Glumdark

Glumdark February Update! Book news and a new website.
about 1 month ago – Mon, Feb 02, 2026 at 01:40:52 PM

The Book

First, let's start with what matters to you most: the status of the book.

There has been a lot of back and forth about the final costs per unit for the different versions of the book. During this process, we weren't able to move into pre-production and get the first proofs done. Unfortunately, while this is happening, there isn't anything I can do to speed things up.

But we finally got the numbers we needed and should have everything signed this week. The printers have sent initial feedback on our files, so that means we're officially in pre-press.

As far as the rest of the items, many are already produced and most of the rest have been ordered. Nothing outside of the book itself should hold anything up further:

• Stickers: In warehouse!
• Patches: In production.
• Cassette: Quoted.
• Poster: Ready to order.
• T-shirts: Screen made, test print done. Ready.
• Bookplates / Sketch Plates: In warehouse.
• Art Print: Ready to order.
   

The Web Site

Perhaps because there's nothing I can personally do to get the book done faster, I've been investing my time into the Glumdark website.

Total Redesign

The site had really started to look dated with too many CTAs and tons of stripes and underlines and etc. I went through and stripped the design way down, making it much easier to navigate and use--I hope. 

Three-Dimensional Dice

The dice rolling mechanism on the Glumdark site has always been functional, but I like watching real dice roll. So I implemented dice rolling into the site.

It can be turned on or off easily in the footer. And because I didn't want to lose any snappiness, the table lands on the number before the dice finish rolling. Which always feels weirdly prescient.

This is out now! Lemme know if you find any bugs. I'm sure we've got some. 

New Art & Tables

We have multiple pieces of art commissioned for the site by Strega Wolf and of course Vil. My biggest priority is addressing the fact that the Travel Location Generator still uses icky AI art for the icons. You can tell they were made with a really early version of Midjourney back before we took a strong stance on the matter. They gotta go. 

And we've got two new tables in Beta: Lives in Space and Distress Beacons. They should both be out this week as well. We'll announce them on the Glumdark Patreon and Discord server.

Two small steps towards a Glumdark Space book?

Thanks for tuning in!

Cheers,
CTRO / EF

The Big November Update
4 months ago – Sun, Nov 09, 2025 at 11:11:49 AM

Obviously, Happy Belated Halloween

We've got a few things to report.

T-Shirt Printing is a Go

We're partnering with Pete's Print Shop in beautiful Greenpoint, Brooklyn for the t-shirt printing. Because we have to do everything the hard way, we're screenprinting these baddies and I wanted to get a sample printed for Quality Assurance Purposes.

And now: the sample is in hand. Or rather on-torso.

It's not too late to pre-order a t-shirt here!

Asset Selection is DONE

I believe I mentioned before that I had to go straight to the manufacturer to get samples of everything we needed in-hand for comparison. But it's impossible to make accurate material choices when you're just looking at pictures. All the more when you're comparing something reflective like the gold foil. It looks different in every picture.

But we did finally find some golds we like and we're pretty happy with the color matching from three different materials: paper, foil and nylon book ribbon:

With this selected, we've now made all of the material selections for the book. We're just waiting for a final full pro-forma from the printer before we press the Go button on digital and physical proofs.

I am unreasonably excited to hold the physical proof in my hands, even if it'll be unbound.

Glumdark Space is Growing

I've got some ideas for a second book. But in order to design it, we'll first have to write it. And to that end, I've returned to writing Glumdark Space tables.

To start, I beefed up the Things Found in a Derelict Space Ship to a D100.

This increases the projects I'm working on simultaneously to a number that I don't feel comfortable discussing. But I'm excited about all of them. So.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

That's all for now! Grab a shirt if dig 'em!

Cheers,
CTRO + Exalted Funeral

The September Update, Now in October!
5 months ago – Wed, Oct 01, 2025 at 01:55:28 PM

So Much Signing, Writing and Drawing

The sketchplates and the bookplates are done, finito, complete-o. They're already sitting in the warehouse ready to be shipped out once everything else is complete. 

