Buy the PDF HERE, PoD coming soon!
A runaway space station controlled by a rogue AI.
A haven for scum, pirates, slavers and other ne’er-do-wells, squatting amidst the ruin of the fallen Urlanth Empire, right on the edge of a warzone.
100 shops, services and interesting people for your players to interact with, inspiration for hundreds of adventures and many ideas that can easily be ripped off for other space opera, heavy metal or OSR science fiction games.
So, Satine’s back and we’re talking about rewards.
Now, I don’t have the resources or profile of someone like Monte Cook and people are definitely hitting their Kickstarter/IndieGoGo exhaustion limit.
Hopefully there’s still enough goodwill out there and I’m not asking for as much as many projects because I think we can squeeze a great deal of quality out of a more reasonable amount of cash.
I’m not going to think ahead to stretch goals, that’d jinx it, but we’re thinking up extra reward levels and options.
So, here’s a thought. Why don’t YOU let us know what sort of rewards you might like on this project and how much money you’d heft out of your pocket to get it. We’ll see what we can do about it making them – or something like them – a reality in order to wrangle money out of you!
Switching from fantasy to science fiction/science fantasy you run into issues with deadliness, firearms, automatic weapons and the whole panoply of high tech gizmoes, gadgets, sights, bullets and so on and so forth.
You also have to account for more advanced forms of protection while not overdoing the whiff factor or making it too easy to hurt someone the other way.
This ain’t easy.
I haven’t quite decided yet but I’m leaning towards damage reduction for armour and armour class boosting for force-shields/agility. Force shields won’t apply to melee attacks and ranged attacks should find it easier to hit,
I want to keep things as simple as possible but I also want combat to have plenty of options and to have a universal guideline so players can easily decide what they want to try. Sticking with LotFPs attack guidelines, mostly, this also gives fighters (soldiers) a much greater capacity to pull special attack moves.
Something like a universal -5 penalty no matter if you’re tripping, headshotting, disarming or any other environmental or competency issues. You could then offset that penalty – and even turn it into a bonus – by taking lots of skill levels.
The spirit of ‘old school’ is heavy on the improvisation but by providing a framework you can enable a lot of improvisation from that.
“What’s the penalty for fighting in zero gee?”
“-5”
“When I levelled last time, I took Zero gee combat once.”
“-4 then.”
Bosh, sorted and fighters/soldiers become a damn sight more interesting all of a sudden 🙂
The Machinations of the Space Princess fundraiser as part of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure fundraiser didn’t fund but there was sufficient interest to warrant another look.
MotSP will set its sights on the world of sleazy, sensual pulp Science Fiction from the likes of Metal Hurlant, creating a universe of heavy metal space opera (rather than rock n’ roll).
Rather than a single adventure and some ideas, MotSP will be a FULL GAME.
MotSP will give you ALL THE RULES you need to play.
MotSP will BULGE AT THE SEAMS with adventure ideas and toolkits to help you create and maintain your game and produce ideas.
MotSP will include fantastic art by Satine Phoenix.
MotSP will take your gang of wandering space-reprobates from the strip clubs of Proxima to the feudal planets of the Black Cluster. The glass spires of Imperial Space to the wastelands of scrap-worlds.
MotSP will take you from confronting elemental evil to delving the crypts of long-dead civilisations across the known galaxy.
MotSP is planned to include:
Why should you back us?
Satine is a fantastic, up-and-coming illustrator and associated with I Hit it With my Axe and D&D With Pornstars. This project will give her a real chance to stretch her artistic legs and show off.
I am a full time RPG writer and author with a lifetime love of science-fiction comics, novels and fantasy art. If you’ve ever looked at a Tim White or Roger Dean illustration and been inspired to set a game in what you see, we have something in common.
I have a proven track record of producing great games in PDF and POD as well as selling through publishers such as Cubicle 7 and Chronicle City. I have worked for Wizards of the Coast, Steve Jackson Games, Cubicle 7 Entertainment and others and won an Origins Award (along with my writing partner Steve mortimer) for my work on The Munchkin’s Guide to Powergaming, the book that spawned the card game.
If nothing else, you’re guaranteed an amusing read with great art and that HAS to be worth a few bucks.
NOTE
All funds donated will be used whether the project hits its target or not! If you’re donating, you’re actually donating! Whatever amount up to $1,000 is raised will go on art from Satine. Past that number we’ll start to reveal and trigger stretch goals and the money will be split 50/50 between art and payment to me for my time/effort (and driving lessons!)
I have been very busy, beavering away on my novel, which is almost complete and should be finished by the end of next week. This has taken time away from games writing quite a bit and as I’ve been busy two weekends in a row and have had a bit of a bout of depression things haven’t been proceeding entirely according to plan. Please bear with me!
