Just three days left to get the Wasteland Degenerates Jumper Cable Edition, and, boy howdy, I wasn't expecting you all to blow through the 350 backer achievement in one day, ya frothing loonies!  I had friends in town for the 4th of July, so I couldn't get into the thick of it again until now.  Probably good that I waited, though, since last night we hit Stretch Goal #4 to unlock the Job Board of the Apocalypse mission generator!

The next stretch goal, at $10,000, is for the mad lads of the MAD Network (their Fold-Å-Freak is my direct crowdfunding competitor and I don't even mind, check it out!)  to contribute a new monster in the UNDONE bonus booklet.  Crossing my fingers to get this one, because it's a collaboration I've been wanting to sneak in here!  After that, I'm looking into a potential T-shirt add-on at $11,000.  Who knows?  We've beaten the odds before...

I have another crowdfunding competitor that you should check out before their campaign ends: Smörk Borg from Squid Ink Games.  These folks have one of the most imaginative takes on Mörk Borg that I've seen, and I look forward to collaborating with them.

I noticed that some folks have bought the digital-only tier but have also bought the physical version of Enter the Dismal Armory (and maybe Blood on the Bleak Road, too).  This may be my mistake for not removing physical add-ons to the digital tier, but I wanted to let you know that you can get a digital version of Dismal Armory for FREE on my Itch site and Blood on the Bleak Road will also be available at a lower price for digital-only download there as well as soon as Matthew is done formatting and illustrating it. 

I don't want you to have to pay shipping to get these items unless you actually want the physical copies.  I will NOT take it negatively if you adjust your pledge to remove physical items from the digital tier.

My last livestream before the Unstable Cataclysm will be today, July 7th, at 1 PM Central US time.

Unstable Cataclysm: The campaign ends at 6 PM Central US time on July 10th.  I've enabled overtime mode, though, so each time someone pledges from 5:50 PM on, we're live for 10 more minutes just in case late pledges come in.  I'll keep streaming through the inevitable end time.

I'll tell you what, if we hit 460 backers by the end of the campaign, I'll write the Epilogue for Tales from the Lore Dumpster to usher Janet From Marketing to her final reward.

Thanks to all of you, we ANNIHILATED the second stretch goal!  Which means that we're getting a monster supplement, including one by Brian Colin of Vast Grimm!

Next up is $8000 for the third stretch goal: the random character generator for the website!  Stuart Gorman is pretty keen on getting that rolling if we can support the dog shelter.

And after that it's looking like the fourth goal at $9000 will be including the Mission Generator; I may need to donate more money to Stuart's dogs to get an automated version on the website as well.

Fear not, intrepid Guest Creator Monster fans, your status as 2nd place in the survey means that I'm going to have that as the $10,000 stretch goal #5, but give me a bit to find a creator that I can chain to a desk until a monster is created.

I... really would be surprised if anyone had completed the final room of my Dark Fort-alike, Enter the Dismal Armory, yet (feel free to crow about it in the comments if you have), but even if you haven't, you can still enjoy Blood on the Bleak Road, 12+ page a cross-country vehicle combat extravaganza into which you can bring any surviving Dismal Armory character or a freshly created one using six new History results and a host of new vehicle combat options.  Blood on the Bleak Road requires Enter the Dismal Armory to play, but, fortunately, you can download it for free on Itch.io or get the physical version as an add-on to this campaign (if you haven't already)!  It will also be available for download on Itch once the layout and art are done.

Let's shoot for a 7:7 timeslot; July 7th, that is, at 1 PM Central US time.  

That didn't take long... let's make it a little more challenging, just for the sake of my carpel tunnel.  350 sounds like a good number!  Anyway, enjoy Lore Dumpster #4 in the Backers-only section!

Hey Degenerates, looks like we hit that 280 backer goal, so I'm including Lore Dumpster #3 in the Backer-only content section for this update!

Brian Colin of Vast Grimm creates a cosmic horror for a monster add-on at $7000.  Just under $600 to go there!

Stuart Gorman creates an online character generator at $8000.

And... a third stretch goal that we still have a few days to determine (but Mission Generator appears to be in the lead) at $9000!

