AP: Space Nazis - Battle for the Throne Room

Greetings Rocketeers!

This episode takes place as the battle for the hanger bay rages on.

Galaxia entered her throne room aboard the Dominance. Her many minions stood guard around Fulton's companions: Captain Oft, Ballcutter the Amazonian warrior, Gerrowl the lion man, Peeps the bird girl, and MicD Robot.

Galaxia sneered at the companions. "Now that Fulton is my love slave I have no use for this rabble. Have the robot dissected for spare parts. Do with the others what you will. Come Lord Galaga. We have business on the bridge."

AP: Space Nazis - How I Learned to Hate Galaxia but Love the Bomb

Greetings Rocketeers!

In our last episode of Adventures in Z-Space, the heroes boarded the Dominance after Queen Galaxia threatened to destroy the city of Hempstead, Texas. The PCs jettisoned the ancient Stargate along with the non-combatant members of the Achilles crew. The plan was for Fulton to stall the Queen while Dash, Anthem, Xander, K'hyven, Parkay, and Fidget found a way to disable or destroy the Dominance, preferably with the same atomic weapons Galaxia planned to use on Hempstead.

Fulton, along with the NPCs Captain Reginald Oft, Ballcutter the Amazonian warrior, Gerrowl the Lionman, and Peeps the Birdgirl were brought before Galaxia. The enraged tyrant demanded to know what they did with her Stargate. Fulton was his usual womanizing self. He fully expect the Queen to succumb to his considerable charms. One kiss from Galaxia, however, made Fulton the Queen's love slave. He told her everything about where they dumped the Stargate and what his friends were doing to her ship.

Fulton Trapped with Hitler and the Chronobot Master Cog

The Making of Space 1889 - The Burning Desert

This post is a companion post to AP - Space 1889: The Burning Desert. In it I detail how the scenario was developed, what Maptool modifications were needed to run it, how the maps were created, and what other resources were used in the final product.

Adventure Source
I used the first scenario in Frank Chadwick's original Tales from the Ether. The adventure used the original Space 1889 rules and so I had to convert the NPCs into Savage Worlds.

The conversion was amazingly simple. In Space 1889 the attributes and skills go from 1 to 6. I simply doubled the score to give values from d4 to d12 (counting 1s and 2s). The skills matched Savage Worlds fairly well but I fudged them a bit here and there as needed.

The handouts I pulled directly from the pdf using GIMP's screen capture utility (File->Create->Screenshot). There were quite a few of these which included letters, newspaper articles, and a detailed description of Mercury. The hand-written letters were a bit hard to read in the source material and this remained true once I moved them into Maptool.

AP - Space 1889: The Burning Desert

On Sunday, September 19th, I ran another Savage Worlds/Maptool introductory game using the Space 1889 setting from Pinnacle Entertainment Group.  We had three participants who played Adventurer Tex Chapman (ChiTownRoy), Naval Petty Officer Aku (Aku), and Inventor Alexander Setsu (rstehwien). Unfortunately ChiTownRoy had technical problems and left before the final battle.

The characters started in London at the Explorer's Society. One of the characters received a letter from a friend on Mercury describing a plot that could harm the economy of England. The letter included a Times article about the falling price of tin due to flooding of the tin markets from a small Pacific island. The letter ended with a plea for the character to come to Mercury to help root out the conspiracy.

AP: Galaxia's Web

Greetings Rocketeers!

In the last episode of Adventures in Z-Space, our heroes evaded or destroyed a squadron of Nazi fighters and war rockets after stealing an ancient Stargate from a hidden Nazi swamp base. Stargates are incredible devices allowing instant travel from one place in the universe to another. Queen Galaxia was displeased with the theft of the device and threatened to destroy the small Texas city they used as a base if they didn't immediately bring the Stargate to her ship, The Dominance.

And now for this week's episode

Galaxia's Web

Savage Releases

The following Savage Worlds products were released recently.

Hellfrost Encounters Book 1 from Triple Ace Games

I enjoyed my brief stint in Hellfrost. Its a crunchy setting from Triple Ace Games that reminds me greatly of 2nd edition DnD. Not in terms of the mechanics but in terms of character flexibility for DnD went over the edge in complexity. Wiggy's latest work, Hellfrost Encounters Book 1, is designed with the busy GM in mind containing 50 encounters covering a variety of situations and locales.

Each encounter fits in one or two pages and is useful for random encounters, a mini-adventure on the spur of the moment, something to break up the party’s travels, or a starting scene for an adventure of your own devising.

