Disposable Future!

Now live on Kickstarter!

Disposable Future is a dystopian cyberpunk RPG using mechanics from Into the Odd. In this role-playing adventure game, you and the other PCs start as roommates sharing one crummy apartment in the slums of New-Cleveland. You have $20 in your pocket, rent is due in four days, and you owe thousands of dollars to someone powerful and unforgiving. You’ll take any sketchy job that comes your way, even if it means taking the bus to a hit. 

I've been playing this game on-and-off with friends for a few years now, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to finally sharing it with the rest of the world. As of this writing, the campaign has reached it's funding goals. I'd really like to hit both my stretch goals so I can include a starter adventure ("These Machines Kill Fascists") and upgrade the interior art for color. 

So please, give it a look, and maybe share the link with others. As always I appreciate your support!

 So do I only post on this blog to promote Kickstarters anymore? It seems like that may be the case.

Anyway…

Fantastical Classes: Blobs vs. Blades
Now on Kickstarter!

Fantastical Classes: Blobs vs. Blades is a collection of brand new character classes for old-style fantasy roleplaying adventure games. Specially designed for use with Old School Essentials, this book contains six exciting character classes that you didn’t even know you needed! All of them are lovingly written and illustrated by your old friend Joshua LH Burnett.

The book features six new classes, some of which are directly inspired by beloved classic JRPG video games. If we hit our stretch goals, I’ll add even more classes!

• Adept: Adventuresome scholars of all things magical that can use both arcane and divine spells!
• Blob: Small gelatinous monsters that come in a variety of lurid colors!
• Dancer: Charming performers whose dancing lets them tap into the primal forces of magic!
• Fury: Highly-mobile skirmishers who specialize in using two weapons at once!
• Ophidian: Venomous skulkers whose blood carries the influence of the ancient Serpent Men!
• Swordmage: Doughty warrior-wizards who can channel arcane magic through their blades! 

Check it out on Kickstarter!

Spread the word! Wake your neighbors! 

Crepuscular #2: Triumph Over the Grave!

So, did I finally post on the blog after 10 months of absence just to plug my new Kickstarter?

Yes.

Do I feel a little guilty about that?

Also yes.

But hey kids, I have a new Kickstarter!

After putting it on the back burner for way too long in order to work on other fun projects, I am finally bringing Crepuscular #2 to the world!

CHECK IT OUT!

This time the adventure "Triumph Over the Grave" focuses on a 0-level funnel crawl. I don’t rightly know if this is the only 0-level adventure that’s set up as a hex-crawl, but they’re very rare if they are out there. Also, you start of this adventure dead! If you can crawl your way out of the afterlife, you’ll get to start your new life as a 1st level adventurer. Neat right?

I’ve also got a lot more information about the Crepuscular City of Xothma-Ghul in the book. It’s neat how that city started out as your basic Lankhmar expy and has morphed into this weird dystopian almost-cyberpunk city where I basically just slather on my snarky social satire and sneering distrust of institutions. But, y’know, it’s me, so it’s weird and kooky and fun.

Also it’s gonna be in color! How cool is that? This will be my first big project in full color (aside from the QAGS version of Leopard Women) and I’m super excited to see how it looks. Comix Wellspring prints some good looking color comics, so I’m sure it will look fab.

Anyway, give it look-see and spread the word! It’s already hit funding, but I have family dental bills to pay and need the extra dosh!

Spread the word! Wake the neighbors!

And I’ll actually post some more stuff on this here blog soon. I promise. Seriously.

Laser Ponies! 10-Days left on Kickstarter!

My friend and Leopard Women of Venus co-creator Leighton "Laser Brigade" Connor is currently kickstarting the 2nd Edition of his "RPG for Everybody" Laser Poines!

Laser Ponies was originally published in 2009 as a supplement for QAGS. This new edition still uses the QAGS mechanics, but is a complete game in one book. QAGS is a quick and simple system that should appeal to fans of Macchiato Monsters, the Black Hack and other rules-collaborative games. 

