Friday, December 23, 2016

It's Alive! It's Alive!

It's taken a while, but yes, today I held in my bare hands, irrefutable physical evidence that the second edition of the Discworld Roleplaying Game actually exists in material form!

The official street date for publication was this Wednesday just gone, the 21st, and I understand that people in the USA have indeed actually acquired copies from shops. The book doesn't appear to have made it to retail here in the UK just yet, but I guess that we can hope for next week.

Thursday, December 01, 2016

More on GURPS Steampunk

Just a note; Roger Bell_West and Mike Cule discuss steampunk, taking discussion of my book as their starting-point, in the latest episode of their podcast, Improvised Radio Theatre - With Dice.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Expand, Contract - Addendum


  1. The launch of the new edition of the Discworld RPG has now been delayed until the beginning of December. Probably. Why am I not surprised?
  2. Roger Bell_West has a very kind review of GURPS Steampunk 1 in his bloghttps://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2016/11/GURPS_Steampunk_1__Settings_and_Style__Phil_Masters.html

Thursday, October 06, 2016

Expand, Contract (50)

And so it came to pass, after a fair amount of waiting to launch... My latest GURPS creation is now available for purchase online, in PDF form.

GURPS Steampunk 1: Settings and Style is planned to be, as the title should imply, the first of a new series, bringing GURPS 4th edition rules standards to contemporary steampunk sensibilities. Or vice-versa, perhaps. It imports and revises some material from earlier (3rd edition) books while adding new stuff, so you can now be driven to fits of the vapours, stat up quick and dirty steam-tech, and argue the definition of Raygun Gothic, all from one book...

Oh, and I've been updating and revising a couple of other manuscripts lately, about which I may not yet speak in detail. Related to this, though? You might ask that...

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Expand, Contract (49)

Yes, it's been a while since I've had anything to announce here. Various projects have, shall we say politely, been hanging fire. But now, after a year or two in the writing, some time in the revision (in which time, Terry added a whole new and significant sapient race to the setting), the horribly sad death of the setting's actual creator, and a heck of a period, umm, heaven knows, maybe with the book buried in peat maturing while SJGames cranked out a few dozen more Munchkin variants, I can actually, officially, mention the forthcoming onset of the new edition of the Discworld Roleplaying Game.

It's scheduled for November, in fact. I very much hope that remains true, because it'd be nice to do some kind of quasi-official launch at Dragonmeet.

(I'm honestly trying not to be cynical about launch dates these days, y'know, but it's difficult.)

Anyway, we definitely have an official cover design now an' all. I must come up with at least one more convention demo scenario...

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

UK RPG Conventions Page (Usefulness Of)

For some years now I've been maintaining a calendar of British RPG conventions, currently at http://www.philmasters.org.uk/RPGs/conventions.htm, which I hope some people may have found useful. However, I'm now wondering if anyone is still using it.

I've noticed that I've been receiving few notifications or announcements from conventions recently, so if I don't happen to hear about or pick up on an event, it doesn't get an entry on the page - and nobody then complains. I also get very few comments on it in person at the conventions I attend myself. And, though I absolutely do not maintain the page in the hope of making a profit, I do notice that the tip jar feature has received exactly zero income in all the time it's been open.

This is pushing me toward the conclusion that the page is no longer of any use to anyone, presumably because gamers are hearing about conventions through this new-fangled socially medium stuff or something. Hence, as maintaining it costs me a little time and effort, I'm considering just letting it die.

However, if it does still serve a useful purpose, I'll be glad to hear it, by e-mail or through comments here, and I'll try to keep it going.

Friday, January 01, 2016

Me, in Audio Form

Just in case anyone is wondering what I sound like these days - I recently gave an interview to a roleplaying games podcast, Improvised Radio Theatre - With Dice, about my work in the hobby, including The Small Folk and other stuff.