Songs of the Spellbound Sea: Nautical Adventures for 5E!
Created by somanyrobots
Explore the Spellbound Sea with naval combat and ocean travel rules, 3 new classes, 20+ subclasses, 100s of spells, and more!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
February Update: Shipping!
5 months ago
– Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 02:12:38 PM
This is the closest illustration I have to a mail carrier.
Boooooooooks!
Sorry, I just get excited. TL;DRs:
Books are going into the mail!
FoundryVTT module will become premium.
Digital art book: we're on to draft 3 now.
Check out Machines of Bone & Blood if you haven't!
Also check out the Dark Matter Mega Box!
Books
Last month we discussed the possibility of a witch cursing me and both our boats sinking into the sea; I am delighted to report that has not happened. Both shipments have been received by the warehouses, and folks are hard at work packing up boxes to send out.
For the US: Your books will be mailing from a Florida-based warehouse, ~any day now. I was hoping to get a timeline update from them before sending this out, but I have not. I know they've been packing books since the start of last week, though.
For UK/Canada/EU/Everybody Else: Your books are mailing from the UK, which will be very convenient for some of you and regrettably inconvenient for others. The warehouse sent out address verification emails yesterday (they do their own verification step on top of the one I've already done). I expect those books to get into the post next week!
FoundryVTT
I've now got a signed agreement with FoundryVTT to make Songs of the Spellbound Sea into a premium module. This will not be costing you any extra money; this is the product you paid for. When I promote the module from beta to its final state, there will be a few changes:
I'll deactivate the current distribution; existing versions of the module will continue to work, but they won't receive updates and if you uninstall them you won't be able to reinstall.
The module will become available for purchase on the FoundryVTT store. All backers with current access to the beta module will get a key to redeem for no charge.
The module will also become available to ongoing Patreon supporters; I haven't decided what tier yet.
Digital Art Book
I had a check-in with the designer on this last night and got a copy of the current WIP. It's coming along nicely! I wish I had more to share, but I don't — she's cranking away at the layout, and after she's done with that I'll do another text pass. Soon!
I won't repeat last month's big announcement, but in case you missed it, my next book will be Machines of Bone & Blood, and already has a prelaunch page live! The prelaunch phase is going well, as is my prework to get the book ready. Go check it out if you haven't!
That's right, 'tis the season for cross-promotional announcements again. This one is well worth your time! Mage Hand Press is currently entering the last week of a campaign to update and revitalize its excellent Dark Matter sci-fi 5E setting. You can select either a 5E (2014) or 2024E version, and you'll get:
Ship Combat!
8 species and 46 subclasses!
The core book and two campaign books!
On a personal level, Dark Matter is probably where I'd start planning a sci-fi campaign, and Mike from Mage Hand is just about the nicest guy in the industry. He was extremely generous with advice for Spellbound Sea (and generous with a shoutout this weekend for MB&B!) and there's almost nobody I'd rather see succeed. (Well, me, but after that.) So go check out Dark Matter Mega Box!
Mid-January Update: Another Book on the Horizon!
6 months ago
– Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 09:07:31 AM
Hello again!
Here's a mid-January update; probably the last until February. TL;DRs:
There's gonna be another book!
Boats are doing boat things, we're still looking at Feb-March delivery.
I've officially got a title and a prelaunch page for book 2! Book 2 will be called Machines of Bone and Blood, and is set against the backdrop of a terrifying Necroindustrial Revolution, with zombie workers and skeletal machines causing huge social upheaval. It's going to be themed on Britain's Luddite uprising, with mighty necromancer barons opposed by a coalition of dispossessed workers, technology-opposing druids, and bloodthirsty horrors from the darkest forests. The art above is just for the necromancer class; I'm very excited to show you the proper cover once it's ready.
