Just got the cover image from the artist.  He’s making some tweaks so the final version will be here in a day or so, along with a remaining B&W piece for the interier.  Look for it soon.

I hope to have the Voidsparrow finished tonight; so look for it in the next day or so.

There are several projects on deck right behind that one; including the S.L.A.M. Soldier D7ACU, another AE release and a slew of short adventure-type Wanted Poster projects.

The Traveller project is chugging along; with a couple new freelancers that have contacted me in the last week or so.  I have started looking beyond the initial release to future offerings.  I have several ideas on deck, and will find the right fit among freelancers for them.  I want to get three projects well under way before the first one hits the street.

I am also going to kick the Pandora project into gear for release as a Pathfinder compatible campaign setting.

Chris Field and I will also be collaberating on his Thinking Races books as a compilation for dead tree publication.  Man, there is a lot of stuff going on!

In my personal life things are just plain busy at work.  Six hours of overtime last week, was in early today and worked an hour late yesterday.  Please don’t read that as a complaint; it isn’t.  I am happy to actually be employed; and worry about remaining that way.  But that is also why I am pushing my publishing company to the next level this year and going into dead tree products; because I don’t want to sell a hundred PDF’s and call it a “successful” product, I want to sell a few thousand copies of a release.

I am taking a class at the local community college on Auto Repair.  Not that I am looking to switch careers, but being the cheap bastard I am I want to save some cash by doing work myself.  (Or at least know enough to keep from getting ripped off by knowing a bit about cars so that when a crafty mechanic tells me my dilithium crystals are not feeding power to my flux capaciter I can tell him to jump in a lake.)

Sales have dropped off noticably since the GM’s day sale.  Still selling a lot of the Free20 PDF’s, but that is why I need to get some new releases into the mix.

In other news I have had an idea for a miniatures game I have been toying with for a while.  I was thinking about it today at lunch; and I think I am going to work up a rule set and release it.  I don’t want to give the idea away just yet, but if your a fan of GW’s Blood Bowl you’ll be in the right ball park.  Only instead of selling my own mini’s I plan to make the rules such that you can use any mini you want in the game.  (Well, maybe I’ll do minis of my own if the game takes off. )

The Voidsparrow is coming soon.

Footsteps that shake the earth. Bodies so massive they splinter ancient redwoods as they pass. Venom more deadly than a cobra’s, scaly armor that can shrug off grenades and laughs at bullets,teeth and spines sharp enough to tear through a tank’s armor or disembowel a mammoth in a single swipe.

Dinosaurs are every child’s favorite monster for a reason: they are impressive in a way that few
other monsters can ever hope to match. The dinosaurs in this book might share a name with the creatures in the Monster Manual, D20 Modern Core Rulebook or Menace Manual, but they are very different beasts. These dinosaurs are smarter, tougher and more vicious. In accordance with current paleontological theory, these dinosaurs are fast moving, agile saurians which marry the strength and endurance of reptiles with the craftiness and voraciousness of mammals. These dinosaurs are pack hunters and watchful parents, not slow witted, lumbering behemoths.

Dinosaurs are grouped by phenotype, organizing them into groups with similar physical traits, without regard to evolutionary relationships or place in the geological time line. This book’s dinos have unique abilities with little basis in reality: chameleonic skin, acidic blood, henomenal regenerative abilities among others, all included to add variety to what would otherwise be a very consistent set of monster stat blocks. However, most of the abilities found among this books
dinosaurs are similar to abilities displayed by living animals who fill similar ecological niches in the modern world; more fantastic abilities are simply ‘scaled up’ versions of real world animal abilities.

These monstrous behemoths are all members of the Animal type- a creature type I have new respect for after completing the project. As such, they can be inserted into almost any D20 campaign. There’s no weird magic or especially unusual powers here to mess with your game’s sense of reality, just teeth longer than your forearm.

For sale now at OBS.

Our first Traveller project is coming along nicely.  I have an expanded outline in my hand for  a section which I approved so the freelancer can flesh it out.  I have a contract from another freelancer I need to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on and send out.  I was also contacted by another freelancer I need to get back to because he’s apparently been playing Traveller since it first came out, and even has a website devoted to the game.  So I am pleased with how this project is maturing.

I am also planning out future releases; but one at a time right now.

