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Monday 14 January 2013

Get ready for Osprey Adventures

My own role-playing campaigns are frequently set in historical periods rather than outright fantasy settings. The research is half the fun, and usually the first place I'll look is Osprey's military books, a series I started collecting as a board wargamer. In the last couple of years Osprey have woken up to the overlap between wargamers, roleplayers, history buffs and SF readers, leading them to buy up punky sci-fi imprint Angry Robot. And now they're launching a couple of new series under their Osprey Adventures imprint.

Myths and Legends (quoting from the 2013 Osprey Books catalogue now) "examines the great stories that have echoed down through time and have helped to shape our cultures. Each title in the series focuses on a specific legendary figure, such as King Arthur, or upon a collection of myths, like dragon-slayers, and presents their story in a straightforward, entertaining style. Alongside the narrative is factual information about the history behind the stories and how these legends developed and changed over time. The books also contain Osprey’s usual array of illustrative material, including specially commissioned artwork plates."

This is actually almost word for word a concept that Jamie and I came up with fifteen years ago. We called it Legendary Sourcepacks (previously discussed here) and spent the better part of a year pitching it to publishers. In hindsight we would have had more success if (a) we hadn't started with medieval Japan, (b) had waited at least a decade, and (c) approached Osprey first! But every cloud has a silver lining, and the way it turned out we don't have to write the books, we can collect them instead.

The other series that's launching Osprey Adventures is Dark Osprey. These are titles such as The Nazi Occult:
"In the dark dungeons beneath Nazi Germany, teams of occult experts delved into ancient and forbidden lore, searching for lost secrets of power. Ordered by Hitler to discover new weapons that could be unleashed on his enemies, the occultists experimented with dark magics, mystical artifacts, and creatures thought only to exist in nightmare. This book tells the complete history of the Nazi occult programs, from their foundations in Hitler’s early esoteric studies and the quests for the Ark of the Covenant, the Spear of Destiny, and the Holy Grail, through their experiments with lycanthropes and zero-point energy. It also includes sections on the shadow war fought in the dying days of the Reich as the Nazis sought to stave off defeat through pacts with diabolic entities, attempts to preserve the Fuhrer’s brain, and the deployment of the strange flying saucers that battled to save the final Nazi stronghold in the Antarctic.  For years, the Allied governments worked to keep this information from reaching the public, and sought to discredit those few who dared to seek the truth. Now, using a combination of photography and artwork reconstructions, the true story of the most secret battles of World War II can finally be told."
Now, even in a fantasy, it's not really feasible for the Nazis, who were the batty New Agers of their era, to have got within a million miles of investigating zero-point energy, having kicked all the good quantum physicists out of Germany in the mid-thirties. But the other stuff sounds coherent and should fuel an alternate WW2 role-playing campaign if you like Hellboy or Iron Sky.

11 comments:

  1. I must recommend Heather Pringles The Master Plan which has very sobering effect when read after stuff more sensational nazi occultism and superscience stuff.

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    1. Actually that looks more up my street as our games tend to be fairly realistic. Thanks for the tip, Jonas. But for those whose RPG games are more fantastical, Hite's is probably the one.

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  2. Oo - these look great. Thanks for the heads up.

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    1. And that's not all that Osprey Adventures have in store for 2013, Chris. More news shortly... ;-)

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  3. Ooh, nice Osprey gorgoeusness with myths and fantasy. Yummy.

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  4. Ah! Osprey made an excellent move hiring Ken Hite to write a book on Nazi occultism. Ken is an expert on conspiracy theory myths, folklore, obscure history (and pseudo-history), and he is well known for his ability to craft them into exciting and weird game worlds. Just read his "Suppressed Transmission" column or, better yet, find a copy of "The Day After Ragnarok" for the Savage Worlds or Hero engines.

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    1. I was about to say, "Ken Hite? It seems Osprey might produce some very 'gamable' (ugh!) material indeed.' But you beat me to it. I'm looking forward to when Qelong, his adventure for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, is finally available.

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    2. I haven't read any of Kenneth Hite's work, but I'm familiar with his name as a prolific GURPS contributor. This probably isn't the place to point out that, in Norse myth, the day after Ragnarok turns out quite nice :-)

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  5. Osprey are cool. It is also my impression that they have nailed down an efficient production process (I have proofread a few of their military history books).

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  6. Agreed. But it's not just the production process. They recognized the need to estabilish themselves as a brand (several parallel brands, in fact), to build a direct relationship with the customer, and to integrate digital and print strategies.

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    1. ...which is one of the reasons why they are cool! (apart from the content itself). I have had a few regular jobs in publishing, though not actually with Osprey (for whom I have only done freelance work), and what I saw was that whenever anything unusual or innovative was proposed, it would collide with the marketing and sales teams, whose first question (or possibly second, after "Well, who's going to read it and why?) would be "So what's it like that we've published before?" I understand the logic of such interrogation from the sales & marketing point of view, given that most publishers will orient themselves toward specific markets, but still it does raise a barrier against publishing anything that's a bit "different".

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