Home Worlds Now On Sale!

Home Worlds is now available for purchase! Considering I delayed it by a month, I’m pretty pleased with the outcome (maybe because of the delay). As I explained before, I pulled out about a third or more of the content and replaced it with a lot of new stuff (including NPCs and new creatures). The end result is a better product. Now I need to see if anyone buys it.

Speaking of which, I’m happy with how my previous product, Cardboard Citizens II, has been selling. It’s not very expensive, so I’m not getting rich from it, but selling stuff you’ve worked hard on does wonders for my fragile self-esteem. Would it kill my Mom to buy a copy?? ;-)

On a personal front, I finally got a day job (after many months of unemployment). It’s only a 6-month contract, but at least it means we don’t have to eat cat food anymore. I think the cat is especially happy about this. On the downside, the new job means I’ll have less time to work on the game (or perhaps I’ll just need to focus my time better).

Currently, I’m churning the story for the Ovid Incident in my head. The whole thing starts when the characters get a distress call saying a research station has been hit by a micro-singularity (a black hole basically). For that reason, I’d like to incorporate some fractures in time, perhaps ghost-like images from the past showing people from the base before the accident. I plan on using this as a storytelling device, to move the plot along as the characters explore the damaged structure.

Below is a work-in-progress for Ovid. It’s a mutant I’m calling “Dark Angel.” He hovers above the ground and kills with a burst of radiation.

Ancient Temples (in Space)!

It’s taken four tries, but I think I’ve finally got something I can use for the cover of Home Worlds. I already did two images, the first was the Pool of Memory (which really sucked) and the second showed an Aztec-style temple (for the Draconian home world). Since the latter wasn’t really “sci-fi enough,” I decided to create a new one that showed a street scene with an alien walking down the sidewalk. However, the Editor (also known as the Wife) didn’t like it, so I tried again. With the Editor looking over my shoulder, I fashioned a scene with the Draconian temple again, but with a large alien moon filling the sky. This was met with a conciliatory gesture from the Wife (i.e.: she put down the stun gun), and the cover art was decided!

As for the rest of Home Worlds, it’s almost ready for re-proofreading, so I need to figure out what I’m doing for my next project. Previously, I had been doing stuff for the Ovid Incident adventure module, but all this work on creatures for Home Worlds got me thinking about doing a supplement on minor races. I’ve also considered doing a supplement about the Five Families (and the minor aristocratic families) of the Imperium. However, from a business point of view, I really think I need more adventure modules, so I’m going to finish Ovid before tackling anything else.

As a side note, I’ve been writing for the Examiner.com website lately. It doesn’t really pay anything frankly, but it does give me some experience. Take a look at one of my newest articles, an interview with another game publisher located here in the Midwest.

So, here’s the two cover images: the first is the rejected street scene, and the other is the one I think I’ll be using.

Fantasy/Sci-fi Smash Up!

I’ve been working full speed ahead on the Home Worlds supplement since my last blog post. Although I was disappointed with how the supplement was shaping up before, I’m feeling more at ease with it now. I pulled out everything that wasn’t related to actual home worlds, including Dark Psi and the racial abilities. Instead, I’ve been adding NPCs and creatures for each planet, and changing the formatting a bit to highlight each world.

The Imperium Chronicles RPG is a fusion (or “smash up”) of fantasy and sci-fi, and I’ve been able to continue that theme with Home Worlds. For example, the Dahl (who are analogous to fantasy elves) share their planet with a minor race called the Fae (or “fairies”). For die-hard sci-fi players, the idea of seeing fairies flying around their science fiction universe might seem crazy, but that’s exactly the kind of incongruity that I love. Besides, who wouldn’t like to see a centaur (a future race I have planned) running around with a missile launcher strapped to his back?? ;-)

Since my last post, I’ve also published a print version of my online comic, Magnus Black: Born in the Grave. Lately, I’ve been thinking about writing a script for a comic based on my adventure module, Scent of Decay. I wanted to write the script and then collaborate with an artist to do the actual drawing. Since I’ve never written a script for a comic before, however, I’ve been practicing with my Magnus Black story. Of course, this is backwards from what you’d normally do, but I thought it’d be a good way to familiarize myself with writing scripts. I’ve only done a little bit so far, but it’s been educational and a lot of fun.

Here are a couple of images from Home Worlds, both with a fantasy theme. The first is an NPC named Danu the Fae Queen, and the other is a minor race called the Sporemen:

Evolution of a Supplement

NOTE: For people in Kansas, please use the title “Immaculate Changes by the Big Guy.”

