#RPG – Postmortem Studios May Update

The image to the left is a supernatural rock star. The latest Clipart Critter stockart from Brad McDevitt.

We’ve got hundreds of pieces by him at affordable prices for your handouts or your own gaming projects.

Please support me via my Patreon – you get discounts for as little as $1 a month.

This month’s discount is on Camelot Cosmos (both the GM and Player’s books).

Patrons get to ask questions, engage, suggest topics for Youtube videos and otherwise get access to me, my thoughts and my expertise.

As a loyal follower of this blog, you can also get a discount on FATAL Highway this month!

 

April

Discount Offer

This is a quick set of tried-and-tested rules for vehicles and vehicle chases in FATE. The original iteration of these rules can be found in Agents of SWING and aspects and versions of it can be found in other recent FATE products or fan-books I’ve written including Pacific Rim: FATE of Mankind and @ctiv8 2.0. This version contains some ideas written up for a FATE version of ‘45: Psychobilly Retropocalypse.

This booklet is all about cars, chases, crashes and some post-apocalyptic inspiration for those who want to play road warriors.

APRIL IN REVIEW

What a month, I’m pretty exhausted but the Gor main books are complete and out and it seems to be a success. The blowback I was anticipating hasn’t been as big or furious as I was braced for – which is a relief – and so far the game has been well received across a great many different Gorean communities. It has drawn me into the Drupal scandal however, so mixed blessings…

This is really all I’ve had time for through much of April, preparing Gor, commissioning work on adventures for it, art wrangling, dealing with printing, dealing with shipping and now doing a bunch of interviews and commentaries on it in all sorts of places.

It’s hectic!

Still, any promotion, sharing, likes and so on would be appreciated and if you have a blog, Youtube channel, podcast or similar and would like to talk about the Gor game, surrounding controversy or anything else – no matter how big or small your outlet, hit me up and we’ll work something out.

I AM AVAILABLE FOR FREELANCE WORK:

Links to my profiles on Fiverr & People Per Hour (these will be expanded as I add services):

Fiverr
People Per Hour

DIRECT SERVICES:
Currently, my 2017 plate is clear and free for freelancing and consultancy. I’m pretty reliable and can offer reasonably fast turnaround. I can, perhaps uniquely, provide detail and grounding to scenarios – even dungeons – to humanise them and give them a bit of depth. Give me a try, see what I can do for your games.

I am a 17+ year veteran of the tabletop game publishing world with lots of experience in freelancing and self-publishing.

I’ve worked for Wizards of the Coast, Steve Jackson Games, Nightfall, Cubicle Seven Entertainment and more. I have also written fiction and worked on social media computer games, packing a lot of meaning into short pieces of text.

As a self-publisher, I have overseen every step of the publication process from concept through to publication including writing, editing, layout and modification. I also produce Youtube material and have begun producing audiobooks. If you need some narration for a video project or an audiobook reading, I can help.

Here’s some of the services I can offer, and the minimum prices offered – though anything is negotiable up or down depending on the client. I will work pseudonymously if that is a concern for you.

• New writing (raw text): $0.03c/word (minimum)
• Proofreading/Light Editing/Commentary: $0.01c/word (second and third deeper passes are possible).
• ePublishing/RPG Publishing consultation. Skype/Hangout/Call: $20/hour.
• Consultation on your game project: $20/hour.
• Layout (InDesign): $11 an hour.
• Stock Art Shopfront: Postmortem studios have a huge stock art catalogue from multiple artists and we’d love to add you to that storefront. If you’re an artist who wants to sell your stock art but doesn’t want to deal with the accounts and uploads etc with your own storefront (which would be my first recommendation) then I can do that for you for 50% (I round up your payouts). Even if you don’t want to do this through me I recommend doing it anyway for all artists and can consult on best practice if you need advice.
• Voice Work: If you find my dulcet tones to your liking, I’m available for voice over work and narration, recording audiobooks and more. Rates negotiable, starting at $11 per hour.
• Promotion/Interview: Free. If you have a product you want to pimp out or would like to just talk game design and culture you’re welcome to talk to me and appear on my Youtube channel.

