No sooner were we back from Continuum, than we found ourselves starting to prepare for the Mongoose Living Campaigns Open Day - which makes this something like the 16th day I have been working without a break (I need a hug!). Still, would only be an issue if I wasn't working in the gaming industry!

The Open Day was a great success, with many familiar faces from Continuum turning up to continue the adventures of their characters. We also had Lawrence 'Mr RuneQuest' Whitaker drop by to run an extended version of one of the RQ adventures, much to the delight of several gamers who were entering Glorantha for the first time. Guys, you have taken the first step on a long road!

Many thanks to everyone who came down to our offices, we could not have run the day without you.

For my part, I was on something of a high on the Open Day as, at 8pm the day before, I finally closed a deal we have been chasing for the best part of two years. There are a few formalities we have to work out over the next couple of weeks, but the design process started, well, on Saturday!

This is a new licence, and an incredibly hot one at that, coming in three parts, and I thnk there will be some people going absolutely dippy over them given what I have been reading on several forums (lots of people seem to be doing some of their own conversions on these properties already!). The first part is a fantasy miniatures game, appearing in early 2011, though we will likely not formally announce it until we have some pretty painted miniatures to show off. The second is a sci-fi RPG (based on the Traveller system) likely appearing Summer next year, and we may drop a hint or two about this at Gen Con. Finally, a sci-fi miniatures game in late 2011, possibly followed by a related fourth game in early 2012 that will see the return of a much loved set of rules. As I have said, the origins of this deal are a couple of years old but we have finally managed to shepard them along. Watch this space, as this is a good 'un.

Not that we have been idle, just dallying with next year's projects. There is a whirlwind of activity at Mongoose right now as we get some new goodies ready for Gen Con - unfortunately, the new Elric of Melnibone will be appearing in late August, but we will have Darrians, Heroes of Magnamund, Cults of Glorantha, Shards 2, the Traveller Compendium and some other tasty morsels ready for the show.

The Judge Dredd miniatures game continues to grow apace, with a new set of updated playtest posted on the web site on Friday, along with two all new Street Judges. We will have some more models, a mix of new and classic, for you later this month (they will be at Gen Con too). There is currently a poll going on in our forums asking about the direction you would like to see this game take, so swing by and add your voice!

Oh, and I should mention - a small number of you are currently waiting for us to send you some Dredd miniatures. Apologies for this unusual break from our 24 hour turnaround, but demand has far, far exceeded our expectations. We are getting a restock from our US facility within the next couple of days, so expect to see your Mega-City One goodies very soon!

In other news, we are expecting Mr Dever's revision of the Sommerlund sourcebook to arrive this week, and Lone Wolf 14 is in the very last stages of checking before Mr Dever gives it the greenlight and it can go off to print. We will be starting work on Book 15 immediatly, so expect to see a constant flow of Lone Wolf goodness throughout the rest of this year and well into 2011.

The next Big Thing will be Elric (we already have the screens back from print, so we are just waiting on the rulebook now!), though keep an eye out for Vikings (by Pete Nash, very tasty!) as well if you are any kind of fan of RuneQuest.

At the moment, the writers are working on the Abiding Book, Wraith Recon, Robot, Cybernetics, the Magnamund Bestiary and the second edition of 760 Patrons - I am pretty sure you can work out which book is for which game!

I have to sign off now, as I have to dive in and help with the mail orders which, I am happy to say, have been increasing steadily over the last couple of months. Many thanks for those, it is a sure sign that we are doing something right, and it is always greatly appreciated.

As I said right at the start of this post, we really could not do any of this without all you chaps and ladies!

As I type this, we have just wound up our second day of trading at Continuum in Leicester - which means the fun is about to begin!

Continuum is one of my favourite events on the calendar (the next one is 2012, and I recommend you check it out - they have people coming from all over Europe, it is that good). From the point of view of a trader (which is our official position here), it is a very relaxed convention. A lot of gaming goes on, and there is a great social aspect here, with people chewing over the relative merits of various games systems, editions, and beers.

We officially launched the two Mongoose Living Campaigns this weekend (Traveller and Glorantha), and the games have been starting today. Last night we had a character creation seminar where we explained the basic premise of the Living Campaigns, and then helped people create their characters. I was helping out on the Traveller side, and it was interesting to see the different approaches people took. On the one hand, you have the ex-marine sniper who can nail a cockroach at 800 yards. Then you have the rock star who, at the age of 36, is still waiting to be 'discovered'.

