Reviews from a Dead Planet

To finish off this series of interviews, Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions was able to answer my questions about their product lines.  Evil Hat was instrumental in bringing me back into the hobby of gaming, thanks to The Rolemonkeys running a session of Spirit of the Century, which caught my interest and drove me to look into many new systems.  So, indirectly, Evil Hat is responsible for this blog.

Here’s Fred’s answers to my questions.

Spirit of the Century/FATE 3.0

• With the products Spirit of the Century and Spirit of the Season currently in print and several others currently in the process of being completed (Dresden Files, and a SotC supplement), what is next for FATE 3?

Hopefully Dresden Files be a better game than Spirit of the Century, as we’ve learned a few things about how the Fate 3 engine runs from listening to feedback on Spirit, such tweaking the fate point economy and making some new decisions about how combat runs so it won’t drag on.

Lenny Balsera and I have been talking about where to take Fate 3 once we get past the great wall of Dresden, and we’ve got a few ideas cooking. One that we may or may not follow up on is to do some of the development of a Fate 3 “core book” out in the open as a series of blog posts. But either way, eventually we’ll roll all that and more up as a book, just like we did with Fate 2, and make the PDF free for all online.

Continue Reading »

The second publisher that I had the pleasure of asking questions of is Pelgrane Press.  Pelgrane Press is the force behind a variety of games, most notibly, Dying Earth and Trail of Cthulhu.  Simon Rogers took the time to answer my questions.

Dying Earth

• What is up next for the Dying Earth line? 

We may have released our last ever Dying Earth game, although I may do one more XPS. The license expires in October, and we then have 6 months to sell our stock. PDF sales will continue during that period.  We’ve done justice to the line, I think.

Continue Reading »

This is the first in a series of interviews that have sent to various independent publishers to get a sense of what they have coming and to spotlight the products they already have available for purchase.

I couldn’t think of a better company to start with than Mind Storm Labs.  MSL’s first product, Alpha Omega was released earlier this year.  Indie Press Revolution describes Alpha Omega as follows:

The world has been remade, cast from the fires of war, plague, and the vengeance of a long-abused planet. It is a dangerous world, reclaimed by the primal forces from which it sprang and no longer subject to the will of humanity. It is a world stalked by monsters, marked by the gleaming towers of humanity’s ingenuity, and home, once again, to the angels and demons of the ancient world-long-forgotten, un-Earthly creatures of incredible power. Earth is a world shaped by incredible shifts in science, culture, and the environment.

The 21st century nation states are no more, and the human population on Earth has declined dramatically. Most of the planet’s surface is wilderness, inhabited only by those brave, foolish, or desperate enough to risk the terrors of the New World’s nature. Known as Freezones, these incredible expanses of wilderness are pockmarked with the remnants and ruins of the Old World, evidence that humanity’s reign over the natural world has ended.

Most Humans, and the other intelligent species with which they now share the Earth, have retreated into the Arcologies, massive city complexes scraping the very edge of space. The civilized world is controlled by powerful organizations spawned from the corporations, religions, criminal syndicates, and secret societies of the 21st century.

The president of Mind Storm Labs, Tom McLaughlin took the time to respond to my questions.

Continue Reading »

The Good: Once you get the system, it makes sense;  Versatile setting that doesn’t force you to play in the author’s world; provides ideas for story and traditional gaming styles

The Bad: Not for novice roleplayers; Not enough setting to run the game from the book; Art could be better

The Verdict: Try It

Book Specs:
Title: Don’t Rest Your Head

Author: Fred Hicks

Publisher: Evil Hat Productions

Pages: 82

Price: $20

Availability: IPR, Lulu, DriveThruRPG

Continue Reading »