I’m having fun doing them….when small family let me get away. Had the nasty one of my main machine finally dying over the weekend, which put a spanner in the works, but resolueltly I march on.  Missus going back to work should set increased writing time, and gaming group is on hiatus until June. So May is offically ‘get stuff done’ month.

SimpleQuest -

gspearing

 is doing a grand job of editing the chapters, leading to me doing my rewrite this week, with layout at the end of the month. Simon’s delivered the goods on the art front with some nicely evocative pieces. Fingers crossed will be out in July (as in you can order a book from Lulu out).

Shattered Lands & Life and Death. Currently on hiatus, but will see some development work since I’m running L&D and Dead Pot County, the Scenario that will be part of Shattered Lands, at Continuum. Big news for Shattered Lands is that its going back to being its own book and will not be released under the OGL.  After Continuum I’ll be getting both these books finished for probably a winter release. I say probably since I don’t want to rush either of them.

Monkey. Unfortunately wont’ be out for Continuum. Watching the final editing process of SimpleQuest has really made me realise how much work needs doing and how I don’t want to rush it. But what I hope to do before Continuum is a revision of the rules, implementing some of the ideas that came out in the last playtest and feedback from the Mighty Monkey Army, and make that available as a plain Pdf for testing, comment and buzz.  The ‘serious’ work starts after Continuum, so brace your self for more meaningful updates then.

Hearts in Glorantha. End of May is the deadline for submissions. As well as my Karia stuff, Greg Stafford already submitted a piece as has Jeff Richards and John Ottoway (author of Cthulhu Rising). Got about 10 others beavering away as we speak so we’ll see what happens at the end of the month when stuff starts hitting my intray.  Still open to submissions

Other than that my final thing at the moment is egging

gspearing

 on in the development of Wordplay, which seems to be coming on tidily.

In the meantime I promise on the life of my first born that I shall not take on board any more projects.

I have become a Gloranthan Fanzine editor.

Looking at my hard  drive the other day I realized that even with the stuff I’m doing for  Moon Designs (Red Sun Rising) and Continuum (a compilation of my Molad scenarios humbly called ‘Liber Newtus’) I’ve still got a variety of Gloranthan bits sitting there.  This was also coupled with the realisation that despite there being other fantasy worlds out there , and working on one my self for self publication (see d101games.co.uk ) my heart and regular gaming is still very much in Glorantha.  Also add into the mix the desire to show idiots like Angry Argrath over on Rpg.net (see http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=181101 if you’ve missed out) that Gloranthan fandom has survived the Fan Publication Policy and perhaps provide something that acts as a rallying call to Gloranthan fandom itself.

Thus the idea of a fanzine ‘Hearts in Glorantha’ jumped out like Athena out of Zeus’s head fully formed and ready to rock!
 
The fanzine will be run on a not for profit basis and will feature contributions from Gloranthan fandom. The idea behind it is to have a vibrant magazine which comes out bi-yearly, that shows Glorantha is alive and well. Obviously the majority of the articles will be HeroQuest, but I will accept articles for other games systems. The liscence I have covers Mongoose RuneQuest as well.

The fanzine will complement not compete with existing fan publications, such as Unspoken Word and Tradetalk, and of course the official material published by Moon Designs. I think there is a gap in the market for a  fun fanzine which is made up of individual articles on a variety of subjects, rather than the ‘theme’ issues that UW and Tradetalk does. Think the non-themed issues of Tales of the Reaching Moon and with its eclectic collection of articles.  Also I think that having one more fanzine won’t hurt the party and will actually help fill in the gaps between releases of the existing fanzines.

I’ve got the green light from Greg, and I’m looking to have an issue out by Continuum (early August) with another one out by XMAS.

Distribution wise I’m going for a duel pdf/dead tree model, with the pdf available via places like RPGNow and a hardcopy available direct from Lulu.com

If you would like to contribute content or help in any way please please get in touch (mrnewt@gmail.com). Payment will be the usual satisfaction of seeing your art/article in cold hard print and a copy of the issue your work appears in.

Aha the wonders of playtesting! Ran Monkey for a group of five at GoPlayManchester which was an absolute tonic for all the writing and introspection that I’ve been doing about SQ/Monkey recently. In short it was good to take it out for a spin.

