Matt Goetz, IKRPG Manager

Today’s the day: the Kickstarter for Into the Deep Wild is live!

I want to tell you a little something about how it came to be.

I love the Bong Joon Ho film The Host. It introduced me to one of my favorite actors, Song Kang-Ho (you might know him from Parasite and, seriously, The Good, the Bad, the Weird is well worth your time), made me start paying attention to Korean cinema in a real way, and is tangentially related to the subject of this insider, the bog gulper.

Stay with me.

In one of the development team’s many Zoom meetings, Erik Reiersen revealed a discovery from the vaults. You see, back in the day, the concept artists at Privateer Press didn’t work exclusively digitally. Many concepts were traditional pen-and-ink sketches, drafted on reams of printer paper and tucked away into filing cabinets. I should know: I once grabbed an old filing cabinet that included tons of original concepts from across the years, including some Matt Wilson originals.

We were discussing our upcoming release, the Into the Deep Wild supplement for Iron Kingdoms: Requiem. With a flourish, Erik revealed his discovery: it was a sketch for the “bog gulper,” a monster that was pitched during an open call for new monster ideas in the lead up to Monsternomicon II back in the 3.5 days of the Iron Kingdoms.

It was perfect. A gross, fishy hybrid of a catfish, anglerfish… and, best of all, with the earmarks of weird mutations: extra limbs, a fleshy lure that looked like a drowning human—it called up memories of the first time I watched The Host and saw the strange mutant beast rampaging along the waterways of South Korea.

I’d found my muse. This needs to be in the Deep Wild books, I thought. This needs to be the Deep Wild.

That led to the creation of one of three books for the Into the Deep Wild release. Called Monsternomicon: The Lost Pages, it is a gaggle of new monsters and threats to include in your games of Iron Kingdoms: Requiem. And like the once-forgotten bog gulper, it includes many of the monsters from the earliest versions of the Iron Kingdoms, all with a bit of a modern twist. Lemaxes, letheans, screechers, urtheks, and more are in this new manual of monsters, presented by a handful of the Iron Kingdoms’ foremost scholars of Extraordinary Zoology. Alongside them are never-before-seen creatures from the far-flung corners of western Immoren, giving Game Masters a new set of tools to add to encounters and players new and unexpected threats to face.

With all of the gribbly monsters that players are sure to encounter while adventuring in the deep wilds of western Immoren, Game Masters might want to build encounters with monsters both old and new. To keep from having to juggle through numerous books in the middle of a tense battle, we have a resource lined up for one of our early Stretch Goals: monster cards! 

The first set of these cards was produced for the Legend of the Witchfire adventure. Acting as a quick reference, the cards allow a GM to keep the focus on the action instead of flipping back and forth to different pages each time they want to toss an extra putrid devil rat at the party. If we reach this stretch goal, we plan to produce cards for multiple monsters, both from this campaign and previous ones, to act as a useful tool to help streamline your games of Iron Kingdoms: Requiem.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this preview of the bog gulper, past and present. The Deep Wild Kickstarter is available here

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