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Forgotten Futures News
Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.
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2009.07.01 00.34
It's Heeeeeere!!!
Only twenty years late... The complete Canal Priests of Mars is now available as a PDF from Heliograph Inc., print version to follow in July / August:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=63094&filters=0_0_0_0&manufacturers_id=2551
Can't do better than to post the blurb..
BASK! In the glory of London, hub of Empire!
TRAVEL! Aboard a luxurious ether liner!
MARVEL! At the wonders of Mars!
Our heroes help Martians accomplish a holy mission in London, then travel to Mars aboard the Princess Alexandra, the largest and most luxurious ether liner ever built! Throughout their journey they must face the hazards of London, the Ether, and Mars, compounded by mysterious enemies bent on stopping their Martian allies!
The original edition of Canal Priests Of Mars cut slightly over a third of author Marcus L. Rowland’s manuscript to fit GDW’s adventure format.
The Complete Canal Priests Of Mars restores the cut material, features all new artwork by Paul Daly, and adds many useful player handouts. Enjoy the "author's cut" of a classic Space 1889 adventure, or experience it for the first time!
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2009.04.30 20.31
Download the FF CD-ROM and save!
UK postal prices have risen again. Because postage is now by far my biggest expense, I've decided to try offering the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM as a download - a 450mb zip file. The price is £2.00 off the normal UK registration fees, £3.00 off the normal overseas fees:- £16 instead of £18/£19 for a first time buyer
- £10 instead of £12/£13 for a previously registered user who buys the CD for the first time
- £6 instead of £8/£9 for a repeat buyer.
Anyone who registers will be sent a username, password, etc. for downloading it, good for 48 hours. If for any reason you need to download the same release again that will be free, but you'll have to request a new password. When the next release of the Forgotten Futures RPG is ready you'll be able to download the distribution disk contents in the same way.
For the moment this offer applies to the full Forgotten Futures CD-ROM only; if things go well the Charity CD-ROM will eventually be made available in the same way. A lot depends on how big an effect this has on site bandwidth, and whether it becomes necessary to upgrade to a more expensive hosting account.
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2009.01.20 18.15
Show me the money!
The pound plummeted to a new low against the dollar today. Which leads me to remind anyone from the USA who might have been thinking of registering Forgotten Futures - it's priced in pounds, not dollars, so the odds are that it'll never be cheaper for American customers. Buy now before I have to put up the price!
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2009.01.01 14.52
Web page redesign
I've made some changes to the design of both of my sites, most notably a redesign of the game download pages to improve clarity and reduce clutter. This is most obvious on forgottenfutures.com (and .org), but there should also be a slight improvement on forgottenfutures.co.uk
I've also replaced all (I hope) of the files that got mislaid when I moved to the new hosting company, fixed a few links, and made a higher-resolution version of the logo which resizes with page width - the old one was low resolution and didn't resize.
If anything seems to have gone horribly wrong please let me know!
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2008.12.20 23.58
Season's Greetings!
This year's Xmas card is from a 1908 article on Christmas cards. I have no idea what the original message might have been, mine is just
Season's Greetings,
and
Best Wishes for 2009
Marcus L. Rowland
You'll probably want to open these in new browser tabs or windows!
For a big version of the picture:
For foldable greetings cards:
Single sided PDF (1.4mb)
Double sided PDF (1.4mb)
Many thanks to Phil Masters for posting his card, which reminded me that it was high time I got my card on line and suggested the PDF versions.
Apologies if you see this more than once, I'm also posting it to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ffutures_news and the insanejournal equivalent.
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2008.11.17 17.44
Crisis? What Crisis?
While nobody is keen on the present financial crisis, it's probably an excellent time to remind my US readers that Forgotten Futures is priced in pounds, not dollars, if you buy on-line. At the current exchange rate registration is cheaper for US purchasers than it has ever been before. It probably isn't going to last, so register now!
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2008.11.11 16.25
Dragonmeet 2008
I'll be running the following adventures at Dragonmeet at the end of the month; both are set in the world of Stanley Weinbaum's science fiction:
With A Grain of Salt
The Venusian colonies depend on regular supplies of salt to refuel the atomic blasts that provide them with power, but their only source is the great Brightside salt flats, several hundred miles sunward beyond the deadly Hotland swamps. When all contact is lost with the mobile factory that collects it, and two shipments in a row fail to reach the British colony of Venoble, it’s time for the League of Nations Patrol to investigate.
3-6 Players, 2-3 hours
Warlord of Mars
For decades China has been in a state of near-anarchy, ruled and plundered by rival warlords who grind the peasants into poverty. Now General Fong, one of the most merciless of these rulers, has somehow reached Mars with a group of his most fanatical supporters, seized one of the remaining Martian cities, and proclaimed himself Emperor. How will the gentle Martians react to his oppression? Why would he want Mars anyway? And what can the adventurers do to stop him?
3-6 Players, 2-3 hours
Please note that these are test runs - I'm still working on the settings etc. so there may be differences in what eventually appears.
