WE DID IT! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
4 days ago
– Thu, Oct 08, 2026 at 02:59:11 PM
So amazing! We've officially wrapped up this BackerKit campaign, and I just want to take a moment to say thank you for making my next book a reality.
Seriously, I can't express to you all enough my enormous gratitude for your support. Whether you backed the project, shared the campaign with friends, helped spread the word, or simply cheered us on, it means a great deal to me. Seeing other gamers get excited about this project has been incredibly rewarding, and I'm so appreciative of every one of you.
It's been a whirlwind these past few weeks, especially juggling the campaign alongside my regular work schedule, so I'm taking a little time to catch my breath. But I'm also really excited about what comes next and getting THE OVERLORDS OF STEEL into your hands!
A couple of quick things before I go:
- First, I'll be enabling the Late Pledge/Preorder Store here on BackerKit in the next few days. So, if you know anyone who missed the campaign but still wants to get in on the action, they'll have another opportunity!
- Second, I want to make sure everyone stays informed as we move into the next phase. Going forward, I'll be posting an update at the beginning of each month with news about the project, production progress, and anything else worth sharing.
For now, I just wanted to check in, celebrate this milestone with all of you, and say how much I appreciate your support. It genuinely means a lot to me, and I'm looking forward to sharing the rest of this journey with you. Onward to the next chapter!
Very Best,
Rob, PHP
Timed Release #3: Stat Block & Design Reveal of the Great Dragon, J'gulga!
14 days ago
– Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 06:42:03 AM
Hey Everyone,
For our third and final
timed release, I'd like to share the near-finalized
stat block of the great dragon,
J'gulga, and explain how this primordial monstrosity affects gameplay and the party's decisions.
MONSTER STAT BLOCK
This is the book's
most complex and
powerful monster. I designed J'gulga so that referees can run it quickly at the table. The familiar stat line caps the block, followed by the dragon's offensive options and then its defensive and behavioral traits.
As you can see below, even the highest-level heroes will discover that this creature is not easily killed. To achieve such a victory, the players must
study J'gulga, learn its patterns and behaviors, and lure it to a predetermined battlefield that gives them the greatest possible advantage. For example, the dragon always telegraphs its breath weapon by
visibly charging during the
spell declaration phase.
The
dragon's heads are especially vulnerable to a few tricks that can gradually reduce J'gulga's offensive output. Each head the heroes destroy brings them one step closer to permanently slaying the beast.
But even after exploiting these weaknesses and preparing carefully for battle, the dragon can slaughter the party if they suffer a few unlucky rolls.
Several
artifacts hidden within the megadungeon of
Exesed Mordax can swing the battle further in the heroes' favor. This design encourages players to
explore the setting and discover as much as they can about the beast. However, the adventure doesn't force them to do so. That's because slaying the dragon is technically possible without any of these hidden artifacts, leaving each group free to decide exactly how they will bring down the great dragon, and become legends themselves.
RUNNING THE DRAGON
Since J'gulga was inspired by
Bowser's Fury, I originally designed the dragon around a
Fury Die mechanic (a nod to that fun video game). The idea was that the referee would roll this Fury Die at specified intervals, with the results determining how and when the dragon appeared.
But after playtesting, I discovered that OSE's overland travel procedure already demands plenty of rolls from the referee. To cut down on dice rolling and make the game faster and easier to run, I instead incorporated J'gulga's "scenes" into each terrain type's
random encounter table.
In Overlords, whenever
wandering monsters are indicated during hex travel, the referee rolls on these encounter tables, which produce interesting situations involving
creatures,
hazards, and
inclement weather. Occasionally, they also result in
dragon sightings.
This means the referee
doesn't need to separately track the dragon's movements. He simply follows the tables while hex-crawling and keeps one (lavishly red, green, or black) bookmark on J'gulga's stat page.
LEARNING THE DRAGON
J'gulga appears more frequently and behaves differently in certain terrain types. The players learn information about the beast through NPCs, research, rumors, and (everyone's favorite) direct observation.
- If encountered near Exesed Mordax, the dragon brutally attacks anyone approaching or leaving the megadungeon, acting as the city's guardian. The heroes must flee back into the ruins and wait for the monster to depart before daring the long journey home again. Thankfully, J'gulga only strafes the dungeon a few times each day, so entry and escape remain possible even for low-level adventurers.
- In the mountainous Spines of Arratan, however, where J'gulga hunts larger prey, the dragon isn't immediately hostile. One encounter describes the PCs spotting 1d3 rocs soaring overhead as if preparing to attack the party, only to notice an enormous silhouette darkening the clouds above. A moment later, the 230-foot-long dragon swoops down and tears into the largest roc with all six biting heads, crashing into the mountainside with its prey and pinning the bird beneath its titanic weight. One of J'gulga's heads snarls at the heroes while the others begin feeding on the thrashing avian. As long as the PCs do not approach or attack the dragon while it dines, it leaves them be.
