Mars, Arkham, America and other perilous places
Hello from a room that’s increasingly becoming a wall of books against the outside world. I hope you’re as well as can be expected under the Circumstances.
COMMERCIAL BIT OF THE EMAIL NOW FOLLOWS. SORRY.
First up - I’m writing the Terraforming Mars rpg with Ken Hite, based on the board game of the same name (which is itself heavily inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s wonderful novels). It’s through our Spanish pals at Shadowlands. We’ve got ambitious plans for this - it’s going to be a generational epic, Pendragon in spaaaaace, with all the ways terraforming can go right and wrong. It’s crowdfunding on Backerkit on March 4th.
Second, Pelgrane & Shadowlands are also doing a new and shiny version of the Fear Itself 2nd Edition horror RPG I co-wrote with Robin Laws a few years ago, together with the Ocean Game campaign setting I developed from Dave Allsop’s notes. It’s also crowdfunding on Gamefound on, er, March 4th.
Third, Handiworks are doing a new edition of Cold City/Hot War, which I’m really looking forward to. I could be wrong, but I think they’re starting on, er, March 4th
I can confirm - and have the sore hand to prove it - that Inkstone Books will be doing a signed hardcover edition of Sword Triumphant to go along with their Sword Defiants and Sword Unbounds (Swords Defiant? Is it like inspectors general? You know, the things government used to have.) The pre-order link isn’t up yet, but keep an eye on their site.
And as Sword Triumphant review copies are in the ether, I’ve put up a recap on my blog of the Sword Unbound.
Various other promo bits for Triumphant are in the offing; an event in Edinburgh, a signing or two here in Ireland. Details when they materialise.
Also in the offing - I’ll probably be running a game of Heart at GenCon, entitled Mad, Bad and Somewhere Dangerous to Go. The scenario concept is that you’re the entourage of an eccentric visionary I-can’t-beieve-it’s-not-Byron Heart-inspired poet, so I’ve written up a draft set of rules for a new Heart career around thee concept of ecstatic-creativity-meets-monster-meat. Grab the alpha version here.
Probably, I say, as everything’s in flux. The speed of international events and the ongoing mangling of American state capacity is both staggering and terrifying. Last GenCon, my flight home was delayed by the tail end hurricane, and half the Pelgrane booth got covid. Now the regime is demolishing weather forecasting and pandemic preparedness, along with so much else - not to mention blowing up the transatlantic relationship and generating the sort of headlines you find as environmental storytelling in a post-apocalyptic FPS.
I mean, I don’t think I’m going to get detained at Indianapolis airport for retweeting a funny anti-Trump cartoon in 2017 - but it doesn’t feel completely outside the range of possibilities either. In a normal year, I’d have booked my flights by now.
I don’t think we’re going to see the old normal ever again. The vibes, friends, are all early-2020, when you could see the wave mounting in the distance but didn’t know how to warn people or find higher ground. (This is a FUN TIME to have a day job making ELF GAMES to pay the mortgage.)
If you want a daily distraction that might also be oddly relevant, my “Gar comments on the day’s entry in the Tale of Years from the back of the Lord of the Rings” project continues on Bluesky, and we’re into the period where EVERYTHING HAPPENS EVERY DAY from now until March 25th.
Warpcon - the local games convention slash sacred turning of the year - was at the very end of January. I ran two games - a somewhat experimental Trail scenario that takes place over nine months, and what should have been a somewhat experimental Shires Out scenario only at the last minute I realised that the whole convoluted setup could be replaced by “someone asks you to investigate this mystery”, which worked infinitely better. And yes, this is the equivalent of going “wait! what if the monsters were in a dungeon, with treasure!” There’s a point in every creative project, especially in ones that have gotten troubled and tangled, where you should step back and ask yourself if you’d be better off using a simple, tried-and-true formula. Make it a murder mystery, a love story, a dungeon crawl. Sometimes the answer’s “no”, but even the act of rejecting simplicity and the arguments you’ll have to muster to do so can help guide you out of a tangle.
(He said, from the middle of a tangle in his current novel)
CURRENTLY READING: I recently finished Dave Rudden’s Sister Wake, which anyone who likes Black Iron Legacy for its warring gods and fucked-up saints will also enjoy, for it has many gods (warring) and saints (fucked-up).
Also picked up Kieron’s THE POWER FANTASY, which was rather good.
I recently did a bit of an office reorganisation, which involved putting (some of) my unread books onto two shelves so I know what I should, theoretically, be reading next.
Here’s the fiction shelf:
And non-fiction:
CURRENTLY WATCHING: Severance Season 2, as well as rewatching FOR ALL MANKIND and bits of THE EXPANSE for Mars stuff.
Thank you for reading. Next newsletter in a few weeks, by which time we’ll have had six hundred or so more impossible things before breakfast.
Gar