View from the Pelgrane’s Nest – June 2014

This will be a short Pelgrane’s Nest – the fledgings are demanding fresh freelancer flesh (say that three times quickly!).

The 13th Age work flow is now established, with the Bestiary printed, 13 True Ways on preorder, and two others in layout. Ken Hite has written much more than we expected for  his latest KWAS Voodoo 2 and done the same with Hideous Creatures: Serpent Folk, so the subcription becomes even better value. The collection of Ken’s first 13 KWAS issues is available as a single download from the store.

More Content for Pelgrane Press – Project Shakespeare Monkeys

With magical PR chap Wade Rockett’s help, we’ve devised a social media calendar. We’ve been sticking to this schedule for a solid month now and it’s going well – from your perspective, is simply means regular articles from Robin, Ken, Gareth and the Fire Opalites which we then wrap up into Page XX for our monthly visitors. In particular, it means extra snippets of content from Robin to spice up your games, including the lines of ours which need more love such as Mutant City Blues and The Dying Earth.

13th Age

The 13 True Ways print version is available for preorder – get the PDF download now. Kickstarter backers have their PDF already, and we’ll get you an update on the other Kickstarter goodies soon. I am particularly excited about the six new classes, and can’t wait to play the Occulist – unique in that if you play it – you are actually the only one in the entire world. I’ve scratched together some pages to create a sampler you can download here.

The 13th Age Bestiary is en route to our shipping points – those lucky Fire Opalites already have their copies. We’ve sent out the address change request to Bestiary customers, and I hope the Bestiaries will be shipping on Friday. Limited editions won’t be out for a while.

Chris Huth has moved from 13 True Ways layout to Shadows of Eldolan, and then The Book of Loot (you can see a sample of Loot here). We hope to have both of these at GenCon.

The Eyes of the Stone Thief is progressing – here is a sample of Herwin Wielink’s cartography.

Trail of Cthulhu

Soldiers of Pen and Ink now has cover art in the style of Spanish Civil War posters. It will be a 72-page mini-campaign available in print format.

Dulce et Decorum Est, our Great War collection has been printed and will ship to pre-orderers at the end of July.

Mythos Expeditions has been copy edited, and is waiting on layout.. Here is a double-page spread.

Ken Writes About Stuff Subscription

Ken has been rather over-excited in the past two or three months and has written much more more than he was supposed to for Voodoo 1, Voodoo 2 and Serpent Folk – the lastest releases of KWAS. For this reason, we have increased the cost of those individual episodes. However, the cost of the subscription will remain the same, at least for now – so it’s exceptional value. The more subscribers we have, the more all subscribers benefit with extra content at no extra charge – it’s like a Kickstarter in that respect. This month, subscribers are getting both Voodoo 2 and Hideous Creatures: Serpent Folk on their order links so that they will now have a month in hand.

For those of you who missed out, the first year’s subscription is available as a single volume from the store.

The Rest

Gar has mainly been working with Rob on polishing up The Book of Loot; he’s also produced a list of suggestions for Fear Itself 2nd Edition which will change it so it better suits the specific genres for which it is designed, with campaign frames for different styles of horror game.

The Gaean Reach and The Gaean Reach Gazetteer have been printed and will ship to pre-orderers at the end of July.

Better Know a Freelancer – Robin D Laws

Robin D Laws wrote The Dying Earth, the GUMSHOE system, the Gaean Reach and DramaSystem. He created The Birds comic strip writes fiction and critical analyis and has access to Canadian ice wine.

Robin D Laws. Say that name, savour it, then read on. Don’t say it three times while looking in a mirror though, unless you want a mildly irritated Canadian in your bathroom. (This also works for Rob Ford, but you have to use a horizontal mirror lined with white powder). Robin D Laws is a game design powerhouse. To use a coding reference, if Ken writes source code for GUMSHOE, then Robin wrote the GUMSHOE compiler – he’s that badass. He annoys a few people with his game design innovations, and “transforms the way I game” with a bunch of others. Eventually though, it’s like “I was doing that stuff all along.”

Who, though, is the fool? The game designer who annoys people, or the publisher who pays him to annoy them? (This probably sounds better in Latin).

Aside from the quality of his work, my experience working with him on The Dying Earth gave me falsely high expectations of professionalism in the industry. Well, thank you for that. As a Canadian, he is ideally suited to his role of official translator between American English and English.

We didn’t quite burn him out with Hillfolk, but he needed some time to refersh with other projects and publishers, though he still produced a 13th Age adventure and monthly Page XX columns for us. He did all of this whilst knocking out a second edition of Feng Shui with all the latest gaming technology and produces half of a droll and award-winning podcast Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, which is released on time with terrifying efficiency – all the more extraordinary considering his co-host.

Now Robin D Laws, with his “Robin’s Laws of Gaming” hat on has written Getting Started with Tabletop Roleplaying Games. Read a sample here.  He is knee deep in the outer black at work on his Esoterrorists campaign which will be shattering your brain towards the end of the year. As I mentioned above you may also have also have noticed more articles on our website by Robin D Laws – each one a polished stone of inspiration your GUMSHOE games.

“Robin D Laws, Robin D Laws, Robin D Laws. Ah, there you are. You have my ice wine, I hope?”