I’ll be posting some more ImagiNation previews, everything is now done save for a few pieces of art so, fingers crossed, ImagiNation should be out by the end of the month. This will be released FREE on PDF and AT COST via Print on Demand. I’d like to get as much press as possible for this game – since it deals with depression and is intended as an aid/boost to fellow sufferers as well as a game. If you’d like to help me out with that, please get in touch.
I’ve received proofs of all the board/card games I have made – apart from Lady Bexington’s Home for Wayward Zombies on The Game Crafter (links in the side) and I have to say I am very, very pleased with the quality and results. I can’t recommend purchasing outside the US unless you’re willing to spend over the odds but if you are a US customer and want a shiny, awesome copy of Steamed, Final Straw or Cthentacle then go buy! If there’s enough interest there I’ll work on more board and card games.
When the novel is finished, because ImagiNation has been slightly delayed, I will put together the generic version of The Description System (that powers both Neverwhere and ImagiNation) and get that out ASAP.
The last bit of news is that myself and Satine Phoenix will be going ahead with Machinations of the Space Princess but as a FULL game, derived from the Lamentations rules set and aimed at providing fast, furious, simple, Sci-Fantasy adventuring weirdness in a Metal Hurlant style. Sexy, Sleazy, Swords & Sci-Fi. You can get some ideas on where my thinking for the game is going by looking at the Maksa-Jazra blog posts here (though those are more fantasy than SF). This will be an IndieGoGo fundraiser aiming for $1,000 to go to Satine for art. We’re still working out the details but look for a proper announcement sometime next week. Excess money will go to stretch goals, more art and some money going to me for the time it will take to write. It’ll be a ‘whatever amount is raised’ fundraiser.
After that, it’ll be on to a second novel and I hope you’ll all be as supportive of that endeavour as you have been of my games writing!
If you want to check out my already published short stories, you can get them at Amazon or Smashwords (just search for my name on the Nook, iBook etc stores).
So, Machinations of the Space Princess didn’t fund, but we didn’t do too badly. There’s around a grand’s worth of interest out there it seems so maybe we can still do it. Satine’s still up for the project and I would still like to see it done so we’ll take some time and and think over the options and maybe, in a while, we’ll do a Kickstarter or an IndieGoGo with a more modest target and see what we can scare up.
If I do that I’d want to do something closer to a full game, but built on the scaffold of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Something that’s a bit more fulsome a little bit less of a toolkit that still needs some wangling. I’d wand to do more than an asteroid, scare up a whole background and some proper spaceship/space combat rules.
I’d also mod the fuck out of the game, just because that’s how I roll. More skill based, some shiny combat options that are better set out, or at least have some guidelines in there. Psychics, aliens and a Metal Hurlant theme, feel and freedom to the whole thing. I want the good parts of the style, creativity and craziness of album covers, sci-fantasy, comics and crazy B-movies all wrapped up in sexy, dangerous bundle.
I just cleared my desk of work, so I’m in no major hurry to get cracking with this but if there is support and if we can raise some cash to throw at Satine, it’ll still happen.
Rock and roll!
\m/ >.< \m/
And there’s no better reason to fund something. Even so, here’s some more reasons I think you should. Just some random inspirational doodads.
I’ll shut up about it for a while now.
Starblazer is an excellent game, no doubt about that, but it’s also somewhat unwieldy. It’s the Arcturan MegaTome of RPG books rivalled, perhaps, only by HERO. That said it’s a fantastic toolkit for putting together your own games and it, and Legends of Anglerre, are my go-to resources when doing something with FATE. The incarnation of it I like best and the one I tore into little pieces and then reassembled to make Agents of SWING.
Another FATE project I’ve alluded to, apart from the pulp SF one, is a half-joke. The title of
this post is the ‘working title’ if you will but it only really exists as scattered ideas and notes on the back of a napkin. (This is the state that most of my 100+ item to-do list exists in most of the time, I have – like – a lifetime of work I’m never going to get around to doing, I tell ya).
If Starblazer is Rock’n’Roll Space Opera then, asks my brain, what would a Heavy Metal space opera look like? The obvious answer is Heavy Metal or Heavy Metal 2000 but that’s to sell it short I reckon. Those might be the obvious sources, themselves drawn from the pages of Heavy Metal magazine (Metal Hurlant) but there’s so many, many other sources you can look to. Lobo, RanXerox, album art and the artists who made it.
What defines the sources we can draw on for such a genre and what might it look like?
If I did have time to write this, how would I go about it? Would I kitbash the rules or just make a style/universe guide for use with Starblazer? I don’t think I’d be able to resist a similar simplification to what I did with SWING, though some things would have to work differently to that. I’d definitely keep the ‘attacker defines the consequence’ change I made, do something to make melee combat as important as ranged. Probably some work to make different weapons and their special effects stand out more. The key would be the presentation though, the key to such a game would be to invoke and inspire the right kinds of adventures and ideas.
Postmortem Studios 