- In other regions, J'gulga flies low overhead and roars as it passes, scattering the party's retainers and horses. The adventurers must chase after their fleeing hirelings and mounts, possibly losing some of them if they fail to react quickly enough.
As the players advance through the campaign, they can use these dragon lore scraps to avoid, fight, or manipulate J'gulga, even steering the beast into the midst of factional enemies and using it to slaughter them. For example, if the players witness the dragon swallowing a glittering chest of gold coins from one of their carts, they might later exploit that knowledge by covering their wagons with thick blankets or tarps to conceal their latest treasure hauls and avoid J'gulga's attack along the road home.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In short, the dragon serves the campaign as both a
hazardous environmental force and an
end-game party goal. Unlike many adventures, where the villain appears only briefly to monologue in the dungeon's final room, the players feel this Big Boss's presence from the campaign's
very beginning. They also have many chances to interact with J'gulga
before the final showdown (if one ever occurs).
I hope you and your players find J'gulga a challenging, memorable, and exciting foe unlike any other!
Very Best,
Rob, PHP
Timed Release #2: Check Out the New Layout for THE OVERLORDS OF STEEL!
20 days ago
– Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 09:43:44 AM
Hey Everyone,
Hard to believe we're already two weeks into this exciting race!
But today's Timed Release is a little different. Rather than revealing maps or features of the setting, I want to show you how I’m planning to present all of that material in the finished book.
Below is an
early layout sample from
The Overlords of Steel.
One of my biggest goals with Overlords is to make a very large sandbox easy to run at the table.
That means the layout cannot simply look good. It has to help the referee find information quickly, understand it at a glance, and move back and forth between description, rules, maps, tables, and gameable details without constantly hunting through paragraphs.
So this new layout is built around a few principles:
-
Strong visual hierarchy. Major topics, subsections, rules, and reference material should be immediately recognizable.
-
Short, digestible sections. Longer subjects are broken into smaller chunks rather than buried inside walls of text.
-
Bolded interactive information. Important rules, terms, locations, and game elements should jump off the page when you need them.
-
Tables whenever they make information faster to use. If something can be understood more easily at a glance, I want it presented that way.
-
Rules next to the material they affect. Setting information should not be divorced from the things characters can actually experience, manipulate, or exploit during play.
-
Two-page-spread thinking. Wherever possible, material will be organized so that related information lives together rather than forcing the referee to constantly flip pages.
The sample here covers Qa’rood’s timekeeping system and its strange celestial cycles. Even something as potentially complicated as a 384-day calendar, two moons moving on different cycles, and recurring mystical conjunctions can be reduced to a combination of short explanations, bolded reference points, and tables that make the information much easier to use.
And, importantly, those details are not just lore.
The strange movements of the heavens have game effects.
- A Black Syzygy weakens light and strengthens the undead.
- A Savage Moon drives creatures toward violence.
- Other conjunctions affect magic, surprise, wandering monsters, missile attacks, and more.
The goal is for the world-building and the game system to constantly reinforce one another.
Designed for a Big Sandbox
The Overlords of Steel is a very large adventure. The book contains a tremendous amount of material for the referee to work with: a vast wilderness, multiple settlements, factions, and dungeons, plus thousands of encounters within the lost city of Exesed Mordax. And I don't want the campaign's size to become an obstacle to running it.
Instead, I'm trying to take the density and scope of a huge old-school campaign and combine it with the kind of modern information design that makes complex material faster to absorb and easier to reference during play.
In other words: big world, small prep burden. That is my design target.
This Is Still a Work in Progress
The pages shown here are an early layout prototype, not the finished book. Fonts, spacing, graphic elements, table styling, artwork placement, and other details may continue to change as the book develops.
But this is very close to the direction I'm pursuing for the final presentation, and I wanted backers to see it while the campaign is still underway, because these Timed Releases are meant to show you what kind of book I'm trying to make. And I think The Overlords of Steel is beginning to look like the epic adventure that I've had in my head for a very long time.
Thank you, as always, for helping me make it.
Very Best,
Rob, PHP
$100K Reached! Incredible!!!
26 days ago
– Wed, Sep 16, 2026 at 02:14:51 PM
Wow, I'm feeling very blessed, my fellow Overlords!
Not only did we hit our
$70,000 funding goal in just
16.5 hours, but we're now officially past the
$100,000 milestone and it's all because of you: the
850 incredible Overlords who jumped in during our first week.
It's
so exciting to see this project come to life and to see this level of passion right out of the gate!
Thank you all for your steadfast support, for making this launch a massive success, and for helping me keep this
momentum going by
telling others about the project! It's gonna be epic! I can't wait to share more with you
next Tuesday.
Very Best,
Rob, PHP