Recent Products

• Tales of Gor: The Gorean roleplaying game.
• World of Gor: An encyclopaedia of the Gorean world, intended for use with the RPG.
• Map of Gor: A map of the Gorean landmass, modelled on the tiled floor of Samos of Port Kar.
• The Tower of Art: An adventure for the Gorean RPG.
• Fifth Fantasy: The Chronomancer – A character class for 5e.

Our entire catalogue (other than the newer items) – easier to browse than the online sites can be downloaded for free HERE.

Social Media & Contact

I’m always open to contact, discussion, ideas and more. If you have questions, queries, suggestions or feedback – good or bad – please do get in touch.

• You can comment here on the blog (Postmortemstudios on WordPress)
• You can find me on Twitter @grimachu
• You can find me on Facebook (James Desborough) and Facebook pages as a game designer and as a writer. Postmortem Studios also has its own page.
• You can find me on Youtube (PostmortemVideo)
• If you want to ask questions (or troll me) anonymously I have an Ask.fm (Grimachu)
• If you want to support my writing, games design and other work I have a Patreon (Grimachu)
• I’m also on G+ (JamesGrimDesborough).
• I’m on Minds.com as Grimachu

Second Hand Books & Old Stock

I have a number of old books and stock available for sale. £5 for small format books, £10 for large format books + shipping (UK only).

100 Conspiracies
Abney Park’s Airship Pirates
Adventurer’s Vault 4e
Agents of SWING: Agent Casefile
Ant Assault (Cardgame)
Black Rock Bandits (4e adventure & Map)
Bloodlust RPG (French)
CTD: Isle of the Mighty
Cthentacle (Hardcopy)
d20 Mecha
Dark Conspiracy: Darktek
Dark Conspiracy: New Orleans
Darktown RPG
Desecration (Pathfinder adventure & map)
DK System (French)
DM’s Guide 2 (4e)
Dog Town RPG
Exalted: Return to the Tomb of Five Corners
Legend of the Five Rings LRP Rules
Mantel D’Acier (French)
MET: Antagonists
MET: Book of the Damned
MET: Dark Epics
MET: Journal No 4
MET: Laws of the East
MET: Laws of the Hunt
MET: Laws of the Hunt Player’s Guide
MET: Laws of the Wild Changing Breeds 1
MET: Laws of the Wild Second Edition
MET: Oblivion (Obilvion)
MET: The Long Night
MET: The Masquerade Second Edition
MET: The Shining Host
Monster Manual 2 4e
MTA: Akashic Brotherhood
MTA: Akashic Brotherhood 1st Edition
MTA: Blood Treachery
MTA: Book of Shadows
MTA: Cult of Ecstacy
MTA: Dreamspeakers
MTA: Initiates of the Art
MTA: Masters of the Art
MTA: NWO
MTA: Progenitors
MTA: Sons of Ether
MTA: The Book of Chantries
MTA: The Loom of Fate
MTA: Verbena
MTA: Void Engineers
Ninjas & Superspies RPG
Palladium The Mechanoids (Rifts Sourcebook 2)
Player’s Handbook 2 4e
The Sting (Pathfinder adventure & map)
Traveller New Era: Fire Fusion & Steel
V:TM 2nd Edition
Victoriana 1st Edition
VTM: Blood Bond
VTM: Blood Magic, Secrets of Thaumaturgy
VTM: Children of the Inquisition
VTM: Children of the Night
VTM: Clanbook Malkavian
VTM: Clanbook Tremere
VTM: Elysium
VTM: Ghouls, Fatal Addiction
VTM: Guide to the Sabbat*
VTM: Midnight Siege
VTM: Storyteller’s Handbook to the Sabbat
VTM: Storyteller’s Handbook
VTM: Storyteller’s Screen 2nd Edition
VTM: The Anarch Cookbook
VTM: The Hunters Hunted
VTM: The Player’s Guide to the Sabbat
VTM: The Succubus Club
VTM: Time of Thin Blood
WOD: Blood-Dimmed Tide
WOD: Combat
WOD: Outcasts
WTA: Anansi
WTA: Axis Mundi – The Book of Spirits
WTA: Corax
WTA: Mokole
WTO: The Risen
WTO: The Sea of Shadows

Comics

2000AD
315-351
353-383 (two 383’s)
385-734 (two 393’s)
736-989
991-1199

Megazine
Volume 3
1-11
13-15
19-23
25
27-38
72

#RPG – A Lengthy, Good, Review of the Gor RPG

This rather lovely review of Tales of Gor dropped on RPGNOW, written by Emma R. You can buy the books at RPGNOW (in PDF, you may have to log in and change settings to make adult content visible) or at Lulu.com in hardcopy.

