Creativity Meets Corona

In January I published Expert Nova, English Edition, an English version of my RPG for contemporary adventurous campaigns. It is a straight translation with an additional  chapter on campaign design the Swedish way, with They Came From the Sea!, a “1950s monster movie” setting in a cinematic Australia, as a hands-on instruction.  The game is illustrated by my adult daughter Elin, who is an art & design student. You can buy the game at as a softcover book (64 pages) at Lulu (link>>>) and as a PDF at DriveThruRPG (link >>>). Expert Nova, English Edition got top marks in a review at the Swedish RPG forum WRNU (link >>>); the text is in Swedish, but if you copy-paste it into Google Translate, you’ll get a readable translation.

That being done, January and February proved extremely busy for me. I joined the Eloso team for the final production stages of the Keeper’s and Investigator’s  Books of the Swedish edition of Call of Cthulhu. Their launch is scheduled for Gothcon (Sweden’s premier game con) at Easter. So I spent my days writing, tweaking, editing, and translating. We have written several new chapters dealing with Sweden in the 1920s: society, customs, careers, creepy events, and so on. (For example, why did a Swedish mining company abandon the Pyramiden settlement in Spitzbergen?)

I write regularly for the Swedish gaming magazine Fenix. In February, I put together an article for issue #2/2020: a creepy SF monster for Expert Nova, useful for many contemporary Earth-based campaigns.

I have also outlined several projects for Expert Nova and the Swedish horror RPG Chock.

However, the corona pandemic is a spanner in the works. No, I’m not ill, but last year I signed on as a civilian reserve officer in the Civil Defence Service. Last week, I was called into service at the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. It’s an office assignment, nothing out of the ordinary, but I feel proud that I can put my wits and skills to work for the sake of life and health of others. I will be very busy for most of March, therefore having little time to write games.  But I’ll have a small private notebook at hand all the time and every once in a while I’ll jot down new ideas. There will be game stuff later this year, rest assured of that.

Expert Nova Available at DriveThruRPG

My new role-playing game Expert Nova, English Edition is now available as a PDF at Drive Thru RPG — link >>>

Price 10 euro.

Interior artwork by Elin Blixt

Expert Nova, English Edition Is Now Live on Lulu!

Expert Nova is my new role-playing game for action and mysteries in settings from the late Victorian era to a near future in which man still is the measure of all things. Put your players to the test in London’s seedy alleys, the trackless jungles of the Amazonas, the catacombs under Paris, or the Templars’ hidden headquarter. It is a translation of the Swedish version that I published last year, though with an extra chapter explaining campaign design according to our distinctive Swedish RPG lore.

Expert Nova is a 6″x9″ book of 64 pages. €25 at Lulu.

Link to my Lulu shop — >>>

Free character sheet (PDF) — >>>

Expert Nova in five bullet points:

• Flexible rules that favour playability and encourage clever schemes and social interaction.
• Speedy character generation that produces hardy and versatile adventurers.
• Action is skill-based: roll 1D20 as low as possible.
• Adjust the grittiness and lethality of your adventures by applying optional rules.
• Campaign design guidelines with a 1950s Australian science fiction setting as a hands-on example.

My RPG Accomplishments in 2019

At the New Year holiday, people often look back at the past year and muse on what has happened. In my case, I pulled off a few nice game-related accomplishments.

• Ruby Jubilee as a game writer: In 1979, I made my first professional sale, a Traveller article for GDW’s inhouse magazine Journal of Travellers’ Aid Society. Read the full story here — link >>>.
• Expert Nova, my newest game: My professional situation got a complete overhaul in April for reasons that are of no interest here. What is relevant, though, is that suddenly I had more time for making role-playing games. In May, I decided (snap — just like that) to use my forty years of RPG designer experience to write Expert Nova, a role-playing game for contemporary settings (currently an almost empty niche in the Swedish RPG market) The rules are inspired by Basic Role-playing, the dominant game system in Sweden since the  1980s. I launched Expert Nova via Lulu in October; buy it in my kiosk — link >>>.
  

  Elin Blixt’s illustration of the chapter on equipment, endurance, and health in Expert Nova.

• Family Business: I have recruited my adult daughter Elin, an art & design student, for doing interior artwork in my games. Her first job was Expert Nova and she quickly grasped the ins and outs of illustrating RPG rules. We will proceed with new projects in 2020.
• Expert Nova English Edition: In November I translated Expert Nova into English, an easy task because I am bilingual. Because foreign gamers are unfamiliar with Swedish RPG lore, I added a chapter about our traditional way of designing campaigns. The English text is currently being reviewed and I intend to launch Expert Nova English Edition via Lulu at the end of January. Stay tuned to this blog.
• The Expert setting books: I have started outlining some settings, the Expert Series, for the Expert Nova rules. However, I haven’t yet decided which book to complete first.
• Cthulhu Calling: The Swedish game publisher Eloso is busy developing a Swedish version of Chaosium’s classic RPG Call of Cthulhu, part translation, part new material about Sweden in the 1920s. In late 2019, they hired me to work on some chapters. Great assignment.

Uppdatering: Expert Nova (4)

Summary in English: A quick progress update for my Swedish RPG Expert Nova.

Augusti har varit en rejäl månad nära det gäller spelskriverier. Dels har jag lagt ner mycket tid på att översätta Runequest till svenska och dels har jag gjort de där sista tidskrävande arbetsmomenten på Expert Nova.

