I finished up the layout for the Vampire Scion Prestige Class last night.  I should have that posted either later today or tomorrow.  I’ll be hitting the layouts really hard for the next couple of weeks so I can get several up-coming projects ready to roll out.  I have the artwork back for another Advanced Class update, and should be getting some maps for another project that already has the artwork ready. Those and Black Tokyo, plus at least one more D7ACU Antony is working on are on deck.

The guy GM’ing our Star Wars campaign just got a whole mess of Stormtroopers and other cannon-fodder figures off ebay yesterday.  Should give us plenty of stuff to kill!  Last Sunday I saw the Robot Chicken Star Wars special; awesome!  Check it out.

Games Day was fun but also disappointing in a few ways.  I love to see the Golden Deamon entries and this year the overall quality seemed a bit off.  Some of them were stunning, to be sure; the Chaos Nurgle Lord/Champion done by one of the GW staffers was awesome!  But there were also some entries that had no business in a painting competition.  I am not kidding, they were just bad.  I just figured if you read White Dwarf or have ever seen a GD competition before you should realize that your figures should be of a certain level of quality before you stick them in the competition.  (Youngbloods are exempted from this, of course.)  Naturally these models did not make the first cut, but I was even surprised some of them were entered.

The crowd was large, but not as large as I have seen in years past.  The hall was bigger, so that made the crowd seem a bit smaller.  I attribute some of this to the fact that GW now has several Games Days across the US; so fewer people travel to Baltimore if they can make Chicago etc.  I was glad I went, and had a good time.  I left my army in the car and didn’t actually play in any of the games.  Maybe next year.  I guess I should start working on my Golden Deamon entry!

I finished up the layout for Mega-Feats Vol. II and posted it last night before I went to bed.  I still need to post it over at YGN but my FTP info got deleted so I need to look up the right IP address.  I’ll have it up there today.

Working on another couple of products tonight; I have two small ones and the long-awaited Black Tokyo.  Anthony is backlogged with new clients but I will get as much done as possible and get soem final artwork pieces from him.  I even got an InDesign training video so I can ratchet up the layout and design on this (and future) release.

Got a call from Louis Porter Jr. Friday night.  I missed the call and he left a voicemail; so I called him Saturday while I was driving up to Baltimore for Games Day.  He wanted to check with me because he’s working on a product that had some similarities to several of mine, and didn’t want to “step on my toes” as he put it.  We talked about it and I see where he’s coming from but didn’t think it was so similar that I should be worried.   But I am glad he called, and showed the courtesy of checking.  I know he get some bad press on the publisher boards, but he has been nothing but helpful to me and professional when our companies compete in the same areas.  We also talked about the slow month and print publishing and a few other things.

Games Day is this Saturday in Baltimore. It totally snuck up on me. I used to go every year, but I haven’t been in a few years. What’s funny is that my entire RPG group is made up of current or former Games Workshop employees! I sent an email out to some of the guys to see if any of them wanted to go to the gun range on Saturday and do some shooting. That’s how I found out about Games Day; they said they had to work!

So I arranged to get some free passes for me and my buddy and we’re gonna be up there to check out the Golden Deamons. (It’s nice when one of your gaming buddies is a VP at the company!) I’m looking forward to it. On another GW related rant; I think they are shooting themselves in the foot by not attending GenCon. I guess their idea is that since we have several Games Day’s across the country/world that we don’t have to go to GenCon. That’s bass-ackward thinking. (Which is fairly normal from GW now that I think about it!)

I’ll probably throw my Necron army in the car and bring it. It would be nice to get a few games in. Which reminds me; I need to get painting on my Warmachine army for GenCon! Time is really flying by; we’re more than halfway through june already!

Life has been really crazy with my schedule. Now that things are settling down I want to get my release schedule back to where it should be. Come hell or high water I will have a PDF released this weekend! (Honest, I promise!)