Oh yes, and keep your eyes on the road: The sequel to my solo game set in the Wasteland Degenerates universe, Enter the Dismal Armory, is just around the corner.  Watch for Blood on the Bleak Road, an epic cross-country highway murder-venture, on my Itch page!

Next installment at... let's say 305 backers, so tell your friends!  And... go!

Hey Degenerates, we did it!  First stretch goal is busted!  Barely!

(nobody cancel their pledge... sure it would be funny, but please don't!)



We're now on to the 2nd stretch goal: at $7000, Brian Colin of Vast Grimm has offered to concoct a horrible space monster to bring the terrible void between the stars to the Wasteland.

And at $8000, Stuart Gorman will complete the Wasteland Degenerates character generator for the website!

Which brings up the question: what's at $9000?  Let's talk about it tonight at the livestream! 7 PM Central US time!

Okay, so we had 4 votes for continuing the fiction series, and 0 votes against, so I'll take that as a "go ahead."  

As before, anywhere there's an asterisk (*) is when I rolled on my random tables to determine the next part of the story.
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Janet from Marketing was already regretting taking this job.  A hundred miles into the 140* mile trip from Blacksand Reach to Fargo, the holographic heads-up-display* in her customized pickup* started complaining of too many rads; she parked the truck and laboriously got into the hazmat suit the weird cult lady had given to her on behalf of Baron Tao.

It didn't used to be this way.  She used to be a respected mechanist for the Gas King, but she lost a race* and all that goodwill vanished.  Turns out fans are fickle, even after the end of civilization.  One day she'll prove it was sabotage.  One day.  But today she had to beat up a scientist that never did anything to her in order to put gas in her car and chips in her belly.

Gingerly getting back into the pickup, she gunned the engine past the Fargo 38 miles sign.  The HUD gradually ticked up the rads as she observed the blasted landscape of Fargo.  A useless wreck of a city... and THEN it got nuked; she hated going into rad zones even with protective gear.

Featureless countryside, only slightly glowing, gave way to the outskirts of town, and finally to the industrial sector of the city.  Fargo got one of the last nuclear power plants in the country, and consequentially it was one of the most advanced plants from the Before Times.  As the plant came into view, Janet had to admit that the thing was pretty swanky, actually*, nigh untouched by the bombs, and the radiation shielding would protect Tendai from the external radiation just as well as it protected him from the decommissioned fissile material.

As she slowly pulled into the parking lot, a hulking bipedal form came out of the front doors. with smaller shadowy figures lurking just behind yellow barrels emblazoned with toxic waste symbols. Great, mutants.  Of course it's mutants, she thought as the large figure revealed itself as a champion, covered in bone spikes and pus-oozing lesions.  Who else would live in a rad zone, she thought.

Janet's CB crackled to life. "Hey you, in the pickup."  

She waited for a moment, then picked up the receiver.  "You're supposed to say 'over' when you're done talking over the radio," she said testily. 

"Hey you in the pickup, OVER," the voice said.  Female, Janet thought.

"Go ahead, over," she smirked, finally spotting the cameras*.

"Those muties are going to tear you apart.  If you promise to take me out of here, I'll tell you how to get past them," the voice said.  "Over," she said, after a moment.  

"Deal, over" Janet said without hesitation.  She didn't know if she was going to give this lady a ride yet, but you always say 'yes' when the opposition's crony offers to defect* in exchange for info.

"Good.  I'm Alexis Blackcutter*, by the way. Over."  Janet wondered if she was named after a sword in an online game from the Before.  She didn't say it out loud; the mutants were getting closer and she thought that, perhaps, being a snark queen wasn't the best course of action here.

"Great, Alexis, Now that we're friends, if you could clue me in so my blood doesn't get drained by a bone siphon, that would be great., over."

"Sure, the yellow barrels.  They're full of Tendai's experimental juice... well the rejected stuff.  They're highly inflammab-" Janet didn't hear the rest of the sentence as she was already thumbing the trigger on the truck's grenade launcher*, hucking an explosive straight into the barrels the mutants were crawling out from.  The world went white.

TO BE CONTINUED???
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Tell you what, if we get to 280 backers, I'll take it as a sign to do #3.