gimmicklabs

Art Update for BC79

Barring any unforeseen bursts of sudden inspiration accompanied by a notable fiscal irresponsibility, this is the last art update for BC79. What could still happen is that I'll make a print version, which is enough of a pain and far removed enough from the design process that it's not something I'm interested in doing at the moment.

Anyway the last piece of art was going on the page with the following three statblocks: The Nuclear Missile, Elly or Rapturia. While Elly is the most import...

More art! Plus, some design stories.

I've just updated the module with new art, which is a good opportunity to post an update about it, show that art off, and talk more about the campaign itself. 

This is the official AMB-01 Trawler art. Originally, it was going to be a much more practical design. A grungy, industrial-style landship puffing out clouds of nanomachines while rolling over the terrain. We en...

Battle Century 0079 RC is out

It almost had to be pushed into August, but we made it to the July deadline! If only barely, and only for some timezones.

We changed main artists. For the past 2 months the man who's been my main artist for 4 years has been unfortunately tied up with real life complications. Long story short, you'll see some art style differences from now on.

For now, the book only has a front and back co...

Still Waiting for Art

I just realized that its the end of the month and I haven't yet posted an update, so here I am. My plan for this month was to post the finalized cover, but, well, as the title implies, I don't have it yet.

What I do have is the logo!

I added the calendar era to the title to give it more of a UC Gundam OVA feel to it. Feedback has been very positive so far, which is good because an antholo...

Let me Tell you about BC79

The anthology is finished! It's currently sitting at 70 pages and 6 Episodes. I'm gonna take another month or two for the editing and proofreading process, and also to wait for art. By the way, the anthology has a name now: Battle Century 0079, or BC79 for short, named after the year the anthology takes place in.

If you've seen earlier posts, you know that there's new mechanics in BC79. A new subsystem for Allied Reinforcements and also some new Features. Now, the bad news about said Fe...

April '23 Progress Report

Work on the anthology continues. One of the highlights of doing this kind of project, at least for my personal sensibilities, is that I get to make custom mechanics. Take these three Features, for example:

Dogged Determination

Internal Upgrade (0)

Effect: You cannot use Default or Alternative Genre Powers other than Try Again, Not so Fast, Live Another Day or their corresponding Alternative Powers...

2023-04-30 18:30:14 +0000 UTC View Post

March '23 Progress Report

The rewrite is at 2/6 Episodes. I'll admit that I wanted to be further along by the end of this month, but it is what it is. 

For a little bit of context, on March 1 the power grid went down for half the country because one of the cables coming out of our largest nuclear power plant caught on fire. Then we spent the next three weeks rolling saves against power failure every few hours. (save ends)

For even more context, this was at the tail end of a 5-month drought that was fi...

Uncreeping the Scope

I've been slowly chugging at the Campaign Module. However, I realized it was being harder than expected, and that was early while I was still writing the simpler Episodes. Worse, a part of me kept saying it needed to be longer and have more Episodes, for pacing reasons, you see. 

The project was both growing out of control and lacking in certain areas, which is a terrible contradiction to have. This situation made me step back and reconsider all the component pieces of the Campaign...

Introducing Gemini

One of the coolest things about publishing your own games, is that the homebrew content you make for a specific campaign is only an editing pass or two away from becoming official content.

The Gemini System was originally going to just be a variant of the Allied Reinforcement rules, but those rules didn't do everything I needed them to do. So, you know what, it's my system. I can make up new stuff whenever I want. Why, I can even upload it and someone else might find it useful!

Wh...

December sure is December

As foretold by the prophecy, I don't have much to show this month. I wanted to show at least a new mechanic for the campaign I have almost finished, but I lost a hard drive to a power outage two days ago and it was the boot drive, so I spent an entire day getting the ex-slave drive in working order and that really took the wind out of my sails so I'm just going to take it easy for a few days and be glad about all the things I didn't lose.

I will regale you with the full tale of...

Let's Talk about the Campaign

So last month I promised a campaign scenario. Here's some numbers to give you an impression of what that'll be like:

• 9 Episodes. Each Episode consists of a short Intermission, an Operation, and a short optional post-Intermission Scene.
• 6 Introductory pages. If you've read Any Oasis in a Desert, the Monsterpunk campaign scenario, it's pretty much the same as the first 20 pages of those.
• 6 Premade PCs. Including their own Mecha, different from the ones i...
  2022-11-23 13:49:27 +0000 UTC View Post

Updated BCGR to v1.84

The updated version is out wherever it is that you get your files from. That's the final content update to the core book, but not the end of BCGR as a project. There are things left to do before I can call it fully complete, the first of them all being a premade campaign scenario.

Whatever I make next for the game will be free. Don't expect large expansion books full of new mechanics, though. Things that are smaller or focus more on narrative than mechanics are more likely. The premade ...

October Progress Report

It's done! The last few illustrations are in and I've gotten in the last clarifications into the rules (if you're curious, the specific clarification is that shared/transferred Maneuvering bonuses are canceled if the recipient moves away or is moved away; this was implied in the writeups for the shield grunt and shield rival, but not explicitly spelled out anywhere). You can expect v1.38 next week.

Now, without further ado, let me show you the final three modified pages with their new a...

September Status report

"No news is good news" goes the saying, supposedly coined by James I of England. 

Clearly the king never felt obligated to give other people progress reports.

Alas, no news is, indeed, bad news for us. The last pieces of artwork are taking longer to finish than expected, so unfortunately this is an update just to say that there's no update.

Hopefully I can share those with you next update. Until then!

Gimmick Out.

August Progress Report

While all the new art is a great addition, the best thing about the decision to take most of the year to upgrade the book is just how many errors in the text I've managed to fix. Eight months, three game updates and two sets of proofreaders later, I'm still finding typos, double spaces between words, and the like.

At any rate, THE ARTENING continues apace. Albeit in a different order than I originally envisioned. Here's the first of the new pages featuring new artwork:

2022-08-28 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post

BCGR v1.82 Update

All the relevant download sites have been updated, so here I am for the status/roadmap post!

These are the final two high priority pages in need of filler art:

P175: Faction Wealth Tests.

P194: Solar Grid Energy, Religion, Law and Labor.

Last month I said the next update would come when I had the art for those, but those will be finished near the end of the month and I'm going to be very busy then so I released v1.82 now, without art in those pages. I'll be showing tha...

BCGR June Art Progress Report

This month's art goes for the Exemplar Themes pages, and it was the trickiest art to conceptualize so far.

Exemplar Themes are for characters who represent an ideal, often gaining power from it, like GaoGaiGar's Guy Shishio whose G-Stone is powered by courage. These often work best when there's multiple characters in the same group standing for different ideals, like in Digimon Adventure where each character in the main cast has one of eight crests. 

The question is: How do y...

BCGR May Art Progress Report

Slow month, compared to earlier ones, but we did get some art. First, here's three portraits for the Phantasm and Phasing Skills page:

I had the plan, a while ago, to show a Mycotypal human before and after using the gender change ability. For space reasons, I didn't get to add that to the corresponding lore section, but I can add it to the Phantasm section as an appropriate of illusionism.

BCGR v1.8.1 Update

I've just uploaded this month's update to both DTRPG and itch.io. In addition to the two pages I showed off in the last post, I filled a few additional pages with stock art (thank you leftover store credit) and wrote a few extra sidebars. I even expanded the NPC Contact table on the Lifepath section a little.

This results in a not-insignificant shrinking of the total number of pages that need art. Here's the updated list of high priority pages:

P48: Life, Fortune and Ma...