Happy Dance!

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Happy Dance! Happy Dance! Happy Dance!

Everybody's buyin' Freeform Anthropomorphica!

Happy Dance! (And thanks to all of you who bought it, and I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what kind of cool stuff you build!)

CHRIS

Workin', workin' like a busy little beaver....

Okay, right now, I'm working on 3-4 projects simultaneously.

Here's the list:
1. Coven of Bast. I'm pretty satisfied with the text, and I'll be starting on the art soon enough. I want to set Bast aside for a few weeks, make sure I don't have any more ideas pop into my head that I want to include before I seriously start laying it out. As it stands now, CoB is around 30K words, and will probably be around 80-90 pgs when fully laid out. As can be expected, it's got alot of culture, plot hooks, setting detail, and around 50 new feats, some new equipment and other unique Bastian goodies.

2. I'm working on State of the Otherverse: Cybernetics Armory, the seqel to D7 Tech Update: Cybernetics. It's around 17K words, will include over 40 new cyber implants, 20 new weapons, expanded rules for full and light reconstruction cyborgs, some Otherverse specific starting occupations and cyborg feats. It really gives a sense not only of culture, but also of new possibilities for 'borgs. I'm laying this one out right now and look for it in a couple of weeks.

3. I'm finishing up Freeform Anthropomorphica for the Thinking Races line. I just spent all day browsing Furripedia and immersing myself in the culture, as well as collecting GNU, Share/Share Alike and other public domain and free images for the project. I absolutely LOVE public domain image sites and services, because they are such a great way to illustrate lower-budget projects.

Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun writing this. Like Galaxy Command, its a bit goofy, a bit lighter and less serious than the usual Otherverse America stuff. I've been adding stuff to the manuscript steadily over the last few weeks, and will continue to do so. I want this puppy to be a comprehensive character creation guide for Pathfinder. Basically I'm aiming to top what Palladium did back in the day with the TMNT Bio-E mutation creation system. It's going to be a very pretty, very deep project, and as with Galaxy Command, I'm being inspired to push my writing to match up with the excellence of the stock art I've found. F.A. should be out in another month or less.

4. On a related note, Black Tokyo II is still in the pipeline. The manuscript is about 30K words, and I'm pretty satisfied with it as it stands. I'm gathering art, including some new Amanda Webb and hopefully some Anthony Cournoyer pieces, as well as older Japanese art- shunga and uriko-e prints in the public domain. Again, another very pretty product, if it comes out the way I want it to.

Also, I've got a couple of advanced classes for Otherverse America and Psi-Watch in the can, and I'll be uploading them soon. I've also got our first Pathfinder release on deck. It's The Thinking Races: Iron and Steel. This short sourcebook is all about playing constructs, elementals and other durable metal and stone beings in Pathfinder, and includes a bunch of races more than a little inspired by the Warforged. TR: Iron and Steel also includes Pathfinder revisions of the Forgeblood Feats originally presented in 2005's Megafeats: New Paths to Victory.

So I've got a lot on my plate, and you guys can expect a bunch of cool products as we wind down 2009.

Blessed Be,
CHRIS

Something I just noticed

There's more stock art than ever on RPG now, but over the last few weeks I've noticed fewer and fewer actual gaming releases. I know I'm buying the art, and doing stuff with it, but is anybody else? I'm worried the RPG market is stagnating a bit, which is probaly natural as people focus on Gen Con and the Pathfinder release.

Anyway, I'm working on some stuff right now.... Black Tokyo II and the Bastian sourcebook. The Bastain sourcebook is turning out to be really fun. I enjoy detailing new cultures and playing junior anthropologist, which makes world books like this rewarding to do. Plus, there's something exhilirating at designing a religion around a mostly forgotten pagan diety. It makes me feel like I'm reclaiming something, polishing up an old divine concept, and putting my own unique stamp on it. It's almost an act of worship, strange as that sounds.

Anyway, look for both soon, as well as some shorter releases as soon as I send 'em to Mark.

CHRIS

Black Tokyo II In the Works

Right now, I'm gathering research and putting the initial outline for Outcast America together, but since I know it's going to be a big, lengthy project, I've been working on shorter, easier to put together mini-splats and short PDFs. I want to have a good release cushion while I work on Outcast America, especially since the Pathfinder release is imminent, and I want to have some products to release this August.

