I'm off in Everett, WA for the second OrcaCon; Carinn Seabolt and I are proud to be Special Guests of this excellent event. It's a gaming con that celebrates inclusiveness and diversity, and the cast they've lined up (despite Yours Truly) really exemplifies that important idea. Speaking of diverse, there's a heck of a lineup of products to follow.
GODLESS
Shadow of the Demon Lord is something of a phenomenon – a dark fantasy game in a sea of dark fantasy games that somehow manages to stand out dramatically in the eyes of fans and experts. Robert Schwalb knocked it out of the park, not just with the base game, but with the tremendous support line he’s published for the thing.
Now he’s gone and done something even more twisted and daring, this time taking the entire rules and structure of SotDL and setting it up to run an Earth-based post-apocalyptic campaign based on the same foundations of his original masterwork. In other words, now you can transform our own world into one where the Demon Lord invaded and won the day, with all the Mad Max insanity you can imagine… and then some.
Drown in Fire and Blood!
After the Cataclysm sundered our world, reducing cities to ruins and bringing nations to their knees, a new threat unfurled its wings to cast a shadow upon our reality. In this spreading gloom caper demons, warped creatures, and horrifying monsters, all of which tear down what’s left of the world in preparation for the coming of their dark master, the dreaded Demon Lord.
Godless is a new setting expansion for Shadow of the Demon Lord, giving you all the tools you need to transform our own planet into the World of Fire and Blood. This book contains:
With Godless, you have everything you need to adapt Shadow of the Demon Lord for play in a post-apocalyptic environment, letting the players create characters who scavenge the landscape for parts, food, and fuel, while fighting off hideous mutants, invaders from other realities, and, of course, demons. With this book, you’ll be able to explore a brand new world in the grip of the dreaded Demon Lord!
OLYMPUS, INC.
Looks like we may have another theme week going, as today’s Pick also deals with gods and a strange future. In Olympus, Inc., you’ve got awakened divinities, cyberpunk, urban fantasy, all wrapped up with a post-modern spy thriller package and using Savage Worlds. This one’s from Fabled Environments, the folks who bring you those amazing floor plans for buildings linked to cool adventure possibilities. Their attention to detail means this book has something special going for it.
So…been through a lot have you? Motor vehicle accident, total humiliation, family murdered? No? Ah…a bunch of guys tried to kill you. I figured it was something like that or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Was there a moment where every cell in your body cried out and you felt every emotion at the same time? Did you feel like you could do anything and were one with the universe for a split second? That is what we call the Awakening. Congratulations, today is your birthday. Today you are no longer asleep. Instead, you have Awakened. You are a demigod.
For the most part, things are exactly as you knew before you experienced the Awakening. Let’s start with the basics. This is stuff you probably already knew or at least suspected. Twelve massive corporations control most of the world’s commercial, medical, scientific, and industrial production via a plethora of subsidiaries. To some extent, governments still hold megacorporations in check and the media is a mixed bag.
What you don’t know is that you’re now knee deep in a war for the survival of our world. Good Luck!
Welcome to the world of Olympus, Inc where modern-day demigods and mythical creatures battle in the shadows for the future of our world.
Olympus, Inc combines the vibe of the cyberpunk genre with modern espionage and urban fantasy.
In the book you will find
MINDJAMMER: TRAVELLER EDITION
A couple of years ago, Modiphius released an ENnie-award winning posthuman sci-fi RPG called Mindjammer. Using the Fate Core rules, it blew people away with its depth and its excellent treatment of the concepts. For those wanting a more classic, crunchy RPG system in which to play with this fascinating setting, now they’ve released it using the Traveller rules.
The Ennie Award-winning transhuman science-fiction RPG setting returns, in a brand new edition for use with the TRAVELLER roleplaying game!
This brand new 384-page hardback book includes:
• full rules for starships, organisations, and culture operations;
• detailed character cultures, genotypes, and new careers—play a sentient starship!
• new and innovative systems for describing planets, star systems, and alien life;
• deep setting material on the New Commonality of Humankind;
• rules for the Mindscape and virtual worlds;
• starmaps and planet descriptions, histories and background.
THE UNIVERSE AWAITS!
Never has there been a greater time of opportunity. The universe is in flux, and for the first time in ten thousand years no one knows what the future will bring. Charge your blaster, thoughtcast your orders to the starship sentience, and fire up the planing engines. Come and defend the light of humanity’s greatest civilisation as it spreads to the stars!
