🦅📘 Murka Preview: Arcana Americana, Chapter 1!
1 day ago – Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 10:16:58 AM

Okay so look, I am acutely aware that I am late to this particular posting party,
BUT!!!
If Ohio can show up 150 years late to *checks notes* becoming a legitimate state, then I politely ask for forgiveness for my week of tardiness. Please have mercy!

PDF Preview for Chapter 1 of Arcana Americana is here!

• This is a work-in-progress. 
  • Many of the elements you see here are still being re-worked or re-arranged. Some text wraps incorrectly, like on page 23. Some of the page elements are not final. This is close to what the final product will look like, but expect some changes along the way!
  • We're planning on replacing the chapter image for this with that Murkan Gothiccc piece I shared in the last update—if you haven't seen it yet, go check it out!
• If you find any concerns, issues, or errors, please tell us!
  • You can leave a comment here, send me an email (jaron at valafoundry.com), reach out to us on the QuasiReal Discord, or send a carrier pigeon if you can manage it! Happy to take any feedback you have.
• There's more where this came from!
  • We're hard at work figuring out exactly what our cadence for these updates will be. I want you guys to have a steady stream of preview material, but I have to reconcile that against asking our layout artist to provide frequent updates - please be patient while we keep figuring this out, we appreciate you!

The Roadmap

📕📑 Murka Book & PDF Status Update
17 days ago – Mon, Jul 06, 2026 at 12:39:33 PM

HI YES HELLO, I--
*falls down stairs*
I AM STILL HERE, I AM ALIVE, I JUST--
*falls down another set of stairs*
WAIT, OPEN THIS UPDATE, I HAVE IMPORTANT NEWS, PLEASE DON'T--
*falls up stairs somehow*

Quick Developmental Book Update

• Setting text is 100% completed
• Spells are 90% completed (need a final review)
• Subclasses are 90% completed (need a final review)
• Monsters are 80% completed (Brad is currently going through and updating them all to be both 2024 and 2014 compatible, everybody please comment "Thank you, Brad" on this update so I can show him)
• Items are 90% completed (need a final review)   

As for layout, we've finally got our new layout artist tackling the project! I've asked for a preview and it sounds like by the end of next week, I'll have a big chunk of setting stuff for you guys next week, plus a roadmap timeline for when we can deliver you individual chapters. So be on the lookout for that!

I plan to release preview material out to you guys as it goes through layout, so you can start getting your dice-chucking paws on Murka (and also so you can inevitably find the typos that we swear we fixed already). I've seen some of the sneaky beaky preview stuff and it's so t-t-t-t-tasty. But I got bullied when I asked if I could share it before it was ready, so I just need everyone to bear with me until the end of next week and then I'll hook y'all up, I PROMISE.

Talk more soon

📢🍃 Major Update: Action Fiction is now Vala Foundry!
2 months ago – Tue, May 12, 2026 at 09:51:54 AM

Hey, gang!

So sorry we’ve been quiet these last two months. A lot has been going on behind the scenes, and I’m so excited to share with you what we’ve been working towards this whole time. Action Fiction has been acquired by Vala Marketing, and will now become Vala Foundry! I know that the term “acquired” sounds like scary corpo-capitalism speak, but rest assured, very little will be actually changing, and in reality, this will open up some amazing doors for all of us.

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT!

How did we get here?

Last summer, Vala Marketing helped us push the Ratified & Radified Backerkit campaign WAY beyond our expectations. What was supposed to just cover the costs to do some light edit work and reprint books became enough for us to see that Murka (and our other games) has so much life in it, and it’s so fun to make, and perhaps most importantly, we might be able to make it full time. 

As some of you know, the AF gang has never done Action Fiction game design full time. All of us have juggled having a day job, working 40 hours a week to feed the capitalism machine and pay rent, and then spending another 20 hours a week working on stuff like Monsters of Murka, Cthulhu Dreamt, and Goblin Cave (not to mention Conventions where we’ve gotten to meet many of you fantastic people). This is how we’ve always operated, and while it’s been amazing, it has also been incredibly difficult. We’ve burned out a few times, we’ve hit walls, we’ve missed bills—all in the pursuit of making games that we, and you, can be passionate about and have fun with. But now with Vala’s help, we can go full time as game designers.

Grant (the big cheese at Vala) really loved working with us on Murka, and now we get to do so much cool shit together. Meeting Grant for Murka was like finding my long lost twin in a number of ways—it was very apparent right from the rip that he understood exactly what Murka is about and why it’s so important. It’s been a breath of fresh air to work with someone with all the same passions and beliefs, and someone who laments all the same realities that we do. It’s also nice because instead of being acquired by “big business,” it feels a lot more like two small businesses forming a very cool alliance which will open doors for both of us.

So… What does this mean?

