Sunday, October 27, 2013

Sentai Revisited

Well, the new job at MiniMart is not working out as well as I had hoped. So, I've given notice and am currently looking for something better. The last few weeks have been rough- in fact, I'd call them absolute crap, but hopefully the next few will be a bit better.

I just sent Heavy Weapons to Mark for posting at RPGnow. This nine dollar sourcebook is about 130 pages of very crunchy goodness- hundreds of new spells, magic items, mundane weapons and pieces of gear specifically for the Heavy Future campaign setting. And just to remind you, Galaxy Command itself is now a free product! Go get it when you sign in to download Heavy Future or Heavy Weapons.

I've got a small and motley assortment of projects on deck. Among them.....

1. Dirty Galaxy, a disease, haunt, trap and other innanimate nastiness sorucebook for Heavy Future.
2. Expanded Races: Erobots- robot fetish character options for Heavy Feature's most fun and modular new race.
3. Masters of Endara Campaign Setting- my He-Man and the Masters of the Universe inspired fantasy setting.
4. Closed: Monsters of the Army of God- still waiting on the last art from Felipe Gaona (grrrrrr).

However, my real-world situtation has me just distracted enough I'm not getting anywhere with any of them. So today, I plugged in a season of CSI, and started looking back at my Sentai material and revising it with an eye for POD. I figured it would be good, brainless work that would recharge my batteries a little with its completion. I'm right about that- tonight I'm about 70% of the way through the conversion and consolidation into one larger POD sourcebook. I will be combining the material from Sentai Spectacular and Sentai Sequel into the POD release, along with some, but not all the material from Expanded Occupations: Children of Gaea and some new, print-exclusive content.

Because of Amanda's art process, I've got solid B&W inked line work for the art, which will be easier to get into print, especially considering the ongoing darkness problems we've been having with BTU. So Sentai might beat hentai to the POD market as the first Otherverse Games POD release. You just never know how things are going to turn out, either in real life or in terms of desktop publishing.

Talk to you later, and hopefully I'll have more cheerful news,
CHRIS


Thursday, October 24, 2013

Heavy Future is Up!!!!

Heavy Future just went on sale at RPGNow. Heavy Weapons, which details the spells and weapons, will be up in a couple more days. I'm waiting on a few last pieces of art and it'll be good to go.

I have also made the original Galaxy Command campaign setting free- at about 4 years old, it's probably generated all the sales it's going to, and in many ways, this book has been replaced by the artistically superior Races of the Command Fleet.

Over the last year, I've been using Galaxy Command as a general spine on which to hang other genres of sci fi..... sleazy, pornographic adventure in the case of Heavy Future, or Silver Age, Legion-inspired superheroism in Action Galaxy. Galaxy Command itself is a somewhat generic space opera setting, which gives me a lot of flexibility. I can remix elements as desired to capture specific genres of sci-fi, and still take advantage of the basic work on the core setting.

Plus- gamers get a free, big, fun core rulebook for D20 Modern/D20 Future, which they can easily import to Pathfinder if they want.

So tonight I'm going to put the finishing touches upon Heavy Weapons, after that, I will complete a couple of future Heavy Future releases- Dirty Galaxy (which focuses on inanimate threats, like diseases or traps) and Expanded Races: Erobots.

I want to finish these ones off, and then do some fantasy- I want to play with Amanda's setting a little, and I'm already working in the background on my Endara campaign a little more.

I'll give some previews and more details a little later,
CHRIS

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Job Found, Projects Coming

Well, it's been about a week since the last update, and here's what's going on.

I managed to get interviews with several different companies this week, including a cooking job for one of the town's McDonalds- same crap work I was doing for Whataburger. I got the job of course, and was scheduled to start Friday. However, in the intervening period, I had interviews with several other companies.

I ended up accepting a gig with the Mini Mart company- a local chain of convenience stores in central Texas- there's about a dozen of these stores around Kerrville, and several more in the surrounding towns. I think the company focuses mostly on smaller markets, where they're not competing directly with Stripes or the other big chains. I'll be starting up with them tomorrow- the store I'll be working at will be the one directly across the street from my old Whataburger, which falls somewhat short of irony.

