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Dispatches:
News from Atlas Games
e23 Updates, including Free Ars Magica
Thomas Weigel, manager over at
e23, reports that all the PDFs I uploaded to their server over the weekend are now online and available for download. In due time we'll get direct links to individual products on e23 from their respective pages here on the Atlas site.
Some
Ars Magica fans will be especially happy to hear that one of those PDFs is
Ars Magica 4th Edition, available for free once again at its new home.
Happy Halloween!
It's All Hallow's Eve! To celebrate the day, let us give you a link to a
review of some Halloween-appropriate games, including
Gloom, by Michael Erb of the Parkersburg, WV,
News and Sentinel.
And while the Atlas warehouse is sold out of Gloom, that hardly means that everyone is -- if you're looking for the game it's well worth calling around to local stores and searching the web. For example,
Warehouse 23 still has copies, and we saw a stack of the game at the Games by James store in the Mall of America this past weekend.
City & Guild Off to Press
Last week was busy with travel and some other things, so I forgot to put a note up letting folks know that
City & Guild, the next
Ars Magica 5th Edition sourcebook, is off to the printer. We hope that this will put it on store shelves in early December.
Changes in PDF Distribution
Today it was
announced that RPGNow.com and DriveThruRPG.com are merging into a new company. Unfortunately, this new company is going with the less attractive business terms that DTRPG offers publishers. For that reason, we have notified RPGNow that we are terminating our existing agreement with them.
Fortunately, we have been getting up and running with the good folks at e23. At this point in time we have
48 products available from e23; that is fewer than we had on RPGNow, but I will work on getting the rest on there as soon as I can, as well as titles never before seen in PDF.
Pieces of Eight Audio Review
Pulp Gamer has put up a brand new
podcast review of
Pieces of Eight. It's a well-produced review, entertaining to listen to, and I'm not just saying that because the reviewer rated the game as "don't leave the store without it." :)
Special Treat for Board Game Geeks
We're doing a very special promotion with the good folks of
BoardGameGeek.com for their BoardGameGeek.CON (as in convention) event next month: All 400 attendees at the sold-out event will be getting their own set of
Pieces of Eight, free. Each attendee gets a velvet pouch containing a set of 16 coins (either the
Maiden's Vengeance set or the
Cursed Blade), a
rulebook, an explanatory note from designer Jeff Tidball, and a mini-FAQ, when they sign in for the con.
Pieces of Eight is the perfect convention game, since it's about as portable as you can get. You can carry your coins in your pocket, it plays quickly, accommodates a wide range of number of players, and you don't need a table or other play surface (just two hands and a pocket or the pouch to serve as the "hold"). This means you can easily play it between other games, or even while waiting for a table at a restaurant. And at BGG.CON, you'll know that there are 399 potential opponents close at hand!
If you're going to be attending BGG.CON, we'd also like to suggest that you download a copy of the very convenient
print-and-fold booklet PDF with the rules/abilities of all the coins in the game.
Mysterious Metacreator!
Some great news from Peggy and Bruce over at Alter Ego Software, about more development of
Ars Magica supplements for
Metacreator:
Alter Ego Software is now accepting pre-orders for the Ars Magica Supplement for The Mysteries and Mystery Cults, at www.alteregosoftware.com. The pre-order period is 30 days, ending Nov. 16. We are targetting 50 orders, to make this financially viable.
In the same manner as the Covenants pre-order program, if we reach the target we will develop the supplement as our top priority. If it fails to garner sufficient customer interest, all payments will be refunded.
Thank you for your support!
Peggy and Bruce Kvam
Alter Ego Software
Reprints Today
I've gotten word that the truck will be here early this afternoon with the reprints of two
Ars Magica 5th Edition sourcebooks,
Guardians of the Forests and
Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults. We will commence shipping immediately.
Atlas PDFs on e23
I'm late in calling this to everyone's attention, but I'm pleased to announce that a bunch of our digital titles are available now from e23. At this point, to be specific,
48 books are online.
More of our RPG books will be available for download from e23 in the future. Also on our "to do" list will be adding links on the individual product pages here on the Atlas website. But you don't need to wait for that if you want to go shopping today!
Translation News
I am pleased to announced that we have finalized and signed licensing agreements with the French game publisher, Play Factory, to publish
Once Upon A Time in the French and Portuguese languages. The game's previous French publisher, Halloween Concept, went out of business last year. The game has not previously been published in Portuguese.
New Spanish translations and site updates
New Spanish translations of rules for
Lunch Money and
Beer Money have been posted with our thanks to Rodolfo Schmauk.
Additionally, there is new information for the
Pieces of Eight errata and FAQ page. Also, the
Product Price list has been updated in the
Retailer Support area.
