Tuesday, April 30, 2013

We've done it!

Take a look at this right here:


Yeah. That's a funded Kickstarter.

Arcana Rising has officially passed 100% funding. You can find more details about the next two stretch goals on the Kickstarter page's latest update. Up next at 150% is hiring Sam Drost back to work on layout for the game so I can focus on the game design.

In the meantime, I am working away today on the job system for AR, and hope to have the complete list statted up shortly.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Download BWP games FREE in PDF for a limited time!

As a special promotional offer, and to give our audience more idea what our games are all about here at BWP, special discount links have been added to the Kickstarter page for Arcana Rising, allowing people to download Hulks and Horrors and Heaven's Shadow in PDF for free!

Take a look today! Arcana Rising: An Urban Fantasy Roleplaying Game by Bedroom Wall Press — Kickstarter

Arcana Rising: An Urban Fantasy RPG, now on Kickstarter!

Ladies and gentlemen and other assorted creatures of myth and legend.

It is my esteemed pleasure to announce the launch of the Kickstarter campaign for my newest project!

Arcana Rising is an urban fantasy roleplaying game, that aims to merge the classic old school fantasy with the system of Hulks and Horrors, a modern day milieu, and a shade of folklore and mythology.

Powered by the H&H Engine, AR will provide 12 levels worth of urban fantasy old-school goodness, with twin-pistol wielding gunfighters battling back-to-back with spell-slinging wizards, a wealth of fantasy monsters, and a brand new skill and career system that hopes to add a new wrinkle to the H&H system and to the lives of our adventuring heroes.

You can back us on Kickstarter right this very minute, and the link bar above provides a mirror of the information therein. Development has already begun, but I need your help to make it a reality, so put in your pledges today!

Saturday, April 20, 2013

[Expanding the Game] FTL #2: Shields



Energy shields provide an added layer of protection against enemy attacks, though their effectiveness varies depending on the nature of the incoming assault. The shields absorb most kinds of physical and energy damage so long as they do not fall below a certain velocity, and because they are an energy field, can self repair in combat, provided they have not been damaged.

Energy shields work as a pool of damage points against which certain kinds of weapon damage are automatically applied before resolving them against the armor and hull below. In addition, each level of shield has a regeneration rate, which is the number of damage points it gains back every round of combat so long as the system is still functioning properly and undamaged, and the engines are still providing power. If a shield is completely drained, however, it takes a round for the system to generate sufficient power to begin regenerating again.

When purchasing shields, handle them as an add-on system, requiring 40 tons of cargo space within the hull in order to install. The types and costs of the shield levels are as follows:



Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Damage Capacity
20
40
60
80
Regeneration Rate
5
10
15
20
Cost
50,000
75,000
100,000
150,000


In combat, shields react differently to each weapon type, as follows:

  • Beam Weapons: Shields completely absorb the damage from a beam weapon, talking only half-damage from the beam, and allowing no damage through even if the beam does sufficient damage to drain the shield.
  • Burst Weapons and Mass Drivers: These weapons strike the shield first, doing normal damage, and should the shield be drained by the attack, any remaining damage carries over to the hull and armor below as normal.
  • Ion Weapons: These deal double damage against shields, and temporarily disable their recharge ability for 1d6 rounds.  
  • Missiles: These relatively slow moving projectiles are unaffected by energy shields, and ignore them completely. 
When attacking a ship with shields, simply roll and resolve the attack as normal, but subtract any damage absorbed by the shield first.

Zoltan Shield

Zoltan have an additional type of shield they employ on their ships. Zoltan shields can be equipped in addition to regular shields, and provide an added layer of temporary protection against all forms of attack. Zoltan shields have a damage capacity of 100, but do not regenerate in combat, and will in fact only regenerate by capturing power from subspace, requiring an FTL jump in order to recharge. 

Zoltan shields soak all forms of damage, though they still take double damage from ion weapons. 

Adding a Zoltan shield to a ship requires an additional 20 tons of cargo space and costs 200,000 credits.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

BWP is hiring! Plus, my next book!

Howdy Bedroom Wall fans!

It's been a while. Sorry about that.

One of the disadvantages of being a sole proprietor and creator is I have a limited amount of creative focus, and truth be told I've been floundering around for a bit since H&H, trying to find a new project while hopefully giving H&H the continued support via the blog that will keep it in the limelight. We've hit Copper status on DTRPG and to my mind that makes H&H a proper success, and I want it to keep going. Part of why I haven't already started putting together a new edition is I don't want to sabotage this one.  I think H&H is a complete and wonderful game in its own right.

But, I have a new project. For reals this time. And it's a doozy, I think, and has been consuming pretty much all of my writing time and head space, such that I really haven't had the room in there to continue things like the FTL series. It's called Arcana Rising, and I'll have some announcements and even a Kickstarter about it very soon. I'm really looking forward to seeing this one through because I've found with this project that balance between originality and classicism that I love so much as a designer, something I never quite seemed to get to with Hackerscape.

So, I have a proposition, and maybe it's a mad one, maybe not, I'll leave that up to the applicants.

I want to hire a blog writer for Bedroom Wall Press. Amount of contribution would be up to you, but I would want a bare minimum of 1 post a week of at least 600 words. Topics would be partly assigned, especially initially as the first order of business will be wrapping up the FTL blog series, but if you have other ideas of your own you want to pull off with BWP's games I'd be more than open to suggestions.

Compensation would come in the form of ad revenue share, to be negotiated based on the amount of contribution, and of course we'll want to work together on how best to add genuinely topical advertising to the blog, so we can move away from generic AdSense ASAP. If anyone knows of any RPG-related ad-sharing networks, please let me know.

I am sure that some people will be jumping to tell me how awful and unfair this is, and those people are welcome not to apply. I believe in compensating writers as fairly as I can, but BWP is a one-man operation at the moment and I don't have the resources to offer anything else but this.

Applicants should apply by emailing me directly at jsberry AT hulksandhorrors DOT com.  Tell me a little about yourself, your gaming tastes, your familiarity with BWP's games, especially Hulks and Horrors, and link some samples of stuff you think is in line with our currently released projects. If you've got a blog that updates regularly that is definitely a plus in your column. Familiarity with old-school FRP systems in particular is just about mandatory, at least some time spent with B/X or Labyrinth Lord and the like.

In the meantime, I'll be continuing work on Arcana Rising and try my best to squeeze out an update or two for H&H when I can, and I hope you'll bear with me!

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

[Expanding the Game] FTL #1: Characters

FTL: Faster than Light is a space exploration and combat game of the roguelike persuasion for PCs by Subset Games. It is a personal favorite of mine; I was actually a beta level backer during their Kickstarter, and it was the first KS I ever contributed to.

FTL puts players in control of a lone vessel, fleeing the oncoming rebel fleet as it makes haste to prepare itself for a coming battle and notify its superiors of the impending threat. It also happens to make a riproaring concept for a Hulks and Horrors game.

And so, in the first of a new blog series at BWP, I'll be presenting a series of posts detailing some house rules for running FTL on the tabletop. Each week I'll release a new chunk covering the salient details needed to modify H&H to fit FTL, and thus also in the process provide new systems and add-ons that you can even use in your regular H&H games. Once the series is completed, the posts will be compiled into a PDF and posted in the Downloads section. We'll begin with some important character rules.