Blood!: Hell on Earth

I have two major problems in writing games. Firstly I don’t have enough time, energy or copies of myself to write everything that I want to write and publish. Secondly, I tend to come up with the same ideas as other people at a similar sort of time. Fortunately I beat others to the punch with Agents of SWING and the only very-similar product to come out was 7TV – which is brilliant and awesome but is a skirmish minis game and thus doesn’t bite into the same market.

Another case is Adamant Bloody Entertainment and their bastarding East-West fusion game Far West. This is so bloody similar in concept, if not execution, to my own project Setting Sun that I’m in two minds whether to go ahead, though they’re different enough in other ways. Mine’s alt-history and more Samurai themed than Wu Xia themed, and not Steampunk per-se. Mine also uses a poker mechanic and is oriented on team/gang/pack play. We’ll see. Setting Sun could be the Cyberpunk to Far West’s Shadowrun.

When it comes to Blood! it has been my intention since I resurrected the game to create the long promised supplements/reskins of that game Hell on Earth and Star Shock. Hell on Earth was to be my first. I was all excited to revise the Blood! rules some, create some setting background and material on Puritan witch-hunters post restoration, trying to survive the crown and the Annus Mirablis (1666), the devil’s own year when many thought the end of the world was come. I was going to create a dark post-civil war, post-Cromwell setting of debauched courts, downtrodden puritans, devilry, witchcraft, zombies, omens, infernalism, qabbalistic magic and Hammer Horror references when what should happen but this?

Shit.

Shit indeed.

Fortunately, since its relatively humble beginnings, Defoe:1666 has gone somewhat bugnuts crazy, which is fine as these things go, but does distance it quite a bit from the more serious approach I was going to take.

So, that means Hell on Earth is probably back on the cards for development in the not-too-distant future, after the current swathe of heavy, long-term projects and I’ll probably be throwing ideas up here.

One of the main things to do in B:HoE is to address criticisms of the Blood! system, insomuch as it can be done without losing the system’s integrity and raison d’etre. The errata/suggestions that already exist will be incorporated and we’ll probably try and find a way to speed up or slimline the character creation system but the bloody and brutal combat will – of course – remain.

I’m likely to throw ideas up here as they occur to me, as much to keep them safe as to draw comment but I do crave feedback on development and all aspects of our games. So please don’t be shy of speaking up.

Agents of SWING Update

SWING is, essentially, done. The final version of the rules is all complete and set in stone, there’s just a few more things to do – relatively easy things – before the base book can go into layout and, thence, to POD and PDF download.

• One more read-through/edit
• A few more examples.
• The example/pregen characters (there’s a lot of these so that you can pick-up and play as and when).
• The example enemy organisations – a handful of these.
• The reference sheets.

The first one shouldn’t take more than a morning.
The second one shouldn’t take more than an afternoon.
The third and fourth shouldn’t take more than a day together – once I have all the art in.
The last shouldn’t take more than a morning.

I’m still waiting on a bit of art but I intend to get as much of the rest out of the way as I can beforehand, so that’ll be the read-through/edit, the examples, the enemy organisations and the reference sheets. The pregens will wait until I have the last bits of art.

The layout should only take me a couple of days.

So all things being well, hopefully end of this month, beginning of next.

Care and Feeding of Your Artist

So You’re a Small RPG Publisher
This essentially means that you have no money to speak of and, as such, you’re doomed before you start. Obviously you’re going to look for cheap options first when it comes to art and that means you’re going to look at alternative art sources such as:

• Begging people on deviantart.
• Friends who can just about draw if you squint and are willing to work for free.
• Clipart.
• Your own horrific scribblings in the manner of an epileptic spider having a grand mal in an inkwell.
• Tattoo Flash.

Sooner or later though, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and hire an artist to do some work for you. This is expensive and can be harrowing, distressing and frought with danger for all concerned but it is worth doing and there are things you can do to get maximum value for money, maximum artist satisfaction and a good working relationship. I pride myself on, generally, doing this fairly well and producing good material with a small art budget, and so can you!

