Night's Black Agents - Double Tap Outline

Now that the first draft of CAMELOT Trigger is away at Evil Hat HQ, I can talk about my next project.

Night's Black Agents combines to great tastes that go together - vampires and spies. Anyone who knows me will tell you how much I love these things. Ken Hite, Gaming Mastermind, brought them together in the simple genius of my favorite GUMSHOE game.

He also posted the outline for Double Tap, the first supplement to the game. I have three sections I'm cleared to talk about. I will be writing the expanded skills section, which includes suggestions for how to use skill spend to be even more badass than usual. I will expand my Adaptive Tradecraft article with more neat in the field tricks for tracking vampires and their minions. And I will be discussing how to run Night's Black Agents for a solo agent, since Bond and Bourne rarely roll with backup.

He's taking suggestions on the Pelgrane site. I'll open this entry to any questions or comments I might be able to answer.

CAMELOT Trigger - Fellow Travellers

I have a wedding this weekend, so my time to work on the setting is limited. This does give me the opportunity to talk about the other settings and what I love about each of them.

J.R. Blackwell's Court/Ship
Social mechanics flow effortlessly in FATE. I love that the system makes trash talking just as dramatic important as fighting. This setting will offer some great ideas on how to run games where a sharp tongue is more deadly than a sword.

Brian Engard's Wild Blue
I love Westerns. I love superheroes. And I love fantasy games that are set outside of the pseudo-medieval Tolkien paradigm.

Mark Diaz Truman's Timeworks

As much as I want to get back to work with Mark on REDACTED, I want to see his take on time travel even more. Time travel is a ripe genre for RPGs. Even though The Coriolis Defect didn’t fund, I’m still excited to see what Mark does with one of the most challenging ideas in gaming.

Jason Morningstar's Fight Fire
Jason is the super-genius behind Fiasco, which is one of those rare games that hits the table and always creates memorable stories. Anything he does is work reading. I also love that modern designers are willing to push themselves out of genres that are focused on fighting.

Filamena Young's White Picket Witches
The evolution of the modern supernatural genre is fun to watch. Shows like Supernatural don't get a lot of respect even though they are carrying the torch of X-Files and Buffy. This game looks like a fun balance between soap opera and supernatural drama, which as anyone that's played Vampire with me know me how much I love that blend.

John Rogers' CrimeWorld
Besides gracing my Leverage blog with an interview, John knows a thing or two about clever capers. Since so many RPGs have busting into places for treasure as part of their mission statement, this segment will go a long way even outside the original genre.

Shoshana Kessock's No Exit
FATE games have a reputation for being big, loud and heroic. This looks like it's going to be none of those. There's a clamor for "gritty" FATE games and this looks like a great place to start.

Sarah Newton's Burn Shift
Most post-apocalyptic games are about wallowing in the destruction of second (and possibly final) dark age. The appeal to gamers is obvious, since there are a lot of parallels to the classic setting for fantasy game. But a game focused on rebuilding? That's awesome.

Brennan Taylor's Fantasy Adventure
Bulldogs is the favorite FATE version at our table. Fantasy is the most popular genre in tabletop gaming and this looks more like a Grey Mouser tale than a D&D riff.

Thanks to you, CAMELOT Trigger is GO! But the battle rages on. Tell your friends to back the Kickstarter you you can see all of these fine settings in print!

FATE Core Kickstarter - CAMELOT Trigger

Like King Arthur? Like Big Stompy Robots? How about a setting where you get both? Hop into your mechaknight and help Arthur unite the Solar Sovereigns against the Emergent threat led by the AI MerGN. Unlock CAMELOT Trigger by pledging to the FATE Core Kickstarter today!

AV Club - D&D Museum

I love exploring the Secret History of Gaming. An IndieGoGo campaign recently launched looking to build a museum for Dungeons & Dragons. One of the proposed locations is Lake Geneva, home to TSR. I couldn't think of a better place for it. Sorry, Renton.

Kickstarter - Hillfolk/Mafia Century

Robin Laws is one of the most influential voices in game design. He recently launched a Kickstarter for his new game Hillfolk, which focuses on drama and intrigue over encumbrance and tactical fighting.
In addition to his titular setting of feuding Iron Age tribes, he is adding Setting Pitches from several amazing game designers as stretch goals for the Kickstarter.

