FASA Games: 2017 Look Ahead!

FASA Games Look Ahead

Hello everyone! Overall, it has been a bit of a quiet year for publishing at FASA Games, but there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes! There are some exciting times ahead for 2017 with quite a few projects that are close to going out the door. Below is a summary from each of the line developers and what there is to look forward to in the coming year.

1879

The big news for 1879 is the GM’s Guide Kickstarter! See 1879 Game Master’s Guide Kickstarter for the rewards available! We’ve got the book written and laid out, and just need funds to pay the artists up front for the last of the artwork, and get the book printed. We’re offering some nice bundles, with discounts on the MSRP for the 1879 GM’s Guide, 1879 Players Guide, and 1879 GM Screen.
Once the GM’s Guide is in print, we’ve got a lot more for this product line planned!

RPG:

  • Akkadian Connection 01: Big Trouble in Little Soho, currently in layout, is the first of our Plot Point Campaign books, like an Adventure Path. The party starts out investigating a dangerous new drug circulating in London’s criminal underground, and uncovers a much larger conspiracy. Designed to take the characters from Initiate into their Novice Tier, this adventure can be followed up by the second and third books in the series, played as a standalone, or serve as the launching point for your own campaign.
  • London: The Haunted City is in second draft. Haunted by its past, and by its past inhabitants, London is home to the most advanced technology in the British Empire but still enforces laws from the time of Magna Carta. While the wealthy flit overhead in microsteam-powered airships, the poor eke out a living in squalid rookeries, or make their coin interfering with one firm at the behest of another. Adventure Hooks, locations described and ready to use in your game, and a complete scenario involving a kidnapping gone badly awry!
  • 1879 Players Companion is in first draft. Not only will we give you the Warden and Master Tiers for the Players Guide Professions, but the mechanics to build your own Professions, and a few examples, including the Engineer and the Police Officer! We’ll also introduce Variants, that allow you to customize your Profession, and show you how it’s done with the Newtonian and Promethean Variant of the Weird Scientist Profession. The Equipment chapter introduces mechanics for fully automatic weaponry and gives you the stats on a few models. The Magic section will have the rules for creating new Base Spells and new KAVs, spell stacking for multiple effects in a single KAV, and how to build Fetishes and Foci. The Secret Societies chapter has a new Order for Mages, the Theosophical Society, a new Faith, the Sufis, and a new School for Weird Scientists, the Sisterhood of the Third Unification. Plus new Devices, expansions on Social Level, and a section on Analytical Engines!
  • 1879 GM’s Companion is in first draft. The players don’t get to have all the fun. The GM gets new Secret Societies to use as background, opponents, or motivations. We’re including a massive expansion on vehicles, including the Vehicular Combat system, so you can finally have that airship battle you’ve been planning. There’s a chapter on Spirits that gives you essentially a codex of the astral entities flitting about the Empire, and a chapter on Dragons.
  • The Fort Alice Gazetteer is in first draft. This book expands massively on the Terrestrial presence in the Gruv, describing not only Fort Alice, but the Zulu ikhanda, the Maori and Indian support settlements for their regiments stationed in the Gruv, and the nearby Saurids. There’s also a Bestiary chapter, for some new creatures and plants to be encountered, and pregenerated characters for some of the more noteworthy (or notorious) inhabitants.
  • Saurids of the Gruv is in first draft. The Saurids have four cultures in the Grosvenor Peninsula. The Plains, Mountain, Forest, and Kistalmi each have very different ideas about how to live, how to govern themselves, and whether or not they want to get along with the Humans. This book will also include the Saurid Professions, with enough material to allow playing a Saurids campaign.
  • Akkadian Connection 02: Saurids on the Grosvenor Express takes the party from London, through the Rabbit Hole, to Fort Alice, investigating the connection from the first adventure to goings-on in the Gruv. This book is in revision after initial playtesting.
  • The Samsut book is in first draft. Like the Saurids book, it will detail the Samsut culture and homeland extensively. Samsut Professions will be included. The goal of this book, again like the Saurids one, is to allow playing a Samsut campaign.
  • Akkadian Connection 03 doesn’t have a final title yet. It’s still in first draft and has not yet been playtested. This adventure will pick up where the second PPC book left off, and take the players deep into the Samsut homeland.
  • Further books in the planning stages include Paris: The Fallen City, Berlin: The Electric City, and a series of standalone adventures including The Augusta Equations (chasing down Countess Lovelace’s final work) and The Freiburg Horror (can you weaponise a smell?).

Minis:

  • There’s a whole new line of sculpts on the way for the Samsut! Ral Partha Europe has been finalizing the greens and making the molds. We’ll have the tarayshlamtu (the undead controller), both in field kit and in an armored sedan chair. We’ve got Mushkenite and Amelite special forces, cavalry riding the six-legged war boar, and more!
  • The British Forcebook and Samsut Forcebook are both in final draft. We’ve added a chapter to each with an example deployed force, and another chapter with a battle campaign. Not only do you get expanded mechanics for British magic and Samsut weird science, you get stats for new models and a full playable campaign in each book.
  • Further books in various stages of progress include the Saurids Forcebook, the Prussian Forcebook, the Vehicles Sourcebook, and the Creatures Sourcebook. Each one will expand the mechanics for new model types, and include a battle campaign using the models introduced in the book.

