A smile on my face, Byan Adams’ Touch the Hand playing, today the first book of Newsies & Bootblacks has just been finished. It comprises all the rules needed to play the game. Book II New Paris detailing the setting, and Book III Adventures on New Paris, on well, adventures will cover everything else. I am pretty confident I will be able to finish before schedule. Which is great, because I have ideas for other games already boiling in my head. But that’s for another time.
Anything different from Newsies and Pickpockets?
In a word, yes. First of all the rules has been polished, many typos and misspelling corrected — and that’s before sending them to the editor –. Then, in the more substantial aspect.
- Added exotic but very cool weapons as the Galuois Pistol or the knuckleduster-pistol.
- Simplified the wording, killed some odd rules.
- The published edition will see more and better original art by Joyce Anne Martin.
- Added optional rules on: weather, poison, wages and sales, an optional sickness, and the best of it all,
Inventions
As an optional rule, player characters, provided they have materials and some place to work, will be able to build new inventions. Obviously, we cannot be speaking of battleships here; a bunch of newsboys lack the needed resources for such a venture; but a diminutive autogyro, a powered bicycle or even a steam powered robot dog is not beyond the realms of imagination.
Yet, it’s an optional rule because it could easily dominate the whole game, especially if the Game Master is overly generous. The rules as generous enough as they are.