Summer Sale Spotlight Day 2 Hunters in Alexandria

Following on yesterdays’ spotlight, which featured Project Darklight, here’s one about one of our quietly best selling game, which was released with out much fanfare early Autumn 2015.

What is It?

A self-contained game of monster hunting in the cosmopolitan city of Ancient Alexandria during the Roman occupation.

Although it is based on the Fate game system, it uses a variant called Fortune, which sits somewhere between Fate Accelerated and Fate Core regarding complexity.

How it Came About

Paul Mitchener (Age of Arthur, Starfall, Crucible of Dragons), the author, released it as a standalone game via his Historical RPGs Patreon. I liked the straightforward version of Fate that he used with it, called Fortune. While it retains the meat of the Fate system, there are differences. It uses Professions instead of Skills, (Fate Core), or Approaches (Fate Accelerated).  Extras are used as standard to define anything that isn’t directly part of the character such as magical items, martial techniques or advantages due to some form of social status (the Legionary extra is a good example of this).  I also liked the premise of the characters being monster hunters in classical Alexandria, since I’m a big fan of Roman Epics.

While I liked the Patreon version and I thought with some more work on it, It would be a nice small pick up and play the game. Paul agreed with me, so we started work on it.

The Development Processes

I did a small bit of editorial on the game, asking Paul to clarify a few bits and expand in a few areas (the section on Alexandrian Religion is new). The main aim here was to keep it short and to the point, including lots of gameable stuff without either being vague or going over the top.

After Paul had done his bit of creating this tightly focused game, I rounded off proceedings with an adventure called Saviour Gods. This adventure focuses on a plot to pull down the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which unknown to anyone is a magical ward dedicated to the “Saviour Gods” of the title

I commissioned the ever-talented Peter Town (Mythic Russia, Hearts in Glorantha, The Book of Glorious Joy) who actually relishes the ancient period, to do the art.

Peter Town’s Egyptian Sorcerer

Another Peter, Frain (Duty and Honour, River of Heaven, Monkey), did the cover, a scene straight out the Saviour Gods, with a Roman Centurion battling a mummy before the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Peter Town’s cover

I also re-used Stephanie McAlea’s (Stygian Fox owner who produce beautiful Call of Cthulhu scenarios) fantastic map of Alexandria, which she had originally done for the Patreon version on the back cover.

The Finished Product

An A5 11 Page self-contained game. It’s designed to be read quickly and then run with the adventure or scenario seeds straight out of the book. The game even comes with four ready made characters.

Currently available in the D101 Summer Sale with 25% off until Sunday 16th in print with free pdf, selling at £9 (usual price £12).

Also from DriveThru in Pdf/Print 

And LULU in print.

 

Summer Sale Spotlight Day 1 Project Darklight

I’m currently holding a 25% off sale at the D101 Web Store, until this coming Sunday. For the next 5 days, I will be highlighting one of the books in the sale.

First off is my Cyberpunk/Conspiracy Thriller game, Project Darklight.

Day 1; Project Darklight

What is it?

Project Darklight cover by Steven Austin

Project Darklight is a rules-light story game of Cyberpunks in space in the 23rd Century. They are fighting the Corporations who abandoned their world during an economic crash during the first Galactic War, who have recently returned covertly to retake control. Behind this façade of a Corporate Conspiracy is a deeper mystery that stretches back to the origins of humanity and beyond. A mystery that is fuelling the secret black labs of Project Darklight, that makes faster than light travel possible and mass mind control a reality.

How it came about

Mainly, I wanted rules light Cyberpunk game. Something that quickly factored in all the big overpowered cyberpunk special effects. Such as the cyberware itself, the character’s supernormal experience, the effects of important technology (where everyone has the equivalent of Dirty Harry’s Magnum .44). Then put them in one big hand of dice and counted up the successes and turned that into a rapid measure of success or failure, with room to show up huge successes or failures. Graham’s Spearing’s Wordplay system does exactly that, so I very quickly had a prototype that I took to the table.

The Development processes

I ran lots of convention games, and a home campaign where we played with the whole setting co-creation system (inspired by games like Burning Empires and Fate Core) that features in the book. For my home campaign, we created a small self-contained planet called New Oldham, with about 3 other significant satellites. The players wanted a game that took their punks from Street Level gangbanging to the lofty heights of corporate takeover, and that’s what they got. Mission accomplished for my fundamental goal for the game.

