So, I've hardly been beavering away solidly of late, but I have managed to do a little games design. I'm currently working on:

Six Bullets for Vengeance - my game about revenge movies, told backwards, continues to develop slowly! I did another pass at the document a little while back and moved some stuff about and reworded bits. I hope to post it up for open playtest soon.

Ordinary Angels - my game about angel cops is still emerging, again slowly! It's all in my head - I know what I want it to do, but am having trouble getting that out and onto paper. The Conception playtest wasn't quite a disaster, just very "compact" - for all the wrong reasons!

Lost Days of Memories and Madness - whilst I'm not actively developing my game chef entry from last year, about the fall of a decadent empire (or "bored elves" as Graham calls it), I keep meaning to pick it up and brush it down a bit. Scott tells me it's great so I need to make sure it works for others as well as it does for me and him!

I'm bouncing some other ideas around at the moment too, most of which use a similar set of mechanics to Lost Days of Memories and Madness. I've also got a few pages of notes on a Polaris hack to run a Bourne Identity-type thriller called Assassinator 13. It's somewhat crazy and a bit of a mind-fuck, but could be good.

So, how about you? What bounties does the summer bring?

Bleakworlds is my sci-fi game: a mash-up of Blakes 7, Poison'd and Traveller. There's no character generation: the game starts right away. It's in early playtest and looking good.

A Taste For Murder is my murder game, almost completely finished, waiting for me to lay it out and publish it. If you wanted to give it an additional playtest, you'd be welcome.

Graham

Duty & Honour is one set of examples away from being done. Or at least done enough to throw at the feet of the editing volunteers. However the world appears to be throwing anything and everything in its path include work complications, an extension and a stint in hospital this week! I am convinced there is a conspiracy

Hearts of Oak (or indeed, whatever it gets called) is in the notes stage. I have all of the D&H conversion points in my head and I just need to get the research done properly to make it work. Shouldn't be a problem.

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

Eekamouse in Atlantis has had its first full playtest, and is most of the way through the editing/changes that arose from it. Second playtest will be in the next month or so, after which an open playtest draft will probably be available

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Pulp! - is in a revising stage, after which it should be go for a "special edition".

Lost Gods is more stalled. I have a plan to do a two page printout (kinda like Malc did with starship trooper) to foist on folk at GenCon.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I have just this week got Jaws of the Six Serpents (PDQ system instantiation for sword and sorcery/darker fantasy - Conan to Gemmell) to a stage I'm happy to call a draft* and am gathering a few folks for an informal feedback/playtest phase.

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

Savage Empire, the Savage Worlds conversion of Cursed Empire is rough drafted and I'm running the first "proper" playtest this weekend.

Umlaut is awaiting some layout and some extra art and some other bits and bobs. It's back-burnered but not quite stalled.

My last month has been pretty hectic but forthcoming are:

Reel Adventures: Another revision to the rules is needed and them some more playtesting but it is almost done. Maybe for Furnace that one.

Combined Arms: A mates military card game I am planning for Dragonmeet this year. Anyone interested in playtesting would be welcome.

I have a couple of other ideas on the boil and I want to get Stitch into a new form by the end of the summer.

Cheers

Iain

'The Giant Brain': 'Revenge of the B-Movie' out now!

Mob Justice now available!

Bad Family - You play family members in a sit-com, having the worst day of your lives.

...

I've been working on Bad Family, off and on, since 2004. It's the first game I've ever seriously tried to publish. In April, I did a round of tough playtests, which helped me shoot a whole bunch of sacred cows in the text.

Right now, I've got a call out to some artist friends to do some cartoons for the interior art. I'm pretty excited about this - it'll be the first time I've done layout for one of my games with art it in. And I've discovered that laying out the game as if it's actually BEEN published really motivates me to work on it.

The idea is to produce an ashcan for Confusion in August, and try and sell a few copies, open it up to external playtesters, and try and figure out how to make it as simple as possible. This seems fairly realistic - Bad Family has a small rep in the Wellington RPG community due to some early playtests I ran at Kapcon in 2006.

...

Graham, your description of Bleakworlds intrigues me. I'll be following this more closely, now.

