New Wallpapers, and a bit of a catch up.

Well, the students have finally started back and we get back into the daily routine at work, rather than the project driven summer holidays. For those who don’t know I work in I.T. at a UK University, and the last few weeks have been frantic as per usual. But as I said they’re back and things are settling down a little again.

As a result I haven’t been a productive as I would have liked, having got a new set of cover stock art out, and a few other publisher resources ready for release, but I haven’t been entirely idle on other projects. I have started laying out Marauders 2 for YotZ, and continue working on Shadow of the Zombie. Additionally, I am working on a number of Masterplan Modern: series floorplans, some of which will be suitable for a Post Apocalypse version as well, and hopefully one or two will also make potential YotZ Encounters products.

Finally I have started work on what I hope will be a great resource for YotZ and Post Apocalypse players in the D20 Modern setting. One of the things I often find when working with the YotZ setting, is the need for a few survivor NPCs. And by this I mean, not the Fleshmongers, Marauders type of survivors, but general everyday folks who have by wit, skill or luck managed to hang onto their lives despite Mr Hungry trying to take it at every turn. These are the doctors, lawyers, students, builders, electricians, normal people who we all know.

So I thought that a series of products detailing more rational, and normal survivor types at various points in the rising would be a useful resource for me, and therefore possibly for other YotZ GMs as well. Additionally, I will be not only providing a bio, stats and other information on these NPCs but their zombie stats should they die. These zombie stats will be in form of “Zombie Cards”. Index cards of the zombie so if you need half a dozen zombies you can randomly pluck them from a deck and voilà zombies ready to go.

If you have any thoughts on how this product idea could be improved, do feel free to drop us a line.

Finally, I am including 2 more wallpapers from John Picot. Enjoy.

Night All

John

Real Work, in the Works!

Well, not a lot of new progress on products. As the title suggests, real work is getting in the way of publishing work. With 35k students all poised to return to Uni in 3 weeks, it’s all hands on deck getting everything ready, so I have been more than a little tired this week after work.

In addition our best mates got married on Tuesday, so Monday and Tuesday were right offs as far as writing was concerned.

On a more positive note, I have started a new floorplan set. Master Plan: Modern – Homes and Apartments will give a number of small houses and apartments, all nicely decorated and furnished. I am aiming this product at two distinct uses. Firstly the clean version can be used for burglary and such for our more nefarious characters, and a dirty version (blood splats optional) will be ideal for scavenging locations for a Post Apocalypse or YotZ game.

I am also trying out a new idea with this set of floorplans. Over the years I have built quite a few mapping objects, and for this set I am going to include the png files the objects used in the plans as well as the plans themselves. Hopefully, gm’s will find these useful for drawing their own maps. Who knows, but opinions are always welcome.

Finally, I have started on layout of Marauders 2 for YotZ so this should be with us in the next week or so.

Night all

John

An Evening of Quiet Repose and Layout

Well after an evening of quietly laying out Killing Winter, Dead Future Rebooted and Passion, Powder and Plunder for print, I have now got the proofs ordered.

Can’t wait to see how they look in print!

We have a lot of books in our print queue, so I will keep you informed when our back catalogue is available in Dead Tree version.

Night all

 

John

The Hacked Site Blues!

One of the great things about having your website hacked, is all the linked items which are destroyed resulting in hours of reconstructing the damn stuff.

I suppose there is always a silver lining though, as this is giving me the chance to review our product listings and standardise our product previews.

Just spent a couple of hours rebuilding the samples for a whole bunch of stock art, uploading them to the, now clean, server and editing each product listing to include the sample links. 14 products out of 165 done, yay go me….

 

However, I don’t want to let the “admin” work get in the way of other more creative tasks, so I am trying to split the load between new products and fixing old products.

 

I have re-started work on a Dead Future adventure, completely redesigning the starship design and underlying floorplans, which should lead me onto the next adventure for which the floorplans are all but finished. This first adventure will roughly parallel the diary entries from Dead Future, with the characters investigating, boarding and subsequently having to escape from a drifting Explorer vessel which is one of the first Dead Future rising points. From here I hope to plot the course of the survivors as they head back into the solar system and Earth, in a dilapidated starship in much need of repair. In fact the state of the starship leads to the next adventure, putting into an asteroid mining facility to refuel and refit, of course Mr Hungry got there before them 🙂

I also want to look at some parallel adventures taking place on Future Earth during the rising, but I think I may need to come up with a skirmish system for this as the risen verses mechanised troops will not necessarily lend itself to d20 Modern. More on this as the idea’s come.

Finally, I have been putting in some graft on Shadow of the Zombie, a sideline to the main YotZ theme which introduces more Shadow and FX into the game for those who want it. So far it’s been an interesting ride researching mythological zombie varients, zombies from literature, film and games. I have especially enjoyed developing the Bokor class for this, with Voodoo being a perfect example of FX in a zombie setting. The Bokor will provide some interesting possibilities for Havens. Anyway, on with the book, I gotta get the Draugr finished tonight before bed.

Later Peoples

John

And Once More with Feeling

Well, once again the website has been hacked, and once again I have removed all the offending code. However, this time I am changing my tactics.

Instead of having a static web page, or having a scripted page which I have to keep patched and still gets hacked, I am moving the maintenance of the back end to someone else.

Over the years we have built up quite a few elements of web presence, obviously the main one being RPGNow, but also Lulu and more recently Blogs, Twitter and Facebook Groups. So instead of creating our own pages I have decided that the Blog will be our main point of presence from our URLs, with links to our sales outlets, and other web pages.

Hopefully this will free up time from fixing hacks, maintaining servers and let me spend more time doing what we should be doing, publishing.

Back from Greece to a Nice Review

Just got back from my jollies to Greece, to find a nice review for Hold at All Costs 1 on RPGNow.

You can read it at http://www.rpgnow.com/product_reviews_info.php?products_id=62430&reviews_id=20694

So now its time to settle back, and get on with some new material.