Strife Liberated!

You will know already if you were a backer of the project, but Wild Skies: Liberating Strife is done and set out to everybody. It’s available at fine retailers everywhere and has even been reviewed. It’s March and I feel like I have not come up for air since I started putting the Liberating Strife manuscript together in August of last year. Well, I am taking this moment to breathe. *three deep breaths*

When we chose to set the first Wild Skies book in Europe we always knew “The America Book” was going to be the next one we did. Being two “Yanks” ourselves, it only made sense. We took the same assumptions about the period and the technology level we want for the Wild Skies world and adjusted everything to an America context. What if everything Nikola Tesla said he could make actually got made? What if there was no “trust busting” and bigger and bigger companies unified into one mega-corporation? What if American politics of the period was stanch isolationism backed by the highest level of tech in the world – all leased to the army and air navy by said mega-corporation? Well, that’s the America we present in Liberating Strife.

That was what Brandon and I brought to the table. This was bigger than our previous project with two additional writers brought on. To over-simplify their contributions, John Kennedy was our “company and dissidents” specialist and Josh Sinsapaugh was our “culture and counter-culture” expert. The depth of research those two went to and the results they produced fill me with joy. Instead of just giving players a bunch of American tech and some American animals, this book paints an almost complete picture of the United States of American in this alternate reality diesel punk time line. Corporate structure of the United Dennington Trust; it’s there. Boardroom politics at the highest levels; covered. The popular and underground music scenes; explained. Traveling the roadways and airways; yes. All the countries of North America; have their own section. This is a 130 page book and it’s page 67 before you get to anything with game statistics; before that it’s all world information. Considering three of the four main writers grew up with Palladium’s Rifts* Wold Books, maybe it’s not a surprise.

The book also has a lot of great art in it. Showcasing art is another thing we get from the game books which are our roots. The cover by Chuck Walton and Eduardo Domínguez is another great one. Inside, in addition to another slate of great pieces from Mike Mumah of animal people doing all the things (shout out to my favorite, the Jazz Age party on page 87) and Aspen Aten doing another map for us and Brian Manning’s work on the weapons and vehicles, we have 30s-looking national parks posters from Steven Wu and action scenes by Steven Cummings. All together Wild Skies: Liberating Strife doesn’t just give you some stuff from America, it lets you play Wild Skies in America.

Case in point: In January I ran a game of Wild Skies using some adventure seeds we had sent to Kick Starter backers right after we funded and the pre-gen characters in the book. I was laying awake in bed the night before thinking about the game and trying to account for everything the players might want to do. I knew my game was full of people who had signed up specifically to play Wild Skies – I knew they would want to test the full potential of the game. As I lay there, I feel like I went through all the stages up to cosmic brain, because with all the material in the book flashing through my head and all the sessions I have run over the last few years I knew I could handle any situation which came up. If they wanted to go on a road trip, or try to take over a night club or ride the rails, or become air pirates, or stay in the work camp and investigate the original mystery, I could run that. When it came to it the next day, I could indeed run it and we had a great time. People like a game I helped create! It’s an amazing feeling.

Wild Skies: Liberating Strife is Wet Ink Games product number WIG-108, which means there are 9 Wild Skies products out there now. I haven’t talked about them all here so be sure to check them all out on DriveThruRPG.

I Wrote a Rifts World Book

My writing partner Brandon and I submitted a manuscript we called “The Sovietski Sourcebook” to Palladium Books on the last day of 2012. We knew then it takes a while for a publisher to take all the steps which lead to a book being published. We know that better than ever now that we have our own games company. At last all the steps are complete and Rifts World Book 36: Sovietski has been released! If you are a fan of Palladium, you have seen this coming for a while now. The “raw preview” edition of the book was released in summer 2016. Since then it has regularly been featured in the company’s weekly update. Even knowing it was coming, it was still a special moment to see my name on the cover of a Rifts book. Thanks to Kevin Siembieda, the staff of Palladium Books and all the artists for bringing this book to fruition.

What is the Sovietski?

Rifts is a role playing game set roughly 300 years in the future which assumes humans entered a Golden Age of technology before a nuclear exchange on the Winter Solstice provoked a magical apocalypse which opened the Rifts, magical gateways to every possible elsewhere, and demons and magic beings flooded in; destroying nearly every human civilization. In the time period of the game monster kingdoms and human nations vie with each other for control of the earth. Many human cultures have adopted magic or revived ancient mystic arts, but just as many are committed to technology and cyborgs and power armor are as common as wizards and psychics.