Cheers,
Steve

Not exactly a game - but I'm finishing off the layout for 'Hearts in Glorantha' which from the title you can guess is a Gloranthan fanzine. Premier issue for Continuum at the start of August, which has a sizeable Gloranthan contingent, so there is real pressure to GET IT DONE! Many thanks for all the advice and help I've gotten on this one from various peeps on this forum :)

Next up is SimpleQuest - which is my take on BRP/RQ using the Mongoose RQ System Resource Document. Its been a hard long slog (the text currently stands at about 10 chapters with an average of 20 pages). Currently stalled due HiG, but I'm doing layout next weekend on this one. Again to GET IT DONE for Continuum. One of the nice things about having to sort out the adventures for another ref to run at Continuum, is that I now have two adventures ready to do layout and art post Continuum. So I've got my 'follow up realeses' good to go.

Probably of most interest to people here is Monkey: The Storytelling Game of the Journey to the West. I've got a mate running a couple of games for me at Continuum, so again there's a need to clean up the current rules. This means there will be a pdf Continuum edition, available to everyone to have a peek and use for playtesting via the D101games website, either prior to or shortly after Continuum. After Continuum I go full tilt on Monkey development, with the background and setting chapters getting the love they deserve.

More details and previews on my website www.d101games.co.uk.

Regards

;O)Newt
D101games -An Imaginary Company

3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars which is Starship Troopers, WH40K Space Marines, and Aliens all rolled into one. You kill bugs, they kill you and it's designed for campaign play. The party will end up being a mixture of veterans and replacement characters over a series of about 20+ missions. The last bit fell into place (Q: How do I count the aliens on the planet? A: I don't, the kills determine that.)

This is very close to done. The rules work and it's just my explanation of them that needs fixed. So, the final pics are getting put in and my mis-speakings are being corrected.

Will be out at GenCon and I'll be running it in its final form at GameWang.

After that...

Cantare a fantasy game of long campaigns resolving your motivations, gets kicked into playtesting. I think that will take up the rest of my year. It's a question of getting the balance right in how characters ebb and flow over the course of the game.

Good Morning Britain will also be in a form for playtesting by August and I'll farm that out to other folks. Basically, it's *cough*MArvelSuperHeroes*cough* with some twists and teh numbers filed off. The setting is Thatcher's Britain.

Y'know Gregor, 3:16 reminds me a lot of 2000AD stuff too, especially Halo Jones when she joins the military.

Labyrinths & Lycanthropes is very close to completion. It's a light hearted dungeon bash where you kill monsters, take their stuff and go up levels. Everyone gets a turn being the Labyrinth Lord, trying to knobble the other PCs. Viking Hat not included.

The Dragon Vs The Gun is also pretty much done. This was originally a Ronnies game and is a GMless D12 system. The game is all about chaos (The Dragon) railing against order (The Gun). Players run multiple PCs, of differing alignments. It's great for doing really epic stories!

I'd like to run another playtest then begin laying out the final version.

We, The Warriors I've finally succumbed and started on my own Contenders variant. It's fantasy Contenders with 'classes' : Militant, idolator, zealot, rapscallion and savage. The crunch is scrawled out on my note book, I need to playtest it and work on some good fluff.

Non RPGs, I also got a wrestling card game pro-wrasslin' Battle Royale that needs playtesting - and a better name...
Fragtown, my generic wargame that also needs a bit more playtesting - using the Contenders derived Pretenders campaign system.

Roleplaying has been a bit of a dead zone for me recently, what with all the drinking, whoring and Warhammer Fantasy Battle...

JoE

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Hot War is about to be sent off to print. It will be a 204 page digest sized book. The game itself is all about friends, enemies, secrets and consequences in the aftermath of nuclear apocalypse. Interestingly, a lot of the flavour of the setting is transmitted via in-game artefacts such as posters, memos, diary entires and so forth.

I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper has had one (and only one) playtest. It's functional, but needs a lot of work. However, for a space disco game of getting to close encounter three with Captain Strange, I think it will eventually come together. Playtesting welcomed.

That's the only ones I'm actively working on at the moment.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios