View From the Pelgrane’s Nest – September 2019

Gen Con!

It seems like forever ago, and yet it’s only a month since it finished. We had a particularly good time at Gen Con last year – our sales were up on last year, we had new and enthusiastic booth staff, and we won the Gold ENnie for Best Setting for The Fall of DELTA GREEN. (Also, Ken and Robin won the Gold ENnie for Best Podcast, and we discovered that Ken and Robin will be hosting the ENnie Awards next year!). It continues to be an exhausting week, though, and it casts a long shadow over our productivity in the months preceding (and weeks succeeding, although in my case, I went off to run the RPG section at Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon, so it’s my own fault my August disappeared).

NEW! Trail of Cthulhu cluebook

I have a terrible memory, and so it’s vital that I take notes in games or I’ll have completely forgotten what’s happened by the next session. As a Keeper for Trail of Cthulhu, it’s even more important to have all the important details of your game available at your fingertips. This Art Deco-styled custom 5” x 7” cluebook helps Keepers hold their campaign in focus. It’s got custom pages for recording everything you need, from Investigators’ abilities, to key NPCs, and maps of significant locales along with the clues they contain.

The GUMSHOE Community Content program

We announced this in our Swords, Spies and Shoggoths panel at Gen Con (which you can listen to here, thanks to our friends at the Plot Points podcast), and here’s a bit more on the rollout plans. At the end of this month, we’ll be officially launching the GUMSHOE Community Content program, making Ashen Stars available to creators. If you’re not familiar with the Community Content concept, it means we’ll be making some elements of Ashen Stars (e.g. some IP elements, art, and layout assets) open for members of the community (that is, you!) to write and publish your own Ashen Stars content on DriveThruRPG.

We’re currently working with a number of people to have some interesting and varied content available for launch, so you can better visualise the creative possibilities. Confirmed content includes long-time Pelgrane GM Chris Sellers’s Rogues’ Gallery – a supplement to play Ashen Stars as a morally dubious crew; a new adventure from Ashen Stars fan Jakob Schmidt, and new ship schematics from cartographer extraordinare Ralf Schemmann. We’ll be releasing full details on how to take part later this month, so watch this space!

Work in progress update: Mutant City Blues 2nd Edition

I’ve dropped the ball on this in all the Gen Con and Worldcon kerfuffling. Jen McCleary’s been waiting patiently for me to get back to her with a review of her first draft layout, which is my #1 priority now that I’m back in the office. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the layout finalised in the next month, and then it’s in the hands of The Printers.

Work in progress update: Even Death Can Die

Christian Knutsson has taken over the layout of this, and will be adding new art and graphical elements, as well as cleaning up the layout of the existing PDF products. We’re also hoping we can get the layout of this finalised in the next month so it can join MCB2 at the printers.

Work in progress update: The Borellus Connection

Once we’d pulled together all the adventures, and made all the post-playtest feedback edits, this turned out big. Too big, realistically. And so Gareth’s been hacking away at it for the last while, trying to wrangle it into a more manageable shape so it can move on through the Arc Dream approval process and on to production. You can see the result of his hacks in his Rung Sat Swamp article here.

Pelgranes in the Wild!! – Tabletop Gaming Live

Now that we’ve got UK-based Becky on board (and I hope you’ll join me in giving her a warm and positive welcome to our community!), we’ll hopefully be better resourced to attend more UK-based conventions, starting this month with Tabletop Gaming Live in the Alexandra Palace in London. Becky and I will be trying out a Pelgrane booth there for the first time, so please do come along and say hello, if you’re around!

Until next time,

^^ Cat