Black Pudding 8 Print Edition Out Now!

The print edition of Black Pudding Issue 8 is now available to order from the Squarehex site using the following link:

https://www.squarehex.co.uk/collections/black-pudding/products/black-pudding-issue-8

You can also get a bundle of the first 8 issues at a special price:

https://www.squarehex.co.uk/collections/black-pudding/products/black-pudding-issues-1-8-bundle

Black Pudding Issue 7 Kickstarter is Live!

The Kickstarter for Black Pudding Issue 7 and The Black Pudding Adventure Journal is now live. I launched it with minimal fanfare on Sunday afternoon and in less than 24 hours it's already closing on raising £4,000!

Check out the project here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/black-pudding-issue-7-and-the-black-pudding-journal

GOZR Kickstarter is Live

 The Kickstarter for GOZR - An Adventure RPG in a Broken Future World is now live. The campaign funded in the first hour and we've just lined up the first Stretch Goal.

Check out the project page here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/gozr-an-adventure-rpg-in-a-broken-future-world

Squarehex 2021 Review and 2022 Plans

2021 Review

Considering the the ongoing impact of Covid, I'm pretty pleased with how things went in 2021. Sales of The Black Hack were solid, but we ran out out of print copies in June and so funded a reprint with a Kickstarter campaign. Stock of The Black Hack will go back on general sale in early January 2022 and we should have enough stock to last another 18-24 months. The Black Hack in PDF form clicked up enough sales to become a DriveThruRPG Adamantine best seller, which is quite an achievement when you consider that only 136 other titles have managed to reach the same status.

We ran 2 other Kickstarters during 2021. The first was an intentionally small project to print some Dungeon Geomorph mapping pads. The second (Dungeon Master's Little Black Book) was also intended to be a small project. However, it smashed its goal and went on to get over 1800 backers, which is more backers than we've had for any previous project. The welcome success of that project generated a lot of extra work. I did have another small project ready to go, but I had to shelve it to focus on The Black Hack reprint.

2021 saw a tentative return to conventions. Squarehex had a stand at both the UK Games Expo in August and Dragonmeet in December. We were anxious about returning the the shows, but thanks to the rules in place we felt safe at them. It also helped being part of an island block of stands with our friends at All Rolled Up and Patriot Games.

2022 Plans

The first job of the New Year is to put The Black Hack books and boxed sets back on general sale. At the same time I'll attempt to tidy the Squarehex webstore up a little. There's also a fair bit of admin work I'd like to do including a full stocktake and reorganising our storage, show stock, and getting new convention signage.

We'll be back with more Kickstarters. My list of potential projects now runs to several pages, and there are at least 8 that could potentially be selected to run this year. In no particular order they are:

• Another dungeon geomorph project
• The Lichway
• The Black Hack Classic Characters book
• A small notebook project
• A Black Hack adventure/s
• Another Little Black Book
• A game box project
• 2.5D Dungeons

I expect that we'll run 2 or 3 from that list and there's always a chance that something else will come along that manages to jump the queue. I'd also like to print some more mapping paper pads, but the rising cost of Overseas postage is making it increasingly hard to distribute them.

Italian fans of The Black Hack will be interested to learn that we have signed a license deal for an Italian Edition of the game. I'll share more details about it when it's ready to launch.

If they run, we'll be back at conventions in 2022. We've booked a stand at the UK Games Expo in June already. We also hope to be at Continuum (local to us in Leicester) in August, and Dragonmeet in December.

Thank you to everyone that supported our work in 2021, I hope we can tempt you back with something new this year.

The Black Hack 2nd Ed Reprint

The Kickstarter to fund a reprint of The Black Hack Second Edition hard cover rule books is now live. The project will allow us to print lovely, offset copies of the book with stitched binding and a black ribbon bookmark. Backers will not only save money on the retail price of the books, but they will also get a set of bonus booklets with their rewards.

