Hey, remember tariffs? In what feels like twenty years ago but was in fact February 2025, the US announced tariffs on basically everyone, which resulted in everyone basically doing tariffs back. Since then there have been so many rumors and deals and changes and pauses and unpauses that no one knows what the hell is going on anymore, including businesses and most of the countries involved. I actually talked quite a bit about the impact of all this with the Extra Credits crew back in April, but we’ve reached the point where creators are trying to experiment with new ways to make things while minimizing the impact on them.
So, hey, in case you haven’t heard, I’m doing a Realms of Pugmire crowdfunder right now! Let me do my promotional part first. Ahem.
Welcome to Pugmire Unleashed: A Player’s Guide. It’s primarily a book for players who are interested in new options for their games. Inside you’ll find not only more options for dog player characters, more advice on how to play dogs, and more information about dog communities beyond the kingdom of Pugmire. You’ll also find more species to play: badgers, birds, lagomorphs, and reptiles.
If you have a yen to be a nautical adventurer, there are rules for sailing and ships presented within, as well as a more detailed writeup of the main coastal city, Waterdog Port. For dogs looking to use strange and exotic weaponry, there are rules for gunpowder weapons, as well as the associated syndrome of Gunpower Panic that goes with using them. Combined with loads of new spells and backgrounds, there’s something for every player in these pages.
We haven’t forgotten the hard-working Guide in all this. Within in this book, we present not only some new enemies for player characters to thwart or befriend, but also three adventures that present a loose chronicle using much of the material presented in this book (and Realms of Pugmire). Players should avoid reading the back of the book, in case of spoilers, but most of the book is here for you to enjoy.
There you go. If you like that idea, stop reading and go check out the BackerKit campaign. Then come back, and I’ll continue.
The past couple of crowdfunders I’ve done for this edition of Pugmire have been to fund print runs we could then distribute and sell in game shops. But since the US announced their plans, several things have conspired to make this difficult:
My publisher, who is based in the United States, cannot find a printer within the US that can print my books to the quality and specifications we need
Printers outside the US have to ship to the US in order to get to distributor warehouses, which means they’ll be subject to tariffs
Thus, backers would have to pay tariffs regardless, either as a surcharge to the books in distribution within the US, or when the book crosses the border back out of the US
The price of everything else is also going up for other reasons as well as tariffs, so people’s willingness to pay extra for silly games about dogs is lower than ever
So when the tariffs were announced, Rich Thomas (owner and creative director of Onyx Path Publishing) asked me “is there a way to do a crowdfunder that doesn’t involve tariffs?” He already had some ideas, I kicked in a few more, and the whole team bounced them around for a while until we landed on this: a purely digital campaign where all physical products would be done as print-on-demand, instead of a traditional print run. Thus, physical stuff can be printed and shipped either within the US or completely outside the US, thus not crossing a US border.
I’ll be honest: living in the UK right now, I check every crowdfunder and online storefront now to see if they’re US-based, and if they are, I do one of three things: check to see if they’re going to pass the tariffs on to me, look for a European alternative, or just don’t get it. So I’m deeply aware of how tricky this is. This campaign is an experiment to see how that would look.
The upside is that, since we don’t have to cover the cost of a print run, the goal can be set a lot lower, because that’s a huge financial burden removed. The downside is that, well, a lot of people (myself included) treat crowdfunding like a preorder and just want to push a button, charge their card, and have a book show up at their house at some point in the next couple of years. So the options for companies ultimately boil down to making things more expensive, or changing that experience.
I admit, I had hoped by now things would have gotten a bit better, or at least stabilized, but none of that appears to be true and most folks have moved on to the latest trending crisis. It’s still tricky to figure out the right move in all this. Which means it’s all the more important to back experiments that try hard to reduce the costs for you, if you’re able.
Very much a mixed message, I admit: yay more Pugmire, but holy shit tariffs! Let’s see if I have some more generally positive news….
News
Red Moon Roleplaying’s campaign of Masks of Nyarlethotep continues! Here are episodes nine through twelve:
Also, Humble Bundle has a huge “Roll Big or Go Home” RPG megabundle! Over fifty titles are presented to raise money for Extra Life. Games I’ve worked on or contributed to include Transformers RPG Core Rulebook, Cyberpunk RED Core, They Came from Beneath the Sea!, G.I. Joe RPG Core Rulebook, Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook, Power Rangers RPG Core Rulebook, and Scion Second Edition Book One: Origin.
