Adam Jury

TechManual for Classic BattleTech is available as an eBook, and the print version is at press overseas.

This is a whopper; 352 pages that cover building every kind of ‘Mech imaginable, plus infantry units, combat and support vehicles, battle armor, and other units.

I’m pretty sure this title has more tables, more math, and more numbers than any book I’ve ever worked on; it’s packed solid with info, but well-organized and has examples for building every type of unit in the book. Both of the BattleTech developers — Randall Bills and Herb Beas — really pushed themselves to make this book the ultimate resource for BattleTech construction.

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battletech

I updated my Publication List to include BESM Third Edition, the last book I worked on as a freelancer for Guardians of Order. I finished the book nearly a year ago, and started it nearly two years ago, so it really feels like forever has passed. I haven’t seen my copies yet and long-ago burned the files to DVD — I can barely remember what it looks like.

Mark MacKinnon has been blogging about the game. I hope that BESM/Tri-Stat fans enjoy it, and I’m glad that the WW/Arthaus team picked up the rights to it.

Well, that’s the first of my books out this year — next up are Handbook: House Davion, Classic BattleTech TechManual, Classic BattleTech Tactical Operations, Jihad Hot Spots: 3072 [With a freakin' awesome cover by Klaus Scherwinski], the Classic BattleTech Box Set [come hell or high water!] and some stuff that’s cool but I can’t talk about yet. Plus, probably a few other things that I’ll get roped into doing … who knows, I might even get to work on some Shadowrun stuff this year!

Handbook: House Davion for Classic BattleTech is finally available as an eBook, and the print version is at press. Talk about a project that sucked the life out of me … I wasn’t originally scheduled to handle the interior layout, but I had a free few days in my schedule so I offered to zip through it ASAP, which I did. Then we decided to cut the book down to keep it in the same page-count ballpark as the other books in the Handbook series, but it still ended up being 204 pages once the author took the knife to it and I squeezed it into the layout.

Then rounds of proofings, working on a ton of TechManual in-between time, all the crazy weather in Seattle keeping the BattleTech developer knocked offline/without power for awhile, the holiday season … argh!

On the bright side, the book is finished and so far well-recieved, and I’m getting very good at cranking out the first draft of an entire BattleTech book “over the weekend,” literally. That should prove handy in the coming months …

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battletech, fanpro

GenCon 2006 was tons of awesome. In brief:

• FanPro had our largest booth ever, shared with Iron Wind Metals, and we also had a couple of the Virtual World Entertainment BattleTech pods there. We got to talk to a ton of fans, and ran a successful instance of our “Booth Runner” game for the second year in a row.
• We had awesome sales of our new products, including Street Magic for Shadowrun and Total Warfare for Classic BattleTech.
• Total Warfare looks really, really awesome. It’s so gratifying to see something that we worked so hard on come out in a virtually flawless manner. The hardcopy is gorgeous, the best-looking book FanPro has ever done, and it totally brings Classic BattleTech up to — and maybe above — the production values of other modern miniature games.
• Shadowrun, Fourth Edition had brisk sales and won two ENnie Awards, for Best Rules and Best Product.
• We pimped Degenesis as much as possible, with limited resources, and a lot of people seem enthusiastic about it.
• Our Dodgeball team won two 3AM games, including a victory over the White Wolf team.
• We had great service and fabulous rooms at the Hilton, had some good meals, productive meetings, and good times during the evening.
• Guardians of Order’s A Game of Thrones RPG got a bunch of 2nd place ENnies — and deserved first place in at least one, but was almost certainly hurt by GoO’s lack of support for the game over the year.

A super successful show!

Updated my Publication List for a few new releases, notably System Failure and Midway City.

Technorati Tags: roleplaying, freelancing, graphic design, shadowrun

Midway City from Spectrum Games & Z-Man Games is one of the projects I worked on this summer, and after an odd delay where it seemed to sit at the printers while they did rain dances or something else that was time consuming but had nothing to do with getting the book printed, it’s been printed and shipped and it should be arriving in game stores late this week or early next week.

In the far future, rich eccentric Clayton Douglas creates a distant planetary colony using elements of technology and architecture from 1920s through 1940s America. Decades of increasingly corrupt and ineffectual Mayors follow Douglas’ death, eventually culminating in the administration of the tyrannical Mayor Hoodler. Hoodler creates an oppressive police state designed to ruthlessly control society, forcing total conformity to Douglas’ original vision. The characters exist in this dystopia amidst cybernetic detectives, mutant mobsters, alien-touched drug lords, vat-bred blue-collar workers, and human hybrids that can see into an alternate dimension known only as the Jade.

The Golden Years are over. Welcome to Midway City, Jack.

Since it’s been finished for awhile, the PDF has been sent around and a few reviews are already available, all on RPG.net so they use the Style/Substance scale:

• Daniel Bayn’s Review — 5/4
• Sean Posey’s Review — 4/5
• Jim Moreland’s Review — 5/4

The website also hosts some preview and source material, most importantly the Quickstart Adventure, which includes basic rules to play a 4 player + GM adventure. There’s also a World Preview and a System Preview. Plus character sheets in the fancy and plain variety.

The Print on Demand version of Beyond the Storm: Shadows of the Big Easy is now out. It’s $19.99, and all proceeds [beyond expenses that have to go to LuLu for using their service] go to the Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina disaster relief. A PDF version is also available for $10.

Beyond the Storm: Shadows of the Big Easy is a collection of short stories, essays, art and role-playing game materials inspired by the culture, landscape, and city of New Orleans. With contributions from three continents and from across the spectrum of role-playing, all the proceeds from the sale of the book will go to support Katrina Disaster Relief. Join the authors and artists as they explore the Big Easy as it could have been and how it might be…

Beyond the Storm features contributors from a bunch of industry all-stars and some that will be, including some short stories, material suitable for dropping into superhero and horror games [including HERO and M&M stats], a complete adventure for Shadowrun, Fourth Edition, and several complete RPGs – some experimental, some more conventional. All wrapped around the theme of New Orleans.

Complete contributor list: Aaron Acevedo, Aaron Axelsen, Scott Bennie, Jason L Blair, Leanne Buckley, Heather “Squish” Cornelius, William Edmonds, Crazy Elf, Matt Forbeck, Caz Granberg, Seth Johnson, Adam Jury, Mischa Damon Krilov, Lindsay Labanca, Mur Lafferty, Jason Mical, Veronica Pare, Jeff Preston, Mikko Rautalahti, Sean Riley, S. John Ross, Janice M. Sellers, Angi Shearstone, Geoff Skellams, Adam Tinworth, Ursula Vernon, David ‘Doc Blue’ Wendt, Stacy S. (Niedecker) Wendt, Michael Wendt, and Brook Willeford.

The Ennie nominations are now online.

Very pleased to see Dreaming Cities [which I art directed] nominated for Best Interior Art, and it’s also good to see Authority and Ex Machina nominated for Best Cover Art, plus a best Production Values for Authority.

Some other cool stuff I like was nominated, too — d20SRD.org for Best Fan Site, Vampire: TR for Best Interior Art, Burning Wheel for Best Rules, and World of Darkness Core Book for Best Writing. All good stuff.

Voting is here.

Since my pen-paper.net biography and credits list is way out of date, I whipped up a Publication List, containing all the published projects I’ve worked on.