Observations of the Fox

This morning I uploaded parts 2 and 3 for the Modular Dungeons project. And I've just added a bundle that allows people to purchase the first three parts at a reduced cost. That bundle can be found here. A few people have already started purchasing the products in this new range, so that's always good. I need to scan in a few more elements that I've drawn, and then I'll be able to start creating a few more of these. I'll be happy when there's 10 of these packs.

OneBookShelf has a function where a product can be sent to a group of reviewers. The idea is that this will get at least one of them to read through the product and provide a bit of feedback, because good reviews are one of the strongest promotional tools available to a new product. When I released the Dispatch Guide for The Law a fortnight ago, I sent comp copies to their reviewer's circle, and figured I'd send a copy of the core rules for The Law along with it... after all, a GMs handbook makes more sense when the rules it refers to are also present. I indicated at the time that I'd provide feedback on this feature... I can't remember if I made that indication here on the blog, or in one of the game design Facebook groups I'm a part of. Either way, a fortnight has passed, I've sold half a dozen copies of the Dispatch Guide , and a few more copies of The Law . I haven't had a single review from the reviewer's circle.

It's been a bad run over the last couple of weeks. I finished my university studies over a month ago. I've been trying to get accredited as a teacher since the beginning of the year, and by this stage the process should have been completed. I know there are jobs in the fields where I'm qualified to teach, but I can't get through the bureaucracy to get to those jobs. Chasing this down has drained my bank accounts dry, with costs for car registration, power bills and phone bills coming in on top of that.  I tried to do a bit more study while waiting for accreditation from the relevant government departments, but I can't even do that, because the up front fee for study at the local college (while cut back due to being a registered carer) was still too much... ...so I've fallen back on doing what I love to do, what I find to be a fun diversion when the real world just starts getting me down, and what tends to make me a bit of extra money on the side. I...

It's one thing to say stuff needs to be changed... it's another to actually step up and offer assistance in that change. I'm not in the US, so I can't go to protests or anything like that, but as a white guy who wants to see some positive change in the world for all people, I feel that it is right to help out when and where I can. So, I've donated a couple of products to Steve Trustrum's " Reuniting Families Charity Bundle "... currently sitting at over $600 worth of products, for $29.99 There's some good stuff in the bundle, and it's for a good cause, so go and check it out.

This coming weekend, I've put a couple of discounts on some Vulpinoid Studios products over on RPGNow/DrivethruRPG. It's a part of the "Irregular Birthday Sale", where some years I remember to discount stuff, and some years I'm too busy and forget about it. It's also partly a response to Free RPG Day being held on the weekend of my birthday. The first product being discounted this year is The Law, which will have it's PDF reduced to a dollar.  Here's the link.  (It will only be active on the weekend of June 16th-17th, 2018) The second product to be reduced will be the Ghost City Raiders Starter Bundle. This pack of PDFs contains the core rules, ten character types and ten scenarios, with a total individual sale value of $22, it normally sells for $10, but for the weekend will also be marked down to a single dollar. Here's the Ghost City Raiders link. (It will also only be active over this coming weekend) In previous years when I've p...

I've been so busy focusing on why people haven't been noticing or buying my games, that I hadn't noticed one of my little games actually reaching a sales threshold. Tooth and Claw has gained "Copper" best seller status on DrivethruRPG. I hadn't noticed this because I usually look at my products through the RPGNow shopfront rather than the DrivethruRPG shopfront. It takes 50 paid sales on a single shopfront to gain one of these little badges, and I've got a few other products slowly crawling their way towards a similar status... quite a few of my games have sold 60 or more copies, but those sales are scattered between the various shopfronts of the OneBookShelf network, so no others have the mark yet... despite their regular turnover trickle of sales. Then there are the free-release and pay-what-you-want products, which have hundreds if not thousands of downloads, but only a tiny percentage of paid sales. Still, it's nice to see a slow but stea...

Go there... get it now. Here's the link.

Why write my own, when this post by Dan Maruschak already says almost everything I would want to say on the topic? Why get frustrated that my work generally doesn't get out there, when a number of people have commented that their own work wouldn't have gotten out there if it weren't for face-to-face networking at conventions in North America or the UK? Or just lucky breaks? For the last 10 years, I've been involved in several initiatives to get Australian game designers recognised. In most cases, one or two designers have been raised above the rabble, while everyone else either continues to struggle along in obscurity, or has their profile marginally lifted. In the past six years, I've been studying and my game design has been a backburner project. I'm not actively getting my stuff out there, instead I'm just refining what I do, and getting the rest of my life on track. Most of my stuff can be found on RPGNow/DrivethruRPG , print stuff on Lulu , ...

For those who are interested in the progress of the next book to be released for The Law, here's a sneak preview of the current status. Here's the first few pages... It probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense without a copy of The Law, so here's a link to that.

Between assignments and other work, I've been putting together the complete card set for NOIR. Hopefully in the next 24 hours. the game will be available as a pay-what-you-want product on DrivethruRPG/RPGNow, and I'll also have a minimal overhead version available on those sites as a print-on-demand set of cards. Time for the next project.

