Knock! #5 - one week to go!

I assume the Venn diagram of "people who read my blog" and "people who have already backed the Knock! Kickstarter" is a perfect circle, but if not, I wanted to say (shout! scream!) that the campaign for Knock! #5 campaign is one week from completion!

What is Knock!?

If you have taken a strange road to get here, Knock! is one of the most well-known publications in the OSR space. Since 2021, it has collected and curated important ideas from the scene's game designers, theorists, and fans. It bills itself as: 

An Adventure Gaming Bric-a-Brac. A Compendium of Miscellanea for Old-School RPGs. For OSR weirdos and curious D&D heads alike.

Blogs are the bedrock of the OSR community. They are the place where its ideas are invented, traded, and iterated on. Knock! is inspired by (and inspires!) this creative energy. Recognizing the importance of blogs to this game-design space, the magazine has brought the "canon" of OSR theory into print, allowing for a wider audience.  

It's latest issue, Knock! #5, is currently fundraising on Kickstarter. There is one week left until the end of the campaign!

The book funded in a wink (merci!). It's already laid out. It's currently being copyedited. Soon, the only thing that will be left to do is collect your pledge and ship you the book. So don't miss out! 

What's in this issue?

This issue contains a diverse group of contributors and contributions: a mix of OSR mainstays and new blood, a blend of old favourites and hitherto unpublished essays. Each page is a sigil that’s trapped some strange idea or gameable spark. This issue contains: 

• Monsters! (The hydra knight sprouts riotous limbs each time they’re hit! Scary!)
• Essays! (Ever wonder why kobolds are sometimes depicted as lizards and sometimes as dog people?)
• New rules! (Put some strange weather in your dungeon.)
• Random tables! (100s of names and quirks for your next familiar.)
• Magic items! (What will you get from the dungeon vending machine?)
• New classes! (Ever wanted to absorb a monster’s powers by eating them? Now you can!)
• Adventures! (What happens when a goblin gets a hold of a ray gun?)

There’s even a short section in the back where we indulge in a bit of navel gazing, thinking about the state of the scene itself.

The book is 212 pages (A5 format: 5.9’ x 8.25’, slightly bigger than digest size) in beautiful full colour, printed on quality paper (coated 130 gr, with a cover on coated 300 gr).

Hey what's up with shipping?

The shipping is two tiered - France and The Rest of the World - for a simple reason: it is being shipped by Le Poste from France, where the Layout Lord Olivier lives. That is the system that Le Poste uses. The rates are Le Poste's rates. They aren't something the Mushmen have set. 

Let me assure you: shipping prices are my enemy too! But the world is falling down around my ears, and I cannot improve global commerce by myself. So let us drink and read funny RPG books and eek out what little joy we can in the world we have left. 

Don't split the party

Unique to this campaign, there's a pledge tier that gets you every single issue of Knock! magazine, 1-5. That's over a thousand pages of rules ideas, game design essays, random tables both serious and silly, adventures, character classes, monsters, and multifarious goblins. 

If you haven't yet taken the deep dive, I really think this is the best bang for your buck. I don't use any product more than my issues of Knock!. Whenever I start a new RPG game, I go there first for inspiration. I return again, and again, and again.

Reflections on my first Kickstarter campaign

It is strange and thrilling and humbling to be editing a magazine that I loved from the second I picked up the first issue. 

Something that has struck me as I have joined the Mushmen is that this is quite literally a cottage industry. From the outside, there was such a level of polish to everything the Mushmen did, it was easy to imagine that there was a large company behind the craft. But no, it was just two guys (now three!). 

I really respect the Mushmen's ethos in not having weirdo physical add-ons. They add a level of complexity (and failure) to Kickstarters that isn't necessary and contributes to a weird culture in the crowdfunding space. 

But! I also respect their ability to just add value to each campaign. For example, in this campaign, we're adding a searchable index of all Knock! articles, past and present. This will help you track down that article you were thinking of and let you put your hand on the issue and page number. This is free!

