Coming “soon-ish” from Skortched Urf’ Studios -a 100+ page sourcebook for adding firearms to your campaign.  This will be our first dead-tree product.  More details soon.

New Sketchbook Stock Art coming soon!

Check out the S.C.A.R.E. Vol. 3 cover…

S.C.A.R.E. Vol. 2 also got a four out of five star review over at RPGNow.  Check it out.

The reviewer said that he took one star off for some spelling and formatting issues, so I went in and corrected them.  Now he bumped his review to five stars!

Skortched Urf’ Studios is pleased to announce the release of our second volume in the S.C.A.R.E. line.

S.C.A.R.E. - Secrets, Contacts, Allies, Rivals and Enemies. They are part and parcel of the character generation process, and provide endless opportunities for adventure, intrigue and complication. The S.C.A.R.E. line gives you NPC’s designed to provide maximum flexibility as they can be used in several ways; either as a valuable Contact or Ally, or as a dangerous Rival or Enemy. Secrets can be exploited for profit, patriotism or career advancement; and each could lead to danger, wealth or fantastic new discoveries. Multiple plot hooks and adventure ideas are also presented in each release, allowing easy integration into your game.

This volume in the series details Viesca Melin Aella.

What do you get when you take a member of the Imperial family (in this case a grand-niece to the Emperor), add in the loyalty and training instilled by the Imperium’s finest organizations, the unlimited authority granted by Imperial Credentials, access to bleeding edge technology, the unlimited resources to create multiple, bulletproof cover identities, and the contacts, networks and intelligence gleaned from hundreds of Imperial and Corporate agencies ? You have a Shadow Agent with the authority to arrest an Inquisitor, kill with impunity or start a war! Only a select handful are trusted with such authority, but they are the most fearsome and effective weapon in the Imperial arsenal.

Viesca Melin Aella is one of these “Shadows”.

This PDF release includes information on Viesca including her background, personality, advanced training and how she treats her Allies, Contacts, Rivals or Enemies. There are also dozens of adventure hooks and ideas for using Viesca and her cover identities in your game.

Written by Mark Cathro.
Artwork by Anthony Cournoyer.

For sale now at OBS.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=78010

Don’t forget Vol. 1 in the line:

Look for more Volumes VERY SOON!

Skortched Urf’ Studios and Otherverse Gmaes are pleased to announce the latest release in the Galaxy Command RPG:

The Planetary Champion -An Advanced Class for the Galaxy Command Setting.

Answer the call of duty!
Protect your people, protect your world!

Defy WARSTAR and rebuff star-pirate incursions with the strength of both conviction and your strong arms. Become a Planetary Champion, a breed of hero powerful enough to be truthfully called a one man army! Planetary Champions are psionic superwarriors who are taught to unlock their true potential, and are empowered by their planet’s ruling body to dispense justice, and to lead the world’ defenses in times of crisis. Unbelievably confident and often tactically brilliant, Planetary Champions tend toward (justified) arrogance. Their self-assurance is the source of their powers. Morale-fed super abilities draw strength from the Champion’s courage and conviction.

Many worlds have their own Champions and each is as unique as the world that created them. Some worlds dispense with conventional militaries entirely, depending on either one lone and incredibly powerful Planetary Champion or a small team of dedicated heroes. Other worlds place a Planetary Champion near the top of their world’s military hieachy, allowing these legendary warriors to command armadas and vast hordes of conventional troopers. No matter if they fight alone or with a legion at their back, a Planetary Champion’s courage never wavers.

Add this Advanced Class to you collectiion of Galaxy Command RPG products today. Also part of the Galaxy Command RPG line:

Or save on all these titles by purchasing the Galaxy Command Bundle. Click HERE for more details.

Last night I tweaked the sales listing for the Dept. 7 Full Monty Bundle.  Check it out…

Here is your chance to get your hands on every single Department 7 PDF ever released by Skortched Urf’ Studios for a whopping 75% off the regular price!

Included in this Bundle are 39 PDF titles:

32 Advanced Classes that cover the whole gambit of classes, from the Super-Natural to Super-Heroes and everything in between.

5 Technology Updates covering the highest technologies used by Dept. 7 agents.

and 2 stand alone Dept. 7 PDF’s:

The Dept. 7 Firearms Training Academy will get your characters locked, loaded and ready for anything.

Mia Famiglia: The Lodovico Crime Family covers a complete organized crime family ready to drop into your campaign.