I haven't posted much here. But that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything...on the contrary, I've been more busy this month than I have in a long time. I've been... on two field trips learning about Australian Indigenous culture within an educational context... travelled over 3000km via various modes of transport, without leaving my state (50km south to Kangaroo Valley, 850km up north and back down the coastline one night to drop some ferrets to Taree, over 700km each way to the outback town of Moree...then the regular 1500km or so that I drive each day)... Taught four different art classes during a six week practical session as a part of my university studies. I've also been working on the images for Inktober, but haven't had the chance to scan them in yet. Maybe in the next few days...it still xounts as a win if I manage to get all 31 images completed and posted by the end of the month doesn't it. I've finally recieved the various p...

30. Share something cool you made if you can at all justify it as RPG related. Last One. With the Shonen Knife concert this week, and the production of an image to possibly get signed by one of my favourite bands, things have been thrown out of their regular schedule. This has been made even worse by other complications around the house, and generally not feeling well. As a result, this post is two days late. One of the curious things I saw as I was doing research for this picture was the fact that on the Band's bio page, two of the members indicate that they enjoy playing games. No specification as to whether they lay board games, card games or RPGs...but the fact that they indicated game play on their biographical details was awesome in itself. Still, I probably can't really justify this as an RPG related share. Instead, I'll have to share the Vulpinoid Studios online store. I've got heaps of things for sale there, and some of it even sells occasionally...

Last night, I managed to upload " The Law " to my DrivethruRPG/RPGNow shopfront. I was thankfully alerted to the fact that there were a whole heap of spelling errors on the page, due to the "p" key on my rapidly aging keyboard not working half of the time...but that's all fixed now. I'll probably update the shopfront page with a few more images and a couple of more interesting elements of text, but for the moment it's done it's job. While I was sleeping, a copy of the game sold, and now I can purchase the "Dr Who Humble Bundle" that I referred to in yesterday's RPGADay question. Stupidly, in my enthusiasm last night, I started working on the Dispatch Guide for the game (which, for those who haven't been following, is basically the GMs guide). The first ten pages of that basically came from the fact that I wanted to keep the whole game tightly focused as a highly illustrated 32 page "game comic"...which meant there ...

I can't remember if Vulpinoid Studios has had a birthday sale before. I'm pretty sure we might have, but I can't find evidence of it. It's something I hope to do every year for the week when my birthday occurs. 25% off everything in the RPGNow shopfront , and discounts wherever else the designs from Vulpinoid Studios can be found. Now, I need to start working on some more designs and artwork, so that the birthday sale can be even bigger next year.

Sorry...rant in progress. I do things. I make those things public. Occasionally I hope to make a little bit of money from those things so I can focus more on those things rather than the day to day mundane tasks that earn me the necessary money to survive in the world. I look at what other people are asking for things. I don't think my requests are extravagant...in most cases I actually think my requests are quite modest. But people ignore my things...or they loot the free things I offer, and ignore any requests for support so that I can continue making new things...then to have sand kicked in my face while I'm already pretty low, I see things that I presented to the world offered by other people a year or two later, in mounds of adoration and heaped praise. Or I see other people making things that vary the themes I offered, and they pull in money by the bucketload. I can't pull the "I'm in a minority" card, I can't pull the "But I'm a femal...

It's been months since I've released something over on RPGNow/DrivethruRPG, I've had so many half complete projects that I just haven't been too motivated to complete, and so many other non-game related projects that I've neglected the shopfront for a while. Today I released Big Damn Hero . Hopefully it's the first in a few more regular products available online. (The link to the preview copy has been killed, now that the product is live)

I've thrown together all of the play sheets and information I used for last weekend's FUBAR session into a zip file and made it available for sale over on DrivethruRPG/RPGNow. FUBAR Fever Unless I manage to do something thatI'm really happy with for this FUBAR Magic(k) system that I'm working on, this will probably be one of last supplements before I launch a formal Kickstarter/Indiegogo project to produce a hardcopy of the rule book.

The Hold 'Em NPC Generator for Modern Characters has just gone live on RPGNow/DrivethruRPG. Here's the link Hopefully it sells a few copies in the next couple of weeks, that'll certainly get me motivated to create a few more generators along these lines.

Just letting everyone know that I've almost finished the Hold 'Em NPC generator. The text is complete, now I'm just trying to search through my hard drives for some suitable images that might be appropriate to scatter throughout it. It could probably do with some decent cover art, but that might need to be something I take care of when a few more have been generated and a hardcopy is crowdfunded (or made available for sale through DrivethruRPG/RPGNow). I'm pretty happy with this little project and I hope other people will be too. One more project almost knocked off this year's "to do" list.

For those who were interested in the Dungeon Fonts that I've been putting up for sale over on RPGNow/DrivethruRPG, I've decided that I'll bundle together the first few as a discounted pack. Instead of $5 per font, you get the base font and each of the first three expansions for a total of $10. That's 50% off the total cost. Link to the Bundle Pack Once I've created another three expansions, I may bundle them together in the same way (Core set + 3 expansions). But if I'm going to follow this model, I will try to ensure that the three expansions bundled together follow some kind of standard theme, perhaps urban enviroments, natural environments, traps and pitfalls, or a group of sci-fi glyphs. I don't know, we'll see how things go.