Strange Owl Games State of the Union 2026
3 months ago
– Wed, Jan 07, 2026 at 06:36:47 AM
2026 Hail Adventurers,
Happy New Year, and welcome to 2026. A lot is in motion right now, so consider this our Strange Owl State of the Union update.
First up is an Amboria update. Later today via BackerKit, you will receive the pre-art Thunder in the North file. This version includes the full layout by Thomas Shook, who also laid out the core book, with all text in place and art placeholders throughout. Bob is finishing the remaining art, with help from Molly, our new Art Director, and we are very close to the finish line.
Once the art is complete, we will do a final editing pass and then send the book to print. With the upcoming Chinese New Year, the exact print schedule is still a bit uncertain, but we expect to have a clearer timeline by mid-February and will share it as soon as we do.
We are also running a last-chance crowdfunding campaign for Amboria on BackerKit. This is just to make sure that anyone who wants a print copy still has the chance to get one. We are also offering art prints, along with print copies of Akboritha and Book of Odes Volumes 1 and 2, which have been requested by quite a few of you.
If you have not checked it out yet, you can find it here. Richard and I, J-M, will be streaming this Thursday at 10 AM CST to talk about what is coming next for Amboria and to answer questions about the current campaign. These streams are pretty informal, and we are happy to dig into details or just talk shop. You can watch from the BackerKit page at 10 AM CST, or follow me here to get notified when we go live.
Looking ahead, 2026 is shaping up to be a busy year for Strange Owl Games. We have more Amboria planned, more Space 1889, and several new projects underway. These include Tim Brown’s new edition of Dragon Kings, as well as a new OSR version of Jackals using Shadowdark mechanics. We are also planning to attend North Texas RPG Con this year, with Tim, J-M, and Richard in attendance.
That is it for this status update! More soon, more books, and hopefully more time at the table.
Happy New Year!
November Update
4 months ago
– Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 08:33:31 AM
All,
We’re officially 13 days out from launching the Last Chance BackerKit for Amboria, and the countdown is on! Here’s the link to the pre-launch page.
If you can share it around and help get as many eyes on it as possible, we would truly appreciate it.
So what’s coming in this new crowdfunding round?
I’m glad you asked!
We’re rolling out art prints of Bob Crum’s stunning Amboria illustrations, available as add-ons during the campaign. We’re starting with four prints, and if the campaign gains momentum, we hope to unlock even more pieces for the collection.
We’ve also heard your questions about reprinting Akboritha and offering a print version of the Book of Odes. While I can’t spill all the details just yet… let’s just say that meetings have been had, emails have been exchanged, and things are moving. I’m hoping to share more concrete news with you in December.
Production Update!
Thunder in the North is deep in layout, and the final pieces of art are coming together beautifully. We’re still on track to head to print in January.
As always, thank you for your patience, enthusiasm, and support throughout this journey. I’ll have another update for you all next month.
And one more exciting note: we’re thrilled to showcase Bob Crum’s latest illustrations for Thunder in the North, including five brand-new monsters and the cover art, all attached to this post.
Strange Owl Games
August Update
7 months ago
– Sun, Aug 31, 2025 at 06:57:13 AM
My dear friends,
You’re long overdue for an update on this Kickstarter. I am sorry about that. I wanted to wait to send out this update because I wanted to wait until I had some good news. I’ll give you the good news first, and then give you a bit of a personal update, and then share what’s next for Amboria.
The Good News
Amboria Core Rules: Strange Owl is wrapping up layout and art right now, and not soon after this update, backers will be receiving a PDF of the laid-out text. Part of the reason this has been delayed is that, after getting the book all laid out, we realized we wanted more art! So you’re getting incredible new illustrations you didn’t even pay for!
Thunder in the North: After far exceeding the assignment, I have finally turned in the final draft for layout. Backers who backed at the appropriate levels will soon be receiving a copy of the campaign book. It’s… Uh… It’s 300 pages? Printed? Basically, I wanted this campaign book to really have everything I would want in a campaign, and this means I ended up significantly overshooting my goal. Again, this just means you’re getting a lot more Amboria! Seriously though, it’s hard to express how much it means to me to have finished this campaign and to be able to share it with all of you.
Personal Updates
I don’t know how much you’ve all heard, but life has not exactly been calm over here. On December 12, 2024, we welcomed our sixth child, a daughter – little Olga Marie “Ola Mae” Rohlin. Just a few days later, on December 27th, a sewer line backed up and flooded almost our entire house with sewage in the middle of the night, and we were forced to move out of our house – keep in mind that my wife was just two weeks post-partem – and hop between a series of hotel rooms and AirBnBs while our house was torn down to studs and rebuilt. Move-in coincided with Orthodox Holy Week this year, not exactly the most relaxing week for yours truly.