Content-wise, it'll have a similar approach as Spellbound Sea. The book will have 2 classes, the Necromancer and the Abomination, and around 2 dozen subclasses for the rest of the roster. As with Spellbound Sea, you can also expect a few species, a few backgrounds, a few feats, and a whole pile of spells and magic items — in this case, the spells are heavily tailored to dark magic, as many of them were written to fill out the Necromancer's spell list.
My goal is to launch in the summertime, basically repeating the schedule we aimed for on Spellbound Sea. I'm aiming to have a larger share of the content done before the campaign goes live, which should enable us to really hit the ground running.
It would be a huge help if you go over to the prelaunch page and follow! Prelaunch followers is the biggest sign of how well a campaign can do, and good growth there helps spread word of mouth and produce a snowball effect.
Also, a small note: for a crowdfunding-driven business, I think there's almost no ethical breach bigger than stealing resources (money, but also time) from campaign B to finish fulfilling campaign A. So if a witch curses me and the boats both sink tomorrow, I will delay Machines of Blood and Bone as long as it takes to get Spellbound Sea properly wrapped up.
Boats
No changes here from the perspective of "when am I going to get my book?". Both boats continue to sail. The US-bound boat is literally in the Panama Canal as I write this, bound for the east coast. The UK-bound boat last checked in off the coast of South Africa (having gone the long way rather than through the Suez Canal; some ships do this now). We're still expecting both shipments to hit warehouses in the first couple weeks of February.
Roll20: The beta continues; we continue to grumble at Roll20 about trying to fix the charactermancer issues.
FoundryVTT: The Foundry module is officially in beta! Backerkit should have sent out an email to distribute the instructions; it's currently installable through a manifest URL. Longer-term, I'm looking into setting it up as a Foundry Premium module; I just need to make sure the costs shake out.
Shard Tabletop: No changes here. If you'd like a Shard key and don't have one, contact me directly.
Digital Art Book
Draft 2 unfortunately hit some roadblocks, but we've got those cleared and are back to making progress.
Next Up
The boats will boat, I'll chip away at the outstanding VTT issues, and the designer and I will work on finalizing the art book. And I'm going to start prep for Machines of Bone and Blood!
He seems nice.
Early January Update: Boats!
7 months ago
– Tue, Jan 06, 2026 at 10:07:26 AM
Booooooaaaaaats!
Happy New Year!
Just a quick little update since I have some concrete information about shipping. Our books are on boats now, en route to the warehouses.
US/CA: Your books are currently somewhere in the middle of the Pacific ocean. (Tracking shows them near Japan, but the last tracking ping was 10 days ago.) ETA to the US warehouse is February 5; at that point the books are in the fulfiller's hands and they'll ship out from there. These do have to go through the Panama canal, though, and there's definitely nothing geopolitically interesting happening in the Caribbean. While I haven't heard of any delays as a result, we definitely can't rule it out.
UK/EU/ROW: Your books are currently off the coast of Sri Lanka. ETA to the UK warehouse is Feb 11, and as again, the fulfiller takes over from there. These have to go through the Suez canal, so there's an outside chance they get stolen by pirates. Not a high chance, but not zero, either.
All this is to say that we look on track for a February-March delivery range. Once the books arrive at the warehouses, the fulfiller (GamesQuest) will have detailed distribution info for me, and at that point I'll have real doorstep-shipping estimates.
That's it for now! I'll post a proper monthly update towards the end of the month (though our status on the books will likely still be "sitting on boats").
December Update! Reprint done, we're shipping for real!
7 months ago
– Mon, Dec 29, 2025 at 02:08:32 PM
This is probably the most Christmas-y looking illustration in the book.
Happy December! Happy Holidays to those who had a celebration this month, and regardless, I hope you got to spend some time snuggled up with your loved ones.
TL;DRs:
Reprint is concluded, awaiting new shipping estimate.
VTT: Roll20 module is officially in beta, Foundry's close to it, but debugging continues.
Digital art book 1st draft done, 2nd draft is underway.