I grabbed these shots of them before the rest of the signatures were complete. And we also added some more doodles, nonsense and little thank yous to each one. 

It sure took a while to write 100 different D4/D6/D8/D12/D20 tables--even if they're largely very stupid--worth it to show our gratitude though!

In order to get these done, we shipped the cards with printed borders to Vil in Brazil. He illustrated them and shipped them to me in New York and then I wrote the tables and stuck them all in my carry-on luggage to San Francisco so that Matt and I could sign everything. Then we shipped them off to the warehouse for distribution. Phew. 

Hell is DHL

For the past couple of weeks I've been trying to receive some paper samples from our printer in Lithuania. We believe this should be the last physical thing we'll have to approve before we have all of the materials selected for the book--the correct ribbons, foils, papers, debossing, etc. 

If you don't like stories about horrible customer service experiences, go ahead and skip to the end. But if you live for failed logistics operations STRAP IN.

First, I rescheduled the delivery online as I wasn't able to be at home when the package was scheduled to arrive. On the day of the rescheduled delivery, I stayed home all day and it did not arrive. 

The next day I call customer service and it tells me there’s an exception with the package and I have to resolve it at delivery.dhl.com. So I go there and it tells me there's an exception with the package and I need to call customer service. 

So I called back again and did the old, "keep repeating the word agent" trick until a human being answers. I told them it wasn't delivered and they offered to let me reschedule the delivery for the next day. They said that they could only reschedule it this way if I signed for it. I said OK, I can stay home again and sign for it.

Then the next day they called me back and said that they couldn't deliver the package unless I released the signature, meaning, not sign for it. I said I could stay home and sign for it. They said that my options were to have it returned to Lithuania or release the signature. I released the signature and scheduled it for the next day. They gave me a 2 hour delivery window.

I stay home the next day. It doesn't arrive in the 2 hour delivery window, or at all. I call the next morning and mumble "agent, agent, agent" again. This time, no luck. It tells me I have to schedule a callback and has me enter a time I want to be called back, with no indication of the time zone. A time without a time zone is literally meaningless 𐠒. So, I enter 11:30am. They say the next available callback is in 3 days. So I just hang up and call back in five minutes and someone immediately answers.

I explain the situation and they ask if I want to file a complaint. I say no, just the package. They ask if I want to just pick it up and I say yes, that's fine. They give me a location where I can pick it up and I ask if they're sure it will be there. They say no, it won't be there. So I say, well, then let's redeliver it. They ask me when and I give them a new delivery date for the following Monday.

That Monday comes. I stay home. No package. I call back the next day. Agent agent agent.This time, someone gets on the line who promises to be helpful. He says he'll call the station and the driver and ensure that it can be delivered that very day. I say great, let's do that. He puts me on hold, tells me he talked to the station and driver and that it will be delivered that day.

It doesn't come. 

To be clear, I'm not mad at the customer service agents. I've been a customer service agent--I did it for years. I'm aware that I'm over here getting a peek into hell but they live there.

Anyway, finally, FINALLY, it got delivered today. It's too soon to say exactly what the paper choice will be. But suffice it to say I'm excited about the options I received.

Next Steps

Once we get the godforsaken paper samples from DHL, we should be able to pull the trigger on just about all of the production choices--assuming that we love one of the paper samples. Which is great. 

I'll be asking for a physical proof, which will add a little time, but I don't expect it to be too much. It will be worth it for the peace of mind. 

The other physical items should be quite simple 🤞. Now that we have estimated numbers for everything, we can get those things in the hopper as well. The book will have the longest production cycle.

It's coming. But it can't come soon enough for me.

Cheers,
CTRO + Exalted Funeral

𐠒 Unless it's like a UNIX timestamp or something. Which is just a count of the seconds since January 1st, 1970. Hilariously, many systems store Unix timestamps as a 32-bit signed integer. The maximum value a 32-bit signed integer can hold is 2,147,483,647. Which means that we'll have another Y2K-type situation on January 19, 2038. But it might be way worse because a ton of legacy systems and firmware can't be upgraded to 64-bit. Or maybe it will be a big disappointment like last time. We'll see.

