It is July 1st and that means it is the anniversary of Trapped Chest officially becoming a company, and time to look back at what has been accomplished.

The last year has seen the release of several products, both paid and free.

• Rasker’s Hive: A free adventure for The Nullam Project. While people seem to like getting a copy, it is seen as a bonus, rather then a reason to buy the game. That is not to say I won’t be doing another free adventure, but the next few releases will need to be more premium.

• Reanimated: Unsurprisingly, people really like zombies. This game has been praised by critics and quickly fills up when I run one shots at conventions. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, now is the time. There are even some adventures planned, but we will get into that shortly.

• Join Their Ranks: Still fresh enough to smell the ink, this supplement for Reanimated gives you rules for playing as the undead. While it is still in the backlog for many critics, the few that have gotten to it have loved it, commenting on the unique spin on the genre and the addition of a few GM resources that didn’t fit in the core book.

January had a major milestone, in scoring a contract with Compose Dream Games for distribution of TTRPGs, and shortly after getting stock to their UK Marketplace as well. These guys have been great in getting my games out to a wider audience.

March was a dark month, with a house fire putting a hold on much of what I had planned. While I still managed to get Join Their Ranks published on time, it came down to the wire and there is still a lot of recovery to do before I am back at full speed.

Future projects are coming along at a steady pace, with the occasional delay during convention season, but rest assured that a wide range of things are planned.

• Quest Nexus: The d12 dice pool based universal system that has been in production since 2019 is progressing, with my artist, the talented klur_arts having only 10 pieces left out of the initial order of 172. Klur has also been nominated for a CRIT award for best character artist for her work on Inevitable: A Doomed Arthurian Western from Soul Muppet.

• Reanimated Adventures: Yes there are adventures coming. My 1920s, New York, mummy adventure, The Curse of Nefer Ka Tet is in production right now, and there are plans for a yet to be named adventure set in the old west, another set during World War 2 and a pair of adventures set in feudal Japan, one of which has the players acting as members of a ninja clan, tasked with entering Edo and assassinating the zombified shogun, and the other being the exact same adventure told from the perspective of the zombies and running with the Join Their Ranks supplement.

• The Nullam Project Supplements: Reanimated may be taking the spotlight, but I have not forgotten about this one. There are plans to release a mini-campaign called Lycora’s Tears, which will consist of 4 missions. The first mission is already written, but things have slowed down. Additionally a book with series of very condensed missions, called The Elysium Mission Logs is partially written. Finally, I have plans for The Elysium Command Manual, which will act as a GM guide, but this one has not even started yet.

• Essence of the Arcane: This is a board game that I started designing before founding the company and was the reason I did the trip to EssenSpiel in 2019, to find manufacturers. Recently I have been reworking the layout and am planning on doing my own manufacturing. I don’t think it will be ready for Mini-toba Market, but the plan is to have prototypes for upcoming conventions and retail copies ready for Game-itoba in january.

• Three Merchants: This game is ridiculously popular whenever I take a prototype to conventions. The big thing holding me back is manufacturing. With everything that has been happening, I have not had enough time to get quotes. I have considered just manufacturing it myself, but due to the box size, I am not sure I can source big enough chip board. Also, the box insert may be challenging. This game is coming, but I don’t have a release date yet.

• And I Quote!: The party game of quotes and word guessing has been well received at conventions, but getting people to actually try a party game has proven difficult. It’s not that people don’t like it, it’s just that conventions are the wrong place for it, and I feel this would find more love in a pub setting. This is another one that needs more testing before committing to manufacturing, but on the bright side, it is a fairly easy game to manufacture.

There are other things on the horizon, such as a card based TTRPG, a rules light TTRPG based around 3D dungeon tiles, a wide range of board games from the massive, table consuming The World Betwixt and Between, which is almost at the play test phase to small card games like The Royal Port Heist.

3rd party content is the lifeblood of a TTRPG community and luckily there are people working on it for my games. Lytha the Bard of Bardic Inspirations RPGs is working on a mission for The Nullam Project called The Skittering Mines, which is a dungeon crawl in an asteroid mine. She is also writing a comedy adventure for Reanimated, which will be revealed at a future date.

Having recently picked up a 3D printer, I am able to do more prototyping, which is always helpful, and now that I have committed to every single convention in Manitoba and am doing more production work then ever, I am in a constant state of …tired.

That pretty much sums up the last year and the future. Enjoy your Canada Day, and I am going to try to get some work done, but in reality I’ll probably just fall asleep at my computer.