When I first started work on my current supplement, it was entitled Pool of Memory and was going to be about five home worlds, weapon modifications, and a set of new abilities called Dark Psi. Early on, however, I decided to move the weapon mods to a different supplement. After going through the proofreading process, however, I also realized that there wasn’t enough content, so I added more information about each home world and added a section of racial abilities (one per race with each home world). I then changed the name from Pool of Memory to Home Worlds, since that seemed to fit better. After adding more content for each home world, I reached the point where the Dark Psi (and the racial abilities) just didn’t fit anymore. I had very nicely painted myself into a corner. After a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that I needed to pull the abilities out altogether and just focus on the home worlds, including the addition of more content like NPCs and encounters (similar to Chapter 10 of the Basic Rules). For those paying attention, this is NOT the best way to write a game supplement. In fact, it’s quite possibly the WORST way to write a game supplement. On the other hand, this only gives credence to my belief that the world would be a better place if it was run by robots and not people (or at least not people like ME). ;-)

Soooo, instead of publishing Home Worlds this week, it’s going to be a while longer. However, I do have my other product, Cardboard Citizens II, which is just about ready to go, so I’ll probably be publishing that within the next week or two.

On another front, I’ve been taking more notes about The Ovid Incident, my next adventure module. I was doing some brainstorming last week and came up with some more ideas. It’s still only in the planning stages, and hopefully I can plan a little better this time around.

They Drag Me Back In

As it turned out, I really wasn’t done with the content for Home Worlds. After going through the new sourcebook, I realized that each planet wasn’t fleshed out enough. I spent the last two weeks adding more details for each world, especially the geographical regions. I also added a few more cultural tidbits for some of the races. Now, finally, I think I’m getting close to the end and I’ve given the current draft to the Editor for proofreading.

In the last couple of days I’ve been doing some preliminary renders for the Ovid Incident adventure module. The adventure’s about a runaway retrovirus and the grotesque mutations that occur at the lab where the virus was developed. So, I’ve been messing round with different character shapes and textures in Poser. I’m not sure how good the results are at this point, but there’s lots of time to fiddle with it.

Lately I’ve also been thinking about doing some creative writing (with the Imperium as the background). A while back I wrote the beginning of a short story called Ramus, but never went beyond the first few pages. Over the last week, however, I’ve been putting together an outline and some character ideas. In the original story, Ramus was a human, but my recent work on Home Worlds got me thinking about having him be a Dahl outcast who’s dabbled in Dark Psionics. I’d like to tie the story into an adventure idea revolving around the Dökk (the Dark Dahl). I only hope writer’s block and a lack of time (due to my other projects) won’t keep me from writing the story.

The Tiny Parvulians

I’m happy to announce that Imperium Chronicles is now available on the Your Games Now website. For the last year, my game could only be bought on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow.com (and its affiliates). Starting this week, however, my empire is growing a little bit bigger. Of course, if YGN could make their vendor application a little more idiot proof, it would make my life (as the before mentioned idiot) a lot easier.

Home Worlds is approaching the home stretch. I’ve pretty much added all the content that’s going in there and now I just need to do some finishing touches and have the Editor read through it for grievous typos. In my mind, I guess I’ve already moved on to the next project, but I still haven’t decided what that’ll be.

I was thinking about Lilliputians the other day. Well, technically I was thinking about a race of tiny humanoids living inside robots. Since I was a kid, even before watching Dr. Who (i.e. Daleks) and certainly before seeing Men in Black (i.e. the Arquillian living inside the corpse at the morgue), I’ve been fascinated about creatures living inside machines. Then I started thinking about the machines themselves and I was reminded of the Mechs in the Gundam series. I asked myself: “What if the people in Gundam were actually very small and their “gigantic” mechs were really human-size? So, I came up with the idea of a race of small creatures (maybe 15 cm tall) that interact with other races by walking around in machines. Basically, the Mechs allow the race (who I’m calling Parvulians, based on the Latin word for small) to interact with other races without fear of being stepped on or tucked away into someone’s pocket. My wife even suggested making them extremely boastful (like most tiny men you encounter). ;-)

Btw, here's an image from Home Worlds. It's a Dark Psi psionic that turns your hands into the claws of a bear:

Creative Juices

The creative juices are flowing again (ewwww), so I came up with two new ideas. The first is a supplement I’m calling Weapons of War that features new weapons, weapon modification rules, and military vehicles (including grav and hover tanks). I’ve been thinking about the mod rules and some new weapons of destruction, but it’s only been recently that I considered adding tanks to the game. For the tanks, I think I’ll be using the same basic “slot” mechanic that I’ve used for robots and starships. I don’t want to go too overboard with them, however, so there’s probably only going to be three sets of chassis (light, medium, and heavy) and three sets of turrets (small, medium, and large). It’s early days, though, so we’ll have to see.

The second idea is for an adventure module called The Ovid Incident. It starts with a cryptic message that reads "Mayday, Mayday ... [static] ... impact ... [static] ... micro singularity ... [static] ... losing containment ... [static] ... please help us ... [static].” Upon investigation, the characters trace the message back to a moon base where mutants and a runaway retrovirus have run amok. The characters must search for survivors and discover what’s gone so terribly wrong.

The Home Worlds module is also coming along. I’m working on the second half right now, which covers Dark Psionics. Right now there’s 26 new psionics that characters can choose from, mostly divided into two categories: metamorphism and so-called Death Magic. I’m hoping these new psionics will satisfy my players’ need for a darker side of the mind. ;-)