Here's a general State of Copperhead County update for March!

Work proceeds on the next version of the game, which will abandon our EA format and embrace the final 6x9 book format. It will also be a standalone experience, with all of that system stuff inside of it. There will probably be a bit of new game content in v6, but my focus for now is porting the existing content into the new format, revising it, and writing boring chapters about how dice work. There have been some minor game changes made since v5, but nothing important enough to bother anyone about (cohorts are a little expanded, and I changed some special abilities to reflect that, and to make a Hellraisers crew more survivable in the mid-to-late campaign game, if you must know).

With all of that coming, I also increased the price of the game from $10 to $15. Why? Well, the game's been on sale for $10 for almost a year, and for most of that time, I think it was a fair price. However, with the last couple of updates, our page count, word count, and content count went up a hell of a lot—as did the cost count of paying for all of those words. I've also decided that, when v6 drops and is largely a final, stand-alone product, the PDF price will be $20. For those reasons, it seemed unfair to let the game linger at the $10 price point, then jump up suddenly. Of course, everyone who was friendly enough to purchase the game during the $10 period will just continue to receive PDF updates for no further investment (as will anyone who purchases it during this $15 interregnum).

Of course, one hope during this era of increased pricing and increased content, is that more money = better content. Copperhead County is a DIY project that I create, direct, produce, edit, etc, by myself, with the paid help of a few artists and one writer. I've paid for all of that out of pocket, and although the EA period has been good, the game is still in the red, and gets further in the red the more outside help I employ. Better pricing for the endgame will help defray that, and help me pay further partners. I'd like to hire sensitivity readers; I'd like help editing the text; I'd like to have more content; I'd like to do all of this without going personally broke.

I'd like to have v6 ready by the beginning of April. How extensive the update is depends on how much I get done by that deadline, but it will have system chapters alongside the current content in a shiny new format.

Also joining us on April 5th is a recorded game on The Gauntlet by one of Copperhead County's first and friendliest supporters, Barry Cook. Stay tuned for more info on that as it approaches!

Bye!