I know some of you chaps have offered to put an editing eye across things for me before and, as ever, there isn't really the budget spare to pay someone to do it at the moment.  I can offer PDFs or perhaps a couple of hardcopies for reading through some stuff for me though.  Any volunteers?

First look concept sketches over on apresvie

1. The GSL rebellion seems to be going full swing, but like the corporations in Star Wars I think I'll let this go on for a little while before I pin my flag to either side. AFAIK the copyright laws regarding systems are the same over here as they are in the US as I've seen similar 'compatible' products sold over here.

2. Someone should SO 'Osric' Cyberpunk 2020 given that CP3.0 was so bloody awful.

Card game idea that came to me in a dream last night (don't ask).

OK, you have a deck of cards, there are three kinds of cards in it:

1. Pigs - each pig has different qualities, like being bulletproof, fireproof etc. Affecting what objects can be used on it.
2. Verbs.
3. Objects.

a) Shuffle the deck.
b) Each player draws three cards to start, any pigs are returned to the deck.
c) Determine who goes first by playing rock, paper scissors or rolling a dice.
d) Each turn you draw a card, up to a maximum hand size of five (discard a card if you go over). If you draw a pig you shout 'F*CKPIG!' and proceed to step e). Otherwise play moves clockwise around the table until a pig is drawn.

e) Starting with the player who drew the pig you play card combos that describe something horrible you are doing to the pig. Each action and object is worth points and the person who scores the most points with their combo wins that hand, their points and the points for ALL the combos placed on the pig (introducing a tactical element). Combos have to make sense. In the event of points ties the table votes on who wins the hand with a coin toss separating ties.
f) If you can't go for some reason, you shout 'PIGFUCK!' and everyone laughs at you.
g) Play ends when all the pigs have been played.

Optional:
To increase the tactical element some interference/addition cards (4th type) could be added to the mix. Such as '...and douse it in hot sauce.'

Example:
Bill draws a card for his turn, bringing his hand size to five, it's a pig! It's Wee Pig, who is a born victim with no immunities. Bill gets to go first and the four remaining cards he has in his hand at the moment are...

1. I fuck it...
2. I burn it...
3. ...with my chainsaw.
4. ...with a badger.

Fucking a pig with a chainsaw is possible, and horrible, fucking it with a badger.... feasible but the other players aren't likely to go for it. Burning with either a badger or a chainsaw isn't really possible so Bill has no choice but to play 'I fuck it with my chainsaw' for a fairly strong combo of fifteen points. The remaining players now play their combos, if they can't beat Bill they should choose to play low card combos to limit the number of points he can get, otherwise they should strive to beat him.

HERE over on apresvie

Did an RPG lottery syndicate win or something? I've made 1/3 of a typical month's sales in half a day on RPGnow and 100 Dark Places is top of the hottest items list.

Wonder what I did right this time around.

I am seriously hacked off now by the delay in clarifying the GSL and the problems surrounding it and now I'm off for a few days to the South of France to visit my dad so will likely be away and off proper net contact when something does surface.

X-Posted to apresvie

Wizards of the Coast is pleased to announce that third-party publishers will be allowed to publish products compatible with the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game system under the new Dungeons & Dragons 4E Game System License (D&D 4E GSL). This royalty-free license will replace the former d20 System Trademark License (STL), and will have a System Reference Document (SRD) available for referencing permissible content.

The D&D 4E GSL will allow third-party publishers to create roleplaying game products in fantasy settings with the D&D 4th Edition rules, and publishers who register with WotC will be granted the right to use a version of the D&D logo that denotes the product as compatible with the D&D 4th Edition Roleplaying Game, in accordance with WotC’s terms and conditions. The effective start date for sales of D&D 4E GSL publications will be October 1, 2008.

The license associated SRD will be available on June 6, 2008, at no cost. A small group of publishers received advanced notice and will receive these documents prior to June 6, at no cost, in order to prepare for publication of compatible materials by the effective start date. If you haven’t already been contacted by WotC, you will be able to access the documents on the Wizards website beginning on June 6, 2008.