We played ‘The Ministry of Thunder’, an idea ruthlessly nicked from the lovely

timgray

  whose original idea was much more eloquent than the action packed comedy that ensued at the gaming table using Monkey. Here’s the quick pitch I used;

Your errant immortals finds themselves in trouble with the Heavenly Authorities. Fully expecting to be cast out of Heaven for your crimes, instead you find yourselves drafted into the celestial Ministry of Thunder. Run by the God of Thunder, Lei Gong, it takes on the role of punishing those crimes that mortal law can’t or won’t reach

The game went swimmingly once we started playing, but there were some areas where the rules didn’t work as well;

The Good
The Bickering rules worked a treat, two of my players from my first successful playtest (the lovely Rob and Mr C) who inspired me writing them gave me a text book example of good implementation, which will make it in the rewrite.

Having a ‘Three strikes and your out’ rule for major character, two strikes for supporting characters and one strike for mooks worked much better for tracking combat and drawn out conflicts and will replace the existing Dramatic Action rules.

The Bad
Character gen dragged again like it did at Furnace. Need more examples for magic powers, cheat sheets, visual aids (?) to make the experience easier and less brain melting.

The Ugly
Grafted in some ‘attacking multiple opponents’ & ‘assisting other character’ rules in game, which worked overall but need some polishing out of game. Still a win though since the current rules didn’t have these areas and the players at the table really wanted them.

Overall it went very well. Even though it was tarnished for me by the fact the rules aren’t as smooth as I hoped, self criticing often brings me down, the game was greatly enjoyable with some fantastic Roleplaying from the players. The Ministry of Thunder is now going to become my stock demo game and I’m keen to play it with other players

I’ve made the decision to start wrapping up the writing on SimpleQuest and Monkey.  This has more of an impact on SQ, since it’s been a largely unplanned fun project where I’ve largely been going with instinct rather than plan. By giving myself the focus of getting the writing done by a definite date, means that I can no longer meander or waffle about. It also means that there will be material left on the cutting floor and some bits of the project (SQ especially) aren’t going to happen at all, or be deferred to a latter date.

So wittering aside what does this mean for everybody’s favourite unreleased games.

SimpleQuest – End of writing Feb. Means that some of the additional rules – Mastery and Ritual magic – will be terser and less explanatory/example ridden as a result. Also the Creatures section will be less colourful than I would like. There will be shorter creature descriptions and less detail about making pcs out of creatures.  Herodotus as a setting is being dropped, possibly be made into a separate release later in a year Instead the Shattered Lands, in a slightly expanded form than the current preview on the website, with the adventure ‘Dead Pot County’ will be SimpleQuest’s example setting. This is an easy decision since Shattered Lands is nearly finished while Herodotus is almost at zero.  Cutting floor: some rules for Political/Social combat, possibly rules for Shamans.

Monkey – End of writing March. Looked at the Furnace edition the other day and was quietly impressed. Actually in a much better shape and closer to being a full game than SQ. The character generation chapter needs rounding out with more examples of magical powers, but on the writing front all that it needs are a ‘Narrators advice’ chapter and the Big Guide to Immortals and Locations in Monkey’s world. The ‘Big Guide’ could become a bit where I languish and ponder to much, but I’ve got a definite list of locations and people from the book I want to cover, and the Antony Yu translation (4 vol, just about to finish vol 1 YAY!) is nicely giving me the colourful detail that this section needs. Another longer adventure, since the Bag of Wind only lasts a couple of hours (three with character gen), would be nice, but not essential.

This means that I’ll be able to finally publish these games by Continuum, and give my long suffering play testers a full game to play with.

Other news

On the Monkey front Mark Galeotti is signed up as Editor and Simon Bray is going to be doing the art. Mark has been a long time support of the game and has invaluable experience form his work as HeroQuest line editor and Mythic Russia publisher. Simon’s style is a perfect match to the more traditional B&W line art feel that I want evoking for the book. It also helps that both Simon & Mark are long time friends and allies from the Gloranthan community. In fact they are currently working on publishing some of my Gloranthan scenarios for their Unspoken Word magazine. So we already have a comfortable working relationship.

Another self-publisher is looking at using SQ under the OGL to get his game out this year. More when this is further down the line, but it is a very exciting prospect and when I can say more I will gush excitedly about it.

