Cam Banks’ Magic Vacuum Design Studio has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Cortex Prime, the newest version of the Cortex Plus system. Cam was the lead designer and developer of the Cortex Plus system, which was used in the Smallville, Leverage, Firefly, and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying games. Two different books are offered, a 152+ page roleplaying game, and a basic system reference guidebook. A $10 pledge gets you pdf versions of both books in January while physical copies begin at $25, arriving in April of 2018, with a hardcover Cortex Prime book only available during this campaign starting at $35.

Posthuman Studios has announced a second edition of Eclipse Phase, launching a funding campaign last week. The science fiction roleplaying game is set in a quite advanced future: your mind can inhabit different bodies, death is something that can be easily avoided, and need is alleviated. However, transhumanity has fled Earth following a war against artificial intelligences, dispersing thoughout the solar system (and beyond) for survival. The new edition features faster character creation and resleeving (switching from body to body), an updated ruleset for quicker and simpler play at the table, and a redesigned layout to minimize flipping through the book to find relevant rules. Already funded, a $60 pledge gets you a copy of the physical book around October; a pdf-only reward is available down at a $20 pledge.

The story of Brass is a long and troubled tale, but finally Brass is being reprinted in an updated version from Roxley Games. Brass, now titled Brass: Lancashire, is part of a funding campaign that also is producing a sequel game, Brass: Birmingham. Both games have updated artwork (the best art I’ve seen in any edition of Brass, frankly). Lancashire features updated 2- and 3-player rules to “provide an experience more consistent with [the 4-player gameplay]”. Birmingham has a dynamic board setup with new canal and rail scoring (plus an evocative nightscape map). Crazily over-funded and with several upgrade stretch goals already unlocked, you can get either one of the games for about $60 or both as a reward for backing at the $100 level. (Funding levels are in CAD.) Final versions of the games are expected in January of 2018.

Back when I was heading up a rather large monthly game day event, it seemed that every third attendee was a budding game designer. Gameplaywright and Atlas Games are creating a great product for these designers: The White Box. This project comes with components for prototyping and development, a book of essays about how to make games, and a gift certificate for The Game Crafter, a small press board game printer that is commonly used for prototyping. A $30 pledge gets you a copy of The White Box in October. Higher level pledges get you a consultation on your game design.

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This afternoon, Monica Valentinelli, the project lead for Margaret Weis Productions’ Firefly line and developer for their upcoming Cortex Plus Action corebook, announced she is no longer working for MWP. Her partner and publishing director for OneBookShelf, Matt McElroy, also announced that he will neither be developing the Cortex Plus Heroic corebook nor managing the Kickstarter campaign for the two books. “If MWP does go forward with those books they will be under different leadership,” McElroy posted on RPG.net’s forums.

In March, MWP announced they would be going to Kickstarter for a campaign to produce generic Cortex Plus Action and Cortex Plus Heroic Roleplaying rulebooks. Originally described as coming during Spring of 2016, the campaign has yet to be launched. The MWP website was revamped in the past few months with a focus on novels; the announcement of the Kickstarter campaign is no longer on the website.

As to roleplaying games, only the generic Cortex Classic book and the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide are offered, although the entire Firefly line is available on DriveThruRPG. When asked in August if there were any more Firefly supplements coming from MWP, McElroy responded, “Firefly was always a limited license.”

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Monte Cook Games and Margaret Weis Productions are joining Wizards of the Coast in offering hosted licenses for third-party publishing. Like WOTC with the Dungeon Masters Guild for Dungeons & Dragons, the two companies are working with DriveThruRPG to set up special online storefronts, launching this spring, where anyone will be able to upload and offer for sale digital products that make use of the Cypher and Cortex roleplaying game systems.

A hosted license—where an open game license is tied to the use of a publisher-sponsored marketplace—allows a publisher to collect royalties on related sales and to provide some degree of oversight.

In the case of the Dungeon Masters Guild, the license also provides for broader use of the original publisher’s intellectual property (such as campaign settings). However, whether such expanded access will apply to either the Cypher System Creator Program or the Cortex Plus Creator Studio, remains to be seen.

Margaret Weis Productions’ announcement did state that the new program would replace existing arrangements for Cortex Plus Fan Product and Cortex Plus Official Licensed Products.

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Cortex Plus is the basic system underlying Margaret Weis Productions’ newer RPGs, Marvel Herioc Roleplaying, Leverage, and Smallville. The Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide is a sampling—albeit a large sampling—of guides, optional rules, settings, and sample scenarios for the system.

Some of the specific sections included in the book are: “How to Hack Cortex Plus”, “Hacking Stress”, “The Kingdom as a Character”, “Vampville”, “Episodes at the End of Time”, and “Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying”.

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