As part of moving Æternal Legends from Mob United Media to Zero Point Information, we’ve had to do some re-arrangement of products at our various storefronts.
ZPI is now on Lulu. If you’re after a print copy of Æternal Legends, you can get it. If you want a PDF of Æternal Legends, well, you can get that too. And if you want to get Touched by Darkness or BLACK SEVEN along with your order, you can.
Alternatively, you can get a PDF of Æternal Legends from DriveThruRPG. The link’s the same as it ever was, but this time it’s on the Zero Point Information storefront. I’ve also thrown Touched by Darkness up there as well.
If you get electronic copies of Touched by Darkness or BLACK SEVEN from Lulu, you only get the screen-formatted PDF. If you want the .zip with epub files and all the extra gubbins, drop me an email and I’ll hook you up.
I’m aware that this post is fair packed with links. But I’m an indie RPG publisher, if I didn’t linkdump now and again I’d hardly sell anything.
Some things are simply commercially unviable. This sketch is one of those things: my dream of a print version of BLACK SEVEN
Elevator Pitch
BLACK SEVEN is awesome. But wouldn’t it be more awesome in print? Not as a boxed set, but a manilla envelope containing all you need to run the game for friends and at cons.
What Is It?
I have a surprisingly concrete idea of how I’d love to do a BLACK SEVEN physical version.
The whole thing’s in a large manilla folder containing:
- Two copies of the Agent Briefing, bound.
- One copy of the Control Briefing, bound.
- Ten (or twenty) A5 Agent Records, blank, as a peel-off pad.
- Ten (or twenty) A5 Facility Records, blank, as a peel-off pad.
- A USB key with electronic versions of everything.
- One “BLACK SEVEN Field Guide”, containing the introduction, example of play, and options from the corebook, bound.
Operation: GREY UNICORN is in a half-size sealed envelope, with appropriate logos and decoration, containing
- Operation: GREY UNICORN, bound.
- The example Agent Records.
- The example Facility Records.
Where things are noted as “bound”, they’re done as A5 stapled booklets, with appropriate logos, design, and layout, with colour-coded cardstock covers.
Where Are You At?
Ahahaha. Because of the variety of components, the cost to produce individual units would be verging on the extortionate, and that’s assuming that I can get volume discounts. BLACK SEVEN hasn’t sold enough for me to get volume discounts on the PDF, let alone on a physical product. It’s a light game, and ain’t nobody going to pay shitloads of cash for less than fifty pages.
Current Hurdles?
The whole thing’s a bit batshit, so this Sketch is rather more a dream of what could be rather than anything that actually happens. Maybe in ten years or so I’ll be in a position to do this kind of thing.
I’ve wanted to write New Æon for a while. It’s a chance to cut loose on my own SF game, the sort of opportunity that I won’t get short of the good people of White Wolf cutting loose and giving Ian Watson and I the chance to reinvent Trinity. Since that ain’t going to happen1 I instead have New Æon.
Elevator Pitch
Mash up the system from Exalted 2E and Trinity with a garnish of bits from Apocalypse Prevention, Inc.2, make a setting out of one part DC 1 Million, one part WildC.A.T.S. 3.0, and some of Alan Moore’s ABC work into one big gonzo comic-book-science-fiction mess.
What Is It?
Two hundred years from now, mankind and assorted posthumanity have just recovered from the Silence, a terrible calamity that nearly destroyed everything. But even this New Æon isn’t safe: between psychic cults, sentient corporations, relics of the Old Future, outbreaks of Quiet, and the sinister threat of the Underverse, things just got interesting.
New Æon is set in a post-future inspired by Grant Morrison and Alan Moore. It has a… distinct authorial tone, kinda like the introduction to The Filth and is hard on SF weirdness for fun. The Underverse is my interpretation on what happens when a whole universe decides that having a sense of individual identity is hard, and instead invests it in a figurehead3. The Church of Gort is an excuse to have full-conversion cyborgs walking around with enough firepower to start a small border war. The primary rule boils down to “if it’s post-80s SF, it has a place”.