Purchased individually all these PDF’s would come to $77.17!  Get them all now for just $18.99.

By my count there are 327 pages of combined content included in this Bundle, but if we strip out the Covers, OGL License and Credits page from each title that is still 210 pages of cutting edge D20 Modern content!

Here is the list of items included in this Bundle:

Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: American Nomad
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Bar Room Berserker
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Cold Bringer
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Death Whisperer
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Digital Sorcerer
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Fifth Horseman
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Gravity Slinger
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Grendel Spawn
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Hollowpoint Monk
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Lightweaver
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Luchadore
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Lucky Bastard
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Man Hunter
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Manitou
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Mind Reaper
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Modern Swordsman
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Neo-Witch Avenger
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: NeoWitch Guardian
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Perfect Archer
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Powerphage
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Scion of Masada
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Sentai Spectrum Ranger
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Shotgun Surgeon
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Skele-Teen
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Soul Collector
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: The Forbidden
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: The Innocent
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: The Prince of Doggs
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: The S.L.A.M. Soldier
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: The Unbound Soul
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Urban Sniper
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Voidsparrow
Dept. 7 Technology Update: AAP/CPR Med Kit
Dept. 7 Technology Update: Synthetic Lycanthropy
Dept. 7 Technology Update: Nano-Robotic PANs
Dept. 7 Technology Update: Liquid Armor
Dept. 7 Technology Update: Cybernetics

Dept. 7 Firearms Training Academy

Mia Famiglia: The Lodovico Crime Family

The Adorable Avenger just dropped off the front page. Look for the next release tonight.  I’ll get it uploaded tonight when I get home from work.

I’ve been planning out the next few releases and I have plenty to keep me hopping. Two more from Chris Field for the Galaxy Command RPG ready to go, nine Adventurer’s Wanted posters on deck, Black Tokyo II, two S.C.A.R.E.’s, a Modern project I’ve had forever along with a at least three more sketchbooks full of stock art, a Free20 and two Fantasy/Pathfinder short PDF’s along with an adventure I commissioned a long time ago. None of these include the Long projects I have in the works for print distribution which include stuff for both Traveller and Pathfinder.

Chris has the new outline for the Fantasy Firearms project and is re-working the texts.  I’m fairly excited to see this one finished up as a print release. I have two more fantasy releases behind that one.  One has the script already written and the other has been assigned to a freelancer.  Other freelancers are toiling away on various Sci-Fi Traveller projects as well.

I have a lot of work ahead of me!

It seems the marketing efforts I talked about are already starting to pay off.  I ran some numbers on the Galaxy Command RPG the other day.  It sold well the first two months, dropped off to a handful of sales for two months and sold zero copies for the two months after that.  Once Chris released “new product” (as Louis always says!) to support it and I created a half-price coupon to go out with the marketing email we have sold three fewer copies than we did the moth it was released so far; and it’s only the 11th!  (With two more Galaxy Command releases on deck to boot.) We have sold one copy of the Galaxy Command RPG for every copy of Space Mafia this month. I’d call that a win for a product that sold zero copies for the last two months.

I also already sold one copy of the Dept. 7 Full Monty Bundle that includes every PDF ever released under the Dept. 7 Line for D20 Modern.  I haven’t done a press release on it yet, or changed the sales listing to improve it.

Space Mafia just fell off the front page, so look for another release tonight.  Chris Field sent over four Otherverse PDF’s (of which Space mafia was one) so I have three more in the pipeline.  Front page real-estate is precious, so I always wait until one product goes off the front page before releasing another.

I also have the first Wanted Poster ready to go.  But I have been thinking of adding a couple different versions of the player hand-out with Dwarven Runes or Elvish script instead of English.  What do you guys think; would you like the option of having a few different language versions to print out?  Do you think that would add something to the overall value of the product?

That covers some of the “Short” products I have in the pipeline; lets talk about some of the “Long” products destined for print distribution.  I have one project which is an expansion the short Fantasy Firearms PDF’s we’ve put out. I pasted the two Fantasy Firearms PDF texts in with the script I had Chris write to expand on introducing guns and gunpowder into your campaign and it weighed in at 73 pages in MS Word.  (No art, no layout etc.)  I went through it and it still seemed a tad disjointed to me, which is to be expected when you are piecing together separate PDF projects with new material.  So I started a new document and proceeded to outline the entire book as I wanted to see the final product.  Once done with the outline, I’ll copy/paste the appropriate text where it needs to go form the long draft and fill in the parts that I added.  While it will take a bit longer to get the product finished this way, I really want to do it right.  This one has a good shot at being our first book to be published as a “Dead Tree” product.  From the two previous PDF’s and the new art I had commissioned for the product from Anthony Cournoyer I already have most of the art needed for it.  Of all the “Long” projects in development (and there are several!) this one is the closest to being done with all the pieces in place.  I want to have it finished by the end of January.

