Another FREE PDF from Otherverse games.  Go check it out.

In other news I had a nice long conversation with my new Artist last night.  Yes, you heard that right, a new artist.  I sent some projects over to Anthony and he replied that he was swamped with work and possibly moving on to other types of art.  Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way upset about that; I started him off in RPG art and sent plenty of work his way.  Other publishers used his services as well, and I am glad he has all the work he can handle.  I will say that his professionalism and work ethic have served him well, and he deserves all the success he recieves.  Which leaves me with several projects and no artist.

Rather than hit “the street” looking for a new one, I hit my cell phone and called one of my long-time friends to put him to work.  I’ve showcased a few of his images on this blog before, and he’s ready to step up and start producing some work.  Next weekend we are getting together for our Star Wars RPG campaign and I’ll be handing off my CS3 suite for him to use (mostly Photoshop) while I “make do” with CS4.  The upgrade vs. new version was only about a hundred bucks difference, so I sprung for the full version so I would have the extra copy to use anyway.  He’s happy to get a current copy of Photoshop, and I’m happy to put him to work illustrating.  Win-win.

I’ve already sent him three small projects (Two D7ACU’s and an Adventurer Essential script) plus we talked about the upcoming Traveller project.  I have another short one as well, but I am expecting a few more from the same “line” in the next few days so I’ll send those over once I’ve collected a few.

I also hit the gun show today a few miles South of here with my daughter, and it was PACKED.  (Barry O must have stock in Smith & Wesson cuz he is really driving sales up in the gun industry.)   I picked up three magazines for one of my pistols, but that was about it.  I was mostly just “window shopping”.  We hit Cheesburger in Paradise for lunch and had pretty good burgers but a fantastic desert!  The we hit Best Buy on the way home where I used my gift card from Christmas to suppliment the purchase cost of Dawn of War II.

Now I am cooking/burning dinner and will get back to work on some RPG stuff, maybe fleshing out the Traveller project.

I picked up tickets for my daughter and I, and booked us a room three blocks from the convention center.  (Last time we stayed way out by the air port and drove in each day.)  It will be nice to be able to go back and forth during the con to drop swag off and take a break between forays into the fun.  I wanted to get a room in the Westin, but they were apparently all booked up, and I didn’t want to wait for another block to open up.

In other news I have gotten a few relies to my query for Traveller writers.  (I can certainly use more, so if your interested then please drop me a line!) I have the first project outlined and ready to hand off to writers, and I’ll keep fleshing it out as well.  Once it is in good hands I’ll start on the follow-up release.

I spoke with Chirs field via email yesterday and he has quite a few things upcoming, along with a few smaller projects I have had sitting of his I need to get on the ball with.  Look for plenty of stuff in the next seveal weeks.

Freelance Writers Wanted!

Skortched Urf’ Studios is adding support for the Traveller game to our product line.  If you are a talented Freelance writer with a solid understanding of the Traveller Rules then we want to hear from you.

Contact us at:

skortched.urf.studios@gmail.com

Old news for some of you, I know.

I suppose all of you reading this already knew the new version of Traveller was OGL, but I sure didn’t until I read the new PDF from Mongoose Games “I am Mongoose, and so can you!“.  I picked up the main rule book, along with several of the supplements. I played the first version back in the mid-eightie’s, so this brought back lots of good memories.  We used to meet early before school in the library to play, and occasionally after school as well.  I jotted down a few ideas for products I would like to release for the new system.

In going through it I remeber how much I enjoyed crating you character the Traveller way; joining the military, serving terms, gaining skills, benefits, money; or maybe even dying and starting all over again before you even finish making the character.  The new system mimics that nicely, without as much dying. I also like how the whole system is very “rules-light”; 2D6 needed to play, a few stats, a few skills and your off.  Unlike the massive amount of paper one accumulates to play 3.5/D20 that requires heavy duty software to check your work during character creation.  Don’t get me wrong, they both have their place; but sometimes I prefer to focus on playing the game rather than tweaking my stats.  For power-gaming, hack-n-slash, world-domination type games then bring on the D20 system.

Anyway, I have some new creative juices flowing for Traveller; so look for some support for the game from us in the future.

You can get a sneak-peek HERE.

I am going to go in and blur out a few of the naughty bits before it goes up on OBS.  With luck I’ll have it posted tonight.

