Tropicana, a new savage setting by Mauro Longo and Giuseppe Rotondo has been published by Gramel Games1.
It’s a 100 pages setting handbook, and it is fast, furious and fun as you’d expect from a game with a cover like the one you see here on the right.
This post collects my early impression, after a feverish reading of the book.
Enjoy.
[this is an expanded version of a post from my other blog – Karavansara]
The postman delivered today my Halloween gift1, Steve White’s Dinosaur Hunter, freshly pressed by Osprey Publishing.
Yes, that Osprey Publishing – the one that had me spending extravagant amounts of money on marvelously-illustrated, authoritative books about pirates, samurai, assorted World Wars and what else.
Described as The Ultimate Guide to the Biggest Game, White’s book is basically a handbook for, well, big game hunters interested in bagging themselves a dinosaur.
The book – which comes in a backpack-friendly 200+ pages thick paperback – is essentially the orientation manual for those lucky individuals that have passed the preliminary selection for a Mesozoic hunting license.
Mesozoic Hunting Corporation (C) provides the gear and the means of transportation. Continue reading
And so it is out.
Extraordinary Renditions, the latest collection of stories set in the Delta Green lovecraftian conspiracy universe, is available through RPGNow1, and various other platforms.
The volume was edited by Shane Ivey with Adam Scott Glancy, and it includes the following tales, covering the story of Delta Green through the 20th century …
“The Color of Dust” by Laurel Halbany.
“PAPERCLIP” by Kenneth Hite.
“A Spider With Barbed-Wire Legs” by Davide Mana.
“Le Pain Maudit” by Jeff C. Carter.
“Cracks in the Door” by Jason Mical.
“Ganzfeld Gate” by Cody Goodfellow.
“Utopia” by David Farnell.
“The Perplexing Demise of Stooge Wilson” by David J. Fielding.
“Dark” by Daniel Harms.
“Morning in America” by James Lowder.
“Boxes Inside Boxes” and “The Mirror Maze” by Dennis Detwiller.
“A Question of Memory” by Greg Stolze.
“Pluperfect” by Ray Winninger.
“Friendly Advice” by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan.
“Passing the Torch” by Adam Scott Glancy.
“The Lucky Ones” by John Scott Tynes.
“Syndemic” and an introduction by Shane Ivey.
Extraordinary Renditions was developed as part of a very successful Kickstarter campaign – and I’m extraordinarily proud of being part of this project.
I love the Delta Green setting, and being one of the contributing authors feels like going home.
I made my first sale in the gaming business with a contribution to Delta Green: Coutdown.
I started writing stories in English on the Delta Green Mailing List.
The line up of this collection features a group of excellent writers, some of them good old friends, and some personal icons of mine.
So, yes, I’m extremely happy – and hope you’ll be happy to read this book, too.
It’s a killer.
A brief post to show you the wonderful cover for my forthcoming novella, A Storm Brewing, set in the gaming universe created by my friend Andrea Sfiligoi for his company, Ganesha Games.
This will be my first all-out “traditional”, high fantasy story in about fifteen years.
And given my tastes in fantasy and Andrea’s A Song of Blades and Heroes universe, it will not be that “traditional”, after all. Nor it will be very high, probably.
I love this cover, by the way. It’s absolutely perfect.
And yes, that’s an eyepatch-wearing, pig-riding whip-cracking halfling redhead girl in the background. Continue reading
This is sort-of a post on demand.
We were talking about world-building, a few days back with some friends, and I realized I never put together a serious, reliable and up-todate list of worldbuilding resources.
I have a few one-stop places I dig, a few books I cherish and a few softwares and utilities I normally use, both when designing my games and writing my stories.
So why not share?
So here’s what I am doing: I am setting up a page – you can find it in the menu in the right upper corner of the blog.
It will collect books, ebooks, web-based articles, software and whatnot – only the things I know firsthand and I endorse, because I use them.
I plan on expanding it as we go on, and the comments are open, both on this post and the resources page, for you to add your own suggestions.
I’ll also make a small banner for you people to share my list – because there comes a time when you are creating your world, and you suddenly need some help…
Dice rolling, interesting video from Lindybeige’s videoblog.
Now this makes a lot of sense to me.
Anyone else thinks this might be the way to go?
A gorgeously illustrated book, Steampunk Soldiers offers a glimpse of a world that never was, in which primitive cybernetics and retro-tech changed the face of war.
The book presents us with a gallery of uniforms and technological add-ons, from the armies of a very different, and yet familiar 19th century.
Each plate includes a brief description of the unit portrayed, with notes on the main engagements in which it was involved.
The brevity of the notes is possibly the only defect of the book – a meatier text section, giving us a more in-depth look at the world and its politics and history, would have been greatly appreciated. Continue reading
Interesting thoughts on half-elves from Lindybeige’s video-blog.
Enjoy!
A post on request!
I was asked about Fritz Leiber.
My favorite author, incidentally.
Leiber’s influence on roleplaying games is enormous – a whole class of characters in D&D was inspired by his writings.
No Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories, no Rogue class.
And of course we all know that the Lankhmar or Nehwon universe was brought to the gaming table a few times, most recently as a Savage Setting.
But, the request goes, what about the rest of Leiber’s production?
And considering that Leiber wrote in all the fields of imaginative fiction, of course his bibliography is a huge reservoir of ideas.
So huge, I’ll actually do two posts on Leiber gaming.
The next will be about time travel and the Change War.
Today, I’d like to talk about horror. Continue reading
