View from the Pelgane’s Nest

We have a record-breaking three releases this month; with Invasive Procedures for Fear Itself and Trail of Cthulhu, and Lorefinder now available on pre-order as a print product, and Hell Fire for Trail of Cthulhu on sale as a PDF. I’m expecting the post playtest draft of Night’s Black Agents any minute from Ken Hite- I am really looking forward to seeing it. Also, there has been good progress on Owl Hoot Trail, which is now open for playtesting.

Ashen Stars

Ashen Stars sale continue to go well, and I think Stowaway, Kevin Kulp’s free 20-minute quick start has helped people get playing. He’s going to record it and we’ll put that up on the website. Terra Nova is in playtest.

James Semple and his team of musicians are working on a soundtrack album for Ashen Stars – you can listen to the theme here.

[audio:http://site.pelgranepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Ashen%20Stars.mp3]

I’m considering what else we might release for Ashen Stars. Let me know what you like to see.

Trail of Cthulhu

To celebrate the release of The Apocalype Machine, we have a do-it-yourself Apocalypse competition with great prizes, and three new Apocalypse Machine wallpapers for your desktop.

• Hell Fire, our 18th century adventure for Trail of Cthulhu is out now.  The Investigators are members of the exclusive, but publicly reviled Hell Fire Club.
• Invasive Procedures, a Trail of Cthulhu and Fear Itself adventure is on print pre-order.
• Ritual Pursuits, the next of our 20-30 minute quick start demos is available now for download.

Lorefinder

We’ve decided to release Lorefinder out Pathfinder / GUMSHOE mash-up as a print book – you can get the pre-order now. Chris Huth has done an amazing job on layout and art, and Ralf Schemmann of ProFantasy Software has created the maps, which will be available for download in a few days.

Lorefinder merges the action-oriented fantasy rules of The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game with the streamlined investigative focus of Robin D Law’s GUMSHOE (The Esoterrorists, Trail of Cthulhu, Ashen Stars). Bad luck might get you killed, but it won’t stop you finding the information you need to move ahead.

Owl Hoot Trail

We are ready to start playtesting Clinton R Nixon’s Fantasy / Old West mash-up now. Apply here. The possibilities for adventures are endless: A Fistful of Gold Pieces and Undead or Alive spring to mind.

In our Owl Hoot Trail Name That Wanted Orc competition, Calaboose Twigg was the overall winner, with Deadeye McGonnagal and Fear-The-Lord Urgluk the runners up. I’ll be sending out notifications and prizes to the winners.

The competition had an interesting side effect. I hadn’t noticed that there were no orcs in Owl Hoot, so Clinton has added them to the draft as a PC race and now I want to play one.  Clinton says

Greenskins are like any other type of people. There’s good ones and bad ones. To hear it told, the bad ones are real bad, and there’s truth to it. Orcs are stronger than humans, and an angry one will tear you apart. Then again, humans aren’t blameless. Big green people with fangs and tusks look scary as hell, and some humans value an appearance over actions.

One thing you can say for certain about an orc: they won’t cheat you. They don’t lie – and that’s a source of trouble a mile wide – and even the meanest one’s got enough of a sense of honor to let a man die with a weapon in his hand.

Esoterrorists / Fear Itself

We’ve got Esoterrorists 2.0 at first draft stage, and we are looking for playtesters – please give this a go if you can. We welcome people completely unfamiliar with GUMSHOE and Esoterrorists as well as old-school players. It includes lots of new GM material and advice based on years of GUMSHOE play. Apply to playtest here.

• The Love of Money (illustrated) looks like it will be out in December.
• Station Duty, Albion’s Ransom Part 2, the Summoning Guide and Operation: Prophet Bunco are all ready for playtest.
• Invasive Procedures, our hospital horror scenario is on print pre-order. This is a bit of an experiment, but if it goes well, we’ll do more.

Night’s Black Agents

I’m expecting the first post playtest draft any day now. We hope to have the special pre-release <Redacted> edition available for sale next month, with the plain text document first.

DramaSystem

Robin has been writing articles about his new game Hillfolk, and the DramaSystem it is powered by. This is something quite new, and we’ll be crowdfunding it next month. You can read Robin’s articles here.

Everything Else

Bill White will be playtesting at the Metatopia con in New Jersey, and we hope to have something for playtesting in January.

The final art for Dying Earth Revivification Folio is in. We’ll start layout shortly.