Hi everyone, sorry that the site has been a bit quiet this week but I had to take a break after the August RPG A Day posts. One a day meant that some of my other life commitments got pushed back a little so I have had a busy week. One of the parts of that week though that totally took me by surprise is that I officially became a game designer!
Now, I know that some of you have played my encounters and adventures and would think that I would lay claim to that title already, but I don’t. To me the mark of a game designer is somebody that has something that others have gone through, accepted and put up for sale. Published by another company in this case and on Thursday when Steve Russell of Rite Publishing sent out the pre release PDF to those that had pre-ordered it. With that I am finally comfortable in calling myself a designer! I just can’t wait to get my hands on the printed copy now – so excited.
Now, speaking of other things that I have been doing this week, I am well toward producing a sequel to Tomb of the Ghast Queen, the free adventure that I provided on this site for Pathfinder, DnD 5E and Dungeon Crawl Classics. I imagine that I will be spending quite a little bit of time this weekend polishing that off and making the variations so it fits each of those systems and hopefully the first system will see its release early in the new week!
I have also been working in the background on my FATE horror game and have that practically complete but I have decided to hold off until I have finished reading the FATE System Toolkit and the Cypher System Rulebook as I want to make sure I give FATE every chance to shine in the horror setting and I think that these two books have the ability to make that happen.
I have also been sitting on a Pathfinder adventure that I ran around a year and a bit ago at a Fantasy Grounds convention. I ran it past Rite Publishing and they gave me some really useful feedback about it but did not want to take it on as I was going to donate all my money from it to a cause at the time, which is their prerogative as a company, after all the issue was personal to me and it can be a sticky situation for a company to involve itself in such things. The setback has held me off on doing anything with it at the time and I am now looking at the project through new eyes. I wrote this module, called Crossroads, as a tester to see if I had what it takes to write an engaging adventure, before I wrote the module I wanted to write. Thing is, I really like this module and it ran pretty well at the Con. So I am looking at either re-skinning it, losing the charity aspect and running it back through Rite Publishing who were very keen to see a series of modules where I drew all the maps (black and white ink, old school style) and wrote the adventure for them, or do I publish it myself? I have just monetised myself as a sole trader in games but I think it is a bit egotistical.
Finally, on the shopping list of things I wanted to discuss today, my games store will have an on-line store. Now it is probably (at least) a month and a half before we open our doors on a physical establishment but I intend that the on-line store will be up and running from the time that I start taking in stock. The website is purchased and will be located at www.games-onboard.com. The link has nothing up there at the moment, not even a place holder but that will change this week at some stage as I begin to get some preliminary work done with it. The thing that may come as a surprise to some is that I intend to offer PDF games at my site in a similar manner to DriveThruRPG and also D20PFSRD. If you are a publisher that would be interested in taking advantage of this opportunity to use the site can email me to receive the details of selling on the site.
So there you have it, a kind of a state of the Nation from me at the moment. I am a very busy lad at the moment but I will not neglect the blog. I am getting Cameron Corniuk to review the book that officially makes me an official game designer and I imagine he will give me heaps, but I told him to rip hell out of me if he thinks I deserve it! The book is not actually to be released to general public until November 1st but it will be good to give you a review up front to have you ready the week it comes out! Keep rolling!