The Sundered Skies Companion from Triple Ace Games

Sundered Skies is a dark fantasy setting with hints of steam punk thrown in for good measure. Triple Ace Games just released The Sundered Skies Companion which expands upon the information found in the Sundered Skies Setting Book. The companion is designed to be used by players and Gamemaster’s and includes;

• New Edges and Hindrances.
• Detailed information on day-to-day life in the Sundered Skies, including superstitions and commonly held beliefs.
• Advanced Dwarven munitions add even more explosive options to your arsenal of equipment.
• Several new ship designs, including the experimental flame dancer.
• New magic and spells, including a new goddess, The Beautiful One, and Voidomancy—where the caster draws on the void itself as a source for his spells.
• Holy days for the gods.
• Expanded information on the isles of the skies, including four brand new islands —The volcanic Atrium; frozen Frostrock, the desolate and tragic Remorse, and the mysterious jungle isle of Savannah
• 16 cults and secret societies the heroes can join or oppose. Each goals and organization is fully detailed, including unique Edges available to heroes who join.
• Over 25 new Savage Tales designed to be used alongside, and within the existing Plot Point found in Sundered Skies.
• Sundered Gods—a guide to what direction your campaign can take once the Plot Point is completed.

Space:1889 - Red Sands from Pinnacle Entertainment Group

Since Thomas Edison first explored the worlds with the help of his marvelous ether propeller, the British Empire has grown to include the red plains and stately canals of Mars, the steaming, dinosaur-infested swamps of Venus, and even a remote outpost in the twilight zone of Mercury. In 1889, the sun truly never sets on the British Empire!

But deep inside the Empire a core of revolt festers and grows. Martian cultists cry out for the Earthlings' expulsion. Britain teeters at the edge of war with the Oenotrian Empire. In the midst of seething turmoil, the being known only as Kronos seizes the technology of a forgotten race to threaten the very future of mankind!

Space 1889: Red Sands contains everything you need to play thrilling Victorian space adventures with the Savage Worlds game system: new Edges, Hindrances, combat and construction rules for ether vessels and aerial fliers, a complete system for Inventions, copious information about the various locales, races, and mysteries of the Solar System, an Adventure Generator, dozens of Savage Tales, a bevy of alien creatures and nefarious foes, and a Plot Point campaign to take your heroes to the stars and back again.

Interface Zero from Gun Metal Games

Welcome to the Future!

Interface-Zero, is the first book in the Interface-Zero Cyberpunk Setting by Gun Metal games. IZ brings your Savage Worlds game up to speed with the dark, frenetic world of 2088.

Didja Bring Your Gun?

Within the pages of Interface-Zero, you can match wits with ancient triad lodge masters, anarchist hackers and digitalized corporate moguls. Thwart the machinations of the New Chinese Mandarinate, or the Theocratic North American Coalition. Stare down the end of your Gauss rifle at or match nano-woven steel with ganglanders, gene-spliced hybrids and borg shock troopers.

Are ya Wired?

Life is fast in 2088. If ya wanna survive, you need to be faster. Don't worry Ami, we got ya covered. Fast Furious and Fun cybernetic rules enable you to create any type of cybernetic implant or bioware modification you can imagine!

Wanna crash a corp Domain?

Interface Zero hooks you up with everything you need to hack a computer network or de-res an enemy hacker in 2088. But watch out, omae; ghost into the wrong system and you'll get fried faster than your food vat can spit out NUTRIpaste!

Interface Zero is a game without barriers; a setting where you can be artificially intelligent robots, vat-grown simulacrum, transgenic hybrids or just plain old flesh and blood humans. You can jack into the world around you and program it to suit your needs. You can implant cyberware in your body, interface with machines, fly hover craft, golemmechs, jump bikes and even hover tanks and Low Altitude Vehicles complete with the latest weapons and cutting edge VTOL or anti-gravity propulsion systems.

You can assume the roles of shadow operatives who rage against the corporate machine, private detectives cut from a noir-inspired cloth, fearless, larger than life heroes piloting mecha in a futuristic, transhumanist Japan- even survivors gutting it out in a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with mutant horrors or AI-spawned mechanical nightmares are viable concepts in Interface Zero. Interface Zero is more than just a game setting, it is a toolbox you can use, adding or dropping whichever elements you wish to create the scifi game world that you and your friends want to play.

More Fantastic Maps from Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts is a cartographer for Kobold Quarterly, Sunken Empires, and Adventures in the Hyborian Age. He also contributes regularly to the Maptool forums under the name Torstan.

His Fantastic Maps bundle is on sale this week (all 30% off, and the bundle reduced even more). Each map pack has a jpg map for use with Maptool or other VTTs, along with a printable version for use in face-to-face gaming. Many of the map packs contain Maptool files with the VBL drawn in and grids and lighting set up for either 4e or OGL games. All of them will have these files included in early September (they're all done, just not quite uploaded yet). If you buy now, you will get the new files with the Maptool files when they are updated.