We’re starting the new Star Wars RPG campaign in early July. That’s gonna be a blast. We’re gonna be Sith initiates. I really like the new streamlined D20 version of the SWRPG. It will be interesting to see how it ‘plays’. I am leaning towards a Kel Dor of the races available in the core book; but I am also going to check the races book from the last edition and see if anything there looks good. If not a Kel Dor than probably a human.

Yesterday was my two-year wedding anniversary to my lovely wife!  We dropped my daughter off so she could go camping for the week with a church group and spent the night strolling through Ikea looking for a new piece of furniture we need.  We even stopped for dinner at the cafe they have in there.  We measured a few things and got home to decide which piece would fit best. I know, I know…sounds like a boring anniversary, but my wife does love to shop!

Happy Fathers Day. My daughter made my favorite Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies today, and we’re heading over to my in-laws for a family dinner this evening. Should be fun, and the food will be great.

Yesterday was the last day of the VA Renaissance fair. My daughter enjoyed being part of it, but we’re both glad it’s over so we can get our Saturday’s back!

We’re doing Sith in our Star Wars campaign, so I need decide what kind of character I’ll be paying. I’m looking foreward to being a player and taking some time off from being the GM.

Lots of projects in the works; Mega Feats Vil. II and the Vampire Scion prestige class are on deck. I also just got the artwork back for the next Dept. 7 Advanced Class Update: NeoWitch Avenger. (The follow-up to the NeoWitch Guardian class!) Then there is also Black Tokyo. More to follow after that, so stay tuned.

Part of the appeal of RPG’s is their linear nature. Rarely does a game “end” in the same sense as a board game or a card game. You continue to gain experience and progress until you reach higher levels. All the core classes top-out at 20th level, but if you wish to continue playing the same characters you then move into the Epic Level!

I really enjoy playing Epic level campaigns. Why play a fourth level Dwarf Cleric when you can play a 25th level Paragon Doppelganger! (Yes, I actually did play “Queen Dopplepopolous” in our Epic campaign!) Sometimes it’s great to put aside restrictions and notions of “balance” and let lose with some serious POWER GAMING!

Epic Feats & Familiars is designed to give players and GM’s more options when playing an Epic Campaign. Included in this PDF are 21 new Epic Feats and a section on Epic Familiars. Now instead of a small cat or a bird, you can have a Roc or an Elder Earth Elemental as your faitfull companion and servant! Or if you prefer, you can imbue that faithful familiar that has stuck with you for so many levels with new Epic abilities.
The New Feats presented in this title are:

ADDITIONAL ITERATIVE ATTACK
ANARCHIC STRIKE
AXIOMATIC STRIKE
DEATH ATTACK OF OPPORTUNITY
DEDICATED PRIEST
EIDETIC SPELLBOOK
ETERNAL YOUTH
EVERLASTING GOD-STOPPER
EXTREME HARDINESS
HOLISTIC DISCIPLE
INTENSIFY SPELL-LIKE ABILITY
LIMITLESS POTENTIAL
LORD OF BATTLE
MANIFEST AURA
MIGHTY LIFTING
NEGATIVE ENERGY AURA
SUDDEN INTENSIFY SPELL
UNPARALLELED SPELLCASTER
UNSTOPPABLE SPELLCASTER
SMITE CHAOS
SMITE LAW

The final section covers Epic Familiars. You may either choose from a list of powerful new familiars including a Succubus, various Daemons and Devils or even Elder Elementals, among others. You may also choose to imbue your existing familiar with the Epic abilities presented in this section if you prefer.

Listen Now:

 Epic Feats & Familiars: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I picked up the new Star Wars RPG last week. It’s much smaller than the last version, more streamlined. It’s also square instead of 8.5 X 11 like most RPG’s. I like the new version and the layout is interesting. I am wondering if all the SWRPG releases will be square? We wound down our Eberron game and will begin a Star Wars Campaign set in the New Republic era. I’m looking foreward to it, but think I’ll steer away from the typical Jedi just-itching-to-fall-to-the-Dark-Side-so-I-can-use-Force-Lightning-on-people character I usually play in favor of something new. (My last Star Wars PC was Jedi Master Shaeik Annande; I spent seven levels just so I could call him “Master Shaeik”!) Playing a droid might be interesting, or maybe an elite soldier or even a regular Light Side Jedi. I’ll have to see what everyone else is playing.

