Birthday survey, plus a new game!
about 1 year ago – Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 09:53:11 AM

Can you believe it's been four years (almost to the day) since we pulled off our first heist, and successfully crowdfunded Stealing the Throne? Next year will be the game's fifth birthday, and you know what that means...

Current status

• Please take a short birthday survey. Help me decide how we should celebrate Stealing the Throne turning five in 2026! There are a few more details below, but you can jump straight to the survey at this link.
• Against Time and Death, my new ZineQuest game, is Kickstarting right now! Read on for a pitch and some preview art, or head straight over and join the multiversal time war!

A short Stealing the Throne survey

Next year Stealing the Throne will be five years old. That feels like a milestone, and I would very much like to celebrate it. The question is, how? 

I've got some ideas, but I'd love to hear yours! I've put together a short survey, which you can take by clicking the banner below, or following this link. It's very quick to fill out - a couple of minutes at most. Please give it a look, and share it with your heist crews. Responses are, of course, completely anonymous.

As birthday celebration plans evolve, I'll be sure to keep you in the loop!

(You might be wondering why I'm asking you about 2026 in February 2025. The truth is, my game design time is limited - much more so than I would like - and so I need to make sure I plan ahead!)

Against Time and Death crowdfunding now!

Meanwhile, I'm Kickstarting a new game for ZineQuest 2025, and I think you might like it!

It's called Against Time and Death, a duet roleplaying game about the forbidden relationship between two elite operatives on opposite sides of a multiversal time war. It has the same epic scope as Stealing the Throne, giving you the freedom to explore whatever weird alternate histories or strange futures you can imagine, married with the high-stakes intimacy of a secret relationship across enemy lines.

The game is inspired by the award-winning sci-fi novella This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. As with Stealing the Throne, I've put together a crack team for the zine, including Melody Watson returning as editor, and playsets contributed by several powerhouse game design duos: the Storybrewers (Good Society: the Jane Austen RPG), the Brain Trust (This Discord Has Ghosts in It), A Couple of Drakes (Court of Blades), and a mysterious fourth pair still to be announced.

Also! Check out this amazing art that the brilliant Paul Tomes is making for the zine:

This game has been so much fun in playtests, and I can't wait to share it. If it sounds like your idea of fun (and why wouldn't it?!), come and join the time war here!

Next steps

• Fill out the Stealing the Throne 5th birthday survey! Share it with the rest of your heist crew, and have your say about how we celebrate five years of epic giant robot heists.
• Check out the Against Time and Death Kickstarter! I'd love to have you on board for another adventure. The campaign ends February 25th, so sign up it while you can!
• Reach out! I still love to hear about your heists - it's always a good day when someone steals a Throne. Happy to hear from you at Bluesky or on the ickbat games discord.

Right, time to go!

- Nick

Chiron's Doom: coming to Kickstarter very soon!
about 3 years ago – Tue, Feb 07, 2023 at 09:00:03 AM

Hello Stealing the Throne crew! I think we've laid low long enough, don't you? Time for a new adventure!

Just the facts

• My new zine, CHIRON'S DOOM, launches on Kickstarter February 14th! CHIRON'S DOOM is a game about an ill-fated expedition to unravel the secrets of a mysterious monument. Designed for solo journalling, it works equally well with up to 3 players. If that sounds like your kind of adventure, follow this link and click the 'Notify me on launch' button: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ickbat/chirons-doom.

Tell me more!

I'd love to!

CHIRON'S DOOM tells the story of three strange explorers driven to test themselves against an ominous monument. This monument has defied all previous attempts at understanding, but surely your expedition will be different? Inspirations include Diamond Dogs by Alastair Reynolds, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, and the movies Cube, Sunshine, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Play revolves around your expedition deck, built from an ordinary deck of playing cards. Each day of the expedition, you will draw a card and respond to the corresponding prompt (either in your journal, or by playing out a scene). When you begin, the expedition deck consists mostly of cards representing the monument's secrets. But as the expedition goes on, it begins to unravel. When that happens, you shuffle in disaster decks, diluting the pool of secrets and making it that much harder to reach your goal.

CHIRON'S DOOM was one of the first games I released on itch.io, back in June 2020. Since then, it has been downloaded and played by a whole bunch of people (there are some very cool actual play reports dotted around the internet, if you go looking!). You may even own the original edition already, if you supported the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality or Solo But Not Alone charity bundles. 

My plan for this Kickstarter is to get CHIRON'S DOOM in print, and use the opportunity for a complete revamp:

• Gorgeous new art!
• New and improved layout!
• A thorough rules update! 

