The Hands That Feed Preorder store.

!! THTF MAY UPDATE !!
about 1 year ago – Thu, May 01, 2025 at 09:29:44 PM

Hi all!

I have exciting news today! Although it comes with a let down.

Starting with the positive bit first – we’re substantially upgrading the book! The short of it is that we’re quadrupaling the station section so we have a true sand box spanning across multiple star systems. Of course the downside is that we’re pushing back the deadline by a few months.

Upgrade Explanation

Originally we were going to dedicate two pages for each of the six stations – outlining some new factions,NPCs, etc and pointing to the eight corporations so wardens could easily place the entities into their games. Now it’s going to be a solid ~48 page sandbox with 3 stations clocking in at ~2000-3000 words, and 3 stations clocking in much smaller at ~600 words, and a number of storylines to run in the stations. The 5 missions in the book can still be played in any order, three of which work particularly well as introductions for a campaign.

I’m stoked about continuing with the sandbox! Having all of the corporations written first, I’ve been able to intentionally place connections throughout the stations pretty quickly. I’m working off of a checklist of 70+ connections to weave in from The Hands That Feed corporations, alongside ~20 connections to our other books (so you can play an even bigger campaign!!).

So the reason for all of this, ultimately, is I didn’t think the book was delivering enough. Coming back from the hiatus I took from The Hands That Feed earlier this year, I’ve been extremely critical of the book. I made smaller improvements throughout and increased the size of the "Choke Point" mission. I was, and am ecstatic about the missions and about the corporations everyone wrote, but I wasn't unhappy with how easy it was for wardens to implement it all into a campaign. It was too “plug-n-play” and not enough “easy to run out of the box”. Which I know is perfectly fine for a lot of wardens and GMs, but ultimately I want THTF to be easy to get to the table and not require enough prep work to deter wardens, at least as far as running a campaign with it.

Delay Explanation

So where does the few months come from? We need to give Kharrak 2-4 weeks to approve the book for Motherhship. Our printers will take about 6 weeks to turn around the book. Space Penguin will need at least 2 weeks to start fulfillment once they receive them. Production-wise, I think I’ll be done in about 4 weeks. Unfortunately, all the time listed above happens after production is finalized.

I want to apologize for pushing back the date, especially since I chose to take a leave from the project. It made for a better book, and in my opinion is worth it, but I also understand the reasonable frustration and uncertainty that it brings for some backers. I can definitely guarantee, especially based on our track record, that this book will be made and delivered to everyone regardless of delays. I will make sure to keep up with updates as well to keep everyone informed of progress and updated dates.

Now for some more good stuff!

Here’s a sneak peak of the “cover” art/first spread for Time For a Change by Diogo Nogueira, an adventure written for his corporation, KV KORP.

And, I’m happy to announce that we brought Arcvein back to illustrate Carved Like a Covenant! Arcvein illustrated Constant Downpour and, more importantly for CLAC, Knights of Lazarus. Its only fitting to have him back for Carved Like a Covenant (one of the two zines releasing with The Hands That Feed) which features a rival party of knights, a powerful piece of xenotech, and some good ol' fashioned space horror.

*Please note CLAC will be submitted to TKG for approval for Mothership, but due to focusing on finishing The Hands That Feed first we opted out of the preapproval process, which is why there is no Mothership logo on the current cover mockup.

April Update
about 1 year ago – Tue, Apr 01, 2025 at 12:00:13 PM

Hi all!

I'm sorry I'm a a week or so behind on this update, but I'm excited to share that progress in layout and art continues to go strong! Today we're sharing a sneak peak for the newest adventure we added to The Hands That Feed (announced in December).

In Choke Point the crew must infiltrate a dam taken over and controlled by militiamen. Their goal is to release the reservoir in order to flood the anti-air cannons stopping rebel allies from overthrowing the leaders of the Himalayo coup. The bloodthirsty killers, the Utope Trio, defending the dam are equipped with Yucatan Tech Co weaponry, experimental stims, and hallucinogenic gasses and will do whatever it takes to eliminate the invaders. Can the crew navigate the maintenance tunnels and vents successfully enough to make it to the control room? Or will the Utope Trio snuff them out?

Choke Point connects the crew with Yucatan Tech Co in a few ways. In the backdrop of Himalayo falling to a coup is Yucatan Tech Co being caught supplying known bad actors, the Propeller Syndicate which enabled the coup to be successful. Helping the rebels reclaim control of Himalayo allows YTC to pay their reparations and more easily spin the incident as an accidental exchange since the Propeller Syndicate purchased the firearms under the guise of a pseudonym. A successful mission means the crew gains a chunky credit to Yucatan Tech Co firearms and Federico, with YTC, owes them a big one. 

