Ottomancer

Any news on River of Heaven ?

It's in the hands of Mr Newt at the moment. I'm sure he'll post here when there is an update. :-)

Adventures as stretch goal - confirmed with John over lunch that he has 4-5 adventures already written

Hi - I can double-confirm this - I have 2x adventures that have seen several outings at conventions - one of which was also the playtest adventure. Then there is a mini-campaign (3 parts written, with a 4th in the pipeline) which is designed to introduce players to the default campaign setting. These adventures all work as self-contained one-shots if required. :-)

Damn... I just want to give you my money (in return for the book of course)!

Marcus

If you want a taste of the game I'm hoping to be out and about at several UK gaming conventions this year running River of Heaven adventures...

Btw, since this is a hard sf setting, what are the spaceships like? Are they torch ships, or are the much like what's found in most space opera?

There are no FTL ships. There are torch ships though yes. There are also high-tech ships called 'Step Ships' that utilise a 'stellar-tap' - one end of a wormhole in a star, one as an engine exhaust, to provide limitless (or as good as) reaction mass. The technology to manufacture these engines is beyond the capability of human civilisations though, as they are acquired tech from an apparently long-dead alien civilisation.

The Machine Civilisation has developed wormhole tech, and for their own reasons one machine faction has provided several to the more advanced human civilisations.

RE: weapons - I have tried to keep weapons generic, classed together as things like 'slug pistol', 'slug rifle', 'plasma rifle', 'standard infantry rifle', 'smart rifle', 'needler' etc etc rather than have lots of makes and models.

Its one of the influences. Alistair Reynolds' Revelation Space books are another. But I've just looked at the References chapter of the game and John lists a good three pages worth of books, films and TV shows that have inspired him while writing River of Heaven.

Hullo,

Yes - Frank Herbert’s Dune is a great example to me of an advanced non-Singularity interstellar human civilisation, and the feudal make-up of the Houses definitely is an influence on the political structure of the Kentauran Hegemony (which is the default campaign setting). I also draw on the Byzantine Empire and several other sources, including the Crusader states of the middle ages. Likewise the Guilds. There are several guilds controlling space travel though, rather than one.

There is no interstellar empire, no big worms, or spice melange though ;-)

As Newt has said, I wear my influences on my sleeve, and try to list them all at the back of the book.

Hi AikiGhost. Thanks for the comments and kind words, they're really appreciated.

The blog you commented on was originally for me to put ideas as I thought of them until the structure of the book was in place and I began writing the manuscript instead. The most up to date blog on River of Heaven is the one Newt asked me to write over at D101, which you can view here: http://riverofheaven.d101games.co.uk/

As to how many pages - I'll have to refer you to Newt for that, as he is handling editorial duties.

Thanks again for the comments, I hope you like the finished product.

ps - glad you describe it as 'mid-hard' scifi - it is hard scifi up to a point!

Excellent - must grab a copy.

... Prince Rupert and his Alchemist-Cavaliers fight on behalf of their exiled king against the clockwork war machines of Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army...

Steampunk English Civil War? This sounds awesome. I know some people in the Sealed Knot who will love this kind of thing too.

Yet to get hold of the Laundry RPG yet, which is a terrible oversight on my part, considering I love the novels (I pretty much love all of Charlie Stross' novels, Laundry and otherwise). is it a recommended purchase?

John is in the final stages of finishing off the writing (literally the last section tonight he tells me ) and once it goes through proof I'll probably layout the Introductory chapter as a preview as well as giving the contents list.

In the meantime, lots of excepts on John's River of Heaven Blog :

http://riverofheaven.d101games.co.uk/

Hullo,

I can confirm I've passed the last two chapters to Newt. Public playtest completes at the end of this week too, and the feedback I have had has been very helpful indeed.

Thanks for all the kind comments. Sorry for not being around on the forums of late. Between finishing River of Heaven, and other pressing personal/family/work commitments, I've had to maintain a lower profile than I'd have liked here this year.

John has been churning maps out at a frightening pace and is now moving onto the internal art.

It's been a lot of fun. Reminded me how much I love swords and sorcery!

I just downloaded Jovian Nightmares. It looks very good, and contains

many very interesting and useful ideas - thank you for iit.