The goal is to make the game as evocative, dramatic, and easy to play as possible, and fuel a whole new wave of doomed expeditions to uncover the monument's secrets.

Three Stealing the Throne links

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few of the links between CHIRON'S DOOM and Stealing the Throne:

• Two of your favourite Stealing the Throne artists are returning to illustrate ominous monuments. Galen Pejeau (Tensword) has already provided the gorgeous cover you see above, and Sam Tung (Belly Laugh) has something darkly fantastical under construction. Editor-in-chief Melody Watson is also rejoining the expedition. We'll be joined by two more brilliant artists, whose names I am very excited to share when the campaign launches!
• One of your explorers could be the last survivor of a heist gone bad. Your expedition consists of three driven explorers, chosen randomly or otherwise. One of them could be a thief who had a bad encounter with a giant, thousand-year-old mech...
• And then there's this, taken from the galaxy map you all funded as a Stealing the Throne stretch goal:  

(CHIRON'S DOOM is built for play in three specific genres: dark fantasy, gothic sci-fi, or science fantasy. The past, present, and future of the Stealing the Throne verse?)

Join the expedition on February 14th!

• Here's that link again: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ickbat/chirons-doom. Spread it far and wide, and I hope to see you there next week! 

- Nick

It's a wrap!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 01, 2022 at 12:39:26 PM

Well, here we are, at the end of the Stealing the Throne campaign. The heist went off without a hitch, we've made our action-packed getaway, and all that's left is to meet up at the rendezvous point and celebrate our success!

Action replay

Let's take a whirlwind tour through the highlights of the campaign, beginning with the gif that started it all... 

THINGS WE MADE

• Stealing the Throne! A game of action-packed giant robot heists, with fully-illustrated playsets for four iconic Thrones. The zine is 40 pages long (16 pages longer than planned), and the first ickbat games product to make it into print. It shipped in December 2021, right on time!
• Two bonus Ancient Hero playsets. The mighty Alpha Regalis and the sinister Solemn Antic, funded and released to the public thanks to the generosity of our two Ancient Hero backers.
• A massive galaxy map. The Milky Way a thousand years from now, filled with little story seeds and easter eggs.
• Rules for solo heists. Stealing the Throne: Daring Thief Edition - the familiar heist engine tweaked to tell the story of a drive thief attempting an impossible heist alone.

All of this was made possible through your generous support, and I can't thank you enough. If you missed any of these rewards, be sure to check your BackerKit downloads and the game's itch.io page!

PEOPLE WE PAID

• Galen Pejeau. The cover, the interior art, the Throne icons, and Tensword. It's fair to say that Galen set the tone for the whole zine, and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. It wouldn't be the same zine without him.
• Si Sweetman. The Burning Soldier, the first of the Throne illustrations to land in my inbox. I can't imagine a more perfect illustration of a Throne burdened by a thousand years of endless war.
• Sam Tung. Belly Laugh, the Throne most likely to appear in an epic Saturday morning space opera cartoon. The dynamism in Sam's illustration blows me away every time.
• Brandish Gilhelm. Justice Above, imperious and more than a little mysterious. Every time I look at Brandish's illustration, I imagine it sprouting its Photon Wings and taking to the skies.

• Melody Watson. Editor extraordinaire, Melody's work made my words immeasurably clearer, cleaner, and easier to read. Editors are heroes, and Melody is one of the best.
• Jane Hermiston. I'm an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to layout, so Jane's insightful consultancy was crucial for keeping me on the right path.
• Lone Archivist. The newest member of the crew, Lone created a massive galaxy map in his own instantly-recognisable style that also managed to perfectly capture the feel of Stealing the Throne. 
• And me!

Honestly, I think paying talented people to ply their respective trades was my favourite part of this whole process. I'm so glad I was able to work with each and every one of them, and hope I get a chance to do so again in the future.

EXCELLENT THINGS THAT ALSO HAPPENED

• A bunch of brilliant folks wrote hacks, playsets, and supplements in the Stealing the... game jam. You should definitely check all of them out! And if you hack the game in the future, do let me know - the jam is always open to new entries.
• We stole Tensword on the Black Armada Tales podcast. 
• The Friends at the Table (!) crew stole a literal divine (!) in the Road to PALISADE, the build-up to their next campaign.
• The Alexandrian posted a very generous review of the game.
• Stealing the Throne was nominated for an Indie Groundbreaker Award!

This was my first crowdfunding campaign, and it's been one heck of a ride. I'm really proud of what we made, and (as ever) so grateful for your support on this heist. 

5 stars!

Here's the bit where I ask you a favour: if you like the game, could you pop over to the Stealing the Throne itch.io page and give it a five star rating? We're currently sitting on 59 of them, and I would dearly love to get it up to 75.

If you're feeling especially generous, why not drop a comment on the page as well? You could say a few words about a cool heist you executed with your crack crew of Throne thieves, talk a bit about how excellent the Throne art is, throw out some inspiration for other players, really anything at all! Ratings and comments help make the game more discoverable for other crews.

If you're interested in playing or talking about the game on a podcast or stream, or on your website or blog, please do reach out. I'm always keen to talk about heists, game design, and playing games, and I'd love to help facilitate games of Stealing the Throne any way I can.

And lastly, play the game! Steal giant robots! Do your bit to take on tyrants and demagogues the galaxy over!

What's next, and staying in touch

This will be the last regular update for this campaign. I may pop in again occasionally to let you know about future crowdfunding campaigns or big releases, but here are a few other ways you can stay in touch with what I'm doing:

• Subscribe to my shiny new newsletter! I'm still figuring out the details, but you can probably expect irregular thoughts on game design, what I'm currently working on, perhaps the return of #5ttrpgs mini-reviews. Likely to be no more often than monthly (and probably less frequent than that), so I won't be cluttering up your inbox!
• Follow me on twitter.
• Join the ickbat games discord - we've got a friendly little community of game designers, heist masterminds, and mecha lovers over there.
• Subscribe to Black Armada Tales, a podcast where I play a bunch of rad indie games with a bunch of rad indie people.
• Follow me on itch.io so you always know when I release something new.

If you'd like a sneak preview of what I'm currently working on, here we go:

• Speed Daemons. A Forged in the Dark game of illegal mech racing, set in a crumbling domed city on an alien world. Players form a team and race their mech in high-octane duels to release the relentless pressures of everyday life. But racing isn’t just a way to blow off steam - it’s a chance to reshape lives dominated by the oppression of the Three Houses. It's The Matrix meets Fast & the Furious with mechs!

• The Machinery of Peace. A game of politicking space admirals defending their galaxy-spanning empire from a mysterious outside force. The gimmick: each player's fleet assets are represented by their own unique DnD dice set. This is a hopefully a light palette cleanser for me after Stealing the Throne, heavily inspired by Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire series, and Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace.  

All of this may change - the benefits of being an independent game designer! - but those two are top of my list at the moment.

So where did the money go?

If you're interested in the final breakdown of the campaign budget, this last section is for you. Go on, I know you all love a pie chart.

INCOME

• £4,206 - Kickstarter funds. That's all of you!
• £2,367 - BackerKit funds. Mostly postage fees for Kickstarter backers, although the BackerKit preorder page did generate a few additional sales. It's interesting to note that if I had included postage in the Kickstarter campaign itself, the pledge total would've looked more like £6,400.

EXPENSES

• £598 - Platform fees. Kickstarter and BackerKit fees. 
• £1,523 - Art. Galen's cover, interior art, and icons; Thrones from Galen, Si, Sam, and Brandish; Lone Archivist's galaxy map. The second biggest expense, and worth every penny. So much fabulous art from so many talented folks.
• £243 - Editing. Melody's sterling work hammering my text into shape.
• £529 - Printing. This covered proofs, all of the zines for you lovely print backers, contributor's copies, and a stock that will (hopefully) be finding its way into online retailers soon!
• £419 - Shipping supplies. I used a portion of the Kickstarter funds to buy a thermal label printer, and let me tell you: it was an excellent decision. This also covered envelopes, plastic sleeves, and labels. 
• £1,922 - Postage. Surprising no one, postage was the single largest expense for the project.
• £757 - Taxes. This is certainly over-estimated, for a bunch of boring reasons, but I won't have a clearer figure until I've forced myself to do this year's tax return!

"PROFIT"

• £583 - what's left! This technically covers my writing, layout, and project management... but I prefer to think of it as an investment in my continuing game design adventure! I'm honestly really pleased with this result, particularly for my first Kickstarter - I've shipped a game I'm really proud of to 583 amazing backers, I've built up some inventory, and there's a little bit of money left over to invest into the next thing. Yep, happy with that! 

So, that's a wrap. I couldn't have hoped for a better crew on this epic heist - thank you all, and I hope I'll see you again on the next job!