Laser Ponies was designed for younger players but is fun for gamers of all ages. The game is about friendship, teamwork, and magical ponies. But those magical ponies also get to blast monsters with lasers! Experience has shown that children love to kill monsters with lasers. 

Leighton has put his heart and soul into this game, and you should go support it RIGHT NOW!

As of this writing, the Kickstarter has 10 days left to go, and has already hit it's funding. But here's the thing. If the KS hits $1500, then I get to write an adventure for it! My Laser Ponies adventure deals with the PC ponies going up against a greedy bear who uses a magical artifact to control bees and terrorize his neighbors and hoard all the honey for himself. Don't you want to see what that's about?

The Laser Ponies Kickstarter runs until October 1. 

This guy...

Support my Friends' Zines!

QAGS is the Quick Ass Game System from Hex Games. It has been a part of several charity bundles on Drivethru, so chances are good you already own it.  QAGS was created by Steve Johnson and Leighton Connor. I bought QAGS 2^nd Edition at Origins in 2005. I was immediately taken in by three things:

1. How simple but effective the system it was. 
2. How fun it was to read. 
3. How genuinely useful its GM and player advice was.

I started writing for Hex in 2007 with The Dungeon of Moderate Annoyance for their fantasy-parody setting, Qerth. Since then I have written a whole bunch of stuff for Hex Games, including the Ennie-winning Hobomancer’s Companion. Everything I wrote for Hex was in collaboration with and/or under the editorial pen of Steve Johnson and Leighton Connor. More than anyone they’ve probably had the biggest influence on my writing style, in both subject and form. They’ve also become dear friends.

All this is to say that if you like Sanctum of the Snail or Druagr & Draculas, then you have those guys to thank. Also, you’ll probably very much enjoy the stuff they write.

Steve and Leighton both currently have Kickstarters going for Zinequest 2. I urge you to check them out.

Steve is writing Tales from the Lusty Minotaur, detailing the titular fantasy tavern, its staff, and regulars. It promises rumors, adventure hooks, and random tables. There’s also rules for “Fate’s Hand” a tarot-based card game. Tales is designed to be system-agnostic but uses QAGS where stats are needed. Steve’s bringing on several Hex Games artists for this project, including me.

  

Leighton brings us Akashic Titan. This is a supplement for DCC that revolves around the titular Akashic Titans, giant robots powered by magic who travel across the endless void. It’s dream-like and sublimely weird. Leighton’s doing all the writing and art on this one.

Give them a look, and also look at Them's Monsters why not?

Them's Monsters! now on Kickstarter

Kickstarter Link!

Q: What are those?
A: Them's Monsters!

In 2018, I put together a manga-sized zine called Them’s Monsters! that I passed out to people I met at Gencon (it’s better than a business card!). The zine was a collection of various monsters for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. I’ve never officially published Them’s Monsters!, and that original print-run of 50 was all the world has even seen of it.

But now Zinequest 2 gives me the opportunity and excuse to share Them’s Monsters! with the wider world! The Zinequest version of Them’s Monsters! includes the original 10 monsters, several new ones, as well as new and improved art.

Those Monsters...

• Carrion Knight
• Cleric Lick Monster
• Cybersnail
• Eyeless Dead
• Humababa
• Iron Medusa
• Millennium Tortoise
• Muldasynkovi
• Pumpkin Knight
• Sanity Assassin
• Sludge Dwarf
• Sludge Golem
• Terrible Infant
• Weremoose 

And Also…

• The Dungle, a new DCC class of hardy little beetle people.
• A never-before seen Moonblossom & Chance comic.

If you've enjoyed Sanctum of the Snail  or Draugr & Draculas, you're sure to enjoy this one as well. Check it out!

Last 48 Hours for "Leopard Women of Venus" Kickstarter!

Unrestrained self promotion!

As of this writing, Leopard Women of Venus of Venus has less than 48 hours left in its Kickstarter campaign. It's been a wild ride!

We've hit our first stretch goal, and we'll be able to hire Stefan Poag to do art for the book. That's super exciting!