***

It’s fair to say that Gor has something of a polarising opinion on people.

And that’s putting it mildly.

While ostensibly derived from the same pulp ‘swords and planet’ genre that spawned adventure romps by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard, Leigh Brackett and Michael Moorcock amongst many others, Gor from an early age ensured its commercial popularity and courted controversy at the same time by making slavery an integral part of the setting, to the point where nowadays that is pretty much all it is (in)famous for.

That said, it was once a common series of books in the 1970s and early 1980s in the Science Fiction sections of bookshops, occupying vast tracts of shelf space, and the basic core idea (setting aside the more controversial elements) of a primitive Counter Earth orbiting the Sun on the opposite side to the Earth, and the secret war between two alien races vying to control both Gor and (as a secondary prize) Earth is a good one and cries out for a role-playing game to match. And now at last it has one.

The core set comes as two volumes – game stats and character design (plus an introduction to the culture setting) in the first, and an encyclopaedic compendium of A to Z reference material in the second. This makes commercial sense as there are thousands of potential Gor fans who might wish to pick up the reference material, even though they don’t play RPGs, and wouldn’t need to know how many hit points a Sleen has.

43 on average, just in case you’re wondering. 🙂

The first thing to remark upon as I crack open (in a virtual pdf kind of way) the electronic spine of the Tales of Gor game manual is how uncontroversial it actually is once you skim its pages. Yes, there are some pictures of naked breasts, but the author has not produced a game book that beats you about the head with lectures about slavery and the natural order of the genders. What you have is what you would actually want – a sleek, easy to grasp set of rules to establish characters and campaign adventures set on the ‘sword and sandal’ world of Gor.

It takes the adventure setting of Gor first and foremost, and while it doesn’t shy away from the prevalent nature of slavery on that world, I wouldn’t say the slavery aspect in the game books is any more prevalent than in the old Mongoose Conan RPG or in the Rome TV series. Because the author recognises that any tabletop Gor RPG is going to be about sword play and adventures first, with the erotic overtones of that world mostly on show in the background to add spice and kink to the decadent nature of Gorean society.

And here it comes down to your personal preferences. If you don’t like the idea of old school pulp stories having a sexual undertone, then of course this game is never going to be your thing, in much the same way I don’t really take much to Cyber Punk or Japanese Manga. But reading the book you’d probably be surprised how readily accessible it is as a complete body of work to anyone who is interested in pulp Science Fantasy games.

What James does very successfully here is he takes all the interesting and imaginative elements of the Gorean world – elements that are often lost or submerged beneath tedious copy and paste diatribes on the nature of the sexes in the later books (and one thing that can’t be denied, Gor is probably one of the most detailed and fleshed out worlds in pulp fiction) – and he plays to its strengths, playing down the exasperating aspects that even the most enthusiastic John Norman fan could probably live without.

So yes, it’s first and foremost an RPG of ‘High Adventure’ that benefits from a decadent setting that either appeals or doesn’t appeal. If you have set your mind to hating anything to do with Gor, well, this game probably isn’t going to win you over, but if you’ve simply heard it’s controversial, you may be surprised to see how the subject matter has been handled here.

The game mechanics are lifted squarely from the open source D6 system that powered the original Star Wars RPG – a system that incorporates ‘wild dice’ to produce extreme effects at either end of the spectrum. It’s simple enough to be picked up by people who are new to RPGs, but elegant enough that it can provide the sort of feel you want from a game that evokes heroism and larger than life adventures.

