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the author, Kevin Kulp, is a friend of ours. please consider this offering when it launches in January. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kevinkulp/timewatch-gumshoe-investigative-time-travel-rpg he has information on a Google+ page, as well as on Pelgrane Press's blog pages, TimeWatch, by Kevin Kulp, is a GUMSHOE game of investigative time travel that Pelgrane Press is about to Kickstart. You are a defender of history, an elite TimeWatch agent plucked out of your native era and trained to stop saboteurs from ripping history apart. Your training allows you to diagnose disruptions in the time stream and track down the cause, making conclusions that less capable investigators might just guess at. The TimeWatch rules presume that you are a highly competent badass. Who are you to prove them wrong? If youve played other GUMSHOE games like Nights Black Agents and Trail of Cthulhu, TimeWatchs mechanics will look familiar. It uses a pared-down ability list (Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, and various engineering abilities are all grouped under the ability Science!, whose exclamation point tells you quite a bit about the games tone) and can be played in a variety of different styles. You can play it in Pulp style if you want more dinosaurs and aliens, Rebel style if you want to be the people changing history for the better, Cinematic style if you want to emulate your favorite time travel movie, and more. The default is Patrol style, acting as time cops to save the timeline. Traditionally, the two big road blocks to time travel games have been game research and handling paradox. The former has gotten to be surprisingly simple over the past few years; with Wikipedia for research and innumerable, excellent alternate history message boards and podcasts (such as Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff or Dan Carlins Hardcore History) out there, its easy to track down good ideas. The TW rules will contain a number of mission hooks, of course, and our plan is to offer superb guest designers the chance to write missions as part of the upcoming Kickstarters stretch goals. In TimeWatch, paradox is handled through an ability called Chronal Stability, which takes the place of Stability in other GUMSHOE games. Cause paradox and you lose chronal stability; lose enough chronal stability and you become unanchored in time. This allows fun flexibility when solving missions; you can time travel forward to check the work of historians fifty years hence to figure out what happened in this timeline, or even have your future self leave you a cryptic note about what happens, but doing so risks chronal instability. You can plan your investigation accordingly, solving conundrums while keeping paradox to a minimum. Whether youre dealing with a rogue time traveler who gave Hitler nuclear weapons, or mongols who sacked and burned all of western Europe, you may want the extra help. The biggest change between TimeWatch and other GUMSHOE games are stitches (as in a stitch in time), an action point mechanic that rewards fun play and allows players to decide for themselves when to refresh their ability pools. If you find yourself getting nervous about how many Shooting points to spend because you cant predict when theyll come back, youll want to give stitches a try. Weve also worked hard to get all the joy of breakneck chases matched with time travel. Chase someone through time on your personal time machine, and youll find yourself slipping from historical chase to historical chase as you try and catch up; from Roman chariots, to riding a stegosaurus during a dinosaur stampede, to racing high altitude fighter jets after them. Above all, TimeWatch is a game that embraces everything that time travel should be. Want your future self to come back and help you in a fight at the OK Corral? You can do that. Want to play a caveman, or a starship pilot, or Amelia Earhart, all figuring out why the Titantic didnt sink? You can do that. Want to produce a disintegrator rifle with Preparedness, just by reminding yourself to come back later and hide it under a floorboard? You can do that. This leads to some interesting solutions when solving mysteries. When you end up arranging the very same mysterious ambush that almost killed your earlier self last session, just to prove to a local bandit king that you have prophetic powers, you know youre a member of TimeWatch. TimeWatch is an upcoming Pelgrane Press GUMSHOE RPG about time cops, by Kevin Kulp, due to be Kickstarted in January 2014. Stay in touch at @timewatchrpg. To be notified when the Kickstarter goes live, click http://bit.ly/1hSd99K

Hey all. I've decided to try my hand at running a pbp here using the 13th Age system. I'm not sure how many of you have actually played it, but hopefully some of you will be willing to give it a try. If you happen to be a 3E/Pathfinder fanatic, Jonathan Tweet explains why you should set his old system aside for a moment and try his new one. The good news: If you don't own the core book, the publisher has made the rules available as a free pdf here. The bad news: They don't want the free edition to be so nice that you don't buy the book. Not only have all the pretties been removed, so has some of the formatting. It reads like an old netbook (but with hyperlinking). It also does not include the six classes from 13 True Ways. Of course I can help clear up any confusion and you can always acquire the full edition (legally from the publisher of course). Players: 4-6 Classes: All* Races: All* Alignment: No evil Stats: Standard point buy (28) Level: 1st Dice: Polyhedral * No 3rd party, just Fire Opal. Legal: 13th Age 1st edition c 2013 Fire Opal Media; published by Pelgrane Press Ltd. Now for the fun stuff. “A short distance down the coast from the mighty city of Horizon, the town of Eldolan has its own problems. Students of the town’s three rival wizard schools constantly feud and create trouble for the town guard, the Silver Shields, who must clean up the wizards’ messes. The Council of Mages—who truly rule the town—involve themselves with stints of political one-upmanship that keeps any true political progress from moving forward. And rumors of people going missing have been on the rise, keeping the common folk close to the magically lighted streets when they go out at night. But a darkness has been growing in Eldolan, and those who seek old power have set plans in motion to remind everyone what true fear is. “ Shadows of Eldolan is an introductory adventure that features investigation, roleplaying, and a good chunk of combat. It is an entirely urban adventure, so any talent/spell/feat that is only useful in the wilderness is better not taken. This in no way precludes rangers and such; you just want to avoid certain options If we end up with more than 6 applicants, I'll do the usual and create a queue. Potential Players: SparksMurphy - Kadu Evilhalfling - Rizzel Kangaroorex - Ruth Blubbernaught (?)