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2008.10.09 18.04
With The Night Mail error.
I've just discovered that there was a small error in the story With The Night Mail by Rudyard Kipling on the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM release 6; the latest release adds four more illustrations from its first magazine appearance, but only three of them were included correctly - the fourth was a repeat of the second. I've now fixed it on this site, and on the CD-ROM. If you're running the files from your hard disk simply save the current version from my site to your drive. If anyone wants a replacement CD-ROM I am prepared to supply one, but I will have to charge for postage - it's much cheaper to copy the files from the CD to your hard disk, replace the file mail.htm with the on-line version, and burn a new CD from the files. Apologies, this is one of those stupid things that should have been spotted and fixed before the CD was released.
FF CD-ROM Release 6.1 fixes this bug and adds the Forgotten Futures Compendium, which can also be downloaded from my sites.
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2008.09.21 12.42
The Forgotten Futures Compendium Now On Line
The Compendium is a new release for the Forgotten Futures RPG, containing material that for one reason or another hasn't been included in previous releases of the game:
THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GEOMETERS
A Crossover Adventure For Forgotten Futures
& The Original Flatland Role Playing Game
When the High Circle vanishes in front of hundreds of witnesses, the only possible answer is abduction into the Third Dimension. Are the adventurers up to the task of rescuing him? Not that they actually have much choice about trying, of course…
~
CURSE OF THE LEOPARDMEN
A Forgotten Futures Adventure By Alex Stewart
Murder and mayhem strike an isolated British colony, and there's evidence that the murderer is more… or less… than human. Can the first victim's odd account of an airship journey hold the clue? The only way to find out is a voyage into the very heart of darkness…
~
THE ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT
Victorian & Edwardian Advertisements
& Scenario Ideas
What secrets lurk behind the lurid claims of advertisers? Are their products entirely safe, or even slightly effective? And who are those odd people who want to thin your hair, lighten your complexion, make you drunk or buy your false teeth? A brief sprint through the world of period advertising, with scenario outlines and verse by the late great William McGonagall.
As an experiment the Compendium has been put on line as a PDF only - I will add an HTML version if there is enough demand.
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/compend
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2008.09.17 18.38
On The Move
As of a few minutes ago http://www.forgottenfutures.com should point to my new web site, not the old one. It may take a while for this change to propagate, the easy way to find out is to click on the link above (or open it in a new tab) and see if you go straight to the Forgotten Futures top page, or stop off at a redirection page. If you get any sort of error message please let me know.
This is a mirror of the old site, and all links should work exactly as before. But fairly soon I'll be adding more content, so please watch this space.
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2008.09.12 16.13
Forgotten Futures for Education
Are you using any of the Forgotten Futures material for educational purposes? If so I'd be VERY interested in knowing what subject, syllabus, etc. you're using it for. If you've developed work sheets or other educational resources related to this material I would very much like to put them on line - I can't actually pay anything for them, but it's a good opportunity to give your school, college, whatever a teeny amount of publicity, and you may be helping others to expand their syllabuses (syllabi?)
Please contact me via the usual address, forgottenfutures at ntlworld dot com, if you have anything I can use.
Many thanks!
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2008.09.10 18.43
Forgottenfutures.com moving
I have now mirrored everything that was hosted on forgottenfutures.com to forgottenfutures.org, and intend to transfer the domain name as soon as my old web hosting company confirms that they have received my instructions... which at the present rate may take some time!
What will happen, until this is sorted, is that anyone going to the top level at forgottenfutures.com will be redirected to forgottenfutures.org
If you go to one of the forgottenfutures.com subdirectories the contents are still there for the moment, and eventually all links to forgottenfutures.com ought to reach the equivalent directories on the new site. Please bear with me, I hope that things will be reasonably painless but the chances are that something will be fumbled at some stage. If for any reason you find yourself staring at a 404 error message then goto
http://www.forgottenfutures.org
and follow links from there to the files you want.
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2008.08.31 22.18
Forgottenfutures.org on line
I've set up a new Forgotten Futures web site:
http://www.forgottenfutures.org
This joins
http://www.forgottenfutures.co.uk
my personal site, and
http://www.forgottenfutures.com
which is primarily a download site for Forgotten Futures RPG material. At the moment the .org site has more or less the same contents as the .com site, eventually I plan to add much more. It's likely that if all goes well forgottenfutures.com will eventually point to this site and the old site will be closed.
Since the site and servers are based in the UK I'm hoping that I will be able to resolve any problems much faster than has been the case with the current forgottenfutures.com - there's also a small legal advantage, in that some minor copyright problems that have arisen because that site is based in the US would not have caused difficulties if it were in Europe.
For the moment (and probably for the future) you need to do nothing about any of this, it's just something that will be going on in the background. Eventually direct addresses of some of the RPG and support material may change, although I'll do my best to avoid that.
