22 June 2008

Super Genius Games

By the way, here's a bit of news from my friends Stan! and Hyrum. I'm not usually one for putting ads on my blogs, but I want to see these fellows succeed. Keep your eyes on Super Genius Games!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Escondido, CA (June 14, 2008) – Super Genius Games (SGG) proudly announces the upcoming release of its first One Night Stand, a new line of adventures, standees, and full-scale map tiles suitable for use with any edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game or other fantasy RPGs. Each product in the One Night Stand line will offer a complete package of everything a game group needs for an evening of adventure.

"This publication model fits squarely in the Super Genius philosophy of providing an entire evening's worth of gaming fun in a single, complete, reasonably-priced package," said Stan!, Creative Director for Super Genius Games and co-designer of the first two One Night Stand products.

Each One Night Stand will feature an original, fully rendered map in both a single-page GM version and full-scale map tiles that can be used as a battle mat at the gaming table.

"We’re working with some of the best cartographers in the business to create fun, exciting maps for use in any fantasy roleplaying game, especially those that focus on tactical play using miniatures and maps," said Hyrum Savage, President of Super Genius Games. "There will be traps, monsters, and lots of cool surprises for GMs to spring on their players."

One Night Stand adventures will also contain printable standee figures for all of the creatures and monsters encountered in the scenario. These standees are provided through a partnership with Interactive Design Adventures (IDA), who are the creators of the wildly popular Stand-Ins line of printable standees.

The first two One Night Stand products will be released in mid-June 2008 with one being available as a free download in honor of the upcoming Free RPG Day. The entire One Night Stand line will be published in PDF format at RPGNow.com and DriveThruRPG.com for the low price of $6.99 each. Additional products will be released on a regular basis so GM's will always have something available for their games.

About Super Genius Games
Super Genius Games is an imprint of OtherWorld Creations. Founded in fall 2007, SGG is dedicated to publishing quality print and PDF products for a wide range of games and game systems.

Co-founders Hyrum Savage and Stan! between them have more than 22 years experience working professionally in the hobby games industry. They have done projects with and created products for Wizards of the Coast, Upper Deck Entertainment, TSR Inc., Paizo Publishing, Malhavoc Press, West End Games, Steve Jackson Games, The Game Mechanics, Guardians of Order, and many other industry-leading companies. Their work has been nominated for 10 major game industry awards.

Still Alive

I'm still breathing, though some days I feel like I'm on life support. It's hard to keep up with work (which is demanding in a lot of ways), my freelance projects (which are just as demanding as I've come to expect), and my family obligations (which make the day job and the freelance writing look like child's play by comparison).

So, yeah. I'm here, I'm just busy busy busy. There are never enough hours in the day.

In the news:

D&D 4E is in the house. I haven't had a chance to play it, and I don't know when I will. I've got the core books and I've breezed through them. Overall, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm sure the game plays well, but I'm not sure that it's got the sorts of character options I've come to expect.

To me, RPGs are about character options. In a class-based system, especially, character options are king. They are what differentiate Fighter A from Fighter B. This is why I enjoyed kits in AD&D 2nd Edition, and what made feats (and to some extent, Prestige Classes) so valuable in D&D 3.X.

On the surface, D&D 4th Edition looks to me like characters are even more codified. Multiclassing is out, for the most part. Abilities are chosen from a very limited pool (though I'm sure that, with enough time and enough expansions, this will change). This means that one character will be very much like the next of his class. And, of course, there's the 4E/MMO parallel that everyone seems to be drawing. I can see why, and I'm sure it's entirely intentional. As it is, I'm on the fence.

Will I run D&D 4E? Maybe. I need to try it out at least once to make a final determination. As it is, I still like 3.X quite a bit.

My first D&D 4E article will be up on D&D Insider pretty soon. Look for Hazards of Dark Sun to appear very soon in Dragon Magazine.

In other news, I'm probably going to miss GenCon this year. However, I will be at Origins (for the first time) this coming weekend. I'm going with EA Mythic, and we'll be showing our game off. Drop on by and say hello!