With the year coming to an end, I thought it would make a good time to provide some insights into how we work and give you some previews as to what might be coming from us next year.
It's all a bit amateur-hour...?
We are a small operation - it's basically just me doing all of the design, layout, planning and logistics needed when putting a book together, with Nigel helping me out with writing and games design. We have a handful of different groups we play with that we rope into playtesting stuff for us when things are ready, but we're essentially just a couple of guys doing this as a hobby. It's an incredibly rewarding hobby - we get to see our creations come to life, to see other people playing them, and to play them ourselves, both woith our friends and intriducting new people to our games at conventions - but a hobby all the same.
As such we tend to work on things in fits and starts, swapping between projects as the muse takes us, letting out enthusiasm for a project guide where our efforts are spent. The key for us is that we're having fun being creative, not churning things out because we need to pay the bills.This can mean that we miss deadlines, that projects get put back on a shelf for months, if not years, and that something new can come along and take over even when another project is very close to completion.
Biut, with all that said, lets have a look at out current suite of projects in the works and see what you might get to see at some point next year...
Pneuma: bronze-age high fantasy
Pneuma is the game we are perhaps closest to completion. We've done some initial "alpha" playtesting (which basically just means getting some people to create characters and run through a quick scene to test the basic maths of the system), and have the book about 80% written. Once a project gets to a certain point of development, I tend to get it laid out and then finish off the writing directly in the laid-out document, so it's also about 80% laid out.
Pneuma is a very high fantasy game. It's set in a world inspired by the eastern mediterranean during the late bronze age, and the mythology of those cultures. It is a game - and setting - all about magic. The world of Pneuma is infused with magical spirits tied to the essences of matter, enegy, life, thought and time. All of the sapeient peoples of the world can manipulate these spirits, known as Pneuma, and achieve wonderous magical effects. As such their societies, economies, and cultures have developed around the use of these magics.
It is a fantasy world, but not one of your typical game settings, where elves, dwarves and orcs live alongside humans, and worship a pantheon of noble or destructive gods. In the setting's past, humans and their gods left, mysteriously, and left the Pneuma and the other peoples of the world to thrive in their absence. There are classic people of myth, such as Minotaurs, Cyclopses, Demons, and Satyrs, but there are also new wondrous peoples of the world, such as living spirits, living statues, the descendents of the demigods of thunder and lightning, and even sentient colonies of bees.
Mechanically, the system is based around using your magic in inventive ways to solve your problems. In combat, you engage in a magical duels in an innovative system unlike anything we've written, or even played, before. You might blast your enemies by summoning fire pneuma to explode in the air around them, or empower your body, weapons and armour to turn you into the ultimate fighting machine, slicing through their magical defences with your bronze blade. The system handles any approach your immagination can dream up.
It's also a game where the narrative is crucial. You can describe how your magic manifests in any way you wish, you have a prophesy that guides your story in mysterious ways, and, most importantly, you have your own personal pneuma - a spirit bonded to you that works with your to help you master your magical powers... and also chips in to the narrative when other players or the GM activate them to roleplay whatever inspiring words, wise counsel, or even mischief, your pneuma gets up to.
This game is currently looking for playtesters, so check out our discord if you'd like to get an early look and help us refine and bring this game to market.
Mission of the Month: more S.M.A.S.H. adventures in 2025
Our commitment to releasing a new S.M.A.S.H. mission pack every month has been really helpful in keeping us motivated with other projects and keeping the sales ticking over. Each new pack not only brings in a score or so of its own sales, but also seems to stimulate sales of our existing catalogue as it reminds people that we're here and puts us under the nose of new customers.
The main reason that we have been able to keep putting these out every month is beacuse many of them were written and playtested months ago. Echoes of Phobos, Shadow of the Eclipse, and Legends Reborn were written to be run at UK Games Expo last spring, and Glory to Gorgon was one of our playtest adventures. There's still one one of our UKGE games still to release, so you can look forward to that in January, but there are others in the works that we're hoping to get written up and put out in the following months. Here's a look at some of what we've got in the works:
- Infinite Horizons: The last of our UKGE 2024 adventures, this is a game for experienced chatracters with powerful enemies, exploring that classic comic-book theme of alternate realities.
- Rumble in the Jungle: An adventure written for my local monthly play group with heavy "Predator" vibes as the PCs hunt down an alien in a central american jungle, while being hunted themselves by the country's military junta.
