Why did His Majesty the Worm skip the Kickstarter?
A preorder campaign gambit
The Worm team has long been skeptical of the current trends in crowdfunding. To fund the core game, we used an Itchfunding model—putting ashcan drafts of chapters up on Itch.io as pay-what-you-will to collect enough coins to commission artists and editors. It took a long time, but it was the right move for the game. Now, to fund the production costs for the Worm's next big book—The Castle Automatic—we want to do something similar.
What is The Castle Automatic?
First things first: The Castle Automatic is a 100+ room, 5-level Metroidvania-style dungeon designed for use with His Majesty the Worm, the 2x ENNIE-winning, tarot-based RPG. In the module, players will repair magi-mechanical engines that control the castle's sun, moon, weather, and seasons to overcome its deadly challenges.
It's designed to be an easy way to get started fast with His Majesty the Worm: you can run a full campaign with just this dungeon, the core book, and a single tarot deck. Or, expand your ongoing game with the all new talents, monsters, dungeon lords, and magical treasures found in the book.
Instead of doing a "traditional" crowdfunding campaign to fund the book, The Castle Automatic is doing a direct pre-order campaign through Exalted Funeral. We're calling it the Early Worm campaign.
Why?
Most folks don't remember this, but once upon a time, Kickstarter was for burgeoning creators to collect enough cash to hire artists, editors, designers, and other folks to help them make their dreams a reality. Since then, the biggest companies in the industry have come to dominate crowdfunding platforms. They bring completed, polished works to the table and gamify people's FOMO. Now, crowdfunding platforms are really marketing and preorder platforms, not really a place for new artists to launch new projects. And, of course, these platforms are happy to take their chunk of the cash.
To fund the production costs for the Worm's next big book, we're doing a preorder campaign. A preorder campaign is like crowdfunding, but it cuts out the middleman and dispels the kayfabe of "will it fund?" We are confident this book is getting made!
This approach is more honest, more appropriate for our size, and promotes a better culture between me (the writer) and you (the gamer).
Current status
This isn't a Kickstarter, but I'm still excited to keep you informed every step of the way!
Writing is complete and the book is currently in copyediting. Layout should be complete by the end of the year. Print files will be prepared early next year. We expect that with prepress, printing, and shipping, this preorder will be fulfilled in May or June of 2026.
We will update Early Worms with regular updates via email. As soon as the digital files are ready, backers will get instant access.
Sound cool?
If this sounds like a cool project and you're excited to run a big dungeon campaign of His Majesty the Worm, we'd love for you to preorder the book! We'll be in contact with everyone who preorders the book through each step of our process to share the work as it's completed and celebrate milestones.
As thanks for supporting the book during the preorder campaign, we'll give you a free large scale (A3) isometric map of the Castle Automatic illustrated by Guy Pradel.
