Wow what a response! I'm glad to see that other folks are as excited about this as I am!
For a little bit of background on me you can check out
my website, but in a nutshell: I'm a full-time freelance game designer and I've got contracts with over a score of companies (both digital and traditional), including Fantasy Flight Games'
Tome of Decay and AdventureAWeek.com's 3.5 D&D/Pathfinder mega-adventure
Rise of the Drow. Morrus has already given me some trial runs for EN Publishing with
Tip of the Tongue (which I'm told has a thread on these forums somewhere?) and
To Stake a Vampire (which I'm finishing the first draft of tonight).
I've been watching O.L.D. and N.E.W. carefully, expecting the OGL license to come up. This is a fantastic RPG system and I'm literally beside myself with excitement over the idea of expanding it into N.O.W.!
I created an account just because this is the version of the game I really want. Gonna back it for sure, but I wonder if I can get a soft cover.
Also, if I can humble-brag, I had a teeny-tiny, miniscule role in this. Put the glimmer in papa's eye.
;-)
Thank you Bawylie! I've been watching this Kickstarter continue to rise and
knew he was going to run out of stretch goals...
I saw this last night on the kickstarter page and was definitely intrigued.
I was born in 1975, so the 80's were my prime time...
Slightly off topic, but you really haven't hit 350 books on either yet to get a hardcover?
Unless people are like me and holding off until the last hour. I'll probably do mine this weekend .
But yes, NOW would be awesome.
N.O.W.
will be awesome. I spent my time at university studying the literary aspects of film and one of my favorite genres has always been action movies. The field is so ripe for harvest!
Well, bearing in mind Mike hasn't written a single word yet - we're not entirely sure. He has made some suggestions, but I want to keep the race/species vs. career distinction clear throughout the whole game line. So my current line of thinking is - human, mutant, and - maybe, maybe - robot (which won't be as advanced as the android from N.E.W.). But this is a long way from decided yet. I'm keen to avoid having "types" of human in place of race, because that doesn't translate over well to N.E.W. and O.L.D. where humans don't have that distinction. Cyborg, perhaps (six million dollar man, bionic woman).
Morrus has it precisely—nothing is written in stone yet. We've kicked around a few different ideas and they're all really enticing.
At this point we're confident that what N.O.W. brings to the table will both integrate right into O.L.D. and N.E.W. easily, but still bring a very
spectacular element to the whole affair that defines it as something special.
Yes please.
This will be great if/when it happens, sort of an update to one of the greatest RPGs of that era -
Ninjas and Superspies, but with a more solid system (sorry Palladium fans).
Things from N&S I'd like to see in NOW:
- Rules for designing agencies. In N&S you could design a spy or clandestine agency, including location, base size, global resources, access to weapons and gadgets, etc
- Rules for martial arts. N&S had 41 martial arts, with a cool description of the style and how you had to track down people in far off locales to learn it. (The game system for these martial arts wasn't very exciting though e.g. Level 1: +1 punch, Level 2: 1d6 snap kick, Level 3: +1 to block etc.)
- Rules for gears and gadgets, but also having a quick system for gearing up. Nothing's worse than starting your espionage game while PCs kept scrutinising the shopping list for ghillie suits and other random things, buying each item individually. Maybe something like the Preparedness rules from Trail of Cthulhu. "GM: You make your Gadget roll. You are indeed carrying the trick cigarette lighter..."
One of the things that we've definitely touched on a few times in our discussions thus far is the inclusion of agencies of some sort, because obviously spies are going to play a part in this (Bond!).
How inclusive that is can't be said yet, but they definitely have a place in N.O.W.!
An expanded martial arts section sounds like an
excellent idea and is another thing I'm well suited to tackle; if Morrus has no objections, that is definitely getting rolled into the plans for right now.
Gadgets and new equipment of all sorts are planned, but specifically I'm looking to trick out the basic vehicle section; if you don't want a starship but you
do want a sweet tank or pitched chase sequences through the jungle in jeeps (or for that matter, the urban jungle!) that's already in the works.
Just throwing something out there for folks to think about.
N.O.W. campaign, Corporate Raiders.
They say the business world is cutthroat.
They don't know the half of it.
When a deal goes bad, you've got to watch the bottom line and try to stay out of the red.
So are armor piercing rounds a office supplies or a business expense?
If you're in Hostile Procurement or Fiduciary Retrieval, it's both.
Just imagine a world where corporations are actually involved in a secret shadow war of backroom deals and modern ninjas. Mercenaries and spies are employed far more often than lawyers, and to better effect.
A hostile takeover probably has lots of fighting involved, but what about the less obvious missions to sabotage the target company, kidnap it's key personnel, interfere with it's cash flow, and otherwise tweak the numbers to your employers favor.
Ok, I've had enough fun letting my imagination hijack things for a minute, time to let others go wild.
That's been included in my designs from the start! High level corporate espionage and obscenely brutal business tactics are certainly finding a place in N.O.W.!
Thank you all for your interest in hitting this stretch goal—please help us hit it! N.O.W. needs to happen, well, now!
