to have even more of their input. At $740,000, we’ll expand Come Hell or High Water with new content from the Old Gods of Appalachia creators themselves!
Where will they take us? The Clutch? The Tabernacle of the Elder Choir? Maybe they’ll expand their coverage of the Walker House to include its other incarnations—Pleasant Evenings, or perhaps The Charm School? Ultimately that’s up to them, family—but wherever they take us, they’re sure to give us details and lore straight from the horse’s proverbial mouth.
Let’s Meet Matthew Wimberley
Matthew Wimberley lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His collection All the Great Territories won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems have appeared in Blackbird, Orion, Poem-A-Day, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere.
Like the other horror and Appalachian creators we’ve been introducing in updates throughout this campaign, Matthew will be contributing to the color, inspiration, and atmosphere of the books you’re funding through this campaign.
Did You Receive Your Special Delivery?
In case you missed it, early today we released Special Delivery, a free product with new creatures, character options, adventure ideas, artifacts, and more. It’s all excerpted from the current drafts of Dig Your Own Grave, All Your Gods Are Dead, and Come Hell or High Water, so it’s a great way to get a taste of those books—with stuff you can use in your game right now!
Thanks again for your support!
—Team MCG
Here are some illustrations and other graphics you might enjoy. You can right-click to save or download them, if you'd like to use them to share Old Gods of Appalachia: Deeper Still online!
Take a Look Inside the Books with a Free Special Delivery
2 months ago
– Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 10:27:10 AM
Hello, family!
We have a surprise for you: new creatures, character options, adventure ideas, artifacts, and more that you can use in your game
right now! We just released
Special Delivery, a free title that gives you a preview of what you’ll find in the forthcoming books.
It even includes a taste of the really neat system Shanna's developing for inspiring a rich and compelling concept and background for your character.
The content is all excerpted from the current drafts of Dig Your Own Grave, All Your Gods Are Dead, and Come Hell or High Water. Download it now, have a look at the promise these titles hold, and start using the new content right away!
While we have you, a reminder: we’re closing in on the next stretch goal. Please give this campaign a shout-out and help us hit it quickly—we’d love to get it unlocked in the next couple of hours, and start working toward even more before the campaign closes tomorrow!
Thanks again for your support!
—Team MCG
(P.S.: Here are a few sharable images. Right-click to copy or download them, to use in your own social media mentions of this campaign. We recommend you share this URL: https://mymcg.info/deeper-still-social)
Ever Onward, Ever Forward, Yes?
2 months ago
– Wed, Sep 18, 2024 at 06:12:39 PM
Hello, family—
You’ve done it again, unlocking another stretch goal to take us, yes, deeper still into the hills and hollers (and mines and caves) of our favorite chilling Appalachia.
Come Hell or High Water will now include a poster map featuring several locations the book describes.
We’ve made several upgrades and expansions to our three books throughout this campaign. Now, let us turn our attention to another worthy offering: the
Old Gods of Appalachia Prop Set. This collection of documents—letters, tickets, stamps, bills, and other vintage, in-world items—immerses your game even further into its alternate Appalachia. For our next stretch goal, we’d like to grow it, adding even more items to pull you and your friends deeper still into your adventures.
We have many great ideas for expanding this item, and one of them is pictured above. Imagine the look on your players’ faces when you hand them an authentic card from the man in the impeccable charcoal-gray suit! (Or the look on your own face if it’s your GM handing it to you.) This is the sort of thing we’d like to bring you!
It’s common for the pace of a crowdfunding campaign to pick up in its final days, and this one is no exception. You unlocked a stretch goal just Monday! Get us to $690,000 to unlock this one, too!
And that’s hardly the last of it. We have plenty of other great upgrades awaiting their turn—perhaps including additional contributions from Old Gods of Appalachia creators Cam Collins and Steve Shell themselves. But remember: campaigns only reach those big results when their backers help them! We’re shouting from the rooftops to reach gamers and Old Gods of Appalachia fans, but there’s only so much we can accomplish. We need your help to reach these stretch goals.
Ever onward, ever forward!
Join Shanna, Cam, and Steve on Friday!
We’ll be streaming live via this campaign’s page Friday afternoon and evening, as the campaign draws to a close. Lead designer Shanna Germain, plus Old Gods of Appalachia creators Cam Collins and Steve Shell, will be dropping in. Join us—and if you know any other fans of the podcast, the RPG, Appalachian tales, or horror in general, be sure to invite them along!
Meet Melinda Clayton!
The books you’re funding through this campaign will include bits of color, inspiration, and atmosphere from a variety of Appalachian and horror creators. In our past updates, we’ve introduced several of these contributors, including including
Cherie Priest,
Lee Mondelo,
Alder (Ash) Van Otterloo,
Jeff Mann, and
Tim Earley. Today we’re introducing Melinda Clayton!
A writer of primarily southern psychological suspense, Melinda Clayton’s work includes two series: The Cedar Hollow Series, which includes novels
Appalachian Justice,
Return to Crutcher Mountain,
Entangled Thorns, and
Shadow Days, and The Tennessee Delta Series, which includes
Blessed Are the Wholly Broken,
A Woman Misunderstood, and
Child of Sorrow. Clayton is also a writing tutor, an editor, and an instructor for Southern New Hampshire University’s COCE MFA program. You can find her novels in print, ebook, and audiobook format
on Amazon.
Thanks again for your support!
—Team MCG
Happy Monday—How About a New Stretch Goal?
2 months ago
– Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 04:26:57 PM
Hello, family—
It’s our final week for this campaign, and if the past is any guide, we can expect to see the pace quicken as people realize it’s their last chance to get in on this exciting campaign—especially the cool limited-edition OGoA items you’re funding.
