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Dispatches:
News from Atlas Games
The eagerly anticipated
Land of Fire and Ice was delivered today, and at the moment we're just waiting for UPS to come and pick up the boxes destined for distributors far and wide. Depending on the hard-to-quantify mysteries of freight and logistics, you may see it in a store near you any time within the next few weeks!
Nyambe Nominated for Origins Award!
John and I are just back from a record-attendance GAMA trade show where
Nyambe: African Adventures by Chris Dolunt got an Origins Award nomination for Best Supplement! Be sure to check out the free pregenerated PCs we have up for Nyambe on our site, view the Player's Lorebook at
www.nyambe.com, and vote for Nyambe at
www.aagad.org
"Sheep on the Borderlands" -- the Penumbra spoof that appeared in
Dork Tower -- was also nominated for Best Adventure, to our delight and amazement. Congrats to author Jeff Tidball and Dork Storm Press!
Small Talk
Yesterday: 60 degrees. Today: Snowing. That's Minnesota.
Break Today, the Mak Attax sourcebook for
Unknown Armies, is off to the printer today!
Splintered Peace Reviewed
If you haven't done so already, take a look at Simon Collin's
review of Splintered Peace at
EN World.
Trips to Iceland, Both Real and Imagined
Land of Fire and Ice is such an evocative and inspirational book that's it has actually encouraged somebody I know to take a real-life trip to Iceland. Perhaps you'll hear more about that in the future. Until then, you can whet your appetite for ice, snow, magma and magic by downloading
The Icelandic Wars from the
Ars Magica section of our website. This is an all-new PDF download written by Mark Shirley and David Woods, the authors of
Land of Fire and Ice. What you'll find inside is exclusive to this download, not reprinted from the book itself. You'll also get pretty new pictures by Eric Hotz and
Grey Thornberry which should appeal to you dragon-lovers out there.
That's all from me today. Go play.
The Kids, They Love the Magica
The
free PDF version of Ars Magica 4th Edition is going like hotcakes. Fully illustrated, downloadable and digital hotcakes. We're really delighted.
While all of that's been going on, I've been laying out
Sacred Ground, the next book in our series of complete location anthologies for
d20, starting with
Seven Strongholds and
Seven Cities.
Sacred Ground has some really evocative and exciting locations from the likes of Rick Neal (
Ascension of the Magdelene), Chris Jones (
Occult Lore) and other great writers. Only four locations are presented in
Sacred Ground, but there will be more where those came from, believe me.
Have you piloted an airframe? With
Sacred Ground you can. Check out Steven Sander's glorious cover illustration in the Pipeline on the
Atlas Games website and see them for yourself.
In other news, the GAMA Trade Show has concluded and John and Michelle should be back from Las Vegas and in the office sometime today. I expect they'll have some news to share about all the hubub and tomfoolery of the show. Stay tuned.
It's True
The beloved historical fantasy RPG
Ars Magica is now free. You can download the mighty core rulebook from
RPGNow, er, now. This is a PDF version of the rulebook available on store shelves, ready for printing. Anyone in the world (and there are
Ars Magica players all over the globe) can now learn to play the game for free.
Read the press release here.
Okay, that's all for now. Go play.
Off to Vegas!
It's time for the GAMA Trade Show! My flight to Las Vegas leaves in a few hours -- I'm just in the office taking care of some last-minute stuff. This promises to be a busy week. If you're a retailer attending the show, be sure to stop by and say hi!
If you're staying home, be sure to stop in Monday to see the website. We have a big announcement all ready to go tomorrow, and I think it will really surprise some folks...and, I hope, delight even more.
No Time For Bustle
Busy, busy here at the Atlas offices. We've got books in production as usual, website shenanigans going on, advertising and review business to tackle and the bright lights, plastic dividers of Las Vegas coming up. Retailers, be sure to yank on John or Michelle's sleeve and ask them to see the covers of our new books; they're bringing a binder teeming with new art by Thomas Denmark, Steve Sanders and more. Good stuff. With all this hustle, who's got the time for bustle?
Meanwhile, votes are in on the
Dynasties and Demagogues issue. We'll be passing
personality feats on to you, by popular demand. By "popular" I mean this: more than 95% of all votes were in favor of
personality feats. The people, as they say, have spoken.
Lots more going on next week, too. Stay tuned.
Plastic Dividers
We've produced a set of eight plastic dividers -- each for a different Atlas product line -- which we'll be giving out to retailers at the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas next week. If you're a retailer, please stop by to pick up a set for yourself. We need to limit it to one set per store -- we only have 200 sets, and it sounds like the retailer attendance at GTS may be a lot higher than that, so don't wait until the last day!