I'm very much hoping that we'll reach the $4000 dollar mark, so we can bring my friend Anne Hunter (DIY & Dragons) onto the team. Our plan is to have her write a new supernatural patron for book--some kind of powerful super computer connected to the Caverns and the Science Robots. Anne talks at length about her ideas on her last blog post: "I Shall Destroy All Civilized Stretch Goals." A mixture of Futurama and Star Trek? Yes please!

The LWoV Kickstarter runs through November 20.
CHECK IT OUT!

Leopard Women of Venus for Troika!

The Kickstarter for Leopard Women of Venus still has 18 days to go, and we’re just $400 away from funding. If you haven’t checked LWoV out yet, click the link above and give it a look-see! I think you’ll like it.

Speaking of crazy sci-fi-fantasy settings, I’ve spoken before about how much I love Daniel Sell’s Troika. I think Leopard Woman would fit in quite well beneath the Hump-Backed Sky, executing who knows what kind of missions for the sinister Science Robots. So here they are as a Troika background.

Leopard Woman of Venus

You once were a normal citizen with a caste and a job--just a comfortable cog in a subterranean techno-socialist “utopia.” Then your masters, the Science Robots, chose you for some reason. They filled you with radioactive leopard blood and rewired your brain with pranic circuitry, making you faster, stronger, better. Now it’s your duty to defend Venus from all manner of alien evil. What threats does the city of Troika hide?

Possessions

• Comet Fire Helmet (as fusil)
• 3 Plasmic Cores
• Leopard Skin Armor (modest armor)
• Flying Saurian (Medium beast, flies)

Advanced Skills

• 3 Saurian Riding
• 3 Comet Fire Helmet Fighting
• 2 Hand-to-Hand Fighting
• 2 Propaganda
• 2 Spell: Leopard Blood

Leopard Blood (X)

The Leopard Woman channels her prana through the irradiated leopard blood coursing through her veins. She gains a bonus to her Skill on her next action equal to the number of Vitality she spent when casting the spell.

Leopard Women of Venus for DCC now on Kickstarter!

x

Leopard Women of Venus: now on Kickstarter!

If the blog has been quiet lately, it’s because we’ve been very busy down here in the Flumphwerks. And what we’ve been busy with is Leopard Women of Venus!

THE KICKSTARTER IS LIVE!

I’ve talked about Leopard Women of Venus (LWoV) before, but I’m going to go into a bit more detail here. LWoV is a psychotronic sci-fi setting based on the works of cult-favorite Golden Age cartoonist Fletcher Hanks. I’ve called Fletcher Hanks the “Ed Wood of old comics,” because his imagination outpaced his talents. His artwork is weird, often grotesque, and his stories are simple, lurid, and violent. But there’s a weird, fever-dream imagination behind them that really speaks to some core part of me and Leighton’s (my co-writer) creative muses.

Leighton Introduced me to Fletcher Hanks around 2010, when he showed me a few pages out of I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets, the first volume of Hanks’s collected works. I was intrigued, and over the next year or so we put together a setting book for QAGS called “Leopard Women of Venus” all inspired by this initial panel:

Years went by, and now Leighton and I decided to update and rewrite LWoV for Dungeon Crawl Classics. The weird pulpy insanity of Hank’s sci-fi, superhero, and adventure stories lend them selves well to the amped-to-eleven nature of DCC.

How Do You Make a Game Based on Fletcher Hanks?

That’s a good question. If you’re familiar with Hanks’s work, you know that he’s not big on world building, or character development or even plot. Most Hanks stories are only 6 to 8 pages long. A villain executes some crazy scheme, and out overly-powerful hero swoops in and brutally murders them in the name of justice. This brutal justice is often meted out in creatively disgusting fashions. In the hands of a more focused writer, the punishments would be ironic, but for Hanks they’re just weird. Occasionally there’s a small setback for the hero that he has to overcome to complete that W-shaped plot, but for the most part the stories are simple and direct.