I wasn't going to take part myself, but I have been roped into a Living Traveller game thie evening. So, I promptly set about creating a distinctly nonp-conventional character. I had considered a complete barbarian from a feral world with a spear and a helmet he was convinced was magical. Then I thought about an ace pilot who had been thrown out of the service for doing a high-speed pass over an admiral's daughter.

In the end, I settled for Princess Fu-fu L'Mange, a celebrity famous for absolutely nothing. You know those socialites that really get up your nose because they constantly appear in the papers and yet seem to do nothing? That's her.

Her Soc has been knocked up to 15, but no other characteristic is above 5. She is a Rank 4 Celebrity (from Book 8: Dilettante, actually quite a high rank so she is well known), and started off with 10,000 credits - you will have to read the character creation rules for Living Traveller to see how many points she burned to get that much money. In the end, she bought a cocktail dress and some really cool shades (well, okay, the cocktail dress is armoured - I ain't kidding - and the shades allow her to see in infrared and ultraviolet spectrums).

In a nod to actually being useful to the party (because I did not exactly have a lot of points left over for skills), she is actually quite good at persuading and decieving people. I figure if she picks up a gun during any adventure, I have done something wrong.

And, you know... I can just see we are going to have a great laugh tonight, with the Princess rubbing shoulders with the sniper and rock star.

Just goes to show - you don't need to be a gun bunny to do well in the Living Campaign!

In other news, we announced that we had reached an agreement with Chaosium to post their classic Michael Moorcock RPG materials on Drivethru. These books are still great to trawl for useful background materials and adventures, and they are all dead cheap, so grab yourself a bargain.

Races of Glorantha and the third volume of the Mega-City Archives have recently arrived at our offices, and pre-orders have already gone out.

Oh, and it looks like we are going to have some really cool news for fans of miniatures and fans of Traveller, so keep your eyes peeled on Planet Mongoose. You'll get the best hints before anyone else!

Well, the past two weeks have just gone by in a blur!

We have given a lot away free lately - the culmination of several long-term plans all dove-tailing together. Traveller fans must be fairly delirious at the moment, with all the attention being lavished upon them!

First up was the start of the Secrets of the Ancients campaign, a grand, epic-scale campaign that will reveal some of the hidden mysteries of the Traveller universe. Over 8,000 people downloaded the introduction and first adventure in the first five days of its posting, and we hope many of you will still be around when we finally close the campaign after ten adventures (and yes, there has already been some chat about Secrets of the Ancients Part Two...). Written by Gareth Hanrahan, this campaign is well worth a look if you have yet to dive in.

Then, we released the current playtest rules for the new Judge Dredd miniatures game. This game has already been subject to playtesting within Mongoose, but more pairs of eyes never hurt! The core system itself is fairly solid (we believe!), but we need your help to refine points costs and play balance of various models, equipment and Talents. As soon as we start getting feedback (and it has begun, we have already delved into the inner zen of zombies in the game on the forums!), then we will be adding the psychic and vehicles rules.

We also have some brand new models coming up for the line. The first to appear will be two new Street Judges, both of which are currently getting paint jobs, and we already have others at sculpt right now. The rest of the 'classic' range will also be made available over the next couple of months or so.

Finally, we launched the Mongoose Living Campaigns yesterday. This is entirely new territory for us, so we are determined to go slowly on these, rolling out events when we feel comfortable. That said, you are welcome to form your own groups for both Traveller and Glorantha, as there will be plenty of adventures for both this year.

This time next week, we'll be prepping everything for Continuum, so I hope to see many of you there. This show is always RuneQuest heavy, so you'll be glad to know we'll have both Empires and Races of Glorantha on sale there!

We have just come back from Games Expo in Birmingham, always a good event if you want to experience the full breadth of hobby games (RPGs, miniatures, card and board games). Next up, Continuum on the first weekend of July - if you are interested in a residential event with a big nod to RuneQuest and Cthulhu both, you really cannot do better than this one in Leicester. Then of course, there is Origins in the US, and we are all looking forward to Gen Con!

A couple of big books strained our production schedule recently, but I am happy to report everything is now on time. We are just awaiting delivery of Terror of the Darklords and RuneQuest Empires, and the Mega-City One Archives III and Races of Glorantha I are not far behind!

