Roleplay in the Cosmos in Teens in Space
Spinning off from the exciting RPG of strange adventures in small towns, Kids on Bikes, Teens in Space takes the adventures of youth to the stars.
We are so thrilled to announce, in partnership with Hunters Entertainment and Infectious Play Publishing, that Teens In Space is landing everywhere in August!

Designed and developed by Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski, this roleplaying game sets the stage as you and your group of friends venture into the cosmos for adventure and profit. Along the way, your crew’s bonds will be tested, your ship will malfunction, and you’ll probably get shot a few times. But that’s all in a day’s work for Teens in Space!

Player characters will take on the roles of adolescents of a variety of species at the age of nearly full maturity; closing near their full physical and intellectual potential but lacking experience and wisdom. You’ll travel the stars in a customized starship of your own design and through your adventures you may discover many things about the galaxy you inhabit, as well as about yourself at this formative stage just before adulthood.

Teens in Space is an all-in-one 122-page full-colored book featuring art by Heather Vaughn and with sections for both players and GMs. Powered by the Kids on Bikes system for a streamlined world-building and storytelling experience, this game is optimized for crews of 2-6 players aged 8+ with a dedicated storyteller at the helm.

OSPREY GAMES LAUNCHES ROLEPLAYING GAME SERIES

Osprey Games is delighted to announce the November 2019 launch of Osprey Roleplaying, a new series of beautifully illustrated, hardback RPG rulebooks that transport players to incredible worlds and extraordinary adventures. The series debuts with two titles: Romance of the Perilous Land: A Roleplaying Game of British Folklore, created by award-winning designer Scott Malthouse, and Graham Rose’s Paleomythic: A Roleplaying Game of Stone and Sorcery.

In Romance of the Perilous Land, players take on the role of brave knights, fierce warriors, and other heroes as they fight evil, right wrongs, and create their own legends in Arthurian Britain.

Paleomythic sees players attempt to navigate their way through the harsh prehistoric land of Ancient Mu – a world where hostile tribes, otherworldly spirits, ferocious beasts, and other monstrous creatures threaten their survival at every turn.

Speaking about the new series, Philip Smith, Head of Osprey Games, said “I’m thrilled that we are finally able to announce the first titles in our new line of RPGs. We’ve been working with some great designers and artists on games from a range of genres, and there’s more to come – watch this space!”

Romance of the Perilous Land: A Roleplaying Game of British Folklore

Designer: Scott Malthouse

Illustrators: John McCambridge, David Needham & Alan Lathwell

ISBN: 9781472834775

Format: Hardback

Price: £20 / US $30 / CAN $40

Created by award-winning designer Scott Malthouse, Romance of the Perilous Land is a roleplaying game of magic and adventure set in the world of British folklore, from the stories of King Arthur to the wonderful regional tales told throughout this green and pleasant land. It is a world of romantic chivalry, but also of great danger, with ambitious kings, evil knights, and thieving brigands terrorising the land, while greedy giants, malevolent sorcerers, and water-dwelling knuckers lurk in the shadows. As valiant knights, mighty barbarians, subtle cunning folk, and more, the players are heroes, roaming the land to fight evil, right wrongs, and create their own legends.

About the Author

Scott Malthouse is a roleplaying game designer and folklore enthusiast who was born and bred in Yorkshire, where he currently lives. His work includes the award-winning Quill (Best Free Game 2016, Indie RPG Awards), In Darkest Warrens, and Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying.

Paleomythic: A Roleplaying Game of Stone and Sorcery

Designer: Graham Rose

Illustrators: John McCambridge & Mars Oosterveld

ISBN: 9781472834812
Format: Hardback

Price: £20 / US $30 / CAN $40

Paleomythic: A Roleplaying Game of Stone and Sorcery, written by Graham Rose, sees players face all manner of challenges as they try to survive in the prehistoric land of Ancient Mu. Taking on the roles of hunters, healers, warriors, soothsayers, and more, they will navigate a world of hostile tribes, otherworldly spirits, prehistoric beasts, and monstrous creatures lurking in the dark places of the world. Players have a huge scope in sculpting the game experience that best suits them, whether it’s a gritty survival story without a trace of the mystical or a tale of grand adventure and exploration in a mythic setting.

About the Author

When Graham Rose discovered roleplaying games, he was hooked. He designed his first home-brew RPG in the 1980s and has continued tinkering with games ever since. It was whilst roleplaying that Graham decided to acquire as many of the abilities listed on his character sheet as possible. This quest has led to a wide range of interests, from archaeology to competition fencing, a career in the fields of intelligence and law enforcement, and has also resulted in him crashing a snowmobile in the Arctic Circle, enduring serious illness in Kathmandu, coming face to face with a silverback gorilla in Rwanda, and walking Hadrian’s Wall during a storm. Graham lives in the UK with his wife, Nicola, and currently works as a cold case homicide investigator.

About Osprey Games

Osprey Games is the dedicated games division of Osprey Publishing (part of Bloomsbury Publishing plc) and publishes a wide range of wargames, card games, and board games. Launched in 2014, the company has produced an array of critically acclaimed titles, including Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, Bolt Action, Odin’s Ravens, Wildlands and The Lost Expedition.

So These pics of the Elder Scrolls came across my desk. I can’t wait for more!

From Jason Hardy, Shadowrun Line Developer:

Shadowrun, Sixth World is coming soon!

Wait, Shadowrun, Sixth World isn’t out yet? But I’ve been thinking about it for years! Playing it for more than a year! How are other people not playing it? Development time can be so disorienting.