Back at the basic hard cover level (£18) and you get a copy of the A5 124 page hard cover book, A7 16 page Arcane Spells booklet, A7 16 page Divine Prayers booklet, A6 20 page Lore booklet for writing notes/rules, A6 20 page Locales booklet for drawing maps and 2 double-sided, laminated Quick Ref cards.

There are higher level reward options too including a Boxed Set. And, for anyone that already has The Black Hack in print there's a low cost (£3) reward with just the 2 new booklets and the Quick ref cards.

You can find the project here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/the-black-hack-second-edition-redux/description

Dungeon Master's Little Black Book Project is Live!

 I've just launched my Dungeon Master's Little Black Book project on Kickstarter. It's off to a flying start and funded in the first few minutes.

The aim of this project is to fund print runs of two versions of The Dungeon Master's Little Black Book. The first version will be crammed full of random tables, ideas and maps that can be used by a DM during a game without any preparation. The second version will be a blank version of the Little Black Book that a DM can add their own content to.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/dungeon-masters-little-black-book

Dungeon Geomorphs Project is Live!

 I just launched 7 day Make100 Kickstarter project. Over half of the rewards have already been snapped up so if you want in better be quick!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/dungeon-geomorph-pads

Squarehex 2020 Review and 2021 Plans

Considering the reality of 2020 for many businesses, Squarehex has had another relatively good year. The main downer was not being able to attend any Conventions. However, we did get some government support which partially made up for what we lost due to the cancelled events. We managed a couple of mini Kickstarters (Combat Counters and Keyboard Mapping Pads).

The main project of the year was The Black Hack Classic Monsters book. It did better than I expected on Kickstarter, which led to the book having some extra pages. To be honest I was quite glad to have the extra work over the Summer putting it together and then the fulfilment in the Autumn.

Ongoing sales of the rest of the Black Hack range have been strong throughout 2020 and we've had a few more stockists carrying our products. The main impact of Covid on web orders has been delays in the postal system. Thankfully, even with delays we had very few parcels that didn't eventually arrive.

For 2021 it looks like it will be Autumn at the earliest before even smaller Conventions can run in the UK. From a business planning perspective I'm making the assumption that there won't be any large Cons in 2021, but I hope that I'm proved wrong.

Brexit is also presenting a few problems for UK businesses. Sales to the the EU only make up about 20% of our business, and it looks like the main risk will be that export orders to the EU may get hit by VAT in some countries. It's too early to tell how much of an issue that will be, and what impact it might have on sales. The increased cost of postage to the USA and the current strength of the £ are bigger threats at the moment as the USA accounts for about 50% of our trade. The strong £ also reduces income from PDF sales as they are generated in $.

My main plan for 2021 is to keep my head down and bash out a couple of small Kickstarter projects before the Spring (Dungeon Geomorph Pads in mid January and a Zinequest project in late February). Then in the Spring I hope to have a new Black Hack project ready to go. Beyond that there are lots of other new things I'd like to get on with. Maybe I'll feel more bullish once I've had the jab.

Squarehex 2019 Review and 2020 Plans

2019 was a good year for the business. The two highlights for me were getting The Black Hack Second Edition rewards sent out to our Kickstarter backers and The Black Hack picking up a Silver Ennie award at GenCon. Ongoing sales of The Black Hack have been strong and we now have 2 distributors in the US (Exalted Funeral and Noble Knight) and in the UK Leisure Games are carrying stock. We should also soon have copies of The Black Hack in general UK distribution via Asmodee.

Once the main work associated with The Black Hack was over it was nice to get back to a few smaller Kickstarter projects to fund print runs of several notebooks and booklets. In addition to the Kickstarters I'm always on the lookout for small niche publishing projects. In the last few years I've had the pleasure of printing material featuring the creative talents of Kristian Richards, James West, David Black, Dyson Logos, Charley Phipps and Karl Stjernberg. In 2020 I'll be helping Fish in the Pot with the UK/EU distribution of their one page dungeon zine.

During the year we managed to attend 5 conventions (Hammerhead, UK Games Expo, Barrage, Chillcon and Dragonmeet). I hope to do a few more shows than that in 2020, but they are very time consuming and apart from the Expo and Dragonmeet the financial rewards are fairly small.

