Month: May 2008

I’m having fun doing them….when small family let me get away. Had the nasty one of my main machine finally dying over the weekend, which put a spanner in the works, but resolueltly I march on.  Missus going back to work should set increased writing time, and gaming group is on hiatus until June. So May is offically ‘get stuff done’ month.

SimpleQuest –

 is doing a grand job of editing the chapters, leading to me doing my rewrite this week, with layout at the end of the month. Simon’s delivered the goods on the art front with some nicely evocative pieces. Fingers crossed will be out in July (as in you can order a book from Lulu out).

Shattered Lands & Life and Death. Currently on hiatus, but will see some development work since I’m running L&D and Dead Pot County, the Scenario that will be part of Shattered Lands, at Continuum. Big news for Shattered Lands is that its going back to being its own book and will not be released under the OGL.  After Continuum I’ll be getting both these books finished for probably a winter release. I say probably since I don’t want to rush either of them.

Monkey. Unfortunately wont’ be out for Continuum. Watching the final editing process of SimpleQuest has really made me realise how much work needs doing and how I don’t want to rush it. But what I hope to do before Continuum is a revision of the rules, implementing some of the ideas that came out in the last playtest and feedback from the Mighty Monkey Army, and make that available as a plain Pdf for testing, comment and buzz.  The ‘serious’ work starts after Continuum, so brace your self for more meaningful updates then.

Hearts in Glorantha. End of May is the deadline for submissions. As well as my Karia stuff, Greg Stafford already submitted a piece as has Jeff Richards and John Ottoway (author of Cthulhu Rising). Got about 10 others beavering away as we speak so we’ll see what happens at the end of the month when stuff starts hitting my intray.  Still open to submissions

Other than that my final thing at the moment is egging

 on in the development of Wordplay, which seems to be coming on tidily.

In the meantime I promise on the life of my first born that I shall not take on board any more projects.

I have become a Gloranthan Fanzine editor.

Looking at my hard  drive the other day I realized that even with the stuff I’m doing for  Moon Designs (Red Sun Rising) and Continuum (a compilation of my Molad scenarios humbly called ‘Liber Newtus’) I’ve still got a variety of Gloranthan bits sitting there.  This was also coupled with the realisation that despite there being other fantasy worlds out there , and working on one my self for self publication (see d101games.com ) my heart and regular gaming is still very much in Glorantha.  Also add into the mix the desire to show idiots like Angry Argrath over on Rpg.net (see http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=181101 if you’ve missed out) that Gloranthan fandom has survived the Fan Publication Policy and perhaps provide something that acts as a rallying call to Gloranthan fandom itself.

Thus the idea of a fanzine ‘Hearts in Glorantha’ jumped out like Athena out of Zeus’s head fully formed and ready to rock!
 
The fanzine will be run on a not for profit basis and will feature contributions from Gloranthan fandom. The idea behind it is to have a vibrant magazine which comes out bi-yearly, that shows Glorantha is alive and well. Obviously the majority of the articles will be HeroQuest, but I will accept articles for other games systems. The liscence I have covers Mongoose RuneQuest as well.

The fanzine will complement not compete with existing fan publications, such as Unspoken Word and Tradetalk, and of course the official material published by Moon Designs. I think there is a gap in the market for a  fun fanzine which is made up of individual articles on a variety of subjects, rather than the ‘theme’ issues that UW and Tradetalk does. Think the non-themed issues of Tales of the Reaching Moon and with its eclectic collection of articles.  Also I think that having one more fanzine won’t hurt the party and will actually help fill in the gaps between releases of the existing fanzines.

I’ve got the green light from Greg, and I’m looking to have an issue out by Continuum (early August) with another one out by XMAS.

Distribution wise I’m going for a duel pdf/dead tree model, with the pdf available via places like RPGNow and a hardcopy available direct from Lulu.com

If you would like to contribute content or help in any way please please get in touch (mrnewt@gmail.com). Payment will be the usual satisfaction of seeing your art/article in cold hard print and a copy of the issue your work appears in.