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2008.08.28 07.51
Forgotten Futures X on Line, and The Forgotten Futures Compendium
As of a few minutes ago Forgotten Futures X: The Tooth And Claw Role Playing Game is on line. Contents include complete rules for dragon adventurers, a detailed sourcebook for Jo Walton's World Fantasy Award-winning novel, and adventures. There are HTML and PDF versions, and bonus contents include three chapters of the unfinished sequel to Tooth and Claw, Those Who Favor Fire, a cutout paddle steamer, and character record forms in several formats.
There will be another Forgotten Futures release within the next few weeks. The Forgotten Futures Compendium is a collection of material that for one reason or another hasn't previously been included in one of the main game releases. It includes a Flatland RPG crossover, The League of Extraordinary Geometers, Alex Stewart's wonderful African adventure Curse of the Leopardmen, and a collection of Victorian and Edwardian advertisements and adventure ideas.
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2008.08.18 19.13
Forgotten Futures Charity Update
I've handed on another £110 to Cancer Research UK today, taking the total I've given them to £1888. Due to a small error this is a few pounds more than I've actually raised for them, but the difference can come from me.
Hopefully if Forgotten Futures X goes well I'll be able to give them another donation before the end of the year.
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2008.07.29 15.10
Forgotten Futures X posted
I'm very pleased to announce that I've posted Forgotten Futures X: The Tooth and Claw Role Playing Game to registered users today, and it will go on line this time next month.
It's a licensed RPG based on the World Fantasy Award-winning novel Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton, and describes a quasi-Victorian world whose inhabitants happen to include a nation of dragons. Contents include a complete guide to dragons and their world, reworked rules aimed specifically at dragon player characters, two long adventures and several outlines. The release is in PDF and HTML form, with extra resources including editable dragon character records in a variety of formats, a cutout paddle steamer, and more.
For those who don't want to wait, the distribution CD-ROM is on sale now, with all profits going to Cancer Research UK. It includes Forgotten Futures X, a 14mb sampler of material from the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM, and four films: Melies' A Voyage to the Moon (with three different sound tracks), and the silent version of The Lost World.
There's also a new release of the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM, adding Forgotten Futures X and 65mb of source material ranging from Edwardian advertising to several versions of the year 2000, as imagined in the late nineteenth and early 20th century.
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2008.07.28 09.24
Forgotten Futures X - Mailing tomorrow
I'm very pleased to say that Forgotten Futures X distribution CD-ROMs will go out to registered users tomorrow, and will be on line at the end of August. It's been a long time coming but I hope that people will think that it's worth the wait. The new release of the FF CD-ROM will also be ready tomorrow, and I'll be emailing a few people to remind them that they wanted to order it.
I'l be at the Continuum games convention in Leicester this weekend and will have a few copies of the distribution disk for sale in aid of Cancer Research UK. I'll also be running a couple of adventures and hopefully giving a talk about FF X, my plans for FF XI, and my other games. Hope I'll see some of you there!
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2008.07.11 15.53
Forgotten Futures X, new packaging for FF CD-ROM
As of last night Forgotten Futures X: The Tooth And Claw Role Playing Game is complete apart from proof-reading and post-production work. However, it will still be a while before it goes out to users.
Since this is an authorised derivative work, it has to receive approval from Jo Walton, author of Tooth and Claw. Once that's done I can make any corrections etc. then convert the document as it is now (a Word file) into a PDF (which is very easy) and an HTML version (which is a lot harder if I want the page layout to be any good). It's pointless doing this before I have Jo's final approval.
While I'm waiting for approval I'll be working on the other stuff for the distribution disk; a cutout paddle steamer, chapters from the unfinished sequel to Tooth and Claw, various handouts etc. that need to be stand-alone documents, and so forth. There will also be samples of material that's on the FF CD-ROM, and some other extras. I also need to sort out a lot of new content for the FF CD-ROM and update its menus, design labels, etc. etc.
Hopefully all of this will be done by late July or early August and disks will then go out to all registered users, with the on-line release a month later. This isn't as early as I'd hoped, but not as bad as I'd feared.
* * * * * * * * * *
To avoid raising my prices I've had to rethink the packaging of the FF CD-ROM. UK postage is now based on the size, thickness and weight of a packet. Using a jewel case and padded envelope puts everything into the expensive "large" category, and has raised costs by about 50% over the last couple of years. Sending it in a plastic wallet and cardboard mailer envelope reduces costs to the old level. As a test I've sent several disks packaged this way and all have arrived intact, so there appears to be no down-side. The new packaging will include an insert sized correctly for a jewel case, and will be introduced with the next release of the FF CD-ROM.
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2008.07.02 00.14
Real soon now...
A brief update - due to various factors beyond my control Forgotten Futures X is running a little late, but I hope to have it finished in the next few days, and sent out to registered users as soon as I have final approval from Jo Walton and can finish assembling the contents of the distribution CD. This is later than I'd hoped, but I think that when it eventually happens people will think it was worth the wait. Many thanks to everyone for their patience.
I'm pleased to say that there will be a new paperback edition of Tooth and Claw in January next year, and that the distribution disk will include the first few chapters of an unfinished sequel, Those Who Favor Fire
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