So amid some other projects, I've finally dug out the manuscript for Black Tokyo II and have begun working on it in earnest. Black Tokyo has been my best seller by a wide, wide margin, so it deserves some support, plus, it's just a fun thing to work on.

So let me just say this: Black Tokyo II is coming soon!

CHRIS

Random Fun Release

In between Otherverse America releases, I like to work on random fun projects. Apolitical, mass-market, goofy stuff. Fantasy, less serious sci-fi.... anime girls being violated by hentai tentacles. Whatever, you know?

I just put the finishing touches on Galaxy Command- a 90 pager minisourcebook about 70s style cheesy sci-fi TV. It was a project I was smiling the whole way through. Part of the reason I got it out so fast is the fact I decided to look at it artistically from the point of view of a lame 70s TV producer. They reused props, built things on the cheep, did whatever it took to put the TV shows out quickly and cheaply, and I thought I'd do the same. So instead of writing first, and than finding stock art that sorta fits, I decided to pick my stock art first and write around that. The cover peice from LPJ's Image Portfolio: Mixed Genre, a badass Tron-esque android made of glowing red light became the setting's central villian. I found a great Ronin Arts sci-fi clip art pack, which I'd been first introduced to a few years back through the purchase of another sci fi project. This stuff is fucking incredible. It looks just like old Dave Cockrum stuff, and is perfect for what I'm going for.

Here, let me show you some of the art.....

These pretty mofos come from the Ronin Art's stock pack, and as you can probally guess from my previous work are another Legion of Superheros riff- they're the "Dawnstar" type race. Low tech, Amerindian-flavored, winged humanoids. The sheer quality of the art I found let me really get into this project. As cheesy as it is, and as cheesy as I wrote everything, all the injokes and oddities, I really had fun with Galaxy Command.

I mean, this is pure old-school Cockrum here!

I'm still a little giddy about that. Anyway, I wrote it with the original Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica in mind, not to mention 70s era Legion and Cockrum's X-Men... and the Omega Men, and Alien Legion, and the Futurians and a whole load of comics even more obscure and niche than that. Hopefully, if you like old space-opera type sci-fi, you'll get a kick out of this book.

Laying out Galaxy Command was pretty fun. I kept the layout as clean and simple as I could, in the spirit of old 70s RPGS. I was considering doing the book entirely in black and white with spot color, like the original DC RPG, but that would of looked far too ugly, even for retro-kitcsh. Still, I enjoyed it, the red, white and blue pageborders, which really look 70s were almost a direct lift from the box of the DVD collection of old 70s shows which inspired this sourcebook!

One thing that I noticed I was doing about half way through coloring the art was making everyone either Caucasian or alien-colored. It's a pretty white-boy future in Galaxy Command, but once I realized I was doing it, I actually decided to keep it up. It's not the most inclusive thing out there, but for this project, based on media from a specific time period, it felt right. Anyway, it's an odd thing to admit, especially as racially integrated as most of my Othervere Stuff is. Not a big personal revalation, or some major contraversy, I hope, just something odd I noticed about the art. Speaking of art....

That's a few Sade stock images right there, cropped together and backed with some PD images from NASA. Looks frickin' amazing. I really love her stuff. I wish she'd do more males and monstrous figures, but her T&A heroines are amazing.

Along with Galaxy Command, expect a Free20 product that gives you another player race for the setting. they'll be releasing simultaniously. Let me just tell you the title: Free20: Threeway. That should get your lavicious minds working over time.....

Okay, let me stop you before you all get too out of hand. For a few years now, ever since Guide to the Known Galaxy, I've been trying and trying to find a way to create a Carrgite-inspired race for D20 Future. Carrgites are the species of Triad of the Legion- a perky little brunette ninja who's power is that she can split into 3 perky little brunette ninjas. Anyway, as a D20 power, her ability is unbelievably BROKEN, but I finally figured out a way to do her justice... as a +0 ECL player species! Anyway, pick 'em both up (especially the free stuff!) and let me know what you think.

Anyway, after a day or two of vacaton, I'm going to start seriously working on Outcast America. It will probally be the darkest thing I've ever written. More on that later.

CHRIS

Still in shock....

It's been a week since Dr. George Tiller was murdered and I'm still processing it.

