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.)
World of Darkness: Glimpses of the Unknown is out now!
If you need more of a kicker before rushing to download, that’s fair. Glimpses is a book of story seeds and ideas, some fully developed and some left to spark ideas in a Storyteller’s mind. It’s got material in there for all the World of Darkness games, from vanilla WoD through Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Promethean, Changeling, Hunter, Geist, Innocents, and Mirrors.
I did a whole host of ghostly and weird stuff for World of Darkness and Geist. I’d have done Werewolf or Hunter, but y’know who’s better than me at doing those games? Chuck Motherfucking Wendig and Matt McFarland, that’s who.
All of that for $7. Can you think of a better way to spend $7? Yeah? Well, you’re wrong.
After far too much wibbling about building a list of playtesters and all of that shit, I’ve decided to just make the test documents for Through public. After all, it’s just a dump from Scrivener.
So, here’s Through Playtest I: Character Creation. (PDF link)
Should be reasonably self-explanatory if you don’t mind the obvious “dumped out of Scrivener in ten seconds” formatting. Read it, test it, let me know what works. The document itself contains everything that I think you’d need to know in order for a group to make characters. Let me know if that’s not the case, let me know what works, let me know what’s broken but I’m too blind to see it.
From drought to flood. Days without ideas, and suddenly a whole lot hit at once. I apologise for anyone reading this on Livejournal or Dreamwidth; this is their third syndicated post in a row. But it’s got to beat another bloody recipe, no?
Anyway. Through. That’s the winner as the new name for TGFKATTEG. It’s good. And now I’m wondering what font to render it in to make a decent logo, and whether that could scale down to be an inset font for just the game’s title throughout the text. The unholy joy of playing with fonts.
But I’m not here to talk about fonts. I’m here to talk about something that I’ve just had an idea for, that ain’t going to come to pass.
The Through Object.
The Through Object is an artefact of information. While the PDF would be Creative Commons licenced, the hard-copy of Through would include a single-use code for a website, which would let the owner set up a Through Object for her group. She signs up, invites all of her players (none of whom need a code), she can create a game, record what happened, record character details, it’s got hand-holding for new players to step through conflict resolution, open- and privileged-channel communication (a reasonably big thing in Through), you can record every little detail or tell it to ignore some details. A thoroughly tailored website just for the game.
The site would have two types of account. Ones created with a code can create unlimited Through Objects for their games, and can invite other people in. Invite-only accounts can only have one Through Object at once, and can’t invite any others. Want to upgrade your account? Buy the book. Bought the book second-hand? Cool. Send me evidence of you with the physical book, and I’ll give you a full account upgrade.
Effectively, I’m talking about making a highly-tailored social network for Through that’s useful at, away from, and instead of the table. The Through Object isn’t the anaemic dictatorial model of DDI, providing a clunky interface to the latest Holy Word of the Text, and it’s not the
Game-related social networks can be a really great thing. Back before Ning realised that they liked money, I ran a simple network for a dozen or so Geist players who brought elements of their home games together to create a real-world analogue of the in-world Twilight Network. It was great for me as someone who had helped put Geist together, and from all that I read and heard it was great for the players, because they came with things from their own tabletop games and left with other people’s ideas to take back there as rumours. Which is fantastic.
While Through isn’t particularly mechanically complex (at least at present), it does go back to some ideas that have pretty much been discarded, and something to specifically take care of all of that would be a great thing.
Naturally, this is a pipe dream. I know enough web programming to know how hard it’d be, and any indie game I release will not make a tenth of what I’d have to pay someone to write the site for the Through Object. It remains a dream I had in the shower, a dream of a somewhat better world.
I’m working on a game. It’s a game about ghosts, but it isn’t set up to tell ghost stories. More of a “You died. What next?” setup, playing to the needs and desires of people after the most significant change they’ll ever encounter.
I’d originally been calling it Through the Ebon Gate. Unfortunately, I was plugging in to the noosphere for ghostly titles, as that’s the title Christopher Simmons used for his Geist SAS. I don’t want to look like I’m piggybacking on that title—and it’s a good enough title that I don’t want to dilute it.
This does leave me with a problem: I’ve got a game with no name. The only option my sleep-deprived brain is cooking up is things like After|LIFE, and it’s not the late 1990s any more.
Thus, I throw it open to the joys of the lazyweb: Should I stick with TTEG? Or TGFKATTEG? Is After|LIFE nowhere near as horribly dated as I’ve lead myself to believe? Or do you have the perfect name for this game, just straining to get out? That’s what the comment field is for.
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