At the end of the day, very little will change. The AF gang will still own the intellectual property for Murka, Cthulhu Dreamt, and Goblin Cave. We’ll still be the ones cooking stuff up for you. And we retain all our creative control. Really, Vala is just empowering us to do our thing, and then do some more. We’ve been hard at work polishing Murka and Cthulhu Dreamt and Goblin Cave, but we’ve also started planning for our next few games and what will come next. This will be the first time in AF’s history that we can actually look ahead, we can stop to take a breather and formulate a plan, and we can pay ourselves for our work. For us, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. And for you, that means more games!

Part of our future means Monsters of Murka and Cthulhu Dreamt will be published by Vala’s TTRPG publishing arm, QuasiReal Publishing (perhaps best known for MythCraft), so you'll start to see their logo and branding more. This is because we’ll be splitting our efforts a bit, with all of our TTRPG content moving to QuasiReal, and all of our board game content staying here with Vala Foundry. But it'll still be the same folks steering the Murka ship as before, so you shouldn't expect any major changes!

From here on out, you can expect faster timelines and more frequent updates! Not having to relegate ourselves to 20 hours a week and only when we’re able to muster the energy after 40 hours of day-jobbing means we’re so much more refreshed. It’s hard to describe how freeing it feels. All we’ve felt lately is space to breathe, and a really exciting road ahead.

So, for us, the only real change we’re experiencing (other than all the new resources and focus) is that the A in AF is flipping upside-down. Now we’re the VF gang. (inb4 one of you—probably Brad—says “Vction Fiction”).

🕹️🔧 NEW PLAYTEST PDF: SPELLS! | Update on the 2014/2024 Printing
4 months ago – Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 02:15:07 PM

Did you know: Your liver is the only organ in your body that can completely regenerate itself. I know this because I am currently like 90% of the way to completely regenerating my own after donating! Ayyy!

Okay now scroll down for some of that good, good Murka stuff.

New Playtest Material: Spells!

Cheyenne continues her work laying out the bits of the Murka books which have exited the editing stages, and we finished ALL 23 of the spells from Arcana Americana, which we now present to you for review! 

You can find the Playtest PDF here.

The PDF is currently currently a work-in-progress; we're still finalizing a lot of the art and layout elements. But the text is in a pre-release state ready for public playtest. Feel free to theory craft, run a one-shot, or start your Murka campaign outright! Then, collect your feedback and submit it in our handy dandy feedback form!

You can find the Feedback Form here, or in the Playtest PDF.

We're primarily looking for any wonky mechanical interactions or obvious balancing issues, so if you catch any, please please submit them! As a show of our appreciation, there's a section in the feedback form to submit your name which will be credited separately in the book as a playtester. This section is optional, so if you'd rather not have your name in the book, that's fine too!

What About the 2014/2024 poll?

The poll was overall in favor of printing in the 2024 ruleset, but some of you offered some REALLY helpful suggestions on how to mitigate the issue entirely by including both. The most-suggested and best solution we've found so far is to print the 2024 rules with 2014 sidebars, meaning, the default rules assume 2024, and when the two rulesets differ, we offer specifics on how to use the content in 2014 D&D. 

This is also the approach Loot Tavern is taking in their new materials, and having now seen them for myself, it looks great and it's such an elegant solution. So, thanks to everyone who suggested it—this will actually save us some time on layout in the long run, and drastically simplify our processes from here on out!

Until Next Time!

You can look forward to the next playtest PDF sometime soon, which should include our monsters! Until then, you can find the Arcana Americana subclass Playtest PDF here. Or, you can find the Arcana Americana Spells Playtest PDF here. 

Thanks for all your support! We're nearing the finish line together!


Yours across the plains of Midwesteros,

Jaron R. M. Johnson

And the Action Fiction Faction

📊🗳️ NEW POLL for Printed Books | New Playtest PDF Coming Soon!
5 months ago – Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 07:07:20 AM

The word "poll" seems to be etymologically newer than I thought (~1300 AD) and it basically means "head" or "one among you," like an interpretation of the noun "vote." I don't really know what I expected for such a banal word.

Uhhhhh hell yeah, democracy forever.

Major Poll Question: Printed Books

The promise we made with this Backerkit was that we would create content compatible with both the 2014 and 2024 versions of the D&D rules systems, and we intend on keeping that promise. This made sense to us since, at the time, it was largely just planned to be an edited update and rerelease of the first three books, which were already printed in the 2014 ruleset. But, after polishing these books for a year, and as the community (and us, admittedly) have gradually warmed up more and more to the 2024 ruleset, we're left with a very tough question: Which version do we send to print?

