Design Notes, the Revised Otherverse America

For the last couple of days, I’ve been working HARD on the revised Otherverse America. The core book is going to be absolutely huge, and will be out sometime next year- late spring or early summer, depending on how quickly I can afford to gather art resources. I don’t want to rush it, and buying a lot of art at once strains my finances to the breaking point unfortunately.

(As an aside, if you’re an artist and want some work in the next couple of months, drop me a link to your online portfolio and information about your rates. My email is Christopherafield@hotmail.com.)

So what’s going to be in the book?

Right now, I’m consolidating information from the original core book and APEX, and incorporating bits and pieces of the sourcebooks I’ve written to date: Coven of Bast, the Eleusinian Covenant, Neverborn Again, and Razor Culture. Those will all still valid, and I’m pulling all the good ideas I had in those books, that I hadn’t though of yet when the core book was written. For example, the evil Nuremberg AI from Neverborn Again will be mentioned in the corebook, though greatly expanded on in the sourcebook, and the expanded information on the Nicellos family from Eleusinian Covenant will be included.

I will be including 11 races in the corebook- humans plus 10 non-human options:
• From the original book, we’ll have the Full Conversion Cyborgs, along with the expanded cultural options from Cybernetics Armory. We also keep the Neverborn, though their more complex racial feats will remain with their sourcebook.

• From APEX we’ll include the Couriers, Mechanics, Mediators, Nanofeasters and Shy Minutemen. (The Fluxminx and Softling Healers are getting moved to Sexually Transmitted Future, along with greatly expanded cultural info and racial feats.)

• From Coven of Bast we’ll have the Dreamborn Mau and the Ubasti, which are such an awesome idea I wish I had included them originally.

• From Guide to the Known Galaxy, we’ve got the Half Grey, who will be absolutely bad ass as spies.

The racial mix is pretty good. We’ve got at least four races that are incredible melee bruisers: FCBs, Nanofeasters, Shy Minutemen and Ubasti. Of those, two are tied to a specific faction: the Choicers have Ubasti and the Lifers get Nanofeasters, while the remaining two can be associated with any faction. With the Mechanics, you’ve got tech-experts and the Dreamborn Mau and Mediators are both diplomacy / leadership specialists. The Couriers and Half Grey make excellent spies and rogues. The Neverborn are just creepy and add a lot of flavor, and also have some great defensive abilities as undead. So we’ve got all the major game play niches filled.

Object Philosophies- the techno-magic superpowers which are unique to the setting- got heavily revised. I went through and edited a bunch for clarity and simplicity of effect. Instead of each philosophy being tied to a specific key attribute, 90% of them are now Wisdom-based, which makes sense as the abilities are run off willpower and belief. I also standardized the durations and uses per day- if a Philosophy had fewer uses per day, it’s likely now usable 3 + WIS Modifier times per day.

A few of the minor Philosophies were simply pulled and turned into regular feats. That will make them a bit more common. Also, I took a look at entry prerequisites for Philosophies and adjusted a few downward, to make them easier to learn. Also, I’ve added a few more feats, Stating Occupation and other rules elements to reinforce the idea that Object Philosophies are a big, important concept.

I’ve gone through and revised the classes in original corebook. We’ll still have Covenguards, Neo-Witch Midwives, Closers and Vindicators, and they’ll be joined by the renamed Juggernaut Brutes from APEX and a few others. Several abilities and entry requirements got tweaked. For example, the Midwife’s “Feminist Medicine” class feature was altered so it now provides a skill bonus equal to ½ her class level, and it’s easier to become a Closer.

I’ll be adding a few more classes- the Tactical Commander and Sniper from APEX will get expanded into ten level full classes, I think. I also want to adapt the old Scion of the Pilgrim into a general Politician class. I also want to add at least one more class to each faction, but I’m not sure what it is yet. I’ve mentioned that the Choicer military uses a lot of precogs and diviners in it’s strategic planning, and I want to expand on that. I also want to create a Lifer illusionist/fear manipulator type character… I’ve been thinking of a Lifer “Mysterio” for a long time.

