In this book you will find fully Labyrinth Lord-compatible information on eight new paths of sorcery, six with their own specialist magic-user classes and over a hundred new spells. Use them as-is for your campaign, or slap on a new coat of paint to make them your own! Behold the secrets of…

• The High Path, the versatile and potent art favored by most magic-users within the Sunset Isles.
• The Stitched Path, a heterodox art of blood and soul-sacrifice to accomplish by theft what talent cannot give.
• The Kuan Amelatu, elven necrolators devout in their shepherding of the blameless dead and their guardians against the living.
• The Astromancers of the Gadaal, peerless diviners and fateweavers who wield luck and foresight as weapons against their foes.
• The Makerite Theurges, seekers of the holy sorcery of their stern god, speakers of the words by which creation was made.
• The Nine Immortal Art, the ancient Imperial magics that make a sorcerer into a living vessel of transcendence.
• The Mountain Way, a path of elemental force and natural power that strikes down its foes with flame and storm.
• Shakunasar, the forbidden sorcery of the Shou and its unnatural command of the flesh and minds of lesser beings.

Aside from these glimpses into the grim sorcery of the Isles, the Crimson Pandect also includes…

• A new system for acquiring new spells, creating magic items, and constructing magical servitors- a system based on the accumulation of eldritch tomes and experimental lore. Finally, your wizards actually have a reason to hunt down those books of forgotten wisdom and spend their hard-won coin on experiments and strange artifices. Includes extensive helps for the Labyrinth Lord in creating arcane treasures for inquisitive sorcerers to seek.
• Guidelines for designing and building your wizard’s sanctum, including prices for laboratories, scriptoria, arcane distilleries, and other vital necessities for a wizard’s researches. The guidelines are integrated with the research system to reward those wizards who devote their precious gold to the facilities and resources they need for future greatness.
• Guides for the Labyrinth Lord who needs a wizard cabal in a hurry, either as patrons, teachers, or enemies of the PCs. Based on an elaboration of the Court Site system in the Red Tide campaign guidebook, use this to generate a fast wizard’s tower, arcane academy, or nefarious witch-cult.
• Resource tables for easy generation of arcane artifacts and eldritch tomes for your campaign’s wizards to find!

Look for the Crimson Pandect to make its appearance in early May, as it’s currently in layout. And for those eager enthusiasts of apocalypse, do not fear- Other Dust is still on schedule for release early this summer. The Crimson Pandect has been under work for some time now, and I’ve decided that May is a good time to slot its release. Why? Because I scorn sleep as a sign of moral weakness, and never shall such turpitude stain the scarlet mysteries to be revealed herein!

First off, let me say that new-school gaming is something beautiful. I’ve played and DM’d 4e and had a great time. I haven’t had a chance to do much indie storygaming, but a lot of the stuff they’re doing over there looks fascinating. I’m a CO in the edition wars, and I do not want anyone to imagine that my allegiance to the old school is some kind of commentary on absolute gaming values. So those people who don’t go in for Stars Without Number‘s old-school mechanics, they’re saying something I can appreciate and understand. But for what Sine Nomine does, old-school is the best choice, and here’s why:

First, almost everyone understands how to play. You may not even like its ancestral games, but odds are that you know exactly what hit points are, know how to roll your attributes on 3d6, and are completely comfortable with rolling 1d20 to hit. You are not confused by the concept of levels and the idea of armor class. You know this stuff and it takes you only minutes to process differences or tweaks to the rules. Sure, not everybody started out playing this way, but enough of these ideas have percolated through our hobby that it’s a rare gamer who has to stretch to understand Stars Without Number‘s rules. Innovation is great, but not a lot of us are teenagers any more and every hour spent mastering a new set of rules is an hour less for us to be playing with our friends.

Second, Sine Nomine’s games are about a playstyle, not a mechanic. The games I make are about supporting a particular playstyle- sandbox gaming. The entire idea is to help the GM support and sustain a long-running sandbox campaign in a way that’s both fun for the GM and exciting for the players. The goal is to accomplish that in the least stressful way possible, while helping the GM have fun with their own creativity and inventiveness. This means that the core system needs to be so intuitive, so familiar to the GM that all their mental focus and energy can be put toward the game and not toward wrestling with the mechanics. Familiarity is vital to that. The GM needs to be confident that he can just whip up an enemy or set up a challenge without worrying over whether or not he’s “doing it right”. Old-school mechanics have that kind of familiarity for him. Sadly, I lack the necessary genius to develop a new mechanic that’s so powerful, so perfect for sandboxing that its value outweighs that of plain, time-worn familiarity.

