After that, look for Expanded Races: Nanofeasters and Guide to the Known Galaxy: Solomon Station. The image at right depicts a Nanofeaster soldier, illustrated by John Picot. The Nanofeasters never had original art, I illustrated the race in both its initial appearance and in Species of Otherverse America, with the same piece of stock art, so its gratifying to finally have some original artwork on the race.
John really captured the size, ferocity and implicit violence in these guys. I'm going to lay out ER: Nanofeasters tonight, and Solomon Station tomorrow or Thursday. ER: Nanofeasters is going to be a quick project- about 20 pages with only a few illustrations. Solomon, meanwhile will be a longer, more complex and more difficult release.
After that I might do a couple of small fantasy or Galaxy Command releases if I get inspired, but I'm thinking that Solomon Station and Anthros of Endara will be my last big books of the year.
Plans for 2013
I'm already planning ahead to next year's releases. I expect that Black Tokyo's Unlimited Edition and the Endara Campaign Settings will anchor 2013, and be the books that most heavily drive sales.
The Lifer Army Book
I will also be releasing a comprehensive army roster book/monster manual for the Lifer Nation in early 2013. This massive 100+ page tome will consolidate all the Lifer stat blocks from Otherverse America, Never Born Again, and Ghosts & Promises, among other sources. This will be a relatively cheap product for me, in terms of art. I've already got tons of art for these characters- as it stands right now, I'm commissioning a cover from Alex Garcia and a few pieces of new interior art, but the majority of the art has already been purchased. In addition, I'm already adding more threats to the list, from a CR 22 'henchman' for Artemis down to new CR 1 Lifer pre-gen characters for convention games or quick sessions.
I'm also experimenting with building Lifer military vehicles as creatures with the Construct type rather than as equipment built around the D20 vehicle combat rules. So far, I've built an absolutely kickass VTOL troop carrier/air cav type vehicle, a hover tank, a scout bike and a 'technical'- basically a pickup with a rail gun mounted in the bed, and I'll write up some more tonight. Building vehicles as creatures seems much more intuitive to me, and a lot more fun....and hopefully more useful around the game table.
Finally, last night I went back through and completely revised Artemis' statblock as she appeared in Otherverse America 2nd Edition. I had built that character using the D20 Modern rules for building monsters- last night, I rebuilt her as a Pathfinder RPG style Outsider, and the differences are staggering. The revised Artemis has about twice as many HP, her defenses overall got pumped up, and if she full attacks with her main gun, she's inflicting around 750 points of damage per average round. This bitch really earns her CR 29- she's basically designed to TPK anything that goes up against her, and could probably kill any critter in the Pathfinder Bestiary in one or two rounds, up to and including things like Balors, Pit Fiends, elder dragons, and the Terrasque. I'm not normally a killer GM, but I figure if you're sending your players against an epic level threat like Artemis, a character defined as the ultimate badass in game fiction, 'everybody dies' should be a viable, even the most likely, outcome.
Anyway, I'll preview the two versions of Artemis side by side in a couple of days and you can see what I mean.
Blessed Be,
CHRIS
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