Till höger ser ni Expert Novas framsida, en föredömligt minimalistisk design av Tomas Arfert. Vad som nu återstår är en sista illustration av Elin Blixt (kapitelbilden för SLP-kapitlet), och en sista rapport från en korrläsare. När allt detta är klart skickar jag över de kompletta dokumenten, dvs omslag plus 52 sidor inlaga i det amerikanska formatet 6″×9″ (152×228 mm), till Lulu.com för print-on-demand — det lär bli i september. Yay!

Beta-versionen av Expert Nova har fått följande positiva recension –– länk >>>

Sedan är det dags att bestämma mig för vad som ska bli titel två i Nova-serien, dvs en helt ny kampanjmiljö med Expert Nova som regelmotor. Jag har ett par settingar i huvudet. Om du har några särskilda önskemål, skriva gärna en kommentar till den här posten.

Uppdatering: Expert Nova (3)

Idag har jag låst layouten för Expert Novas inlaga, 52 sidor i det amerikanska formatet 6×9 tum, och skickat en inlage-PDF på språkgranskning. Under augusti ska jag få korrektur, Elin Blixts illustrationer och Tomas Arferts omslag. Publicering i september om allt går väl.

Uppdatering: Expert Nova (2)

Summary: A quick update on the progress of my new Swedish RPG Expert Nova.

Jag har grovmonterat Expert Nova i InDesign och sysslar nu med finputsning. Jag skriver bland annat en del spelexempel utformade efter ledigt utrymme på aktuella sidor.

InDesign är ett proffsprogram som jag jobbade mycket med under min tid som vetenskapsjournalist hos Strålskyddsinstitutet på 00-talet och det är skönt att vara tillbaka vid den “arbetsbänken”. Jag har till och med valt att använda med samma typsnitt som då: Sabon i brödtexten och Gill Semibold Condensed i rubrikerna, det sistnämnda på Tomas Arferts inrådan. Han tipsade mig även om det finstilt läsbara telefonkatalogstypsnittet Bell, vilket fungerar perfekt i spelets tabeller.

Som det ser ut idag får Expert Nova en inlaga på 50 sidor. Formatet blir amerikansk storpocket 6″x9″, vilket stöds av print-on-demand-tjänsterna hos Amazon KDP och Lulu. Sidorna blir nästan lika höga och cirka 1½ cm smalare än i det G5-format som användes till Drakar och Demoner och Mutant. 

Elin Blixt är klar med hälften av illustrationerna och jobbar på; allt måste vara klart innan höstterminen börjar på hennes art & design-utbildning. Tomas Arfert ska nu formge spelets omslag på ett oldschooligt sätt.

Om kaffet är starkt & gott och vinden ligger rätt, ska Team Fox alltså skicka en tryckfärdig Expert Nova-PDF till Amazon KDP i september, dvs ungefär en månad senare än min ursprungliga plan.

Därefter ska jag börja grunna på regelverkets första settingbok, arbetsnamn Nova 2. Jag har en idé, men den måste knådas en del innan jag vill offentliggöra den.

En recension av beta-version finns här — länk >>>

Uppdatering: Expert Nova (1)

Summary in English: I outline the progress of my Expert Nova RPG engine, based on BRP 1D20.

Regelverkat Expert Nova är medlem av rollspelsklanen Basic Roleplaying (BRP), vars urfader är ett regelverk som skrevs av Greg Stafford och Steve Perrin på Chaosium, Inc, för rollspelet Runequest i slutet av 1970-talet. Klanen har sedan växt till att omfatta alla rollspelsgenrer. I Sverige har diverse BRP-kusiner dominerat vår hobby alltsedan Drakar och Demoners lansering i början av 1980-talet.

Expert Nova är avsedd för någorlunda jordnära settings från sent 1800-tal till näraframtids-SF. Jag planerar för flera settingböcker, men då talar vi om 2020 och framåt. Därför vill jag inte gå in på detaljer här och nu.

Expert Nova använder BRP 1T20, ett upplägg jag har kommit att uppskatta allt mer med tiden. Själva regelverket är färdigskrivet och är på provspelning under juni. I juli ska min vuxna dotter Elin illustrera inlagan medan jag uppdaterar texten en sista gång. Sedan är det tänkt att Expert Nova publiceras som bok och som nedladdningsbar PDF. Vi talar där om sensommar eller tidig höst förutsatt att inget oväntat inträffar.

The Tiger’s First Illustration

Earlier I have mentioned that my adult daughter Elin (a.k.a. the Tiger) now works as an illustrator for some of my RPG ventures. We have formed Team Fox. Elin’s mundane occupation is as a student at an art & design school.

In Elin’s first project, I have asked for a simple comic-book look; here is a resulting watercolor of an adventurous journalist for the apocalyptic 1950s Australian setting “Oz Is Drowning”.

Copyright 2019 Elin Blixt

The Tiger Progresses

I dropped by the Tiger’s apartment yesterday to see how her first artwork assignment for me progresses. I have not yet anything by her hand to display here (the Tigress to the right is merely a representation of her character), because she is still experimenting with the black-and-white style I have asked for, somewhat inspired by the adventure comics and movies of my youth. After all, she is working with a retro-style text. It is a paternal joy to witness how my daughter gets into role of an illustrator one step at a time.