Well, my first book, The Price of Honour is now complete and submitted for editing. I am really pleased with how it has turned out, and I must admit I’m looking forward to seeing the final printed version.

Just to give a brief outline. The story starts in 999 A.D. when the Imperial Court is dominated by the Fujiwara clan. Two rival clans, the Minamoto and Taira, form an unexpected alliance to fight off the bakemono (Japanese goblins) that have invaded Iwami province. The players are plunged into a war where they fight battles against impossible odds, get drawn into the political intrigue, face powerful sorcerers and mythical creatures, and even visit the great temple complexes in Nara. The story comes to a climax in a battle of epic proportions.

With that done, I’m now planning my next project, Tripwire. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is a campaign for Traveller. Whereas The Price of War was more combat oriented, Tripwire is focussed more on intrigue, secrets and conspiracy, so it will be a very different sort of campaign. The overall plot is sorted so its just a case of filling in some of the details before I get cracking on it next week…

Today has been quite exciting.

First, Lawrence dropped down to our office, to help our planning (or, rather, re-planning) of the 2010 schedule. In the end, the old one was completely discarded, and we started afresh. No, not going to give anything away, but if you are a follower of Conan, you are going to go dippy when you see what is coming. We also set various Traveller projects in motion (OTU fans will be well catered for in 2010), and also a very special Runequest project that Lawrence himself will be heading.

Getting my head out of 2010 (it seems so close when you are in publishing!), we had a new delivery of books today - Scout arrived, much to the joy of Traveller fans, I imagine (this is one of Lawrence's too!). However, along with Hunters of Granbretan, we also received some other books that won't see the light of day for a good few months yet, such as Project Steel and Shadows of Cthulhu. We printed tiny, tiny runs of these to basically get them into the system, but they won't be appearing for sale for a while - unless, of course, you happen to be attending Corporation Day on the 28th. We should also have some other juicy titles by then. . .

MSWord just informed me that 'there are too many spelling errors in the document to display them all.'

Bah. Tlaukhu, Foederate, Drinax, Tobia and Tlaiowaha are all perfectly cromulent words if you're talking about the Aslan sourcebook.

We have had a few comments of late about missing scheduled release dates for books. Unfortunately, it always seem to be the books people are most anxious for!

In the State of the Mongoose, I explained some of the exceptional circumstances that caused release dates to slip last year, and what we were doing to fix them. As things stand right now, most of our books _are_ now being released on schedule (that is, appearing in stores on the month it currently says on the web site). A few titles are running 1-2 weeks behind - which actually means they are in our warehouse in the right month, but it always takes a couple of frustrating weeks for them to worm their way into your local store.

So, which books are currently on schedule, and which are not, you will be wondering. . .

The Universe of Babylon 5, Lurker's Guide to Gaim and Fighting Ships all go to print this week (and so will be in stores early to mid-March, depending where exactly in the world you are). There were some art issues with these titles which, unfortunately, could not be avoided.

Enemies Within, Scout, Corporation, Adventures in the Hyborian Age, Age of Dreadnoughts, Fronela, Hunters of Granbretan, and Pocket Spycraft are either all at print right now, or are already sitting in our warehouse ready to be sent out. Most of these you will see by the end of the month, a small handful may lap round into the first week or so of March because of the way distribution (and the logistics behind it) works. Most, if not all, of these books will incidentally, be available at our Corporation Day - another good excuse to turn up!

Dwarfs (Mostali) and Prison Planet will go into March, around the middle of the month.

There was a massive cock up at the printers with Lone Wolf 8, which actually means we will be getting Lone Wolf 9 slightly beforehand. We will be sending both of these books out together (well, you don't want any surprises spoilt, eh?). Book 10 has been unaffected.

From the March releases onwards, we are predicting everything will be on schedule, and we will then be looking forward to reinstituting our release _days_ (not months) later this year. So, you will see an actual date of release on the web site, and you can be 99% sure (Murphy's Law will always stop it being 100%) that the book will appear in your local store that week - just like the good old days with Mongoose releases!

It has been a long road jerking our release schedule back into shape, but we are finally about there. We wish to thank every one of our fans for their untiring support and greater patience in waiting for the books they love.

Psions for Traveller is finished, and I'm very happy with the book's scope. As you'd expect, there's a host of new talents and powers (termed advanced talents, to differentiate from the common talents found in the main rules), and these cover things such as astral projection, combat, defence and so on. But I also decided to go further and include powers for time and dimensional travel, and integrating with ships. So, if you want to play Helva from 'The Ship Who Sang', you can. If you want to play a certain type of time travelling do-gooder who hops around in a telephone kiosk; that's possible too. Fancy playing a dimensional-travelling cynic with floppy hair and a penchant for either 1940s RAF flying jackets or 19th Century hussar's uniform? Yep, that's possible too.

The careers chapter runs the full gamut of psionic possibilities. There are dedicated psion agencies, plus variants for the main careers in Traveller. Also included are mystical orders (for those psions who have dedicated to upholding some ancient republic's values in a galaxy far, far away) and Temporal Guardians (for those who prefer telephone kiosks to Type S Scouts).

I've also expanded the rules for developing and training psionics. You no longer need to find an institute. There are rules for using mentors, spending time with other psions, joining that mystical order (May the Power Be With You), or developing psionic abilities through mental trauma.

Speaking of which, psionic trauma gains its own chapter. Psions can be a delicate bunch, and putting too much strain on the mind can lead to phobias, paranoias and even full-on madness. This chapter shows how all that works and the effect it has on psionic characters and their abilities.

Expect too a chapter on new equipment, for both psions and non-psions. But expect too a chapter devoted to psionically powered ships - and building time machines and dimensional devices. Integrating a psion with a ship can bring all kinds of advantages, but with some obvious downsides, and this chapter should offer some intriguing possibilities for adventure and ship design.

After all that mental exhaustion, its good to be turning back to some RQ, and this month sees 'Guilds, Factions and Cults' underway. The aim of this book is to fully detail how these associations work, with governments, each other, and characters. Both GMs and characters will be able to build their own cults, guilds and political factions, either playing them as characters in their own right, or gaining full support from them in the course of a normal campaign. Early days on this book, but it should be a fun RQ resource for any fantasy setting.

After 'Guilds', I'm taking traveller to Megacity One. You can probably guess what that means.

Finally, let me welcome aboard Simon Beal. As his post says, he's tackling a 'Land of the Samurai' campaign, and knowing a bit about the theme of it, I'm really looking forward to seeing it emerge (and running it, too!). Good luck Simon!

Loz

The first book I’m working on, The Price of Honour, is a campaign for the Land of the Samurai RQ supplement. I’ve made a good start on it this week and really enjoying it. It has made me want to watch the classic film Ran again but there seems to be a small gap on my shelf where the DVD should be. Now who did I lend it to?

Next month I will be working on Tripwire, a campaign for Traveller set in the Spinward Marches. This will be full of conspiracy and intrigue so looking forward to that one as well.

After Tripwire there are more Traveller books on my list, but more on those next time…

As a sneak peek, we finally locked the ships that will be appearing in this book;

Hermes
Hyperion
Nova
Olympus
Omega
Warlock
Bin Tak
Dag Kar
G’Quan
Sho Kos
T’Loth
Darkner
Demos
Octurion
Primus
Sentri
Vorchan
Torotha
Avioki
Bimith
Sky Serpent
Strike Hawk
Xill
Drakh
Shadow Fighter
Shadow Ship
Victory
Vorlon
White Star

I've also had my head in 2010 today, rejigging our Traveller releases. Next up for revision. . . RuneQuest!