Black Sky Butte, Lone Island in the Sky, Mire of Lost Souls, Temple Mound, The Dragon's Lair, The Glass Balcony, The Ice Temple, The Island Cave, The Leafless Wood, The Low River, Tree Bridge, and Tribal Encampment all for $13.99.

Sale ends September 1st. You can find all the map packs here.

Review: Thrilling Tales 2nd Edition for Savage Worlds

Savage Worlds 1930's Pulp Fiction
If you ever enjoyed the two-fisted treasure hunting of Indiana Jones, the high-flying action of Dave Stephens' The Rocketeer, the globe trotting exploits of Doc Savage, the extra-planetary adventures of Flash Gordon, or the gritty mob busting of The Untouchables then you've enjoyed a story set in the pulp era. Pulp is not a genre unto itself. In the strictest sense, pulp was the medium used to present stories during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. The pulps reached their height during the 1930s as great change swept across the globe. Gandhi's fasting and Hitler's rising occurred as synchronous events. It was the time between World Wars with the world growing steadily smaller thanks to air travel, automobiles, radio, and an increased literacy rate.

Pulp fiction fed a hungry and growing audience a steady diet of adventure, intrigue, and action. Good was good and bad was bad. Even some bad guys were really good guys if given half a chance. The hero never died in pulp adventures. But then again, neither did the villain. The stories, plots, heroes, and villains are great RPG fodder as players and GM recreate some of their favorite settings from movies, books, and TV. Adamant Entertainment produces a Savage supplement titled Thrilling Tales 2nd Edition to add to their extensive line of Thrilling Tales products.

AP: The Getaway

Robert Fulton

Greetings Rocketeers!

In our last episode the heroes loaded the ancient Stargate into the hold of the rocket ship Achilles. Fulton leapt into the pilot's seat blasting toward the whiteness of Z-space to avoid capture by a squadron of Nazi war rockets heading their way.

Free Product - Sewer Map Set 1

It's hard to complain about free products. So I won't. I simply state that a little more effort would have made Sewer Map Set 1 from WYDRAZ RPG Products much better. But there are some positive aspects.

• It's free.
• It works well with Maptool possessing a 100 ppx grid that lined up well when I imported it.
• The advertisement at the end of the pdf showed some nice products from the same company.
• It's free.

If you are a Maptool user, I recommend drawing sewers like this with textures. You'll use less memory although it takes more time to create.

To improve the product, I recommend different textures. The ones used in this work are all very green. The water color is particularly bad. You could also alter the texture from the 100ppx to something larger with more variety. Use more than the basic three textures so every floor, water, and impassable section aren't the same for every square. Also, add some other decoration i.e. rats, gates, spider webs, slimes, and oozes.

I suspect this product is advertisement to show off other, pay-for products. If so you should spend a little more time jazzing it up. As is, I wonder if the quality of your other work matches this one.

Net Find: Men's Adventure Magazines

I'm a pulp fan so I'm always happy to find a resource for game prep. I use Maptool for online RPGs and thus need art to make tokens to move about the map. I was therefore very happy to find a web site catering to the pulp magazines of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

Men's Adventure Magazines is a blog dedicated to the "Sweat" pulp mags from the post war era. Not only does it contain numerous magazine covers, it is rife with plot ideas for your pulp games.

The blog does contain some scantily clad women which I'm sure were quite scandalous back in the day. Today they seem pretty tame but the site still boasts a "Mature Content" warning.

Check it out for all your pulp gaming needs.

eReader vs. Tablet for RPG pdfs

(see end of article for an update)

I'm tired of lugging around RPG books. I have a bookshelf full with many resting unused for years. Some were never used. I just don't see the point.

Now that I play Savage Worlds my need for new books is even smaller. Since I design most of my own settings, I usually use the supplements as source material without actually using most of the game itself. I therefor starting buying my games as PDFs to save space. The side effect was to make for a rapidly searchable text when looking for rules during my online games.

So it seemed reasonable that one of the eBook readers like a Kindle or a Nook would fill my need nicely. I posted the question to a few online forums asking for advice. I was surprised by the response.

2010 ENnie Winners

2010 Winners and Nominations

N-Space Beastiary: The Beastmen of Mars

The Races of Mars


This article discusses the various races of Mars in the Space Nazis setting. The setting utilizes the Slipstream product in conjunction with the Savage Worlds Explorers Edition from Pinnacle Entertainment Group for race creation, equipment, vehicles, edges, hindrances and power.

Cat Men are the Red Planet's dominant life form. Other races live alongside them as either prey species, intellectual masters, or hide from them altogether to prevent racial extinction.

The topography of Mars is that of large swaths of red, savanna plains separated by forests, mountains, caverned trenches, and polar ice caps. The canals of Mars stretch from the poles to the equator supplying water and trade routes.