So finally in the first half of this year you will see D101 Games move out of being a company in development to a company in reality.
Its going to be a big and pleasing leap, to see the stuff I’ve been working on for a good part of a year and more finally available, all nicely presented and illustrated.  Continuum in August is going to be the close of this first phase, and I’m intending to celebrate like a mutha!

Beyond this I’ll be promoting and developing SimpleQuest and Monkey.

SimpleQuest in the short term has the Shattered Lands series of adventures, which I’m going to throw myself into and have fun writing. Herodotus is still on the cards as is possibly some sort of Tang China supplement (a spin off from all that research I’ve been doing for Monkey). Though it is likely these will see the light of day more 2009.  There’s also SQ powered games, such as Blood and Sand , on the horizon. Plus I’m planning on supporting the game by doing some quick free scenarios, in the same way I used to write adventures and publish them via the web for HeroQuest

Monkey is going to be more of a promotional job, since I’m taking great pride in that its a complete standalone game. Perhaps a cheap adventure book may come out of my playtesting campaign, but other than that its going to be a case of getting out there and demoing the game to people.

The website has been a useful promotional tool, and is due a quick refresh soon. Mainly in the form of cleaned up Game pages but also switching on the news feed that comes with the Content Management System (CMS) I use for the site, to start pumping out announcements and release dates   I’m going to keep the ‘purple monster’ look for the time being, but at some point its going to get a complete work over and a fresh template. Also at this stage musing about whether or not to make the site the focus for the games communities that will hopefully spring up around SQ and Monkey, or whether to develop links with communities that already have an interest and merely link to them. 

I’ve got a few ideas for games beyond SQ and Monkey. I’ve got a satirical Sci-fi/Cyberpunk game, that will probably use the Mongoose Traveller SRD if that is in a half decent shape, and a short fun game roughly based around the classic Troma Series Class of Nukem High and DR & Quinch.

I’m also looking at using

gspearing

‘s upcoming Wordplay as out of the box system for story telling/narrative rules light games.  Again this is more 2009 territory, but one or two ideas might slip out as convention games.

Monkey has really benefited from me pushing to get the ashcan version done for Furnace 2007 back in October last year. Got lots of positive and useful feedback off people. I also have something that with a bit of work can be polished off to the full game.  Problem is that because I’ve been focusing on SimpleQuest since then, Monkey has been put aside until that gets done.

Things that need to get done in the next month or two.

• Get my background reading done. Basically between now and April all I can read is Monkey related stuff.  Mainly Asian mythology books and of course the big Antony Yu four volume translation, which is doing a great job of filling in the gaps that the Arthur Whatley translation leaves (this is the commonly available Penguin version) and has tons of flavoursome description.
• More playtesting. Both one shots, GoPlayManchester is a prime candidate as is a couple of private games I’ve been invited to, and a short campaign (5ish sessions) with my home group.
• Prod the Mighty Monkey Army for feedback. I pushed out the ashcan back in Oct/Nov of last year and not a peep since then! Saying that doing a playtesting Questionarie for SimpleQuest was really useful for getting feedback, so I’ll be doing the same in the coming weeks.
• Sort out Art. I’ve got a couple of leads here that as usual I need to chase up.

So far the plan is to seriously get down to writing in March and get finished for May at the latest. Layout June, and off to Lulu in July so I can get copies to take to Continuum in August..

Its going to be tight. In hindsight I should have never started SimpleQuest, but on the positive doing SQ means that I’ll have more experience of putting a book together before I do Monkey, which will be better as a result. Its now not a question of whether or not the book gets done this year, but how much time I can put in to polish it up into the final book.

Much better news here.

The Shattered Lands material has benefited immensely from being the setting I’ve used for my SimpleQuest playtesting.

Life and  Death has made a couple of appearances so far. As written its a game in three acts, and the games so far have been from Act 1. So the adventure has a lot of mileage in it! When the time comes it is pretty well good to go, and nicely shaping up to the finished product.

The Shattered Lands sourcebook itself is shaping up nicely. The intro which is available as the preview on the d101 games website is done and dusted. The adventure Dead Pot Country is nearly a complete first draft and is getting a playtest at Conception, courtesy of that nice man Neil Ford, and at GoPlayManchester in Feb. All I’ve got to do now is lots of fun writing about Aztar, a sample city, Cults and more about the cultures and people who live in the setting.

I’ve got to find  an artist to illustrate the books. I did have one in mind, who I contacted via email but never got a reply Ho hum, I’ll try again when I’ve got the text nearer to completion.

