January 16, 2018

Lasers & Hacking

Originally prompted by some of the ideas thrown around on the SomethingAwful Traditional Games forum (registration possibly required), I’ve fallen in love with hacking John Harper’s Lasers & Feelings. It’s a very nice, very light system that’s I’m using as the basis for a rough sketch of an urban-fantasy game with possibly-obvious inspirations (currently a pre-alpha; I’ll write about it here when it’s done).

But that’s not all I’ve done. I have committed hackery¹, to tune Lasers & Feelings to different styles of game.

Sanity & Sorcery — Lovecraftian horror

Shaken & Stirred — Stealth action

Power & Responsibility — Silver-age superheroics

Swashbucklers & Scoundrels — Pirate adventures

August 19, 2017

Stepping Back

As Rich Thomas revealed at GenCon, I stepped back as developer of Werewolf: The Forsaken and Werewolf: The Apocalypse developer at Onyx Path a year and a half ago.

I didn’t say anything at the time as I was finishing the books I’d started — W20: Changing Ways and the Pentex Employee Handbook — but I have not started work on any new projects.

January 6, 2017

Fuck 2016, Redux

As you may remember, I pledged that proceeds from my November and December sales would go to The Trevor Project, an American charity supporting LGBTQ youth. Because 2016 was a shitshow, and the results of the November election the icing on the cake.

Thing is, right now I’m on the long tail. My last two months’ proceeds are $15. That looks a bit anaemic, so fuck it. Over the last six months, my self-published games have made me $42. That’s more like it.

November 11, 2016

Fuck 2016

2016 is a shit of a year. Life has got worse for a tremendous number of people.

If I can make it better, even in a small way, I shall do.

September 10, 2016

Meat is Murder

A cyberpunk roleplaying game about having the best stuff

This is very unapologetically 80’s cyberpunk — cybernetics rather than gene-tailoring and shit like that. All money is in Euro, and all numbers are written in European notation; one hundred thousand Euro is €100.000,00 but nobody cares about cents. Cash is good. Stuff is better. Meat is worthless.

August 5, 2015

Wider Margins

A footnote in yesterday’s post mentioned that one of the many reasons behind the razor-thin margins in the tradgames space is the stagnating price.

RPG books are ridiculously fucking cheap compared to books of similar production values in other areas. The price of the book has not risen in any significant proportion to the increase in costs. Instead, the increase in production price has eaten in to the margins, the amount of money that the publisher gets and uses to pay for writers and artists and game designers.