A couple of days ago, I downloaded Big Finger Games Talent Tree Compendium because I want to include variant Talent Trees for each faction’s basic classes, to further differentiate the cultures. I wanted to see how another game company did the same thing. I’m going to pull some of the OGL talent trees from the Big Finger Games product, as well as add lots of setting specific talent trees to each side. If I can pull it off, it will really help differentiate the cultures. Depending on the final word count of this section, it might be in the revised core book, or might end up being a stand alone product released near-simultaneously with the revised corebook.

As I’ve gone along, I’ve taken note of some stuff I originally wanted to include in the revised corebook, as well as elements from APEX that I’ll be pulling out and releasing soon after the revamped corebook as short 5-20 page PDFs. Part of the reason I’m not loving APEX as much as I did some of the other sourcebooks is that unlike Coven of Bast, which had a single tight focus, APEX seemed to be all over the place, a clearing house for data on everybody in North America who WASN’T Lifer or Choicer. It doesn’t hold up as well.

• As I said, Fluxminx, Softlings and data on the meta-porn industry and genetic engineering goes to Sexually Transmitted Future.

• Black Dream gets its own short PDF and hopefully a better name.

• From APEX, the info on FBI Freelance Investigators, Beasting and NEST Teams, not to mention the sex crime stuff from the original corebook will each get their own micro-PDFs.

• The information on Mexico gets its own PDF, which right now I plan as Zapatista rebels versus drug cartel full conversion cyborgs. Cyberpunky and fun.

• “Beyond Otherverse America” a section on the state of the world beyond North America will get its own splatbook.

• Information on Diana Station and the Lunar cities get their own PDF.

• Solomon Station will eventually get its own PDF, which will probally be in the 20-30 page range.

• The X-Swat Agent and expanded information about the Islamic asteroid mining industry and space salvage industries will get their own book, which will tie back into Guide to the Known Galaxy more strongly. Expect near-Earth space to get a lot of support soon.

• The Submind talent tree from APEX will get its own short PDF.

In terms of world information, I’ll be adding a lot more content on specific locations within the setting, especially city info on the big factional capitols: San Francisco, Boston, Pensacola and the DC Metroplex. I’m also changing the organization of information, hopefully to make the book easier to flip through and more useful.

I’m keeping some but not all of the fiction. The Lifer story focusing on the beginning of the War still feels strong, and I plan to expand that into its own short PDF. You’ll have all the Dacoveney family scenes, stats for the players and Lifer political information. That might be a freebie or might be released day and date with the revised corebook.

The other fiction needs some rewriting and I want to include more evocative vignettes, that give a better sense of the world. To this end I’ll be including a glossary and time line, probably as stand-alone short PDFs included with the zipfile containing the Core Book. And yes, we’ll have a full index to everything.

So I’m also working on story elements as much as I am game play elements. I want to include more information about game-mastering this wild and complex setting. Expect a series of suggested plug ‘n play rules modifications that explore different themes and story elements in the world. Also look for the Intangibles sidebars, which I liked from the original core book, to remain and get a bit more comprehensive and useful. They’ll also be a bibliography in the back, which is an odd inclusion for a RPG, but there you go.

They’ll also be advice on more fully integrating Psi-Watch material into Otherverse America, either just as bits and pieces of classes, guns, ect and exploring some of the dimensional connections I brought up in Psi-Watch Unlimited Edition (Metamorphosis North, Bubastis Black, the dimensionally duplicated Cassie Feneris’).

Something else I want to do is include a sense of generationality, and provide better options for campaigns set at different eras of history. I’ve ran campaigns set during the RAINBOW era, during the War itself and during 2107, and I want to include that versatility for players. I really want player to be able to run characters groups of mixed age- 60 year old War veterans, 120 year old immortal physicians, 18 year hot headed rookies, and precocious 8 year old apprentice priestesses and child soldiers, and have the differences all mean something.