New Æon is my “popcorn game”—It’s so different to the sort of game that I normally write that designing it doesn’t use the same creative muscles. And the setting is my favourite bits of cheesy goodness squeezed into one setting, where a cyborg nun of the Church of Gort meets a holographic supersolider in a bar and nobody’s in the least bit surprised.
Where Are You At?
I’ve written half of the system. It borrows heavily from various action-oriented dice pool systems without being a direct rip off of any particular one. I have the basic rules down, but no more.
I like the idea of “Roll (attack – defense), successes add to weapon damage, roll (damage – soak)”, but I need ways to make it tactcally interesting without having three dozen options at any one time. One idea involved using different colours of poker chip to track things like ticks, defence penalties, aiming bonuses and the like, while another idea involved making cards for every possible action, but that does feel like overcomplicating the whole thing.
The setting’s not been written yet save as bits that interact with the rules. I don’t know whether to leave that as-is, using the implied bits to build a picture in the reader’s brain. That’s a distinct possibility.
Current Hurdles?
I’m trying to come up with a combat system that is both tick-based and not clunky. Killing multiple actions with fire (outside of special powers) helps a little, but I really don’t want a 10-step attack resolution, y’know?
Also, writing up different systems for martial arts, psi, anachrotech, neotech, cybernetics, and fuck-alone knows what else and balancing everything together.
I’ve got a D&D game going at work, which is a novelty for me. We’re playing with the 4E rules, hacked slightly to include things like significant wounds that need lots of time or magical healing to deal with. So some of my gaming-based thought processes have become tied up with that.
Yesterday, I turned in the first drafts of Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition, demonstrating to myself that I can indeed churn out 55k in 40 days without going bugfuck insane. That, in turn, frees up some space in my mind.
And so I get to thinking about some of the game sketches that live in my head. I don’t know why—these are cognitive cycles that should probably go towards planning the D&D game, or designing Through, but the former is a surprisingly easy game for me to run, and the latter is too intense for me to work in large chunks. I’m sure that will change, but right now I’m after some mental sugar and candyfloss. Given that’s how BLACK SEVEN came about, I don’t think I can complain too much.
I mentioned a short while back1 that I have some ideas percolating in my brain. I’m going to kick the tyres on each one and post them up here, in part to give them the attention that each one deserves, but also to help straighten each one in my head. That might be enough for my brain, giving each idea a spotlight here. On the other hand, my innate sense of perversity2 might take one of those sketches and demand that I make it into a real game right this minute.
One of the reasons for kicking them up is to get a record of where my ideas stand. Another is to run these ideas past people in a structured setting, so don’t be shy about commenting—even if it is just to say “that’s a crap idea”. All input is welcome.
-
Two months is a short while, as these things go. Which makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing on twitter, where a “short while” is no longer than ten minutes.↩
-
I’m of the firm belief that one shouldn’t be a writer without a sense of perversity. Perhaps one should call it a contrarian streak, were one in polite society. But that would be going alogn with the ideals of polite society, frankly, so fuck’em.↩
As Malcolm says, he’s giving Æternal Legends to me. Which is a bit of a weird thing to say, because it’s a creator-owned game. But he created the system it runs on, he developed the book and did all the necessary work to turn my manuscript into a game. We’re working on a way that I can not just keep selling the game, but create supplements and a new edition.
Nothing’s changing just yet. When we get something sorted out, Æternal Legends will move to the Zero Point Information banner in the various places that sell it. Then I’ll get Spheres ready for release ASAP. Once that’s out, I can move on to creating new things for the game. If you’ve got something you’d like to see, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
I’d also like to thank Malcolm for all the hard work he’s put in to Æternal Legends. I look forward to working with him again.
In the time I’ve been quiet:
- I’ve written and submitted the Werewolf Translation Guide for White Wolf.
- I’ve got some exciting news about Æternal Legends.
- I’ve got some more exciting news from White Wolf, which should see me writing for them until March on something that I’ve always wanted a crack at.
- I’m wrestling with some design elements that have halted progress on Through.
- I’ve got a couple of old ideas climbing out of the recesses of my brain and asking me to write them.