When I came to develop the background, I pulled heavily on what is called UFOLogy, since various theories connect our real-world corporations with the machinations of off world powers. I love this sort of stuff. I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, so it’s a fundamental part of the setting creation rules that if you don’t want to deal with the Alien Agenda part of the background I present, you never need to go there and the game runs just fine.

The Finished Product

It’s a 198-page book, in A5 softcover format. It has seven chapters that cover setting creation, character creation, technology, game rules and even has time to include a short introductory adventure.  Cover by Steven Austin, with internal black and white art by Steven Austin and Jeshields.

Project Darklight is currently available in D101 Web Store’s 25% off Summer Sale until Sunday 16th July. Free Postage and Packing for UK orders. Free PDF included with purchase.  Further information and to buy a copy visit the Project Darklight product page

It is also available in print and pdf via Drivethrurpg.com.

Also via Lulu as a printed book.

 

Hangout Games

Taking inspiration from erstwhile D101 Colleague Paul Mitchener who dumped his wish list of games he’d like to play over hangouts soonish the other day, here’s my list. Some of it less navel-gazing, because they are D101 releases that need playtesting, some of it is.

Monkey! I’ve got to figure out a way of adapting/streamlining Monkey to run over hangouts. At the moment the card based mechanic really shines at the table, because you get to see the opposition’s cards laid on the table before you draw yours. This is especially relevant when you are facing down multiple extras (mooks) and their bad ass boss, and you have to decide which cards in your hands are getting played where. BUT once that crease is ironed out I reckon it should shine because its already fine tuned to be a quick action packed fun fest with most adventures lasting a single 3-4 hour game session. I reckon I should be able to pack lots into a 5-8 sessions campaign. I reckon the Ministry of Thunder, a

OpenQuest: Green Hell. I want a weekly/bi-weekly game of OpenQuest like some folk run D&D. Good old classic FRP, but finely tuned to cut out the time wasting. OQ already does it Face to Face (it was my go to when my kids were very small and I only had 3-4 hours dead to run game), no reason why it shouldn’t online. I want to immerse myself in the setting I’m putting together for the adventure book Green Hell, a big bad ass Fantasy Swamp. Aspirant pseudo-Medieval Knights and Wizards vs spiky plant based horrors sounds good to me 🙂

River of Heaven. I’ve run a couple of RoH games at conventions and always had a good time. Now I want to do a short campaign. Either a continuation of the Starshine adventure , which is basically “you are fugitives on the run with your own ship, GO!” or a short focused sand boxy campaign on ‘Red Mars’, with the the characters being on the wrong side of both the Imperial Chinese and the US Military who both have colony’s on the planet.

Crypts and Things: Underdark Spires. This is one of the adventures I’m spitting out as part of the C&T Kickstarter as an addon. I’ve played bits at conventions, and I could easily playtest the remaining bits as standalone, but I want to stress test it as a whole. I want to see characters ground into the dust, driven mad or warped by corruption. Or (more likely) see a clever bunch of players heroically overcome all the weird madness this mini-campaign chucks out at them.

Moving onto games that I don’t publish, to show I’ve got a bit fo depth to me 🙂

Tenra Bansho Zero – run once, played once at conventions. Would love to explore this gem some more. It hits my dials for batshit oriental Gonzo, plus the play framework of startup-scenes-intermission-more scenes + simple d6 system really hits my sweet spot for game design too.

Dungeon World: Megadungeon Ran this as my first series of Hangout games, and for a while, it was my go-to hangouts game. Then suddenly it stopped and I didn’t play via hangouts until my recent game of Beyond Dread Portals a game written by and run by +Paul Mitchener (look out for this one when D101 publishes it later this year). I was running the mega-dungeon I wrote when I was 15-16 from memory and it was working out most excellent, providing great improvisational nuggets under DW where it never really holds water for as an overly complex logical AD&D adventure.

Feng Shui This is more of a wish list game, one I’d possibly like to play, but that lovely 2nd Edition sitting on the shelf gathering dust needs to get some use and be made part of my gaming landscape once more.

HeroQuest Glorantha I’ve been away too long. HQ is a great pick up and play game, quick flavoursome character generation, and is the ideal way of running zero to EPIC hero in about dozen of more adventures. I know HQ Glorantha is quite a niche game, but I may seriously look at this as being my first game to run via hangouts.