Updates you've been waiting for!

migrated from Substack. Originally posted on 17 January 2025

Hello, Dearest Subscribers,

I feel like I'm starting every newsletter with: it's been a while. It has, though.

The last year has been a very challenging year for us here at Double Proficiency. Lots of it were family matters about which I do not intend talking about on the wide-wide internet. It was a lot of hospital visits, therapy appointments, burnout, and a custody case to boot. Honestly, neither of us even had a lot of time to work. But work we did.

Let me update you on the state of our various projects. For clarity, I'll break it down into sections.

Geologist's Primer

The fulfillment of the Geologist's Primer has been a rocky road. Switching to a new publisher required setting up a variety of new work processes on both sides and figuring out plenty of logistics for the international delivery. Whoever came up with the methods of tracking your shipping containers while on high seas deserves all the curses people send their way.

I know some of you are still waiting for your packages to arrive. So am I. The recent changes in the EU shipping rules, the still-not-resolved supply chain breakdown, and the state of international shipping are throwing a wrench after a wrench into the whole process. I know the folks in the distribution center our publisher is partnering with are working through the backlog. Remember that if you want to check-in on your parcel status, it's fastest if you reach out to our publisher directly via support@huntersentertainment.com.

The book - but not the physical stretch-goal materials, which were Kickstarter exclusives - is now available in bookstores, from Amazon to (hopefully) your friendly local gaming store. I understand this is annoying to people who are waiting for their Kickstarter parcels to arrive; unfortunately, matters like wholesale & commercial release dates are set in place waaay ahead of time and cannot be pushed back, because they affect hundreds if not thousands of people down the line.

If you missed the Kickstarter entirely, you can now grab the physical book from your favorite bookstore and the digital version (and stretch goals!) from DriveThruRPG. If you backed the campaign, you already had all of these in your mailbox months ago :)

Mycologist's Primer

My current fungal obsession is pushing the project forward according to the schedule. The book is about 75% written at this point, and we're planning to wrap it all up in late January or early February. The first 50 fungi entries (unedited!) are already available for perusal on our Patreon, and will be updating our Patrons, Backers, and Subscribers on the progress.

The finished sections are already undergoing the scientific edit (thanks to an actual mycologist, Alex Mela, Ph.D), as we want to make this project run more smoothly. The copy editor is waiting in the wings to take over as soon as possible!

(Speaking of wings, my brain is already playing with ideas for the next book in line. Let me know if you have your favorite birds, y'all.)

Meanwhile, our publisher has set up the Backerkit for the Mycologist's Primer. If you backed the campaign, the link should be in your inbox already. That's where you can add all your shipping details and peruse add-ons. Eventually, we will also host a pre-order store for all who missed the campaign (I’ll let you know!). Important: if you backed the campaign, for the first week of the Backerkit running, you'll be able to switch your add-ons to the $50 physical bundle! We recognize that it was unlocked late in the campaign, and some of you might have missed it. We don't want you to miss out on the deal, though!

Aphelion RPG

Meanwhile, Jakub has been hard at work on our upcoming sci-fi TTRPG, Aphelion. I am SO excited to finally be able to share something on the topic!

Aphelion is a grounded sci-fi game taking the players over 200 years into the future, to a Solar System thriving with activity. Humanity reached out for the planets, and spread as far as the technology and imagination allowed, until civilization reached the threshold of interstellar space at the Sun’s aphelion—the Frontier—and encountered the first signs of a new singularity destined to change humanity forever.

Explore a rich universe built around concepts inspired by real life futurism and technologies at the edge of practical science taken to their limits, filled with mysteries, conspiracies, and conflicting interests of Powers-That-Be vying for control of the Frontier.

You are a Kaper Crew: freelance traders and hands for hire, prospecting, treasure hunting, trading, collecting bounties or running gigs for various factions. You’ll explore habitats, investigate distress calls and anomalies, deal with crises and obstacles inherent to the dangerous life aboard where a single short-circuit is all that stands between life and death. All that, while avoiding pirates, mercenaries and ruthless factions ruling the lawless void!

The system is nearly finished, and it's just so much fun! We have plenty of things set in motion: YouTube videos with development chats and updates, Beta access through our Patreon, and more!

Also, we are starting to organize playtests! If you'd like to participate or just keep an eye on it, join the Hunters Entertainment Discord server!

(ALT: A photo of a poster inviting visitors to explore a new world of opportunities in the Hydra Sector. The hyper-cheerful and corporate-approved poster in orange and teal shows high-tech towers and automatic roads with spotless drones. The worn-out poster stands abandoned in a debris-covered warehouse, among peeling paint.)

Other Projects

We've been rather swamped last year, so we had no time to continue working on Wayfarer's Decks. Still, if you'd like to pick up a handy, illustrated deck of encounters, vistas, puzzles, and NPCs, you already have 17 to pick from. You'll find them all on Itch.io (digital) and on DriveThruRPG (digital & POD).

Witch's Odyssey, my witchcraft spin-off of Aphelion, is currently on a hiatus until the full Aphelion rules are ready. I did not forget about this project and I do intend to finish it.

Thank you for your patience, dear Subscribers. 2024 was not kind to us. We're planning to do better this year. We will, at some point, also switch from Substack to a newsletter hosted on our website, but this will require no action on your side. The progressing decay of social media sites wants me to keep all our business as close to the source as we can. There isn't and never will be any alt-right and generative-AI propaganda on our website, in our newsletter, and in our lives.

Love,

Anna 🍄