Plane Sailing Games

Lonely Courage Playtesting - final amendments

The last round of playtesting has allowed me to refine things which were added in after the first blind playtests, plus included a few additional refinements.

Lonely Courage

Lonely Courage Playtesting

I don’t think that any game designers underrate the value of playtesting. I want to tell you some of the improvements that I’ve been able to make to Lonely Courage as a result of playtesting

Games

Our Last Best Hope - Lovecraft Style

Have you ever wanted to save the world from monstrous Cthulhu style threats from the lovecraftian mythos, in a one-shot game that follows classic disaster movie tropes? Then read on!

Reviews

Book Review - Between Silk and Cyanide, a code makers war

Leo Marks was the principal code-maker for the SOE during the war. This book which is filled with wry humour and bureaucratic frustration covers his war from 1942-45. He was considered the “one who got away” from Bletchley Park, and has amazing insights into the secret war of the SOE.

Reviews

Book Review - Lonely Courage by Rick Stroud

This is the true stories of seven of the SOE heroines who fought to free Nazi-occupied France. The author has taken a chronological view of events from the rise of Hitler in 1933 to the end of the war.

Games

Innsmouth Summer Camp

A hack of Grey Ranks to enable the game of teens in a perilous situation to be played in Innsmouth, as the Deep Ones take over. And what runs in *your* family?

Lonely Courage

Stories of Lonely Courage

These are the stories told from three of the four playtests at Metatopia 2018. They give an indication of some of the stories you can tell with A Cool and Lonely Courage.

Reviews

Metatopia 2018

I attended Metatopia for the first time this year. I had heard that it was a great opportunity to test a game I had been working on. It turned out to be so much more than that.

Reviews

Grey Ranks - Review

My introduction to story games was the excellent Grey Ranks. It tells an important story about an overlooked period of history and invokes genuine feelings.

Games

A Cool and Lonely Courage

A Cool and Lonely Courage is a tragic role playing story-game about the women of the SOE in wartime France, for 2-5 players.

Games

Adventures in the Underbelly

Everything you need to include Cybernetics and Psionics in your Starguild game - whether gritty, noir or pulp levels of power.

Games

Gateway to Adventure

Each of the adventures contains the information needed to run a 4 hour one-shot adventure with prebuilt PCs, or to integrate the adventures into your ongoing campaign. This collection contains six of my favourite convention adventures which I've used during Starguild playtesting.

Reviews

Ten Candles

I have come to understand that some of the very best games have mechanics which support the theme of the game in some way. For me the outstanding example of this is Ten Candles by Cavalry Games.

Reviews

Book Review - 1984

So I decided to re-read 1984. I first read it about thirty years ago as a teenager, and I remember it being dreary and with a bit of horror at the end. Reading it now, I see it somewhat differently…

Games

Starguild: Space Opera Noir

Starguild: Space Opera Noir is a traditional tabletop RPG. In 238 pages futuristic weapons and faster than light travel meet heartbreak, decadence and betrayal.

Starguild

Underbelly Setting Dials

What kind of power level do you want cybernetics and psionics to have in your Starguild game? Whether you like rare and dangerous or powers that wouldn’t look out of place in a superhero movie, Adventures in the Underbelly has you covered.

Starguild

What do psionic powers look like?

Psychic powers cover a wide range of science fiction mental powers. They are broadly divided into six disciplines, each of which have a number of talents which can be gained within them.

Starguild

What Do Cybernetics Look Like?

Cybernetics are man-machine interfaces. Characters and opponents can use money to build in additional capabilities, but at a cost – every bit of embedded tech causes you to lose a little bit of humanity. And when the chips are down, the horror of what you have done to your body can cost you dear.

Starguild

Starguild Core Game Design

In this post I hope to cover a broad overview of the design of Starguild - what mechanics are used to define characters, to accomplish things, to avoid harm and so forth.

Starguild

Influences on Starguild

When setting out to write an RPG, it is useful to consider all the influences which you have had along the way. Starguild was a long time in the making, and these are some of the key things which affected design decisions about what I was doing

Starguild

Professional Art on the pages

As a result of the successful kickstarter, art is coming in from the three main artists that I have commissioned. These page excerpts show their work and my goodness I'm pleased with the way things are coming along. Great art really does lift a book!

Kickstarter

Kickstarter 6 - The print proof

I want to be able to underline the fact that the game is done apart from additional artwork, and there seems to be no better way of doing that than being able to include in the video some shots of me holding a printed copy of the game.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter 5 - Making the video

Planning and preparing the kickstarter video is somewhat less straightforward than I might have hoped…

Kickstarter

Kickstarter 4 – The Shipping Forecast

If you live in the U.K. You are probably aware of the shipping forecast. It is an institution beloved of many in this island nation, because it reflects our relationship with the sea. “Tyne, Dogger. Northeast 3 or 4. Occasional rain. Moderate or poor.”

Kickstarter

Kickstarter 3 – How many words on the back cover?

How much text should you put on the back cover of a book? Well, I guess the first question to ask is “What is it there to do?” Actually, that might be the second question, as it is almost certainly worth deferring to what I consider the Ken Hite Rule here...