I was gonna say some stuff about politics…what with the Amnesty Bill and all kinds of people already running for President, but since that isn’t the main thing this site is about I’ll save it for my other Blog. (I just set up a second blog with it’s own domain where I can discuss other things that matter to me.) I’m having some trouble with the theme not showing up properly. I’ll link to it when it’s ready for prime-time.

Worked on the Black Tokyo logo/title last night.  I don’t have it exactly where I want it yet, but it’s coming along.  I haven’t started on the Otherverse logo but I do have an idea of what would look good.  I just have to see if I can ‘pull it off’ like I see it in my mind.

Sales this month are a bit slower than the last couple of months.  Maybe it’s the lull before Gen Con, or the fact that I only released two new products last month.  Not sure, but I have three of four more products on deck for the rest of June so we’ll see what that does for sales.

I got rained on last night driving my motorcycle home from work.  It wasn’t bad enough that I wanted to stop and put on my rain suit, so I just kept going since I was almost home.  Right after I got home it hit hard; we had a massive thunderstorm that only lasted about an hour.  Glad I missed that one!

I had to be in at Oh-Dark-30 this morning, so it will be nice to get out of work at a decent hour.  I have a few errands I want to run anyway.  Then work on some more PDF stuff since the current product is about to drop off the front page of RPGNow.

Played Halo 2 last night with my regular group; we’ve really been working on our teamwork and communication.  I can’t say we won all our games, but we definitely won more than we lost, and two of those games were absolute routes; with scores of 54-100.  One game was a flag capture where everyone on the other team quit except one guy; so it was eight of us against him.  We treated it like a training game and worked our plan.  We even let him steal the flag and run it in for a tie game.  We were killing our own guys so he could run the flag in!  I prefer people who stick it out rather than just quit when the game isn’t going your way.

Lots of things happening right now.  I’m knee-deep in the layout for Black Tokyo.  BT will be the first release of the Otherverse imprint Chris Field is doing under the Skortched Urf’ Studios banner.  Black Tokyo is a Hentai themed, adults-only title!  So be warned.  (Obviously, it will be an OGL release rather than a D20 System offering.)

I’ve also got two other products just about ready to roll out.  Mega-Feats Vol. II and the Vampire Scion.  I am also reviewing another submission from the same author (Shane O’Connor) that looks great, so that will be a future release as well.  Following that, I farmed out the maps for our Law of the Jungle adventure and once I get them back I can finally finish the layout for that PDF.

I’ve sent some other projects over to Anthony for artwork, but he’s keeping quite busy with other commissions currently so I’m not sure when those will come back.  I have enough to keep me busy for a while so that will be fine.

In other news, I attended a gun show on Saturday.  (I had to kill some time after I dropped my daughter at the VA Ren Fair and heard there was a show nearby. ) I was a good little geek, I didn’t buy anything and fill up the credit card we just paid off!  I saw a few things that interested me, but wasn’t ready to drop the ca$h.  I was amazed to see well-used Glocks with noticeable wear on the Tennifer finish going for north of $450; a new one can be had for the $500 neighborhood.  I’m in the market for a new pistol; and am leaning towards the Taurus 24/7 pro in .40 or the HK USP.  Given the Taurus is under half the cost of the USP I am leaning a bit more towards the 24/7.

There is a whopper of a show at the end of July near my house, so I’m saving my pennies until then.  (And since it’s right after my birthday I’ll be able to get myself a nice present!)  With any luck my PDf sales for the next couple of months will pay for my purchase!

Sorry for the lack of recent updates. I was in a class all last week, along with the holiday weekend has kept me very busy!

I have begun serious work on a new phase of Skortched Urf’ Studios marketing and business strategy; more details to follow soon.

I have also continued to work on our new releases and have a pre-view of a few up-coming products: