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Weird, Whimsy & Wonder: fill your TTRPG sessions with awe!

Created by Cezar Capacle

A playful tool to make your TTRPG moments weird, whimsical, and wondrous. Skip the tired tropes and turn any plain creature, place, event, or item into something worth remembering!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Pledge Survey and All Sorts of Pain
7 months ago – Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 02:13:56 AM

Hello, hello, hello!

Here I am with a brand-new update. Today I’ve got news on three fronts: campaign, development, and something personal (feel free to skip that part if it’s not your thing).


📬 Survey & Pledge Manager


The BackerKit surveys are out! 🎉 You should have received an email inviting you to:

  • Confirm your address information
  • Pay for shipping
  • Grab any extra add-ons you’d like

I’m happy to report that 87% of you have already completed your surveys—amazing! If you haven’t yet, it would be great if you could take a few minutes to do so, since it speeds things up for everyone.

👉 Didn’t see the email? No worries. Just follow this link, enter the email you used for the campaign, and BackerKit will resend it to you automatically.


🖌️ Development


My plan this week was to finish three title pages for the Flavors chapter—Weird, Whimsy, and Wonder. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I did finish the Weird title page (which turned out fittingly weird, full of quirky animals and eyes repurposed from public domain illustrations, including those delightfully odd medieval animal illustration... uhm, "attempts"). You can check it out below.


As for the other two, I wasn’t able to complete them this week, for personal reasons, which I’ll share a bit about below.


💬 Personal Note (optional read)


Some of you know that I live with chronic pain caused by four protruded discs in my cervical spine. For years, it kept me from even trying to learn how to draw. Recently, with yoga and a less stressful routine, I’ve been able to tackle this dream of mine—though it’s still painful and sometimes leaves me unable to use my right arm for days. That was the case this week, which slowed me down a lot.

On top of that, I experienced something new: my first sensory meltdown (which I didn't even know was a thing). At a public event, the loud music and kids shouting overwhelmed me to the point that I broke down sobbing and had to leave (???). It was scary and vulnerable (new fear unlocked?), and after some research I discover this might happen to neurodivergent people. I was never diagnosed growing up in 90s Brazil, but... there are signs, you know what I mean?

To add to it all, I had a very negative interaction with a backer. Please don’t get me wrong—the vast majority of you have been nothing but encouraging, kind, and amazing. But that one experience hit harder than I expected and with everything else that happened, it was the push that left me paralyzed with sadness for two days. Thankfully, my good friend Tim from Critical Kit offered support and encouragement, which helped me bounce back by Friday.

Now, I’m not sharing this to ask for sympathy or to make excuses for lower productivity this week. I’m sharing it as a reminder—to myself as much as to anyone—that we all need to take care of ourselves and of each other. Behind every screen, behind every interaction, there’s a person carrying things we can’t see. A little kindness, whether toward others or ourselves, goes a long way.

The good news: I’m back at work now, managing the pain, moving forward with layout, and excited to keep creating.


❤️ Closing


That’s all for today! Please remember to fill out your surveys, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask here.

And one more thing: let’s be kind to each other. The world is a heavy place right now, and we could all use a little extra warmth, respect, and togetherness.

Appreciate you all, have a fantastic week.

— Cezar

Help Me Choose the Background Color 🎨
7 months ago – Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 02:34:16 AM

Greetings, everyone!

How’s your week been? Over here I’m deep into layout work, juggling new margin illustrations (which I’m excited to show soon) and a very time-consuming side quest: setting up the Pledge Manager on BackerKit. Turns out, it’s a pretty intricate process! If you ever plan on crowdfunding, I’d say set aside a good chunk of time just to learn the platform. Luckily, their customer support has been top-notch.

But back to the book. I’m excited to share a new spread with you today, one that’s a little less art-heavy. As much as I love the chaotic, psychedelic vibes of the title and intro pages, I’m mindful that too much visual noise can be fatiguing when paired with dense text. Sometimes, the layout needs to give your brain a little room to breathe and soak in the information.

This spread leans more on text, but I added some whimsical margin illustrations to keep things lively. That’s when I ran into a design question I often ask myself—and this time, I’d like your opinion.

When I work on layouts, I usually lean toward lighter, less saturated background colors. Darker or more saturated tones can feel striking at first but become tiring to read over long stretches. After finishing this spread, I wasn’t sure if the darker background was too heavy, so I tried a lighter version too.

Since you’ll be the ones reading it, I thought it only fair to open it up to you:

👉 Which background color works best for you?

  • Option A: Darker

  • Option B: Lighter


You’ve got until the end of next week to cast your vote—just drop your choice in the poll below!

Back to the drawings and layouts for me. 

Talk soon, take care, and thank you for helping shape this book.

-- Cezar

[ERRATA] Whoops! Sorry for the jumbled mess!
7 months ago – Sat, Sep 13, 2025 at 01:52:43 AM

Hey peeps, it's me again

Yesterday I sent out a guest update hyping up my good friend Steph from TTRPGKids only to realize later that the images were attached incorrectly, which resulted in you all receiving a jumble mess of infinite characters! My apologies! 🤦‍♂️

Their project is great and deserves better than my little faux pas, so here's all about it once more (no images this time, just so we avoid any weirdness—despite the whole theme of this project 😅)

Sorry again, and enjoy your weekend (and do checkout StoryGuider)

(fixed last update follows)


What about playing with kids? [Guest Post]


Hi there! 

Today I'm excited to have a guest post by Steph, from TTRPGKids.   

Steph does great work, and their next project is now funding, and I believe some of you may find great value in it! This is not sponsored, I just want to hype a fellow indie creator! ^^


StoryGuider

Made just for kids, by the ENnie awarded TTRPGkids, StoryGuider lets young players, ages 2-7, have a special story that twists and turns down the paths that they choose!

This series of 36 adventures is designed to be fun for kids while intentionally teaching social emotional learning skills and practicing other skills (like fine motor control) as part of the story itself and its story-related engagement activities.  

StoryGuider was initially published a few years ago as an aid for a pre-K teacher looking to improve class engagement on the school’s social-emotional learning curriculum, and this campaign aims to not only improve the stories based on feedback and lessons learned but to also hire artists to update all the coloring and activity pages.

From this initial publication, StoryGuider has been tested and used with classrooms full of kids (group play), parent to child play (1:1), and early reader learning (solo). StoryGuider is great story for adults or older children to read to young players AND for emerging readers to play on their own while picking up key literacy skills.

All art is made by humans, and the team includes two skilled teen artists who are kicking off their careers in illustration and comics.  

Stretch goals for this project include publication of an illustrated SRD example, additional book formats (i.e. hardcover and large size options), and a translation into French to help kids and adults with foreign language practice. 

If that sparks your interest, check the campaign here.  

Thank you and have a great weekend! 
 
-- Cezar

What about playing with kids? [Guest Post]
7 months ago – Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 07:16:59 AM

Hi there! 

Today I'm excited to have a guest post by Steph, from TTRPGKids.   

Steph does great work, and their next project is now funding, and I believe some of you may find great value in it! This is not sponsored, I just want to hype a fellow indie creator! ^^

StoryGuider  

Made just for kids, by the ENnie awarded TTRPGkids, StoryGuider lets young players, ages 2-7, have a special story that twists and turns down the paths that they choose!



This series of 36 adventures is designed to be fun for kids while intentionally teaching social emotional learning skills and practicing other skills (like fine motor control) as part of the story itself and its story-related engagement activities.   

StoryGuider was initially published a few years ago as an aid for a pre-K teacher looking to improve class engagement on the school’s social-emotional learning curriculum, and this campaign aims to not only improve the stories based on feedback and lessons learned but to also hire artists to update all the coloring and activity pages.   



From this initial publication, StoryGuider has been tested and used with classrooms full of kids (group play), parent to child play (1:1), and early reader learning (solo). StoryGuider is great story for adults or older children to read to young players AND for emerging readers to play on their own while picking up key literacy skills. 

All art is made by humans, and the team includes two skilled teen artists who are kicking off their careers in illustration and comics.     

Stretch goals for this project include publication of an illustrated SRD example, additional book formats (i.e. hardcover and large size options), and a translation into French to help kids and adults with foreign language practice.   

If that sparks your interest, check the campaign here.  

Thank you and have a great weekend! 
 
-- Cezar

That’s a Wrap — Thank You All So Much 💛
7 months ago – Mon, Sep 08, 2025 at 03:14:09 AM

Top of the morning to you all!

That’s a wrap on the campaign. Wow. I honestly can’t believe it. When I started this project, I thought maybe 20 people would find some value in it—and instead, we ended up with nearly 400 backers and over 700% of the original goal. I have no words. I’m just so, so grateful to all of you.

I’d planned to send this update over the weekend, but I got knocked flat by a brutal 48-hour migraine (the bad-writing kind, where even looking at a screen is impossible). I’m only now recovering enough to peek at the computer again. At least it gave you a small break from all the emails I was sending in those final campaign days. 😅


What’s Next?


Soon you'll have access to the pledge manager to, well, manage your pledges, and updates will keep rolling out—roughly weekly—as development continues. You can expect:

  • Progress reports on layout
  • Previews of new art
  • The occasional poll so you can help shape what comes next
  • Maybe even some guest updates along the way

Together, we’ll ride this project through to a great finish, how does that sound?

I haven’t properly celebrated yet (saving that for when I’m fully back on my feet), but for now, I just want to say: thank you again, from the bottom of my heart.

Wishing you all a fantastic week—talk soon, and keep being awesome.

-- Cezar