It had been our original plan to send the 2014 version to print (so that they match the first editions of our Murka books more closely) and to create a digital 2024 conversion PDF that would be included for anyone who ever bought our books (including all backers). But as we've continued working, and as we're nearing the point of no return that is pressing "submit" on our giganto-fuck print order, this decision has felt less cut-and-dry than it was the first time around. And we need your help deciding. (Spoiler alert, there is a poll)  

I'll explain our big thoughts deeply below, but first, a TLDR:

1. We want these books to last a long time
2. We want the community to be at the forefront of our decision

And ultimately, there are only two paths to choose from:

1. Print the books with the 2014 ruleset and include a 2024 ruleset PDF (our original plan)
2. Print 2024, PDF 2014 (a change of plans, and if you DID want a 2014 print version and would be unhappy with a 2024 printed book, we will refund you and still give you the 2014 PDF)

Compatibility with Future Murka and D&D Products

This is the most exciting hangup for us; we've had so much fun returning to the world of Murka, and we've got ideas, plans, and in many cases even drafts, for new Murka content. We want to keep releasing it out there for people to play. We want to give you more Murka: a music expansion, a video games expansion, an anime expansion—hell, I've even started work on a small for-fun Murka campaign product with a few subclasses and monsters that could be turned around in as little as a year.

We know for a fact that we want to make more Murka. But to keep the product line alive, we want to adapt and innovate. Eberron has already released, updating the artificer to the 2024 ruleset, and we anticipate them to gradually release more and more products into their 2024 ecosystem like Dragon Delves and eventually with some 2024 versions of the Tasha's and Xanathar's style books. The more content Wizards of the Coast (and other third-party developers we love, like Hit Point Press) releases in the 2024 ruleset, the less relevant and compatible our 2014 Murka content becomes.

We would love to be able to take books to conventions and sell them to new fans of D&D as well, folks who are only just discovering the game, and let them journey into Murka. But it's tough to explain to folks who are new that there are some nuanced reasons why our books are based on the decade-old version of the rules, rather than the most recent—and to understand that nuance, you kind of need to have a deeper understanding of the hobby.

We want this to be our "Definitive Edition."

We had always planned for the Ratified & Radified version of Murka to be our "definitive edition" of what Murka could be. After this, we didn't want to dip back in and edit these books anymore; we wanted to only focus on releasing new Murka stuff. But if we send 2014 rules to print, we're leaving ourselves open to have to do a second print run at a later point—especially if the D&D 2024 ruleset become the dominantly desired game format.

It doesn't impact our Backerkit delivery timelines either way.

One of our first concerns was, "we should do what gets books in the hands of people the fastest." Obviously we are only able to make these books because of our backers (psst... that's you), and because of that, we want you all to be our priority. That's also why we ultimately decided a poll made sense.

When we crunched the numbers, we realized that because layout is going to be the most arduous bottle-neck process, it doesn't matter which version of the rules we take to layout first. Both rulesets ultimately will need to be laid out, and whether we start with 2014 or 2024, you guys will get the PDFs and books at the same time as we had planned.

We like the new OGL much, much better.

It's no secret that the OGL catastrophe was... well, a catastrophe. But once the dust had settled and the new OGL/SRD protections were forged in the fires of Creative Commons, there came a lot of security with that. It even opened us up to being more able to talk about compatibility more directly without having to always be so oblique ("for the fifth edition of the world's most popular tabletop roleplaying game" if I have to write that one more time I'll explode). 

In Conclusion...

All that to say, we think it makes the most sense to send 2024 rules to print, but we aren't planning on making that decision without consulting you first. If people overwhelmingly want 2014 print books, then so be it! We're here to make the kind of Murka you all want to play. And no matter what, we'll do everything we can to make sure you're happy. so if you wind up not happy with the decision we make, we'll be able to refund anyone who is unhappy (and still provide those folks with PDFs either way).

So please, if you don't read another word in this update, please please scroll down to the poll at the bottom of the page and leave us your thoughts. Leave comments - do you have strong feelings one way or another? Are there things we aren't considering? Are there things you want us to think about? Let us know! Our destiny is in your gauntlets.

What About the Playtests?

Good news! Playtests are going exceedingly well. You all caught a lot of really great balance notes and we'll be making our edits accordingly. For those that saw our last update, you'll know I was out of commission for a while (and unfortunately I will continue to be out of commission for a few more weeks), but the Murkan buck doesn't stop with little ol' me; Cheyenne is hard at work on the next Playtest PDF, which will feature both Magic Items and Spells (including a lot of brand new, never-before-seen content).

You can look forward to the next playtest PDF sometime soon! Until then, you can find the subclass Playtest PDF here.

Thanks for voting in the below poll (remember, this only applies to the printed books; we will be releasing PDFs of both rulesets no matter what). And thanks for supporting us. Can't wait for you to play our games.



Yours across the plains of Midwesteros,

Jaron R. M. Johnson

And the Action Fiction Faction