Silver Branch Games

Tim

A quick new year update!

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I notice I haven’t blogged here in A Very Long Time. So, a quick note about what I’ve been up to recently.

In editing and proofreading work, I’ve worked on a few Warhammer rpg products: the Enemy Within campaign book and its Companion, and a couple of the Ubersreik mini-adventures. I’ve also edited a couple of short products for Liminal, the modern-fantasy-in-Britain rpg from Wordplay Games.

And, of course, I was proofreading the second edition of The One Ring, the official Middle-earth rpg. That was in the final stretch when licensing difficulties led to the project, and the line, being cancelled. A bit of a blow, not least because I was looking forward to using the book myself. (And, let’s be honest, if there’s any project a fantasy nerd wants their name in the credits for…) It did rekindle my interest in the game line though, so I’ve been acquiring books before they went away and hope to run it locally.

Because the pipeline takes a while to go from text to finished book, I just saw that one of the John Carter setting era books I proofread is now out. I think that’s the one that made me think of a Firefly-style (or Star Trek, Blake’s 7, etc) campaign zooming around the skies of Mars…

Went to Dragonmeet in London at the end of November. Of course the railway network saw me coming and laid on maximum disruption for that day (as well as freezing weather). So I arrived late and frazzled, but eventually rebooted and enjoyed meeting up with friends from the wild world of gamery.

In terms of any future releases from Silver Branch itself – I don’t have anything new planned. Nothing has caught my interest in a while, and that’s partly due to general life stuff eroding my energy (gradually improving). I did throw out a couple of small pdf things last year, and more of that might happen.

The one thing that is conspicuously still sitting there waiting for me is the GM’s book/otherworld book for Albion. That has also been waiting (in partial notes form) for A Very Long Time, as a thing that tells people outside my head important stuff about the vision of the game world. I think this year is the time to either do it or let it go… I nearly jumped into it over Christmas, but lurgy etc. Would be open to friendly prodding about more Albion stuff…

I also realised that Jaws of the Six Serpents was ten years old last year. By the gods! Maybe I should have done some sort of barbarian party.

As a gaming-related update, I’ll also record the closure of my friendly local game store, Chimera, in October. Located 15 mins walk from my house, it made important things really frickin’ easy during a period of variable mental resources, meaning that I got to play and run games more than ever before (and get out of the house etc). So another toast to Andy and Heather and the Chimera community. And part of my new year quasiresolutional substrate is to keep those connections and build new ones.

Happy new year!

 

Albion: Blood on the Road adventure

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A new introductory adventure for the Albion RPG, out in pdf.

Two bodies have been found on the road into town. The characters are sent to investigate. What happened to these people on the road? And what might be going on in the woods?

This is a simple and straightforward adventure, created as an alternative starting point to the adventure in the Albion corebook, as I wanted more than one play experience to bring players into the game!

So it gives players a taste of interaction, investigation and combat, and it gives their characters a first brush with the supernatural. It’s best for a mixed group of inexperienced characters (and won’t be satisfying for a troupe of combat monsters). Ideas for adapting it to your group are given throughout.

> Check it out here.

 

A dark harvest of RPG editing!

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I haven’t mentioned in the blog yet that I’ve been doing editing and proofreading work for RPG products, and these are now seeing the light of day so it’s worth giving them a shout-out.

Chaosium has done a revised edition of Masks of Nyarlathotep, one of the RPG world’s most celebrated adventure campaigns, and I did the proofreading. It’s out in pdf now – a 666-page monstrosity of globe-spanning conspiracy! – with the print version due in a few weeks. The core writing team for the revision was all-British, including Scott Dorward who’s contributed material for Jaws of the Six Serpents.

I’ve also been working on a bunch of books (seven now!) for Modiphius’ Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, doing editing and proofing. Originally kickstarted, they set out to produce a major resource for enthusiasts of the most iconic sword and sorcery hero, covering phases of Conan’s life as barbarian, thief, pirate, etc, and aspects of the world Robert E Howard created, like ruins and horrors. You can find the pdfs here – plenty so far, many more to come.

If you’d like some help with editing or system design for a tabletop RPG project, do get in touch.

 

UK Games Expo 2018

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The hall at Games Expo

I went to Games Expo in Birmingham yesterday. This is the UK’s largest gaming convention – and with attendance now over 20,000 people, in the top tier of gaming events in the world. It covers the whole range from board and card games to RPGs and miniatures.

I caught up with RPG folks, chatted about potential editing work, and wandered the halls looking at what’s going on.

I took this photo on Sunday. Bear in mind that was the quiet day. Apparently on Saturday the aisles were pretty much full. This is NEC Hall 1; Hall 2, behind me, was also in use for stands and a massive play area, and there was also play going on over at the Hilton hotel.

One of the things that someone pointed out in a conversation was that more stalls were dealing in accessories, spinning out from the games themselves. That includes folks like my friends at All Rolled Up. But I also spotted two stands selling colourful USB cables. Weird.

A nice final note was that I ended up floating at the edge of the awards ceremony, while folks I know got awards for Call of Cthulhu – The Two-Headed Serpent, Cthulhu Hack – Wendigo, and the Conan RPG. (Having done some work on the line for the latter, though not the mainbook, I experienced a tiny mote of reflected warm and fuzzy!)

If you’re into the gaming scene, no matter which corner is your favourite, it’s worth a visit if you can. Expo is well run by an incredibly dedicated team whose original goal was to create the convention they wanted to see, and the organisation improves year on year as they learn from experience as well as growing the attendance. The main downside of its successful growth is that nearby hotels can be very expensive and sell out fast, so if you’re going to make it a multi-day trip and play games and socialise in the evenings, it’s good to plan ahead.

 

Questers of the Middle Realms – second edition

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Questers coverA new edition of this system-light, affectionately humorous take on traditional fantasy games is now out.

You can get the pdf over at DriveThru and RPGNow. A print version will be coming soon.

Questers was my first product using Chad Underkoffler’s light and flexible PDQ system, way back in 2006. There’s been a print version available through Lulu, but as a thin Letter-sized book it was never a satisfying artifact, which led me to do much better with ‘Jaws of the Six Serpents’. Over the last few years I’ve wanted to do a fixed version and make it available through the integrated print option at DriveThru. Finally we’re getting there!

This is really a revised version. The rules and content are pretty much unchanged. But it’s got a new layout and section structure, making it more like Jaws. It’s had another editing pass, and some artwork changes. And it now incorporates the old mini-supplements ‘Character Assistant’ and ‘Ten Magical Thingies’.

Previous pdf purchasers on DriveThru and RPGNow who are set up to receive publisher mailings have been sent a link to get a free update.

 

New Jaws product – The Blizzard’s Teeth

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Gosh, it’s a long time since I updated here! I’ve got a new product to let you know about.

blizzards-teeth-cov-200The Blizzard’s Teeth is a Jaws of the Six Serpents adventure of fantasy survival horror by Scott Dorward, designed for convention or one-shot use.

A set of provided characters are drawn together at an isolated keep while a deadly storm howls outside. They’re a dubious lot with secrets and agendas that will drive events. Will they work together in the face of a terrifying enemy?

What you get: the adventure in the same book format as previous Jaws products, plus the player character information repeated on Letter-size pages.

Check it out at DriveThruRPG.

Notes

You may also be able to adapt this for use with ongoing characters, if you really want to. You could certainly adapt it for other systems, and there’s a box on the very simple workings of PDQ to help.

This adventure has bad characters making unpleasant choices. It’s probably not suitable for pre-teen players.