Why We're Running a Kickstarter (Patreon)

Hello amazing Friends, Supporters, and More,

Last night we launched our Unnatural Horrors Kickstarter.  We want to explain it fully, and importantly, explain why the Kickstarter is separate from our Patreon. So, let's jump into it!

In 2018 we released a PDF called Domain of the Nameless God - a D&D 5e Horror Adventure written as a bonus for you, our dear supporters. It was basically Travis' notes as a DM for the Dark Dice podcast (Season 1), with a few edited pieces of Creative Commons art (from the 1800's), and a really cool cover that our friend Allen Moris painted.

By popular demand, the PDF was refined and eventually released on digital platforms, quickly becoming a PLATINUM best seller! We used proceeds from this book to commission more artwork, we added to it, and over the years its evolved from 86 pages to 192 - with full-color artwork on almost every page!

Fast forward to Hasbro's Creative Commons D&D Rules release in 2023 - where anyone could now use the D&D 5e rules in their content. We were now free to print a book without using Hasbro's official printing company. After being available for sale online through other large platforms, we had to remove our story from their site due to our horror content not meeting their ethical standards, as children "could be harmed" in the adventure (if players fail the mission) so this was a huge turning point! It was also around this time that Hasbro announce the new D&D Rules Update, coming in 2024, and we were able to meet with and construct a co-publishing deal with Nord Games - who will help us distribute these physical books - something we as podcasters are not suited for.

Earlier this year we got an early copy of the updated D&D 2024 rules, and now we've future-proofed our upcoming book with these new changes. We've also combined our Domain of the Nameless God adventure with the True Necromancer Class, magical items, monsters, and a bunch of bonus content we've written over the years into a horror omnibus called Unnatural Horrors.

This book was shaped by Patron/Lamprey playtester feedback, funded by e-book sales, and its print run has already hit its funding goal thanks to the amazing backers over at the Kickstarter!

Our full time career as podcasters, and the shows we bring to life each week remain unchanged, and your support here is vital to our survival. Unnatural Horrors is a "side quest" to this career, similar to - how if we were offered a TV/Movie deal for one of our shows we probably couldn't upload the TV episodes here because of stipulations by Amazon/Netflix/etc.

We're grateful for those of you who have chosen to back our Kickstarter, which you can still do here if it's of interest:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/randomencounter/dark-dice-unnatural-horrors-for-5th-edition

Either way, thank you for your continued support in making our dreams possible! We look forward to making more podcast announcements this week. And don't worry, the versions of Domain, the True Necromancers, and other Dark Dice PDFs already available to Patrons will continue to be available to our supporters here.

Let's unleash some horrors!

-Travis & Kaitlin (and Eezo)