The Mortar Pit

Yes, you read that correctly....projects finished up and projects started.

Like I said its been a really crazy ten days, both in my personal situation and my piece of the RPG world since I posted I was going to start The Last Parsec. Today's post is focusing on the last bit - my corner of RPG-dom. Its going to be a long post too folks!


Winter Eternal has been reviewed by James, and I fixed the issues and resubmitted the modules about 8 hours later. (I have no life - really!) So if they are happy with the fixes, it should be appearing in the store in another week or two.

I pushed updates to Weird Wars Rome, based on some issues reported to me by Eric Lamoureux and Gonzalo Durán. Thanks guys! Incidentally, both those two were very helpful in the completion and review of the theme I updated for the Rome modules. Eric originally built it a couple of years ago and sent on to me with permission to use whatever I could out of it. Once SmiteWorks releases FG 3.2.0, I will push the theme for inclusion with the module.

Then a funny thing happened a couple days ago. It actually got underway a few weeks ago when Deron Poisson, who I have gamed with for a couple years now, shared a post that popped up in my stream about this little OSR adventure entitled "An Adventure Most Fowl". I thought about purchasing it then, just never got around to it. A week or two later I saw a post by Howard Beleiff looking for people who were interested in review copies. I mulled that over for a bit but never took him up on the offer.

I liked the idea they were presenting with it, so I went and bought it. Now, the product that Grey Fey initially released was, I felt, sub-par. The story line right from the start was a hit with me, an inventive plot with a really cool way to challenge low level adventurers. The writing was excellent, with great NPCs in a small village with a problem.

The problem with it at first, was its presentation. Layout and illustrations were what initially turned me off the adventure. That layout, in a war reminded me of the way modules were presented by TSR in the late '70s or early '80s. Not bad, but compared to what can be done with software now it felt substandard. It just didn't look good, so it kind of gave the impression it wouldn't be fun to play.

Howard shared a post saying that the product had been updated with a new revised layout and illustrations. So, having enjoyed the meat of the adventure I went downloaded the new version and took a second look. Way better presentation from the front to the back, definitely leaves a better impression of the adventure. It also makes me want to see what else these guys produce.

If you like playing OSR, then you need to check it out.

Three days ago, I posted a small mini review of "An Adventure Most Fowl", both Howard and Deron re-shared that post - Deron actually shared it twice. That post is now my second most read post, not that big a feat really but very surprising to me. So thanks Howard and Deron for bringing a couple more readers this way - maybe one or two of them will come back.

While on the topic of OSR, one of the first one shots I played after finding Fantasy Grounds was a Castles and Crusades pick up game run by Damian Hupfeld . Now, it was my first time I had played that ruleset and really liked the feel of the system. I am now even playing in a C&C campaign, that is currently on hiatus. It just seems that the rule set doesn't get much in the way of love from SmiteWorks, part of that is player market on FG. There aren't a lot of players on FG, and consequently not as much demand for new product. Since that first game of C&C I have been slowly buying PDFs from Troll Lord Games.

I am not aware of anyone actively working on C&C conversions, but I have started to test the waters. I do have one conversion (Expanded Classes) underway that I started a couple of nights ago. TLG packs a pile of info into their books, so the process has been a bit slower as I work out how to present it within FG, especially charts...OSR systems love their charts. The screenshot below is the result of about 30 minutes worth of work on it. I am trying to decide whether I like the library method better, or creating it as story entries then exporting it.

Attachment 15112

As you can see, I have only just begun to work at it. I can give an estimate yet of when it will be done nor can I say what I am going to tackle after this is done. I do have a couple of options, plus I have been really hoping Doug would be able to provide an update a certain post on the FG forums.

So now onto the finished products that I mentioned in the post title.

I'll leave this teaser here:

Attachment 15113

Other than making sure a couple of NPCs get tokens assigned and a few others have token paths corrected those are all complete and will be submitted to SmiteWorks in the next day or two. Some of the work was already done, I just had to update it and polish it off.

This one was at times very frustrating. A couple of edges that NPCs have are from other Pinnacle setting books. One of which I did not own, so I first had to figure out where the edge came from. Savagepedia gave me a starting point, turns out both the products it was published in were on sale yesterday on Drivethru.

What it means though, is to use the information for the Scout (DLR) and Explorer (Solomon Kane/Slipstream) edges I need to get permission from Pinnacle through the SmiteWorks team.

The other very frustrating bit was that one of the Walkers included in the Core rule book has no modifications listed for it, no notes at all to match it's stats listed in the book. I found a thread started in March about the missing info. It was missed completely by the folks at Pinnacle, but I just saw that +Clint Black is aware of the issue. So I may wait a little bit to see what transpires before submitting The Last Parsec modules in the screen shot to SmiteWorks.

Pinnacle Entertainment Group we need moar Weird Wars Rome!!

However, that forum user Jeffrey Gordon has a fantastic website with all kind of useful tools for you Savage Worlds games. Check it out HERE

A couple of other projects that are underway and that I am picking away at slowly, both in support of Weird Wars Rome:

Nox Germanica: this one I am using the SW NPC maker and Enhanced Library extensions...normally I do it all in Notepad++, but again trying something different - maybe it will cut down my creation time significantly

Attachment 15114

Wellspring: this screen cap gives you a small sample of the theme and the new library window in FG 3.2.0

Attachment 15115

I do actually have three others started but no screen shots for them. I have actually only got skeletons of the XML for them:

• Beasts and Barbarians - but there was a hint somebody was close to completion on that, but I haven't been able to get confirmation.
• Shaintar - this one will require a bit of work as it will definitely need an extension, plus I right now I only have the Player's Guide so it is simmering for the moment.
• Accursed - this setting is just plain awesome, and again it will require an extension - and my lua skills aren't quite up to that level yet. If nobody else does this setting, I will get it converted.
• If I can figure out the adventure/card deck stuff in SW I will give the recent Mutations Deck from +Just Insert Imagination a go as well. Hmm, actually the little light bulb flickered a bit as I wrote this out - I might give it a go sooner than later.

So, that pretty much wraps it up for now. A lot of reading and some pictures for ShotgunJolly to look at.

Thanks for taking the time to read this mess today., and as always comments and flames are more than welcome. Game on!