That brings us to the other update. As many of you probably know, I was ordained a deacon in the Orthodox Church in America on May the 4th (the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearers) of this year. Anyone who has read or played in a game of Amboria knows that the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church is one of my main sources of inspiration, and it’s the fulfillment of a long process of prayer and preparation for me to be able to serve the church in this way.
As life has finally settled down, and we are finally getting our boxes unpacked and getting our family back into some normal, healthy rhythms, I have been focused on getting the Amboria kickstarter across the finish line. And that brings us to what’s next…
What’s next for Amboria
While the good folks at Strange Owl finish up art and layout on the books, I will be focused on the PDF stretch goals for the Kickstarter. These are:
- New Adventure Trilogy:
- The Bell of Time
- The Isle of Madness
- The Bridge of the Jade (not yet unlocked, but more about that in a moment!
- The Book of Odes – This is the big lore dump a lot of you have been waiting for! While we made the decision to include a lot of liturgical content in Thunder in the North, this will be a much more extensive reward – the first two volumes of The Books of Odes, including the liturgical readings from The Queen’s Book for the first quarter of the year.
Once these PDF’s are delivered, I will resume writing the next campaign setting book: Sencankarr: City of a Thousand Springs. It is my intent to continue supporting this setting with new content just as long as there’s anyone interested in reading and playing it!
In the meantime, I am very excited to announce that Strange Owl will be opening up a limited-run “last chance” crowdfunding campaign to expand the content in the Amboria core rules and Thunder in the North. If you’ve already backed this campaign, we aren’t asking you to back again – but it might be a cool chance for your friends to get in on pre-order pricing before the books go to print. The money raised in that campaign will be applied to the original campaign, which should hopefully mean that we unlock those last few stretch goals. Stay tuned for another announcement about this soon.
Anyway, this update has gone on long enough. I hope you enjoy the PDF’s which will be hitting your inbox this week, and that you’ll let me know what you think!
I remain ever your friend,
Richard
PS – J-M here with Strange Owl Games. Huge thanks to Richard for all his hard work, along with Bob (our artist), and Thomas (our layout guy). With the draft in layout, and Bob working hard on the art for Thunder in the North, we are on track to have this book to the printer before the end of the year! This means that you will see your books as soon as they can print them and turn them around in 2026.
I know this project has taken much longer than any of us anticipated, and I wanted to say thank you for your continued support and patience. I am sorry these delays have kept mounting, but we have implemented new processes and procedures to greatly improve our response time when we hit crowdfunding.
Some of these include:
- Insuring manuscripts are completed and out of editing BEFORE the crowdfunding.
- Having the art direction written up and ready to go as soon as the campaign funds.
- Limiting offerings and stretch goals to ensure tighter turnaround times.
We are ecstatic to get you the draft of TinT and the final, gorgeous PDF of Amboria here in September! Additionally, Richard and I will be making monthly posts going forward. Originally, we did not want to bother you unless we had news, but after hearing your thoughts, and now that we have a ton of news, we will be making one update a month until the project is in your hands!
Currently, our timeline for this project is:
- September - Final Amboria PDF & Completed draft PDF of TitN, after that, we will lock the backerkit! This means your cards will be charged, but not for shipping. That will happen closer to the actual shipping date.
- October – Art completed and Last Chance crowdfunding.
- November – Delivery of the Final TitN PDF.
- December – All files sent to printer.
- March/April – Books arrive stateside and start shipping (this is an estimate).
I will have a better idea of print time and shipping costs when we hit December/January.
As for the last chance crowdfunding. We know this is WAY overdue. As such, when the book comes out, it will be more expensive. So, we want to offer a way to have people who have found Amboria and Richard, to have a chance to get the books at the original crowdfunding pricing. We expect the books to go up $15 to $20 at retail.
What does this mean for you, who brought this project to life? At first, nothing! Nothing will change about your pledges, and your books fulfilled first.
We are planning, as Richard said, to add anything we make from this second crowdfunding to the total of the first, meaning we can unlock the remaining stretch goals! These stretch goals are automatically added to all pledges (assuming you would have gotten them in the first place).
Additionally, we are going to have art print packs of the amazing art Bob has put together, available on this new crowdfunding. There will be a ‘previous backer’ tier, if you want to add those prints to your pledge.
If you have any questions, please contact me and I will do my best to answer them.
We are at the finish line here, and I am so excited to see these books in print. As soon as we get proofs in, know I will be showing them off with Richard!
Thank you all,
J-M & Strange Owl Games