Wizards is also working on the details of a second royalty-free license, the d20 Game System License (d20 GSL). This license will allow third-party publishers to create roleplaying game products in non-fantasy settings with the 4E rules. The exact details for the d20 GSL will be released as they become available.

************

This seems slightly woolly to me since 'Fantasy Setting' is a rather subjective term, would Iron Kingdoms be a fantasy setting? What about Bas Lag? Some people consider Star Wars to be fantasy. Plus this doesn't tell us that much about the constrictions of the new licence but I'd hazard a guess and say it's going to be about as restrictive as the old D20 license, so you may not be able to do complete settings with character creation etc in them. This may be a bit of a mistake as the leeway with the old OGL lead to efforts like True20 and Mutants & Masterminds that pushed things forward a bit. Still, we'll see, I'm sure I can knock something up whatever the restrictions.

Boy do I hate tax returns, even online, but they owe me money again, so 'yay'.
I would be doing quite well indeed, well enough to indulge the crazier part of my brain if I wasn't having to help cover the heating bill for the house.

Ah well.

Hopefully things I've written that are in Limbo will be published this year and thus I shall get more moolah.

More!

MORE I TELLS YA!

BWAHAHAHAHHAHA!

Much as it's nice not to be punched for snoring, or have the light on too bright, it's damned hard to get to sleep when you're no longer used to sleeping in a bed alone. Plus the cat is being a TOTAL arsehole, Donna always says he's MY cat but the way he's been mooning around, curling on her chair all day and trying to entice me into fights (he usually fights with her) I think he's equally her cat.

It's going to be an interesting year I think. It seems like nobody has much idea what's going on with 4th Edition and its OGL, but I should be getting free books when they do come out and trying to work out my strategy for that. The French version of Cloak of Steel is out, Secret Sexy Project 1 is now just awaiting final legal and logistical wranglings and I seem to be able to work at a relatively normal pace again - which was nice - just as well since it appears - if the first 1/4 of the year has been anything to go by - that I'll be getting a lot of varied freelancing this year too.

Of course, on the downside the dollar's continuing to be worth... fuck all and that directly impacts my income, I may have to raise my PDF prices a bit to compensate, but I don't relish doing that. It's always a bit of a gamble weighing what people will pay.

Livejournal layouts both here and on apresvie
Who'd have thought I would ever remember how to do any CSS at all?

Game type stuff, game/book/film reviews, Postmortem news etc to be found over at apresvie
Erotica writing (in prep for upcoming work) is under a filter, message me here or mail me if you want access.
I know I'm still being lame keeping the diary thing (friends only) going, but meh.

I have just about fucking had it with Lightningsource.
NO other printer gives me this much hassle over setting up and printing my files, nor do they charge me for the privilege of getting a week's worth of singularly unhelpful e-mails.

I can't help but wonder what exactly I'm paying for if other POD services can set up my, apparently 'difficult' files without issue and without charging me. Surely someone being PAID for the job would... you know... actually do it.

That was much quicker than I thought, especially since Lulu seems cheaper than I remember and the main thing I needed from LS was already set up.

Bosh, sorted, but tiring and annoying.

Best rest, don't want to overdo it :(

100 SF seeds now...

100 Horror done, Kingdoms next...

There goes 100 Fantasy Adventure Seeds.
Right, what's next...?

Horror, right...

That's 45 at Lulu, I think I'm going to back and redo @ctiv8 in another format, see if there's a way to do it cheaper...

I'm bored, can you tell?

@ctiv8 is now up on Lulu at least, but the print cost for it there is astronomical because they only offer full colour on the small, magazine style prints.

This is clearly rubbish.

Hmm... I wonder if exporting the old US Letter PDFs to European A4 through 'print to PDF' would be easier than reformating... and if it would work right... *pokes Adobe* I'd still have to redo the covers but that would save a hell of a lot of work.

I hate uploading, its boring, but you have to nurse it along.

Today is not a good day for science.

Due to mess ups between RPGnow and Lulu I now find myself uploading a ton of files to Lulu that I'd really rather not be doing.
After that I have to reformat all the files to a different paper size (joy... rapture... ecstacy) and upload them all over again to Lightningsource AND pay for that, which will be pricey.

Arsebadgers.

Still, it leads to money, so that's good.