Third, old-school mechanics work. They have their pitfalls and edge cases, but everyone’s used them so long and hammered on them so hard that all the real problems are clearly marked. As a designer, I don’t need to lie awake wondering if my combat system is going to collapse at the first clever shove from the forums. I don’t need to wonder if hit points will prove unworkable over long-term play, or if levels and experience points are going to break after the first eight sessions of a campaign. I can afford to focus my testing and my attention on the new elements I’m adding, making for a better, more tightly-tested design overall.

Fourth, I like it this way. And given that there are many, many parts of producing and publishing RPG books that have nothing to do with fun, I prefer to maximize the entertaining parts of this business. When I’m sitting down and writing 1,400 clever tag elements for the upcoming Other Dust, I don’t want to add any more aggravation to the job than already exists. Old-school mechanics are just easy, simple, and robust. I can have fun with them, because I know what they can do and I can foresee the effects of changes I make.

I don’t know that I’ll be sticking with old-school mechanics forever. I might take it into my head to try something different, if I find a mechanic that’s worth the sacrifice of familiarity. One of the nice things about being an indie RPG producer is that the money involved is so small that there’s no overwhelming pressure to stick with a particular line. But for now, for my current products and for upcoming items like Other Dust, the old school is exactly where I want to be.

Let Them Know Your Fame In Hell.

In An Echo, Resounding, a Labyrinth Lord-compatible guidebook, you’ll learn the arts of war and kingly rule in the untamed borderlands. Referees will find all the tools they need to build a savage land of adventure and bloody struggle, carving the foundations of empire into the very bones of their campaign. Players will find new talents as Champions of their lands, fighting for a noble cause or struggling to establish a beacon of light in the wilderness. And together, both will find new tools for domain management to bring the red-edged games of kings and princes within the grasp of fiercer souls!

Within this book, you’ll find that same dedication to practical play tools and detailed table helps that you’ll find in all Sine Nomine products. In particular, you’ll find….

• Complete rules for domain founding, management, and conflict.
• Quick and easy rules for mass combat with both military units and heroic individuals.
• New Champion abilities to give expert adventurers even more value to the lords who win their capricious aid.
• Extensive GM support for building campaign regions of cities, towns, ruins, lairs and precious resources. Don’t waste your creation effort- learn how to support your endgame from the first campaign session!
• The Westmark, a fully-worked example region from Sine Nomine’s Red Tide Campaign Sourcebook and Sandbox Toolkit. Hit the ground running with zero prep or strip it for parts for your own campaign!

Grab it now and forge yourself a land worth conquering!

• Bannerjee Construction Solutions- Frontier space stations for those worlds with nothing but gumption, resolve, and a cheerful carelessness with human life!
• The Bruxelles-class Battlecruiser- Stats and plot seeds for these ancient emissaries of the Terran Mandate’s will. Will you find one before your world’s enemies do?
• The Cabals of Hydra Sector- A list of sinister conspiracies and dark cabals in Hydra Sector, along with detailed writeups of two organizations compatible with Darkness Visible!
• The Dust- Nanite clouds from the Mandate’s latter days lie in wait in long-lost installations, along with details for randomly-generated pretech super-science!
• Martial Arts- Want a campaign where lighting-handed unarmed warriors are a match for gunslinging space marines? Try out these ten martial arts styles and tips for creating your own!
• The Qotah- For six centuries, these avian aliens have kept an honor-bound peace with humanity. Learn about their warlike culture and brooding integrity; is their word strong enough to bind the tempests of war?
• The Red Sangha Mercenary Corps- Cursed from birth with bloodless calm, these Buddhist warrior-monks sell their implacable courage to support their world. What ends can drive an army without passions?

As a special bonus for those patient souls who have awaited a print format, this book also includes details on The Judicators- heirs to the ancient Bureau of Rectification and its ruthless policing of Mandate officaldom, these psychics wield a unique and subtle psionic discipline. Their arts allow them to use a victim’s own sense of guilt and duty to mold their choices, goading them on with the fires of their own burning shames.

You never know when the blind exertions of cosmic law might annihilate all traces of our advanced technology, so buy now and mock uncaring destiny with your foresight!

In Your Place        Level 1

The judicator has an instinctive awareness of the expectations of others around him. In ordinary social situations and when exchanging common courtesies, the judicator always knows precisely what social behavior is expected of him by his interlocutor, whether in action, appearance, or speech. He can even speak formulaic courtesies and make flawless small talk in languages he does not actually understand, instinctively making the sounds expected of him.