There was a time—six years ago, to be specific—when I threatened physical violence to anyone who said the words “sixth edition” in my presence. (The threats didn’t work. No one is ever scared of me. But I digress). Fifth Edition took a lot of effort to produce, and I didn’t want to think about starting that whole process again. But then there were a few years where I didn’t have to think about a new edition, and I could recharge. Actually, that’s not entirely true, because every time I play a game—whether it’s one I worked on or not—I’m kind of thinking of a new edition. I’m looking at what works well, what works differently than intended, and what possibilities might open up with a tweak here and there. So when the time came to envision the next edition of Shadowrun, I had a few ideas, as did the excellent roster of Shadowrun writers and gamemasters I could tap into.

All those ideas needed a framework, of course. As we started our work, we decided the sixth edition of Shadowrun needed to possess three main qualities:

Be no more than 300 pages long;
Use D6 dice pools; and
Feel like Shadowrun.

Those last two points are related, because it’s tough for a game to feel like Shadowrun if you’re not rolling a healthy handful of D6s. But there’s more to it than that. Combat specialists, spellcasters, conjurers, adepts, faces, deckers, technomancers, riggers, enchanters, weapon specialists, and more all need to exist, and they all must have different and meaningful ways to contribute to a run.

In this edition, all that had to happen within 300 pages. Which is a trick. Fifth Edition, not counting the index, is 466 pages; the anniversary edition of Fourth Edition was 351 pages, and Third Edition was 325 pages (minus the sample record sheets). Second Edition is a lean 284 pages, but it had no bioware, no technomancers, no alchemy, and no qualities, to name a few things that have changed in the intervening years. The book that started it all is an even leaner 207 pages, but along with the elements Second Edition didn’t have, it lacks things such as adepts and foci, and it offers only twenty guns—heresy! (Fifth Edition has 52, while Shadowrun, Sixth World will offer 53–we didn’t cut back much on those options!) All this is to say that streamlining the core rulebook back to 300 pages was not going to be easy.

It’s important to note that simply making the book shorter doesn’t, by itself, do any good. You can make any book shorter by simply ripping every third page out, but you end up with a book that makes no sense. Making the book shorter only is useful if the game also becomes smoother to play. In other words, we didn’t just want a shorter game—we wanted one that moved faster and was easier to get into, while still offering lots of meaningful options. We also didn’t want this to be Shadowrun: Anarchy for the simple reason that Anarchy already exists. Anarchy represents a more extreme end of the rules-light spectrum than Shadowrun, Sixth World–one way to understand the difference between the two is that the gear rules and listings take up about seven or eight pages in Anarchy, compared to fifty pages in Sixth World. Did I mention we wanted to offer lots of options?

Anyway, this means that if the rules were changed, they needed to be changed with an eye toward enabling players to do the things that they wanted to do more quickly. Combat should be faster. Hacking should be smoother and more intuitive. Magic should adapt to be just what the caster wants it to be. And so on. So what, specifically, did we do? Here’s a sample:

Expanded Edge: Yes, one of the things we did to streamline the game was to make one function much more detailed. But stay with me for a second. The definition of Edge has shifted—rather than being that undefinable something extra you reach for in a tough spot to help put you over the top, Edge now represents the accumulated advantage you get in opposed situations. Whether you’re fighting, spellcasting, hacking, or negotiating, you’ll have a chance to earn and spend bonus Edge. And you should spend it—if you’re not gaining and spending Edge regularly in Shadowrun, Sixth World, it might be time to rethink your tactics. Or find less formidable opposition. Gaining and spending Edge replaces a lot of other functions in the game, like calculating situational modifiers, dealing with recoil and armor piercing, and environmental modifiers. Edge also provides a chance for a character to really have an impact when it’s time to spend it.
Fewer action types: There are two, Minor and Major. That’s it! You get one Minor and one Major per turn, with an additional Minor for various circumstances, such as reaction-enhancing augmentations or spells. One Major Action may be traded for four Minor Actions, or four Minor for one Major.
Simplified initiative: You roll initiative at the start of an encounter and then don’t re-roll it. Certain actions or effects may change your initiative score, though.
No limits: Limits served a valuable function of balancing attributes and providing different opportunities for rule effects, but in a streamlined ruleset, they are not needed. Limits on most tests and Force for spells have all been removed.
Skill list narrowed: Fifth Edition has 80 skills, while Sixth Edition has 19. That’s a big difference. There’s definite streamlining there, but it comes at the risk of characters not being distinct from each other. To deal with that, players can still select specializations but can also upgrade a specialization to an expertise, giving their character +3 bonus dice instead of +2, and once they have an expertise they can select an additional specialization. This will provide characters with chances to become truly distinct.
More intuitive Matrix: This is an ongoing goal, and it’s always fun to try to make Matrix activities happen alongside and in parallel with the other actions. Deckers will have meaningful things to do and ways to get in, make things happen, and get out—all while trying to avoid the watchful eyes of the Grid Overwatch Division, of course.

Those are some of the major changes, but far from the only ones. We haven’t talked about Attack Ratings, the uses of armor, changes to Knowledge skills, revamped spell design, new vehicle stats, cyberjacks, and more. I hope this gives you a taste of the upcoming changes, and I look forward to you all playing Shadowrun, Sixth World as much as I have and will! And look for more information on this blog each Wednesday in May!

May 1: Initial Announcement
May 8: Product Overview
May 15: Developer Overview
May 22: Setting Overview/Fiction Announcement
May 29: Developer Q&A
June 5: Rigger Dossier
June 12: Shadowrun at Origins preview
More to follow – I will nail him down at Origins if it’s the only thing I do this year.