There was a new Soviet Union at the height of the Golden Age and the few people who survived the apocalypse in their bunkers managed to pass their brand of soviet communism on to their descendants. These descendants are the Sovietski, a small (mostly) human nation built on what used to be the great cities of eastern Russia. As the rest of Russia is ravaged by cyborg warlords, ancient demons and gargoyles, the Sovietski keeps itself safe with mandatory military service of all citizens with many converted to cyborgs. They also have tanks, hover tanks, fighter jets and walled cities. Many fans of Rifts like the high technology aspects of the setting so there are plenty of vehicles, cyborg bodies, weapons and cyborg character classes included in the book.

The aspect of the book I am happiest with, however, is our focus on the culture of the Sovietski. We included quotes from communist figures to illustrate the ideals of the Sovietski or to present its irony. We described the unique cultural feel of each of the different cities. We wrote about religious enclaves and festivals and made a random roll table for chance encounters with strangers. We included some of the non-humans which also call the Sovietski home. All of these elements (hopefully) give players the ability to play characters from the Sovietski, not just play with the equipment of the Sovietski. What have the people had to give up to survive in the hostile world of Rifts? What joys have they found for themselves despite the sacrifices?

Why did I want to write about it?

This Sovietski book was something of the perfect project for me. Brandon introduced me to Rifts twenty years ago and I have liked the expansive world of the game ever since. We have role played together since high school and have done so weekly for almost ten years. I enjoy reading about Russia’s history and we both keep up with the news from the country. Working together to write a game book set in Rifts Russia was a natural extension of all our previous experience with Palladium and our shared interests.

As a creator, I always respond to things I like by wanting to add to them. While almost every corner of the Rifts globe has been talked about, there are plenty of places where the coverage has been thin. The “New Soviet Nation” was one of these areas. It was introduced in Rifts World Book 17: Warlords of Russia, with some extra information in Rifts World Book 18: Mystic Russia; about thirty pages in total, and most of that cyborg bodies and vehicles. The nation existed, but its history was not detailed, its political systems were not explored and the motivations of its people were left blank. The challenge was to add the detail we wanted to the setting without contradicting what had already been established in previous books. I think we managed it well.

The project has an important personal aspect to it as well. I have always been interested in the Soviet Union. I attribute this to being old enough to remember the end of the Cold War and the break up of the USSR but too young to have really had any understanding of events at the time. For most of my life, America’s fallen rival has loomed in my imagination as a mysterious shadow of “something important” which is ultimately unknowable because it is gone. I cultivated an appreciation for the symbols of the USSR during my teen years because teens are always looking for ways to mark themselves as unique by defying expectations. In collage when I began to study the broad sweep of Russian history and leaned about the machinations and proxy wars between East and West which define the Cold War, I learned there is little, if anything, to appreciate in the government or leaders of the Soviet Union. Instead, I came to appreciate the remarkable capacity for survival possessed by the Russian people. They have overcome a barely hospitable landscape, defeated invasion forces and endured some of the most brutal government repression in history. I find myself having made something of a complete circuit with this project. My interest in detaining a fictional version of the Soviet Union has only made me appreciate all the more the people who struggled against the real Soviet Union. It is the heroic spirit of those people I wanted to capture. This book is my celebration of survival against all odds. It is my eulogy for the millions killed in Soviet era purges. It is an expression of my hope for a better future for the Russian people.

A role playing game book may not be fine art, but I like to think Rifts World Book 36: Sovietski is in the same tradition as the many works by Russian poets, composers, writers and musicians which have been expressing the same hope for centuries.

Culminations which are but Preludes

The first downloadable supplements for Wild Skies: Europa Tempest are now available! These were paid for by stretch goals and certain backer levels during the our Kickstarter campaign two years ago. Right now we have an adventure called Lucky Rabbits Afoot, featuring raiding rabbits from the Saar Warren and a closer look at the small nation of Luxembourg. We are also offering a mercenary crew profile of the Rock Roost Renegades which includes four full characters from Corsica and a few of their unique technical innovations. These are just the first of several small releases we have in the works.