Good news: you’ve unlocked yet another stretch goal! The new audio files from Old Gods of Appalachia voices Cam and Steve, plus the amazing Yuri Lowenthal (voice of the Railroad Man), are now going to become a reality. Because these will be added to the existing sound files you can already download (see page 264 of the Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game corebook), this goal makes the game better and more immersive for everyone!
With that goal under our belt, it’s time to talk about what’s next. But first:
Let’s Crush This Final Week!
The final week is often really exciting—in our past campaigns (we’ve run nearly 30 of them over the years) the final week has accounted for up to a third of all backers! Think of how many stretch goals we can unlock—how much bigger and better your rewards can become!
But that only happens with your help.
Campaigns really take off when the backers spread the word. If you want more lore, more background, more atmosphere and creepiness, more exclusive details from Cam and Steve, and more adventures and options for your game—in short, more stretch goals—you need to help make it happen!
Here are some posts you could share right now to help spread the word:
There are loads of other posts on our accounts—give them a scroll and share a few of them!
Now, How About a Poster Map?
Come Hell or High Water features full-length adventures, along with detailed locations and sites (some written by Cam and Steve themselves!) you can use in adventures of your own making. The book, of course, will have loads of maps of these hollers, towns, mines, buildings, and other locations. Let’s do those maps justice!
We want to add a poster map to the book. It’ll be a large, double-sided poster that displays several of the key maps from the book at a larger scale—and, like the game in general, it will be beautiful to behold.
We’ll unlock this map at $650,000.
With your help, we’ll be able to unlock this quickly as we move into the fast-paced closing days of the campaign and move on to even more exciting stretch goals.
Meet Tim Earley!
As you may know, the books funded by this campaign will include bits of color, inspiration, and atmosphere from a diverse selection of Appalachian and horror creators. In our past updates, we’ve introduced several of these contributors, including
Cherie Priest,
Lee Mondelo,
Alder (Ash) Van Otterloo, and
Jeff Mann. Today we’re introducing
Tim Earley!
Tim Earley is the creator/lead writer of the tabletop roleplaying game,
Holler: An Appalachian Apocalypse (Pinnacle Entertainment Group, 2023). He's the author of five collections of poetry, including
Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, winner of the 2015 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. A recipient of writing fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland, Tim currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where he teaches online classes in Appalachian literature, British literature, and fantasy literature for the University of Mississippi. When he's not writing or gaming, he's running in the woods, among the bears. Check out more of Tim’s fascinating life and works
at his website.
Thanks again for your support!
—Team MCG
More Content from the Creators! Now Let’s Talk Audio.
2 months ago
– Thu, Sep 12, 2024 at 12:30:53 PM
Hello, family—
Stretch goal unlocked! Thanks to your support, we are expanding Come Hell or High Water with additional content written by Cam Collins and Steve Shell (the creators of Old Gods of Appalachia) describing canon locations you know and fear from the podcast.
Speaking of Cam and Steve: the Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game corebook includes not just hundreds of pages of text describing the game and the world, but also audio files you can use in your games. (You can find the link on page 264 of the corebook.) These clips add atmosphere and a sense of authenticity to your game, as Cam and Steve themselves narrate descriptions of select creatures, items, and locations one might encounter in the game.
For our next goal we’d like to expand this selection of files, giving you even more audio options to immerse everyone at the table in the unique atmosphere of Old Gods of Appalachia. Cam and Steve will record additional snippets, giving you descriptions of unsettling creatures you might encounter, unique Appalachian artifacts you might come across, and creepy locations you might find yourself in. These will be added to the files linked in the corebook, so everyone who plays the game will have access to them.
And here's a late-breaking bonus: Steve and Cam reached out to Yuri Lowenthal, who has also agreed to contribute to this audio. Expect to hear the dulcet tones of the Railroad Man among these audio files!
We’ll unlock these additional audio files at $610,000.
Like the goal you just unlocked, this is another contribution directly from the podcast creators—an exciting new addition that any Old Gods of Appalachia fan would love. Be sure to tell your friends who love the podcast! The more people we reach, the sooner we unlock this goal—and move on to even more!
You can find some sharable posts here:
On the topic of interesting contributions, we’ve been profiling some of the Appalachia and horror creators who are contributing brief bits of color, inspiration, and atmosphere to these supplements. In our past updates we’ve introduced
Cherie Priest,
Lee Mondelo, and
Alder (Ash) Van Otterloo. Today we’re introducing
Jeff Mann.
Jeff Mann has published three poetry chapbooks, six full-length books of poetry, three collections of personal essays, a volume of memoir and poetry, three novellas, six novels, and four collections of short fiction. With Julia Watts, he co-edited
LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia. The winner of two Lambda Literary Awards, he teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech. You can
discover more at Jeff’s website.
Thanks again for your support!
—Team MCG
While we have you. . .
We at MCG make lots of fun, engaging games beyond the
Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game. (If you aren’t familiar with our many other works,
check out our website—we think you’ll like what you see.) And the creativity of our small staff isn’t limited to what the company publishes. Many of our team produce cool projects outside our MCG work.
If you’re a fan of mystery and sci-fi, for example, you might check out the hit Station 151 podcast—our awesome Art Director Bear Weiter, who makes the
Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game so creepily beautiful, is one of the creators. Their new season is about to drop—you can find a trailer, and more information, at
the Station 151 website.
And if your interests go back into history just a bit, check out
The Mason of New Orleans and
The Angel of Ecbatana, two novels by MCG’s COO Charles Ryan. Take a trip into the 12th Century filled with intrigue, astonishing plot twists, and relatable characters you'll miss when the book ends. Charles is currently crowdfunding an upgraded edition of the first novel (including an audiobook), along with the sequel.
Check it out!
