Spes Magna Games

Just a quick update today. Busy, busy, busy.

The writing’s picked back up again. I’m still not getting quite as much done as I want/need to, but at least there’s progress. Recently, I statted out the bad guys for the short adventure to be included with Fencing & Firearms. Doing so gave me an excuse to dust off and update my old Unseelie Template.

The unseelie are creatures who’ve been seduced by the dark side of nature. For them, nature is blood red in tooth and claw, more a source of fear than a world of beauty. Many unseelie were normal fey, but others were once non-fey creatures who have given themselves over to the forces of darkness. As Duhnmair, a fey knight, describes in a play-by-post game I’m running, “The Unseelie revel in the darker side of nature. They reject the beauty and creativity that balances the destructive force of a storm or the red fangs of a predator. Their leaders seek to plunge the world into chaos where failure would be the only sin.”

I’m a big fan of adventures that include re-usable material, and a new template fits the bill. Even after the adventure is over and the villains defeated, the Unseelie Template can be used again, applied to different creatures. This template is also a way to get more fey into your game. I’ve never quite understood why the fey seem to get so little consideration in the rules. Folklore and literature are rich with stories about the Little People and the wonderful and terrible things they do to mortals. When I get around to working in earnest on the Novus Mundus campaign world, the fey will certainly be more prominently displayed than fantasy RPG staples such as orcs.

I’m also wonderfully pleased that I’ve received my first official Quid Novi? submission from a subscriber. I read the submission over yesterday, and it is good. As a result, Quid Novi? VII will feature ostriches and emus as the Chance Encounter of the month. Both animals will strut forth fully Pathfinder-compatible and will include what you need to use them as animal companions and mounts. Soon you will finally be able to run that much longed-for Ostrich Riders of the Brazen Plains campaign. A big thanks to Spes Magna supporter Alzrius!

On the bummer front, response to my subscriber-drive contest has been minimal. Of course, it’s only been a little less than a week, so there’s still lots of time. My Quid Novi? subscribers are a big part of my strategy for success with Spes Magna Games. They are the backbone of this little venture of mine, being the folks that I hope will become avid fans (and customers) of Spes Magna products in the future.

So, my wonderful subscribers, let’s get more people to sign up for Quid Novi?! It’s free, fun, and soon will include really large birds.

It’s March 9 already, and I’m still behind with writing, editing, and some website-related work. It isn’t helping that I’ve finally discovered Hulu. In particular, I’m thoroughly enjoying The Lone Ranger. I used to watch the adventures of that fabulous masked man in syndication when I was a kid. I remember owning Lone Ranger, Tonto, and Silver action figures. I don’t think I had Scout, so I’m guessing my Tonto walked everywhere. Fortunately for my time management, Hulu only has twelve episodes of The Lone Ranger available, and I’m just about half through them.

On the work front, I am done with Rewarding Roleplaying and Fencing & Firearms. I’ve started on the Five-Room Dungeon that will be included with F&F. Darren Calvert emailed me yesterday and told me he is getting ready to put finishing touches on the cover for The Case of the Purloined Princess. I’ve looked at the roughs he’s done, and they’re delightful. I really need to upload some images to the site for the world to see. That’s one more thing for my list.

Speaking of The Case of the Purloined Princess, work has slowed to a crawl on my end. I’ve got to get back on track. I’ve been saying product would be released for sale this month. At the rate I’m going, that’s going to end up happening closer to April and than to February.

I’m also working on the Quid Novi? subscriber bonus PDF for March. It should be available with the March 21st issue. This month, I’m offering an alternate version of the bard’s Versatile Performer class feature. The Versatile Performer class feature for bards is a bit confusing. It’s meant to make the bard better at certain skills that seemingly correspond with different types of Perform, but the actual mechanics of the class feature are muddled. Versatile Performer is also a bit on the uninspiring side. It’s an attempt to boost the bard’s role as skill monkey while keeping to the theme of bard-as-performing-adventurer, but Versatile Performer just sort of seems to miss the mark.

The new subscriber-only PDF presents an alternative system for Versatile Performance that draws upon terminology related to music, dance, acting, and rhetoric. For example, a bard could learn Accelerando. This ability lets the morale bonus provided by Inspire Courage also apply to Reflex saves. Furthermore, when the bard reaches 5th level, affected allies gain a +5-foot bonus to base speed.

Speaking of Quid Novi? subscriber PDFs, it looks like Monsters & Magic Items of Greek/Roman Myth is the winner for April. I’ll add the other two to the project queue for May and June. Also, don’t forget about the subscriber-drive contest that’s going on right now.

Well, that’s it for this post. I’ll be back in a few days.

Since Quid Novi? subscribers get the one-third discount, we’re looking to increase our subscriber base, and we’re asking for our subscribers to help.

Get one other person to subscribe to Quid Novi? before April 1, 2010, and you and that new subscriber will both get the new, improved Rewarding Roleplaying for free. Have your recruit email me with your email address in the body of the message to let me know who’s responsible for bringing another reader into the fold. I’ll personally ensure you both get the new, improved Rewarding Roleplaying.

What’s more, the top five subscriber recruiters will get free copies of the new, improved Fencing & Firearms, to include the one-shot adventure.

Finally, the number one subscriber recruiter will get all of the above, plus a copy of The Case of the Purloined Princess.

To clarify: If you recruit more new subscribers than everyone else who recruits new subscribers, you get one each of everything listed above for free. If your numbers two through five in the recruiting of new subscribers, you get Fencing & Firearms, the accompanying one-shot adventure, and Rewarding Roleplaying. Plus, every new subscriber who lets me know he or she was recruited by an old subscriber gets the for-sale version of Rewarding Roleplaying as a special welcome.