Finally, my friend at Darkheart Games is putting together a charity game jam! It’s the Cozy Cat Game Jam, and there’s still another 22 days to get your submission in, with all proceeds going to benefit Ohio-based cat rescue Alley Cats & Aristocats. Here’s a list of what they’re looking for:
TTRPGs with a feline theme. We want to emphasize light-hearted, cozy, and family-friendly games (TTRPG comfort food). Cute! Silly! Fun! But we're into spooky, too.
Don't let "family-friendly" feel too limiting: think mischief over violence, spooky over horror, tender over spicy and you'll have the vibe we're going for.
We want games we'd feel comfortable printing out and sharing at the shelter. Your game does not have to be print-ready, but if we raise enough, we may reach out to contributors to see if they'd be ok with having their games available for free at the shelter. Lots of folks come to visit the adoptable cats, especially with their kids, and having some fun games around would be spectacular!
We encourage games written expressly for the bundle, but also welcome already published works that fit the theme. We like solo games, journaling games, one-shots, campaign settings, loot tables -- whatever you're inspired to create, as long as there's cats.
My Media
On the one hand, when I’m in the middle of crowdfunding a book that allows you to play, among other things, a rabbit warrior with a sword, of course I’m going to talk about Usagi Yojimbo. But I’m also going to talk about it because it’s an amazing comic that I would babble excitedly about even if it didn’t happen to coincide nicely with my promotional plans.
To summarize, Usagi Yojimbo is a long-running black-and-white (now colour) American comic book featuring a masterless samurai rabbit in sixteenth-century Japan. It’s good. There is no summary of the comic that expresses how good it is, because it sounds daft, like a cash-in. But it’s so, so much more. I’ll try to explain.
First, the writer/artist, Stan Sakai, does his homework. The book is incredibly well-researched, and he only deviates from history when the story requires it (like, you know, the fact that all of the characters are anthropomorphic animals). It doesn’t make you feel like you’re reading a dry history book, though. One story is all about how seaweed farming works, and it lasts for several issues, yet it’s actually a fantastic story about how the rich manipulate the poor.
In fact, that’s another point: the average quality of each story is astounding. It’s almost boring to talk about the series because the best stories are sublime, and the worst stories are merely quite good. I read and love a lot of comics, and I’ve learned to accept that long comic runs will have the occasional bad issue, bad arc, or even bad year or two. Usagi doesn’t. Aside from watching Sakai’s art evolve over the years, a story from early in his run could stand next to one published last month.
Sakai also gets comics in a way few people do these days. Despite the comic going through three or four publishers (depending on how you count them), the story all connects together. Further, because it’s creator-owned and beloved, he’s even negotiated his rights so that when the book changes publishers, the trade paperbacks are still numbered the same way. When you go from, say, Fantagraphics Volume 7, the next volume at Dark Horse is Volume 8.
And yet, you can pick up just about any volume of Usagi and understand what’s going on, because Sakai also understands that every comic is someone’s first, and makes sure people aren’t lost unless it’s a big epic story or something. Occasionally, you get Usagi explaining something to a companion that he explained last issue, or if you’re binging massive volumes you’ll get someone recapping something that happened earlier in the book, but it’s minor, and most of the time you don’t even notice it. Sakai tries to make each recap also add to the current story, so new and invested readers both get something out of the moment.
Plus, the art is breathtaking. It’s a rare all-ages comic that balances action, darkness, humour, and drama in a way that neither kids nor adults feel talked-down to. Sakai has this charming quirk of showing someone has died by drawing a little skull next to them, but he uses this technique to dramatic effect just as much as he does as a way to express “this character has died” to a younger audience. Plus his expressions are utterly fantastic. I mean, check out this bad-ass action scene.
![How To Start Reading Usagi Yojimbo [Guide + Reading Order]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CvmM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F04de9340-ebe1-4474-8afe-d561b2986bb9_600x890.jpeg "How To Start Reading Usagi Yojimbo [Guide + Reading Order]")
Yeah, Usagi Yojimbo is great. There’s another Humble Bundle that’s wrapping up soon that has a large chunk of his work at Dark Horse (which is well over a hundred issues in total), so I highly recommend checking it out. And if the idea of a rabbit samurai appeals, then also check out Pugmire Unleashed!
Whew! Lots of emotions this time around, so I think I’ll call it there. See you next month!