Open Core Quick!

After languishing on my hard drive for a couple of years now, after it was developed for a couple of licensed products that didn't come through, Jonathan and I have decided to release Open Core Quick through Seraphim Guard:

From the Developer of the Open Core System and co-designer of Pulp Fantasy, comes a lighter take on role-playing games...Open Core Quick.

Produced in conjunction by Seraphim Guard and Battlefield Press, Open Core Quick takes the best elements of open content and boils them down to their essence, creating a system that is fast to play, easy to learn, and robust. While intended for at least one experienced gamer, a game master could easily teach the basics of Open Core Quick to inexperienced players in order to create characters and get a game started in minutes, not hours.

Extensively playtested by gaming groups in the United States, the U.K. and Iceland, this game is not just some quickie system released to the public.

While based on the popular Open Core System, this game has been streamlined for ease of play, and designed for player character-centric game play. The characters are the important part of the story and the players are able to mechanically effect play through their choices. While gamers with experience with the Open Core System will be able to play this game with little effort, some conversion will be necessary for characters between the two systems.

Also contained in the .zip file of Open Core Quick is a short PDF called Guns and Money which features rules for Wealth, Money and Weaponry for the Open Core Quick rules.

Everything needed to get play going is included in this .zip file!

Open Core Quick is 48 easy to learn (total) pages plus the OGLs.

Only $5, and available from, RPGnow.com.

New DC Merchandise From SDCC

SDCC '07: Image Announces Kirby Plans

Image Comics' newly remastered collection of Jack 'The King' Kirby's Silver Star hit stands a couple of weeks ago.

Image also has plans to publish a completely recolored one volume graphic novel collection of Kirby's 14 issues of Captain Victory later this year.

So, what's next?

Announced at the Kirby Tribute Panel at Comic-Con International: San Diego today, Image and The Kirby Estate have entered into an agreement to produce new series based on two of Kirby's final creator-owned properties, originally published by Pacific Comics in the early 1980s.

Also in the pipeline is a collection of completed-but-unpublished Silver Star mini-series by Kurt Busiek, along with Busiek and Neil Vokes' Teen Agents mini-series.

Weekly World News to close (aliens not blamed!)

It's the final nail in the coffin of the Free Press here in America. Just kidding.

Publisher American Media Inc. said on Tuesday it will stop printing the Weekly World News, which for 28 years gleefully chronicled the exploits of alien babies, animal-human hybrids and dead celebrities.

The company said in a brief statement it would end the print version of the tabloid newspaper next month but would maintain the online version (www.weeklyworldnews.com).

'Due to the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace that have impacted the newsstand, American Media, Inc. today announced it will close the print version of the Weekly World News, effective with the August 27 issue. Weekly World News was AMI's smallest weekly publication,' the company said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

Spokesman Richard Valvo declined further comment.

American Media is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, and is best known as the publisher of the National Enquirer. The company announced last month it was exploring the sale of five of its 16 magazines as part of a strategy to focus on celebrity weeklies and lifestyle magazines.

The Weekly World News, which boasted it was 'The World's Only Reliable Newspaper,' reveled in shocking and almost always exclusive reports about extra-terrestrials, ghosts, scoundrels and scientific discoveries, such as the cure for lovesickness found on the walls of an ancient Mexican monument.

The Look of Ultimates Volume 3

Well, they've released a piece of Mad's cover art for the first issue of the next Ultimates story line:



This art comes to us via IGN.com.

Pitch of Fear

The Web of Caves

The Doctor is imprisoned

Brilliant

A Final Crisis Teaser

Well, we knew a third Crisis was coming because of the not-so-subtle hints, and the fact that Countdown has to be counting down to something.

DC Comics has provided Newsarama with the following image (by 52 cover artist JG Jones), and offered no further comment.

Blah Blah Blog by Tom Brevoort

I'm really not sure if it would have been any better, but Tom Brevoort is posting Mark Millar's original pitch for Marvel Comics' Civil War event on the Marvel website.

Mostly this is being posted so that people can see the process of how a pitch is turned into a book.

As I mentioned on Friday, this week I'm planning on posting a series of documents from the making of CIVIL WAR, since people seem to be interested in that, and since the earlier series on HOUSE OF M was so well-received. So that's what you all have to look forward to in the days ahead.

To start with, here is the first document written by Mark Millar outlining his initial ideas for CIVIL WAR. This was done immediately after the creator conference at which the initial ideas for CIVIL WAR were thrown around, and you'll see Mark make reference to some of those conversations herein. Also, the version I've chosen to upload has notes incorporated into the body of the text from both Joe Quesada and myself, so you can get a sense as to our innediate eractions to the specifics of what Mark was proposing. And because I can't seem to do different colors in this blog, the Joe comments are labeled JQ, and my comments are labeled TB.