We're hoping these will be a valuable sales tool, and informative for consumers browsing the retailer's shelves, too. Each one describes the product line, highlights its distinctive features, and provides a list of "picks" to help guide the consumer in buying supplements.
Hey folks,
I'm
John Tynes, line editor and co-creator of
Unknown Armies. At present I'm in the final stages of work on
Break Today, the Mak Attax sourcebook. The authors are Greg Stolze and Chad Underkoffler, who have both done kick-butt work.
Among lots of other stuff, the book includes four new adept schools: Anagram Gematria, Geomancy, Herpemancy, and Plutophagy. I'll let you decipher what those mean!
The book is mostly edited and laid out. Atlas is proofreading several chapters now while I wait for the interior artwork to arrive. We should be ready for press within two weeks, and the book will be in your local game store around the end of April. You can check out the sweet cover art at
Ken Meyer Jr's site.
Operation Desert Pimp Slap
We got some fan mail today from "the Kuwaiti Desert Lunch Money Crew," headed by US Marine Corps Sgt. Burek. He writes, "As every infantry man knows, there's not much to do in the field while we wait for the order to move. So, instead of bringing regular playing cards out with us, I decided I'd bring my deck of Lunch Money. I taught a few of my friends how to play, and we've been enjoying your game every chance we get. Well, the word has spread and the game has become so popular that we can't find enough seats at the table to fit everyone.. We love your game and we'll be playing it as long as they keep us here (and after we get back to the states)."
Thanks to the whole crew who signed the letter, and included their nicknames: The Bull, Mongo, Ken, Hail King, Hammer, Juice, G-Spot, Fan Man, and Suzie. Your letter made our day. Watch your mail for a care package from us. You're in our thoughts, and we hope you come home safe and soon.
Greetings from Ars Magica
I'm
David Chart, and I'm the
Ars Magica Line Editor. I'm also a
freelance author, but I'll be posting here in my capacity as Line Editor. Except when I have a new book out, probably.
As Line Editor, I'm responsible for the creative side of the Ars Magica line. That covers seeing all Ars Magica books through from initial outline through writing, playtesting, and editing to the point where I hand them over to Atlas Prime. I'm physically located in Cambridge, UK, while Atlas is in Minnesota (which is in the USA, I believe), so I can generally avoid getting dragged into the process of producing a physical book. I'm also not responsible for choosing the art for Ars Magica books, although I do get the authors to provide art guidelines. We have an excellent art director who co-ordinates the artists.
I just recently finished editing
Sanctuary of Ice, and turned it over to Atlas. Thus, I'm now briefly between Ars Magica projects, and working on finishing a book I'm writing for the Penumbra line. It's coming on nicely, Michelle, so don't worry.
Any questions about Ars Magica can be
emailed to me.
An Atlas for the Whole World
A few routine updates to the site today, including the much-requested return of the
downloadable Penumbra adventure maps for the first four
Penumbra adventures. These are the
Campaign Cartographer maps we used back in the day. Good stuff. Sorry for the wait on those.
Our
Retailer Locator has also been updated, with entries spanning a new state (Mississippi) and three new countries (Germany, Portugal and the UK). Have you checked the Locator? There might be a store closer than you think, and it might have a copy of that book you thought was gone forever. Meanwhile, we still have a few states in the Union suffering without representation. Step up to the mic, and give us a shout out. I mean, I've
been to game stores in Illinois. I know they're there.
Lastly, we actually are taking votes right now to see what little bit of
Dynasties & Demagogues we'll be giving out free to the masses.
Drop us a line voting for feats, personality feats, spells or a prestige class. (So far, the politician prestige class has been doing some heavy campaigning.) Next week, we'll have your free sample.
Rocking the Vote
Take a look at Gaming Frontiers' Issue 4 for March ... Dynasties and Demagogues author Chris Aylott has put together an article with a preview of the sourcebook's rules for handling voting in small governance bodies like juries, ruling councils, and guilds. The sourcebook also includes rules for swaying individuals, faction voting for governance bodies like a Roman senate or Viking thing, elections involving thousands of voters, and conducting in-depth political debates.
Last Hero in Scandinavia
Today we're announcing a new Coriolis title, this one for
Rune and d20:
Last Hero in Scandinavia, by Chris Aylott. Watch for details to show up on the website in the near future. Viking mayhem will strike the d20 system like never before!
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