I got the CD in the mail from Chris containing his massive Otherverse America setting.  I am almost done with the flip book, and expect it to hit the virtual shelves early next week.

I am expecting the delivery on my Adobe Creative Suite CS4 software today as well; I am very excited to get my hands on it.  Once I do I’ll be handing my C3 copy over to my artist friend so he can get off GIMP and start using Photoshop.

It also turns out, I have no heat at my house and temeratures are a balmy twenty-six degrees today; even lower last night.  Here is the story; I got home last night and turned on the heat, since we leave it off during the day.  I cooked dinner.  (Chicken Tikka Masala if anyone is interested.)  After dinner, it was still very cold.  I snuggled under some blankets to watch TV and fell asleep.  My wife woke me at about ten PM to say that it was VERY cold.  The furnace was not putting out any heat, so I checked it and fumbled about, but what they hell do I know about the inner mojo of a furnace?  So we added an extra blanket, and snuggled up close with a few extra layers of clothes on.  This morning I hop in the shower and the water is warm, not hot.  Hmmm, that’s interesting.  So apparently the issue is not with our furnace but the gas.  Good news for me.  So I get to thinking; I don’t remember ever seeing an actual gas bill.  Ever.

I check our electric bill thinking it must have been bundled in and it wasn’t.  A call to the electric company confirms that they are not handling our gas.  Now I have no earthly idea who does.  Never seen a bill, never got a cut off notice; yet we have been in the house for six months! I call around to the various gas companies and find the one that provides service to our address; they never heard of me.  I set up service and the man will be out Monday to hook us up.

Aside from a very cold weekend ahead of us,  (I’ll be picking up a couple space heaters on my way home tonight)  here is what happened as best I can figure out.  I remeber last summer when we bought the house we had to have an inspection.  When the guy came to do it he couldn’t inspect the furnace or hot water heater due to the gas being turned off.  My realetor called and got them to turn the gas on so we could complete the inspection, and he came back to inspect a few days later.  This was before we actually had purchased the house, and there was a few weeks delay on our closing due to a paperwork snafu on the sellers end.  I suspect that the gas company simply left the gas on, and we didn’t know we had to pay someone else for it as we never got a bill and never had our service interrupted.  Certainly we never got a cut-off notice or anything like that. Our neighbors moved out a week or so ago, and I guess that when the gas company came out to turn theirs off they noticed ours was on and shouldn’t be.  That’s just a guess, of course, but I thinks its a fair one. So I guess that means I have been pirating gas for half the winter!

I am way more excited about this than the GSL update. They should both come out about the same time apparently.

A few posts back I noted how I discovered the Footer tool on the OBS site and used a Flash component to add some thumbnails of my products for people to scroll through, increasing exposure.  I just ran a sales report on one of our Dept. 7 Advanced Class Updates: The Hollowpoint Monk.  This is one I have always really liked, had good cover art and would be fun to play, but had never really “taken off” from a sales perspective.

Well, it is one of the products I have been featuring in my footer.  Here is the sales breakdown for the last few months for that product.

Aug. 2008: 2 copies sold.

Sept. 2008: 4 copies sold.

Oct. 2008: 2 copies sold.

Nov. 2008: 1 copies sold.

Dec. 2008: 2 copies sold.

Jan. 2008: 7 copies sold.

From one or two copies to seven in the first month I have featured it in my footer.  Not bad at all.

I ordered the Adobe Creative Suite CS4 today.  I can’t wait to get my hands on it so I can start playing with the new features.

I also spoke with Chris Filed (well, email anyway) and he is sending over his massive Otherverse America setting, so I should have that this week.  Look for it to be released shortly thereafter.

OBS just put out their Auto-Pay feature, which will funnel the % of each sale to the various people, rather than me collecting all the funds and sending it out each month.  This opens up all kinds of possibilities for partnerships as it removes the hassle of the accounting.  There are still a few bugs, but I am working on getting all my current products fixed and sending off the right % to people.  The new tool uses a % of the gross sale price, where I had negotiated based on the net, so an adjustment is in order to make the number work out the same.

I saw the new G.I. Joe trailer at the beginning of the Super Bowl, and I have to say that Baroness is looking fine.  I really want to like this movie, but I have to admit I have my reservations.  G.I. Joe was the very first comic book I ever collected, and naturally I had all the toys growing up, so there is a soft spot in my heart for the Joes.  Please don’t screw them up.