The contest started once this post was made, and it runs until midnight, March 31, 2010, Central Standard Time.

Speaking of sales, Quid Novi? subscribers get one-third off the cover price for all Spes Magna PDFs. Right now, we’re looking at these products and prices:

Rewarding Roleplaying – $1.50, or $1.00 for Quid Novi? subscribers. This version of Rewarding Roleplaying has been edited and expanded for greater clarity and playability.

Fencing & Firearms – $7.50, or $5.00 for Quid Novi? subscribers. This will be a bundle that includes Rewarding Roleplaying and a short Pathfinder-compatible adventure using the Five-Room Dungeon format.

The Case of the Purloined Princess – $4.50, or $3.00 for Quid Novi? subscribers. This is the first convention-style module featuring the Anklebiter League. TCotPP is designed to be played in about four hours, and it includes just about everything needed for play, including six pre-generated characters for your players to run. It also features stunning art by Darren Calvert done in glorious black and white.

Keep an eye on the Spes Magna site. I’ll be updating the site with more information about these products.

Well, OwlCon has come and gone for 2010. My son Giant Boy and I were at the con bright and early Saturday morning in time to play a Truth & Justice event featuring pre-gen characters that were mash-ups of comic book heroes. I played the Black Vision, a Luke Cage-Vision combo. Luke Cage was an ex-con who intervened during an assassination attempt against the King of Wakanda while he was in New York City. Cage was mortally injured. To save his life, the king’s scientists transferred Cage’s consciousness into a synthezoid body. Giant Boy played the Scarlet Spider, who gained his powers when bitten by a Gypsy witch who had been driven mad after being bitten by a radioactive spider.

The other players ran Captain Thor (Captain American and Thor), the Atomic Manhunter (the Atom and Martian Manhunter), Bat Lantern (Batman and Green Lantern), and Wolfeye (Wolverine and Hawkeye). Our mission was to save the multiverse from the machinations of the Leader (Reed Richard and the Leader mashup) and Dread Clea (Dormammu and Clea mash-up, which really isn’t a mash-up because Clea did assume the mantle of Dormammu at least once).

The event wasn’t anything terribly elaborate. It was basically three super-fights strong together with some narrative transitions. We did battle with various mash-up villains, such as the Abominaut (Abomination-Juggernaut) and Gorilla Polaris (Gorilla Grodd and Doctor Polaris). It was an amusing four hours. Truth & Justice uses the PDQ system, a narrativist RPG with a lot of flexibility and room for creative use of character abilities. I’d read a bit about the PDQ system before hitting the con. You can get a free taste by visiting Atomic Sock Monkey‘s freebies area. I’m not sure I’d want to GM the system, but I wouldn’t mind being a player using it every now and then. It has a lot of potential.

The Black Vision had two highpoints during the game. The first took place when he was mind-controlled by the Ace of Hearts. Hearts ordered the Black Vision to fight his fellow heroes. The GM explained that I could attempt to break free from Hearts’s control, but I opted to roll with the setback for at least one round after Captain Thor nailed Hearts with his mystic uru shield.

I looked Cap’s player in the eye and announced, “Mama said knock you out!”

The Black Vision nailed Captain Thor pretty good, and I got some bonus Action Points for opting to let the villain keep the upper hand.

At the end of the game, it became necessary to insert something mystical and something high-tech into the Sphere of Doom created by the villains to remake reality in their own image. Captain Thor tossed in his mystic uru shield. Atomic Manhunter, our resident super-scientist, explained that the high-tech component needed to be extremely high-tech. So, the Black Vision hurled himself into the Sphere of Doom, thus destroying the villains’ plan and saving the multiverse.

Not bad for a day’s work.

After Truth & Justice, I ran an event featuring The Mad Monk’s Revenge. Giant Boy and two friends, Eric and Angela, were part of the event along with three folks I’d never met before. I repeated the event Sunday afternoon for six other players, including the fellow who ran Wolfeye in the Truth & Justice event. Both playtests went well. It looks like my basic set up is pretty solid. I identified a few gaps in some NPCs’ motivations that I need to plug. I also noted a few areas where I need to offer some DMing advice. The adventure has a definite goal, but it’s structure is pretty flexible in terms of how the players go about accomplishing that goal. Consequently, the two groups took different approaches (in a few instances, very different approaches). I think this is a definite strength of the module, but it also makes writing it more difficult. It’s impossible to prepare for every possibility even in a scenario that is a hardcore railroad in terms of plot structure. The looser the plot, the more complicated laying out the plot becomes.

I also used both events for more playtesting of Fencing & Firearms and Rewarding Roleplaying‘s Action Point system. In both cases, the rules seemed to work well. All in all, I’m pleased by the way these products have shaped up. Best of all, everyone who played in the events seemed to enjoy themselves, and isn’t that what gaming is really all about?

While I was running my second event, Giant Boy ventured off on his own to play in a Draw! event. Draw! is a wild west RPG that uses poker chips and decks of playing cards for action resolution. I’m not real clear on how this works since I wasn’t there to watch, but Giant Boy had fun playing the game. I gave him some handy westernisms to help him out. He managed to work “vittles” and “varmints” and “slap leather” into his in-character dialogue.

Next time I get to do the con scene, I’m going to have to keep an eye out for Draw!. I’ve also liked the western genre, and I had loads of fun with the original Boot Hill RPG back in the day.

OwlCon was a good time. Now, it’s back to work to get caught up on my writing. Busy, busy. I’ll type at you again in a few days.