So the good news here, is that once SQ is out of the door The Shattered Lands and Life and Death should, artist permitting, follow quickly after in the months that follow.

Its been a while since I’ve posted, and to be fair things slipped considerably in the run upto XMAS, with home and work taking up much of my time pretty much 100%. It taught me some hard lessions about how much freetime as a working father with young child actually has. This in turn has lead to some hard decisions being made.

So this is the first of four posts detailing where I’m I upto with the games/stuff I’m working on:

SimpleQuest – My main focus at the moment. Looking at a March release. Slipped badly, due to SimpleQuest almost becoming ComplexQuest with lots of ‘clever’ rules almost being grafted into the draft. Ironic after spending alot of time stripping out some of the more twiddly parts of the MRQ SRD the game based on. Also I got an over inflated sense of the importance of the game. Suddenly in my head it became an all important project, my legacy to future rpgers…blah, blah , blah. Had a couple of weeks with that bouncing round my head. What a load of crap. Well heads are screwed back on again, back to basics – Take the MRQ SRD, rewrite the bits that don’t work for me, add a bit of user friendliness and approachability for people completely new to rpgs and GET IT DONE AND DUSTED.

Given myself the writing deadline of the end of Feb. Bad news this means Herodotus is not going to be part of the book.   Herodotus was begining to look more sense to do as a seperate supplement, so its likely that it will get picked up with this in mind in the second part of the year. Instead I’ve got a quick workable fantasy setting that I developed for a BRP game many moons ago which is going to make an appearance, along with a nice scenario I worked up this week while I was on holiday.

While I was on holiday I also got to grips with the section that was giving me the most fear and I skipped during the first draft. The Creatures section. First off i picked about fifty of the creatures from the MRQ Monsters SRD, which I believe will give a good start. Good classic Fantasy stuff; Elves, Dwarfs, Giants, Goblins etc. None of the Gloranthan creatures will be in SQ. Wrote up the descriptions of the Humaniod group (Goblins, Hobgoblins, Trolls, Orges) and felt 100% happy with it. So the final bit of development work has been done

So overall about 60% of the explanation/examples text is done, so its that difficult 40% where I wrap it all up that needs doing. Most of this is the GM advice section where the potential to go off into the deep end of pretentiousness and not resurface is huge. However since I already did this before XMAS, not planning on doing this again

Good news is that my friend Simon Bray has come up with the goods and I’ve got a set of black and white illustrations for the interior   Simon is also doing the cover as well. I’ll post some examples later.

So SimpleQuest is still on the way, despite my best attempts to sabotage it

Next: The Shattered Lands

Well Continuum 2008 has been officially announced, at John Foster Hall, Leicester University, UK Friday 1st – Monday 4th August 2008.

Personally I’m going to be pimping Simple Quest and Monkey to the max.

Very early stages, but I’m thinking of doing a big mad Fantasy Greece game using SimpleQuest, with miniatures (hydras, hoplites, triremes) on a big map of Ancient Greece. Think Ray Harryhausen meets Herodotus.

Monkey is going to be making a big appearance as well, seeing as I’ll have the book out by then. Lots of tabletop games as well as the possibility of a short (4 max) Freeform, but since I’ve never done one of these before I’m going to consult the gods of Continuum free forming before I get carried away.

For me Continuum is going to be a D101Games thing, with the amps turned up to 11!

If anyone is interested in helping me out with all this fun, please get in touch (coment or contact at mrnewt@gmail.com).

Because SQ is going entirely OGL, I’m no longer going to be including The Shattered Lands setting in with the SQ rulebook. This will come out as its own commercial book, with a series of swords and sorcery adventures to back it up over the next couple of years.

Instead I’m going to be including an Fantasy Ancient Greece setting, based upon Herodotus’ histories, set just before and during the 1st Persian War, where mythology is real and the Spartans really are the sons of Heracles and have access to their father’s divine magic.

 Its going to be light and evocative and OGL, so other authors can quite happily set their own adventures in it and expand the setting. As well as the setting I’ll also be doing an introductory adventure – Children of the Minotaur – a tale of intrigue in Athens, involving Cretan Pirates and the return of a certain bull headed maze dwelling monster!

I’m doing the research for this at the moment, so this will probably be the last thing that gets written.