This is the Recke for Mechnoir. I had a lot of fun drawing this one. I wasn’t originally planning on illustrating the rigs when I first devised the idea for the Mechnoir player’s guide. It’s one of the reasons this is taking so long. It takes me about 8 hours to draw each rig. And I have to fit that time in amongst my other projects (like doing layout for the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying books and making videos for Evil Hat). But I feel like the booklet would be lacking if not for some pictures of the rigs you’re going to be stomping around in, right?

The other thing that I realized when I started on the Mechnoir player’s guide is that a player’s guide alone wasn’t going to cut it. It’d be weird to just add mechs to the existing Transmissions like Hong Kong or Los Angeles. Mechnoir needed its own transmissions built up around the idea. So, the Mechnoir player’s guide will be bundled with three mech-specific Transmissions that detail three different cultures that have begun to colonize Mars. These have been written my the handsome and talented Mark DiPasquale (who wrote the Singapore and Hong Kong Transmissions) and will go into layout very soon.

The Warsaw is a heavier rig than the last two you saw. One of the the things that distinguishes heavier rigs (besides a heavy tag) is that they can have more than one armor tag.

These armor tags are important in Mechnoir, because they allow you to avoid unwanted damage. When someone inflicts a sticky or locked negative adjective on your rig that describes physical damage, you can burn an armor tag instead of taking the adjective. Since heavier rigs have more armor tags, they can take more of a beating. The largest rigs have three armor tags. Taking one of these down can be like a boss fight in a video game. Pretty epic.

The chicken-legged robot in the last post is called a Dancer 38. These “rigs” were designed as construction vehicles for taming the harsh landscape of Mars. Hence the yellow and black color scheme. The Dancer is designed for surveying terrain while the Coyote’s articulate arms allow it to build, maintain, and repair large pieces of machinery. They are two of the eight vehicles found in Mechnoir, the upcoming alternate player’s guide for Technoir.

Mechnoir is now in its final playtesting stages and, when it is ready, will be made available free-of-charge to everyone who backed Technoir‘s Kickstarter campaign. Plus, it’s going to be bundled with three Transmissions giving you plenty of content for giant stompy robot action on the surface of Mars. The bundle will also be made available for sale on DriveThruRPG.

Stay tuned as we reveal more about the world of Mechnoir and show off the Warsaw D9 next week.

If you’ve already bought a PDF copy of the game, and you’d be interested in upgrading to the print version, be sure to email me at jeremy [at] cellar-games [dot] com with a proof of purchase (your PDF order number or the email address you used to contribute to the Kickstarter campaign), and I’ll hook you up with a $5 discount.

The book looks pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

Anyway, I invite you to watch from the safety of your own home as I undertake this exciting and often warned against career move. Will he be able to make rent? Can he find affordable health insurance? Will he marry just for the financial stability? Tune in next week to Freelancer Mystery Theater.

Well, let me ignore that whole ball of anxiety for right now and focus on the really cool part. I get to work on some amazing projects. Here they are:

• Technoir: seeing the book through print, delivering all the promised rewards for the Kickstarter backers—including Mechnoir, Hexnoir, and Morenoir—and creating more supplemental material is still my main priority. Fortunately I have some help with this. Look for some cool official Transmissions from various authors over the coming months.
• Marvel Heroes: I am the Art Director for Margaret Weis Productions’ new roleplaying game based on comic books and characters I’ve loved all my life.
• Wushu Black Belt Edition: I’m doing layout for Daniel Bayn’s new edition of his amazing cinematic action game. I can’t wait to see this finally in print.
• Something I can’t tell you about: I’m doing some writing for a yet-to-be-announced-that-I’m-working-on-it game. I’ll be happy to tell you all about it when I can.
• Something without a name yet: I’m helping a friend to develop his game. To early to say much about this.

That’s quite a enough to keep me busy right at the moment, but I’ll be vocal about my availability as more time opens up.

In two days I leave for Gencon Indy 2011! Can’t wait to see everyone who’s going out there. Technoir won’t be there in print, unfortunately, but I will have a few special Transmissions to hand out.

I’ll be spending a good chunk of my time at Games on Demand. This is your one-stop location to try out new and not-so-new indie and small-press games. It’s going on Thursday to Saturday from 10am to 10pm and Sunday from 10am to 2pm. You can find it at the Pennsylvania Station C Meeting Room in the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Slots start every 2 hours. Be sure to bring some generic tickets.

I personally am on the schedule to run games starting at 2pm on Thursday and Friday and at 10am on Saturday. I might be there other times as well, but this is when I’m officially on the schedule. I will be running Technoir for folks who are interested, but I have a few other games I can run on request as well. Games like Apocalypse World, Wushu, Do, Be Ashamed Young Prince, and A Penny for My Thoughts. Come find me and get in on some gaming.

Thankfully, due the funds raised through the Kickstarter campaign and the sheer numbers of supporters who purchased the print edition of Technoir, I can have the book printed by an offset printer. This means keeping the unit price low enough to stick to the $25 cover price. And while it means it’s going to take longer to print than I originally expected (we’re looking at September now at the earliest), it also means I can take the time to make sure that every error I find (with the help of some amazing proofreaders) is corrected and the full-color art appears exactly as it should on the page.

While it’s unfortunate that I won’t have it in print with me at the convention, this is ultimately great for the game. Thank you for your patience.

Good news time. The PDF version is now ready to be downloaded for the Kickstarter backers and playtesters. If that’s you, check your inboxes for links to that today. You will also receive an updated PDF when the book is sent to press if there’s any issues found during the proofing process. The PDF will go on sale at DriverThruRPG soon.

And be sure to check out the newly redesigned TechnoirRPG.com. It has an updated protagonists sheet, the player’s guide, and the Twin Cities Transmission to support your next session of Technoir.

Technoir Beta – 813KB

As to what’s changed: mostly the Contention chapter as a whole. It’s almost nearly completely rewritten with a much more detailed step by step guide through the process and much more text to explain when and why you roll dice. The system is much more clearly identified as a method used to manipulate characters rather than as a combat engine.

The examples throughout the book have also been rewritten to give a much clearer picture of how the rules support a noir story.

I also wanted to point out that I removed the Player’s Guide from the Technoir website. It’s so out of date right now that I didn’t want to cross any wires with it. Look for a new Player’s Guide to be posted in the next week or so.

My own focus now is going into the final illustrations and layout polishing phase of the book. Unless there are any major issues introduced by this new draft, the PDF of the game is on track to be finalized sometime in the next week.

Thank you so much.