- Night of the Ninja: Another one from Nigel's head that I've yet to play in so can't say too much, other than it's about ninjas and we've been asked to play characters with an occult investigative background. I've created a librarian taoist priest with powers from his Fulu wards and talismans, and I can't wait to try him out.
- Gods of the Saxons: Another of Nigel's, but this one's only at concept stage. I think we'd be playing as anglo-saxon gods to do something with that comic book trope of old gods in the modern day. Not sure if this one will see light of day, so watch this space.
(note that many of these are working titles, so may change by the time they come to press)
Divergence Mechanism: Neon and Steam Acanepunk
This is our newest project, but one that has come along very quickly over the last few weeks. An fantasy game with a single urban setting (perhaps unorigianlly just called "The City" at the moment). Four conflicing magical forces - teh Burning, the Dark, the Dreaming, and the Engine - define the setting, as does the interaction between the material realm and the "Other" - a dimension that you can transfer your consciousness, but one home to strange and dangerous magical spirits.
As players you will be a gang of punks, looking to fight against the oppresive ruling factions of the City. You might bend one or more of the magical forces in the setting to your will, be tained by one of the forces of magic, or just be strong, tough, skilled, and smart enough on your own.
It's a game with strong cyberpunk vibes - the Engine can provide you with the equivalent of cyberware, the Other is matrix/cyberspace you can explore, and above all, you are punks fighting against the oppressive systems that keep the ordinary person pushed down, and hordes the all wealth and power for thesmelves.
Mechanically it has a system that uses a deck of playing cards, with some light deck construction, that makes for fun narrative play and (hopefully - we've not playtested it yet) fast and cinematic combat scenes.
Given that we only had the idea a couple of weeks or so ago, this game is scarily close to playtesting, so if you fancy trying it out whilst helping us out, have alook at our discord and sign up to help us playtest..
Dead Sector: back on the shelf for now
If you've been following us for a while, you may remember Dead Sector that I was touting as being in the works a while back. For the moment this has been put back on the metaphorical shelf. Annoyingly it's not that far off being done, but I've just hit a bit of writer's block on it and have been distracted by other projects that are claiming my attention.
As a quick fill-in, Dead Sector is a cyber post apocalypse game, where the PCs are a part of a community of survivors in a dangerous post apocalypic world that was once an entire city-world, like Corrusant in Star Wars or the hive worlds of Warhammer 40,000.
However, the city is now in ruins and the surviors live amongst the bones of its once mighty structures - kind of like the world of The Matrix movies, when they're not in the matrix. Mechanically, it's system relies on the use of teh different resources you manage to scavenge to overcome complications and achieve success to capture the post apocalypic feel.
But, as I said, this is back on teh shelf for now. I do intend to get back to it at some point, but it's probably unliek it will see light of day in 2025. That said, writing up that last paragraph has got me thinking about it again, so who knows...
S.A.G.A.: Bringing Asymmetry to Fantasy
A final entry here, because this is the project that is at its earliest stage, and as such probably won't see release in 2025, but definitely something we will be working on over the year, so maybe it'll hit playtest.
Very much a working title, S.A.G.A. (Sorcerous Adventure Game with Asymmetry), is our attempt to do what we did with S.M.A.S.H. for comic book superheroes, to fantasy novels.
Let me be clear, this is not just making a fantasy game out of the S.M.A.S.H. gane engine, but applying the same basic design principles to the fantasy genre.We want to create a game with strongly asymmetrical character mechanics that captures the drama and narrative feel of a great fantasy novel. And note that's fantasy novels, not fantasy games. If we do it right, this won't feel anything like D&D at all, but will allow you to create games based on a wide range of your favourite fantasy novels, or even to craft your own.
It's a project that we're really excited about, but also possiblyt slightly intimidated by. Watch this space for more news as the game develops.
Playtesters Wanted
I've mentioned on a couple of occasions above that we;re looking out for new playtesters. With so many projects on the go, and several in current need of, or being close to, playtest, we find it puts pressure on our gaming groups when we just want to playtest something new every week. If we just carried on regardless, we could end up hogging playtime and denying others in our grous the chance to run games themselves, or play the long-runing games we've enjoyed in the past. These people are our friends, and that's not how we want to treat them. We hope that they will be happy to try out the games we're working on, as they are the things that excite us, but we appreciate our games are just one amongst many.
As such, I'm interested in starting up a monthly group that will be dedicated to playtesting whatever we're working on at the time. If you're been excited or intrigued by some of the ideas above and would like to get an early look at what's going on, then please join the discord and sign up for a playtest group. It will really help us push our projects forward and make sure our finished products are a little less "amateur".
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