Before I sit down and get my mojo together to finish off the Book of Glorious Joy (which has its final corrections and an index to throw together -SQEEE! ), its time to quickly reflect on where I’m at with my publishing endevears.

Wordplay. If you pay attendtion to my main news feed/twitter/farcebook page for d101 you would have seen that yesterday after a quick chat with the games’ author Graham Spearing i decided to call it a day on publishing Wordplay.I confessed to him that Wordplay is probably my least priority of all the games I publish and then showed him the great pile of stuff I’ve got planned. He then stepped in as an outside evaluator and pointed out that I should stop doing Wordplay now completely. This means stopping publishing even the stuff I’ve put out. I agreed with him. I’ve had my fun with Wordplay, but my heart has not really been in it since Christmas. In retrospect I should have just printed Wordplay the Big Five as a one off and left it at that. Stopping completely frees up allot of energy, not to mention art assets (WPB5 had a lot of cracking art which I can now build other supplements/games around), but at the moment I feel kinda like I’ve just split up with a major Girlfriend. But its the right decision. I’ve already started looking at what I had planned for Wordplay, Project Darklight (or CyberPlay as Graham was calling it) immediately comes to mind, and working out the best things to do with it.

Worry. I’ve been quietly stressed about D101 for the last couple of months. I’ve got two very large books in production that vampire like are sucking my creative mojo out.  The thing is that its been a fun ride doing both The Company & The Book of Glorious Joy. However I’m at the end of both books, and the end of my tether. While I’ve been finishing off these books, there was also the fun and games over whether OpenQuest is still legal, with Mongoose loosing the RuneQuest license. In the end Jeff Richard who sorts out the legal side of RuneQuest on behalf of its owner Greg Stafford told me that Greg said OpenQuest is ok with him

Wombat. Its been a while since I did a public update about Wombat. I’ve hammered out two alpha versions already and I’m planning a third and final before I go public with it, and plan to do a final alpha before moving quickly onto a Beta. I reckon I’m still on track to the Free version for Furnace (where it will be distributed as a free leaflet) and the extended version “The Little Book of Big Adventure” by early Dec. Once it goes beta I’ll start making more noises about it.  Wombat for me kinda takes over from where Wordplay leaves off (which is why Wordplay should leave my hands and go back to Graham). Its a big little thing for me and D101.

Win. HeroQuest is win, Empires Rising is win, OpenQuest wave 2 games , River of Heaven & The Company, Crypts and Things is the win, Wombat is win and Monkey is win (you’ll see how much Monkey is win soon ).  So its not all doom and gloom

Upcoming releases….

After not releasing any thing since Hearts in Glorantha #3 back in Sept 09, suddenly there’s a whole slew of stuff erupting from the Volcano of Love that is the D101 production que.

Monkey (D101-008) Man oh man I’m excited beyond belief. Its in editorial now with the esteemed Mark Galeotti (author of Mythic Russia and ex-HeroQuest line editor, and real life academic journal editor) and going straight into layout once I get it. Master pages are made up, cover is made and I’ve got all my art ready to go once the little monkey boy comes home. Looking at mid-March early April at the latest.

Savage North (D101-07) Same deal here, last of the proofing being done and straight into layout once I get it. Mid March

Wordplay The Big Five (D101-08) A bit of writing to be done on my part, which could hold things up a tiny bit, but otherwise over half the book (Core +2 out of five themes) already laid out. Aiming for a Con-Quest (see below release) but won’t be surprised if it slips slightly. Its a big book at 250+ pages!

Con-Quest! (D101-09) A one day Derby convention (a games day?) at the Assembly room run by old friends of mine.  Headed up by Darran Sims, Mike Mason, Evil Gaz and Dave McAllistar, its one of the most professional teams out there. Which is just as well since I’m feeling very wobbly about shifting gears from Con GM to Con Trader. Yup that’s right we’ll be having a very reasonably priced stall, which will also feature the lovely Tim Gray and his Silver Branch Games (get yer Jaws of the Six Serpents in), which should be selling HiG, OpenQuest and subject to release coinciding Savage North, Monkey and Wordplay:Big 5. Plus we’ll be running games all day; Monkey, Wordplay:BigFive and of course Savage North! Thanks in advance to Tom Zundar, John Ossoway, Andrew Edwards and Paul Mitchener who are going to be running games. Its my first con in ages and its going to be awesome and the win for D101. Pop down and see us

Beyond Con-Quest!

Con-Quest is a big milestone for us, alot of stuff that has been lying dormant finally sees the light of day. Gloranthaphiles amongst you will have noticed that there’s a serious absence of Gloranthan releases amongst the treasure trove being unearthed at Con-Quest. This is deliberate. Monkey kept on getting pushed aside for HiG and Savage North was already way over due (it was meant to be an Autumn release). Wordplay:The Big Five just came up suddenly and needs to get out asap otherwise some excellent gaming material ( I’m talking about Mark Galeotti’s The Cold Crusade and Charles Green’s Keep Portland Weird themes here) wouldn’t have seen the light of day.  Focus on these books kinda sapped my time to work on Gloranthan stuff. However after Con-Quest is full steam ahead on various HQ releases, both Gloranthan and ‘Gateway’ (Moon Designs term for non-Gloranthan settings). I’ll expand on them later (esp HQ Gateway since I’ve been teasing the community with promises of various things) but for now I shall leave you will a bullet list of stuff you can expect May-July.

