Squarehex UK Expo Pricelist

I've printed a price list for the last couple of UK Games Expos. This year's is the biggest yet. There's lots more of our own products, but there's still room for plenty of OSR, Savage Worlds, Miniatures, and a few board and card games.

We'll be re-stocking the stand every day,but a few of the items are limited to just 1 or 2 copies. If you spot something you particularly want get to us as early as you can. If you can't see something on the stand please ask as I'm not sure they'll be room to display everything.

Cthulhu Book Posters Project is Live!

I've just launched my 13th Kickstarter project. This time I'm funding a print run of two posters, each featuring the full text of a H.P.Lovecraft story. 

The first poster is A2-sized (420x594mm/16.5x23.4inches) and contains the entire text of The Call of Cthulhu. The second poster is A1-sized (594x841mm/23.4x33.1inches) and contains the entire text of At the Mountains of Madness.

Here's a link to the project page:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/cthulhu-book-posters

If you are at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham (29th-31st May), then you can take a look at them on the Squarehex stand. I'll also be selling my very limited test print-run stock of the posters at the show.

Petty Gods Print Copies

I was very surprised to get a parcel from Lulu this morning. In it three hot off the press copies of Petty Gods. I got two hardbacks and one softcover of what is a very hefty book.

I'm keeping one of the hardbacks but will take the other two copies with me to the UK Games Expo at the end of the month. If anybody going wants a copy I'm happy to sell them at £22 (Lulu price £18.98 + postage) for the hardback and £12 (Lulu price £9.98) for the softcover. Those prices are based on what I paid including a discount code and postage rounded up to the nearest pound.

Well done to Richard LeBlanc and everyone else involved for getting this wayward project to completion. I'm really looking forward to giving it a proper read over several evenings. I hope the OSR can produce another project of this scale, and I would be very keen to submit material again.

Here's photos of the books side-by-side. The second photo shows a randomly selected (it just happened to be the one with my entry on it) spread of the contents.

Watercolour Hex Map

This is an A2 map painted with a set of watercolour paints (the hard block type) that I borrowed from my daughter's art supplies.

To start with I simply drew a rough line to mark the coast and the island. Then I laid down a thin wash of blue for the sea and light green for the land. Once dry I applied extra washes of; grey for the mountain, darker green for the forests, ochre for the swamps/marshes, and a slightly stronger blue for deeper areas of the sea. The rivers and mountain details were added in with a slightly thicker paint mix, and roads/settlements were added with rough dark pencil. At this stage the map was very powdery so to stop the colour rubbing off I sealed with a thin mix of water and PVA glue.

The A2 sheets are available from the Squarehex site here:
http://squarehex.myshopify.com/collections/square-hex-pads/products/a2-20mm-numbered-hex-sheet-tube-of-10-sheets

Finished Car Wars Map

I've finished the Car Wars map that I posted as a work-in-progress here. I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

I got a couple of other ideas whilst drawing it, but it might be a few weeks before I get time to draw any of them.  I also thought it would be cool to print some paper with the grey shading of the old Car Wars maps so that cut out buildings drawn on the white sheets can be placed on it. I'll add that to my long list of future mapping sheets.

The blank mapping sheets can be found here.

Shrine Geomorph Contest Entry

I'm really enjoying the bi-weekly Geomorph contest run by Inkwell Ideas. I'm using the contest as catalyst for not only spending more time drawing maps, but also to try out new ways of creating them. For my shrine entry, I created the whole map using Scribus (free DTP software). There's not a single bit of drawing on it. Everything is just lines and shapes added one-by-one.

The map is called The Shrine of Collected Confessions. Worshipers place a coin in one of the fonts situated at the corner, and the door opposite opens as if by magic, to grant them access to one of the shrines four private chambers. They can then say their prayers, and confess their sins. Of course they are blissfully unaware that anything juicy that they reveal is recorded by the scribes in the secret chamber at the centre of the shrine.

WIP Car Wars Map

Although my stock of A2 quarter inch grid sheets turned up on Friday (pre-orders were all posted on Saturday), I've only just had a chance to draw something on one of them.

I'm drawing a map of a compound similar in style to the one featured in Truck Stop Car Wars supplement. I'm adding features that will feature in an adventure I've put together. I'll probably run the game using Savage Worlds rather than Car Wars but I'll still add some Car Wars elements.

I'll try and do some more work on it over the next couple of days.