Gor’s strict caste system lends itself well to character templates, and although the most appealing one for me is obviously ‘head strong, condescending, reassuringly superficial, and somewhat overconfident agent of the sinister Kurii,’ you can if you wish role-play a builder instead.

Though honestly? A builder? Why would you? 🙂

The black and white art by Michael Manning is all bespoke and with only one or two exceptions, evokes the complex world of Gor very well indeed. I’d best describe it as a comic book take on Aubrey Beardsley with its solid chiaroscuro style. The exception for me at least are the faces of the Kurii that look a bit too cartoon like and not nearly ferocious enough. In some of the illustrations you feel like you want to give them a great big hug and stroke their lovely soft fur, and indeed, there appear to be one or two pictures where slave girls are indeed doing just that (Disclaimer: in real life, never actually attempt to stroke or hug a Kur). On the other hand, the pictures on pages 25 and 56 are just sublime and worth the price of admission alone.

Grim Note: The Kur are – much like many of Lovecraft’s creations, more horrifying on the page than when brought to life in art, but we did our best 🙂

Despite the single minded tone of the official books, the game is quick to assure us that it is designed to accommodate any manner of interpretations of Gor. It’s quite conceivable that a group of player characters could be anti-slavery, for example, odd as that might seem to John Norman himself. And it wouldn’t be that difficult to run a Gor game in the style of Robert E Howard’s Hyborian age, with the added flavour of the secret cold war between the enigmatic Priest Kings and the savage Kurii lurking in the background.

Moving on to the second volume (which was a bit of a beast to download to be honest) we have a hefty compendium of easily digestible background entries in an A to Z format, made more fun by randomly placed interjections by the author writing as an Earth man brought to Gor to live for a few years as a roving scribe. Breaking up what is essentially 202 pages of encyclopaedia entries, with a series of (often) humorous insights and anecdotal observations into everything from Samos of Port Kar to Pleasure Slaves, makes for fun reading, and my only criticism here is there isn’t more of it. It’s a stylistic flourish that I would love to see carried over into supplementary books, especially ones that flesh out specific regions of Gor.

Grim Note: I didn’t want to overstep my bounds as an author, rather than a game designer, in this creative writing element. I kept it shorter than I might otherwise have done if I were more self indulgent, but I will consider adding more to the supplementary material.

As I well know (because I role-play there), the Internet has long had a sizeable presence of ‘role-players’ gaming Gor in various forms in chat room based sites (not to mention the vast population of such people in Second Life) and it would be very cool indeed if this game with its simple enough rule system that lends itself very well to the dice rolling programmes in Gor based chat rooms, became a standard rule set for people to take their role-play further than it currently stands. It has that potential over and above the more usual tabletop format of role-playing games and it would be a vast improvement on the current anarchic system whereby two players simply argue about who stabbed who successfully with a sword.

Taking into account its small press origins, this is an impressive and inexpensive role-playing game that succeeds in bringing the full flavour of its source material to the tabletop. To my mind it presents a far more elegant and cohesive game setting than, say, the bloated and sprawling world of Pathfinder, and it has the potential to be expanded into all manner of meaty supplements.

High on my wish list would be adventure/sourcebooks for the various regions of Gor – in particular the Tahari, the Northern reaches of Torvaldsland, the Panther Girl forests and the Jungle interior. Taking one of those regions, populating it with fleshed out locations and a format of say, 101 adventure seeds, or perhaps a sprawling campaign on the scale of ‘Shadows of Yog Sothoth’, would make for a very cool package indeed.

And I can but dream of a source pack specifically tailored to haughty, over confident agents of the Kurii…

So, all credit to James Desborough who seems to have pulled off the near impossible, when you consider how toxic the concept of Gor can be in certain quarters.

Five stars, which frankly is four stars more than I’d give to the tawdry and demeaning plays of Boots Tarsk Bit. Needless to say, I of course only watch those plays periodically to remind myself how offensive they are… 😉

#RPG – Tales of Gor Hardcopy Available

And has been shipped to backers too…

You can purchase hardcopies of…

Tales of Gor

World of Gor

and my other works…

…over on Lulu.com