Noble Armada

Happy New Year everyone! This is Todd, Noble Armada line developer up to bat. It’s been a good year for Noble Armada. We showed up with an early preview book at Gen Con this year and after running a ton of demos I got a lot of great feedback on the changes we had made since the previous year’s playtesting. With those notes in hand I’ve got the game finished now and just working with a couple of artists and graphics design people to get the last elements into place so we can get the book off to the printer. If you would like to get in on the PDF as it comes together with the special beta release pre-order we’ll still be running that through the first week of January! More information is available on our website at Noble Armada Pre-Order.

Once we release the Noble Armada Core Rulebook, the next books we will be starting on are the House books, with House Hawkwood and House Decados on deck first. We’ll be expanding the ship options and providing more specific customization options for each house, as well as for House commanders. We also plan on putting in some unique scenarios and battle zones as well.

Thank you all for your support and hopefully I’ll see you next year at a convention!

Demonworld

Hello from Mary and Leanne, and the rest of the Demonworld Team. 2016 was an exciting year for us. We published the Dwarven and Thain Miniature Army Books, and Around the Campfire, a collection of short stories to peak player interest in the soon to be released Role Playing Game.

Coming in 2017 we plan to release two more Army Books, the Elves and Isthak. The Elves fight to regain their homelands, and the Isthak book introduces such figures as Ice Witches and Giants. Also in the queue are the Players and Gamemaster’s Guides for the Role Playing Game. We will be teasing some of the Specialists, spells, and the more interesting inhabitants on Garen.

Further down the line for 2017, we hope to release a source book of scenarios for the Minis game, with the idea being that players can incorporate them into their table top game, or bring their table top game into the minis.

Earthdawn

This past year has seen quite a bit of set-up for Earthdawn, with the execution to come in 2017. The Gamemaster’s Guide saw print, and the next sourcebook – Travar – made its way through the editorial process. It is currently in layout proof and art acquisition, and should see print in 2017.

Next in the queue is the Earthdawn Companion, which will contain high-Circle content for players and gamemasters. We’ve started teasing the Warden and Master progressions on our website, with a new one appearing every Friday. If you’ve missed them, now is the time to get caught up, as more previews will be coming down the road next year, and we hope to have it in print in the first half of 2017.

Elven Nations follows that up. The manuscript has been handed in, and it’s going through the editorial development process. It will describe the past and present of the elven lands of Shosara and Sereatha, as well as the lost Western Kingdoms that stood in what is now the Wastes. That book should also see print in 2017.

Finally, Questors has had drafts for eleven of the twelve in-character chapters handed in, and the framework for the Questor power system has been hammered out by the development team. While there is still a lot of work left to go on that book, it is shaping up well and more information will be coming out about that as the year progresses.

Waiting in the wings to be finalized through proofing and layout is the Earthdawn Quick Start, which provides a stripped-down set of rules and pre-generated characters to introduce folks to the legendary adventure that is Earthdawn.

As far as additional material goes, we would like to publish some pre-made scenarios and adventures (this is in addition to the material put out for the Living Earthdawn). If you’ve thought about writing role-playing material, but don’t know where to begin, an adventure can be a good first step. If you have a proposal, feel free to send it along.

Along similar lines, if you have an idea for a sourcebook or other supplemental material, send a proposal for that as well. While we have three books in development that will carry us through 2017, we’re looking at what we’ll be doing after that.

Living Earthdawn

In other Earthdawn news, 2016 saw the premiere of Legends of Barsaive, a living campaign, at Gen Con. These are a series of adventures played at conventions and events where players can create characters, and play through the different chapters, advancing them as they go and affecting the overall story. The current arc focuses on Haven and involves characters in a plot that will affect the future of the frontier town on the edge of Parlainth’s ruins.

Four chapters are complete, and plans are to make them available in e-format in 2017 once they have made their way through proofing and layout. Fans will be able to take these and run them at local cons, game stores, or even for the enjoyment of their regular group. More chapters are being written, and should premiere at Gen Con in 2017.

A Few Words from Ross Babcock

Each new year is a time to see where we have been and where we are going. For a FASA Games, each year we are able to publish more books and games. 2017 will see each of our four game lines complete the release of their core rulebooks. You will be able to play table top miniatures and role play in 1879 and Demonworld, role play Earthdawn and fight your Noble Armada starship battles. With the core rules complete we can concentrate on the supplemental and source material that really help tell the stories of our games.

2017 should also see the completion of our Earthdawn Kickstarter campaign (keeping our fingers crossed). This has taken much longer than we planned. We want to do the products right and not rush them. I hope our very patient backers are happy with the results. Our 1879 Campaign will finish on January 15th. Please take a look and help spread the word. Learning our lessons from Earthdawn, the 1879 campaign is focused on a product that is already written and will be fulfilled very quickly. We plan on one or two similar new campaigns through the year.

Players still write and come up to us at conventions and say “You guys still around? I thought FASA closed.” Yes, we are still around and making great games. You have received this update because you have joined one of our kickstarter campaigns or signed up for our newsletter through our on-line store. You know we are still here. Please help us spread the word so that players will start asking “What’s new at FASA? When is your next release?” As you can see from the updates above, we have lots of new things in the works. Each year we are able to do more. Help us make 2017 a great year and set the stage for what is to come.

Thank you and Happy New Year!