OgreCave

The Game of Thrones RPG seems to have finally appeared on the horizon, as Guardians of Order just announced the start of preorders for the game’s Deluxe Limited Edition. Described as 450 pages of full-color resource material, with a foil-embossed leatherette cover and a special dust jacket, the game was personally reviewed by George R.R. Martin for authenticity (which contributed to the delay in releasing it, no doubt), and signed for extra awe-inspiring power. The Deluxe version provides both d20 and Tri-Stat rules, and carries a $99.95 asking price, which many A Game of Thrones fans are surely reaching for right now. According to the website, we’ll actually be able to pick up the game in stores in March.
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Taking a page from WotC’s setting search contest, today White Wolf announced a $20,000 Fiction Contest. Entrants are asked to send a one-page synopsis of the World of Darkness novel they envision. One hundred of those will get $50 apiece and an invitation to enter the second round, which requires an entire first chapter. Of those, only five will be awarded $1,000 each and an invitation to the final round, producing an entire manuscript for a chance at the $10,000 grand prize and publication in late 2006. At least White Wolf has learned from WotC’s mistakes, and seems to be giving itself enough time to sort through the entries.
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Green Ronin has put together a free download of the new Fast Play rules for the Blue Rose RPG. For some reason, mention of flowers and Fast Play makes me think of a gamebook with scratch-and-sniff entries throughout. Sorry, don’t mind me.
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Former Atlas team member Will Hindmarch has been brought aboard at White Wolf as the Line Developer for Vampire: The Requiem, the recent relaunch of the popular RPG property. Justin Achilli, longtime Developer and Intellectual Property Manager for the previous Vampire line, has stepped into the role of Vice President of Editing & Development. Considering how Hindmarch has written multiple, well-received books for Vampire: The Masquerade, here’s hoping White Wolf fans won’t be worried about the change.
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According to a post made on the official fan site for Serenity (the Firefly movie due next April), the recently established company Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd is looking for playtesters for a new RPG. Why post about it there? Good question, but I’m sure you can figure it out.
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Fantasy Flight’s acclaimed mini-d20 setting Grimm from last year is getting the standalone treatment next month (supposedly next month, at least), with its own system and a greatly expanded page count. Grimm was one of the better-realized entries in the ooohh-childhood-is-scary RPG boomlet we had a while back, so it’s good to see this; nonetheless, I have my fingers crossed that the system gets stripped down substantially. I can’t think of many settings better suited to role-playing’s insurgent development ethos of making rules for, and out of, storytelling… rather than just injecting numbers and dice into the middle of story, like cream filling in a Twinkie.

I’ve held the belief for a while now that the future of tabletop roleplaying – and really, its whole future – lies not just in online distribution, but in distribution for free in open formats. I have a lot of reasons for believing this, but what I didn’t have until now was much in the way of evidence that I’m right. So here’s Agyris, an alternative-fantasy setting presented as a website. I think the latter part is important; people making PDFs still have books on the brain, as if being on paper is more real somehow. But printouts never really look all that good, color on the screen looks great and is dirt cheap, and making people load a PDF is just that much more friction to put between readers and your content. These folks do great design, have great art, and have big ambitions – I only caught them because they sent a press release about their new Flash cartoon. (And they have even bigger furniture: check out this completely insane multi-headed workstation they call the “Ultimate Game Table.”) Your hobby might look an awful lot like this in five years, so have a peek now.

The folks at aethereal FORGE have released the Power Grrrl Worldbook, which seems like the perfect game to simulate my daughter’s current fave show, Totally Spies. Besides, any game with “Grrrl” in it has got to be worth a look.
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