I have several freelancers plugging away at some Traveller releases also, as well as a couple more fantasy projects that fall into the “Long” category.  It’s shaping up to be a very busy year!

In other news I picked up a copy of Warmachine Prime MkII last night.  The first thing I did was go through it with an eye towards the layout.  No, seriously!  I knew I didn’t have time to get into the rules or fluff while having dinner, so I studied the pages, how they were laid out, how the text was formatted.  Where they left space or used a graphic to fill in space, how the different sections each had a different border, the drop shadows on several of the pictures, the credits page and the index.  Privateer Press is at the top of the heap when it comes to slick production values.  (Fantasy Flight Games and the Warhammer 40K game, as well as Paizo and the Pathfinder RPG stuff are also at the head of the pack; beautiful stuff! )

I need to get off my @ss and get my factions painted.  I have enough Khador and Menoth to get my game on, but very little of each are painted.  Looking forward to the new plastic WarJacks too!

There is a discussion going on over at the Paizo boards about how 3rd party publishers decide what to publish.  Its a cool discussion that has also offered some advice to would-be publishers on where to get stock art cheaply.  One product I snapped up for the princely sum of twenty bucks I have decided to make an entire line of short PDF’s around; it is the Character Clip Art & Color Customizing Studio produced by the prolific Larry Elmore.  (Yes, that Larry Elmore!)  Twenty bucks for Larry *Effin* Elmore to do art for your product?!  I’m so there.

So I hired David Caffee to write up some short Wanted Posters, kind of like the little “Quests” you can pick up in most of the popular electronic RPG’s.  (I’m lookin’ at you World of Warcraft!) I’ve had them in a file for a while, but I finally got off my @ss and put together the first one.  Take a look:

Here is the intro text for the product:

Need an adventure quick? Is your party unsure where to go next? Need an excuse to get them to the town where your next big adventure kicks off? Adventurers Wanted gives you everything you need for a quick, one session adventure complete with a player hand-out (The cover!) and enough notes and plot hooks to expand from a single session into a full blown multi-session adventure! Adventurers Wanted posters can be placed anywhere in your game; plastered on the tarvern wall, the Oak at the center of the town square, or the sign-post at the crossroads. Give your players a handful of these posters and let them choose where the adventure will take them next!

This one reads:
Reward offered for the safe return of Lady Aryssa Inati, daughter of the Duchess Inati of Hawkswood. Her ladyship has been missing since the last full moon and is believe to be held by a known rogue named Flint De’Kar. They were last seen heading southwest along the Mountain Road. Interested parties should make inquiries at Hawkswood Castle.

Adventure awaits!

Look for this one and more like it soon.

Tonight I released Space Mafia - A Galaxy Command Sourcebook at OBS.

The war between Galaxy Command and the relentless forces of the WARSTAR Empire may be the universe’s biggest conflict, but its far from the only one. And as Galaxy Command’s famous Galactic Marshals and other heroes are occupied by the conflict, forms of crime long thought eradicated flourish. An entire shadow economy, one based around murder-for-hire, weapons smuggling, trade in xeno-slaves and exotic chems, blockade running and high piracy, has emerged from the
shadows.

Even a star-spanning organization like Galaxy Command can’t be everywhere, and with an entire universe available as boltholes, clever galactic racketeers can stay a few light-years ahead of the law.

Unafraid of the Command’s psycho-rehabilitation programs and hardened to life on some forgotten prison asteroid, the galaxy’s worst criminals run rampant. The toughest, most daring and most violent criminals swear the Omerta Oath of the Space Mafia, and draw their power from the Black Sun of Crime!

This 53 page sourcebook for the Galaxy Command RPG Setting gives you new Starting Careers (The Space Mafioso and Psych-Reformed Criminal), Advanced Classes (The Silencer and Techno Samurai) and a host of new planets, hideouts, asteroids, criminal organizations and species.  Add this to the Five-Star Rated Galaxy Command RPG today!

Get the Galaxy Command RPG Setting for HALF PRICE by clicking HERE or on the image above.