I also want to include more support for Lifer characters as player options and not just as shooting targets. It’s funny, but even when I’ve played the setting with people who are pro-life or conservative in real life, they’ve built characters that were either explicitly Choicer or unaligned mercenaries who work most often for the Choicers. They do this even when I try to keep interactions with both sides neutral or friendly, until the players themselves pick a side. It’s weird, and I wonder how much is my unconscious bias as a GM, and how much is a realization that whatever your real-world politics, in Otherverse America the Lifers are pretty clearly the bad guys.

Anyway, with Black Tokyo II coming out soon, Pirates of the Bronze Sky coming out next summer, Fantasy Firearms (print edition) still looming on the horizon and now the revised Otherverse America on the docket, 2011 is going to be a kick ass year for Otherverse Games.

Blessed Be,
CHRIS

Chastity and Depravity.

Well, well, well. After a while, Black Tokyo II: Chastity and Depravity is entering the home stretch. Mark is working on the final layout, and it should be up soon. His layouts tend to take a lot longer than mine, but the final product always looks pretty polished so all's good.

With BT II, you can expect nine or ten new player races, including the very creepy Ubume, superstrong unicorn girls called the Daughters of Kirin, a couple of different races of evil, manipulative seductresses and shapechangers and the heroic but bitchy Futakuchi, among others.

I've got some new classes, including the Hanging Maiden and the Chaste and a few very cool surprises.

There's alot more world information, including dozens of new factions, threats and monsters, some new spells and something new: Starting Talents, which you can add to the D20 Modern Starting Occupations to give your game a more anime feel. I really like starting talents, in that they add so much flavor to the setting.

Also, I'm working freelance for Louis, awaiting his initial editing pass on Pirates of the Bronze Sky. Let me assure you that it's looking really good that one will be ready long before the July 4,2011 release date Louis has planned. We seem to be on the same page with that project, and coming up with content for Pirates has been alot of fun.

Ok, I'm re-writing Otherverse America. It's too much to talk about in this post, but I've completely tweaked the layout. One of the biggest questions I always face when laying out a core game book is whether to put history and world info before character creation info or vice versa. It's not an inconsequential decision. Look at Rifts, Forgotten Realms, Aberrant, Vampire. They all go about it in a different way. FR has the races and classes right up front; Aberrant has about 150 pages of world info before you even start assigning stats. There's no right or wrong way to do it- it's a matter of personal preference. It's actually a big decision.

Right now, we've got world info,races then starting occupations, , classes, feats and gear. I'm almost using the idea of following the cycle of life in the layout. Your character is born, grows up in this world, hears about the history in school, and only then begins choosing a starting and heroic class. I've got a few bits of rules info scattered throughout the world info to keep the crunch fans happy, usually in sidebar format. Many of the civilian Affiliations are found as sidebars to the world info, because these may be the organizations that have the most influence on your character's early development.

I'm adding a bunch more historic info and will be consolidating alot of content from other sources into the core book. Right now, everything written to date will remain cannon and will be usable with the revised core book, with the exception of the APEX soucebook. I'm really not satisfied with that one, and will be revisiting how and why APEX exists, though most of the crunch from that book will remain valid. If you've got a "Nathan Rice" shell suit or are playing a nanofeaster character, that's skill cool.

Anyway, gotta go.
Blessed Be,
CHRIS

Otherverse Armory is UP!

Alright, one of the year's last big Otherverse America releases just went on sale this morning. Otherverse Armory is a 70+ page of gadgets, guns, civilian and military tech for Otherverse America. Though tied to a specific setting, it can easily provide gadgets for any D20 Modern campaign, so I expect it'll be a good seller. Right now, it's 38 on the RPGNow Top 100, and I expect it to climb a bit higher this afternoon.

I sent off a partially complete but very solid draft of the Pirates of the Bronze Sky core book to Louis just about 5 minutes ago. I've got a handle on the races, prestige classes, feats, culture and history. All that's really left is a first editing pass on this, to make sure I'm on track with what he wants. Then I make those changes, work on the equipment and monsters of the setting, bundle it all together for a final editing pass, and blammo! We've got campaign setting.

