We’ve been hard at work developing GUMSHOE One-2-One settings with our writers, completing Dracula Dossier extras and getting the first laid-out draft of the TimeWatch RPG. I also had the pleasure of attending the Concrete Cow games convention in Milton Keynes, while Cat took the more glamorous option of attending Solmukohta. Paul Maclean, who runs yog-sothoth.com, came up to see me in London, and we discussed all things Mythos, Kickstarters and his incredible 360 degree camera. We discussed future Pelgrane Press Mythos releases including GUMSHOE One-2-One and the Trail of Cthulhu Starter Set in this interview here.

This month we release The Dubai Reckoning, an adventure for NBA not based in the Dracula Dossier setting, and make the GM Screen and Resource Book book available as a PDF. We present the final issue of KWAS, Foul Congeries 3 and 13th Age Monthly features a bumper 15-page issue Sorcerer Summoning  issue.

13th Age

• The GM Screen and Resource Book is out now as a PDF. The screen has been separated into separate printed pages for easy self-assembly or for use with the grandiosly-named World’s Greatest GM Screen. However, it’s the Resource Book and high resolution map of the Dragon Empire which makes the download version most attractive.
• High Magic and Low Cunning and the High Magic and Low Cunning Map Folio are shipping to our mail order locations, and you can download the first three Battle Scenes and run them here. Pre-order it here.
• The maps for The Crown Commands: Battle Scenes for Four Icons are complete, and it looks like they, too, will be available as part of a map folio, as the the first batch was so successful.
• Gareth’s Demonology book needs a development pass from Rob Heinsoo, who is finishing up work on 13th Age in Glorantha.

GUMSHOE

GUMSHOE One-2-One

The level of playtest interest in GUMSHOE One-2-One, our system designed for one player and one GM is very much higher than anything else we’ve done, because I think it fills a niche for people who find it hard to get a game group together, or want to try out roleplaying for the first time with a partner. One-2-One opens up a huge array of fiction based on the lone protagonist, which is arguably more common than the team-based ensembles on which RPGs are necessarily based.

• Chris Spivey has been working hard honing his war-time detective Langston Wright, Ruth Tilman is finalising Viv Sinclair and we should have manuscripts in the next few days.
• Playtest feedback from the ruleset and Dex Raymond is on its way back to Robin for polishing.
• We have a large pool of existing playtesters now for GUMSHOE One-2-One and these playtesters will also be offered the opportunity to try our Langston and Viv, but we’ll also be after playtesters unfamiliar with the system to playtest with Langston and Viv. Watch out for playtest opportunities later in the month.

Ashen Stars

We have two adventures ready for playtesting this month:

• The Truth, or Something Like It, in which the Lasers receive a distress call from the Combine ship Mercator – a ship which vanished without trace almost 50 years ago, back in the Utopian age. On arriving at Rekel-3, the planet where the ship crashed, they find that 30 of its crew are somehow still alive.
• In Paradigm Beta contact with the water-dwelling inhabitants of the ocean moon Abzu and to a research station on its  frozen surface has been lost. The lasers are asked to investigate. Meanwhile, Abzu is threatened by  an ecological catastrophe that seems to be connected in some way to the disappearance of the scientists.

Fear Itself 2nd Edition

Gareth has submitted the Fear Itself 2nd Edition manuscript. It’s twice the size of the original Fear Itself. It incorporates the latest GUMSHOE advice and innovations, includes additional advice for creating and running horror adventures, additional Creatures of Unremitting Horror, series pitches, campaigns and adventures. Read Gar’s development notes here.

Ken Writes About Stuff 3

Foul Congeries 3 is the final, bonus subscriber issue for KWAS 3. We won’t be renewing KWAS for 2016; Ken is devoting his attention to Fall of Delta Green. We thank you for your support over the last three years – thanks to you, KWAS is now a source of inspiration for GMs and a well of great ideas for potential future Pelgrane projects, including the Trail of Cthulhu Bestiary Hideous Creatures and a book of Unspeakable Cults.

TimeWatch

The TimeWatch RPG, has been laid out, bar credits and index, and sent out to Kickstarter backers.

Rich Longmore is working on the art for Behind Enemy Times.

The Book of Changing Years is an in-world artifact (much like The Book of the Smoke), ostensibly published in the last decade of the 19th century, having been delivered by an anonymous TimeWatch agent to the offices of Pelgrane Press for publication. It is in the hands of Sarah Wroot, who is working on layout. Here is an illustration by Juha Makkonen in his Dracula Dossier style for that book, featuring Hannibal taking advantage of advanced weaponry to reverse the historical outcome of the Battle of Zuma.