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Just briefly - the final draft of my little (okay, not that little) project for Pelgrane Press has gone in and been accepted, so now it's out of my hands. It may even see literal, physical print in due course, which always feels nice. Nothing against PDFs, but they're weightless.

So now, well, there's so scenarios to work on that should in due course see use at conventions (yes, initially online conventions, I had noticed the state of the world). Then it's over to the project for Iron Crown...

Blast From My Past

Back in the '80s, I was a big fan of the Champions roleplaying game from Hero Games, which is why my first published RPG book, at the end of that decade, was Kingdom of Champions. While I went on to work for other publishers, I did a bit more for Hero over the next few years, and I've been quite pleased to note that the books in question have in recent years started to be republished in PDF form.

Well, if anyone is interested in seeing both what caught my attention back then and what I did for Hero, now's your chance to get there on a budget. Bundle of Holding are currently running a pair of really generous Fourth Edition Champions bundle deals which include my work for Hero and much more. If you stump up $35.19 or more for the Champions 4E Universe bundle, you get, well, quite a lot of books, but the list includes Kingdom of Champions and also Champions Universe, to which I contributed quite a bit of material including an extended scenario (and the bundle also includes things like the classic multi-universal Champions in 3-D, and the quite unique Foxbat Unhinged, by my late friend Alison Brooks). But you might want to start with the Champions 4E Essentials bundle; drop $30.35 on that and you'll get not only the Champions core rulebook but also Champions Presents 1, to which I contributed an adventure, and The Hero System Almanac 2, which includes my treatment of the UNTIL agency. Along with a lot else, of course.

Platonic Solidification

A small note, but - my old book GURPS Atlantis is now available in print-on-demand form from Amazon.

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I now have a new short-ish GURPS PDF up on Warehouse 23:

GURPS Vehicles: Transports of Fantasy

(Yeah, it seems to have been a little while. Been doing other things. Still, I’m quite fond of this one, even at just 32 pages.)

Scenes From a Multiverse

I very much doubt that what passes for my social media activity influences anybody, but in case anyone could use it pointed out - there's a Kickstarter for a print volume 3 of Scenes from a Multiverse currently running and in need of a little love. And I'd really like for it to succeed.

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GURPS Steampunk 3: Soldiers and Scientists

http://www.warehouse23.com/products/gurps-steampunk-3-soldiers-and-scientists

Which completes the starting set of GURPS 4th edition steampunk PDFs (along with 1 and 2 and Conveyances); to put it another way, put those four books together and you'd have approximately the book I'd have written if SJ Games had been willing to do a new-edition GURPS Steampunk.

This one is the characters book, which means a lot of templates, but I tried to add more interest with variant skills and disadvantages and martial arts styles and so on.

Holding Out

The latest Bundle of Holding, "Bundle of FATE 4", includes my own The Small Folk:

• https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Fate4

There's some other stuff in there looks quite interesting, too.

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GURPS Steampunk 2: Steam and Shellfire:

http://www.warehouse23.com/products/gurps-steampunk-2-steam-and-shellfire

The latest in the little line of steampunk supplements I’m doing for SJGames, and oh so very much the highly necessary gear book.

Sound

I was at Athena Games, in Norwich, the other weekend, running some Discworld demonstrations at their fifth anniversary event (nice people), and while I was there, the Draw & Discard podcast interviewed me.

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Occasionally, my work leads to something getting published...

GURPS Vehicles: Steampunk Conveyances is now available from Warehouse 23. It's technically the first book in the GURPS Fourth Edition "Vehicles" line, but it's also, of course, the second book in the 4e "Steampunk" line, supporting my past discursions on settings and style with notes and game mechanics for some very steampunk hardware... A remarkable amount of it historical.

(Of course, just because it really existed doesn't make it automatically a good idea. Pre-dreadnought battleships and giant balloons had their little problems, and that "torpedo ram" that gets the one big heroic moment in The War of the Worlds? Only a geek like Wells could think it was a cool idea.)

But there's also some fantastical stuff, some of it courtesy Jules Verne, though I also raided third edition GURPS books along with dubious dime novels. So there y'go; thirty-plus vehicles, covering land, sea, air, and space.

EDITED TO ADD: Roger Bell_West has reviewed the book on his blog.

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A very brief but somewhat significant note: The Discworld Roleplaying Game is now available for purchase in electronic (PDF) format, for those who no longer like making shelf space.

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For those keeping score -- the GURPS production process seems to be coming back to life now, as one of my PDF projects heads to production review, and another comes back to me after its first draft has been exhaustively reviewed by the line editor.

I can't say much more than that for now, but it's a start.

Discworld RPG Overflow

Despite the 408 pages, some stuff got squeezed out of the Discworld RPG. So I've now made some of that material available online:

• https://www.philmasters.org.uk/RPGs/More-Discworld-Characters-from-the-Books.pdf - game stats for assorted characters from the novels.
• https://www.philmasters.org.uk/RPGs/More-Discworld-Occupational-Templates.pdf - some extra occupational templates.
• https://www.philmasters.org.uk/RPGs/More-Discworld-Spells.pdf - more sample spells.

Another Review

I guess with all the blogs and stuff there are in the world, I should expect a fair number of non-professional reviews. It's nice, though.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2017/01/rpg-review-discworld-2nd-edition-gurps.html

The Continuing Saga of the Discworld RPG

Aaaand another review...

• http://oneyardhex.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/discworld-rpg-review.html

The book is definitely in UK shops now. There've been reports of limited supply in some outlets - apparently the distributors underestimated demand - but restocks appear to be coming in. So if your shop claims that they can't get hold of the thing, tell them to press their distributor, hard.

(Amazon UK still don't seem to have it, though.)

More Regarding That Book

A second review of the Discworld RPG is now up at http://www.letthedicefall.com/2017/01/the-discworld-roleplaying-game-review.html.

Also, the book will be hitting retail in the UK this week. British gamers who lack a friendly local game store may wish to mail order; I thoroughly recommend Leisure Games for this. See https://leisuregames.com/collections/new-releases-week-commencing-9-january/products/gurps-discworld.

Discworld Reviewed

The first (gratifyingly positive) review that I've seen of the Discworld Roleplaying Game has now appeared on the Web, at http://justroll3d6.com/discworld-roleplaying-game-review/.

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.

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.

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 blog: https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2016/11/GURPS_Steampunk_1__Settings_and_Style__Phil_Masters.html