Manufacturing
The reprint run concluded on December 4; I got photos from the factory, and they look good at last. The colors are nice and bright, and there aren't any muddied-out details. So the shipment is rolling! Not on a boat yet but it should be soon. Finishing the reprint took a week or two longer than planned while the factory figured out the color issue, so we do need to update the shipping timeline. (In fact, the reason this update is delayed is that I was holding out to get that timeline update, but it didn't happen before Christmas and then my contact went offline for the holidays.)
VTT Modules
Real progress here, though we're not yet to 100%.
Roll20: We fixed a number of significant issues, but there are still known problems with charactermancer integration. Basically, new spells and classes don't get 100% charactermancer functionality without some light engineering work on Roll20's side, and getting their staff to put that time in is hard. We're working on it, but the module is now officially in beta with those known issues on the block. You should already have your Roll20 keys in your Backerkit accounts.
FoundryVTT: I have spent most of my December revamping the Foundry module; the work as delivered had some issues that take significant work to resolve. I was hoping to get it beta-ready before publishing this update, but no luck.
Shard Tabletop: Turns out Shard wants to charge me, substantially, for every key I distribute, even though most people realistically won't use them. If you want a Shard key, contact me directly with the email address on your Shard account and I'll get it to you.
Digital Art Book
I got the art book back to the designer here near the beginning of the month, so it's waiting for her second pass. This got delayed a bit due to the holidays and some personal issues, but is basically on track.
Next Up
Basically continuing work on all the above. I'll be back as soon as I have an updated shipping timeline, and keep an eye out for updates to the VTT modules and the art book.
I'm also in the prep stages for a campaign for my next book. I'll have a big announcement for that as soon as I get the prelaunch page up!
This is probably the most Christmas-y art in the next book!
November Update: Remanufacturing and Add-Ons
8 months ago
– Thu, Nov 13, 2025 at 02:52:28 PM
I am reasonably confident this is not the captain who will ultimately bring our container over from China.
Happy November! I'm still a little grumpy over last month's bad news, but this month is mostly good-news-given-the-existing-delay.
TL;DRs:
Continuing to sort out the factory errors, but making progress. Delivery estimate is now January 2026.
VTT module debugging continues.
Digital art book is making real progress.
Manufacturing
Last Friday (Nov 7), I received a fresh sample from the factory, and it was okay. It wass still a little too dark, though at a level that would be acceptable if they can't do better. Fortunately, today they sent me photos of another revision that finally looks good - likely a color match for the very first sample they produced months ago, and should have been matching to all along. I'm still trying to get answers about why this has been so difficult for them, but this is something we can move forward with.
This extra work to validate the colors has added more delay, though, so New Years' is now out of bounds and we're looking solidly intoJanuary for delivery now.
The good news is that the factory accepted full responsibility for the bad print run, so this isn't killing the budget. There is a real risk that the delay causes us to run afoul of more tariff changes, but we don't need to pay (significantly) extra to fix the initial issue. (Just a few minor storage costs by my manufacturing partner, which they're eating).
VTT Modules
Real progress on all of these, though unfortunately slow.
Roll20: Still debugging the last few quality issues here. Roll20's last mile is always a pain. But we're making progress, we've sorted the first major issue and are working on two more.
FoundryVTT: There's a working draft ready of this module, but it's got some usability issues I'm not happy with. I'm working myself to get those solved.
Shard Tabletop: Apparently just some miscommunications here about the code distribution process, we're straightening those out. (The backers who were really clamoring for this were already in the beta test, so they're handled; if you're impatient, just message me and we'll get you sorted).
Digital Art Book
The new layout designer for the book's already doing great work. We've got a first-draft layout I'm happy with, next step is for me to write all the text. Then she'll go back and do some more adjustments, add some pretty, and make sure everything harmonizes with the text.
If you want to modify your order or your shipping address, message me directly (on here, via Backerkit support, via Discord, or email [email protected]) and I'll get you unlocked and sorted.