Requires the use of the Traveller Core Rulebook, available from Mongoose Publishing. High Guard and the Central Supply Catalogue, available from Mongoose Publishing, are also recommended.
PSIONICS AUGMENTED: PSICRYSTALS EXPANDED
Dreamscarred Press continues to expand its Pathfinder support line in all directions, including the Psionics Augmented category. Those who love going nuts with psionics as an alternative to magic (a meaningful alternative, at that) will love adding this one to their collection.
Unlock new options for the iconic crystalline buddy of the psionics world – the psicrystal from Ultimate Psionics. Whether storing psionic power in the psicrystal, embedding it into a creature, or turning it into a weapon, the psicrystal gains all new options for use in the Pathfinder RPG.
Psionics Augmented: Psicrystals Expanded includes six new advanced psicrystals, eleven new psicrystal-related feats, two new psicrystal related powers, a new aegis customization, a new soulknife blade skill, and an expanded list of psicrystal personalities.
If your psionic character uses a psicrystal, this book is for you!
ARS MAGICA
Revivals of classics is nothing new for the RPG hobby, but this is one you should absolutely pay attention to. Ars Magica changed the face of gaming for a lot of folks when it first came out. Furthermore, the team that brought that game to life went on to do huge things across the gaming sphere, taking the lessons learned and successful ideas of creating this innovative take on fantasy and magic into other powerful directions (World of Darkness, anyone?). Atlas bringing this back to the market (the 2nd Edition was originally released in 1989 and quickly disappeared from everywhere except used book stores and eBay) after all this time is exceptional news, to say the least, especially when you see two of the names involved – Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen!
In Ars Magica, sometimes you will play the part of a stalwart grog, guarding the wizards with your sword and shield. Flexible combat rules make each battle distinct, unpredictable, and often deadly. Your brutal life as a hired sword promises little boredom.
You can also take the role of a companion, aiding the wizards with your specialized skills and talents. Take advantage of the balanced and open-ended character generation system and design a unique character without artificial class restrictions. Be a lame but magically sensitive friar, a fugitive baron, or a contortionist thief.
Or you will be a magus, a wizard of great power, and delve into arcane mysteries. The magic system is designed to give you all the powers granted wizards in legends, not to make you a common adventurer. Use spells and magic items of your own invention, make up spells in the heat of battle, and duel other wizards.
All the characters are centered around the covenant, the fortress where a group of magi live and conduct their esoteric studies. The covenant serves as the home base for the characters and is the central “character” in the ever-developing saga.
Set down your ponderous tomes, O wizard, and ready your party of friends and warriors. Magic and peril, knowledge and power, mystery and adventure beckon you.
Released in 1989, Lion Rampant’s second or “revised” edition of Ars Magica brought this groundbreaking, award-winning game to a wider audience with clarified and expanded rules and text, a color cover, and new artwork.
-----
And there's this week's Picks! Now it's off to Seattle proper with my dear fried, Miles Kantir of Savage Mojo fame, who now lives in this area. We're doing monorails and the Space Needle, among other things!
This weekend, I'm running a few sessions of Savage Rifts, of course, and I am also hosting an important panel - "It's OK to Not Understand: Ignorance Can Be Cured." The text further reads - "A lot of designers, GMs, and players feel uncomfortable with issues about sexuality, inclusivity, and anything else that goes past their world view or experience level. Let's talk about how to help people learn, and more importantly, feel comfortable about what they don't know or understand." Honestly, I set this up as much for myself as anyone. I am pushing myself from here on out to make sure I am better about diversity and - more importantly - treating such subjects with respect and honesty.
Here's hoping you have a grand weekend of gaming and more ahead of you!
The Adventure Continues!
Note that I use affiliate links in all my posts as a way to generate additional revenue for my efforts; I make my Picks and other article choices, however, based on the desire to share a wide variety of things with you. Thank you for your support.
Sean Patrick Fannon
Writer & Game Designer: Shaintar, Star Wars, Savage Rifts, much more
Please check out my Patreon and get involved directly with my next projects!
GODLESS
Shadow of the Demon Lord is something of a phenomenon – a dark fantasy game in a sea of dark fantasy games that somehow manages to stand out dramatically in the eyes of fans and experts. Robert Schwalb knocked it out of the park, not just with the base game, but with the tremendous support line he’s published for the thing.
Now he’s gone and done something even more twisted and daring, this time taking the entire rules and structure of SotDL and setting it up to run an Earth-based post-apocalyptic campaign based on the same foundations of his original masterwork. In other words, now you can transform our own world into one where the Demon Lord invaded and won the day, with all the Mad Max insanity you can imagine… and then some.
Drown in Fire and Blood!
After the Cataclysm sundered our world, reducing cities to ruins and bringing nations to their knees, a new threat unfurled its wings to cast a shadow upon our reality. In this spreading gloom caper demons, warped creatures, and horrifying monsters, all of which tear down what’s left of the world in preparation for the coming of their dark master, the dreaded Demon Lord.
Godless is a new setting expansion for Shadow of the Demon Lord, giving you all the tools you need to transform our own planet into the World of Fire and Blood. This book contains:
- Guidance for using Shadow’s ancestries in this new setting, plus a new take on the clockwork: the transcendent!
- More interesting things, training elements for novice paths, and strange new religions
- New expert paths such as the preacher and road warrior
- An assortment of spells useful for surviving in such a bleak setting
- New weapons, armor, gear, and vehicles
- New rules for building items from salvage, using automatic weapons, and handling desperate battles fought from speeding vehicles
- Extensive advice for transforming our planet into your very own World of Fire and Blood
- New relics such as the Boomstick and new creatures such as the steel skeleton and the unseen
With Godless, you have everything you need to adapt Shadow of the Demon Lord for play in a post-apocalyptic environment, letting the players create characters who scavenge the landscape for parts, food, and fuel, while fighting off hideous mutants, invaders from other realities, and, of course, demons. With this book, you’ll be able to explore a brand new world in the grip of the dreaded Demon Lord!
OLYMPUS, INC.
Looks like we may have another theme week going, as today’s Pick also deals with gods and a strange future. In Olympus, Inc., you’ve got awakened divinities, cyberpunk, urban fantasy, all wrapped up with a post-modern spy thriller package and using Savage Worlds. This one’s from Fabled Environments, the folks who bring you those amazing floor plans for buildings linked to cool adventure possibilities. Their attention to detail means this book has something special going for it.
So…been through a lot have you? Motor vehicle accident, total humiliation, family murdered? No? Ah…a bunch of guys tried to kill you. I figured it was something like that or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Was there a moment where every cell in your body cried out and you felt every emotion at the same time? Did you feel like you could do anything and were one with the universe for a split second? That is what we call the Awakening. Congratulations, today is your birthday. Today you are no longer asleep. Instead, you have Awakened. You are a demigod.
For the most part, things are exactly as you knew before you experienced the Awakening. Let’s start with the basics. This is stuff you probably already knew or at least suspected. Twelve massive corporations control most of the world’s commercial, medical, scientific, and industrial production via a plethora of subsidiaries. To some extent, governments still hold megacorporations in check and the media is a mixed bag.
What you don’t know is that you’re now knee deep in a war for the survival of our world. Good Luck!
Welcome to the world of Olympus, Inc where modern-day demigods and mythical creatures battle in the shadows for the future of our world.
Olympus, Inc combines the vibe of the cyberpunk genre with modern espionage and urban fantasy.
In the book you will find
- Several New Edges and Hindrances
- Details On Six Of The Olympians Gods And Their Corporations
- Three Types Of Demigods
- List of Powers For Each Demigod Bloodline
- Amazing Adventure Generator
- So much more!!
MINDJAMMER: TRAVELLER EDITION
A couple of years ago, Modiphius released an ENnie-award winning posthuman sci-fi RPG called Mindjammer. Using the Fate Core rules, it blew people away with its depth and its excellent treatment of the concepts. For those wanting a more classic, crunchy RPG system in which to play with this fascinating setting, now they’ve released it using the Traveller rules.
The Ennie Award-winning transhuman science-fiction RPG setting returns, in a brand new edition for use with the TRAVELLER roleplaying game!
This brand new 384-page hardback book includes:
• full rules for starships, organisations, and culture operations;
• detailed character cultures, genotypes, and new careers—play a sentient starship!
• new and innovative systems for describing planets, star systems, and alien life;
• deep setting material on the New Commonality of Humankind;
• rules for the Mindscape and virtual worlds;
• starmaps and planet descriptions, histories and background.