I've been writing about- obsessing about- a coming conflict between pro-choice and anti-choice activists for years now, since high school. I've studied the subject, read every thing I could get my hands on about the killings in Pensacola and Brookline back in the mid-90s, and while I had all the knowledge about the subject in my head, a decade of relative peace (or at least Cold War) had eroded some of the emotional response. I was thinking of those events in terms of history and literature, in terms of what those killings meant in terms of the real future of America and the fictional future of America I'm inventing.

Now, it seems very, very deeply weird to be writing a sourcebook about a fictionalized military sci-fi version of this conflict as a real soldier in the real war is laid to rest. On one hand I feel like The Goddamned Batman- I've got files and photoes on my hard drive at home, I know the psychology and tactics of the badguys and have a pretty good guess what will happen next. On the other hand, I feel like a fucking vulture.

What you may not know about me is I've never had any signifigant personal contact with abortion. I've never had a girlfriend get pregnant, though I do know alot of women who have confessed their own abortions to me. (which is sorta understandable if they knew what I wrote about, what kind of reference books I've got on my shelf.... I'm a pro-choice guy who isn't a Christian, and isn't likely to judge and knows enough about the subject not to make an ass of myself. But alot of these women, I've never told about my writing, or my bookshelf, or really about my politics or faith. It's just like I've got some kind of comforting pro-choice pheremones....) In EVERY single case, these women feel guilty which is a testament to both their innate goodness and the sheer virulence of the pro-life mindset.

A few weeks before this, I was watching the movie Knocked Up with my friends, and I commented to one of them that when a main character seriously starts considering abortion, it ceases to be a comedy. I still stand by that, but what got me thinging is that even I as a pro-choicer have sorta bought into the pro-life meme. The ideology is like spiritual Sarin gas- it does nothing but spread death and misery, and you can't escape it. I started asking myself why do even we pro-choicers view abortion as this monumentous, life altering event? Why do we allow the pro-life cause to make us feel guilty about what is basically the first choice a parent- a good parent- makes? I got to thinking about it more and more, and I realized that part of being a good parent is knowing when the circumstances aren't right for you to be a parent, and taking action to prevent a lifetime of misery for your child to be. So why exactly is abortion any more signifigant than sitting through a spectacularly boring PTA meeting, another mundane (and often lampooned in sitcomedies) part of good parenting?

On a Lighter Note
That's why I can't watch Labryinth today, by the way. You know the one, David Bowie, muppets, Jennifer Connelly? I can't watch it as an adult, even if I loved it as a kid, because of the stident and obvious anti-abortion metaphor. Seriously, if any kid who grew up watching that movie has an abortion as an adult and feels even the tensiest bit guilty about it, about doing the right thing for herself and her family, every copy o' that peice of shit should be pulled off the shelves and shoved right up Jim Henson's dead asshole. And don't get me started on Bill Mantlo's run on Alpha Flight and Goblyn... sure that run gave the comic book world Jim Lee's penciling debut, but it also gave us the world's first aborted fetus superhero.

Anyway, about two years ago I was working at a call center for American Express, replacing lost and stolen credit cards for overprivledged yuppies who were put out by the fact that I couldn't get 'em a card TODAY, but I'd be happy to get 'em a card tomorrow. 99% of my customers, I would of cheerfully shot in the face, the entitled, spoilt, hedonistic rich fuckers.... bastards, the lot of them. But one day, I got a call from a woman who had lost her credit card last week, and we'd already UPSed her a replacement. She called, practically in tears, because the card hadn't arrived yet, and was promised to arrive by 5 pm. At first I thought she was just another damn prima donna, but I started to talk to her, calm her down and I said that I'd send out another replacement to her tomorrow, and I'd send it to her work place.

She explained she couldn't get packages at work. 100% non-negotiable, and it wasn't just a matter of her boss being a jerk, it was an ironclad security policy. I immediately woke up a bit, because very few workplaces have that strict of security requirements. Military bases, especially intel bases have that level of security. So do some really skeezy strip clubs/whorehouses and most crack houses, but those kind of folks usually don't have a gold AMEX. And one other place of work....

She explained the situation. She is an abortion doc, whose home address was in Kansas somewhere. I don't remember where. And she's crying on the phone with me, because the bad guys know where she lives, and they may have taken the package UPS left in her mailbox. And she's afraid that politically motivated credit card fraud is the least of her worries, because if they (she capitalizes the words as she says them) murder might be next.

