TWA Dispatch #1: What We're Working On 🇬🇧🇺🇸

Hi there,

This blog post (which you can receive in newsletter format if you sign-up from the pop up) is a bit different from what we usually write, and hopefully the beginning of a series we aim to publish at least once per quarter.

Lately I (Tommaso, Creative Director of The World Anvil Publishing) realized there isn't a simple way for people interested in our games and activities to know what we're working on, what we're thinking about, and how we see the upcoming months shaping up. Essentially, we don't have a real dev diary. Some of it is on our Discord. Other parts get shared in the updates of the crowdfunding campaigns we run. Other announcements, usually only when things are finalized, are made through this newsletter. I've been pretty terrible at updating social media channels, mostly because I can't stand the people running them, so those updates are irregular and focus only on actionable stuff.

That's not a great way to do it, and I know it. I think it would be great if once in a while we send a longer newsletter where we go over our actual progress, hopes, and, why not, issues we're facing. Some of you prefer the shorter marketing announcements, I get it. But I know that for us to be successful we need to give you a reason to care.

I'll keep these updates sparse and honest. Please feel free to let me know how you like this idea on Discord. 

Let's begin.

Almost done: Bitter Chalice and Dirt City Blues

Let's start with projects we're still wrapping up. Both Bitter Chalice (our homage to Soulslike games) and Dirt City Blues (Tarantino meets Sin City) are in the Beta phase, meaning the PDFs are largely ready and available to backers of the respective campaigns, and we need only a final re-read of the games in layout before preparing them for print.

Bitter Chalice has been a massive (and difficult) project to complete. We're entering the 6th year of work, and at the moment the game counts two authors, one supervisor/translator (me), one editor, three graphic designers, and two illustrators. I had two kids since I started on the project, and other team members went through the full spectrum of the creative process, from excitement, to despair, to cautious optimism that this thing is actually good (I personally think it's very good, but it's also hard to judge something you've been working on for so long from the inside). The game is a hybrid between a TTRPG campaign and a light legacy board game for how the map and resources are handled, and it definitely does some new things. I'm very proud of how well it nails the feeling of exploration of Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, and other Souls games, but I won't lie: we thought we could get it done faster. Alas, it took the time it took, but we're almost there. Late Pledges are still open (but not for long), and they also get access to all the Beta digital files right away. We're hoping to have this in retail by the summer of 2027, but see below for more info on what that means exactly.

Some sample items from the manufacturer

Dirt City Blues was a much easier project to complete — straightforward, as the theme suggests. This has been a little lateral step for our portfolio, which is usually very dark and ominous, and while Dirt City Blues can definitely replicate the darkest Sin City stories, it also liberally draws from the lively, playful, and slightly absurd imagery of 80's and 90's movies. The Core Book Beta is already available for backers and Late Pledges, while the Folder material (a few scenarios, some hacks to play popular TV series, and the Solo Mode) is in layout as I write. Depending on when we can send things to print, I believe this will be ready for shipping at the beginning of 2027, but that will also depend on the printing partner we select. I still haven't made a decision, because we're entering summer holidays for some printers and because we need a different print run between the English and Italian editions. So yeah, I'll pick someone when the files are actually ready. You can still do a Late Pledge here.

Our Next Game: Royalty

I've been going back and forth about announcing Royalty in this Dispatch. So this is NOT the real, proper announcement. I'm just saying that we're far along on our next game. It's called Royalty, written by Mauro Longo (Brancalonia, Lex Arcana, Apocalisse, Inferno) and Alberto Tronchi (Broken Tales, Valraven: The Chronicles of Blood and Iron, and more), and illustrated by Daniel Comerci (Broken Tales, Dirt City Blues, Primal, Kult, and a bunch of other stuff). And surprise: it's not a horror game of pitch-black darkness. Rather the opposite.

In Royalty you'll play... ahem, well, royals. But there's one problem: everyone at Court is a blue blood, and they have at least ten noble titles, so what will your characters do to stand out from the crowd? It's a game of intrigue, mystery, diplomacy, duels, masquerade balls, and deadly power games. Also, it's a game of insufferable aristocracy and ridiculous demands. It's a fun game, with some really cool gameplay twists we'll go into more detail on at a later time. For now, remember it exists, and it will launch on Backerkit Crowdfunding at some point (the pre-launch page is HERE, but it’s essentially a placeholder created for the occasion. More will come).

