Well, it had been a while and I'd figure I'd check in with everyone. Especially you Glorantha-philes that are getting your greedy mitts on Monsters II right about now. I am SO happy with how that turned out, you can't even know. Well, I guess you can...because I just told you. Anyway...

Ducks: A Guide to Durulz is underway, and boy am I glad that Matthew gave me the extra time on this one! Between my freshly pregnant wife, springtime house repairs, and making sure that I am not altering the existing Duckology too much, the project is going to likely take me all the way up to the end of May. I just hope that people appreciate what I'm trying to give to the Ducks and Duck players out there, and that maybe some of the "Duck-Haters" out there will give them a second chance with their new Second Age makeover.

Things I have learned so far in working on the Duck Book:

1> There are a lot more Keet breeds in the world than I first thought.

2> The "real" reason why Ducks/Keets lost their flight and became Glorantha's scapegoats is told thirteen different ways in old Gloranthan lore; I think I found a great medium between them for the Second Age version of the Myth-telling.

3> A lot of old RQ Glorantha literature speaks NOTHING of the Second Age, making my life both easier and more difficult all in one!

4> Our editor Nick is a true Glorantha-phile that has helped point me to LOTS of duck-info. Sure, some of it was strictly 3rd age stuff - but it was a good read nonetheless!

5> Trying to remove the slapstick and leave the cynical humour is difficult, especially with the RIDICULOUS names that 3rd Age RQ used.

6> Working on a Duck Sourcebook is as much fun as I thought it would be; I just hope it goes over well.

Well, back to work for me...I have an entire world to lay a few eggs on and see what hatches!

-Bry

Well, it has been over a week since I returned from Vegas, and my sleep patterns are still not back to normal. Still, that means I have been getting into the office super early, and actually getting stuff done!

The big news this week has, of course, been Traveller. It has been well-received across the various forums (shock, horror, Mongoose did not break the system, and they actually listened to playtesters! Have some faith guys. . .), and copies have been flying out of the door. In fact, a week after it has been on sale, we are already looking at reprinting it for a second time - it has all the hallmarks of being one of our best selling books of all time.

Which, of course, has concentrated our minds somewhat on the supplements. Spinward Marches goes to print very soon, and will be around just after the middle of the month, and Mercenary is hot on its tail. We are rather pleased with the way Mercenary has gone, as Nick outlined below, and High Guard will be more of the same, but for more spacey type characters. My favourite, however, has to be 760 Patrons - the original book was a huge help to me in running Traveller campaigns, and this version is literally ten times better!

This time next week, we will all be hard at work in the Croft Sports Centre, getting ready for doors opening time for Mongoose Hall 08, our biggest self-run event of the year. We have oodles of games going on, from demonstration and participation games of Traveller, RuneQuest and World at War, to 40k Apocalypse, Blood Bowl, and some of the games available through our partners at Wargaming Online. So, whether you are a roleplayer or die-hard minatures buff, make the effort and come down - it promises to be a good day, and we have traders from around the country giving you the chance to pick up some tasy bits and pieces that you might not always see down your local store.

Those are the big things going on at the moment. Behind the scenes, there are all the details that go toward running a games company in the 21st Century - sorting out translation licences for foreign language editions, preparing the SRDs for Traveller and Battlefield Evolution, paying bills, chasing payments, and setting up the next bunch of projects that will have you all salivating!

It has been forever (3 months !!!!) since I last posted on the blog, so I thought it was nigh time to book in and explain what I am currently up to.

Well I have so close to finished Dara Happa Stirs it almost hurts. This is a great campaign and source book and has been a joy to work on. It will almost certainly (barring a freak lightning / meteor strike on Swindon) be at the printers next week. So hooray!

The Spinward Marches is the next in line to be finished and I would be reasonably confident that it would be on its way to the printers next week as well but for the fact it is a short week next week and Mongoose Hall '08 will require me to run around like a deranged penguin for a fair chunk of Friday. But the end is in sight for this baby as well.

Third on my list of things to do is the first rules supplement for Traveller - Mercenary. Now I know that there is concern that this book might follow in the footpaths of the original Mercenary book for classic Traveller, which was a very good book in itself but made playing anything other than a Marine or Soldier less attractive by far (of course High Guard then included the Navy in this two tier approach, eventually Scouts and Merchants saw their dues...) however it made characters from the standard books, well naff.

Well the NEW Mercenary is not like that. First of all it actually deal with Mercenaries a lot more, including creating characters with a Mercenary (not Army or Marine) career. There will be some changes to character generation for the basic Marine and Army types - but those changes will be ones that introduce variety and added detail - not an extra half a dozen or more skills for each character, making it a useful addition for those classes but not one that will unbalance them. It hass much more that this to it, of course, with more guns and equipment, rules for creating mercenary tickets, some new skills (not too many, and they are logical additions for a book of this type), large scale combat and other bits besides.

Anyway Mercenary is probably a couple of weeks away from completion, but it is a very nice book to work on and is coming along nicely - kudos to Bryan for a nice piece of work.

Last up for May will be the long awaited Lurkers Guide to the Gaim. Hopefully. This baby has sat in a somewhat dormant state for a couple of months as events and workload conspired against me getting this book finished. It is certainly one of the better B5 books I've read for a while and the Gaim are now to be taken very seriously indeed...