August Update!
7 months ago – Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 06:13:44 PM

It's August! Let's check in on Glumdark progress. We’re still on track and the pieces are coming together.

Sketchplates

Vil has completed the insane amount of work required in hand-drawing each sketch plate. I think deluxe backers are going to be stoked. They’re all very cool.

This week, I started stamping the dice icons on them. These are stamped from the OG blocks that I carved for the icons inside of the book. Luckily, they take to the paper we used for the sketch plates really well and, I think, look great alongside Vil’s drawings.

Once these are all stamped, Matt and I will need to go through and hand-write tables on each of them. My plan as of now is to write a unique table per plate. So I guarantee that whatever table you receive will be rather stupid. Because we've got to write over a hundred of them and there are only 60 of them in the book that it took 3 years to write.

If you have extremely stupid table ideas, toss them in the comments below. Some considerations were: D2 Ways to Get Stabbed, D4 Sides of a Coin, D20 More Dwarves that Didn’t Make it Into the Movie & D8 Spooky Things.

Pre-Production

I mentioned last time that we’ve got the “final” version of the book in pre-flight mode. We’re going to make a physical proof, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we need to make some minor tweaks. But we’re ready to send them off to the printer. Once we approve a proof, I’ll upload a new PDF to Backerkit so that digital backers have the authoritative version.

We made the decision about gold foil and endpaper colors. The match was really important, but the debate was long and fraught about how gold it should really be. We wound up with a pale gold that I think will really pop while keeping the bleak aesthetic intact.

Next Steps

That's all the real updates for now. We're still waiting for about a hundred backers to complete their surveys, but we're close to making an estimate on numbers so we can get final quotes and start the production process. 

Some things, like T-shirts are a littler harder to estimate, because sizes. Alas.

The good news is that our other physical assets will have a faster turn-around and easier production cycle than the book (famous last words, I know), so we anticipate fulfillment pipelines to be the next serious hurdle. 

No estimate yet of ship date, but I'll update you as I hear more.

Glum on, friends.

-CTRO & Exalted Funeral

Updates, Progress, and Stragglers
8 months ago – Thu, Jul 03, 2025 at 12:50:08 PM

Well, it's July. I'm not sure how it happened, but apparently time passes no matter what. And so here we are. Might as well carry on I suppose.

Stragglers!

Please! If you have not already, please complete your backer survey in Backerkit. Check your email and spam folder and reach out to us if you can't find the survey. Or go here to send yourself a new survey.

We still have 122 unanswered surveys. Once we close those, we'll be able to place orders for more of the physical rewards. So, please do it! 

For all of the backer rewards, the design work is finished and we can proceed with ordering once we finalize numbers / quotes / etc.

Progress!

As we wait for quotes and the inevitable back-and-forth with printers, I've had a few spare cycles to return to the book and add in a couple of fun tweaks. This week I got the color profiles and export options from our chosen printer and have exported what I foolishly believe to be the final version of the book. Once confirmed, we'll update the PDF in Backerkit so that digital backers have the latest and greatest as well.

I'm hoping that we'll be working through proofs shortly.

Sketchplates!

Vil has been toiling away on the many, many sketchplates that he has to draw. They look awesome, and the work is almost done. Once he finishes these, he'll be shipping them from Brazil to New York so that we can get on with signing everything, adding stamps and making up stupid D2 tables.

What's Next for Glumdark?!

I'm not sure! The two most-obvious answers are to either work on the rule system I have in mind or to begin working on Glumdark Space content for a second book. As of now, when there's nothing I can do to get the book printed faster, I'm just waiting for inspiration to strike again while doodling and making little notes to myself about what might be cool or funny.

But if you have anything you'd like to see us create, let us know in the comments. Or if you have questions about anything, I'll answer anything I can. 

Cheers,
CTRO + EF