Bad Omens for Unknown Armies
Ken Hite recently dreamed up what he calls "Bad Omens" mechanics for the Game Design Contest at Ropecon. He says, "The important thing about an omen is that it comes true. Otherwise, it's just a creepy piece of atmosphere. This means that bad omens are primarily useful only in games in which the social contract admits that the player-characters are screwed. (A bad omen in D&D, by contrast, is just a killer GM trap -- "Save versus divine fate, DC a million.")" He applied the concept to Unknown Armies with these results:
"For Unknown Armies, the player may buy off any BOHICA (critical fumble) by accepting a Bad Omen instead. Again, the GM should tailor the specific Omen seen (mocking voices from the traffic lights, a hearse with the PC's birthday as its license plate) to the circumstances and to the player character's foibles (and to his Avatar or Adept school, for choice). The GM then rolls an Omen Increment as above, except that the player only and always receives three BOHICAs at the derived crisis. (This is the Wiccan Rede in game form, it belatedly occurs to me.)"
To see more about Bad Omens and other ponderings, visit
Ken's LiveJournal.
Special Ops Quarterly Drawing
Atlas Games is pleased to announce that Matthew Muth of Dayton, OH is the winner of this quarter's Special Ops prize drawing. Matthew will get to choose a prize from among the rare and and one-of-a-kind Atlas Games items reserved for the Special Ops drawing.
Special Ops is Atlas Games' corps of loyal fans who organize and run demos and tournaments at retail stores and conventions across the country and around the world. At the end of each quarter, Special Ops demo team members who have run a game in the last three months are entered into a prize drawing for special Atlas items. The next drawing will be December 29th, and will feature a choice of prizes such as press sheets and original art from our popular Ars Magica, Feng Shui, Penumbra D20, and Unknown Armies RPGs, and from card game favorites like Dungeoneer, Lunch Money, and Once Upon a Time.
Atlas is also happy to announce that the following Special Ops members have gone up in rank this quarter:
Tim McDowell (Magus, 500 HP)
Craig Carf (Avatar, 200 HP)
Ray C. Becker, Jr (Companion, 100 HP)
Tony Brock (Companion, 100 HP)
Roscoe Gibson (Companion, 100 HP)
Rodolfo Schmauk Ortúzar (Companion, 100 HP)
Darrin Bright (Grog, 50 HP)
Alexis G. Díaz (Grog, 50 HP)
Elkaiam Haggai (Grog, 50 HP)
Congratulations to all of you, and keep up the great work!
Also, we'd like to welcome the following new recruits:
Juan Cuéllar
Carl Kashnier
Alex Neilson
Glenn Russell
Gyõzõ Drozdy
Anderson Neri Guido
Jeff Mckahan
Ian Radford
Robson Scoz
Thanks for being a part of Special Ops!
If you're interested in joining Atlas Games' Special Ops demo team, just fill out and send in the application form at
www.atlas-games.com/specialops.
To request a demo at your convention or retail store, send in the demo request form located at
www.atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/SOdemorequestform.rtf.
Metacreator Voting
Peggy Kvam dropped us a line to tell us that Alter Ego Software is "putting the next Metacreator project to a vote from our fans. We were very pleased with the preorder challenge process, so we'll take that route again. The highest vote-getter from our survey will go up for a preorder challenge."
Her more detailed message to fans is as follows:
We're ready to work on a new Metacreator project. You are invited to vote for the product you would like us to develop first. Please take our survey at www.alteregosoftware.com. The most popular product will then be submitted for a preorder challenge, 50 orders in 30 days. If it fails to make the goal, the second highest voted item will go up for the challenge.
The choices are:
- The Mysteries (Revised) and Mystery Cults: Houses of Hermes for Ars Magica -- proposed price $7.95
- ConspiracyX for Unisystem -- proposed price $4.95
- Rippers and Deadlands Reloaded for Savage Worlds -- proposed price $7.95
- d20 Future -- proposed price $4.95
The survey will close on Monday, Oct. 16.
Best Regards,
Peggy Kvam
Alter Ego Software
Open Call Frequently Asked Question
Well, I've been asked twice, which is often enough for me to answer it here.
The material you submit for the
Ars Magica Open Call should be new and unpublished. That means not published on your, or anybody else's, web pages. We want the book to contain new material, not things that people have seen before.
Wedding Photo
David and Yuriko's wedding was amazing. Michelle and I are really glad we made the trip, and feel humbled by the honor of being invited.
Here's a photo of us with David and Yuriko, who are showing off their traditional Japanese wedding garb right before the ceremony in the Shinto shrine.
Congratulations again to the bride, groom, and their families! (And I passed along the congratulations posted in comments in the last blog entry, by the way.)
Tomorrow we take the bullet train to Kyoto.
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