Mad As Hell - An Anti-Capitalist Demonhunting RPG

Backerkit Surveys
8 months ago – Wed, Aug 06, 2025 at 03:38:53 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Showing off Layout Spreads + Zine Art!
9 months ago – Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 05:50:21 AM

Hello Radicals!

Firstly, thank you all so much for your support in this project. We only post updates when we have significant progress to show you so we really appreciate your patience. 

In short, the update from us: things are rolling along! There are a lot of moving parts that occur behind the scenes in projects like this but we want to give backers sneak peeks when we can. 

Core Book

Our layout artist Dai is hard at work on the next draft after we’ve given him some feedback on the first stage of layout: blocking. During the blocking stage the layout artist places all content onto the pages so they can arrange it all and get a rough page count before tackling the prettifying of the whole book.

Here are some spreads of his work in progress:

The Field Guide to Hell on Earth

Our writers for The Field Guide to Hell on Earth have been writing their demons and artist Molomoot has been creating some watercolour art pieces to go alongside. 

Here is a little sneak peek snippet + WIP art:

Games Transformed

In other news, ¾ of the SoulMuppet team attended Games Transformed in London last weekend. Games Transformed is a leftist games festival exploring alternate modes of production, fighting fascism in the games industry, and celebrating the work union members are doing to create a more sustainable and dignified workplace. Zach ran a game of Mad as Hell in the afternoon and introduced new Radicals to a Demon of Gentrification! 

Thank you and until the next update,

Mol, Tom, Eryk, and Zach

4 hours left! Patch and Character Keeper
10 months ago – Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 04:37:59 AM

Hey everyone

We've been so busy at UK Games Expo this weekend, but the project finishes in the just 4 hours. 

I'm happy to announce that we hit the £40k stretch goal last night and will be adding the patch and character to the project, and we'll make the character keeper available to everyone digitally when its done. 

This has been such an important project for us to run, and I'm personally so happy to be able to collaborate with each one of the incredible creators who made this project possible. This game is messy, brutal and truthful about our politics and how we see the world, and the entire team is so tremondously proud to share it with you. We hope the game can inspire some direct action, get someone to a protest, help someone join a union, write a letter to their MP or do something meaningful and concrete to protect and empower the people and communities around them. We hope you can change the world.

If you're reading this post, thank you so much for your support. It truly means the world to us that you're helping us make beautiful, controversial, political art, while also being able to pay all the people we're working with. Capitalism sucks but it still exists, and if we want art like this to exist (right now) it means the continued exchange of goods and services. 

We've got such a short time left on the project, but it would mean the world to us if you could tell your friends, share the project in your communities and help just a few more radicals to join us on our journey! 

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, 

Zach / Jelly 

GM Screen, New Writers and More!
10 months ago – Tue, May 27, 2025 at 05:23:44 AM

Hey Radicals! 

We’ve got some news coming, some teasers and some more actual play stuff. 

GM Screen

First up, we can show you the GM Screen that Per has illustrated for us! It shows a radical with a flare fighting a new demon, emerging from the smoke! 

This is going to be 13x3 inches, the exact same size as the hardcover for the book, which means you can play dressup with your GM screen! The dustjackets from the core book will slip right over the GM Screen like a nice waistcoat, and we’ve designed the art with SoulMuppet’s special HoleTechnology™  to be HoleCompatible™, so you can see the GM screen from beneath the die-cut dustjacket. Here’s what some of the combinations might look like, with these demons peaking out from beneath the existing slipcases.

Mad as Hell always comes with the Alex Eckman-Lawn illustrated dustjacket but you can grab the two guest alt covers from Scrap or Per at £75 or above. The GM Screen is an add-on for any pledge, or comes in the top tier £110 pledge. 

We’ve got so many add-ons! The Field Guide to Hell on Earth, our solo demonology game the Scarred, the GM Screen, more patches… The world is really your oyster. If we hit our final stretch goal, there might even be a new creation! 

