New Bristol is a superhero setting currently campaigning on kickstarter.
Friday, September 4, 2020
KS Watch! New Bristol: A Campaign Setting for your Supers
New Bristol is a superhero setting currently campaigning on kickstarter.
Designing Curse of Aufgartz
My current project is Curse of Aufgartz - A Savage Worlds Solo/GMless Game.
It is a dark fantasy story with a heavy Diablo 1 feel, offering several quests that you can tackle, and that will keep you busy for about one to four hours, depending on which optional rules you use.
Curse of Aufgartz builds on the experience I developed from the Gold & Glory solo rules, as well as from reading and playing the recently released Deadlands - Crater Lake Chronicles.
The design goal is to make a game that you can play with no GM, alone or with a group.
It works a bit like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, because you make story choices and go back and forth through the book, and also a bit like a board game.
You choose which quests you want to tackle, in a structure that resembles a typical Savage Worlds Plot Point Campaign, with Plot Points and secondary quests.
Each quest is a two-page spread, and it does not ask you to flip the book back and forth. All the options, events and game contents are there in that two-page spread. You finish the quest, you return to Aufgartz (the "home base" chapter), and select a new one.
I'm so excited about this project because it involves more than writing a standard adventure. It needs a structure and and a set of procedures that will allow the book to function as a GM, using some tokens and trackers.
The current iteration of the game includes a single-sheet printout called Adventuring Journal, which features:
- A Time Tracker, where you mark the passing of time. You mark boxes when you solve a Quest or as a consequence of some events. As time passes, more quests unlock, but the Curse also grows stronger.
- A Quest Log, where you mark which quests are available and which you've already solved.
- An Advancement Tracker, where you mark boxes as you complete certain quests or events. After a certain number of marks, you gain an Advance.
- A Clue Tracker, keeping track of your success at unveiling the secrets of the Curse.
- A table to roll random Curse Effects, which are triggered as you advance in the game and Evil spreads in the land.
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
10 QUESTIONS TO: Eric Lamoureux
But who is Eric? Eric is a French Canadian living in the USA, a family man, and a person that strikes me as some kind of “well-adapted introvert”, which I have no idea what it is supposed to mean, but he sure is fun to talk to… or listen to, on his podcast. Plus, he's portrayed like this, Wiseguys style:
1 Hello Eric. Tell us about Wiseguys as if you were trying to sell it to your aunt!
It’s full of Italian recipes! hehe
Wiseguys is Tarantino meets Ocean’s Eleven and Goodfellas. You play mob associates and soldiers trying to strike it big in Las Vegas in the nineties after the Giuliani led Mafia Commission Trials put all the godfathers back in New York behind bars and left Las Vegas ripe for the taking!
It’s also a modern bestiary with over 100 NPC stat blocks, primers on 6 other crime syndicates, and setting rules to run heist and manage contacts that you can use in pretty much any other setting or genre.
2 Let’s talk about design. How long did you work on it? Was it a night job? How would you describe your creative process?
Wiseguys began with the adventure scenario published 4 years ago that followed the misadventures of five mobsters on a road trip in the Nevada desert with a body in the trunk of their Cadillac. People wanted more so Wiseguys was born.
I worked on Wiseguys for over two years part-time. I started by doing a lot of research. I wanted it to be about more than just Italian American men. I read countless articles and books and watched documentaries, tv-series, and movies. That’s where Tarantino influences came in with its strong female leads. That’s where I also learned that the Italian American Mob employed people of all ethnic backgrounds. This opened up the scope of the game and the characters that people could play quite a lot. If you look at the pregens included in the Jumpstart, you’ve got a Latina roller derby player, a black Elvis impersonator, and a former med student showgirl with a pet venomous snake. You can’t get this roleplay experience anywhere else!
I then wrote the Demo Kit which was also a playtest document. I ran a playtest group, ran it at conventions, and also used feedback from a few playtest groups. After that came the Jumpstart which was more polished and used all that feedback and experience from the first year. This was pretty close to the final product. The last six months was a lot of grinding, rewrites, edits, and incorporating material from other writers.
3 Let’s get deeper into the design. Which was the hardest part of designing Wiseguys? And which was the easiest?
The hardest part of designing Wiseguys was to decide what made the cut. I ended up with way more than the 180 pages included in the final version. Managing the whole project from writing to managing the Kickstarter campaign to art direction was also quite the challenge. There were about 20 people working on this project from writers, editors, proofreaders, layout, graphic designers, and artists. The easiest part for me was probably running the playtest. It was a lot of fun.
4 Let’s talk about the Kickstarter that launched Wiseguys. How do you rate this experience? What have you learned?
The Kickstarter campaign was an amazing experience. It was my first project and it was quite stressful; I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. I’ve learned that we, at Just Insert Imagination, have the support of the Savage Worlds community and we’re so grateful for that!
5 Are you currently working on something? Can you tell us about it?
I’m currently working on two freelance projects. However, I’ll let the publishers talk about them when they’re ready.
Morne and I at Just Insert Imagination are currently exploring mini-settings for Savage Worlds. One is an urban fantasy setting that takes place in Cape Town, South Africa where Morne is from. The other one is a stone & sorcery setting where cavemen must save their homeland from cosmic threats. Think Genndy Tartakovsky,s Primal meets the Cthulhu mythos.