Glad you like it - I am in the process of providing some files to Chaosium to support the monograph (location maps, handouts etc) which you should be able to get for free from their website if you have bought Jovian Nightmares. I will post a message here and on the Cthulhu Rising website once I have sent the files to Dustin.

Quick update: Dustin has been in touch to tell me the print version is now available:

Chaosium Inc.

Thanks again for all the positive feedback and offers of scenarios. :thumb:

Quality stuff, John - I should finish writing up that adventure I ran at a local Con here last year and give it to you!

Marcus

Absolutely! PM me and tell me more. :thumb:

Memories of a shoggoth engulfing the curious fool in the spacesuit, before it started to rip open the airlock... In space, everyone can hear you scream - if you don't cut the comms channel quickly enough! :eek:

:thumb: I had a lot of fun running Escape Velocity, at both Continuum and Furnace last year. All of the players were really up for it on both occasions.

Hi All,

Just wanted to tell you about the monograph I have written for Chaosium.

Jovian Nightmares is a sourcebook for Cthulhu Rising - Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the 23rd Century.

It's currently available as a PDF download from the Chaosium website and I am told it will be available in print format later in the Spring.

Link to product page: Chaosium Inc.

Big thanks to all those who played 'Escape Velocity' at conventions last year - the adventure is featured in the monograph.

The monograph I am working on, Jovian Nightmares, although written primarily as a Call of Cthulhu supplement to support Cthulhu Rising, is deliberately structured so that if the mythos elements are removed (and this should be easy as I am trying to contain such stuff all in one Keepers-only chapter) then it could be used as a generic pseudo-hard sci-fi setting for BRP.

I will be buying Outpost 19. I love sci-fi me, especially if written for BRP. :thumb:

I seem to remember at Continuum this year Charlie Krank said pretty much what Lawrence explained in his post above, and said the situation looked unlikely to change.

:ohwell:

It's on my Xmas order list.

:thumb:

I second that :thumb:

Absolutely - I love sci-fi me.

:thumb:

Its that infamous convention in a Castle overlooking the Rhine

Tentacles Convention - Welcome!

Surely someone at Continuum didn't talk excitedly about it?

Aha! Yes, now I remember. I will see what I can do. :thumb:

Going to Tentacles next year?

SGL.

Possibly - if i can combine it with a family holiday. When is it exactly? And where?

All the CR games at the convention got signed up before I saw the sheets... ;-(

SGL.

I know. It happened for a lot of games as far as I can tell. I wish I had put my sign-up sheets on the board day by day rather than all at once. If we'd met, we could have tried to organise a game - I ended up doing that for a couple of guys from the Kult of Keepers.

While I remember, I just wanted to say a super big thank-you to those who played in the Cthulhu Rising games I ran at Continuum.

Whether you were squished by Shoggoths, mutilated by Mi-Go or sucked-dry by Star Vampires. Whether you were infected, crushed, fried, devoured or dissected. Even if you managed to escape alive, sane or not. Whatever your fate - thanks for turning up, thanks for having fun, thanks for making it a really memorable experience.

Well ok, I'll be more precise in my question. The title seems to indicate a scenario around Jupiter. Am I correct? Anything else to say about it?

It's going to be a campaign book detailing the Jovian colonies. As well as some short works of fiction, a timeline and background info for locations/organisations etc, it will hopefully feature at least one full-length adventure - Escape Velocity - which I am running at Continuum this coming weekend. There will also be some linked adventures which will appear as free downloads on the Cthulhu Rising website, at least one of which I will be running at conventions in the Autumn.

By the way, do you happen to have a political world map for CR?

A political world map of Earth 2271? I think I do somewhere. Want me to see if I can dig it out after Continuum?

Just have to say that I also purchased a copy of the PDF during the last Chaosium sale. Fantastic work... I really think that you are on to a winner of a game here (the last time I had this feeling for a CoC setting was Dark Ages!)

Looks like my old group (it seems that their new Keeper saw the same sale!) are going to, at the very least, run the adventures on Ottomancer's site. I get to listen in on these (they record the sessions for poor old Marcus stuck at the other end of the country) and so will report back on their progress!

Marcus

Thanks for the kind words Marcus. It's always nice to get positive feedback. It makes it all worthwhile and knowing people enjoy Cthulhu Rising keeps me inspired to write for the setting. :thumb:

I am always looking to get adventure reports from groups over at the Cthulhu Rising forums, if you're interested..?