Also, if you're missing a back issue that you want to add to your order? At the end of this campaign, you'll receive a 10% discount code usable for your next order on our website, themerrymushmen.com.  

I'll probably have more to say about participating in my first crowdfunding campaign later, but I definitely learned a lot. My biggest takeaway is probably "I can do this." 

Call to action

OK but seriously. I am holding your head in my hands so gently right now and staring into your eyes and saying so sincerely: You don't want to miss this.

More than just trapping a blog post in amber, Knock! is a community of contributors who revel in the spirit of weird ideas, quick iteration, and messy creativity. It contains everything I love about the RPG space. And it's good. There's so much good stuff in here!

Interested? Head over to the campaign page before May 21st and get the new issue at a discounted rate! For those newly curious about the OSR scene and those who have vociferous opinions about what that mysterious acronym actually means, Knock! represents a fun addition to your gaming bookshelf.

Come join us!

Knock! News

I have some exciting news to share: I have been brought on board as the editor-in-chief of Knock! magazine moving forward.

Eric Nieudan, the once and future editor-in-chief, is still very Merry and Mushmany. He has just brought me on so he can focus on the other Merry Mushmen projects. (Speaking of, I really enjoyed the free playtest of Dungeon, Inc., where players play the dungeon's monsters endlessly cleaning up and resetting traps for rude adventurers.) 

By the way: I'd love to see you on the Merry Mushmen Discord. Come chat with us about games!

New Submission Portal

Since I'm coming into this role as an erstwhile contributor to Knock!, I wanted to make sure the submission process was smooth and simple. To this end, I've made a new submission portal on the Merry Mushmen website:

Now taking submissions for Knock! 5 and 6

The Workflow

My intention is that you'll get an email for each step in this process for transparency. (Watch me rue these words.)

Submission

If you have an article, a dungeon, a class, a random table, a magic item, a trap, etc. that you want to submit, we've love to see it! Because we might be able to use one thing but not another, please only submit one thing at a time, but feel free to submit as much as you want. 

Two big things here:

• We need your name as you want to see it in print. 
• We need your email so we can talk to you if we decide to accept your submission.

Because everything will be pulled into our chaotic neutral layout by Olivier the Layout Lord, plain text format is preferred. If you have a specific graphic that is needed to make the piece work (like a hand-drawn map for a dungeon), please submit that too. 

Pondering the Orb

We will ponder everything we receive. 

Because Knock! is a kaleidoscope of content, we might take one thing or another (sometimes leaving things we really love on the cutting-room floor). The book works because it's a collage of lots of different things, so we value variety. If a piece is rejected, you can submit it again a bit later and we'll see if it fits in better with a future volume.

Editing

If accepted, I'll place the text into a Google Doc and make edits for our house style and for print/space considerations. 

Author Approval

I'll email you a copy of the Google Doc so you can see the tracked changes. Accept them or push back to make the changes better. Let's talk about the piece! 

Layout

Once everything sounds good to both the editor and submitter, we'll pass things on to Olivier, High Graphic Artist. He'll make the words look good. 

Manic Last Touches

Of course, putting everything together into a magazine is a near endless series of edits, re-edits, typos, touchups, collapsing, expanding, inserting, moving. We'll be fitting everything together until the book is ready to print. If we need anything else from you, we'll make sure to reach back out.

Prep for the Campaign

Once the book is mostly assembled and we're prepping the crowdfunding campaign, we'll reach out to all contributors to get details for payment and to get final sign off. 

20 hours left on the Knock! 4 Kickstarter 

Don't miss out!

The Knock! 4 Kickstarter is in the home stretch with just 20 hours left. If you haven't already backed, don't miss out on completing your collection. 

(I am just a contributor on this volume, but my "1937 Hobbit as a Setting" post made its way in, so I am very excited.)