A Field Guide to Hell on Earth Vol 2 

We’re fast approaching the end of the project, so it’s time to show off some stretch goal writers for the Field Guide to Hell on Earth Part 2. Each of these writers will be doing 3 Demons, for 12 demons in total. Buying one Vol 1 of the Field Guide will double the amount of demons you have to run Mad as Hell with, and if we unlock the second zine, that’ll be 200% extra demons! That’s so much capitalism to destroy. 

As a reminder, we’ll be making PDFs of both zines available to all of the backers on the project, and you will be able to add-on physical copies of the zine, or get them inside the £110 pledge level. 

But who are we working with… 

• Evey Lockhart (she/her) is a a sapphic trans woman, writer of modules such as Wet Grandpa, Ruinous Palace of the Metegorgos, Very Pretty Paleozoic Pals: Permian Nations, & Kill the Queen. When she’s not furiously writing imaginary problems and gay little poems, she’s probably taking care of her kids, listening to weird punk music, or staring forlornly into the middle distance.
• Panny Lines (they/them) is the co-creator of communist mech game Salvage Union, and expert on social media, PR, and marketing at Leyline Press.. They are a 'forever GM  with a passion for cyberpunk and old school fantasy games.
• Jess Levine (she/her) designs games, writes fiction, performs actual plays, and more—most of it is about sci-fi and/or lesbians. Jess made an adventure for Orbital Blues and created Going Rogue, another game about rebellion, but this time in space, which you can find on Kickstarter now!
• Zedeck Siew (he/him) is a writer, translator, and game designer based in Port Dickson, Malaysia. sWith visual artist Sharon Chin, he created Creatures of Near Kingdoms, an illustrated guide to imaginary Malaysian animals and plants. He writes adventure texts for tabletop roleplaying games – most notably Lorn Song of the Bachelor (2019); Spy in the House of Eth (2020); Reach of the Roach God (2023), and To Put Away A Sword (2024). He is slowly being poisoned by a petroleum refinery 200m from his garden, and worries often about family ghosts.

We’re getting Scrap back for illustration, who has already done some stellar contributions to the Radical’s Handbook. Look at some of the demons you might get to fight!

Actual Play

Last week Who Hurt You concluded their exploration through the supernaturally bitter cold flats of Birmingham and came face to face with the evil causing it. Sam ran a fantastic game, truly bringing the horrors to life with hard hitting real-world localisation and bone chilling descriptions of the horrible eerie goings on. The cast also deserve a massive shout out, you could feel each member constantly on the edge of their seats and engaging with the horrors this game makes us confront. 
If you missed the episode live you can catch up now on Youtube. 

Last night Tales of Myth and Mayhem ran a one-shot of Mad as Hell over on their channel. After a series of mysterious deaths have occurred in a hospital being threatened with privatisation, our group of Radicals sense something is amiss and go to investigate.  It is always wonderful to see AP channels picking up our games and bringing them to a new audience. What’s more, some of the cast are relatively new to TTRPGs so it was exciting to see how they engaged with this game and took to learning a new system. 
You can watch the vod over on Twitch or Youtube. 

Outro

We’ve got just 5 days left on the project, and we’ll be at UK Games Expo, throwing copies of the Radical’s Handbook at people and just generally being games-related-messes. Do come by if you’re going to be there, and say hello. 

In the meantime, please continue to share these updates, and tell your friends about Mad as Hell

Speak soon, 

Zach, Mol and the SoulMuppet Team  

Update to £40k Stretch Goal + new Actual Play & Interviews
10 months ago – Tue, May 20, 2025 at 11:04:04 AM

Stretch Goal Update

Hey folks,

Thanks to all of your support we’ve currently raised over £33k in this campaign, successfully unlocking THE SCARRED stretch goal and we’re climbing towards our next stretch goal that we’ll unlock at £40k. After reviewing the £40k stretch goal and discussing with the team we’ve decided to make a small but exciting change!

At £40k we’re going to add a digital Character Keeper for Mad as Hell, making it easier for you to manage and build characters for Mad as Hell. The Character Keeper will be available for free for all backers when we reach this milestone.

We’re still going to be keeping our original planned stretch goal of a second patch, featuring original art by Per Janke of Anna and her “RISE. SHINE. REVOLT.” protest sign as featured on the cover of the Mad as Hell quickstart. 

