My rants against BSG and Caprica aside, I have been a little off the grid the last few days. Conan and I have been picking apart the NeuroSpasta rules left and right, top to bottom. The setting is still lacking in detail and that is going to be the direction I take for the next few weeks. We have played around with a few classes, specifically with Manipulator, which can make or break the game. I know people will object to the fact that our hacking rules do not require a map. There were many reasons for this. For one: it's just not realistic. Two: We don't expect the entire group to create hackers so to be bogged down with a battle only one or two people will play seemed...well...selfish. Most hacking battles take only minutes and occur during physical combat. Of course, battle servers and giant AIs may be different but they still won't measure to the length of full gridmap combat. Manipulators have powers caused "Hacks" and can enhance those with programs and feats that expand one's repertoire.

I can also safely announce the full list of NeuroSpasta classes:

Combat Authority
Faceman
Gunslinger
Heavy
Infiltrator
Man-At-Arms
Manipulator
Sniper
Specialist
Vanguard

This is in addition to the six ladders which can be combined with any of these.

I have stuck by my guns and refused to insert a katana in the game...
...but there will be chainsaw...

Sorry for the delays. I just spend the last week giving the core book a final polish along with the help of our editor before it goes to layout. This gave me on last opportunity to fix any issues we might have had. I can't say every spelling mistake and punctuation error was fixed but I will say most of them have been. Actually the real benefit has been the work on NeuroSpasta. I didn't take a break after finishing Amethyst; I jumped right into the next game. I carried over the rules I needed from the previous game and started creating another 200 powers. Getting the opportunity to touch up Amethyst one more time, I was able to put back the elements I carried from Amethyst to NeuroSpasta BACK into Amethyst, not revised with the experience of the intervening months. These include certain wordings to prevent confusion but the big alteration was with ground vehicles. We admitted kinda playing it loose with vehicles with Amethyst but we knew we needed a more strict set of rules of NeuroSpasta. Well, I took this opening to insert the new NeuroSpasta vehicle rules into Amethyst, to give players more options and to make vehicle combat more appealing and more realistic (well, as realistic as we can get). We'll have more info on exact releases quite shortly, I imagine.

It is good that a few people read these because as you all should be aware...
...Goodman Games is releasing From Here to There, a compilation of small adventures meant to...ahem...”bridge” points between encounters of a bigger adventure or campaign. Yes, yours truly is one of the writers of this module. I hope everyone will have a chance to get this. I enjoyed the hell out of the experience. The product comes out in June.

Here is the link

Meanwhile, I should let you know that I have seen the final version of the Amethyst FreeRPG, Hearts of Chaos. It looks fantastic.

Also...although it’s unfortunate, Amethyst’s release has been pushed back to May. Sorry folks. Couldn’t be avoided.