Okay, no question about it. She's not a spoiled rich fuck at all, and I'm about to pull out all the stops, the Spoilt Millionaire option for Titanium cardholders only to get her a card tonight by private courier. Fuck policy. Fuck the fact she doesn't spend enough to get the shit-bag billionaire treatment of having a card deployed to her by helicopoter-piloting mercenaries, like some kind of really stupid Shadowrun game.

This woman is a fucking hero, putting her life and financies and reputation on the line to save women when they are at their most desperate and needy, and getting called 'babykiller' for her trouble. She's a cop on the beat, a soldier in Iraq, she's a member of the motherfucking Justice Leauge of America. She's getting the card, and I tell her this, and I'm thanking the Goddess that I took her call, and not the Evangelical Christian guy over to the cubilce on the right, because even though he's a good guy, everything the right to life movement would ever need to fuck this woman's life completely was on my screen.

And that was that. I helped her. Felt good about it for days, about the only time in that whole job full of babysitting rich bastards and dipshit debutantes that I actually felt I accomplished something postive for the world. And remeber, this poor lady was terrified three years before Tiller's death. I don't know if she worked at Tiller's clinic, or even knew him, or not, and I honestly don't even remember her name, not that I'd say it here even if I did, but that doesn't matter. Where ever she is I hope she's safe. And I hope she still has the credit card I sent her.

Anyway, enough of my rambling, incoherant rage. I'm still working on APEX, and just finishing up the art. I'll start layout on APEX either this week or next, and should have a draft up on RPGnow for purchase by July. I'm already starting work on Outcast America, which deals with kids, cults and criminals in the setting, a sourcebook on the Bastian Chocier faction, and setting books for 2107's San Fransisco and Solomon Station, the Lifer-flagged spacestation out in Jupiter orbit.

Finally, I'm worring about future violence. I'm glad that the pro-choice blogger circuit is calling FOX news and that dipshit O'Riely to account for his ideological imeptus to violence. he's like America's Osama Bin Laden, but only more dangerous, because alot of Americans actually LISTEN to him. I'm hoping that after all the dust settles, Operation Rescue is at the center of the nastiest FBI/Dept of Homeland Security fuck-fest ever devised by man or beast, and that Randall Terry is in prision as a co-conspirator.

However, short term, I have a feeling both organizations are going to emerge stronger and even meaner, like a dying coyote with rabies, even if the long-term survival of Op Rescue and FOX News are in question. I also have a feeling that more violence is in the offering- I'd place the the next anti-abortion shooting in one of the Dakotas, either north or south, because both states have recently been ideological battlegrounds, and are dramatically underserved in terms of abortion access. Killing a doctor there will seriously hinder abortion access, and garner media attention, and will provide a concrete tactical 'victory' for the extremist art of the anti-choice movement. The clinic on the Ogalada-Souix reservation land in South Dakota, the one I mention on page one of the Otherverse America setting is a Real Place (TM) (C), (though I changed the name in the game) and I really, really hope they're tightening their security. Having Federal marshalls in palce to protect the clinic wouldn't be untoward, and I hope President Obama does so.

It would also be a memetic/propaganda victory for the pro-choice side- if the media runs photoes of US Marshalls escorting young women into the clinic, it calls to mind the Marshalls escorting the Little Rock Seven to school during the segreation era, and reminds people that the government occasionally takes Big Risks to protect the rights of its citizens, and visually/historically reframes the debate as a matter of civil rights.

I'm hoping Tiller's clinic opens soon, but if I were the staff there I"d be bracing for more violence, as well as more semi-violent and non-violent protests and harassment, everything from sit ins in procedure rooms, 'lock and glue rescues' that destroy the doors or block access to the clinic, to harassment from lifer infiltrators within the local government, beauracracy and regulatory agencies. I have a feeling that one of Operation Rescue's tactics will be to discourage, harass and eventually try and bankrupt which ever doctor assume's Dr. Tiller's practice.

Anyway, it's been a long post with little central theme, and I'll let you go now. Be safe.

Blessed be,
CHRIS A FIELD

This is why the pro-lifers are the BAD GUYS in my fiction

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/02/olbermann-fox-news-compli_n_210188.html

Ever wonder why I write the pro-life side as the bad guys?

This Sunday morning you had your answer.

CHRIS