I have been working to fulfill my part of these extras for a while. It’s been a real learning experience, as cliched as that is to say. The “Luxembourg adventure” I wrote was inspired by a campaign I ran during the very early days of Wild Skies when when it was a setting grafted onto a different set of rules. As part of the process I got to (and had to) pick an artist, correspond with that artist, send art reference, have my work reviewed and all the rest. I have only written one previous adventure, so I’m still not sure exactly what I need to do. To make things worse, this is the first adventure for the Compass System so there are no models to follow. Again, I get to (and have to) make all the decisions about format and length and how to boil down the NPC combat stats for GMs without leaving anything out. Maybe it just feels trickier than it is because I am my own worst critic. Now that it is out, it can see what a lot of other people have to say and make changes for next time.

The mercenary faction was a special personal project for me. Not only did all the same “learning curve” stuff about art and setting format precedents apply, but I got to work with my father to create the faction. As a backer at a certain level, he got to create this faction and all the characters. My father is not a roleplayer at all so he didn’t really have a desire to pick skills and assign attributes. He is a story teller and the depth he went to in creating back stories for his team of ex-military freedom fighting bats from Corsica is inspiring. He started with the facts of the Corsican biota and chose his characters and the nature of their fighting techniques from there. He wrote character bios and a short story about the origins of the team which I then turned into the game’s numbers and skills list. This was not what I expected when we offered “we will work with you to create a mercenary crew” as the Commodore backer level, but it ended up being very nice to collaborate with my father on this project.

Wet Ink Games has more products to release and more games in the works, so keep watching the skies for more!

The Launch of Something

Wild Skies: Europa Tempest is for sale! It has been almost two years since the KickStarter, over three since I started work on my parts of the rules system and something like seven years since Brandon and I first cooked up the setting. We have PDF copies for download right now. We are getting the proofs of the hardcopy version and there will be both hardcover and softcover copies available soon.

There are a lot of reasons to be happy about reaching this point. First off, I have to say, the book looks great! I keep saying it looks like a “real” game book. We made a role playing game! I give a lot of credit to Knox, who did all the layout work. He took it upon himself to make the flavor texts I wrote look like the type of document they are supposed to look like. He played with fonts and layouts to make advertisements, medical reports and letters look like pieces of ephemera from the world and not just descriptions of this fictional world. The art is another big part of the success of this product. To work with so many talented artists and get such good pieces to illustrate the concepts and rules adds more than I can tell to the overall impression we have managed to put together a real product.

This first product for Wet Ink Games has been a non-stop education process for myself and Brandon. I’ve written manuscripts before, and seen my words published by game companies in the past. This is, in fact, the third book-length project I have written with Brandon. All the editing work was stuff we were used to, even if there was more to do this time around. Beyond that it was all unknown paths for me. Before now, my part was only to get the words on the page. I’ve never had to (maybe I should say “gotten to”) work with artists before. I didn’t have to think about layout. There was no process of back and forth about column length and where information appeared on a page. I didn’t have to pay attention to details like whether a title was underlined or bold. That was always someone else’s job. Putting the Europa Tempest book out there means we have overcome all the challenges we didn’t know we would have when we decided to do this book. I know it’s an achievement.

I hesitate to add a “but” to this post, but there is a “but.” Firstly, this Wild Skies project has been a big effort and has taken up so much of the background (and sometimes the foreground) of my life for years. I know getting this far is not the end; it’s just one step in the process. We aren’t finished with this first book until the hard copies are out. The KickStarter isn’t fulfilled until be do a couple more supplements, which are already in process. Then there’s the promotion events we have lined up. Provided all this goes well, we have plans for the next book in the Wild Skies game line and plenty of ideas for more books after that. This no time to stop and celebrate. There is no end, nothing ever ends. Secondly, and I want to be brief about this one, there is something very melancholy for me about seeing all the work of the last three years boiled down to a link and a price tag. I’m not sure I understand my own feelings on this, but there it is.

To bring the mood back up, let me once again say, Wild Skies: Europa Tempest is for sale now! Pick it up from DriveThruRPG.
Follow the project on KickStarter.

AMPed Up!