As soon as all the stuff I've done to date gets formally approved I'll start posting a few previews. It's going to be a fun setting.

In other news, the Eleusinian Covenant sourcebook will be out soon. Along with the upcoming meta-porn sourcebook, it'll finish out the year.

I've been toying with the idea of re-editing and re-releasing Otherverse America like I did with Psi-Watch. I went through with an open document last night and just jotted down ideas I want to include and improvements I want to make, and it ran to 7 pages. So what started as a "Hey, should I redo this one?" has quickly morphed into "Yep, with 7 pages of ideas I pretty much HAVE to redo this one."

I'm not going for any specific rerelease date. I'd love to re-release it on Jan 22, but I know I won't make 1-22-11, and I don't want to sit on a product till 1-22-12. So right now, I'm working without deadline. When I can afford it, I'm going to start commissioning art, just one or two pieces at a time, and building up a morgue. One thing I will do is eliminate most of my art and use commissioned pieces and better stockart. Just like Psi-Watch, the revamped Otherverse America will benefit from better layout skills and a bigger art budget.

No matter what, I WILL keep the first edition up as a FREE product.

You can download it here, if you haven't already:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=60158

Anyway, let me know if you have any suggestions for Otherverse America 2.0. I'll listen, and sooner or later I'll start posting some of my 7 pages of notes.

Talk to you later,
CHRIS

New City, New Projects

Okay, I've moved to Kerrville TX. Don't know where Kerrville is. Don't worry, nobody else does either. It's a little suburb about an hour north of San Antonio. It's the kind of small town you see in horror movies rather than modern reality, and I'm still tripping out that I'm up here. It's like a town from a Steven King novel. Anyway, I'm settled in and doing some writing.

I finished the Eleusinian Covenant and Otherverse Armory sourcebooks and they should be out fairly soon. I've been doing additional work on Pirates of the Bronze Sky and that's coming well. From the rough notes and outline I was given, I've built up a pretty coherent world and it's getting tighter and more fully realized with every line I write.

Anyway, talk to you later,
CHRIS

Pirates of the Bronze Sky

So I'd been waiting for Louis to announce it formally on his blog.... I've been named as the Head Weasel in Charge of the new Pirates of the Bronze Sky campaign setting. The image to the right is the cover, and hey: pirate tits!

So what is Pirates of the Bronze Sky about anyway? Over the last week or so, Louis and I have hashed out the major politics and ground rules of the setting. The campaign is going to a bit more swashbuckling, high-adventure and somewhat lighter than either of us are known for. Unlike Obsidian Twilight, which is basically D&D meets Zombie Hell, or Otherverse America which is all about religion, bigotry and civil war, Pirates will be a bit more cheerful, a bit more optimistic.

The basic tag line is this: Imagine the American Revolution taking place on floating islands drifting above an enormous gas giant planet. Simple and very, very memorable. We've got some really cool ideas for the various factions, and new races. Louis has already previewed two of the new races for free here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=81094
and right here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=82189

I've started up on a third race, as yet unnamed that will basically be a kind of sentient air elementals, which fits nicely with the themes of wind, freedom and movement I want to build into the setting.

Right now, the setting feels very cartoony, which to me is a good thing. Cartoons like He-Man and comics were my introduction to fantasy; I was introduced to them years before I ever read Tolkien or played D&D. It's going to be a fun one to work on, especially giving each nation in the setting its own distinct feel. One of the things we want to do, since this is a setting at war is make your character's nation as important as his or her race, if not more so. The different factions are a mix of historic cultures, some fantasy elements and just plain WEIRD, all thrown into a blender together and set on frappé.

There will, despite the obvious fantasy elements like sky-pirates, 4 armed rhino men and living wind, be recognizable and surprisingly correct bits of Revolutionary era and Golden Age of Piracy era history thrown into the mix, which will give the history pendants among our fans, and I know they're out there, something to digest.

Anyway, more on this as it develops, and I'll post updates and previews fairly regularly over the next couple of months.

CHRIS

Here's a new piece from Amanda. It's illustrating a fairly standard Lifer character wearing a new piece of gear found in the Otherverse Armory, my next sourcebook.