Since there’s not a lot to base a game world on, Leighton and I used Hanks’s work as a springboard for our own imagination. We put all of Hanks’s best known characters (Stardust, Fantomah, Space Smith) as well as his most used tropes (giant insects, fear of spies, bug-eyed monsters, toxic jungles, bodily mutation or mutilation), put them in a big ol’ blender, then mooshed that psychotronic slurry into a cohesive sci-fi setting.

Fantomah and Stardust are omni-powerful, nearly godlike beings, so they work perfectly as Patrons. The jungles of Venus are ruled by giant spiders. Uncanny chemical deposits spawn strange mutations in humans, animals, and plants. Monsters crave human flesh. And the struggling human settlements must always be on the lookout for enemy agents.

On top of that we layered our own creations. The human settlements of Palna, Avrok, Otram, and the Caverns are all terrible places to live, each with cultural baggage amped up to toxic levels. The Humanoid Coalition is the one real force of good on Venus, dedicated to bringing something like balance between the human factions and getting them to work together against the apocalyptic threats to the planet.

If you’ve read anything else that I’ve written, you know what to expect from LWoV. It’s not a comedy setting, per se. But we take a ridiculous premise and deal with it straight. It’s weird, and a maybe a little disturbing in places, but not distressing. It’s quirky, and there are some jokes, but it’s not funny-ha-ha. It skews towards “gonzo” but there’s an internal logic to things (mostly).

The Team!

This is already getting too long, and I didn’t really want to turn it into a commercial. But I want to tell you about the artists and editors we have lined up. Aside from Leighton and I, we have a great group of illustrators lined up: Brad McDevitt, Juan Navarro, Evlyn Moreau, Diogo Nogueira, James V. West, Matt Kish, and the legendary Erol Otus! Additionally, we’ve got two great editors to catch all the typos and comma splices and make sure our sentences make sense: Steve “Dollar Sign” John$on and Fiona Geist.

And so…

You guys, I’m very excited about this book. We’ve added so much more to the original QAGS version while tightening up stuff that just doesn’t work any more. DCC is a great fit for LWoV, and I badly want to get it out to the world!

You can check out the free preview zine to get a taste of LWoV right HERE.

You can check out the Kickstarter right HERE.

I’m sure I’ll talk about the project more here over the next few weeks. But come back next time for more Troika stuff!

Draugr & Draculas--Now on Kickstarter!

This morning, I launched my first Kickstarter project, as part of this February's Zinequest promotion. Draugr & Draculas is a traditional one-color 5.5" x 8.5" zine for old-style roleplaying adventure games.

From the Kisckstarter page...

Dracula, king of the vampires. Vampires, the most noble of undead. For too long these classic monsters have been tweaked, bent, and reimagined to where they no longer resemble the classic bloodsuckers of old. But no more! Draugrs & Draculas brings the vampire back to its evening-wear-clad glory. Retro Draculas for retro RPGs! The kind that would make Lee and Langella proud.

Also, just for fun, we've got some undead vikings.

WHAT IS THIS?
Draugr & Draculas is a one-off zine for old-stye/OSR roleplaying adventure games. Dr&Dr focuses on vampires, undead, and spooky horror magic for use in your own fantasy RPG campaigns. The zine will be entirely written and illustrated by me, Josh Burnett. In accordance with the Zine Quest guidelines, Draugr & Draculas will be a 5.5” x 8.5” zine, staple-bound and printed in black-and-white. I estimate it should clock in at around 24-32 pages.

What's in the zine?

• Count Dracula himself, as well as his origins and current motivations
• Details on Dracula's lesser servants
• Dracula's deadly rival, Elizabeth Bathroy
• Draugr—northern undead of varying degrees of power
• The Draugr class
• Rules for magic users striking a deal with the Devil
• New magical items of perilous power
• Pagan's Well, a small dungeon full of traps and treasure
• And whatever else I can fit in this thing.

This is my first Kickstarter, so I'm playing it safe with only a few simple pledge levels and no stretch goals. I have another Kickstarter planned later in the year that will be much more ambitious (stay tuned!).

Check out Draugr & Draculas here!