It's slightly lower money than the Whataburger job, which I had been at, either in Corpus or up here, for five years. However, pay raises and advancement is much more rapid, and the company offers a better benefit package. To wit, as opposed to the cheap SOBs I used to work for, they offer benefits at all. Plus, and this is important to me- for the money I'll be getting paid, I'll be sweating and stressing a lot less. I've worked both restaurant and convenience stores in the past, and the latter is a far easier, far less stressful environment.

So now that my 'civilian' job situation is all cleared up, lets talk my RPG writing job.

I just finished off Heavy Future and turned it into Mark for publication yesterday. It will be up soon. I'm waiting on the last pieces of art for Heavy Weapons, which will deal with weapons, spells and gear. That should be up in a few more days. I'm also finishing up a follow on supplement called Dirty Galaxy, focusing on diseases, haunts, traps and other nastiness in the Heavy Future campaign. It's a follow on to The Dangers & Discoveries POD sourcebook from Louis Porter Jr. Designs, which collected 24 each of traps, diseases, ect, and is written in a similar format. I'm actually plugging the old LPJD sourcebook in Dirty Galaxy, because there's some cross over there.

After that, I need to keep on Felipe Gaona's back to get the last art for Closed: Monsters of the Army of God. That'll probably be my last big Otherverse America release of the year.

Beyond that, I've decided that I didn't have enough material or inspiration for a Sectaurs stand alone campaign world, though I've got quite a bit of art already. So I will be folding the Sectaurs stuff into my He-Man homage campaign, Endara. I'm actually starting formal work on that book finally, and will be working on that in between Heavy Future projects.

John Picot LOVES Heavy Future, and is taking the setting in different directions than I planned. The Erobot and Psyren races in the sourcebook are all his, and he's constantly coming up with new setting elements, from new weapons and spells to space pirate NPCS. It was his decision to emphasize robot fetish and technosexual fetish elements with the Erobots, and that hook will form the basis for my upcoming Expanded Races: Erobots sourcebook.

CHRIS

Friday, October 11, 2013

Reality Intrudes Part II

Guys, I just lost my job.

I'll find something else very soon, and I'll get back to working on Heavy Future and Heavy Weapons, since I've already got most, if not all the art I need for those books.

I don't think I'll be doing anything useful today though.

CHRIS

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Upcoming: Heavy Future and Heavy Magic

 Night before last, I began laying out Heavy Future. I assembled a rough cut PDF of Heavy Future, which tops out at 135 pages. Originally, I planned a single sourcebook, but the sheer size of the manuscript necessitated breaking my original plans for Heavy Future into two sourcebooks. Heavy Future includes all the world information, a very interesting, deep gazetteer, four new player races and all the classes, feats and starting talents common to the setting. In short, Heavy Future is all about the world and options for the creatures that inhabit it.

Right now, Heavy Future is lavishlyillustrated by John Picot. I actually sent him a copy of the rough cut last night. I got an email from John this morning offering to replace most of the stock illustrations in the PDF with his own illustrations.

I naturally said 'Oh Hell, yes!"

So Heavy Future will actually be better illustrated than I had originally planned. It's already great looking, I want to see what John adds to it to make it even better.

Heavy Weapons is Book II of the Heavy Future canon. It's a HUGE toy and power book. In addition to all the mundane futuristic adventuring gear and weapons, (like the Particle Katana I previewed a few posts ago) Heavy Weapons includes more than a hundred each of new spells and new magic items.

You've seen bits and pieces of Heavy Weapons here over the last few weeks.

Right now, I'm debating whether to release Future & Weapons as a single download on RPGNow, essentially an electronic version of a classic RPG boxed set, or make the books stand alone releases. I'm leaning towards releasing the two sourcebooks independently, each priced at about 40-45% of what I would sell the pair of books for as a unit.

Whatever I decide, look for the two Heavy.... sourcebooks sometime very soon.

Blessed Be,
CHRIS