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.