“Baby Bones” Smartcloth
This expensive product of the nano-tech revolution is worn by any Lifer street rescuer who can afford or steal it. Outwardly a simple cloth bandana worn over the nose and mouth, the smartcloth acts as a chemical filtration unit, protecting the wearer from poisons, gasses and bio-war agents. Nano-computers and imaging software also takes a real-time X-ray snapshot of the wearer’s skeletal structure, and displays a high resolution skeletal façade on its smartcloth surface. The end result is eerie but practical, perfect for Lifer culture.

Any character wearing “Baby Bones” smartcloth receives a +6 equipment bonus on FORT saves against inhalation toxins and disease.

“Baby Bones” Smartcloth
Size: Tiny
Weight: Negligible
Purchase DC: 16
Restriction Rating: None

I'm previewing the Smartcloth and the related image here first and foremost because that is one kick ass image. I know that I'll get some use of it too, and it will become one of the definitive Lifer cultural illustrations.

Anyway, just wanted to show off some cool new art and let you know what I'm working on next.
Blessed Be,
CHRIS

Freeform Anthro, Black Tokyo II, Guns of the Otherverse and Two Dozen Projects for Louis

Right now, I’m working on several projects. On the work for hire front, my Two Dozen Dangers series for LPJ Designs has gone over amazingly well, and I’ll be on some free material for Louis’ blog, in the same vein. We’ve got about a month’s worth of daily content in the can already and more on the way.

I’m going to be putting out a tech book for Otherverse America which consolidates all the gadgets and weapons found in the setting’s various sourcebooks in one place. I’ve been considering a revamp and rerelease of the core book, but instead, I’ve decided to focus on several ‘core’ books each covering a discrete subject. Sexually Transmitted Future will expand on the Softlings and Fluxminx from the APEX sourcebook, as well as revamp the genetic engineering rules. The Otherverse Armory will be the main tech book, but also has a lot of cultural context and content inside, details about the daily life in the setting.

My favorite sci-fi settings have insane levels of detail and color, and while I’ve always had that for Otherverse America, the more I write the sharper the world comes into focus for me. Every product I put out for the setting suprizes me a bit, because it takes my basic idea of “abortion + military sci-fi” and twists it a little bit more, makes it a little bit deeper. Each time I sit down to write, I go a bit deeper into the Choicer neighborhoods and the Lifer Enclaves. I see it a bit clearer, and frankly I get better at this, and I hope that you as readers notice that too.
I’ve been having a lot of fun putting these two books together, and can’t wait to get the final art so I can piece the releases together and get them out.

In other news, in what will be a very welcome bit of info for some fans here, Black Tokyo II is coming together. Look for a PDF release around Halloween/Samhain. Tentacle rape is back on the menu, boys!

Finally, I’m finally revising and re-jiggering Freeform Anthropomorphica. We’ve found some sweet new art for it, and at the same time we’re gathering resources for a possible POD release, I’m revisiting the rules and cleaning them up. I originally wrote it for D&D 3.5 and converted it over to Pathfinder at the beginning of that license. Looking back on the manuscript, I can tell it was an early attempt at a modified ruleset, and the conversion wasn’t as slick as it should have been. I’m fixing that up, and adding a lot more world information to the re-release.

(I spent all last night going through and making sure all the anthro races had a +2 net ability score modifier. The original 3.5 based draft had a +0 net modifier, so converting everything over, and hunting down the last few references to Hide checks took a couple of tedious but necessary hours.)

Look for at least one campaign setting in the rebuilt FA, and maybe several mini-campaigns, similar to the mini-campaigns presented in the WOTC D20 Future sourcebook. I’m still trying to decide if one world or multiple small worlds would be a) more useful to you, the buyers, and b) more fun for me to write. Drop me a line in the comments: do you want one mid-sized to large campaign world in FA or several smaller mini-campaigns you can expand yourself?

Finally, I joined the 21st Century and got a Facebook page, over to the right of the screen. Go friend me.
Blessed Be,
CHRIS