Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan has delivered the final manuscript for Fear Itself Second Edition, and it is now on pre-order – get the plain text Premonition Edition now. It contains a lot of new advice on running horror games, offers different styles of horror, but also digs deep into the core of GUMSHOE with new and unsettling choices for those characters who have experienced terror, and I use “choice” loosely. The popular High Magic & Low Cunning – Battle Scenes for Five Icons with the Map Folio for 13th Age sees its PDF debut, and this 13th Age Monthly givens options for arena combat in Gladiators.
The Fear Itself Premonition Edition
The original Fear Itself was designed primarily as a vehicle for horror one shots – and 2nd Ed certainly supports and offers extra material for those. 2nd Ed offers a wealth of guidance for creating and running mini-series and campaigns, as well as giving ready-to-run examples of each. FE2 twice as long, includes the latest advice and GUMSHOE technology, new Stability rules and is compatible with existing supplements.
Pre-order the Fear Itself 2nd Edition and get the Premonition Edition – the plain text PDF version from the store now – and your name in the final credits if you’d like.
13th Age
- 13th Age Monthly subscribers get the second season of the Organized Play free, and the latest issue – Ironport Part Two by Ennie-award-winner ASH LAW is available to subscribers from their bookshelf. If you haven’t already subscribed, then OP is a great incentive.
- Rob Heinsoo is working on Gareth Hanrahan’s Book of Demons. The demonologist character class has proved to be overpowered in our in-house play test, by which I mean my son played one and killed all my monsters while calling me a noob, so it needs a little adjustment.
- Following the success of High Magic and Low Cunning (now in PDF), it’s time for the royals to step onto the podium. The second book in the series, The Crown Commands: Battle Scenes for Four Icons features The Emperor, The Dwarf King, and the Lich King, the The Elf Queen. The maps are complete; the other art is undeway; here is a delightful floorplan from Naomi VanDoren.
- Congratulations to Campaign Coins for their successful Kickstarter! We’ll be offering the coins and icons for sale after the Kickstarter backers have got theirs.
- On the horizon for 13th Age are Shards of the Broken Sky. the other two Battle Scene Books, icon follower books and a new Bestiary.
Cthulhu Confidential / GUMSHOE One-2-One
One of the largest playtests we’ve ever had draws to a close, with a huge volume of excellent feedback on our three One-2-One investigators. We’ve turned to Christian Knutsson (Hillfolk, Fallen Reich) for layout design, and he provides us with pages of choices based on Cat’s guidance – austere, clean and suitably noir. Here we get to chose the icons for Problem and Edge cards.
Trail of Cthulhu
- Out of the Woods, a collection of new adventures exploring the hideous soul of Lovecraft’s forest, is out of playtest and the writers are polishing up their final drafts.
- Cthulhu City is a concept of Gar’s – characters are trapped in a monstrous conurbation – Dunwich in the west, beyond Sentinel Hill; quaint Kingsport, by the sea; industrial Innsmouth, the engine of trade and commerce; and the city’s heart, Old Arkham. I’m running an in-house playtest of this – it has a strong noir feel to it, and was very straightforward to run. It’s currently an outline.
- Steve Dempsey has been unwell on and off, and this has affected the delivery of Fearful Symmetries manuscript. We hope he recovers quickly.
TimeWatch
I am pleased to say all layouts have been approved for the three TimeWatch books, and they will be with the printers shortly. By mid-June we aim to have the PDFs out, and books printed by the beginning of August for onward shipment.
Here are the covers of the supplements.
The Dracula Dossier
First, a bit of horn tooting! Dracula Dossier gets a review in the Financial Times “The conceit dovetails with the epistolary format of the original and adds an intriguing layer of meta-story.” On Geek and Sundry the title says it all – Four Reasons the Greatest RPG Campaign of All Time Is The Dracula Dossier.
Edom Files, Thrill of Dracula and the Edom Field Manual are being shipped out to backers. Only the Hawkins Papers print version, by far the most fiddly and complex of the add-ons is still to do. While it’s unlikely we’ll have any physical Hawkins Papers left over to sell, the PDF version available from the store.
Here is a selection of what we have done so far: