Underground Update!

It's been too long since our last update! I've been super busy with a variety of things, but here's a quick update to keep you in the loop:

Friday nights at Game Cafe
I've been running games of Unity Underground at our friendly local game store since the beginning of April. At first we had trouble finding players. In fact, I was just getting ready to shelf the idea when our word-of-mouth campaign finally paid off and we got a sudden influx of interest. We've now built a group of 6-10 regular players. The games have been an entertaining blur of gunfights, genetic research facilities, giant robots, high speed helicopter chases, big explosions, and plenty of wacky hijinks.

Here are some shots of the action:

The calm before the storm . . .


Some of our early adopters.

The story behind this is hilarious. Let's just say it led to a rules change.

Me, GMing with hawk-like focus.

Running these games has been a great test of the system and a great number of ideas and improvements have been incorporated as a result. I'm really happy with how the game is evolving, and I'm still having a blast running it.

The Unity Underground BETA MANUSCRIPT!

I'm almost done write the beta draft of the game. In fact, I've been "almost done" for several weeks now. I haven't done a lot of writing in the past few weeks for a variety of reasons. Part of it, I think, is a subconscious terror about releasing my baby into the clutches of others for painful but invaluable feedback and criticism. No worries. I'll get over it.

Oh! Speaking of which. We are planning to release the beta version of the game in PDF format to interested parties. We're going to be looking for people who're interested in playtesting and/or just giving us feedback on the manuscript. I'll post more information about how you can get involved as soon as I finish.

That about covers it for now. More soon!

Gen Con 2010

We'll be at Gen Con 2010 in full force. Here's a rundown of our activities:

Unity Underground Demos
I'm running 4 Unity Underground games over the course of the weekend:

• RPG1010464 Unity Underground 08/05/2010 09:00:00 AM
  
• RPG1010465 Unity Underground 08/06/2010 09:00:00 AM
  
• RPG1010466 Unity Underground 08/07/2010 09:00:00 AM
  
• RPG1010467 Unity Underground 08/08/2010 09:00:00 AM

Design Matters
We're sharing booth 2100 with a cadre of amazing independent publishers. This year's line up includes:

• Nathan D. Paoletta (Carry, Annalise)
• Kevin Allen Jr. (Sweet Agatha)
• Gregor Hutton (Best Friends, 3:16)
• Epidiah Ravachol (Dread, Time and Temp)
• Elizabeth Shoemaker & Shreyas Sampat (Blowback, Mist Robed Gate)
• Tim Koppang (Hero's Banner)
• Daniel Solis (Do, Happy Birthday, Robot!)

We're incredibly lucky to be involved with such a crazy awesome group. I'm not yet sure if we'll be selling anything ourselves this year, but there are a couple of products we might have.

After Hours
If anybody out there would like to meet up for some after hours gaming, drop us a line! We're also discussing meet ups over on our Google Group.

That's it, I think. Hope to see you there!

Femme Gamer

I was recently asked to start writing for the blog: Femme Gamer. Here's what it's about (as taken from the "about" page):

We are females.
We are gamers.
We are writing about gaming.
This site will always tell the truth and never pull any punches.
Where the big sites must please the PR people, we will always tell you what’s really on our minds.

Head on over there to check out all the introductory posts and see what is really going on inside the minds of female gamers!

Friday Night Roleplay @ Game Cafe

Hey guys,

Starting this week we're going to be running games (including Red Moon's games-in-development) every Friday night at Game Cafe in Independence, Missouri.

This week's game is Unity Underground.
Our plan is to start out with low commitment one-shot games and eventually build groups for more extended regular campaigns.

If you're in the area make sure to stop in for a game. Anyone is welcome, whether you're a gaming veteran or just getting started.

We're also looking for GMs who'd be interested in running games each week. Hopefully, we can grow this into a bigger community, introduce people to new games, and have a good time while we're at it.

MECHA is Migrating!

Hey guys,

I've got an important announcement regarding the future of MECHA.

Over the last year or so of my work on MECHA (as the editor/graphic designer/publisher/promoter), I've learned that I simply don't have the time and energy to juggle multiple publishing projects at once (like I did before Cassie and I had our son, Dade). After some introspection, I decided to talk to Chris (the creator of the game) about the possibility of transferring the publication of MECHA to our friends over at Heroic Journey Publishing. Chris was open to the idea, and we were able to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement. Therefore, from this point forward, Heroic Journey Publishing is now going to be taking over the publication of MECHA.

This arrangement allows me to go back to working exclusively on my own games and officially marks the end of my experiment with publishing other people's stuff. (Turns out, my own stuff keeps me busy enough.) Right now, I'm directing all my creative energy toward Unity Underground, which will now be Red Moon's flagship release.

I've very thankful that Mark, Chris, and everyone else at Heroic Journey have been able to give MECHA a home, and I'm excited to see what they will do with the game.

You can see the super-formal version of this announcement, as well as future updates about the release of MECHA at Heroic Journey's website.

After Action Report: RagnaroKon

Cassie and I attended RagnaroKon over the weekend. It was a first-year con, but pretty well attended and very well organized. We were signed up to run two sessions of Unity Underground, neither of which got off the ground. We did, however, manage to do some good networking that may lead to some cool opportunities in the future.

A sad, lonely, unloved Unity Underground demo.

While our lack of demo attendance was disappointing, Cassie and I had the whole day to ourselves (Dade, our 2-year-old son, was with his grandparents). We had a great time trolling around downtown Columbia and hanging around the convention. We learned how to play Dominion (which was awesome) and sat down for a one-on-one mini-playtest of Delvers Fantasy Roleplay, which is a D&D clone that I've been messing around with that uses the same mechanics as Unity Underground.

Cassie played a human fighter named "Esme" who was on a quest to retrieve her magical sword from a mad gnomish wizard and his legion of "robo-gnomes."

It. Was. Awesome.

It was a classic, high-fantasy comedy of errors centered around poor Esme who ventured into the wizard's dungeon time after time, only to be repeatedly knocked unconscious, stripped of all her metallic belongings, and put back into the bushes by the robo-gnomes (as if she were yesterday's garbage). The wizard would then replace the robo-gnomes she'd killed with new ones made from the equipment she'd lost.

How many times have the robo-gnomes rolled you for loot?

The mechanics worked so well for this little pick up game that, of course, I'm now going to have to produce my obligatory D&D rip-off sometime after I finish Unity Underground.

The lair of Wizard Warzer and his dreaded robo-gnomes.

Anyway, we had a great time despite our demos not going off and we'll definitely be going back to RagnaroKon next year. Maybe Esme will finally defeat the robo-gnomes and reclaim her magic sword... but I doubt it ;)

We'll see about that, missy . . .

RagnaroKon

Hey guys,

Cassie and I will be at RagnaroKon on Saturday (March 6th) running two sessions of Unity Underground. I'm excited because we just got a bunch of awesome new miniatures to use in our demo games.

Anyway, our first session runs from 10am-2pm. Session two is 6pm-10pm.

Hope to see you there!