View from the Pelgrane’s Nest

This month sees only one release, but it’s a big one: a new core book by Kenneth Hite. Night’s Black Agents is a vampire spy thriller, and even the game text is tense, gripping and engaging. Just as we did for Ashen Stars, we’ve released a pre-pre-order version which includes the post-playtest draft now, and the book later. Graham Walmsley has also launched the Trail of Cthulhu character builder, and I’ve been in talks with a couple of gaming luminaries about publishing their RPG, but more on that next month. Finally, we’ve moved our US shipping to a full-time mail fulfilment company.

Night’s Black Agents

The Night’s Black Agents REDACTED edition is out now. We hope you’ll buy it – it’s full of perks and it ensures we can do a full-colour smythe-sewn book..

I’m looking forward to running the game myself. I’m going over Conspyramids in my head, deciding on the nature of the vampires, and the locations I want to use. The Conspyramid concept demonstrates Ken’s absolute commitment to making the game easy to plan and run, and it’s so obviously the construct of a designer who has run his game over and over again. The Conspyramid a hierachy of conspiracy nodes in six levels, with arrows linking cells, sometimes across levels – at the top are the vampires, at the bottom the first player interactions. What I particularly like is Ken suggests turning it on its side – it changes from a power map to a narrative arc funneling through to the vampire powers now on the right.

  • Gareth is working on The Zalozhniy Quartet – four linked adventures for Night’s Black Agents, with story design by Ken Hite. The first chapter will be free with the REDACTED edition, and if you have the REDACTED edition and want to playtest the whole thing, visit the playtest page.
  • The Dracula Dossier is planning. It’s Night’s Black Agents meets the Armitage Files creating an improvised conspiracy.

Dragonmeet

There’ll be a big Pelgrane and ProFantasy get-together at Dragonmeet this weekend. Ken and Robin are both coming over as guests, and Robin will be running DramaSystem for us all.  At Dragonmeet, Steve Dempsey will be running lots of GUMSHOE demos, and Ken, Robin and I will be doing a seminar.

Lorefinder, Invasive Procedures and a special pre-release version of Night’s Black Agents will be available for attendees.

The Pelgrane Store

  • We’ve moved our shipping point in the States to Indie Press Revolution’s shipper DOJ, Inc. They are a full time order fulfilment company, are very reliable, ship every day, and respond quickly to our enquries. They have offered IPR customers excellent service. You should see a distinct upturn in service, including quick shipping updates on order pages. If you’ve not received something you should have then now would be an excellent time to let us know.
  • The Ashen Stars Limited Edition token replacements are proving thornily difficult to produce. We have been promised tokens by the end of next week (2nd December 2012).

Ashen Stars

  • Kevin Kulp, who wrote the 30-minute quick start adventure for Ashen Stars has provided us with an actual play recording of that game, you can listen to here.
  • Terra Nova is in playtest.
  • We’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think our next Ashen Stars supplement should be – see our poll.
  • I’ve added some Ashen Stars player resources tech, ability and species cheat sheets.

Trail of Cthulhu

  • Graham Walmsley’s character builder The Black Book sees its first public airing. You can register here. Graham will finish the Investigator Matrix, and add Esoterrorists and Fear Itself support by mid-January. Go to the support page to give feedback.
  • The Eternal Lies playtest is reaching is close, and the team will be updating the manuscript in December. Art is going to take a while for this monster, so I’d estimate a release by August next year.
  • Graham is working on the next set of adventures for Cthulhu Apocalypse, his follow up to Dead White World, that is Slaves of the Green Man.
  • Adam Gauntlett’s Coffins is in playtest, and he is working on other adventures.
  • Ken, Robin and others are working on Mythos Expeditions – a collection of exploratory missions to the far corners of the Earth, for use either linked, or stand-alone.

Esoterrorists and Fear Itself

  • Invasive Procedures is at the printers, with advanced copies available at Dragonmeet.
  • Esoterrorists 2.0, Operation Prophet Bunco, The Worm of Sixty Winters, Station Duty are in playtest. We still want playtesters for Station Duty.
  • Love of Money is being illustrated.

RAZED

I asked Will about RAZED and he said:

I’ve gone back to revise the way that RAZED presents its antagonists and adversaries, to make them even more modular and mutable. Along the way, I’m doing new notes for art direction and passing those along to concept artists who are presenting their own takes on what the aliens and adversaries of the game might look like. This isn’t a game where I tell you what the alien invaders look like and you go with that. They should vary with each campaign, so the players never know exactly what to expect when they’re investigating the origins, motives, and potential weaknesses (if any) of their nemeses.

Meanwhile, I’m going back through Kenneth Hite’s sterling manuscript for NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS and taking samples of his cunning design so I can enhance and magnify everything that’s good about RAZED. It’s slow going, but it’s going well.

The Dying Earth

The Revivification Folio is ready for layout, and work continues on XPS.

 

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