Post Chupacabra Con 2025

Note: This post originally appeared on my Patreon right after the con.

ChupacabraCon 2025 is in the books. It was a great con! Here are a few things I learned along the way, my post con thoughts, and a few thoughts on things to come here soon. Since it is Wednesday and the con ended Sunday, I'm going to assume I have dodged any major con crud.

Learnings

Hex Crawl rules need tightening a little bit. They are working pretty well, but it turned into a LOT of rolling for not a lot of gain at one point. I tightened it up a bit as the three different con sessions went on, and by the final game I had started to dial them in a bit better and the game seemed to flow better for it.

Emergent gameplay is still a great tool for this game, challenges that manifest that you did not plan, encounters bringing excitement, etc.... however, what I did not have happen at Chaosium Con that did happen at Chupacabra Con was one session began to drag. I made the cardinal GM mistake of not putting my thumb on the scale and letting the encounter and expedition rolls just happen and when emergent gameplay DIDN'T happen I did not step in as the GM and fix it. That's on me. So often at Chaosium Con the game sort of fixed itself with encounters that I did not need to, and I just let myself get complacent, because so often the game's systems stepped in to do that heavy lifting for me. Learned lesson: You still gotta GM, bro.

Bolster Hope as an action needs work. It came about post Chaosium Con as a way to give hope to another player, but in practice it means you have to have certain skills to do it, and not all characters will have Persuade or Fast Talk. Fundamentally though, this game is about a group of heroes that are bringing hope back to a blighted land. Shouldn't all heroes be able to do this? (hint: yes) Shouldn't they be able to do this in other ways? Shouldn't heroes be able to bolster the hope of villagers or allies? (hint: yes and yes). Going forward this is going to be a FREE Power that all heroes get starting at CHA+POW+10. That means that most heroes will have some ability in it. Additionally, if you want to, you can spend skill ups in character generation on it.

Chupacabra Con Final Thoughts

If you are in central Texas, you really need to come to this con. I think attendance this year was like 700 people. Which does not sound like a lot, but man the floor was hopping. I had a great time. 'Of Hearth & the Harrowing' was really well received, and I've already got ideas for next years con game!

'Of Hearth & the Harrowing' Next Steps

Cover roughs for the main book are underway! I'll be sharing those as they firm up a bit, probably do a whole post on the cover and steps it takes to get there. So excited to share with everyone when we get there.

The rulebook is going into another round of edits as I await art. There are pieces I still want to write and test that won't grow the wait for the book (since the long pole here is definitely the art).

I'll then be starting on content drops soon. Mostly focused around groups of hexes with their descriptions, village descriptions, maps for the above, and adventure sites. These will eventually end up as separate SKUs from the rule book, but I can start putting them out while the main book art is in progress.

Art Progress

Currently the rulebook is slated to 128 pages or so. Its sitting at 60 pieces of art, but that is a little high for that many pages. Now that includes all small spot are pieces and larger pieces, but of those, nine are complete. Right now I'm relying on one artist for the art and she is only so fast. The larger the Patreon grows the more I can afford to split the art work up and get more of it done faster.

Current art status = 9/60 completed or 15%.

I should do one of those thermometer things to show progress. Heh.