As to what I have actually finished. Well World at War was rushed to the top of my schedule and finished in good time. Monsters 2 was polished off a few weeks back. Secrets of Scelos was laid out after Chris did all the hard work. And a million and one other jobs have been finished that Matt had me do - curse!

This week, I have been in Vegas, attending the GAMA trade show. For those not in the know, this is the hobby games industry's main trade show, where manufacturers get together and hob-nob with distributors and retailers, convincing both that forthcoming products are going to be the Next Big Thing, and they should order loads! It is also a chance to re-new contact with other publishers and gaming industry notables that you might otherwise only communicate with via email, catch up, and perhaps 'do a little business.'

This year's GAMA has been a good one for us, on many different levels.

Our biggest fear was that much of our time would be spent convincing distributors and retailers both that we have now moved our book production to the US, and that issues arising from our own book production facility are now fully in the past. Happily, it seems the Mongoose Marketing Machine has been working at full steam, and the vast majority were already aware of this - recent titles such as the Bestiary of the Hyborian Age and reprints of books like Victory at Sea had already done much to allay worries.

So, for us, much of the buzz around our both was for the new Traveller system, and there were plenty of gruby hands fondling the copies we had! The main rulebook is already on its way to distributors, and will start appearing in stores next week. If you are waiting for it by mail order, copies will be off to you in just a few days!

Cthulhutech was also a popular point of conversation, and many retailers were hapy (delirious, even!) to hear that the main rulebook is already being reprinted, and will be available in 3-4 weeks time, alongside the first supplement, Dark Passions.

On the more forward-looking front, we managed to get a lot of things moving. We have started negotiations to give Wargaming Online the publicity and technological boost it has always needed to push it to the forefront of downloadable wargaming material, which will be good news for anyone thinking to support the OGL nature of the new BF Evo games. We have also started negotiations which, if they come to fruition, will solve just about every problem we have ever had with miniatures production, in terms of both quantity and quality (CTA fans, do not get too excited - this will take the best part of a year to put into place). There were also many other smaller bits and pieces waiting for us in the wings, such as the possibility of a 1920's Japanese/Cthulhu book for the RuneQuest system - but we'll have to wait and see how all that turns out.

Despite being thousands of miles away from home, we also managed to work out a few other outstanding items. We met with the (very) hard working Mongoose Infantry in Vegas, and hammered out a working plan of how to revise our demo system. This will involve a complete restructuring of how we run the demo teams, and will enable us to support them far better. Which is fortunate, as we pretty much now know what our new miniatures game will be in the first quarter of next year. We still need to sign on the dotted line, so to speak, but a big barier has just been removed, and we are now just working out the details. We even have a working prototype up and running! More news on this as and when we can.

While here, we also had time to visit the restaurant halfway up the Eiffel Tower, and caught a show at the Ka Theatre at the MGM - impressive, to say the least. What I _don't_ like about Vegas is the travelling. I am way to cheap to go by anything but Cattle Class which I generally regard as being placed within the ninth circle of Hell. As I type this, I am in the hotel room, trying to prepare myself for the return trip in a few hours. Dreading it. . .

A very busy week for me, this last week.

First, 'Cults of the Young Kingdoms' has been completed and submitted. The book weighs-in at a very substantial 164 pages. It expands all the cults from the main Elric rules considerably, adds chapters and background concerning the Eternal Struggle, and then provides several new cults and societies for Elric adventurers. I never expected to be able to get so much from a straight cults book for Elric because cults aren't really an integral part of the Elric saga. However there's a great deal of really useful stuff in the book and I'm looking forward to seeing it in print.

Then I've started 'Beltstrike' for Traveller. This is part background/source book, with the Belter career path, and a campaign set in the Schaeffer belt. It'll be compatible with the Traveller OTU and generic SF games that require an asteroid belt location. Early days on this book, but I'm enjoying the progress so far.

I've also been proofing 'Castle Brass' and 'Dara Happa Stirs'. 'Castle Brass' needs a few art amendments, but is looking good. Again, its part sourcebook and part campaign book. The sourcebook includes detailed treatments of the Kamarg, Aigues Mortes and Castle Brass itself, with tons of adventure seeds mixed into the text. Aigues Mortes is designed to act as a base for adventurers and there's a lot of scope for getting involved in the lives and agendas of the city's inhabitants.

'Dara Happa Stirs' is a beast. Close to 200 pages of detailed Dara Happan history, cosmology, background and setting. It gives a great deal of information about Yelm's Chosen People and a lot of information about the cities of Elz Ast, Raibanth and Yuthuppa - again, plenty of scenario ideas and interaction points. The second half of the book is the Karvanyar campaign, which traces Karvanyar's emergence from pauper and into Dara Happa's greatest Second Age hero. The characters are his direct, divinely appointed servants and they help Karvanyar bring about rebellion, travelling around Dara Happa on missions involving safe-guarding Karvanyar's father, slaying a belligerent goddess, questing in Alkoth (where everyone is dead, and death a requirement for entering the city's walls), assisting in Karvanyar's quest to marry, and then dealing with the repercussions. The campaign rounds-out with detailed scenario seeds for the years of war that follow, including an important Heroquest to determine the fate of the EWF. I hope to have the proofs and corrections made this weekend, and then the book should be ready to go to the printers. This one, I'm really looking forward to seeing!

So, back to work for me. Loads to do...

Loz