Reducks

You are a duck.
With no quacks to give.

You have bread.
It's time traveling bread.

You have string.
It tracks your timeline.

You have a mission.
It's near impossible.

You'll need the bread.

—

You, the eponymous duck, discover a bomb is set to explode on the far side of the lake — your lake — under a bench, next to the bin, no, not that one, two benches over, yes, the one with the flaking paint and vague sense of unease. 

Determined to halt the inevitable and donning a hat of your own design, you set off on your mission only to be waylaid by frogs, fish, feelings of emptiness, self-doubt and crisp packets. 

This is going to be a rather odd, slightly scrappy and very silly choose your own adventure with an undercurrent of exploring our tenuous place in the Universe and how we can face the empty void. There'll probably be puns. 

The Zine

The zine will be roughly 8x8" square with around twenty-four pages with each double-page of the adventure split into about eight illustrations/story blocks.

Circular holes will be cut in every page for you to pass through your string (see below). The zine will be professionally printed but I'll probably punch the holes myself. 

The cover will be a hefty 300gsm with marginally less hefty 200gsm innards. That should be enough to handle time warps. 

The rules are written and rather terse. The adventure is currently spread across two sets of index cards with very little plot but very strong on vibes. 

Should Reducks hit its funding goal I'll continue to make it while listening to Snivilisation on repeat and filling yet more index cards before joining them together with lengths of string like some crazed murder wall fanatic. 

String Theory

You will pass your string through the holes punched in the pages to track your journey through time.

You will cut the slice of bread (or gluten-free, duck-friendly substitute) into cubes and eat pieces to travel back along your timeline (the string). If you run out of bread you can only travel into the future, like the rest of us. 

If you can't open the book because the string gets in the way, you can cut the string, tie your end to the newly cut end and follow it back to the start of the book thereby meeting your original self and creating a pair-o-ducks (of course). Or get stuck in a time loop. One or the other. 

This is unlikely to be playtested. It might be terrible. It should be funny.

Ink and Watercolour

I'm hand illustrating this myself using a combination of watercolour paints and ink. They may not necessarily be Good illustrations but they will be human. 

Each of the eighty-ish illustrations will be 3x3" on a 5x5" piece of paper and will be in a similar style to the front cover.

They'll likely look very similar in style to the cover or this fish of dubious intent. 

Rewards

Keeping things simple this time round, there are just four rewards:

£4 Digital

A PDF of the zine — downloadable from your choice of itch.io or DriveThruRPG — ready for your home printing needs. You could probably get away with not printing it out but where would be the fun in that?

£20 Zine

The zine itself in all its (probably) hand-punched glory (unless I need to print enough to necessitate getting them die cut) as well as the PDF of the zine and a 1" Reducks promo button badge.

£40 Art

The zine, a PDF of the zine, a button badge and one of the original illustrations from the zine to put in a frame, hang on your wall, and call your very own. 

There will be four times as many illustrations as there are backers of this tier so you should (hopefully) be able to get your first or second choice illustration — the current plan is to share the illustrations with art tier backers around August, leave it a week, then open a form for you to tell me your top three and assign them on a first come, first served basis so if your first choice has gone, you'll be assigned your second choice, etc. 

Remaining illustrations will be available once everything has been sent out to backers. 

£100 Æther Bundle

Along with everything in the Zine tier, one of every zine from my back catalogue and their related promo badges, a list that now includes:

• Orchidelirium
• Coiled.Spæce
• Advanced Double D6
• Field Agent Handbook: 1924 Revolution
• Field Agent Handbook: 1925 Leviathan
• Field Agent Handbook: 1926 Communication
• Field Agent Handbook: 1927 Tempus
• Field Agent Handbook: 1928 Colossus
• Field Agent Handbook: Calibration Record
• Field Agent Handbook: Notebook

All of which are also available separately and as a bundle in the add-ons (or right now if you're impatient).

Stretch Goals

Just a couple of small stretch goals this time round to keep things nice and simple:

• £1,000 — Gold foil cover
  The front cover will get a glow up with gold foil lettering for the game title
• £2,000 — Art prints
  A small set of postcard prints of my favourite illustrations to be included with all physical rewards

Timeline

This is intended to be a simple and silly project to act as a bit of a palate cleanser after what was quite a difficult 2024 for me so here's some rough timings:

• February: Campaign! Also plotting out the adventure
• March: Writing the adventure and doing some test illustrations; 
• April: Illustrations and editing the adventure; Gamefound pledge manager opens up 
• May: More illustrations after I get dismayed by the first lot or, heaven forbid, better at illustrating
• June: Mass panic as I realise this was the original expected finish date that dissipates once I remember that I pushed it back to August to allow time for this very moment of panic
• July: Final adjustments to text and illustrations before sending to the printer
• August: Printer prints followed by me punching holes (probably)
• September: I realise things have overrun so use this month to do anything that hasn't already been done
• October: Your get your zine

I'm secretly planning for you to get your zine earlier than October but things do not always go to plan so I've built a little wiggleroom.

Like my previous projects, I'll send you an update on the last weekend of every month so you'll know how it's all progressing or if anything has gone horribly wrong.

Shipping

A Kickstarter survey will be sent out late Spring to collect your email address so I can send you your digital rewards.

A pledge manager — most likely Gamefound — will be set up to collect shipping and EU taxes (so you won't get and customs charges on delivery) for physical rewards. 

Estimated Shipping Costs 

The expected prices for shipping (without add-ons) are: 

• Zine: US £6, EU £5, AU/NZ/ROW £9, UK £5
• Art: US £16, EU £10, AU/NZ/ROW £18, UK £7
• Æther Bundle: US £20, EU £16, AU/NZ/ROW £25, UK £12

Zines will be sent via Royal Mail's International Standard and 2nd Class services and art will be sent Tracked and Signed.

Your Creator

I'm Luke Earl (he/him), a UX designer by day and game designer by night (and weekends) as well as the currently the sole operative at Æther Corp, the world’s smallest interstellar megacorporation, weirding our world with games and other bobbins. 

This year he also launched iwanttoplay.games, a new game discovery platform to help gaming folks find their next favourite and boost visibility for smaller creators’ creations.

When not playing with paper, pushing pixels or abusing alliteration he sings his little heart out with a surprising number of am-dram groups or is being gently pestered by two oversized fluffy black cats and mauled by a smaller, ferocious ginger one in a coastal town in Dorset, UK.

Like with my five other Kickstarter projects (Orchidelirium, A Small Collection of Flowers & Entanglements, Coiled.Spæce, Advanced Double D6 and the Field Agent Handbooks: 1924–28), I'm doing all the writing, editing, art and layout tasks myself. You have been warned.