I am excited to announce that my Setting Pitch is the stretch goal for $18,500. The series is called Mafia Century. It details the rise and fall of your character's mob family throughout the last century. Imagine a mob series that begins in the era of Boardwalk Empire and ends in the drug-addled 80's of Goodfellas. It's dynastic, dramatic and I'm itching to work on it.

Click here to go to the Kickstarter and contribute. The higher the Kickstarter goes, the more settings that will be available on launch. And that's not counting another series I may release for the open content license that's already been unlocked.

Kickstarter - The Coriolis Defect

After dipping my toe in the pool a few times, I'm jumping into a Kickstarter as a creator from the beginning. The Coriolis Defect is an indie-influenced RPG in the mold of media like Groundhog Day, Quantum Leap or Sliders. If you have gamed with me, take a moment and consider backing this. I promise I will sign it and/or run it for you if you do! If you aren't someone who plays RPGs, consider just a $1/5 contribution to support my career as a guy who gets paid to write pretty.

Kickstarter - tremulus

It's a good time to be a fan of Cthulhu gaming. Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Realms of Cthulhu, the list goes on. But it's also good to have options. The Kickstarter for tremulus has launched, which blends spooky Cthulhu gaming with the lean and mean indie engine from Apocalypse World. I got a chance to look at an advance copy and, well, my thoughts are on display as quote on their page!

Shadowrun - Shadowrun 2050

This is the "historical" setting for Shadowrun using the current rules set in the original time period. Writing about things I read as a pre-teen was a trip. I got to do two sections in this book:

KA-POW KA-POWER List 2050: Most of the freelancers were excited to write in the voices of their favorite commenters. I was excited to explore elements of Shadowrun history. Sure, names like Neil the Ork Barbarian and Concrete Dreams are mentioned in passing. But who were they. Turns out I got to say a bit about some of those names I grew up with, which is so, so cool.

The Neo-Anarchist's Guide To Pissing Off The Star: Lone Star used to be the Big Bad that made all the runners shake. The earliest editions concentrated on the chrome gutterpunks striving to steal their way to a good life. This was a tribute to the NA Guides that I spent hours devouring for that lived in Shadowrun feel.

Shadowrun:2050 is currently available through Catalyst directly. It's also most likely going to be at Gen Con. If you pick up a copy and see me I'll be glad to sign it!

Cosmic Patrol - Into The Cosmos

I got a chance to work on Catalyst's retro sci-fi game's release this year. This book features over a dozen missions written by yours truly. I got into this style of sci-fi through many hours spent watch Mystery Science Fiction 3000 and the last page offers a fun little surprise for those fans.

Flames Rising - Strongholds of The Empire Review

Another review of the l5r 4e line. This book is only available online. It's also the first print-on-demand book for the line.

Honor and Intrigue - Escape from Castle Island

I love pirates. 7th Sea was my first professional writing gig, but I loved that game long before I got a chance to work on it. For all the pirate movies I've made other people watch, I've watched dozens more.

I happened upon Honor and Intrigue on the web. I liked what I saw, especially since I was looking for different system to run 7th Sea as well as other swashbucklers like Regime Diabolique. I got into a conversation with the creator who mentioned he was a huge fan of 7th Sea. We chatted for a little bit about games, swashbuckling movies and swordfighting mechanics. Then he asked me if I wanted to produce something for his game. I was honored and said yes.

So here's a short little adventure/setting about a Spanish prison island featuring a mystery on the mainland, a treacherous knife wielder and quite a few names you may recognizes. I present Escape From Castle Island.

For those of you looking for a good set of conversion notes to run 7th Sea using Honor and Intrigue, I recommend El Vago's conversion rules.

Flames Rising - Legend of the Five Rings Review

Here's a review of the Fourth Edition corebook. I'll be doing more reviews of the line in the future, including one of their new print on demand books. L5r is one of my favorite RPG settings.

Page XX - Adaptive Tradecraft

Night's Black Agents is an upcoming RPG that pits burned spies against a vampire conspiracy. Burn Notice is one of my favorite TV shows, especially the parts where Michael Weston cobbles together some cool improvised gadget. I combined these two elements for an article in Pelgrane Press' Page XX magazine.