Now that Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts is out (and is selling like… well… what’s the opposite of hotcakes? cold porridge*? yeah, that), I’m setting down to work on a few projects I’ve got on back-burners, side-burners and even file 13. In time, all of these projects will appear on the blog. Some (well most really) are intended to go to publication in some form or another, but all will be available (in piece-meal formats in some cases) through the blog for free.

Swords & Skulduggery

The companion volume to Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts is a book of optional material for primarily non-spellcasting classes. In it so far is a complete rebuild and expansion on magic weapon generation and my reworking of the Wounds and Pain rules. Of course, the simplified 2d6 thief will be in there too. My goal is to have a bunch of non-spellcasting classes in here, possibly including a bunch of fighter and thief focused special crafts in the style of the Principalities of Glantri  “Prestige Classes” that I wrote up a couple of years ago.

I would say this project is about 5% done.

The Valley of the Red Apes

I wrote up the first adventure in the Valley of the Red Apes a while back – the Ziggurat of Rhissel the Morning Lord. But the adventures in the valley don’t end there. I’ve drawn up a map of the valley proper (to be posted in a month or two) and am half-way done working on a second adventure using another map I posted previously (Jen’s Hall). When this is done, it should be a small regional map with wandering monster tables and encounters, as well as a set of 4 site-based adventures to take place in the valley.

This project is about 40% done.

Challenge of the Frog Idol

Yeah, I released Challenge of the Frog Idol for that B/X Blackrazor challenge (which it won) some time ago. I then received some crazy accolades for the whole thing from a variety of awesome folk in the OSR. But at heart it is still something I threw together in two days, and I’m not happy with it. I’m not planning on re-writing any of the material already in the adventure, but I want to expand it, include more material for the dwarven citadel of Kuln, actually write up the other locations I have marked in the Black Mire, and maybe tie the whole thing together a bit more tightly. Some minor re-workings of the existing material are pretty much unavoidable (some details on dealing with the party trudging through deep swamps and so on), but overall it would just be me smoothing out the corners of this adventure and adding some new material.

So far this is just stuff floating around in my noggin’, no new work has been done, so this project is 0% done (although physically it’s at least 50% done).

Dyson’s Delves II

The big kahuna. Dyson’s Delves was a pretty solid seller and seems to scratch the itch that the majority of my blog readership have. I have more than enough maps in my portfolio to put together chapter 2 of this book in a day or so of scanning and layout. Chapter 1 of Dyson’s Delves was almost 60 pages of material covering 5 adventures.

So far I’ve got Cavanaugh’s Hall, The Burial Mound of Esur the Red, Atarin’s Delve, Ochre Rock, the Treasure Map to the Red Cave, and the Ruins of Corvel on the Mount. I’ve also got Goblin Gully and By Esophagus Brood which are complete, but unstatted, so I have to go into both of those and add full game stats.

But that’s not nearly the 60 pages of material to bring it up to the standard set by Delves I, so I’ll throw in the full Valley of the Red Apes material that I have up there near the top of this list of pending projects and I hope to be good to go.

So all-in-all this project is about 40% done, and can be brought up to 75% with just a couple days of dedicated scanning and layout.

Necropolis: Ottawa

This is not for publication (except on the blog obviously – I intend to post everything RPG-related that I write or draw on here in some manner). This is my ultimate “swine” project (fuck I hate that term, but at the same time, I want to reclaim it, to point out that serious deep introspective roleplaying games can ALSO be fun, and that just because I’m an old-school D&D fanatic doesn’t mean I can’t also love my immersive storytelling games.)

I finally have a small group that want to play my darkest desire in RPGs. I have assembled a small Wraith: the Oblivion troupe. And it is now time to build up an environment to play in. A dark and twisted version of Ottawa & Gatineau, along with the wraiths and spectres that inhabit it.

This is going to suck up a bunch of my time for the next two to three weeks. And it’s only about 2% complete (and I want it done soon, so I can actually run this awesome game finally!)

Bar Fight!

This is a simple card-based sub-system for OSR fantasy games to make bar-room brawls fun, hectic, fast-paced and above all else, non-deadly. Basically each turn each character can grab something to throw or hit someone else with. They draw a card and the card tells them the carnage and bonuses or penalties that using said item provides – either towards accomplishing their goal or towards creating greater chaos and carnage if that is their goal. Cards like “bowl of stew”, “flagon of ale”, “mug”, “chair”, “annoyed halfling”, “local priest” and “flaming mess”. You get the idea.

So far this is just a list of card names and a general idea. So 10% done.

OSM-1

Yeah… about this one. I started in on a Labyrinth Lord based modern mercenary RPG called Old School Mercenaries almost exactly two years ago and never went back to it. It’s not 100% dead, and I don’t want to declare it officially dead, but I don’t think I’ll be investing much time into this any time soon (no matter how much it appeals to me). Part of me thinks I might go back and tweak it to Swords & Wizardry based rules because they handle saving throws a bit better for this kind of game and it might be the push I need to finish off the whole thing, but I honestly don’t know. As it stands, this is remaining on the back burner.

I’ve got the page layout done and about 25% of the text done.

Espionage ’88

While I’m not willing to pull the plug on OSM, I’m a lot more likely to say that Espionage ’88 has been consigned to File 13. So far it’s just a few house rules for classic Top Secret with the advantages / disadvantages from TS/SI thrown in. I don’t think it will ever go any further than this

File 13.

So there we go, a rough overview of my projects as they stand. Of course, I’ll still be posting maps once or twice a week for the foreseeable future (I still have at least 40 maps in my various mapping books that I haven’t posted yet), and the occasional other post of material outside the purview of these projects… But I find that if I actually list all my projects off, it is a lot easier to put my energy into them effectively.

 

*Something that is almost, but not quite, the exact opposite of hotcakes.