We don't have a single final piece of art ready, but if you want to get the vibe of what we're thinking for the look of it, you can check this test from Daniel and try to extrapolate what things could look like.

We're not done with Broken Tales

As the header says. Broken Tales is not only our best-known title and best seller, but also a game line we still have pretty strong ideas for. Over the years we've been discussing many possible directions: the easy one would be to explore lesser-known stories, but that gets tricky fast, since one reason for its success is that many people are already familiar with the fairytales we broke. I should say "thank you Disney," but I won't.

We also don't want to break fairytales from other cultures we have no real familiarity with. Yes, I know, there are already some exceptions in the published material, but in general that can become a minefield. Unless... we bring on board some new writers from that culture?

There are other reasons to revisit Broken Tales. First, because no one has ever said no to more playable material. Second, because we want to make some practical changes to the product structure, in particular to the separate "vinyl sleeves" with the Hunters printouts. As nice as they are, they've been an absolute nightmare to work with: they're easy to damage, very expensive to make, and retailers and distribution hubs tend to forget about them when shipping things out. So, in short, if you want any of the Kickstarter bundles with the sleeves, get them now from our store before we phase them out.

Anyway, it's early to discuss details of what the next Broken Tales lineup will be, as this is a mid-2027 project if everything else aligns. We'll get back to it.

Distribution

One thing we've certainly been struggling with over the years is getting our stuff into retail stores. While you can order from our webstore and we ship almost everywhere for a reasonable price (did you know we offer free shipping above certain order amounts?), not being in stores limits our reach severely. Last year we solved Europe — BNW now carries our products and distributes them all over Europe (not just the EU). So if you're in Europe and want one of our games, tell your friendly shop owner to order it there.

North America is a lot trickier: the sheer scale of the retailer network is so vast that higher print runs than the ones we currently do are required, but we really can't do them unless we're sure the stuff will sell. Moreover, after the debacle of Diamond distribution (you might have heard about the kind of trouble some publishers are in because of it), we want to be overly cautious before sending inventory across the ocean that we might never be able to recover if things go south. So it's a bit of a Catch-22. However, we just had an interesting conversation with someone willing to start with smaller print runs, and if all goes well, I think we might finally arrive in North American stores and events by the end of the year.

It's certainly a process, and SO much bureaucracy. Let's just hope tariffs don't make a comeback, because that's definitely a dealbreaker — our margin would already be narrow until we can ramp up print runs, and that, unfortunately, requires more money than we can spend right now.

VTT presence

The last thing I want to touch on is our VTT presence. As it stands, we've released one project on Alchemy in 2026 (Lost Stories), and there are two more in development (Dead Air: Seasons and Valraven: The Chronicles of Blood and Iron). The UI parts of these two projects are ready (see screenshot), but the logic that makes it all work isn't done yet. If you follow other projects, you'll be aware that Alchemy is experiencing some bottlenecks: this is a hard business to run, and the math doesn't always check out. While we're assured things will be completed at some point, we don't have a clear date for it. There's little we can do about it: we need a pro to take care of it, and throwing money at the problem doesn't seem to speed things up — it's just a matter of human resources and bigger games taking precedence. For this reason, we're not promising any new VTT integration until the two games above are done, even if we understand that people see Alchemy support as an excellent plus.

Before anyone says "but what about Foundry?" — the last estimate we discussed with a specialized studio was in the range of the cost of a new medium car, with little chance of recouping that cost through sales, plus the added issue of ongoing maintenance. Our understanding is that developing for Foundry makes sense when the cost of building a system can be spread out not across 3-4 products but dozens or hundreds (think Pathfinder, D&D, CoC), so for now that's not something we're able to do.

Roll20 is something to investigate, but developing VTT support is a fundamentally different job from making classic TTRPGs, and it's not our current focus unless something in the future does so well that we have the budget to invest in that endeavour.

Ok, this first Dispatch has been long enough.

If you like it, let me know on Discord.

Ah, we have Summer Sales going on on the store — take a look!

Cheers,

– Tommaso