I start 2020 with a Kickstarter project (Combat Counters) to complete which should be finished by the end of February. Then I want to run a follow-up project for The Black Hack to fund a booklet of classic monsters which will be a useful supplement for GMs running modules from other OSR/original games. After that I would really like to tackle a reprint of The Lichway. I first talked about my plans for that project in 2015. Although that was a long time ago, when you consider the adventure was first published in 1978, it's still the recent past really. I have done more groundwork on the project over the last 4 years, but more importantly, my ideas on how to best present the adventure have evolved considerably. In between these major projects I should still have time for a few small projects to produce paper pads, booklets and more 2.5D dungeon expansions.

When I started Squarehex I set a very low financial bar for the business. Essentially, I wanted a hobby business that would allow me to print niche items with little regard for how commercially viable they were. That sounds more reckless than it is in reality as I've never lost money on a project. Indeed all my Kickstarters are planned so I know the exact weight, cost and postage for every item before I start. The business has now almost reached the point where it could be a full-time job. If you'd told me at age 20, 30, or even 40 that I could be doing this for a living at the age of 50 I don't think I would have believed it. Even though the pay is a fraction of what I used to earn in the corporate world, I think I'm now in that small group of people who get to do a job that doesn't really feel like work. Thank you to everyone that has supported our projects or bought things from us via the webstore or at a convention in 2019. I hope we can tempt you back for more in 2020.

Happy New Year!

Peter Regan

Dragonmeet Saturday 30th November

I'm just making the final preparations for https://www.dragonmeet.co.uk/ on Saturday. We've got lots of goodies to sell, many of which are things that you won't find anywhere else. Here are some of the highlights:

• The Black Hack boxed sets, books and extras.
• The Midderlands books, zines and extras. Plus the rest of Monkey Blood Design's range. If you buy any Midderlands/MBD product you get a free A2 Ryecroft preview poster map.
• Crooked Staff Publishing's 2.5D Dungeon and Sci-Fi tile sets.
• Squarehex pads, notebooks, booklets, beermats and mugs.
• A spinner full of Reaper Bones minis.
• The Sorcers' Enclave and Dwarven Stronghold posters by Aaron Howdle.
• Black Pudding zines issues 1-5 and Black Pudding Heavy Helping books (2 only).
• Character, plot, treasure and location cards.
• B/X Gangbusters books.
• The King of Dungeons books.
• DCC Lankhmar Kickstarter Edition boxed set and module collection (1 only).
• DCC foil cover hardback (1 only).
• MCC foil cover hardback (1 only).
• Samples of our Combat Counters that are currently live on Kickstarter.

Plus a few more bits and pieces. If you can make it please stop by and say hello. There's also plenty of other indie/OSR traders there including Just Crunch, All Rolled Up, LotFP, Necrotic Gnome and Melsonian Arts Council.

Gamers' Notebook Grid/Hex Version is Live on Kickstarter

I've just launched a new campaign on Kickstarter to fund the final print run in a series of three of our Gamers' Notebooks. This time One side will have 7mm hexes with a outline for a 15 hexes high superhex. The facing page will have a 6mm grid. Both pages will have lines at the bottom of the page for writing notes.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/a5-gamers-notebook-grid-and-hex-version

Gamers' Notebook Hex Version is Live on Kickstarter

I've just launched a new campaign on Kickstarter to fund a additional print run of our Gamers' Notebooks. This time the notebooks will have 17mm hexes arranged in an 8 across 10 down format on one page, and lines for notes on the facing page.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/a5-gamers-notebook-hex-version

Caves of Chaos Poster Prints On Sale Now

I've now added the Caves of Chaos poster-sized maps by Dyson Logos to the Squarehex site. There are two versions of the map, one with numbers, and one without. There is also a set of mapping sheets that simply have a grid and the cave entrances marked on them. Finally, there is special-priced set that includes both posters and a set of mapping sheets. All the sheets measure 707mm wide by 500mm high and are printed on matt white 115gsm paper. If you need a frame I got mine from Ikea for £5 or £6 in the UK and Amazon have a wide range in the £15-20 price range. All the frames I found were 700mm wide so to make the print fit nicely you need to trim 3-4mm off each side.

