Another FUG Kickstarter, Misspent Youth, Drops This Month, and a Gangs Fulfillment Update
about 2 years ago – Mon, Apr 04, 2022 at 08:56:20 PM

Hey Friend-Os,

We obviously thought we'd have Gangs fulfilled before we launched the next FUG Kickstarter, but my team of optimists have decided we are so close to fulfillment, and this project is so different (and frankly has less moving parts and manufacturing) that today we’re happy to announce the Kickstarter launch of the renewed Misspent Youth Role Playing Game. We aquired the rights and inventory of the beloved punk RPG Misspent Youth from Robert Bohl, and he is sticking around a bit to help us launch and write a bit for the new book as well.

Some of you may be familiar with Misspent Youth already. It is a narrative RPG about friendship, standing up to bullies, and changing the world. It's for 4 to 6 people, one of whom plays The Authority, the force that’s making the world a crappy place to live. The others all play Youthful Offenders (YOs), the only ones who can redeem the future from the pack of douches trying to frag it up.

Fall In Love, Not In Line!

For this new launch, we are taking the game in the direction of invitation – inviting traditional role players, and those with no RPG experience at all, to ease into a narrative RPG and offering rebellious catharsis at the same time! Misspent Youth: Fall In Love, Not In Line is kickstarting April 19, and you can keep notified here:  https://remalternis.com/misspentyouth or by joining our mailing list: https://1.shortstack.com/7j2SJ9, and we'll probably mention it here when we go live as well.

This new book focuses on inclusion and invitation. Sometimes it takes players a bit to get comfortable with narrative gaming, so we’re removing the most common roadblocks to imagination, adding rules to combat analysis paralysis, and innovating tools to get everyone having fun fast, whether they’re traditional RPG gamers or complete newbies. It’s like quickstart rules for narrative rebellion, except there’s nothing halfway, cheap, or missing about these quickstart rules. They get everyone into roleplaying revolution seamlessly with maximum fun.

We hope you dig our vibe and  back the Kickstarter that launches on April 19. 

Gangs of the Undercity Fulfillment

Update time!!!! All of the remaining models have been cleaned, modified, sized, and sent to the manufacturer. The process from here is just negotiating the price and getting things rolling. I assume that will be about a week or two but... see every previous update to review exactly how little insight I have as to how long things actually take. But I guarantee as soon as I have any new update, I will be back! 

Subversion

really quick, since there was at least one question about it: Misspent Youth is NOT the Gangs of the Undercity related RPG. Misspent Youth is a narrative RPG, while Subversion, the RPG set in Neo Babylon, will be a more traditional RPG with character advancement, lots of living campaign play, setting books and adventures released, etc. So stay tuned if that is your speed! If narrative RPGs aren't your speed, that's ok. We'd love for you to support Misspent Youth anyway, because that will just keep the liquid monies flowing and make the rest of our game development far easier. 

Thanks again, you lovely lot!

Opti, FUGmaster

Update Time Is Here Again!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 05:45:43 AM

Hey friends!

It is good to be back with things to report. 

First the good (there isn't really any bad, just not AS good).

Cookbook!

The Gangs of the Undercity Cookbook, Finding Home Under The World, is finally done. The PDFs have been added to your downloads page on Backerkit, so head there and grab it, and let us know what you think. This represents a few neat things. First, our own J DiPippa has his opening foray into the cookbook business, and believe me, he knows his food. He, along with a few lighter contributors, made all the recipes and J took all the pics himself after making the foods. 

But second, it represents Opti learning InDesign, a program to arrange and publish PDFs and books. While that may not seem significant, it just means things get cheaper and bit quicker moving ahead. Opti has no plans to go full layout any time soon (we'll still use Double Proficiency for the good stuff), but it does make small things like updates, errata, and smaller projects like this one a lot easier to manage. 