THE UNIVERSE AWAITS!
Never has there been a greater time of opportunity. The universe is in flux, and for the first time in ten thousand years no one knows what the future will bring. Charge your blaster, thoughtcast your orders to the starship sentience, and fire up the planing engines. Come and defend the light of humanity’s greatest civilisation as it spreads to the stars!
Requires the use of the Traveller Core Rulebook, available from Mongoose Publishing. High Guard and the Central Supply Catalogue, available from Mongoose Publishing, are also recommended.
PSIONICS AUGMENTED: PSICRYSTALS EXPANDED
Dreamscarred Press continues to expand its Pathfinder support line in all directions, including the Psionics Augmented category. Those who love going nuts with psionics as an alternative to magic (a meaningful alternative, at that) will love adding this one to their collection.
Unlock new options for the iconic crystalline buddy of the psionics world – the psicrystal from Ultimate Psionics. Whether storing psionic power in the psicrystal, embedding it into a creature, or turning it into a weapon, the psicrystal gains all new options for use in the Pathfinder RPG.
Psionics Augmented: Psicrystals Expanded includes six new advanced psicrystals, eleven new psicrystal-related feats, two new psicrystal related powers, a new aegis customization, a new soulknife blade skill, and an expanded list of psicrystal personalities.
If your psionic character uses a psicrystal, this book is for you!
ARS MAGICA
Revivals of classics is nothing new for the RPG hobby, but this is one you should absolutely pay attention to. Ars Magica changed the face of gaming for a lot of folks when it first came out. Furthermore, the team that brought that game to life went on to do huge things across the gaming sphere, taking the lessons learned and successful ideas of creating this innovative take on fantasy and magic into other powerful directions (World of Darkness, anyone?). Atlas bringing this back to the market (the 2nd Edition was originally released in 1989 and quickly disappeared from everywhere except used book stores and eBay) after all this time is exceptional news, to say the least, especially when you see two of the names involved – Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen!
In Ars Magica, sometimes you will play the part of a stalwart grog, guarding the wizards with your sword and shield. Flexible combat rules make each battle distinct, unpredictable, and often deadly. Your brutal life as a hired sword promises little boredom.
You can also take the role of a companion, aiding the wizards with your specialized skills and talents. Take advantage of the balanced and open-ended character generation system and design a unique character without artificial class restrictions. Be a lame but magically sensitive friar, a fugitive baron, or a contortionist thief.
Or you will be a magus, a wizard of great power, and delve into arcane mysteries. The magic system is designed to give you all the powers granted wizards in legends, not to make you a common adventurer. Use spells and magic items of your own invention, make up spells in the heat of battle, and duel other wizards.
All the characters are centered around the covenant, the fortress where a group of magi live and conduct their esoteric studies. The covenant serves as the home base for the characters and is the central “character” in the ever-developing saga.
Set down your ponderous tomes, O wizard, and ready your party of friends and warriors. Magic and peril, knowledge and power, mystery and adventure beckon you.
Released in 1989, Lion Rampant’s second or “revised” edition of Ars Magica brought this groundbreaking, award-winning game to a wider audience with clarified and expanded rules and text, a color cover, and new artwork.
-----
And there's this week's Picks! Now it's off to Seattle proper with my dear fried, Miles Kantir of Savage Mojo fame, who now lives in this area. We're doing monorails and the Space Needle, among other things!
This weekend, I'm running a few sessions of Savage Rifts, of course, and I am also hosting an important panel - "It's OK to Not Understand: Ignorance Can Be Cured." The text further reads - "A lot of designers, GMs, and players feel uncomfortable with issues about sexuality, inclusivity, and anything else that goes past their world view or experience level. Let's talk about how to help people learn, and more importantly, feel comfortable about what they don't know or understand." Honestly, I set this up as much for myself as anyone. I am pushing myself from here on out to make sure I am better about diversity and - more importantly - treating such subjects with respect and honesty.
Here's hoping you have a grand weekend of gaming and more ahead of you!
The Adventure Continues!
Note that I use affiliate links in all my posts as a way to generate additional revenue for my efforts; I make my Picks and other article choices, however, based on the desire to share a wide variety of things with you. Thank you for your support.
Sean Patrick Fannon
Writer & Game Designer: Shaintar, Star Wars, Savage Rifts, much more
Please check out my Patreon and get involved directly with my next projects!
