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Voidheart Symphony - What Are You Fighting For?

Created by Rowan, Rook and Decard

A role-playing game of psychic revolution in the shadows of the city.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Correction: PDFs Coming On Monday
3 months ago – Fri, Nov 21, 2025 at 09:38:21 AM

Apologies, everyone: I come bearing sad news. I was hoping I'd be handing over PDFs for you to enjoy over the weekend.

However, we're not quite ready. In summary: sending out files in the space between locking orders and charging cards is actually quite difficult, and the sensible thing to do here to make sure everyone receives, and retains, access to all their digital rewards is to wait until cards are charged. 

This should still be on Monday, as planned. So expect files then, though possibly quite late in the evening (if you're in the UK or Europe; quite early if you're in the US).

Please have a great weekend anyway, and I'll get those files out to you as soon as I possibly can.

- Chant

PDFs Releasing This Week (Locking Orders on Thursday)
3 months ago – Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 10:49:26 AM

The headlines:
  • We’re running about two weeks later than planned
  • Printing and manufacturing’s going well
  • Your PDFs will be arriving this week!

TIMELINE

We have lost a couple of weeks. But we did it for what I personally think is the best reason: several rounds of proofing that each made the print files a little bit better. We’ve fixed wonky page number placements, boxes that had moved a quarter inch to the left, and a handful of typos (there are still typos. There will always be typos.). At the last possible moment, we realised the placement of the perforation lines on the tear-out playbooks in the quickstart were in fractionally the wrong place.

This is the ugly truth of TTRPG design.


Anyway, as of Friday 14th November, printing is complete. That doesn’t mean everything’s done - the books still have to be bound, and pieces of hand finishing completed, like the elastic on the notebook and the playbook envelope inside the core book… but we’re getting there. 

That does shift the timeline a little bit:



LOCKING ORDERS, CHARGING CARDS

PDFs are ready, we’ve got all our shipping info set up, so… it’s time to lock those orders! 

Step 1: I am starting Backerkit's countdown to locking orders tonight. That means they'll actually lock 48 hours from now, on Thursday 20th November (UK evening). After that you won’t be able to add or remove any items - so if you want to do that, move fast.
Step 2: I'll distribute the digital downloads for all books on Friday.
Step 3: I will then charge cards on Monday 24th November. 

As a reminder:
Everyone will be charged shipping at this point.
People who added items in pledge manager (i.e., after the crowdfunding campaign) will also be charged for those.

If your payment fails, you’ll get an email from Backerkit informing you that you need to try another payment method (and explaining how to do that).

SHIPPING CHARGES

Logistics Alex has done his level best to get these charges down as low as we possibly can. If you’re getting the book, quickstart, GM Kit, notebook, setting zine and patches, shipping should cost you: 

UK £15
US £20
Canada £25
EU £15-20
Australia & NZ £20

If you are in the UK or US, this is above our initial expectation. Those were our partners' best estimates, with the information we had, at the time of crowdfunding - but since then there has been a lot of global trade upheaval, and while we've done our best to minimise the impact, there has still been a noticeable increase in shipping costs in some places. We're sorry for the unexpected increase; if this makes your pledge unaffordable for you, please email us at [email protected] before we charge cards. It’s not really a silver lining, but we’re getting better at estimating our shipping costs with each crowdfunder, and also getting better at estimating contingencies that allow for the current level of potential short-notice change and upheaval in freight and postage. If you come back and support another project from us, we hope we can avoid nasty surprises in future.

There are some quirks to the shipping costs that you should be aware of. The most important of these is that if you’re one of the ten or so backers who only ordered patches, your shipping’s going to be quite expensive compared to your pledge: £10 in the UK, £12.50 in the US, Aus, and NZ, £15-17.50 in Europe. This is in part because we can't use Media Mail for these in the US - they're not books - and our pick and pack costs (living wage for warehouse employees is important, folks) means that the total cost to ship small items like these is still relatively high. Again, we're sorry that we aren't able to get these costs any lower - but if you wanted to make the shipping cost feel less spicy, you could add the quickstart, GM Kit, and the setting zine without changing the shipping price. Or the notebook. But I really like the GM Kit. I’d probably recommend the GM Kit. As above, if this makes your pledge unaffordable for you, please email us at [email protected] before we charge cards.

BACKERS, MEET ALEX

The next time you get an update, it will hopefully start with the words “BOOKS ON BIG BOAT”, which means this process will have passed from my domain into Alex’s. Alex is our Warehouse and Boat Specialist, and he’ll be taking over updates while Voidheart’s in or between either of those realms.

If you backed Dagger in the Heart last year, you already know Alex. If not - you’re in safe hands. He’s good at this. He’s got the mugs to prove it.



IN CONCLUSION

  • PDFs this week! (Hurray)
  • Shipping charges also this week! (Boo)
  • Physical books in February rather than January (Big Boo, sorry)

- Chant


We Are Going to Print
5 months ago – Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 03:39:38 AM

The design files have been polished to a high shine and are going to the printer today. Wheels are turning (I assume there are wheels in printing presses, I’ve never actually seen one close up. There must be wheels.). THAT MEANS…

TIMELINE

We are on schedule! Print, freight, and delivery dates remain the same. Logistics Guy Alex and I have constructed a 50-point plan for getting your books, zines, patches etc. to you. That’s so many points. We are effectively unstoppable, we think.