So check your backerkit downloads (same place where you would have got the Rulebook PDF) and check it out.  For those who want a physical copy, you can grab one here once the files are processed. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/389613/Finding-Home-Beneath-The-World-An-Undercity-Cookbook . Feel free to share the link, too. We are only charging $3.99 for it in PDF as it was a labor of love and who knows, maybe there is a market for RPG food books?

Misspent Youth: Fall In Love, Not In Line

Misspent Youth is a property we acquired from Robert Bohl Games when Rob got out of the business. After a lot of chatting, we share the same revolutionary ethos and he felt FUG would be a great home for his breakout RPG. Misspent Youth hit the scene about 10 years ago, and got great acclaim (Wil Wheaton even played it on his stream and raved about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPQ9Jj_IGOo). But its time to get Misspent Youth back out there. To that end, we are relaunching Misspent Youth with a new book: Misspent Youth: Fall In Love, Not In Line. It is not a reprint, nor is it just a supplement. It is a reimagining of the original book, with an eye towards roping in more traditional RPG folks and those who have never played an RPG before in their lives. Everything has been geared up to make it accessible, with small updates here and there to keep things current, and get it out to a wider audience! Since y'all have supported us thus far, we'd absolutely love if you supported us again. This kickstarter campaign will be MUCH different than the one for Gangs of the Undercity. It will not have physical rewards (beyond the book itself), and the stretch goals will be much more restrained. Add to that all the manufacturing, layout, pricing, editing, writing, and business lessons we learned from last time, this one is going to be much smoother on the fulfillment side than GotU was/is (more on that below). 

At any rate, if you love the idea of a narrative RPG that scratches the itch for rebellion (while waiting for the Subversion RPG set in the GotU universe), do us a favor and click the button to receive updates about it (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fraggingunicorns/misspent-youth-fall-in-love-not-in-line)

Gangs of the Undercity Minis Fulfillment Update

Probably the most important update for everyone is this. Our production partners, Fortress Figures, have let us know the prices of metals and their ability to move ahead with our orders have made our continuing partnership untenable. This means we are having to pivot to another means of production. Which I think will end up being ok. Here's why. We have partners both in the EU and in the US who specialize in resin minis and we've seen the quality of the minis with our own eyes. Based on you're feedback from the last update, and the quality and ease of shipping we've seen, we feel comfortable moving forward with fulfilling the remaining minis in resin. Some of you have expressed preference for resin in the first place, while others are a bit disappointed, but understand the decision. I'm glad we got our Two Player Box out in metal, but the larger minis and other gangs are just a better fit in resin at this moment in time. The good news is the new production partners are much easier to communicate with and the ability to put minis into a queue for fulfillment and even purchase on our websites are much easier for us to accomplish on our time, so we likely will not have to wait so long in the future. Expect to hear more updates about minis very soon. 

Ok, that's it. Thanks for the continuing support. We are hard at work making sure Gangs gets more love, in the form of tournament packs, additional characters, more sculpts, and more narrative goodness. Another side of the FUG squad is working on Misspent Youth, while the third leg of of our tripod is making sure our Subversion RPG is as good as its gonna get before we start sending it out to folks for alpha playtests. We're still hoping for a KS launch for that later this year, but we'll see. We want it to be right. 

Thanks everyone!

 - Opti

Small production update, FUG news, future projects
about 2 years ago – Wed, Feb 02, 2022 at 06:35:04 PM

Hello friends in both high and low places!

Shipped Games

Just a few things to deliver today, but the first is that if you have not received either your package or a tracking number by now, that is a problem. Unless you are one of the handfuls of people who had special cases (asked us NOT to ship right away), you should have your two player box set either in hand or know it is on the way. If this isn't the case, please reach out. 

Manufacturing Update

Regarding our stretch goal minis, due to the increased cost of metals, shipping, and other factors on Fortress Figures' side, we are likely going to finish the ten or so models we have on deck with them, and likely move to resin for the remainder of the minis that haven't been cast yet. I will update more when I know exactly what we are looking at. I know some of you will like this, and some won't, but it has simply become unwinnable for us to keep the same pace and cost at this point. As I said, I will keep the updates coming. 

