Narrative Declaration Weekly Update — April 27th, 2026
Happy Monday everyone! It's April 27th — almost the end of the month. Here's everything we got done last week and what's on the agenda going forward.
What Got Done Last Week
The monthly PDF is basically done! I want to do one more pass on it for copy fitting to make it look a little cleaner, but the lore is written, the stat block is in, and the math has been checked. I'm planning to release it tomorrow.
Completed all of my maps for Thurston.
Thurston finally got me his art orders for the rest of Chaos Odyssey, so I can get all of those pre-scheduled and ready to go.
Went through every single one of our social media platforms, got clips queued up, and built out a posting plan. The strategy is to start with older clips to build some momentum first before pushing the most recent stuff. I also don't want to send animations to platforms we haven't been active on in a while and have them just die. So we build the presence first, then ramp it up.
Got a lot of project management stuff implemented and things are running much smoother because of it.
I'll be making weekly social media images going forward — something like "here's what's releasing this week" to keep things clear and consistent across platforms.
Show Updates
WarHams: A Chaos Odyssey (Black Crusade)
No Black Crusade recording this week unfortunately. Odo is getting randomly flown out by her job again, and SpeakerD had something come up on Monday. I'd rather give everyone a proper environment to record in than force it in a hotel room. We tried our best to make it work — it just didn't line up this week.
Chaos Odyssey Episode 5 should be live on YouTube today as a preview for YouTube members. The release cadence is: Patreon gets episodes as fast as we can get them out, YouTube members trail behind by a chunk with preview episodes, and then everything eventually goes public.
Thurston will be away on a business trip next month, so there will be some disruptions to the Black Crusade recording schedule. We're aware and planning around it.
A quick note on the YouTube membership vs. Patreon split: the reason Patreon always gets priority is because the cut we receive here is significantly better. YouTube takes 30%, so we only see 70% of what you contribute there. Patreon is where your support goes the furthest, and we want to make sure that's always reflected in how we treat you guys here.
Rotgrind
Rotgrind is still on for this Wednesday! Odo will be recording from her parents' place since we're likely doing combat this session, which makes the hotel audio situation a lot more manageable.
Rotgrind episodes coming up: April 30th and May 7th, then we're back to the alternating Chaos Odyssey / Rotgrind schedule from there.
Tales of Bravos — Season of Ghosts
Season of Ghosts production is officially starting to move. I gave everyone a deadline of the end of this month to get me their character details, and they've come through. I'm taking all of that and getting it into Skelly's queue.
Skelly is still recovering from being sick, so I'm going to have Jers take over the Chaos Odyssey art pieces for now so Skelly can focus her energy on Season of Ghosts — there's a lot to build out: character art, animations, overlays, nameplates, all of it.
I'm also looking into having Mikura do an animated intro for the show. I really want Season of Ghosts to feel special.
New mechanic I want to try for Season of Ghosts: a complication system where a natural 1 automatically triggers a complication (you can still reroll out of it, but the complication happens). On the flip side, natural 20s will have a form where you all can submit what good things happen. I ran it by the Rotgrind group but we're in a good groove there and didn't want to rock the boat, so Season of Ghosts will be the testing ground for it.
I'm also considering leaving hero points out of Season of Ghosts entirely and replacing them with story points from the Pathfinder Second Edition remaster. Hero points in PF2e are so mechanically tied to survival that players get nervous spending them on fun moments, which is the opposite of what I want. Story points feel like a better fit for the tone we're going for.
Season of Ghosts is primarily a horror campaign, so combat won't be the main focus — but when it does happen, I want there to be real stakes. I want you watching at home to genuinely wonder if they're going to make it out.
Recording schedule for Season of Ghosts: We'll start with test sessions every other week so everyone can get comfortable with their characters and builds. Then we'll record weekly for one month to bank a solid chunk of episodes. After that we move to a biweekly recording schedule to respect everyone's time — especially since Horatio is planning to go back to school.
To keep a healthy episode bank even on a biweekly schedule, each session will be structured as two roughly two-hour blocks with a 15-30 minute break in between. The second block starts fresh as a new episode. Everyone on the team confirmed they're good with this, and of course extra time means extra pay.
Episodes for you will release biweekly. That gives EzeDoesIt the time he needs to properly edit each session — going through hours of audio and video multiple times, cleaning background noise, cutting the ums and ahs — it all stacks up. One day I'd love to hire a dedicated audio engineer. We're doing our best but that's genuinely one of our weak points right now.
Upcoming Release Schedule
Rotgrind — April 30th
Rotgrind — May 7th
Chaos Odyssey — May 14th
Then: alternating Chaos Odyssey / Rotgrind from there
Other Updates
Background business stuff, documents, planning — the usual mountain of things that never fully goes away.
Thank You
It's going to be a busy week but things are moving in a really good direction. Your support month to month is what makes all of this possible — the artists, the editors, the animators, the players, all of it. Thank you so much for being here.
Love you all. See you next week!
— Zoran & the Narrative Declaration Team