My Typical Rates
Just as a ballpark to frame the terms of the discussion, here’s what I typically pay, presuming the piece is not too complex.:

• Full Page Colour: $100
• Half Page Colour: $50
• Quarter Page Colour: $25
• Greyscale: Half the above.

I’ll go up to double that for someone I really like/want or because the complexity gets higher, but I can often get lower than that, per piece if other considerations come into it. There’s a lot you can do to make it a more pleasant experience for you and the artist involved.

Caring for your Artist
Order in advance
Nobody likes a tight deadline. The more in advance you can ask for work the more time the artist has to let inspiration to strike and the easier it is to work your – low paying – work in around other work that they might have. This is convenient for everyone and if you get the art early, lets you think about layout ahead of time. Bonus!

Communicate
Make yourself available to your artist to talk. A good relationship is essential on both sides and aesthetics are very subjective. You need to communicate to make sure you get what you want  and they need to communicate if they’re unsure. You don’t want to get something unusable or completely different to what you want and they don’t want to waste all that time and effort or drawing something ‘wrong’. Regular exchange of sketches and ideas is a good idea, until you’ve learned how each other work and have achieved a position of trust.

Know What You Want
If you don’t know what you want, how in the name of Klono’s beard and whiskers, is the artist supposed to know? ”Like… an orc… or some shit.” is NOT an art brief. You need to know what you like and what you want if the artist is going to have any hope of accomplishing that. Similarly, changing your mind every day or two is NOT acceptable and is, frankly, fucking annoying.

Professional AND Personal
This is a hobby industry and, below a certain level of money/activity/scale professionalism is severely overrated. Personal relationships are far more important. I’m not saying kiss people’s arses or pretend to be their friend, rather, work with and talk with people you genuinely like and treat people you work with as friends. This particularly pays dividends at conventions etc where hobby professionals who work together can act as a support network and watch each other’s stock/tables.

Bulk Buy
Sometimes books work better with a common artistic look to them. It’s to your advantage – often – both aesthetically and financially to get a lot of art from the same person. If you have a very tight theme this might not be the case so much, people do get very bored with drawing the same thing over and over again. Still, if you’ve got a bit of variety a common thread in the book from someone’s style is a good thing to have. You can often get a discount if you’re ordering a lot of work too.

Pay Early, Pay Often
Artists get stiffed a lot. They also get paid late a lot. This sucks unwashed donkey balls and you can often get a bit of a discount and a hell of a lot of kudos from an artist – and their other artist friends – by coughing up the moolah as soon as possible, preferably as soon as you get the art. With services like paypal around there’s really no excuse not to. If you don’t have the money, don’t commission the work. If you’re really pleased, pay extra. Come back often to an artist you like and you’ll build your rapport and they’ll like working with you.

‘What do you like?’
The right tool for the right job. Find out what your artist likes to draw and give them work that plays into what they like. That’ll make things more enjoyable and easier for the artist and if the work interests them, you’ll get better results. Everyone’s a winner.

Just Enough Rope
Too much rope and someone will hang themselves. Not enough rope and they won’t be able to express themselves. Start with a small amount of art direction and move on from there. You’re NOT Alan Moore, pages and pages of detailed description and background notes to artists are unlikely to be appreciated. Generally speaking, the more latitude someone has to express themselves, the better. Some people do prefer more direction rather than less, but it’s easier to provide it when it’s asked for – later – than to start out seeming like a bossy, demanding, exacting wanker who is hard to please.

Help them out
Talk up your artist, credit them properly, pimp them to other companies, talk about them on your blog, link to their pages. Sell clip art for them. Anything you can do to add value to them working for you is good and can offset what you can’t pay in monetary terms.

Be Tolerant
You’re not paying that much so let higher paying work go ahead of yours in the queue. Let deadlines slip a little, no biggy. If things get really late and the artist starts feeling guilty you might get a discount or some free work! Be understanding and give them the benefit of the doubt. The artistic muse is a hard thing to tame or to rely on. The more leeway, the better and this goes along with booking early’

Let Them Keep Rights
Let them re-sell and re-use the art in prints, as clip art, for other clients. The more they can sell it the more money they get for the same amount of work and this can make up for a great deal. The art is still tailored to your needs, even if other people later use it, that’s well worth it even if others get it cheaper later on.

