Announcing Best Supporting Actors: Adversaries and Allies
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 02:20:22 PM
Gaming Ballistic is pleased to announce the next release supporting Old-School Essentials.
In the pages of the book, find ready-to-play characters built as individuals. Each has a brief description, providing a snippet of their past, motivations, and salient details that make them unique. They're not all combat monsters: Some must resort to duplicity, cunning, seduction, and guile to get by. Others are more "Thog smash!" and prefer to handle things with something blunt and heavy. There are enough that you'll likely find one to fit your needs, as an adversary, ally, person encountered in a tavern, or as a pregenerated PC to get a game going fast.
The title link takes you to a “follow the campaign page.” I am hoping to have more layout and contents images Real Soon Now.
The book is planned as a 192-page black-and-white softcover release accompanied by a deck of quick reference cards of the same style as those from the OSE Solos campaign.
Stretch goals will allow for a custom cover and hopefully a hardback offset printing. I hope you’ll follow the campaign and back when it goes live Tuesday, March 7.
Just When You Thought it was Safe...
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 01:25:11 PM
Uncertain Gaming Licence 1.0a?
Wow, such sound and fury in our neck of the hobby. Many people are legit concerned about where this leaves the third-party publishing space. I'll leave that to other forums.
However, it WAS my intent, in roughly two or three weeks, to launch a new product into the OSE space. It was going to be a book of 172 characters, with just enough interesting background to make them unique, and stats to let you play with them right away. Each will be statted out more like a PC than an NPC, with enough information to hand them to a new player as a pre-gen, or make them an interesting hireling, or whatever you want.
With nearly 200 of them, it becomes a real resource.
These were also going to come as 3.5x5" cards, just like those I made for the Old-School Solos project:
That's A Lot of Past Tense?
Yeah.
Here's the thing, though. It may be much ado about nothing. WotC might leave OSR products alone and say "anything that's before SRD5.1 we really don't care. Have at it." They might change direction entirely.
Or they might say "we're taking our toys and going home."
So plans had to change. And quickly.
What Now?
I still want to fully support Gavin, the 3pp community, and the fun, fast system(s) of which OSE is one. But even Necrotic Gnome and fish much larger than me are revamping plans.
So here's what I'm going to do.
Worlds Without Number is Kevin Crawford's fantasy RPG. It seems to occupy a nice space between the super-streamlined OSE and the ... much heavier? ... games such as Fifth Edition and Pathfinder.
It's not published under the OGL at all. Kevin has more or less said "don't muck with my IP, and the mechanics are not copyrightable," and he doesn't have the time or inclination to make a fuss if that's what you're doing. So there's a vector that way. It's also got a spiffy but slim skill and background system which will go very nicely with the material I have prepared already for this product. So that's to the good.
Furthermore, if you look at the front of my card, it would be hard pressed to conclude that my product needs the OGL at all. MAYBE THAC0, but that's an acronym and a single word, not part of a trademark. So that's fine. Nothing else is other than either strict mechanics or my own property (the descriptions).
So I'm going to do a Both/And here.
I'm going to develop the product with both OSE and WWN in mind. A notional pledge will get you both PDFs right up until the point where someone says "you can't do that" and makes it stick.
For physical, I think the cards can stay OSE and stay as-is. They'd be an add-on anyway, though of course for "just click once" I'd have them as part of a pledge. You'll get to choose between book options (unless the OSE one has to go away because Evil is sweeping the land, etc).
But I think given how little exposure I feel (gulp) I have due to the nature of the product, I can charge forward. Look for a "follow me" link in a week or so, maybe.
Fire Sale?
Until then, as a bit of a "just in case..." I've got all of my D&Derived stuff on sale on my Shopify store at 33% off retail. If you missed this Kickstarter or if you want to check out my other items...first read the blog post below, then check out my store, if you would!
I intend to support whatever Gavin does - he's just been That Cool in encouraging me to play in his sandbox. Until I know what he's doing, I have to forge onward, and I'd appreciate any wind in my sails I can get from those who backed or were interested in this campaign.
Onward!
Too Much Panic?
Maybe. Some lawyerly folks I trust a lot are giving very skeptical eyes to where WotC is standing now. So with any luck, this will settle out fine, and all will continue on before, especially in the "before SRD 5.1" space. I hope this is the case. If it isn't, I cannot just sit around and wait, so I plan for the bad-to-worst, hope for the best, and tuck my chin.
Happy New Year ... Fulfillment Update
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jan 04, 2023 at 08:22:08 PM
Happy New Year, and I hope those who spend the period between Dec 24 and Jan 2 in something vaguely resembling celebration had a good few weeks.
I wanted to give a fufillment update, since this project has been silent for a while.
There were two categories of "still waiting" that remained:
- 1. AUS/NZ packages, and
- 2. Four parcels that were mis-shipped by my UK fulfillment partner
AUS/NZ
One of the eleven parcels was to my reshipping friend, so that got there fine. Of the 11 remaining, eight have been delivered. One to AUS was listed as "incorrectly sorted" and was re-sent to the correct location, delivery 3-5 Jan ... so sometime in the next two days. Two others to New Zealand arrived in NZ and are still winding their way to their destination.
Oops, Reships
All of these were to Japan, Singapore, or or Singapore, and got filed into the wrong courier. So they went out, couldn't proceed, and then at least three came back. One of those is out for delivery today; a second should be in the next few days, and one to Singapore should re-ship Real Soon Now, I hope. The fourth seems still in limbo.
What now?
So all but one package are in-hand or on the way shortly. The last one I'll reach out to personally after I close with GamesQuest to see what information they have on their end.
Coming Soon
As 2023 kicks off, I'm looking to my first project of the year being in the OSE space, probably at the end of the month. Another project will follow later this year. The lead is continuing the book/card line of product as a GM and player resource. The second will be a setting.
That's all for now, and thanks for your support...and for those who haven't yet received their packages, your patience. We're down to six pending of 800 orders, with five of those tracked and on the way.
AUS/NZ Books on the way
over 1 year ago
– Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 10:02:55 PM
I put it off for a bit so that the books wouldn't sit unattended, but the AUS/NZ packages were dropped in the mail yesterday, and they should start their way to the Freight Forwarder in Florida tomorrow morning.
I anticpate about a week to get there, and then they'll make the journey to Australia, I hope, and from there, my collaborator will reship the books and cards to their destination.
The trip from Florida to Australia seems to be somewhat variable; sometimes it's fast, sometimes slow. But I wanted y'all to know it's on the way.
International Update
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 07:26:50 AM
I spoke with Rudy at GamesQuest today (well, exchanged emails). All UK-Hub orders have left the building, which means anywhere from a few days to two weeks depending on location.
For the AUS-NZ folks, I intend to put those two boxes in the mail on Monday, but I need to clean up some customs forms and ensure that addressing goes well. Last time, I put all that info in the box and it got lost or removed, so I want to have it all done in replicate so my collaborator gets them via email.