The judicator fails Culture checks related to common etiquette and ordinary behavior only on a natural 2 on the skil check, and can masquerade as a native member of any culture or social group, assuming his appearance makes it plausible. Activation of this power lasts for one conversation or social situation. If mastered, this power is permanently active.

 
Despite this brief detour to accommodate the format preferences of loyal readers, work on An Echo, Resounding continues apace. This guidebook contains great heaping piles of help for a Labyrinth Lord keen on adding domain management and mass combat rules to their campaign in the customary Sine Nomine style. The guide focuses on building domains into your campaign as a natural, organic part of the setting rather than a phenomenon that simply pops up at 9th level with a sheaf of fresh paperwork. These tools help you build city-states, princedoms, border baronies, and stubbornly independent allods into your campaign from the very start, using them throughout the game’s life to fuel new conflicts, new adventures, and new opportunities for your players to engage with your creations. Even those Labyrinth Lords with existing campaign worlds are shown how to retrofit the mechanics into their games, adding fresh life and activity into old favorites.

But the contents aren’t just for Labyrinth Lords. Players are introduced to Leadership abilities, special powers and knacks related to running a domain or fighting a pitched battle. Accomplished rulers start to acquire Leader levels after they reach a certain point in their heroic progression, their earned XP now raising their level in this parallel class.  As they grow in the arts of rulership, they acquire new abilities to aid their hard-pressed dominion or become more fearsome in the roil of a bloody battlefield. Behold a mighty fighter carve a red path through enemy legions, a master thief cut a general’s throat in the midst of his personal guard, or a dwarven clanmaster marshal his people to fashion wealth beyond the dreaming of less artful breeds. These levels can also be used to reflect the talents of less heroic rulers who yet retain a genius for battlefield command or the ordering of a state; the elderly general may have long since retired to his country estates and be hard-pressed to defend himself against a younger warrior, but put him in command of an army and may the gods have mercy on any foe that dares defy him.

Much of An Echo Resounding is finished, but the mechanical systems yet require the good sharp shaking that comes of careful playtesting. With luck, you’ll hear its onrushing hooves by the end of January.

Theories are beautiful things. I’ve got lots of them about game design and building optimal sandboxes, and in many ways Sine Nomine itself is just a convenient rubric for me to use in expressing these theories. I think sandbox gaming provides a remarkable set of possibilities to a GM and players, and I think the design space hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves over the past ten or twenty years. Given the opportunity, I’d talk your ear off about all the things that sandboxes can give to a group that other gaming styles can’t provide so easily. Those other styles each have their own strong points and advantages, certainly, but the special virtues of a sandbox are experienced all too rarely these days. I have my theories about why that’s the case.

But GMs and players don’t need theories in a published product. They need tools. One of my pet peeves about a lot of RPG books aimed at GMs and worldbuilders is the studied vagueness of the contents, the preference for giving sweeping advice and broad generalities over specific guidelines. The author will explain why a particular technique or goal is a good one and leave it to the reader to actually implement the directive. I’m not sure whether the authors honestly believe this is the best way to go about things or whether they’re perhaps paralyzed by the sheer scope of material they’re dealing with. Perhaps they fear to put down anything specific because they can easily imagine a case where any particular offering would be wrong or useless. I don’t think they’re doing their readers any favors this way. Why? Well, here’s a theory:

It’s easier to take a working process and generalize it than it is to focus a theory into a working process. Take an early D&D combat system, for example, and the concept of hit points. You have a system that allows multiple actors to conduct physical conflict that eventually reduces one side to death or incapacity. But what if a character gets hit with live steam from an underground mudpot? You generalize the combat system and say that it hurts him just as if he’d been hit by an enemy- you subtract hit points. The same with hostile sorcery, corrosive toxins, falls, or even heat exhaustion- you just tick it off the hit point tally, because the system already works to describe a character’s progress from “fit and hale” to “dead”.

On the other hand, what if you started from a theory about how combat should work? The designer might advise that combat should be resolved fairly quickly, that it shouldn’t involve a death spiral of gradual incapacitation, that an entity should go pretty much from “fighting at full strength” to “pushing up daisies” when that phase transition happens, and in all other ways plot out for the reader a theoretical plan for how combat should function in a game. Maybe the reader can come up with a system easily enough, but do they know that system works? Do they have the time to playtest it and run its numbers to make entirely certain that the results are in line with the theory? Maybe they do, but it would’ve been a great deal kinder for the designer to have handed them a working system in the first place and leave it for them to tweak and warp as they required.