Here in the office, we are just polishing off the first Traveller Compendium, Darrians and Elric, while our writers are putting the finishing touches to their manuscripts of Pavis Rises and Vikings. So, lots of cool books to look forward to!

For my part, I have been running some in-house playtests of the new Judge Dredd game, and am getting a lot happier as to where it is sitting now. The combat system is flowing nicely, and we've started building in the more esoteric rules (like just how does a model transform into a werewolf?). The 'points' system is all over the place right now, but that is something that will benefit greatly from a lot more eyes when we release this rules set as an open playtest. Psychics and 'road combat' rules have yet to make their way in, and will probably be delayed until more playtesting has been done on the core system.

The big news this week has been the release of the first part of the Secrets of the Ancients campaign for Traveller - in the first six hours, there were more than 1,500 downloads of it! This campaign is going to build into a real cracker, so don't presume just because it is free it will be bland. We have got Gareth 'I write BIG campaigns' Hanrahan taking the lead in its development, and with full approval from Mr Miller, you can expect some big ripples going through the OTU/Third Imperium canon.

The next Big Thing will be the start of our Living Campaigns for both RuneQuest and Traveller. This should be popping up on our web site next week, and the campaigns have an official launch at Continuum. If you can't make it to Leicester that weekend, we are having an Open Day for the campaigns on the 10th of July, and after Continuum, you will be free to run the adventures for both campaigns anyway, wherever you are in the world.

Stay tuned for more developments, as there is more in the pipeline that we haven't revealed yet!

Got a lot going on in the office at the moment, but it is all good - there is a nice, warm feeling when you can see you are making real progress!

Anyway, a lot of people have been asking (emailing us, phoning us - they'll be laying siege to the doors next!) where Lone Wolf 14 is. All the art is prepped, and the text just needs a bit of attention, but...

Cults of Glorantha has sprawled into a truly _massive_ project. Lawrence has really gone to town in a tour de force of Gloranthan cults with this one, turning it into a truly epic work. That is the good news for RuneQuest players.

Unfortunately, this great magnum opus has knocked several other projects off kilter, the most effected being, you've guessed it, Lone Wolf 14. Cults is nearly complete, so we will be getting back to Lone Wolf 14 as soon as possible.

However, we do have some light at the end of the tunnel for Lone Wolf fans. Terror of the Darklords is now at print, and Heroes will be hot on its tail. We have also just finished the first editing sweep of Sommerlund and, I have to say, this will be one well worth watching for. It is something of a cliche to say that adventure ideas just drip from each page, but in this case it is very true. Writer Darren Pearce (you'll know hiw work from Signs & Portents) has done extremely well getting the Magnamund feel into this book, and he is just about to commence work on the Magnamund Bestiary - expect good things for the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Gamebook range this year...

In other news, the writing of Darrians is complete and is now into editing. Pete Nash has done some good work on this book, taking existing Darrian material and turning them into a much better fleshed-out race, with some motivations you may not have expected before. And, speaking of surprises, the first two parts of the Secrets of the Ancients campaign (which, as you may remember, we'll be giving away free as a PDF download) are now with Mr Miller for final approval. As soon as they come back, we'll be getting them up on the site!

If that were not enough (I swear, I had fully intended this column to be about RQ and LW today...), we have have just agreed with Comstar/Avenger to publish Sector Fleet and Crowded Hours as part of our official Third Imperium range. Sector Fleet will tell you everything you need to know about the Imperial Navy in the Marches you could ever need to know, while Crowded Hours is a BIG compilation of some excellent scenarios set in the same sector. We've already played some of them in the office, and they are real crackers.

Trying to steer this back to RQ, Lawrence has recently delivered both the Elric of Melnibone main rulebook and the Cults of the Young Kingdoms (he must have cults on the brain right now...), and is now polishing off Pavis Rises, the great Gloranthan campaign. Then, apparently, he will be spending time working on something called The Abiding Book...

For my part, I am desperately trying to clear away projects so I can sit down and complete the final rules-writing/first round playtesting of the new Judge Dredd miniatures game. Once that is done, we'll be turning everything over to you chaps for playing and comment! Progress on the new miniatures for the range is continuing, with our man (or, at least, one of them) in the US, Rob, muttering something about Holocaust suits.

I think that is enough news and previews for now, so I'll sign off. Stay tuned for more updates!