Extreme Future

New Sci-Fi RPG Supplement

By The Illustrator  |  2012/05/07 01:33 Posted in Extreme Future, Future Heroes, Role-Playing Games  |  Comments (1)

space habitatThe Colonnade system RPG supplement is the subject of the first ever system guide for Extreme Future and Future Heroes. I’ve sweated over the blurb for RPG DriveThru as usual, and here it is.

Colonnade, the first system guide for the Extreme Future game, provides an entire star system to start adventuring from. It is a safe and populous system nestled within the heart of the Core Worlds, but there are dangerous corners even here.

Characters can stay within the confines of the Colonnade system, or use it as a jumping off place for exploring the entire galaxy. The supplement has information on all of the planets within the system , both artificial habitats, and the system’s artificial planet.

The supplement also outlines how the politics of the Core Worlds affect the people of the Colonnade system, and indicate which corners of the system are safe havens, and which parts are a little more adventurous.

The supplement can also be used with the Future Heroes game, a game of superheroes of the extreme future, so take a look and make the jump to the Colonnade system.

The image is a space habitat, and it’s huge, providing space for a billion inhabitants. There are space docks at either end, and a few more sprinkled across the space habitat’s hull for good measure. There should always be a friendly spot to leave your spaceship.

Space Monster Chasing Spaceship

By The Illustrator  |  2012/04/10 00:50 Posted in Extreme Future, Fantasy, Illustration, Realms, Role-Playing Games, Self Publishing, The Pet Dragon  |  Comments (0)

space monsterAnother image from the Deep Space Encounters supplement for the Extreme Future role-playing game. This deep space encounter is of the rather dangerous kind, because this alien is very much inspired by the gods of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu pantheon. It is an alien that uses its immense power just to torment and torture the unlucky inhabitants of any spaceship it happens to stumble on.

I’ve also added a map, called the Metraz Area Guide, for download that charts the area where the Realms‘ novel, The Pet Dragon, takes place. This booklet details Metraz and the surrounding area. This is one of the most important areas of Hyrope, which acts as a backdrop to the Realms role-playing game. The booklet details eleven realms in all, with some interesting snippets of information to bring each one alive.

The booklet comes with a map that includes all the political powers and their territories, including elven forests, human cities, and dwarven mountains. The maps can be printed out to use as a nice handout during sessions playing Realms – take a look at the rule book here.

RPG on DriveThru and eBook on Kindle

By The Illustrator  |  2012/04/03 22:48 Posted in Extreme Future, Fantasy, Role-Playing Games, Self Publishing, The Pet Dragon  |  Comments (0)

a space lizzard in a vac suitA couple more of my projects have just gone online on different channels. The first is the book I wrote recently, called ‘The Pet Dragon’ which has just gone live on the Kindle store.The pet dragon is a fantasy adventure where a young elf girl finds a dragon, and is driven out of her elven city by superstitious elves, afraid of dragons and the fire they spit. She and her dragon are forced to make their way in the world, learning to fight, and to cast magic. The book is full of battles, magic, enchanted places, dragons and adventure, so take a look at this exciting book.

The illustration to the left however is from Deep Space Encounters, a supplement for the Extreme Future role-playing game. The supplement adds lots of encounters with brutes like the one in the illustration to the Extreme Future game. This beast is a Lizardeen, and they are the main rivals to humanity in the Extreme Future setting. They are not unthinkingly evil, and can even be played as characters, but they are ‘other’. They are much colder and more calculating than humans and this makes them difficult to predict for your average human, driven as they are by hormones, emotions and irrational urges. Just a normal day piloting your spaceship through the deep void.

Both these projects are available as electronic downloads of course, but ‘The Pet Dragon’ is also available to order as an actual, honest-to-goodness, book. It’s available from Amazon.

Starliner Spaceship

By The Illustrator  |  2012/03/30 23:22 Posted in Extreme Future, Illustration, Role-Playing Games  |  Comments (1)

starlinerI was looking through my hard disc for inspiration and came across an image I created a long time ago. It’s a scan of a sketch that I coloured after scanning.

One of the things I like about this illustration is the giant transparent bubbles on its flanks. Some parkland can be seen below the protection of the nearest bubble and even the suggestion of a swimming pool.

I’ll have to come up with the statistics so that it can be used in Extreme Future – the sci-fi role-playing game as soon as possible.

I’ll probably scale it up in GIMP and work into the illustration a little to make it look like the other spaceship illustrations used in the game. At the moment it has more of the style of the sort of spaceship you might see in a Japanese animation. That’s no bad thing of course, but it’s not the look I want for the Extreme Future role-playing game.

Jungle Space Pirate

By The Illustrator  |  2012/03/29 00:36 Posted in Extreme Future, Illustration, Role-Playing Games  |  Comments (0)

female space pirate in the jungleI’m working on Illustrations for a new supplement for the Extreme Future sci-fi role-playing game, which I’m thinking of calling Deep Space Encounters. The picture is a space pirate in a jungle on some lonely alien planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy.