For An Echo, Resounding, the point is not simply to tell you all my wonderful theories for region creation and domain management. It might be necessary to give a few pages to those ideas simply to put the following systems in context, but the actual value of nebulous guidelines is minimal. What such a book needs to offer is something specific, some precise set of steps that a GM can follow that will produce an adventure-laden region embedded with the local power sources and details necessary to seamlessly transition to domain-level concerns and politicking when the players decide to do so. For region creation, I tell you to take this many Cities and this many Towns and this many Lairs, and where to put each, and how to establish the interesting traits of all of them. I give you a list of obstacles to thwart rulers and tallies of valuable resources and traits to make a place worth conquering. I give you specific details on how to relate that work to later domain-level adventures, so that when the PCs heroically rescue the town of Yellow Toad Well and receive the grateful allegiance of the town elders, you know exactly what that means in terms of military, economic, and social power and don’t need to scramble for a plausible result.

Will these guidelines fit every world? No, they won’t. They’re written for the Red Tide campaign setting, though they’re easily generalized to most any fantasy world. But in each case, turning the Tide Cults into diabolical worshipers appropriate to your own world or tweaking the Eirengarder pikemen into some doughty spearmen that fit your creation is infinitely easier than taking fine theories of how religious groups or pike blocks should work and translating them into specific game terms. Ultimately, I try to make books that are usable immediately- books that require only an hour of time and fistful of dice to produce a result you can use at your gaming table that same day. I’m confident that anyone with the creative chops to enjoy being a GM has all the talent required to adjust and shim in parts suitable for their own creations. As the month and the playtesting progresses, I’ll be showing more details of how An Echo, Resounding handles some of these issues, and how I try to provide practical specifics to go with the pleasures of easy theory.

Discover Sights of Woe

With this book, GMs and players are equipped with everything they need to run campaigns of interstellar intrigue and covert action. New backgrounds, training packages and equipment options will kit out your starfaring spies, and the history and context of interstellar espionage will help you plan your adventures in a cosmos in dire need.

GMs are given special help in assembling an espionage campaign, with tools for the cooperative creation of enigmatic intelligence agencies and long-hidden Perimeter outposts. You’ll also find concrete, step-by-step techniques for building complex spy adventures and sinister plots, complete with detailed support material to keep your focus on the fun.

Look inside to find…

• The history of interstellar spying in the Stars Without Number universe.
• Details of the hideous maltech cults that threaten the very future of humanity.
• A system for cooperatively creating intelligence agencies for your campaign and handling exploits against their nefarious rivals.
• 36 new tags for flavoring your cults, all of which can be used as world tags as well.
• Over 200 new adventure seeds, each one keyed to a different aspect of an espionage agency.
• NPC, scheme, and method tables for fleshing out conspiracies and dark plots.

Get it now at DriveThruRPG!

An Echo, Resounding will provide the tools and resources to help a GM run princely domains and sweeping mass combats under Labyrinth Lord rules. While specifically set in the devil-haunted world of the Red Tide, the tools in this book are applicable to almost any old-school game or retroclone. An initial chapter helps the GM build a sandbox region that both provides immediate outlets for adventure and embeds the necessary framework for future political machinations. Rather than having to suddenly retrofit everything in as soon as the PCs start to show an interest in influencing the local powers, these tools let the GM build those elements right into the sandbox. PCs that want to lead a village to victory over its oppressors or who are suddenly placed at the head of a city-state’s ragged militia can now effortlessly step into place without forcing a sudden rush of ad-hoc judgment calls and improvisations by the GM.

Many old-school domain management systems focus on simulating the strict details of a fantasy fief- gold income, population, peasant morale, food supplies, and other specifics. While this is a perfectly natural approach, An Echo, Resounding instead abstracts the fundamental elements of a domain into Military, Wealth, and Social values. These totals rise and fall depending on the types of locations held by the domain and the sort of special resources or advantages the PCs can bring to their homes. These totals are then used to support Assets, which reflect the military units, unique traditions, temples, schools, and other specific resources the domain has at its disposal. Outside threats and conflicts between domains then become focused on these Assets and the locations that support them. Struggles become specific, and every clash or sudden peril from the wilderness becomes a ready-made adventure hook for the redoubtable rulers. In addition to these domain rules, a mass combat system is provided that can flex to accommodate heroic PCs, massed troops, and special monstrous foes all on the same battlefield.

An Echo, Resounding is going to require extensive playtesting on the appropriate balance of location values and asset costs, so keep an eye on this space for playtest invitations over the course of the next month. And fear not, Stars Without Number fans; the lessons and playtesting data drawn from An Echo, Resounding are going to be directly useful for the project to follow; Other Dust, the standalone SWN-compatible game covering the post-apocalyptic savagery of Terra in the wake of Scream’s horrific devastation.