Here's a link to all 4 products:

https://squarehex.myshopify.com/collections/all/caves-of-chaos

The Caves of Chaos No Numbers

The Caves of Chaos With Numbers

The Caves of Chaos Mapping Sheet

Framed Example (frame from Ikea)

The Caves of Chaos Poster Print Teaser

Dyson Logos has kindly given me permission to print some poster-sized versions of his superb Caves of Chaos maps. The image below shows the version with no numbers, but there will also be a numbered version and a blank mapping sheet with 10mm grid lines and just the cave entrances.

The maps are printed on 115gsm matt white paper and they measure 707mm wide by 500mm high.

I hope to release them for sale later this week, but I was so pleased with how the fist one turned out I just had to share it.

A5 Gamers' Notebook MKII

The first print run of my A5 Gamers' Notebooks sold out at the end of lest year. I'm ready to order a reprint, but want to tweak the design. The original version looked like this although I think this image is based on the smaller (same format) A6 version:

Here's what I have in mind for the new version:

It has the same 6mm square as the original design, but I've now added a page of 7mm hexes on the facing pages, which are scaled to match my existing A5 hex pads. To keep the Notebook utility I've included some lines under the mapping area.

I plan to print them on higher quality 120gsm paper instead of the 100gsm used previously. They will have 50 pages and I expect to sell them for £4.50 each. I don't need a Kickstarter for these, but they'll still be some sort of preorder offer with special pricing.

I'm interested to get some feedback on them, particularly from previous/existing Gamers' Notebook users.

Dungeon Mug on Sale Now!

I've just received a batch of my new Dungeon Mugs. I intend to take these to sell at conventions, but when they arrived I was so pleased with them that I decided to put them up online too. They feature a map depicting a series of tombs. Each mug also comes with a paper copy of the map so you ca populate and run it as an adventure.

Get them from Squarehex here: https://squarehex.myshopify.com/products/dungeon-mug

If they sell well I'll add one or two more designs in the future.

I've also got a few decks of Inked Adventure's Map/Dice Playing Cards in stock. These are the redesigned full-size cards. Also on Squarehex here:  https://squarehex.myshopify.com/products/map/dice cards

UK Games Expo Price List

Squarehex will have a stand at the UK Games Expo this weekend (Stand K24). Here's a copy of our price list flyer. We've got a wide range of items and some of them are limited to just one or two copies. We can't reserve items so if you want something very badly please get to us early.

Squarehex Black Friday Discount

From now until the end of Tuesday you can get 15% off any order placed at www.squarehex.co.uk by entering the code BF16

This is a great chance to pick up print copies of: The Black Hack, Cthulhu Posters, or just to restock your supplies of grid and hex papers.

www.squarehex.co.uk

P.S. I've had a bit of a break from gaming projects over the last few months, but plan to come back to them with lots of fresh ideas for 2017. I'll also have a stand at Dragonmeet in London on Saturday 3rd December. 

UK Games Expo Price List

Squarehex will have a stand at the UK Games Expo this weekend (Stand D29). Here's a copy of our price list flyer. We've got a wide range of items and some of them are limited to just one or two copies. We can't reserve items so if you want something very badly please get to us early.

The Black Hack Print Copies Now on Sale!

With the Kickstarter rewards all now posted, I'm releasing print edition of The Black Hack for general sale. If you missed out on the Kickstarter or grabbed a PDF but would like a print copy of The Black Hack, you may find all the print items here:

http://squarehex.myshopify.com/collections/role-playing-games/black-hack

There is also a bundle deal that combines all the printed materials together at a special price here:

http://squarehex.myshopify.com/collections/role-playing-games/products/the-black-hack-bundle-deal