Next time, care and feeding of your writer.

Agents of SWING Dev Diary

I’ve finished everything up to skills and stunts in their final form. There’ll be another edit and there’s been some knock-on implications into other parts of the rules but all things considered, it’s done. I still have to do the ‘supernatural’ stunts, but those are a bit of a questionable area anyway. There’s no question that there are odd powers, psychics, even magic in a lot of the adventure series of the 60s and 70s – The Champions being one example – but they’re normally not that massively powerful and they’re usually pretty rare – so for the main book at least I want to keep them fairly low key. More powerful powers and so on may be introduced when I go into detail on Section Eight, the department of SWING that deals with the weirder parts of the world.

Sorting out the stunts I got rid of the prerequisites so there are now no multilayered stunts and they’re not dependent on skills. The only thing constricting you is your theme and the approval of Control (the Games Master). This means some entry stunts had to be powered up, others powered down and many eliminated altogether, though there’s a few extras to help make up for that. A lot of stunts were replicated across different skills in other versions of FATE so more were lost there and the whole effort – along with text consolidation and shortening – has massively reduced what was otherwise a very clumpy section of any FATE book.

I haven’t gone as far in reducing things as ICONS does, but this is definitely going to be a less intimidating lump of a book than many FATE based games are and I hope the streamlining and looser rules interpretations are going to make it an even more accessible and fun game to play.

Fingers crossed!

Dev Diary: Agents of SWING

SWING is designed to replicate the spy-fi and adventure series of the 1960s and 70s but the default time-setting is 1967. The book contains a primer on the key events of the 1960s and 70s – though not ones specific to the background of the game or agency, that will come later – and an example of the information is given below. This isn’t hugely detailed – that would take up way too much of a book – and it isn’t very specific but it does give an overall feel to the political and social climate of the time which games can either address, or be an escape from.

Dev Diary: Agents of SWING

Dev Diary: Agents of SWING

I reckon Agents of SWING in its final incarnation will run between 200 and 250 pages. What follows is a very rough outline of the probable organisation of the book which is intended to be supported with expanded material going into the various villainous organisations and sections of SWING in greater detail.

Call of Chavthulu Developer’s Notes – Ian Warner

 

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Hello again Shadow World fans. Since I presented my notes for Bloodsucker: The Batshit I thought it only fair to give you a look behind the scenes of Call of Chavthullu as well. So here’s a little preview along with some insight into the inspiration behind it.

Introduction

Much like all my other Introductions this sets out what’s to come and provides a glossary of new terminology.

Chapter 1: New Credoz

Unlike their Bloodsucker equivalents these new Credoz are not a separate scene just rarer breeds. You are free to include them or ignore them as you like.

The new Credoz are

• Beastz: Feral animalistic Chavs with an appreciation for what little animal life there is in a city. These were the first new Credo I came up with. Essentially I thought why not give the Chavs a transforming nature lover archetype?
• Gopnikz: Eastern European Chav aristocracy. These were a late addition to the rules when I dumped a poorly thought out Credo. Someone on the White Wolf forums gave me the Russian for Chav and I used it to create these monstrosities.
• Menacez: A cult within the Chav scene that worships the ‘Prophet Dennis.’ Like Jimmy Saville Dennis the Menace is a proto Chav so it seemed only fair to give him his own Credo especially one that worships him as a kind of messiah figure.
• Lard Arsez: Embodiments of excessive Sloth the Lard Arsez are great hulking lumps of gristle that refuse to be moved in anything other than a dire emergency. There are obvious similarities to the Mafioso Fatsos. Both were inspired by the obesity epidemic. Mafioso Fatsos however have none of the slothfulness of these critters.
• Rapperz: Music is a key component of the Chav scene and these lyrical chaps are its bards. Possessing amazing powers of rhyme these skilled musicians wield a great deal of power amongst Chav society. This Credo just had to be made sometime!
• Skinheadz: Oh dear Lord what have I done! Although the Chav scene is considerably more multicultural than many others they are thug types so it seemed right to add in a group of racist outcasts. Naturally these guys won’t get on well with almost all of the other Credoz but they are a perfect antagonist.
• Taggerz: Finally we come to the Taggerz. Like the music the artwork is a key component of the Chav scene. It seems only fair to create a Credo dedicated to it and here they are. They even have a secret language in their art that facilitates secret communication and through it intrigue and double dealing.

