The Patreon Begins
Welcome back! It’s a new year, there’s a new President, and we have a brand new development for Crab Fragment Labs. Today we finally kicked off our Patreon campaign, after a whole year of, uh, “planning.”
In case you aren’t familiar with it, Patreon is a way for creators to raise money from their most dedicated fans. Most of the offerings here at Crab Fragment Labs are free (and they will stay that way), but if you like what we’re doing and would like to support us, we’ve finally set that up.
Patrons will receive exclusive weekly posts about the goings-on at Crab Fragment Labs, as well as the various travels and travails of our fearless leader James Ernest. That means first-look access to all the games, tests, articles, fiction, and trivia that we bring out.
Check out the campaign and become a patron here.
And since we haven’t posted since December, here’s a rundown of what you might have missed over the holidays.
Gloria Mundi
The “English Language Edition” of the classic Ernest / Selinker game Gloria Mundi is now in open beta, in both digital and print-and-play versions. Gloria Mundi is a simple resource-management game set during the fall of the Roman Empire. Players build up their holdings and try to keep them safe from destruction at the hands of the marauding Visigoth.
Gloria Mundi is coming along nicely, and we will hope to find a publisher for a real-life edition soon. Meanwhile, we will continue to edit the rules for balance and clarity, so be sure to check back for the latest updates any time you play.
After the Fog
James Ernest’s multi-year project After the Fog is also in open beta, though without a PnP version (yet). There are a lot of moving parts yet to balance, but if you’d like to play the game online, it’s set up in a workshop at Tabletop Simulator. Hopefully we can get that airship back off the ground when groups of more than two people can meet safely around the gaming table again.
The Library
The newest section at Crab Cay is the Biblioteca del Cangrejo, a Library where James Ernest will post works of short fiction. These stories will be a mix of unrelated pieces, some game-adjacent, and some not. In the era of Covid it has been nigh impossible to test new games, so James is branching out and embracing those endeavors which are best suited to solitude.
The first story on this page is “Into the Catacombs,” a worldbuilding piece in the Vinlant universe (followed by more about what that universe is). It’s chock-full of details about a mysterious wizard’s college, the first of several stories intended to create a framework for a brand new tabletop game.
What’s Next?
We hate to make too many promises, because we’ve seen where that leads. But here are a few of the things James Ernest definitely wants to do in 2021.
Games: James is working on several game projects including Fairmarket, a game he keeps mentioning in rough drafts of short stories. At some point this game needs developing and just this week he hit on a possible candidate from the wealth of unfinished games in his notebooks.
Fiction: Over the next few months, be sure to return to the Library for new short stories pulled from James Ernest’s brain, as well as his ancient archive. Are you curious what he was writing in high school? You just might see it if James doesn’t come up with enough new content!
Legos: It’s not all fun and games over here. Sometimes we get serious, like when James puts together a model of the Ali’Iolani Hale.
And More! Some projects are too weird to discuss, because they’re probably too weird to work. But trust us, they sound cool in theory. We’ll tell you about them soon.
For now, though, we’re making sure that our Patreon is up and working, and letting folks know that it’s on. If you’re new to Crab Fragment, please check out the Games page for some pretty great stuff. And if you’re a game designer looking for inspiration or assistance, check out the instructional articles and videos at the Lecture Hall.
Thanks for discovering Crab Fragment Labs!