Wednesday 7 December 2022

Six Secret Books

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YO

I'm going to start pushing out some these little baby bird posts that never really grew to a decent size but just sat in my draft folder demanding that I throw up some insects into them.

Oh Fuck , also keep forgetting to mention you can use the code on the following PEECHO print on demand books:

 Frosty_12495 (might only work with Fire On The Velvet Horizon) or

Frosty_60310 (ditto but for NooFutra)

(Peecho makes it a bit of nightmare to keep revenues separate or distinct so 2 books 2 different accounts.)

to get 20% off. The email said best order by the 4th December to get books by Christmas so that's already completely buggered to damnation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(LINKS TO PEECHO BOOKs CHECK OUT IN THE HEADER ↑↑↑↑↑↑

Anyway look I wanted to glue some MILD content on to that greasy CONSUMMATION bait and other stuff kept happening.


OTHER NEWS

been making various SMALL ENTITYS

There might even be a world building post at some stage. I have zero concrete plans other than making a bunch of these things but we'll see if any ideas stick in my head long enough for A COHERENCY.


ANYWAY
1d6 books, did it need to be a table? Well why have a list when it can be a table and a list? Are you NEW? IF SO hi.

1. Hand written book, with various splotches , stains and repairs. Resembles an encyclopedia in contents Most extensively stained first chapter. The real book of value is read by using the first chapter to learn which stain or smot corresponds to which word. Learning the book of stains gives insight into the secret weaknesses, failings and hypocrisies of the world

2. Odd barked  dead tree, actually a giant scroll written on extremely resident  translucent paper (skin of legendary eel), rolled up into a tube. What appears to be bark is the interlayed words

3. An injury to the world itself , was sewn shut by a single golden hair of a saint. Unpicking this stitching opens the wound , letting horrors sneak into the world, but a great book of wisdom is written length ways along the hair, requiring an ingenious lens or ant(s) servant(s) to be read

4. Ink poured into a human brain, the brain then dried , and cut into fine sections reveals a singular tome

5. A great book, a monolith, yet turgid, documenting a thousand years of successions and slow regime changes. Each of its thick pages is actually part of singular piece of paper, folded concertina style. Slitting off the spine and unpicking the stitching reveals the occulted book written on the inside folds of each page. It reveals the conspiring , stratagems and tactical betrayals that was the engine behind this dry history . Furthermore it shows that each event , however mundane or anodyne seeming, was an advancement of a purpose most sinister. 

5. A book with covers so wide and tall, that they could be repurposed for a door or modest dining table.
It is splayed open and a thriving hive of bees has ensconced itself in-between ,over and around each page. However removing the bees and their wax-industry would show each page is blank. Instead the honeycomb cells formed directest on the page hold the letters, each a sluggish black bee larvae, part ink and part grub-flesh.

6.This book has been burned to ash but still holds its shape. A single breath will cause it to collapse into irregular soot. However by mixing that soot with water and using it as ink, the book can be recreated, each page arriving in a dream. The trick is each page gets dreamed up by a different person, and only they will be able to recreate it using the ink. Each page describes a different , accurate , destructive prophecy , with the last page revealing the cataclysm that will again destroy this book by fire.




Tuesday 22 March 2022

NooFutura available for purchase

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NOOFUTURA

 



NooFutura the weird fantasy cyberpunkesque toolbox/overgrown zine/ setting guide / barely coherent vapourware book I wrote for the Mothership rpg is live for buying.

I went with Peecho, a print on demand company, which , after a very moderate search, I've found to be the best print quality for price.

It doesn't have any of my art in it , as originally it was an opportunity to just get paid to write something without having to worry about any other aspect of the project. However it proceeded to have an incredibly messy development which resulted in me taking on various other roles in the project. (I will do a "how the sausage was made" as a follow up post to this in a week or so and go into a bit more depth about that). One of those roles was art direction and the subsequent artists for the project were Amanda Lee Frank ( instagram ) and Sam Mamelli (also instagram). So that's whose stuff you are seeing on this page right now.

So before we get to links, I need to point out that
 Peecho doesn't have much in the way of an online shop front , instead it just gives you shareable links , that drop the clicker straight into the checkout.

 So as well as this post serving as the shop front , I'll make a permanent page at the top of this blog , beside the Peecho Velvet Horizon page .


If you want a quick look through the contents here's a preview pdf: CLICK ME

 


LINKS FOR PURCHASING:

EDIT: Peecho's phone checkout menu is kinda ass, and it doesn't show the prices so I'll include them here as of 24/4/22
( 21.83 us $ not including shipping)
 

Softcover

 (28.01 us $ not including shipping )

Hardcover

 (39.00 us $ not including shipping)

 PDF

(5.00 us $ )

(via itch.io) 

Here's some (basic) photos of the binding on the magazine & hardcover format






Tuesday 15 February 2022

Leucrotta

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A break in the silence to show some photos:

The Mothership zine(?) I got commissioned to write is very close to release. That's me holding on to the test print . It's got some stuff that needs correcting before it can go live, but probably about month away? It was kinda of nightmare from start to finish? It's me doing a take on shadowrun but trying to be less tolkien , more "new-weird", less cyberpunk 1980 and more cyberpunk 2019. 

Well , I say "2019" but it felt like every 3 months I would hear about some new fresh way the internet and modern technology were being alarming , so the longer it went without release , the more glaring the absence of <rpgified version of current alarming problem>.
I think I'm extremely fair from being able to accurately capture the current zeitgeist anyhow so it's basically a grab bag of weird spins on weird niche problems. Actually there's nothing about touch screens being shit in there. Fuck I should've included that.  I've managed to avoid having a touch screen phone for so long and now I have one and I don't think I've ever done anything on it without it feeling awkward and difficult. I guess if that next gen haptic feedback the switch doesn't use and the ps5 was trying to impress people about with, if that takes off maybe they can make a touch screen phone that's mimics pressing a button with a 95% accuracy.

Which sounds good but imagine typing a keyboard where 1 in 20 taps doesn't do anything. That's fucking touch screens.

Anyway , it's for Mothership but it's a zine so it assumes you will just pick out the bits you like and ignore the rest, so you should just do that. Also Mothership just had a kickstarter for a 2nd edition and this is written for 1st edition. No worries. 

Oh it's just going straight to print on demand, likely just Peecho as I found a cheaper + better quality softcover option on there than at lulu. So no kickstarter, you'll just be able to buy the thing.

If people turn out to like it a lot and get a lot of use out of it, yet want it expanded upon and updated for mothership 2, potentially a new book could be created using the kickstarter model. 

However I don't plan on going to that trouble unless its obvious how the new book can fulfil a need or function that this release doesn't manage to.

The pdf of it was going to have some extra functionalities like hyperlinking but like much else about this project , that had fallen through , and it's just going to have the bare minimum for a pdf.
But the good news is that means it will be available at a price suitable for a no-thrills pdf zine, i.e pay-what-you-want.




 




 Anyway I've been messing about making small scale things, being making a lot of modular d&d terrain that will be featured in a huge photo post at some point.

But I also made a Leucrotta using wire form , knead-it, coffee lids and construction adhesive. 


Decided to change the head, sorry I didn't document about 5 steps between above and below.