The GM’s Day sale went OK, but not as good as I would have hoped.  I chalk part of that up to the overall slump but also to my lack of releases lately.  Chris Field is still hitting releases hard, and his Otherverse products moved well.  I think it shows that LPJ is right when he says to “put out product”; new releases drive sales of your backlist.

I am still very stoked about the Pathfinder licence.  I was toying with what system to release the Pandora Project under; and now I think it will be a full-blown Pathfinder Compatible product.

As for other Skortched Urf’ Studios projects I have a slew of projects on deck.  Look for The North Side Spiders Drow street gang for D20 Modern, three new D7ACU’s, another Adventurer Essentials release and six short releases for our new line of “Wanted Posters”.  These short mini-adventures take a big clue from video games that offer mini or side-quests that you can undertake.  The idea is to offer a series of posters/notices/handbills that the party might see posted in a town square or other common area seeking Adventurer’s, Sell-swords or simply strong backsto fill a need.  Weather retrieving a rare spell component, going undercover as a ringer to break up a pit-fighting ring, dispatching a large monster that has taken up residence a bit too close to the local hamlet or thinning the Kobold population stealing cattle and robbing travellers on the road you’ll find plenty to keep your characters busy earning coins and doing good.  Each will come with ideas for tailoring the quest to your parties level and offer additional adventure hooks to expand each one if desired.  These 4E compatible mini-quests will be tacked up on trees in the town square or the tavern wall in the very near future!

Just got my ticket for The Watchmen; seeing it tonight after work with some friends.  I am fairly excited about the movie, but I have to confess that while I liked the graphic novel it was never one of my favorites.  Neither was V for Vendetta; but I think both will translate spectacularly to the big screen. I loved V and can’t wait to see Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach in living color.

I got the notice in my inbox (and forwarded to me from my brother) this morning about the Piazo Pathfinder Compatibility license.  I have high hopes for this game. I also think it will help re-invigorate the PDF market providing support for it.  I have several ideas for products supporting Fantasy that will dovetail nicely with the release ofPathfinder.

Prom Night.  Not the dance, the horror movie about the dude that wants to kill this girl on her prom night.  I was flipping channels last night and watched the last half of the movie.  The kids are all at the prom in a swanky hotel, the cops know the dude wants to kill her so they are scoping it out and looking for him, the kids go their own separate ways so they can be convieniently killed by the bad guy who is using a knife and wearing, of all things, a basball cap.  (Scary stuff indeed!)  When the cops confirm the dude is there and check his room they find a dead maid, so they know he’s there and wants to kill the girl.  What is a good cop to do now?

If you said “Grab the girl and get her out of there ASAP.” you would be wrong.  They set off the fire alarm and clear the building!  WTF? So naturally our girl just has to go back upstairs to the hotel suite and get something she left there while the fire alarm is going off and everyone is leaving.  (If some companies are too big to fail, isn’t it also possible that some people are too stupid to live?  Just askin’.)  So she’s attacked by the knife weilding psycho, hides under the bed and finds her dead friend, escapes into the arms of the cops who get there in the nick of time.  They roll into the room with guns drawn and…can’t find the killer anywhere! NOW they put the girl in a squad car and take her home, with cops there to guard her and her prom date/boyfriend as well.

Our clever killer managed to…get this…change clothes and walk out the front door dressed as one of the hotel staff.  Those sneaky serial killers and their tricky ways!   So he rolls into the girls home, where mom & dad, boyfriend, uniformed cop and plain clothes detective are all on the lookout for a frakkin’ KILLER and still let him waltz up and kill the two cops without a sound, sneak in through an I-Kid-You-Not open window and slash the boyfriends throat before launching another attack on the girl.  Cue the hero cop (Who had warned the two dead ones the killer was loose and coming for them (See my too-stupid-to-live comment above.) who finally manages to cap the bad guy moments before he was going to plunge the knife into our littel prom queen.  Who writes this crap?  What movie producer read this script and said “Yeah!  Lets get this made; here is a check for several million bucks.”

Lets just say that it probably wouldn’t play out that way in my household, or for that matter any household with an ounce of self preservation.  I mean if you knew there was a very bad man coming after your daughter; would you leave the damn window open?  Would you don your jammies’ and head for bed?  Leave the louisville slugger in the closet?  Look, I am willing to “play along” with a movie and suspend my disbelief; but this was just so stupid I was incredulous.

Happy GM’s day!  Our entire line of products is now 50% off at OBS.

Enjoy the sale!