Desdichado
Hero
OK, that banner ad has been displaying a Fall 2003 release date for some time, as does the website. Since this was one of my more anticipated releases for 2003, I'd like to know what happened! 
Badaxe Games - Grim Tales - Fall 2003?!
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Krieg
First Post
Joshua Dyal said:OK, that banner ad has been displaying a Fall 2003 release date for some time, as does the website. Since this was one of my more anticipated releases for 2003, I'd like to know what happened!
According to their board it's done & will be the next book to go to the printer.
Hopefully it will be out in the next month or so.
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Joshua Dyal said:OK, that banner ad has been displaying a Fall 2003 release date for some time, as does the website. Since this was one of my more anticipated releases for 2003, I'd like to know what happened!
Without going into details, our amazing graphic designer, Brad Kelley, had to back out for a while for personal reasons. A new graphic designer has been found and the book is back on track.
The Book of Unusual Treasures went to the printer some time ago, and is finally printed; binding is this weekend, and then it's off to shipping.
And so, on to Grim Tales!
The first rough draft of Grim Tales is in my hands and the hands of various proofreaders. The book size has been increased to 216 pages, still hardcover, still the same price ($34.95). It is incredibly dense, rules-wise, acting as both a player's handbook and a GM's guide. It uses the d20 license; character creation rules are not included, and you will need your choice of core rulebooks from Wizards of the Coast. Character classes, skills, feats, talents, combat, and essential GM rules are included.
Grim Tales is an "alternate" rulebook that combines the d20 Modern SRD, the best updates and clarifications from the 3.5 SRD, as well as great open content from AEG (Spycraft), Green Ronin (The Game Mechanics), Philip J. Reed, Fantasy Flight (mearls' Monster Handbook), Upper_Krust (Immortals Handbook), and others.
The rules come together with Bad Axe's traditionally clean, efficient rules design to allow GM's to realize nearly any kind of adventure in any setting. If you have seen it in a movie, read it in a graphic novel, comic, or book, played it in a computer game, or just dreamt it up, Grim Tales will support you. The basic ruleset forms the core, and the GM just drops in the other components he needs: Spellcasting (and magic items), Horror (and many unpleasant Insanities), Firearms, Vehicles (Chases AND Dogfights), Fallout, and Cyberware.
This is a great ruleset for "Game Day's" and other one-offs, as well as long-playing pulp campaigns-- if the players can survive. The book makes frequent, unabashed reference to the rat bastardry of the GM-- it is, indeed, a design feature.
Artwork features a cover by Ken Kelly; interior art by Scott Purdy, Jeremy Mohler, Andrew Hale, Scott Drouin, and ENworld's own John O'Connor (Kip the Bold) and Jim Zubkavich.
The playtest/additional design list also features many ENworld members, including Plane Sailing, Eridanis, pogre, jonrog, Ashy, and Piratecat.
I'd like to take a moment to specifically call out the design work of Upper_Krust. Grim Tales builds upon UK's work to create a brand new Encounter Level design system. A GM can put together an encounter of any desired difficulty, for a party of any competency and composition, including any number of mixed creatures in the opposition, in 7 minutes or less. That's a personal guarantee-- 7 minutes or less, or a PC in my campaign dies.
Moving up from Encounter Design is Adventure Design, where we call out the differences inherent in Grim Tales and explain how to build a "serial" adventure. One level up from that is Campaign Design. The whole of Grim Tales gives GM's an amazing amount of "under the hood" control of the fundamental rules.
UK's Creature Design system deserves mention here, too: Though it takes a little longer, you can design any creature and be assured that the CR is accurate, with no guesswork. Every creature ability, from HD to BAB to spell-like abilities and more, is assigned a value-- just add it all up like choosing from a menu and you're done. (Bad Axe is working on an excel tool that will make this process even easier!)
Perhaps the most exciting interaction between the Creature Design system and the new Encounter Level design is in creating new races, mutants, or adding abilities "a la carte" to PCs. Say goodbye to the inaccuracies and inequities of "Level Adjustment" forever. Adding +1 LA to a character at 1st level slows his advancement down, but by 20th level, are you really getting fair value for that +1 LA? In Grim Tales, your character might add +1 CR. It'll still slow you down (as it should) at low levels, but its impact diminishes (as it should) as your character level increases. I predict that GMs and players alike will be very happy with this innovation.
Finally, Grim Tales features a preview of the tentacled horrors (there's Phil Reed's influence!) that will be featured in our first adventure supplement, Slavelords of Cydonia. Though Grim Tales has been delayed, work on Slavelords has continued apace. The upshot is that almost immediately after the release of Grim Tales, GMs will have access to a 1st-20th level epic campaign and bevy of new supporting material. The adventure supplement format will follow with other featured villains, including undead and dragons.
WHEW!
Any questions?
Wulf
afstanton
Explorer
Wulf Ratbane said:
No questions here - it just sounds very highly cool. I've got my local game store perhaps a bit annoyed with my asking if it's here...and now I can stop pestering them for a while. They are grateful, I am sure. (I was worried it had come and gone, what with it being a small print run and all.)
Looking forward to it,
Aaron
Matrix Sorcica
Hero
Wulf Ratbane said:
Yes.
Being a great admirer of U_K's system as well, I'm absolutely delighted that Grim Tales will be using that system. I was wondering if there will be a write up of the classes in Grim Tales, in design terms (a la the fighter write up in U_K's pdf). This will make it no sweat to incorporate classes, talents, action points etc. from other sources - and will IMO result in something very close to a universal system.
