View from the Pelgrane’s Nest – December 2010

We’ve really ramped up production here at Pelgrane Press, with more than eighteen projects passed the planning stage. Three new Trail of Cthulhu products are out right now. We are also really pleased to announce more details of our new fiction imprint Stone Skin Press, and the first stage of our Vancean relaunch. The Dying Earth is available once more on sale from IPR, and there is a special Skulduggery plus Dying Earth RPG bundle until Christmas.

The Trail of Cthulhu

Book-Hounds Pre-Order Now Open

The print version of Bookhounds of London is available on pre-order. The fully indexed street map of London with occult locations alone makes it worth the price. You’ll get the PDF now, and the print version when it is out in March. Pre-orderers (including those who got the Dragonmeet version) will be emailed first to get the chance to get any limited edition version of Book-Hounds.

Eternal Lies Suite Out Now

This includes over an hour of amazing music created by James Semple and his team of musicians. It’s available as a CD or by download from the Pelgrane Store. If you order the CD, you can get the download now. A few of the CDs are signed by three of the muscians, and we’ll assign these randomly amongst the first fifty orders. You can listen to the opening title sequence here – be sure to listen past the opening sequence or you’ll miss the full effect. Read more here.

Poster Art by Jérome Available Now

We know that Jérome Huguenin’s atmospheric, ENnie-award-nominated art for Trail of Cthulhu is very popular, and so we’ve released three A2-sized, high-resolution gloss posters printed on 200gsm paper. Half of the profit goes straight to the artist. Posters will be printed and shipped out to arrive in January.

Eternal Lies

The epic campaign reaches the final stages of the first draft, with initial playtesting underway. Jeff Tidball and Will Hindmarch have been working with James Semple, with the music inspiring their further work.

Occult Guide

The guide is now in layout by the excellent Sarah Wroot, so expect something beautiful.

Cthulhu Apocalypse PDF

Graham has been working on this world spanning setting for over a year now, and our game group has been played nine of the twelve advetnures. The book will be released at a quarter each of three adventures, with the Apocalypse Campaign Frame after the first set of adventures are out.

PDF Adventures

Bill White’s second adventure for Trail, The Big Hoodoo is out of playtesting and is ready to be illustrated. Adam Gauntlett, who created Not So Quiet is working on a new adventure set in the 18th Century, and Jason Morningstar is working on a Trail adventure based in the time of Pershing.

The Dying Earth and Skulduggery

Dying Earth books and PDFs are now available on Indie Press Revolution on sale at 15% off and you can get a free copy of the Dying Earth RPG with Skulduggery. This offer closes before Christmas.

In January, we are also pleased to offer a new Dying Earth supplement, the next in Ian Thomson’s Footsteps of Fools sequence, called the Mountains of Magnatz. Expect more from Ian in the New Year.

The Excellent Prismatic Spray 9 is underway, with this extraordinary cover image from Jerome. I’m quite tempted to do a poster of this one, too, to celebrate the relaunch of The Dying Earth.

The Skulduggery settings Black Smoke, The Wedding, and Pacific’s Six have been playtested and rewritten, and are awaiting layout, ready for release as PDFs. I participated in a Black Smoke playtest at IndieCon, courtesy of GM Declan Feeney. It was a hoot. I played an Irish Cardinal with the temptation Wrath – it was easy to channel Father Jack with a dash of Ian Paisley. He was Pope for about ten minutes before he was torn apart by an angry mob.

Before Dragonmeet, I also had the pleasure of participating in Robin’s forthcoming Skulduggery/Dying Earth crossover with Kenneth Hite and Ralf Schemmann. This used streamlined Skulduggery rules and random card assignment for character creation.

The Dying Earth Revification Folio is clevery designed to appeal both to Skulduggery and existing Dying Earth RPG players. The Skulduggery players will want it for the Dying Earth setting and magic rules, and the Dying Earth players for the streamlined system, magic rules and sneaky way of introducing the game without the fear.

The Gaean Reach

Jim Webster and Peter Freeman have nearly finished the first draft of the Encyclopedia of the Gaean Reach. Robin Laws will be working on the rule set in the New Year, which will probably a combination of Dying Earth social combat combat and GUMSHOE investigation.

Allen Varney has taken great care over the typeface and layout for this product, so now I just have to consider the artwork.

Ashen Stars

Ashen Stars has passed through its second draft and is partially illustrated. The ship combat rules have been streamlined and made more GUMSHOE-y instead of being a cut-down space combat game. Jérome has been working on full-colour art, and we’ve signed up Chris Huth to do additional art. There is a little more playtesting to do, a quick scrub of the text and then it will be ready. The advetnure set, Dead Rock Seven is still in playtesting.

Esoterrorists and Fear Itself

Gareth Hanrahan has completed the first draft of a Fear Itself adventure called Invasive Procedures set, as you might have guessed, in a hospital. It’s up for playtesting. Ian Sturrock is working on the outline to the second part of Albion’s Ransom.

At IndieCon I played in a playtest of a new Esoterrorist adventure called The Love of Money by Matthew Sanderson, who specialises in detailed pre-gen PCs with interlinked backgrounds. He is tightening up the text ready for a playtest early next year. I can’t give too much away, but it features a new creature of unremitting horror, and a superb location for a finale.

Unremitting Horror

I’m also very happy to announce a new Unremitting Horror book, The Ocean Game, to be created by Dave Allsop with Adrian Bott and others. As well as a slew of new creatures of unremitting horror, and setting material for Esoterrorists and Fear Itself, PCs will now be able to participate in the terrifying Ocean Game. Stone Skin Press will be releasing an Ocean Game anthology, too.

Mutant City Blues

Gareth has written a supplement for Mutant City Blues called Brief Cases, which is now up for playtesting, which features three bite-sized cases for our Heightened Crime Investigors.

Razed

Will’s post-apocalyptic setting is in internal playtesting, and is coalescing nicely. You can read about Will’s progress here.

Owl Hoot Trail

Owl Hoot Trail (originally Outlaws and Owlbears) is Clinton R Nixon’s fantasy version of the American West. We’ve been playing the free version in-house, and it’s such fun to play that I pestered Clinton into publishing it, which he has agreed to do through Pelgrane Press. He’ll retain complete control of all aspects of production, but we’ll playtest the hell out of it. It should be out in time for GenCon next year.

The Birds

Robin Laws’ The Birds webcomic finally has a new home on the web, with all strips up-to-date. The Birds collection volume 1 is still available; volume two will be released in April next year, with a guest strip by John Kovalic.

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