Louis Agresta's page

Hey all,

There is now a new way to get your money back for any purchases you made from Nick Logue's Sinister Adventures.

Email your request to bgmcubed@gmail.com

I expect to be able to start sending people their money back by the end of the month. I will update everyone here if there are any delays to the start of that process. Money will be refunded in the order requests are received. Everyone who wants their money back can get it.

I extend Nick's apologies if you've already emailed and need to email a second time.

IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE
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I need to let everyone who purchased know that there is a tiny, tiny possibility that I might be able to put out Razor Coast for Nick. If I do it will be more expensive than the pre-order price, by a significant factor. The book got a LOT bigger under my development. One of the primary issues preventing this is recovering the art from Nick's crashed hard drive and/or getting his artist's to resend it, years later.

Am I committing publishing RC as this time? NO. Absolutely, not.

WHY ARE YOU DISCLOSING THIS?
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If you don't get your money back, and I do put this out you get RC for whatever price you originally paid.

If you do get your money back, and then (by some miracle of personal goodness) decide later that you want RC anyway, you'll have to pay full price. Whatever that is at the time.

If is a tiny little word with a really big meaning, but IF I can help Nick in this way, I don't want anyone to feel they got fooled or ripped off.

Again, this is NOT any kind of promise to release RC in any shape or fashion, whatsoever.

But I have to make you aware of this possibility, now, even if the chances are fairly small. Transparency is important. Anything else would be dishonest.

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO GET MY MONEY BACK NOW?
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I've been working with the Logue to help him recover from a computer disaster and otherwise get his ducks in a row.

He agreed -- and did -- release to my management his email and paypal accounts from Sinister Adventures, solely for the purposes of processing return transactions on his behalf.

I'VE WAITED THIS LONG, WHY ANOTHER #$%&#! MONTH?
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What I've got is a giant stack of thousands of unsorted emails across multiple years -- many filled with understandably inventive imprecations -- plus a few years of PayPal statements. I've hired a temporary assistant to sort everything. He starts next week. Then I've pre-arranged extra hours for my bookkeeper to stay on top of payments. And I've got to make sure they do everything right and don't miss anything. It's an extra project I wasn't planning on, and it's going to take a while to get all set. Sorry.

WHY NOW?
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I would like Nick to survive Paizocon with all his body parts reasonably intact. He'll have a hard enough time surviving his mud wrestling match with Rich Pett. Pett + a pitchfork mob VS. Logue? No way. He'd never win.

And I only recently had the idea.

And it took me a while to work up the courage to offer him my help with this.

DOES THIS MEAN YOU, LOU, OWE ME THE MONEY?
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No. Nick owes you. Always did, always will. I did not buy Sinister's accounts from him. I have no legal obligation to anyone for the money. I am not and have never been an employee of Sinister. I was a freelancer. Now I'm a payment processor. Think of me as an unpaid freelance bookkeeper handling the mechanical and accounting steps of refunding people's money. I'm just helping a friend (finally) do right by the community.

WHAT THE HECK DOES BGMCUBED MEAN?
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Figure that out, and I will shower you with accolades. :)

I'm sure there are questions I didn't address: please fire away.

Just moving the thread over here as promised, as these products-in-the-works, are now separate and distinct from their Sinister roots.

Repeating this part of my previous post as it got lost in the shuffle. If there's someplace else I can go to read about it myself, just point me there --

I wasn't previously aware of it but this KUG thing, specifically a Pathfinder edition thereof, sounds like it could be very cool. Is it "near future/near space" (say within 50 LY) or does it cover a significant portion of the galaxy? Does it reference actual nearby stars appropriately or jump straight out to unknown reaches, in the manner of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and indeed most SF TV series? I confess I would prefer a "near space" grounding though not have the setting limited to that.

Oops - sorry to miss this in the shuffle. The KUG is sandbox space opera/space horror with a drizzle of both cyberpunk and the truly alien. It's set in its own corner of the universe. Sorry, but its not near future/near space. It is, however, grounded in hard science and set in a barred spiral galaxy. Technology has been set so that as you tool between the inhabited zone (an area centered on a barbell shaped zone at the galactic core) and the frontier (a cubic region enclosing the barbell) travel times are roughly equivalent to Age of Sail travel times.

Venturing beyond the frontier to the tip of one of the two unexplored galactic arms and back might take a decade, round trip -- and no one lives who has ever done so. No one credible. After all who believes that crazy old ancient mariner with the funny black alien tentacle leaking from the back of his head?

The farther one ventures from the civilized bar at galactic core, the stranger and less predictable the cold void grows.

Call me blind and stupid, but I can't seem to find on which advancement track to run my Pathfinder APs? Fast track? Medium?

Also, if I pathfinderize a 3.5 AP (by bumping every encounter 1 level, etc.) does the track stay the same?

