Rone Barton and Lou Agresta, two friends of mine, contributed to the Great City Campaign Setting from 0one Games. If you want to know more about TGCCS, check out Atomic Array 008.
Following up on TGC’s success, 0one commissioned a series of adventures from the authors. Rone penned the second adventure, The Bloody Fix.
Go grab a copy, play it, and let him know what you think. If you want, drop my the new 0one message boards.
UKG Publishing is 5 years old. They’re celebrating by discounting all their products 40%.
I haven’t looked at all their stuff, but the Year of the Zombie products are decent. In particular, I’d check out Year of the Zombie: Dead Future Rebooted.
I will be at the Emerald City Gamefest next weekend. If you’re in Seattle, and free, drop by.
ECG Homepage: http://www.emeraldcitygamefest.org/
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=32491269635
RPG Bomb link: http://rpgbomb.com/event/view/id_86/title_emerald-city-gamefest/
Wolfgang Baur (), publisher of Kobold Quarterly, will be running a game.
Dan from Fear the Boot will be there. He and I plan to record “something”…
I’m not sure if he’ll be there this year, but last year author Erik Scott de Bie () was also running a game.
At GenCon this year, I had a chance to meet John S. R. Schutt. He’s a nice guy and an aspiring freelancer.
I got an email from him, telling me about his first gig for WereDragon Magazine. Called Into the Puppets Heart: The Otanshu Legacy, it’s got evil puppets, artifacts and creatures of the beyond. Sounds tasty, so I’m going to check it out.
Anyway, congratulate Mr. Schutt and, if you have the time, check out his work. I’m sure he’d love some reviews.
On our last episode of Atomic Array, Tim Hitchcock mentioned that 0one Games would be releasing a series of linked adventures set in The Great City. The first one is out…
The lightless warehouse alleys of the Trades Ward fester like the sour, fly-covered belly of an old nag. When the streetlamps dim, the wood-planked warehouses seem to stagger with their own decrepit drunkenness, and what little pity the ward can muster comes from beggars too poor to split a copper or toughs who gather in vacant storerooms to wager coins and chickens upon their fists. Is it any wonder then, why it sparks such a romantic attraction to off-duty military officers? For here, there are no lingering eyes of justice, no harsh penalties or judgments other than what a man can dole out with his own muscle. In a minute, a man can prove himself a primal warrior, or fall to the dust and tribunal humiliation of his silent peers.
The Skullcrackers, written by my friend John E. Ling Jr., is a low-level urban adventure designed to introduce players to the Great City and is appropriate for four characters of 1st-level.
I recently received an email from David Amberson about Ziggurat Con 2, which will be held in Iraq next summer. I’m sure many of the industry folk who read my LJ have also received the same email. In fact, I recognized some of the names on the list of people who are already supporting the event.
I was in Iraq, on my second tour, during the first ZCon. Unfortunately, I could not attend. (For some reason, some people just didn’t understand that sometimes dice rolling is more important than gun running!) I missed three full years of conventions to the desert, and wasn’t happy about it. I couldn’t go to the last ZCon, so I’m ecstatic at the prospect of support it this time.
If you are supporting ZCon, in any way, I want to thank you. Soldiers are rampant gamers and have more geek-fu per capita than any other group of people I know. I received two boxes from my FLGS last year, and you would have thought the rapture was upon us. All my guys exploded in enthusiasm. Maybe gaming is how we tune out in our copious free time? I don’t know. I do know that we loved to game at every opportunity. And I know we hungered for anything new with which to do it.
So if you are thinking about supporting the next ZCon, you have my thanks. If you plan to attend, I hope to see you there.
My first gig involving the new 4e rules. Here’s the copy:
Death stalks the Isles!
All through the Known World, the stories are told again and again, by pirate captains and boasting merchant lords: a ferocious sea monster is stalking the trade lanes, and no vessel is safe. The call goes out for a band of heroes willing to dare the impossible: to slay a leviathan of the murky deeps.
Are you and your companions the heroes that can bring back the head of the sea dragon? Or will you perish like those before you, adrift on the unforgiving sea? An adventure of exploration, courage and cunning, Isle of the Sea Drake will challenge characters with savage natives, the walking dead, gold-crazed pirates, a sea dragon, and an ancient mystery from beyond the stars.
When heroes dare the sea dragon, only the most courageous will survive!
Isle of the Sea Drake includes a full-color double-sided poster map depicting the area of the adventure. This world-neutral adventure can be used alone or to launch a campaign in the epic fantasy world of Áereth.
It just went up at RPG Now. Grab a Copy!
You’re a game publisher. You want to promote your products, and want part of your strategy to include an element of online advertising. But… you want your ads to be seen by the people who are most likely to respond, and you don’t want to break the bank to reach them.
This is what Ed Healy (that’s me) would do:
(1) On the day you release a new product, purchase a small amount of advertising on Facebook and StumbleUpon. You can get a small, but respectable response from both sources with only $7.50:
Facebook allows you to target your ads to a given country, state, city, and gender. You are also able to target certain keywords—roleplaying games, for instance—so that your ads are only seen by people who are likely to be interested in your products. Even better, you only pay when people click on your advertisement, and you get to decide how much you pay per click.
You can have your ads point to your home page, or online store. Even better? Create a Facebook Group for your business, which your customers can become ‘members’ of. For your main product lines, create a Facebook Page so your customers can become ‘fans’ and help you spread the word. Post announcements and run your RSS feeds through these tools in order to keep your customers engaged with your company. Target these pages with your ads.
StumbleUpon ads are similar to Facebook ads. However, people don’t see your advertisement—they simply show up at your web site. As with Facebook, you pay for each time someone clicks. The added benefit to SU advertising is that the user can ‘thumb up’ your site, increasing the likelihood that others will find it as well. It’s the closest thing to for-pay viral marketing you’re going to find.
It’s important, with StumbleUpon advertising, that your site grabs the viewer’s attention and makes him want to stay. Consider designing a landing page specifically for your SU campaign—maybe offering SU visitors a discount for purchasing your product.
(2) There are a number of great gaming blogs on the internet. I happen to represent (full disclosure, and all) seven of them. Here’s “the list”:
* Dungeon Mastering: dungeonmastering.com
* Gnome Stew: gnomestew.com
* Jonathan Drain’s d20 Source: d20.jonnydigital.com
* Kobold Quarterly: koboldquarterly.com
* Musings of the Chatty DM: chattydm.net
* Roleplaying Tips: roleplayingtips.com
* Treasure Tables: treasuretables.org
For $17.50 per month, your advertisement will be seen 500 times on each site. Honestly, there’s no need to go much further than this, unless you have the budget. Use this modest amount of exposure for branding—to keep your company and products in front of your prospective customers and to encourage them to visit your website.
Read a little more about advertising on these gaming blogs here.
So, that’s it. Let me know what you think of this plan. Have you ever used Facebook or StumbleUpon ads? Are you a reader of the sites I listed? Sound off, and game on!
Time to brag a bit. Here are the products on RPG Now’s Top Ten list…
01. Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide
02. Adventurer’s Vault
03. Wild Talents: Essential Edition
04. Shadows of Cthulhu
05. Wardogs
06. Scepter Tower of Spellgard
07. The ULTIMATE GM Screen
08. E-Z BATTLEFIELDS: Mechbattle City
09. The Great City Campaign Setting
10. M1: Dragora’s Dungeon
Four of these were written by Cabbbages (they’re the linked ones…).
OK, I’m done.
EDIT: I said three… it was four. Thanks, Ash.