Another project of mine has come to fruition. Third Eye Games has just published United Human Front: Affiliation Guide for AMP Year Two for its AMP: Year One game line. In the game, AMP stands for Accelerated Mutant Potential. When the game first came out I wasn't too interested because I'm not a huge superhero fan. I miss-understood things. AMP is not a superhero game, it's a super-powers game. Maybe it's not that big a difference, but it's an important one. AMP has plenty of “faster than a speeding bullet” without a lot of spandex costumes. When Eloy asked me to write for the game and I actually read the book I liked how dark it was. AMP is full of 1990s-era Marvel-style angst; “they hate us, yet we are dedicated to saving them from themselves.” It's also full of government distrust, secret machinations and downright nastiness which seem to have been pulled from the headlines of recent years. A good setting for a game.

I was asked to write a guidebook for members of the United Human Front. These are the people doing the hating of the AMPs. Explicitly. At first I was not excited. No one wants to be stuck writing about the one-dimensional “bad guys.” Well, I didn't anyway. I took it as a writing challenge, how can I make the anti-mutant faction in a mutation-based super-powers game into something which seems positive? How can I make the UHF a viable option for players picking their character's affiliation? How can I make this faction into something more than a stereotype?

I decided to focus on two things. Conspiracy theories and the kind of anti-government domestic terrorism America saw in the 1990s. McVeigh, Kaczynski, Koresh; they all came from within American culture. That part of the culture hasn't gone away, either. There are even more conspiracies afoot than ever these days. I tried to present the UHF members as thinking people (maybe thinking too much). They have looked at all the evidence and come to their own conclusions. Two members don't have to agree on what AMPs really are, or who created them in the first place to agree they are a potential threat to decent folk everywhere. AMPs are people who can turn into fire or smash rocks with their hands and who are drawn to fight with each other whenever they meet. That's dangerous! The United Human Front is circling the wagons and defending what they know. It's a noble position, in a way. I've also put out the idea not everyone who looks down their nose at an AMP is actually a member of the official UHF organization. This lets GMs use human antagonists claiming UHF affiliation who aren't actually acting by the more careful and deliberate means of the UHF hierarchy. Since the game establishes the UHF was founded by a geneticist, I played up that element too. The UHF top tier people know AMPs are different on a genetic level. It's not technically wrong to say they aren't human. Maybe the man on the street uses it as a cover for racism and fearmongering, but not all members of UHF take the same lessons from the founder's genetic tests.

I've tried to weave the idea of conflicting views of reality into the adventure which forms part of the Affiliation Guide. I have crafted stories as a GM for my weekly game group and I tried to write part of a choose-your-own adventure one time, so I didn't think an RPG adventure would be hard to write. I was wrong. I've not written an RPG adventure for publication before and I found it difficult to present a story where the players were forced to question their own definitions of human and mutant. My first attempt was roughly twice as long as it was supposed to be! I had trouble creating characters players were supposed to care about. I had trouble accounting for everything a group of players might do. I wanted to have multiple paths so different UHF groups with different visions of what it means to be “defenders of humanity” could enjoy the adventure. Ultimately a lot of the branching pathways had to come out to bring the thing down to size. The manuscript I delivered has been polished to a nice gleam by Eloy and the rest of his team. It can only improve when the creators of the game give it a once-over, right? I love seeing ideas I labored on over my keyboard turn into pages with proper layouts and illustrations. Well done, Third Eye Games!

If you want to check it out, the United Human Front Affiliation Guide is available now.
If you want to get started with the AMP game, check out AMP: Year One.
You can also back the Kickstarter for the latest book in the series; AMP: Year Three.

Published Again!

 

I have a (somewhat belated) announcement to make. I have been published for a second time! I was brought on as a contributor to a project for Third Eye Games and I worked on it in fits and starts for much of 2013. The book was published in January of 2014. It is Divine Instruments, a sourcebook for Third Eye's game Part-Time Gods. In the game, players are modern-day gods who have to split their time between their human lives and their divine demands. They are only part-time gods. The source book I helped write deals with some of the tools of trade which were only hinted at in the main book. Worshippers, Relics and Territory are all covered. Learn a bit more about the game and go buy thebook. Better yet, do both! Thanks.

Published!

I have been published. A friend of mine (and now an official writing buddy) and I published some supplemental material for one of our favorite role-playing games. Palladium publishes a quarterly sourcebook with additional and alternate rules for its many games. This is mosly fan-submitted material which is a great way to draw in new talent and it gives us fans a chance to contribute to "the Megaverse." It’s a pretty nerdy achievement but still an achievement. Palladium Books is a small (-ish) company but has a big reputation in the industry. You can support them by picking up a copy. Hopefully, this is the first of many such announcements.