- Nick

It's time: the solo edition is live!
over 3 years ago – Fri, Sep 02, 2022 at 04:37:57 PM

Do you think you have the extraordinary daring necessary to single-handedly steal a giant thousand-year-old robot? Then this is the update for you!  

Just the facts

• Stealing the Throne: Daring Thief Edition is now available in BackerKit. This is the final stretch goal of the campaign, containing all the rules you need to play Stealing the Throne solo. You should receive an email notification from BackerKit shortly, but if you log into your BackerKit account you'll find the files in your Digital Downloads. If you've lost your BackerKit survey you can find it again by following this link: https://stealing-the-throne.backerkit.com/.

Stealing the Throne: Daring Thief Edition

Here it is, the solo version of Stealing the Throne! Big image, because I'm honestly pretty proud of it:

(That gorgeous Throne icon is courtesy as always of Galen Pejeau, and the background makes use of elements from the galaxy map stretch goal by Lone Archivist. A pair of extremely talented folks, I think you'll agree!)

The Daring Thief Edition takes the familiar heist rhythms and structures of Stealing the Throne and adds some additional twists to reflect the game's focus on a lone, driven thief. It uses the existing Throne playsets as oracles, to provide rich inspiration for each phase of the game. The result is - hopefully! - an engine for action-packed solo heists with all the tension and drama of the original game. 

You should shortly receive an email from BackerKit with the subject line "New Digital Content for Stealing the Throne on BackerKit". That email contains a link to the final Stealing the Throne: Daring Thief Edition rulebook. If you don't receive an email from BackerKit, here are a few things you can try:

• Check your spam folder.
• Recover your BackerKit survey by following this link.
• Log into BackerKit directly, and go to your Digital Downloads to find the files.
• If nothing else works, drop me a message!

In due course, I'll be releasing the Daring Thief Edition to the public on itch.io. For now, though, you get first dibs on stealing yourselves a giant robot! Thank you all so much for helping to make this stretch goal happen.

If you do try your hand at a solo heist, I'd love to hear about it! Spread the word online, and please do link me in. As the game designer Chris Bissette wisely said: 

What's next?

• One last update, and then a clean getaway. I'm currently planning a final monthly update for September 23rd, summarising the results of this whole adventure and thanking you all for your support. I'll see you then!  

- Nick

August Update #2 (almost there!)
over 3 years ago – Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 03:57:34 PM

It's August and the weather in the UK is perfect for Sunday afternoon giant mecha heists in the garden. Good thing the solo rules are almost ready to go!

Current Status

• Solo rules now in layout. This is it, folks - the final stretch goal! And it's very, very close to finished. Some really fun playtests helped me pin down the last few details, so I've moved on to layout. With luck, Stealing the Throne: Daring Thief Edition will arrive in your inbox in a few weeks!

Tonight's solo heist: Alpha Regalis!

Just before I settled down to write this update, I tried to steal myself a Throne. I set my sights on the mightiest of targets: the shining Alpha Regalis, the First Throne... 

... and here's the moment when Cardinal-Engineer Scipio's daring getaway was foiled!

I was so close! Just one more scene in the getaway montage and I would've been free and clear. It'd been a tough escape already - I thought I'd pulled off a real coup when I managed to cultivate the ruler of House Dimidicus as an asset during the heist, but both he and Weapon-Saint Yeva betrayed me during the getaway. I did manage to overcome them both, but in the end my king of clubs wasn't enough to beat that king of hearts*.

Hearts are special in the Daring Thief Edition: they indicate that your foil is in the scene. Foils are ambiguous characters with whom you have an emotionally-charged history: sometimes they're an ally, sometimes they're an enemy, and you never know which until the moment comes. This appearance was perfectly timed: my foil for this game was Gaia, who was torn between her love for me and her love for the Imperator Dimidicus. Despite all our history, when the moment came she sided with the Imperator and all my plans came to nought!

Hopefully this gives you a bit of a taste for the Daring Thief Edition. A lone thief against impossible odds, with all the stunning betrayals and epic action of the original multiplayer game. Coming soon!

* The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that this is different to the original game: in the Daring Thief Edition, ties always go to the Throne. It's a tough gig, trying to steal a giant robot on your own.

Next Steps

• Finish laying out the solo rules. The template from the original zine is a huge help here, so I'm expecting this to be a relatively smooth process. Still, I want to make sure the final PDF is in the best shape possible!
• Wrap this heist up! All being well, I'll send a mid-month update releasing the final stretch goal. Then there'll likely be one final update in a month's time, with a wash-up on this whole wild, amazing campaign.

This could be you soon, making your getaway...

- Nick