New Life Templates

This chapter is a rewrite of all the Templates presented so far for use by Chavs. Community Support officer is obviously left out as no Chav would work for the Police but all the other life templates presented in Bloodsucker: The Juice and Bloodsucker: The Batshit. I have included the Batshit ones as I have no plans for a second Chav supplement. Without an antagonist faction there is no need for one after this.

 

New Talentz

Presented herein are several new Talentz for use and abuse by your Chavs.

• Bash: Enhances your Chav’s fighting ability with blunt weapons. Don’t know why I left this out of the Core but its here now.
• Beatz: The Talent associated with the Rapperz for wielding the power of music.
• Corpulence: The Talent the Lard Arsez use to take advantage of their humongous nature.
• Cossack Kick: The Talent Gopnikz use to kick hard and fast.
• Cuss: A Talent for using bad language to inflict pain. Most commonly used by the Skinheadz.
• Morph: The Beastz’ Talent for shape shifting into animals.
• Tag: The Taggerz’ Talent for animating and merging with their creations.

I was quite happy with all of these after a bit of tweaking. I’m sure you will all enjoy using and abusing them.

New Bells and Whistles

I struggled with this section. I was unsure what advanced systems to add to the game as the Core seemed quite comprehensive.

The first thing that came to mind was a systematic representation of Chavs’ cowardliness and reliance on being in groups. This manifested itself in the ganging up bonus. Now you gain Bile for outnumbering your enemy.

Secondly I was inspired by Geist and Promethean to include a method of mystically bonding the Crews. This further emphasises the importance of the Crew in the game and provides a mechanical bonus beyond merely being chummy.

Finally and following on from the bonding system I created the Tacticz system. This allows the Boss of a Crew to enhance his orders supernaturally with Bile and allows his Crew to act in various ways outside of the normal initiative order.

 

New Fluff and Advice

This section gives you advice on constructing characters in Chav Society, advice on high powered games and some more polite terms for the Credoz.

New Opposition

As well as a reprinting of Cults and Constructs this chapter presents the ever present threat of Bouncers.

Other Goodies

More God awful fiction is included in the style of that Certain Other Roleplaying Game.

Conclusion

The Call of Chavthullu expands the world of Chav in much the same way as Juice and Batshit expanded the Bloodsucker world. You could play Chav with the core book alone but the goodies displayed in this expansion should tempt you to give it a shot.

Bloodsucker: The Batshit, developers notes

 

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Bloodsucker: The Batshit Developer’s Notes

Hello Shadow World fans. A little treat for you. Here is a quick look behind the scenes of the upcoming Bloodsucker: The Batshit: In it I will be previewing the product and giving you all some insight into the inspiration behind it.

Introduction

Like the Introduction to the other supplement the Introduction to Batshit lays out why we are writing yet another supplement for Bloodsucker and what you can expect in the book to come. It also contains a glossary of new terminology.

Chapter 1: The True Cliques

The first step on our journey into the world of the Batshit is the chapter on True Cliques. Much like the antagonist faction of that Certain Other Roleplaying Game we present a selection of the existing factions reimagined for their role within a community of wannabe monsters as opposed to the usual whiney woe is me types.

I had great fun doing this section: Taking the existing concepts and giving them a monstrous twist. It could be fairly said that this was just an exercise in rehashing. However it did not feel like rehashing. Though true to their Mainstream brothers’ core concepts the True Cliques looked and felt to me like entirely new entities. I’ll leave you to make your own judgements though.

Chapter 2: New Cliques

As well as the True Cliques we have added 3 entirely new Cliques unique to the Batshit.