You can grab physical copies of all our previous stretch goals as add-ons to your pledge or by backing at our new tier called REVOLUTIONARY. 

Behind The Scenes

If you are interested in the creation, development and behind the scenes of Mad as Hell, we’ve been busy talking to various creators across the internet. 

The Weekly Scroll cover a wonderful wide range of indie TTRPGs and they recently sat down with Zach to chat about Mad as Hell. If you missed this livestream the VOD is now available for viewing on Youtube. 

Over the weekend Roll For Good ran a fantastic charity fundraiser for Game Therapy UK and invited us for an interview about Mad as Hell between their marathon of games. You can find that here. 

Zach also did an interview with Dan from Fandomentals that you can read here. 

New Actual Play

Or if you want to see how Mad as Hell can play at your table be sure to check out these amazing Actual Plays that are occurring!

The final episode of the One Shot Podcast’s mini series is now available. How will our Radicals defeat the Heart Thief threatening their community and will they be able to stop it returning for good? Featuring @superdillin, @mozzarelle, @agonethetic, and @chaoticdarby. Listen where ever you get your podcasts.

stellaluna set their Radicals against the Grindstone that has been puppeteering overworked employees in a special oneshot episode featuring @Drakoniques @JayJustice @ShauntelleB and @WallE132. 

On Wednesday, Who Hurt You continue their investigation of a terrible bitter chill sweeping the streets of Birmingham. Featuring @ayfa.me , @thirdvaultyarns.com, @pmakesthings and @gejwatts. The series continues on Youtube.

If you’re an Actual Play channel or TTRPG content creator and you’re interested in running/covering Mad as Hell (or any of our games) please do get in touch! We try our best to support this area of the TTRPG community regardless of how big or small your following is. Drop [email protected] a line to chat.

Other Projects You Might Like

Finally, a big focus of Mad as Hell is community and supporting those close to us, so we want to take this chance to give a quick shout out to some other amazing projects that are running at the moment that we think follow the same anti-fascist and rebellious tones as Mad as Hell.

Wandering Blades 

In Wandering Blades, you’ll take on the roles of highly skilled martial artists who wander the land seeking to redress wrongs, help the downtrodden, and free the innocent from oppressive forces. (Sound familiar to another game you’re looking at right now?)
Wandering Blades seeks to emulate the cinematic language, style and tempo found in wuxia action cinema and video games. To simulate this vibe, creator Daniel Kwan has designed a beautifully streamlined system that focuses on dynamic and lethal combat while also telling dramatic, heroic and melodramatic stories. Wandering Blades is beautifully illustrated by Lim Li Wei and Leia Ham who have perfectly encapsulated the drama, history and deadliness of both wuxia and OSR media. 

Wandering Blades has launched to a fantastic start, already reaching their first stretch goal which adds two zine supplements from a range of amazing creatives, and are almost at their next stretch goal more internal illustrations from Lim Li Wei. Check it out here!

Galactic & Going Rogue 

Two games of rebellion in space in one beautiful book! 
Galactic, by Riley Rethal, is a game about rebellion, relationships, and war amongst the stars. Inspired by the classic Star Wars trilogy, Galactic casts you as members of The Liberation, a ragtag group aiming to overthrow the fascist rule of The Mandate once and for all. All while dealing with the stress and strain it puts on their relationships with the ones they care about and see to protect.  
Going Rogue, by Jess Levine, explores tales of cynicism, hope, and the ultimate sacrifice. Styled on modern Star Wars media such as Rogue One and Andor, Going Rogue introduces the tragedy and dramatic irony of knowing your characters will inevitably give their lives in one final brave and tragic act to move the galaxy closer to freedom. Going Rogue is already highly acclaimed, winning the CRIT Awards Best GMless Game in 2023, and is now being brought to us in gorgeous physical format. Going Rogue is written from Jess's own personal experiences with anti-fascist street action, and is deeply about processing the difficult feelings that arise in the process of political organizing work.

If you’re a fan of Star Wars, punching fascists and dramatic sorrowful relationships Galactic & Going Rogue is going live today so go check it out!

That's all from us for now, thanks for your continued support! 

~Mol (and the SoulMuppet Team)