• Gloranthan Adventures issue #1 New Beginnings (A set of four adventures set in Sartar, with Balkoth tribe background from Dr Moose)
• Hearts In Glorantha issue #4 (Lunar feature, plus first of Trotskys Lords of the West articles)
• Life and Death(OpenQuest adventure setting book by Newt Newport)
• Empires Rising (OpenQuest adventure setting book by Nathan Baron)
• The Monastery(HQ Gateway, Medieval mystery)
• Lost fools of Atlantis (HQ Gateway, Black Comedy)

More info

Wordplay The Big Five http://d101games.co.uk/wordplay

The Savage North http://d101games.co.uk/the-savage-north/

Hearts in Glorantha issue 4 http://heartsinglorantha.d101games.co.uk/2010/01/25/hig-4-is-go/

Monkey (a rather sparse page which will be updated with previews and images soon) http://d101games.co.uk/monkey

Life and Death http://d101games.co.uk/life-and-death

Empires Rising http://d101games.co.uk/empires-rising

Silver Branch Games http://www.silverbranch.co.uk/

Con-Quest, Derby Assembly Rooms Saturday 10th April http://www.con-quest.co.uk

Cross posted over at the Collective Endeavour, a forum for UK small press RPGs.

Monkey: this is the game that will probably interest you lot the most. Its my slim & focused 70 page take on the Chinese Classic Journey to the West, better known as MONKEY! over here (thanks to the Japanese TV series that aired in the 80s). Players play errant immortals chucked out of Heaven and the adventures revolve around them trying to earn enough virtue to re-enter Paradise despite their weakness and failings. A simple card mechanic models the action, which is fast furious and comedic while ultimately enlightening. Literally 2 pages away from completion, then a bit of polish, editing, layout and out Feb/March (at the very latest).

The Savage North: Last year I released a game called OpenQuest. I took the bull by the horns and produced a totally Open Content game from the Mongoose RuneQuest OGL SRD, which reflects how I like to play D100 (BRP, RQ ) these days, i.e in a very streamlined storytelling manner. The Savage North is a collection of four scenarios set in a Conan like setting. Very trad dungeon bashing/wilderness trekking from the glory days of White Dwarf in the early 80s. A fun little project which I’ve got to work with my mate John Ossoway (author of Cthulhu Rising) who wrote the adventures (for a RQ3 Conan campaign originally), did the copious number of maps and all the art. I’ve been responsible for writing a setting, converting it to OpenQuest and generally gluing together what was initially just a quick fun write up for John’s home group.

Wordplay: The Big Five This is Graham Spearing’s D6 dice pool narrative game. Think HeroQuest and Burning Wheel in the front, with a few indie games and WEG’s Star Wars D6 in the back, all in a car crash. Put back together by a games designer with an eye for simplicity and common sense. When Graham initially started the game he put a call out for people to write mini-settings called Themes for inclusion in the book. Four authors, my self included, answered the call. Graham published a plain text version , which included his Epic Fantasy theme, last year. His plan was to do a fully illustrated version with the remaining four themes. Unfortunately he hasn’t got time to do this due to other commitments, so I’m picking up publishing this. As well as Graham’s theme it will have; The Cold Crusade by Mark Galeotti (De Vinci code meets Heroes), Flashpoint by me (think Traveller redone as a story telling game), Infinite War (gonzo time travelling game, part satire of current war on terror, influenced by Jerry Cornelius and Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time), Keep Portland Weird by Charles Green (Charles calls it Urban Fantasy, but I think its very much World of Darkness done right with a lovely bit of surreal social commentary running in the back ground). “But Newt I notice only three authors there in your list” you cry. That’s right, Dom Mooney was originally going to be submitting ‘Singularities’, an epic Hard Sci-fi theme in the tradition of Iain Banks, Alistair Reynolds and a host of other modern writers, but is now developing it as a standalone Wordplay game. Apart from quickly writing Flashpoint, which is the replacement for Singularities, this is very much a quick layout job. I’ve already got alot of free/lo cost art from my regular stable of artists Release then April.

Dark Corners of the Empire: This is my own fantasy heartbreaker, written using Wordplay. Take the adventure and setting from OpenQuest and mash it up with the Wordplay system and see what comes out the other end.
Its really intended for people who want to try Wordplay out, but are put off by its ‘hey make everything up yourself’ approach or just want to play it in a familiar fantasy setting. Release?? This one is coming together very quickly, so could be March or Feb.

Hearts in Glorantha & Gloranthan Adventures: HiG was my starting point as a small press publisher almost two years ago. Its done me proud, providing me with a basic cash flow to pay for art for other projects. As a commited Gloranthaphile I’m still chugging away putting togehter the twice yearly HiG (issue 4 is being worked on now) and Gloranthan Adventures is an irregular spin off publication brought about by the realisation that I still have alot of my own material (which is mainly adventures) that is too big to fit in HiG.

This is the tip of the ice burg, since I’m a hyperactive sort whose creativity has been well and truly been liberated by self-publishing via lulu, but this is stuff I definitely know is going to get released in the next six months.l