FUG Partnership

One thing that has become increasingly clear to me throughout this process of creating a company, making a game, kickstarting, and fulfilling, is that there are some things I love, some things I hate, some things I am good at, and some things I am not. I also learned that I am at my best when I am doing the things I love and am good at. So we are outsourcing the things we hate and we are bad at. To that end, we are excited to announce our new partnership with Rem Alternis Productions, who will be providing FUG with our admin work, supply chain communications, social media, and Kickstarter facilitation. They will also likely be hosting actual plays/twitch streams of our upcoming RPGs! Like a good partner, FUG is going to be supporting REM in the design, launch, and productions of upcoming game launches. 

TL:DR - Rem is gonna do our admin/outreach stuff, FUG is gonna help REM with games stuff. 

Upcoming Projects

Coming very soon is our Misspent Youth relaunch. We are updating, reformatting, and adding content to Robert Bohl's Misspent Youth: The Game of Teenage Rebellion a F*cked Up Future! I'll give more specifics about what we're changing and what we're adding very soon, but this will be launched as a Kickstarter hopefully in the next few months. This will be a much smaller Kickstarter than Gangs, at least as far as deliverables, so it isn't going to interfere with anything we've got going on with Gangs and fulfilling the stretch goals. But it is exciting to relaunch Robert Bohl's masterpiece to a new group 10 years after it was made, and Robert is gonna be writing the forward! This will have the distinct FUG imprint and feel to it, while keeping the punk and rebel nature it always had. 

And down the road from that (I am still hoping for maybe a 2022 Kickstarter, but we'll see) is our Role-Playing game set in the Gangs of the Undercity world, Subversion. We've got a pretty nice alpha playtest going, and we are working out the kinks constantly. We think you are going to LOVE IT. Because we do. At its heart, it is a game of subverting the status quo and making your mark in the cyberpunk/fantasy world of Neo Babylon. It has all the stuff you love about fantasy, cyberpunk, and rpgs. Whereas Misspent Youth is a narrative game with a beginning, middle, and end, Subversion will be one of those games where the living universe will grow alongside your characters, whose rebellious activity will build up, or destroy, the communities they rely on. I can't wait to share more!

That's it for today. Thanks for all the support! More news when it's available!

 - Opti

Worldwide Shipping Update
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 11:47:53 AM

Hey folks!

I got an update from our fulfillment company (and apparently, at least some of you have as well) that those overseas should have their packages soon. They also were posting on their social medias about it: 

It says EU and UK backers, but they also should have sent out everything else too (Asia, Oceana, South America, Africa) as well. 

I hope you all get them very soon and I cannot possibly thank you enough for your patience during these odd and trying times. You're the best. 

I have some other Fragging Unicorns updates (Manufacturing/fulfillment for stretch goals, FUG business stuff, new games, future kickstarter campaigns, what's ahead for GotU), but I wanted to get the fulfillment bugbear off our backs so we could focus on the good stuff. I'll see y'all in a bit with more updates!

Thanks!

Opti

Worldwide Shipping Update
over 2 years ago – Sun, Jan 09, 2022 at 07:05:01 PM

Hey folks, 

I've reached out to lots of you who have had the same question about where your game is, since we announced last month that they had been shipped. 

The answer is that they are in a queue at Gamesquest fulfillment in Bordon, UK. Covid and the holidays have been doing what they do and I apologize but I can't get them to you quicker. Everything has been done on our end, and we are just waiting for things to happen on their side. I am told that literally any day, posts should be away and tracking numbers should be sent. 

I will make another post as soon as I receive word that Gamesquest has done their thing. 

Apologies for not making a post about this earlier, but I kept hoping that I'd hear from them before I made the next update. Another thing to learn from on our end. 

I want to take time to thank all of you for the incredible patience you've had with us. I know a lot of this was a learning curve on our side and a whole lot of it has been out of our control, but you all have been so encouraging. Thank you very much. Sincerely. 

 - opti