6 If you could buy any franchise and make an RPG of it, what would it be? Tell us about the franchise and the game you’d make out of it.
That’s a tough one!
I think the Chronicles of Riddick series would work great in Savage Worlds with planets trying to kill you and the Necromongers being the secondary antagonists. I’d design a deadly planet generator for sure!
The other one would have to be the Evil Dead franchise. Savage Worlds would be a great fit for Evil Dead’s campy and slapstick style.
7 Let’s see how good you really are as a role player. You are a Hollywood screenwriter, and you must now write a five lines email to convince Mr. Warner Bros to produce a movie based on one of Mr. Lamoureux’s adventures or settings. Go.
I would spike my hair straight up, show up unshaven and rant on about explosions, the underdogs taking on a bully, big guns, exotic location, and six-pack abs!
So...Do we have a deal?!
9 Talking about Savage Worlds, you are quite the authority. Which are your top three settings? Actually, I’m pretty sure one is Beasts and Barbarians, right? So tell us about the other two.
Yeah, Beasts & Barbarians has been a steady top 3 for me since the day it came out and satisfies my cravings for sword and sorcery stories.
The other two are very seasonal. Right now I’m quite enjoying Deadlands: The Weird West. It has a lot of depth and is quite versatile. Some people play it as a straight-up western, others use the horror elements, while some play it as a spaghetti western.
I’m on an Arabian Nights kick right now so I’m quite enjoying reading Hellfrost: Land of Fire.
10 One last question before we say goodbye. Please point us to a song you think we should listen to.
Very few songs move me the way Jeff Buckley’s Lover, you should've come over does.
Thank you, Eric!
Thanks for having me, Giuseppe! Keep writing great games and doing this service for the community!
Stay tuned for more interviews! Hit me on the Axian Spice Facebook page, on Twitter or even on Telegram to never miss one!
If you want to support this blog, check my OSR and Savage Worlds stuff, or simply shop on DriveTrhuRPG (affiliate link).
About Gold & Glory - Seven Deadly Dungeons
Gold & Glory - Seven Deadly Dungeons was my first project I designed completely by myself, crashing together my love for Savage Worlds and OSR games.
From the blurb:
Welcome to a world of legendary heroes and daring feats or, more probably, to a dishonorable story of ill-fated treasure hunters who’ll soon bite off more than they can chew… unless they manage to return home with enough gold to carouse wildly until their next expedition!It is ideal to play one night games as well as longer campaigns and allows you to play with no preparation at all.
Gold & Glory: Seven Deadly Dungeons includes:
- A random character generation system to start playing in no time
- New equipment for dungeon delvers
- Magic and Miracles Arcane Backgrounds to create classic arcane characters in the FFF spirit of Savage Worlds
- Downtime activities such as Carousing and Magic Research, tied to the Experience system, to keep your heroes busy between one expedition and the next
- The Dungeon Deck system to generate your dungeons while you play
- Seven deadly self-generating dungeons for your heroes to explore!
- More than 30 new monsters to face and a heap of magic items to loot!
Monday, August 31, 2020
About Robotech - A Macross Saga RPG
Robotech means a lot to me. It was by far my fav cartoon show when I was a kid. I was young enough to enjoy big transforming robots, but also old enough to understand the sentimental complications that were part of the show, as well as the depth and nuances of the strange war that went on between the humans on SDF-1 and the Zents.
Robotech - A Macross Saga RPG is a Savage Setting published by Battlefield Press in spring 2019 and one of the first settings native to Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.
So you can imagine my happiness when a Robotech setting book was announced for Savage Worlds, I couldn't believe my eyes!
For a Robotech fan, the book is simply fantastic: full of amazing art by Fransisco Etchart and detailed information about the general story and its secrets, all the characters, and of course all the human and Zent vehicles, spacecrafts and mechs.
The book met and exceeded my expectations, except for two things that I expected to find within its pages: the first was a detailed transcription of the events of the original show, episode by episode (which can be found in the other Robotech RPG... no, not the Palladium one, the one by Strange Machine Games), and the second was a dedicated system to run space battles, something deeper than Mass Battle rules, but lighter than the standard Chase rules of Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.
A few months after its release, I had the honor and pleasure of translating it for the Italian edition, as well as running it here and there at several cons and events!
While translating it, I also prepped a scenario for those con games: the player characters were a squad of Veritech pilots (OF COURSE), chosen by Roy Fokker himself to perform an acrobatic show with their VFs during the celebrations for the SDF-1's first flight... If you know the show, you can figure how it continues! The scenario included
- A Quick Encounter scene with the pilots describing their acrobatic maneuvers in the sky above Macross Island
- A Dogfight against a dozen of enemy spacecrafts and mechs as the Zent fleet attacks the SDF-1
- An optional Interlude, ensuing when the SDF-1 folds into space along with part of the island, and pilots are temporarily stranded and floating into space
- A Dramatic Task to rescue the civilians within the island shelters, which must be taken onboard the SDF-1
- A final confrontation with a stranded Zent Ace emerging from the ruins of Macross city.
- An epilogue on the SDF-1 where the surviving pilots are informed of what is truly going on and where they are!
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