SEP: State of Play Aug 2025

Welcome to a snapshot of what’s happening at SEP. You can find the actual website here, but I’m going to stick with Sword’s Edge for most communications and just leave release announcements to SEP.

SEP is in the red so far this year in part due to costs associated with printing books for physical distribution and attending BreakoutCon. Even with Kickstarter funding offsetting much of the cost of producing Nefertiti Overdrive 2.0, SEP barely made a profit for 2024. It went pretty well in 2023, so hopefully the enterprise will turn at least a minimal profit for 2025 and maybe pick up in 2026 . . . unless I do something stupid.

Speaking . . . writing about Nefertiti Overdrive 2.0, it has yet to turn a profit. Really close (like two or three more sales close) but the Kickstarter which raised $4,049 Canadian (of which I got $3,705.80) didn’t cover the costs—some of which is because of additional work I hadn’t anticipated and some of which was exchange rates.

But depending on what projects move forward and how, there might be more costs rather than less.

The major project is Intervention, a robust, roll-low system that uses a cyberpunk setting for the playtest. This was an experiment for me in design. My games are generally story-focused and so relatively mechanics-lite. Intervention is different. It has proved a challenge, but the last few sessions and some other testing I’ve done on the most recent iteration makes me hopeful. What I do with it? Don’t know. The intent was to re-release Direct Action and maybe Resistance Earth using this system. That might still happen. That’s the lowest cost alternative. We’ll see.

I’m also near the end of an update of Kiss My Axe. This both updates the mechanics to match the second editions of Sword’s Edge and Sword Noir, but also a re-examination of my approach to the mechanics and a revision of some of the history based on the works of Cat Jarman, Neil Price, and Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir—Price and Friðriksdóttir were historical consultants on the wonderful Viking movie The Northman.

Those are the two big projects, both of which seem to reaching a conclusion. I am also working on a couple of adventures for different systems now that I’ve wrapped writing for the Nefertiti Overdrive adventures that were part of the Kickstarter.

How are things with you?