However, it looks like the PDF release will be early November: we need to set up all the shipping information in Backerkit so we can lock orders and charge shipping, and we’re a couple of weeks away from having all of the data we need to do that. Soon, though. Soon. 


LOCKING ORDERS, CHARGING CARDS

This will happen moments before the PDF release, but you will get advance notice. I’ll send you an email with about a week’s warning, so you can make any changes to your order. Then you’ll get an email from Backerkit 48 hours before it actually happens. Addresses won’t be locked until we start shipping books, but this is a good opportunity to get ahead of that and check yours is correct.

As a reminder:
  • Everyone will be charged shipping at this point.
  • People who added items in pledge manager (i.e., after the crowdfunding campaign) will also be charged for those.

THE GM KIT

Is ready! It is very stylish, look at it: 


I’m really excited about this one. Mina’s condensed Voidheart Symphony into a 1-2 hour starter experience. It’s both a guided tutorial and a really useful set of GM resources: we’ve got a safety tool card, a gameplay flow chart, and reference sheets for exploration Moves, combat Moves, weapon tags and architect reactions. Plus it’s got a little starter scenario (emphasis on short: dive into darkness, explore the castle a bit, and fight a vassal).

We are reasonably confident you could rock up to your Friendly Local Game Store or cafe, drop this on the table, and immediately look like a pro GM to your friends or a bunch of friendly strangers.

If you didn’t grab one of these (it was not included in pledges: we did not expect so many people to want it), you can still add it to your order, if you like.

In closing: 
  • Ye gods, Mina’s cool
  • Look out for those emails from me, and then Backerkit, about locking orders
  • Watch this space for printing and fulfilment updates

- Chant out

You, The Citizens (important fulfilment updates within)
6 months ago – Fri, Aug 29, 2025 at 03:33:24 AM

So titled because the most fun we’ve had this month is putting backers’ bios and pictures into the book, so thank you everyone who pledged at that level!

Thank you also to everyone who sent feedback on the core book. It is better for your input.

TIMELINE

We’re still on track! Mina’s got bits of work to do on each product, but nothing huge on any of them. The biggest, and most exciting, part is putting the Citizen backers NPCs into the book. If you’re one of those backers, we’ll send you a preview of your content next week.

In order to stay on track, we’re going to send the files straight to the printer once Mina’s finished with them - we’ll proof them, of course, but we’re not going to do a backer review period like we did for the core book. That will let us get files sent over pretty early in September, then onwards we go through production and freight until, early next year, we get the books into your hands!


LOCKING ORDERS, CHARGING CARDS

There’s a delicate dance we have to do, on every crowdfunder, around this. 
  • We want to get you the PDFs as fast as we can. 
  • We have to lock orders and charge cards before we can do that. 
  • We want to lock orders as late as we can, so shipping costs can’t go up by 50% before we need to send out your parcels.
  • We also don’t want to end up manually editing too many orders for late address changes, etc., because that way lies disaster.
For more information, see general global postage chaos.

Our compromise, on this occasion, is that we’ll lock your orders and charge your cards as soon as we confirm the item weights (when printing is finished, so late September/early October), and accept the risk that postage costs might go up a bit in the New Year.

We’ll give you a two week warning (at minimum) before we actually go through with charging cards. Once we’ve charged cards, we’ll be able to distribute all PDFs immediately. 

So, for everyone keeping track, that’s PDFs in October. 

I hope that’s a nice bit of news to end on. I’ll leave you with a few more page spreads, this time from the Burn This City notebook, as a party favour. The notebook contains sections for Rebels (in blue, for tracking your game sessions and character arcs) and for the Architect (in red, for scheming). 

Until next time.

- Chant


Big Important Update: Backer Preview Coming Today!
7 months ago – Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 12:05:29 PM




We interrupt your regularly scheduled timeline and production updates to inform you that the backer preview PDF of the revised Voidheart Symphony is ready for you!

Depending when you see this update, you may already have received an email from Backerkit with a link to the download.



Now, there are some things you should know. 

FEEDBACK PLEASE

This is very much a preview PDF. We've edited, proofed, revised, shaken, and inspected this book under UV light but there are always a handful of errors that escape our notice. We are, alas, only human.

We need your help to catch the rest. If you spot any typos, or indeed anything that's confusingly worded, please let us know. We've made a feedback form to make this as easy as we possibly can. You can access it here:
https://forms.gle/huAQQGH1sAo6WU1FA


FEEDBACK WINDOW

We're eager to get this off to the printer, so we can start making books. That means we're going to keep taking feedback until Wednesday 13th August. After that, Mina will start revising the file and we'll move on to production.

BACKERS ONLY

Please don't share this PDF. Mostly because it's a preview, and we'd like to get those last errors sorted before it makes its public debut. If you want to share it with your group because you want to play it together, that's fine.


OTHER PRODUCT PREVIEWS

We are planning on releasing the quickstart, notebook and GM kit for you to have a look at too. They're still in layout (in the quickstart's case, still in editing). Those will have significantly shorter feedback periods, and if any of them take longer than planned, we might whoosh them straight off to the printer. But for now you should expect to see these in a couple of weeks.

THAT'S ALL!

Chant will be back after the feedback period closes with an update on timings. For now, if you haven't done your surveys please do (you probably won't be able to get the PDF download if you haven't, for a start), and brace yourself for us to start shouting about locking addresses and charging shipping.

Thanks for coming on this ride with us.

Chant & Mina

PS - if you have trouble picking up the files, we'll be checking in right here tomorrow morning to help resolve any issues!