We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror – out this weekend

So I finally managed to get the digital files for We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror to the Kickstarter backers, which is only the first stage of fulfilment, because there's the print files to sort out, and the sequel books, On a Thousand Walls and Cult Cinema, in both digital and print, so this is only stage one of six. But it means that We Don't Go Back will go to Amazon Kindle this weekend. But for the time being, here are some pages from this 440 page, 150,000 word, inch thick monster to whet your appetite. Click to zoom in.

Edit: it's live. Buy it here. 

Chariot II

So, once the book versions of We Don't Go Back, On a Thousand Walls and Cult Cinema are finished, I'm going to do a second edition of Chariot.

Funny thing about Chariot. I wrote it nearly three years ago now, I crowdfunded it, I laid it out, and I played it with my friends for a while, and then I put it away and did some other stuff. And you do, that's what you do, isn't it? You put it to one side.

And about eighteen months after I last looked at it, I looked at it again. And it's full of typos, which it would be, because no matter how good you are at proofreading, you don't proofread your own work; and some of the art I'm still happy with, in an outsider art sort of way, and some of it I'm less happy with; and some of the rules need to be explained more clearly and given better examples. I came up with a better way to do the card mechanics.

But for all that, I read this, and I thought, by God, this is good.

Secret Powers, Going Back

I've had quite a week. And I have some news.

Room 207 Press Weekend Flash Sale

Just until Monday, all of the digital books I have listed at the Room 207 Press store at DriveThruRPG and DriveThruFiction are at a 60% discount.

Which include: 

Chariot and its supplement Cosmic Memory, still the best RPG I have ever written;

MSG™, the game of corporate irresponsibility that io9 described as "Stuffed to the gills with black, black humour".

Inner Worlds, my monograph on relationships in gaming;

and this is not a picture, a ghost story collection.

Find them at my storefront here.

We Don't Go Back: the Kickstarter, funding now

My Kickstarter for the book form of We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror is now live. I'm aiming to raise £1200 in 28 days, and as is the custom, I have amusingly named rewards and inspiring stretch goals. Help me print my words about film on sustainable trees (it's from the forest, see).

Support me here.

We Don't Go Back: the Book

Alternative Titles For This Blog #207

So ever since I got past the original dozen or so posts I planned, I thought that there might be mileage in compiling and re-editing We Don't Go Back into book form.

Inner Worlds: Love, Politics and Role-Playing Games

I've now published Inner Worlds: Love, Politics and Role-Playing Games, a short monograph compiling the essays I published last autumn on the imaginative spaces of role-playing games, in which I wax lyrical on politics, social mechanics, sex, magic and imagination, and ask the question: "is it really OK?"

(Spoilers: yes.)

It's not yet available in print form (and while somehow I can't imagine there being much call for the print version I'm going to have a bundle of printed copies at May's Swansea Comics and Games Convention). You can buy Inner Worlds here.

To crowdfund or not to crowdfund

So I decided to just go ahead and release this is not a picture. You can buy it here.

This is, if you've missed it, a collection of short supernatural fiction, and I didn't Kickstarter it this time. Why was that?

Reintroducing Room 207 Press

So the title of this blog has changed.

News from Somewhere, News from Nowhere

(Before I go any further, did you see Dymphna's post yesterday about women in historical RPGs? It's going modestly viral, and it deserves to. It's a good post.)

The first thing is that The Age of Miracles is still funding. It has ten days to go and is £361 short of its goal. This is not an insurmountable barrier. Please, if you read my blog, pass that on.

If you've read my writing here and elsewhere, you'll know that I am really interested in how our personal experience and the stories that we tell ourselves shape the world. Indulge me. Let me talk a little about that.

The Age of Miracles: Funding Now!

The Kickstarter for The Age of Miracles was launched this evening. It's a collection of the essays from this blog, originally part of the In Search of the Miraculous and Written in Water series, all edited, footnoted and polished into a book form. Reward tiers include cheap bundles of Chariot and MSG™ if you put in enough.

Support me here.

Errata: Alternative Boons for the Lover

I should first offer an apology for not having posted for a couple of days. Life got in the way, mainly and while I knew the pace of the blog wasn't going to be one I could keep up forever, I still hope to post if not daily, at least five times a week. I still have several essays about pop Atlantises and fractured histories to write, and a bunch of game stuff.

But today, I want to fix something in Chariot. 

Reviewed!

A big thanks to John Arcadian and co at the Gnome Stew gaming blog for a really positive but by no means uncritical review of Chariot. Check it out, and stay for the Gnome Stew podcast, which has much of interest for your tabletop roleplay fans.

Signal Boost

It being Saturday, this is just a short call out for a bit of publicity. Chariot is available for sale on DriveThruRPG, Amazon, Kindle and CreateSpace, all of which options have different advantages.

DriveThruRPG:
Has a glossy cover;
Allows for PDF version only, and colour + PDF and BW +PDF.

Amazon/CreateSpace:
Has a matte cover;
Is colour only.

Kindle:
No pictures!

With the DriveThru edition you get the PDF too and you can buy a cheaper black and white edition, while you qualify for free postage if you buy the colour version through Amazon; I make about the same amount from either although I can access funds more easily from DTRPG.

I need reviews and talk. 
If you have a blog or website and you review games, please get in touch with me and I can sort you out with review copies. Please spread the word on social media too. I'm on Facebook at ChariotRoleplay and on Twitter as @HowtheWoodMoves.

Transparency Time

Show your workings.

When you do a project like this that's crowdfunded, it makes you publicly accountable. A few weeks ago I'd said that I was going to give a cost breakdown. Exactly where the money has gone and is going. And now I know, I can share that.

Chariot's Future

The varicoloured thief of shining things.

So now that I'm in the process of fulfilling backer copies of Chariot, the question of what comes next springs to mind.

(Un)Conventional

So tomorrow – that's May 28th – I'll be at the Swansea Comics and Games Convention, manning a table with copies of MSGtm, ashcan copies of Chariot, and copies of the martial arts fantasy game Honour, which I was kindly sent from Hong Kong by a lovely bloke called Dom Parry, a fellow member of the IGDN, for the selling. All of these things will be on sale at a cut price.

At 12.30 I'll also be a panel of one with a talk entitled "Dice Problems: Politics in Role-playing Games." It's not, regardless of what you might think, about ethics in game journalism.

You'll also, by the way, want to stick around for my friend Drift in his guise as donotrunwithpixels, maker of the angriest music ever made using old Game Boys.

Chariot is now available at Createspace

The proof copy of the Createspace version of Chariot (which will transition to Amazon in the next couple weeks) arrived today, and it's fine, so I activated it, which means you can buy the colour/matte cover version here. The gloss cover and black and white versions will be available from DriveThruRPG presently.

I have a shop page for my wares, by the way, meaning you can find the various formats and outlets for Chariot and MSG™ with ease.

And buy them, so I can start eating again. 

Buy Chariot

Chariot is now available to buy in PDF format. Print formats – colour and black and white – are coming soon, as is a Kindle version.

Edit: here's the Kindle version.

(Note that because there's male and female nudity in the art and it's really not for kids, you have to be logged in to DTRPG to be able to see the description. Can't help that.)

This is what the cover looks like

That is literally it: this is what Chariot's cover looks like (and thanks to Winter-Hébert Design for making it so very, very beautiful).

Which is notice that Chariot is heading off to be approved by Amazon Createspace and DrivethruRPG.com today; while I won't quite have print copies ready for the Swansea Comics and Games Convention there will be ashcan editions which will include vouchers for the final version, and which will be collector's items in their own right.