So, if it's not in the book, consider it a first for web enhancement (I'll go pester UK 'bout write ups of the core classes as soon as the IH is released as well
)Edit: Second question. How does GT handle sci-fi? I'm thinking equipment and such, but mainly rules for constructing vehicles and vehicle combat?
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Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Sorcica said:
No plans to do anything like that at all. UK's system quite deftly makes the assumption that 1 Character Level = 1 CR.
You can use as many outside classes, skills, feats, and talents as you like, it won't change that core premise. It's still no sweat to incorporate outside materials-- just go right ahead and use them. Outside skill? Like all skill points, the value is the same. Outside feat? No problem, +0.2 like every other feat. There's no advantage to breaking down the classes to their components nor in breaking down those components of classes (skills, feat, talents) to any finer degree of granularity.
Although in many respects Grim Tales seeks to be as universal as possible, we have not abandoned the core concepts of the d20 system-- classes, levels, ability scores, hit points, AC, etc. Grim Tales remains "universal" in the sense that you can use any outside d20 materials you desire and be assured that they will work within the Grim Tales rules framework.
Two quick examples: Spells and Horror.
The Spellcasting in Grim Tales is more analogous to Cthulhu d20 or Midnight-- spellcasting hurts, a lot. But we do not add new components to the basic definition of the spell statblock (such as, for example, a specific casting cost for each spell). You can pull a spell from some other source and slot it instantly into Grim Tales with no conversion.
Horror is another example. There is no "Horror" attribute added to the statblock of monsters-- so you can use monsters from any source with no conversion, no waiting for some other designer to tell you how "Horrific" any given monster should be-- nor is there any "Insanity" score added to the character statblock that does not convert from game to game. The GM could use Horror checks one session and phase it right out the next session without leaving any loose threads on your character sheet.
So in terms of universality, the decision was made early on to make the system as compatible with your existing library of supporting materials as possible.
Wulf
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Sorcica said:
Missed your follow up.
Based on the answer given above, it should come as no surprise to you that vehicles are designed to be as compatible with existing d20 sources as possible. The vehicle statblock consists of a movement rate, maneuver modifier, hit points, and hardness.
The vehicle rules are cinematic; movement and position is relative. The rules are designed to handle multiple vehicles, sometimes of vastly different scale, and usually moving at high speed (and thus, generally precluding the use of a map). It is somewhat of a combination of d20 Modern and Spycraft (and, I hope, an improvement upon both).
The Equipment chapter (and by extension, the Firearms chapter) give the GM the tools to populate his game with whatever armor and weapons he chooses, melee or ranged, and be assured that they are balanced for play. Grim Tales makes no assumption about the type of game you want to run (whether low-tech swords and sorcery of the Archaic era or hi-tech blasters and power armor of the Apocalyptic era) so you will not find long lists of equipment that you may or may not get any use from in your game. Tools and templates guide the way: The GM can use equipment from any other source (including the core rulebook of his choice, whether the Player's Handbook or d20 Modern) and he has the means to create new equipment as needed.
Wulf
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Matrix Sorcica
Hero
It really sounds awesome and has gone from my will buy list to the must have as soon as humanly possible list.
This is what I meant with universal. Are you rating this reduced spellcasting in a U_K way, to compare with core rule spell casting? Are you giving guidelines as to wealth score contra gp amount?
and action points? Do they have a CR value? I know they do, but how much? It is considerations like this that make me ask if all the 'character crunch' is rated in the CR system. Come to think of it, it would make d20 Grim Tales into something like GURPS or HERO... But it would make it so far easier for the individual DM to rate his own Prestige Classes and homemade abilities etc.
Hope you can catch my drift (as I'm in a bit of a hurry, but just had to reply...
Wulf Ratbane said:
This is what I meant with universal. Are you rating this reduced spellcasting in a U_K way, to compare with core rule spell casting? Are you giving guidelines as to wealth score contra gp amount?
and action points? Do they have a CR value? I know they do, but how much? It is considerations like this that make me ask if all the 'character crunch' is rated in the CR system. Come to think of it, it would make d20 Grim Tales into something like GURPS or HERO... But it would make it so far easier for the individual DM to rate his own Prestige Classes and homemade abilities etc.
Hope you can catch my drift (as I'm in a bit of a hurry, but just had to reply...
Wulf Ratbane said:
Scene from an upcoming game.
Players gather nervously at Wulf's house.
Wulf:So...I assume you all read that thread on enworld? The one entitled "Took me ten minutes!"?
Players (Nod nervously)
Wulf: A promise is a promise. Now then...Fred, you brough the pizza last week, which...
Fred: Thank God! Thank God!
Wulf: Let me finish. Which GAVE ME GAS. So I am not pleased with you. Now then, John. You've been running that wizard how long? Two years? Three?
John: But Malkon is a great character! He...
Wulf: He's boring, John. Boring. A new character would do you good. So then, on to George. George has missed a few sessions, haven't you, George?
George: My pet was sick! I had to drive my wife to the hospital! For God's sake, I haven't even seen my family in...
Wulf: No excuses George, no excuses. Well. Well well well. Quite a few likely candidates here. We'll let the dice decide. Get me...THE SKULL DICE!!!!
(Curtain closes)
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