The Grizzlies share mechanical similarities with the Outcasts however this is the complete extent of the similarity between these Cliques. Whereas the Outcasts are hopeless wannabes the Grizzlies are rugged individualists, perusing the Batshit virtue of carving your own path. Parallels can be seen with that Certain Other Roleplaying game even down to the bear inspired names. I’m particularly proud of the Grizzly weakness. It inhibits Grizzlies from getting along with each other and thus comically reinforces the Individualist concept.

Shoddies are your conspiracy theorists tin foil hats and all. They are desperately afraid of being under the control of some nefarious entity and thus turn into the sort of controlling nefarious entity they’re so frightened of. They typically compete with the True Gothistocrats for leadership positions at least as much as a rabble like the Batshit can be led.

Sick Puppies were the hardest of the Cliques to develop. The main problem arose in how to make that Certain Incredibly Cheesy and Broken Vampire Faction funny. After several re writes I was happy with what I had come up with. The Sick Puppies are thus monstrous fashion divas with the power to manipulate clothing. This is almost as gross as the Certain Incredibly Cheesy and Broken Vampire Faction’s signature power but most importantly it’s actually funny.

Chapter 3: New Life Templates

This chapter came about when I realised I left Pimp out of Bloodsucker: The Juice. I had a player in my University gaming group who would always play a Pimp regardless of the system, plot or anything else so I felt duty bound to include the Pimp in the Shadow World system. Naturally it would look a bit silly with just one new Life Template so I came up with a wide variety of sufficiently monstrous occupations for your Batshit characters to engage in. These include Dentist, Director, Fashion Designer, Management Consultant, Lawyer, Pimp, Politician, Prison Warder, Spin Doctor, Squadie, Teacher, Traffic Warden and Used Car Salesman. Your character doesn’t have to be Batshit to be one of these but it does help!

Chapter 4: New Powers

Naturally with new Cliques there is need of new powers. In addition I have included a slightly more universal ability that was left out of Angst and Juice.

Cloth Crafting is the Sick Puppies’ special ability. It allows the user to manipulate an opponent’s clothing to a monstrous and often hilarious effect.

Shadow Play is the Shoddies’ special ability. It allows them to manipulate Shadows in various strange and often broken ways.

Soul Sight is a new Power available to the more mystical Cliques. It is an interrogation aid that reveals your opponent’s darkest secrets: Particularly useful for detecting Munchers.

Chapter 5: The Diabolical Act of Munching

An element of that Certain Other Roleplaying game involved the Vampires consuming each other body and soul. This wasn’t particularly funny so it was left out of the original rules set. Now a full system for consuming another Bloodsucker body and soul is presented. With the monstrous nature of the Batshit I reckon you expect nothing less.

Chapter 6: Batshit Society

The book is completed with an in depth discussion of Batshit society and the game systems that support it.

The Batshit are organised into Prides. Much like Chav Crews these Prides have a separate Cool rating based on their notoriety and accomplishments.

Prides are bound together by a shared Juice Crush called the Circle Jerk. This needs to be renewed regularly to work unlike a regular Juice Crush.

Prides are led by Alphas who are appointed by the Pride usually by means of violence.

The Batshit have Head Honchos instead of Lords but they function in much the same way.

In times of emergency the Head Honchos appoint a Triple H (Head Head Honcho) to lead all the Batshit in an area. This is a temporary position but one of enormous power.

Essentially I structured Batshit society to be more anarchic. Systems have been taken from Chav because Chavs are just as anarchic if not more so.

Other Goodies

Like Chav I have included incidental fiction in the piece. It is however set directly after the events in Bloodsucker: The Play so best avoid it if you don’t want plot spoilers. The first and last fiction pieces are particularly notable. They are my entries for the Worst Sex in Literature award!

Conclusion

Bloodsucker: The Batshit has been a lot of fun to develop. I hope you have as much fun playing with all these new bells and whistles in your game as I had writing them up.

Happy Gaming

Ian Warner

Obsidian Twilight

I’m working on a new setting for Pathfinder with LPJ Design, the race previews for the setting Obsidian Twilight (a dark, dark, nasty but heroic fantasy world) will be trickling through, here’s the first. You can follow Obsidian Twilight developments HERE.