I also love Choke Point because it turns the YTC weaponry against the crew and showcases how horrifying they can be on the other side of things. Beyond YTC we have one of the new stims manufactured by Potamo Major (Constant Downpour/Outsourced/Stims From the Dark Web) alongside Mistify No.58 which was plucked from Stims From the Dark Web 1. O, and a surprise, we have all new stims coming with The Hands That Feed and a few stations they are manufactured on, providing new accessibility to Tunaverse stims at the same locations the corporations from THTF operate from.

That's it for this update. Thank you again for the support! Till next time,

Marco

Surveys Sent + Timeline
over 1 year ago – Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 02:27:36 PM

Backerkit surveys have been sent!! You should have them in the emails you used to back the campaign here on Kickstarter.

Timeline:

• Late Pledges: Here on Kickstarter will be going down later today, and  the backerkit preorder store will open up in the next week or two.
• Orders Locked and Cards Charged: Early-Mid May 2025
• PDF Delivered: Mid-Late May 2025
• Physical Fulfilment: Mid-Late May 2025

THTF Update

Development on the hardcover is going strong!! Although, I do need to share the unfortunate news that Gontijo is no longer doing layout for the project. We had a mutual agreement it was best for us both and there was nothing bad spilt on the porridge. Despite losing Gontijo, whose work I love and look up to, I do want to reassure everyone who is new to backing Spicy Tuna projects that you can still expect a beautiful book! All of the mock ups on the campaign page were my designs since we weren't far enough along with illustrations for Gontijo to move forward so you can expect more of what you've seen as previews so far because I will now be doing layout, as I've done for all of our previous projects. 

Speaking of layout, most of the progress we've made is in layout so I can better plan out illustrations. Additionally, I'll start spilling out illustrations for the book this weekend and ongoing! Here's a sneak peak of the layout for "Between A Corp and a Hardplace", one of the five adventures in the book. 
*Spaces left for map and illustrations.*The "cover" illustration will also be upgraded!

That's it for today! Thank you again for backing this and bringing it to life. I'm excited to be sprinting forward again!

Till next time,

Marco

January Update!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 11:59:03 AM

Hi all!

The Hands That Feed moves forward, albeit some tedious, slow, and not so attractive work of reworking some of the first writings that were caught in our audit phase. A lot of the original work will get another editing pass after these rewrites and then layout can move forward and we've been lining things up with Walt to knock it out. Once we get the final writing in we'll shift focus to finishing art and layout which I suspect will be a solid month of work. All in all, we're well on schedule to fulfill by May.

Spicy Tuna + Projects Update:

I have loved working on hardcovers the past few years, especially The Hands That Feed as our biggest collaborative work yet, but I've found that hunkering down on a giant book requires me to take decent breaks in between working through and managing all of the text. This has been true since working on the book for the past two years, and why we've had smaller projects move forward over the last eight months, which are now getting to the crowdfunding stage soon. If you follow us outside of Kickstarter, you might have already seen our two zine-sized games (Cryo Drakus and Blackthorn) which are going to crowdfund in February and March. I think it's important to address it here so you know we are dedicated to fulfilling this project responsibly despite having smaller projects move forward with the funding process, both of which have a delivery date after The Hands That Feed.

As a designer I'm stoked about all three of these projects, and appreciate leading with a deadline that allows me to do my best work efficiently. I also appreciate the understanding we've consistently received from backers for our projects, and I intend to continue monthly communication while wrapping up the final parts of THTF.

I'm looking forward to having new illustrations and spreads to share next month so you don't just have to read a wall of text. Thank you again for believing in the book! I continue to grow excitement for how great, I think, it is! Till next time,

Marco

December Update
over 1 year ago – Wed, Dec 18, 2024 at 01:47:52 PM

Hi everyone!

A quick update for December to let you know we've spent our time to tidy up the organization of the book and "audit" the writing to make sure we were delivering the best book possible. A lot of benefits from doing this, but the biggest is that the book will now have five ready-to-play adventures instead of four. We're doing this by expanding a storyline we already had in the book for Yucatan Tech Co. Instead of brain fuel, we're committing to expanding out so it's easier to get playing with the info.

That's the good news for December! Some of these updates will be much shorter so we can put our focus designing, but we want to make sure to keep up with the cadence of monthly updates so you know we're here.

We hope the rest of your holiday season is wonderful! Till next time,

Marco