d1o1 Games website updated

I’ve updated my website.

The main reason was a migration to WordPress Mu (the multiuser version of WordPress) which will make it easier to update the site. The navigation should be easier now and there are some major content updates. In the next month or so you should be able buy pdf and print versions of our products directly from me via the website.

You can now read the d101 development blog over at http://blog.d101games.com or carry on following it over at Live Journal since posts made there will be automatically shipped over.

New updates on the Website:

Sometimes the obvious stares you in the face, Life and Death resurrected

So there I’m looking at a pile of papers and thinking about OpenQuest, mixing liberally with the idea that time is marching on before Newtlet #2 and that I should really be ‘finishing’ rather than ‘starting’.

Then it occurs to me that all the Shattered Lands adventures I’ve written and played are written up with OQ stats ready to go. Just need some sort of Narrative structure to link the adventures together and then 80-100 page book ready to go!

So after its gone through art and editing you should see sometime this year a three adventure mini-campaign (or Saga as we call them in OpenQuest) entitled Life and Death.

Contains
A Travelers Guide to the Shattered Lands – A brief overview of the setting with Cults. Enough for a GM to use the setting without clipping the wings of inspiration.
Dead Pot Country – Enter the ancient ruins of the River Valley Civilization in search of a missing Merchant. (20 pages)
Life and Death – Journey to the tyrannical city of Miraz and stop the plague of Undeath that afflicts it (50 pages)
Tomb of the Last Emperor – Deep in the Badlands under a Meoter brought down by the Gods lies the last Lion Emperor and all his secrets. Dash through his buried palace to get to him before the Scarlet Riders.
+ Eight Pregen characters so you can pick up and play

More old skool D100 action for your gaming pleasure, to go along side John Ossoway’s Savage North adventure pack that is being worked on.

I iz a Game Publisher!

I now publically acknowledge that I’ve now moved away from being ‘Newt the Writer’ to ‘Newt the Publisher’. Its been a confusing transition and lately I’ve been feeling like Robert De Niro’s character in Brazil when he gets smothered by paper work, although in my case its drafts of varying completeness.  But some time off work and a mental step back has got my brain in gear.

The first step was to get all the printouts sorted. A couple of trips down to the University print shop saw the drafts of Wordplay, HQ2 and the behemoth that is the Sartar book nicely comb binded. .I’ve also got a nice neat filing system that is reasonably portable, which helps a lot and gets my not so silent business partner, Rachel my wife aka the boss, off my back about loose paper drifting round the house.  I’ve got a dedicated area in the garage to store excess stock.  So I’m organised in a practical way.

Virtually its not so complete a victory over disorganisation.  I’m using Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) for document management, which has worked smoothly with various collaborators over recent months. Its also been a lifesaver recently as my main Vista machine (Godzilla) has died on me. Normally I’d be cursing that my latest draft was lost, but since the main repository is Dropbox’s servers, when I get Godzilla sorted out I’ll be back in the game. In the meantime I’m able to access and  work on the documents on my work and linux laptop. The D101 website is being slowly revamped. Currently Its in the state were the existing content has been migrated over to the new site and the navigation made clearer. I need to some how make the appearance more ‘sexy’ and also integrate a simple shopping cart so you can by pdfs and printed copies directly from me. The website will also see me gather up the two D101 blogs, this one and the  Hearts in Glorantha, and stick them under the d101games.com domain, although you’ll still be able to read the d101 blog here as I’ll automatically ship over the posts. Its a slower process than I would like but its worth doing it right , before I really swing into gear publishing stuff.

Talking of which looking at the patterns it looks like my output can be easily described as ‘waves’.

Wave 1 is the Fanzines, specifically Hearts in Glorantha although the unpublished Tales of the Firebird and Gloranthan Adventures. Quick to do and engages with the audience.

Wave 2 is the games I’ve been working on for a couple of years now. OpenQuest and Monkey. Very much building on the experiences learnt in Wave 1 to produce good looking easy to read books. OpenQuest is nearly thorough edititorial, I’m going to be spending a lot of time leaning over InDesign in the coming weeks 🙂

Wave 3 is the stuff I’ve got planned with Wordplay, can’t say much about this at the moment because I want to focus on Wave 2, but lets say I and   are very excited about what D101 is going to be doing with his marvelous system.

Exciting as these waves of creativity are I’m also aware that earlier waves are still hitting the shore as the later ones are coming in. Which leads me onto the subject of….

I’ve learnt how to say NO. Mainly to myself and the crazy ideas I come up and then put to other people. I’ve got enough on my plate, time to get it published!