Wow, it’s been a long time since I updated this blog. Let’s just say that helping hold down the home fort during a pandemic and getting work done at the same time has been a wild juggling challenge, and this is one of the flaming chainsaws I let drop.
Since the last post back in December, I managed to get two more Shotguns & Sorcery RPG books out to the Kickstarter backers. We’re waiting to get proofs back from DriveThruRPG for the print-on-demand versions now. Once those are in, we’ll make the books available to the public.
The first of those–Miners & Mobsters–is a 40-page adventure my son Marty wrote for the game, based upon my novella “The Job Never Ends,” which appears as a bonus tale Shotguns & Sorcery: The Omnibus. Here’s the cover, by Jeremy Mohler.
The second new book is The Pathfinder Conversion, which is just what the title says. It’s a 56-page book that lets folks who have Shotguns & Sorcery: The Roleplaying Game convert it for use with the Pathfinder system. We went back and forth about whether or not it should be for first or second edition Pathfinder, but since second edition didn’t exist when the Kickstarter ran, we figured we should go with what had been promised to the backers then: a first edition book.
Marty wrote this book too, and I hired superstar Pathfinder expert Owen K.C. Stephens to develop it (i.e., check everything over and make sure we got it right). Jeremy provided another fantastic cover for that too.
To fulfill the rest of that Kickstarter–which I took over from the original publisher last year–we still need to deliver two more things: a comic and an art book. The comic is entirely done except for the cover, and I started in on the art book last week.
Once those are out and the Kickstarter is fulfilled, I should have some news about a new Shotguns & Sorcery project that Marty and I have been working on for the past several months. We’re excited to get that out there too, but we want to make sure we make everyone happy about the previous Kickstarter first.
Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a long-promised game for Calliope, teaming up with my pal Mike Selinker and the rest of the folks at Lone Shark Games. Plus Marty and I are developing another game with an old friend, which hasn’t been announced yet. On top of that, I’m working on a big, brand-new tabletop RPG that should be announced soon, hopefully next month.
Beyond that, I’ve been writing for a couple of video games. The first of those should have an announcement and a demo out later this year, and the second is still in the starting stages. I’ll let you know more about them when I can.
Lots to talk about, but not quite yet…
Wow. It often feels like I’m spinning my wheels and not getting much done, but maybe all that stuff explains why I haven’t been here so much lately.
Oh, yeah, and I taught a game design class–GDD-325 2D Game Design–as an adjunct professor at UW-Stout this term too. That wrapped up a couple weeks ago. Whew.
Anyhow, I hope you’re all doing well and have managed to soldier on without me. Now that my entire family and I have been vaccinated, I’m getting ready to get back out there in the world in person, and I hope to see you there too!
One of the impetuses for me getting back to this blog is the impending release of Biomutant, an amazing new game from Experiment 101. My longtime pal Stefan Ljungqvist spent years designing it, and he brought me in to help out with the dialog and lots of other bits of text during that time. It’s due out next week, on May 25. I’ll post more about that in a bit. (I hope.)
