November has come and with it the frantic preparations for Dragonmeet. You can find out about all our Dragonmeet news here. We have a great line-up of articles for your November reading. Will Hindmarch tells us all about Revengers, the new game he is developing with Evil Hat Productions. Robin D Laws advises on successes and information gathering for GUMSHOE, as well as addressing some of the misconceptions circling about solving mysteries. We also have a troubleshooting guide for GUMSHOE, for all those little questions your players may pose about the system. Michael Daumen has given us False Dawn, a fantastic WW2 Trail of Cthulhu campaign setting. Kevin Kulp has recorded an actual play report of his wildly successful 20-minute Ashen Stars demo game, Stowaway. We’ve also got some Ashen Stars resources, cheat sheets for each of The Seven Peoples and a quick-reference guide for abilities. The Black Book Trail of Cthulhu Character Builder is now released and ready for use. Simon Rogers rounds things off with the regular Pelgrane update, View from the Pelgrane’s Nest.
Articles
- View from the Pelgrane’s Nest by Simon Rogers, the monthly round-up of Pelgrane Press news.
- Costly Success and Information Gathering by Robin D. Laws, GM advice on the GUMSHOE clue gathering mechanic.
- The First Revengers by Will Hindmarch, all you need to know about Will’s newest project.
- GUMSHOE GM Troubleshooting by Robin D Laws, all you need to know to solve any GUMSHOE problem.
- Mo’ Information, Mo’ Troubles by Robin D Laws, tackling the misconception surrounding easily solved GUMSHOE mysteries.
- False Dawn by Michael Daumen, a WW2 Trail of Cthulhu campaign setting.
- Ashen Stars: Stowaway by Kevin Kulp, actual play recording of the 20 minute demo.
- Ashen Stars Resources – Species cheat sheet and a quick-reference abilities table.
New Releases
- Night’s Black Agents [REDACTED] Edition – this is the Night’s Black Agents pre-order and includes bonus material.
- The Black Book – Trail of Cthulhu Character Builder registration page, see the Nest for further details.
Page XX Poll
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My players wanted rules for playing robot characters and long lists of mundane, non-cyberware/viroware guns and tech so that they could get the true SF shopping experience. I know basic equipment is simple and generic in the system, but they really wanted a long shopping list.
Very impressive edition of See Page XX! There are always a bunch of interesting reads, but this one was even better then usual.
Thanks for taking the time to do See Page XX!
One thing I would like to see is a character builder (similar to The Black Book).
I want a step by step guide to creating adventures. While I get how to create a campaign, and how to get inspiration for the hook and twist and setting of an Ashen Stars adventure, I’m still not quite sure how to put it all together. I’d like something like what is in Nights Black Agents. Detailed steps on how to create a serries of locations. A long list of scene skeletons that can fit together to create almost any ‘in genre’ adventure. And examples of how to map out the connections between clues.
I can probably figure all this out by myself, but I’d realy rather a book that just holds my hand all the way through. (The same goes for Mutant City Blues, by the way.)
For Ashen Stars (and the other GUMSHOE games, for that matter), I’d like to see a mid-sized campaign of linked adventures, in the style of a British TV series (i.e. 6-8 stories, where each story would be 1-2 sessions in length). While each story would be largely self-contained, a larger story arc would link all of them together, with clues from one story becoming important in later episodes.
I’d be happy to put my hand up to help write some, if you’re looking for volunteers :)
Having recently discovered the joys of an iPad, including having all my Gumshoe (Trail of Cthulhu, Fear Itself, Ashen Stars and soon I hope, Night’s Black Agents) PDFs literally at my fingertips, I have been thinking about how best to leverage the platform for maximum RPG happiness. While having annotatable PDFs immediately to hand is great, I think Pelgrane could be really well placed to go beyond “mere” e-pubs and take it to the next level.
What I am thinking of is a Gumshoe App, that acts as a sort of container for a given scenario. You would be able to load in a given scenario with it’s embedded rules (ToC, FI, AS, NBA etc). You would also be able to maintain a database of player characters (import from The Black Book?). In a given scene, the characters with appropriate skills to detect clues would be high lighted. You would also have a ready reference for that scene’s NPCs and beasties, tomes etc as appropriate. Just so you don’t have to flick through different documents. I’m sort of imagining a tabbed i/f perhaps with some translucent overlays. Annotation would be available, as would the ability of print out documents as necessary. If you wanted to get really excited, you could also have an imbedded music player to trigger soundtrack, fx etc….
It would give the folk at Profantasy another string to add to their bow and would also show that Pelgrane is ahead of the pack in all aspects of RPG publication. Think of what Bjork did with Biophilia…
Read and noted.