Which is all nice. Over the coming couple of weeks, I’m going to post the short half-ideas to get an idea of what I should be working on when I have a chance; any and all feedback on them would be highly appreciated.
And while the post office is straining under the stress of χmas and related holidays, you can still get the gamer in your life some electronic goodies. I’ve been having a great time with the Mistborn Adventure Game. If you’re after something that strips away the surface patina of D&D-esque games, you can’t really go wrong with Homicidal Transients1. And with Deus Ex: Human Revolution in the Steam sale (other digital distributors are available, void where prohibited), what better time to take a potential Game of the Year to your tabletop with BLACK SEVEN?
1: Unless you want a book that hates the whole mindset, in which case Greg Costikyan’s Violence is for you.
Good evening, cheese weasels.
I’m not dead. I’ve been quiet here not because anything’s wrong but because it’s quite right: I’m working on a book for White Wolf, so don’t have time for much by way of blogging or working on my own games. Such is the life of a freelance writer.
The fine people at FlamesRising.com gave me the chance to talk at some length about designing and publishing BLACK SEVEN. I say things like:
Likewise, video games operate on a primarily reactive level: the level and scenario is designed from the start, and it only changes in response to the player’s actions. In terms of pen & paper roleplaying games, that school of design calls back to pre-populated dungeons drawn out on graph paper, without even the thrills of wilderness encounters to add some randomness. I wanted something in place that would limit the GM to setting the scene and then following the rules same as every other player.
and such pretentious wank as:
Despite that [prescriptivist] design philosophy, I still wanted to leave as much detail as possible up to the players. Hence, while the rules describe what happened on one level, it’s up to the folks around the table to work out what that means in the context of the story being told. Being Noticed is a rules-thing, but all it means is that you’ve got a very short window of time before people start shooting. How that plays out in the actual story of the operation is up to the players and GM, as it should be.
Go, read, enjoy. Comment there or here, I’m happy to answer any questions. Any at all.
BLACK SEVEN, about which I have a hard time shutting up lately, is now available for Kindle! That includes the kindle app that’s available for pretty much everything with a processor more sophisticated than my wristwatch, as well as the dedicated e-ink based reading devices.
You can get it from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.de, depending whether you like getting your Kindle-books in dollars, pounds, or Euros.
Do you like stealth action games like Deus Ex, Alpha Protocol, and No One Lives Forever? Do you like tabletop roleplaying games? Then I think you’ll like BLACK SEVEN, my latest creation.
BLACK SEVEN is an independent espionage organisation that undertakes deniable operations deemed too politically sensitive for governments, corporations, or private individuals.
Stripped of the marketing speak, BLACK SEVEN’s Agents break in to places, sneak around, steal data, beat up guards, hack computers, get into running gun battles, and occasionally assassinate people. Sometimes, they do this for Queen and Country. Sometimes, it’s for God, America, and Mom’s Apple Pie. And sometimes it’s because a nice lady with an indiscriminately European accent handed over a suitcase containing five million in non-sequential fifties as a downpayment.
It’s ten minutes into the future. You live a life of luxury, at least until you get the call from BLACK SEVEN. Then, you go to risk your life. Whether you do it for the money, for the safety of the free world, or to expand the definition of the “free world” is up to you. All Control cares about is that you get the job done.
BLACK SEVEN is:
• 47 pages of modern espionage RPG inspired by stealth-action games like Deus Ex, Alpha Protocol, and Splinter Cell.
• An abstract system for representing position and stealth without the need for maps or precise measurements.
• Focused on stealth action with Agents defined by what actions they take when infiltrating an enemy facility.
• Creative Commons licensed, so one purchase feeds the gaming needs of a whole group. If you like it and got it for free, I hope you buy it.
• Multiformat, including the rules and a sample adventure in PDF and ePub format, and a host of PDF reference sheets—including a business-card sized Agent Record.
It’s available from DriveThruRPG for the measly price of just $3! Go grab it!
(That’s three dollars, said with some excitement. Not three-factorial dollars. Sorry for any mathematicians I worried with the price there.)
Categories