I’m thinking that there’s no reason pirates shouldn’t bury their treasure in the extreme future, just as they did in the past. I’m writing that up as an encounter for the game as we speak. Perhaps the players will find a pirate spaceship orbiting an out of the way planet, with the spaceship strangely deserted. The encounter would then revolve around the pirates on the surface of the planet fighting it out over treasure buried in a terrible alien swamp.

The illustration will go with encounter description. The pirate in the illustration might even be the leader of the band of interstellar cutthroats.

The whole book will basically be a bunch of wandering monster tables, but for deep space and with fleshed-out encounters rather than just a bunch of monsters for the players to deal with. Putting the book together is proving a lot of fun and, with a bit of luck, it’ll be finished soon. I’ll upload it to the RPG Drivethru site as soon as it’s ready, so it can be downloaded straight away., along with all the other Extreme Future stuff.

monster illustration for sci-fi role-playing game extreme future

By The Illustrator  |  2012/03/18 18:15 Posted in Extreme Future, Illustration, Role-Playing Games  |  Comments (1)

monster illustration for sci-fi rpgI’ve been working on the art for Extreme Future and its supplements. I was looking through the sketches I have on my hard disk, and I found a nice sketch of a sci-fi monster walking down a spaceship corridor. It’s in the tradition of Alien, and those sort of biological construct kind of monster aliens, but this alien – I call it the ‘Scorpiant’ – has cybernetics too.

The idea is that the creature can secrete metal as it grows, and so has a metal skeleton, metal claws, and a metal syringe sticking out the end of its tail that it can use to sting player characters – and NPCs too pf course – rather like a scorpion.

When there are a group of them , they organise themselves like an ant hill, with warriors, a queen, drones etc. But mostly warriors, this being an action and adventure game set in deep space.

I’m writing a new supplement for Extreme Future, which will include table to be rolled on when characters are traveling through deep space. They will be sort of like the wandering monster tables from old D&D, but there will be loads of encounters based around monsters, wrecked spaceships, distress calls coming from strange planets, space pirates and the like.

I think this illustration will make a fine cover, with a bit more work, but it is definitely heading in the right direction. It just needs to be perhaps a bit darker, with even more shadows in the spaceship corridor.

 

Updated Front Page with Second Edition of the SciFi RPG

By The Illustrator  |  2012/03/03 00:57 Posted in Extreme Future, Illustration, Role-Playing Games, Self Publishing  |  Comments (0)

sci-fi RPG website screenshot Extreme Future, the sci-fi role-playing game, has been in its second edition for quite some time now, a few weeks at least, and I’ve finally gotten round to updating the front page of the sci-fi and fantasy publishing and illustration website to reflect that. I’m very proud of the new edition, and on top of a vastly expanded background galaxy – yes an entire galaxy – to adventure in, the game system is also now entirely designed in house.

Designing a dedicated game system, rather than using an off the peg system like FUDGE, was the only way to get the control I required. I wanted to make a game that was light on the bookkeeping, but heavy on cool detail and stats for all the sci-fi hardware of the setting, including robots, spaceships, weapons and monsters – oops, I mean belligerent aliens.

I quite like the cover as well, it sums up the busy environment of the game, with lots of action both in space and on planetary surfaces. It also emphasises the space opera aspect of the games, where some attempt has been made to keep things corresponding to real science concepts, but never at the expense of making things cool. Faster than light travel and communication are commonplace in the background to this role-playing game and psionics are also far from uncommon. One of the weapons available is even an approximation of the good old force sword famous from a certain blockbuster sci-fi movie that shall remain nameless.

And on top of all this there are also extensive rules for including mechs within the gaming experience. They fit into a space opera setting surprisingly seamlessly.  RPG Drivethru has a few pages of the game that can be flicked through, and of course this sci-fi role-playing game is available for sale there too, take a look.

RPG spaceships with Blender

By The Illustrator  |  2012/02/16 01:45 Posted in 3D, Blender, Extreme Future, Illustration, Role-Playing Games, spaceship  |  Comments (0)

early role-playing game spaceship mesh

I’m working on a new supplement for Extreme Future, the sci-fi role-playing game, it was released a few days ago and is already selling well. The new supplement will probably be based around a spaceship.

The spaceship will be something like a freighter or scientific exploration spaceship. It’ll be a small one; the perfect size for a group of adventurers to use it as a base and means of transport combined.

I’m planning to include all the usual goodies, including deck plans, a technical readout and lots of other detail, but I’ll also include some ideas about how it can be integrated into an ongoing sci-fi role-playing campaign game.

The first stage for me is to come up with a beautiful 3D render of the hull of the spaceship, and perhaps some concept art and some modeling of interior detail. As usual I’ll be posting lots of renders of it as a work in progress, before finally releasing the supplement, so many that regular readers of the blog will probably soon be sick of the sight of the spaceship.

.second edition sci-fi RPG cover

It’s great to have the nuts and bolts of a huge and versatile science fiction, space opera setting where I can easily insert the hig-tech equipment I come up with. One of the beauties of sci-fi role playing is all the robots, spaceships, blasters and other assorted hardware that the players can choose for their adventurers, so take a look at the core rules for Extreme Future, the sci-fi role-playing game, which already has everything necessary for spaceship design, and slot the new spaceship in as soon as it’s done.