Hey all,

Trying to shortcut my new campaign by using existing materials and tweaking them. Normally I use a group collaborative method of my own devising to create the campaign setting. My group has expressed their intention to use that process to go in an Arabian-pirates-and-airships direction. Well and good. However, I lack the time right now to develop the campaign/adventure from scratch. Maybe I could pathfinderize and adapt Legacy of Fire. Heck, I wrote a tiny bit of it. Any other suggestions that might be a quick adaptation? A good (and easy - I've got noob players) set of airship rules, so I don't have to write my own?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Thanks in advance for thoughts and ideas!

Hey all,

Some of you probably heard by now that I'm helping Nick Logue polish off his Razor Coast manuscript and get it to publication. As part of that, I'm running a little contest to see who can produce the best, short d20 ship-to-ship combat rules with an Age of Sail feel. You can read about the details here, but the short of it is: 5,000 words; no player left behind; must be OGL compliant; entry due by the end of March; winner to be included in the Razor Coast core book and perhaps receive other prizes (TBD).

To save you the click I've replicated the text of the link, below:

Fire as She Bears! A Dark Challenge from Lou Posted at 2010/02/22 12:10

Grapeshot! Rigging! Long nines and the weather gauge. d20 ship to ship combat rules with an Age of Sail feel. Are they necessary to Razor Coast? No. Would they be cool? Yes, by the Kraken!

So, as newly minted editor, I'm issuing my own Dark Challenge. There is not a minute to lose, so I'm skipping the fanfare of the former challenges: not waiting on the webmaster, not getting art to pump you up. I hope you forgive me. After all, if you're reading this, I have to figure you're pretty hardcore!

Well, here's your chance to dazzle me with full broadsides of your gaming brilliance. Submit fun, easy rules for fighting a ship before March 25th, and I'll include the best rule-set in the core Razor Coast book and credit your RPG work.

I'll also see about adding some other prize as well, but we're pressed for time so no promises. Email your submissions direct to me as a Word document at: lou.agresta@mindspring.com. Be sure to include your name and email address in the header.

Winning this is harder than it might sound. Here are the design challenges.

The rules must:

1. Grant every player the opportunity to make fun and meaningful choices nearly every round of the ship to ship combat. Just like every player has the opportunity for a meaningful -- therefore fun -- action in party versus monster combats, so must every player have choices and actions in a ship to ship combat.

The worst, most boring thing in the world is for some players at the table to sit around twiddling their thumbs while some other player or players make all the choices and have all the fun. Failing this criteria is the death knell for your submission.

2. Incorporate the importance of "getting the weather gage". Not sure what that means? Weather Gage
3. Give smaller, faster vessels fought with pluck, skill and courage a fighting chance against larger, better-armed, slower vessels fought by arrogant morons.

4. Involve at least four kinds of guns: carronades as well as 6, 9 and 12 pound "longs". Not sure what that means? Naval Artillery

5. Include at least two kinds of shot: grape and ball.

6. Be submitted in a Word 97-2003 document with 1" margins.

7. Account for at least four characteristic of vessel: speed/sea worthiness, endurance under fire, strength of armaments -- also called "weight of guns" -- and quality of crew.

8. Be simple and fast for players to learn. If I can't figure it out scanning the rules in a half hour and explain it to players in 15 minutes? *queue sad trombone*

9. Be OGL compliant.

10. Remain D&D. We don't want an historical simulation or an Avalon Hill game! Remember that spells still work, monsters are summoned, etc.

11. Max rules length: 5,000 words.

12. Max length of a handy reference to all possible player actions: 2,500 words.

Avast and have at 'em!

Hey all,

For what it's worth, I just heard from my publisher, Supergenius Games, and my new Call of Cthulu adventure is due to be on sale here next week. I'm pretty stoked! PDF first, followed by dead tree. It's 118 pages of creepy Cthonic goodness (I think so anyhoo, though I might be slightly biased *whistles*) set in NYC, and if anyone picks it up, I'll be very grateful to hear what you think.

- Lou

Originally brought to my attention by Tom Ganz, I saw, and I knew. Sebastian's new campaign.

LASER PONIES!

:)

Hey all,

I'm thinking about running a PFRPG (or N-PFRPG, a little something secret and special) campaign at my FLGS in Poughkeepsie. I expect I'd need the group to help me with some intermittent playtesting, too. Anyone local enough to Poughkeepsie, NY to have an interest? Haven't picked the day yet. Would like to hear from potential players.

- Lou

Squeee! It's out! It's out! I may be a writer on this, true, but oh my I think it's beautiful! Can't wait to hear what my lovely fellow Paizoans think. Many Werecabbages on this one!

Hey all,

I noticed my PFS symbol won't appear when I post as an alias. Is anyone else experiencing this? I'd like to be able to have my symbol next to any alias.