Hi everyone, Ed here to round out the year!
For me, this is the time of year I get pensive and by the time New Year rolls around, I’m more thinking about what I’m going to do next year. So I thought I’d spend a few minutes with you to talk about what we’ve accomplished this year with your help.
I think this is the first time ever that I’ve had to research this retrospective. I can’t tell you, off the top of my head, everything we’ve accomplished this year: it’s been so much that it feels like we’ve packed two years into the one.
So: what have we done in 2017?
Era: The Consortium has grown…
Our Sci-Fi epic has exploded this year, in a really good way. The 8 expansions funded at the end of 2016, which were delivered this year, and the 5 additional ones in 2017, plus hundreds of new players at conventions all through the year, have meant that this has been the biggest year ever for Era: The Consortium.
My future plans have always involved this game and that has not changed: we’ll be continuing to work to bring our flagship game out to new people.
Era: Survival has “Expanded”!
Era: Survival now has 3 brand new expansions, thanks to the Kickstarter we ran in the middle of this year. Our Survival Horror game has proved very popular among roleplayers looking for a realistic, gritty, post-apocalyptic game and also among complete newbies to roleplaying.
We’ll be continuing to support Era: Survival with Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/SoV), where a monthly session is put out for some time yet, and I intend these expansions to be the first of many: there’s a lot more of Gaia’s story to tell.
Era Pocket Collection
When we started the Era pocket games with Era: Lyres Pocket Edition, we never expected them to become some of our most popular offerings.
We’ve doubled the number of pocket games we’re offering this year to include Era: Balam and Era: Hitman, both of which had a slightly unusual but very successful release from our perspective!
With Era: Hitman offering a different take on superpowers from Era: The Empowered and Era: Balam offering something which wasn’t offered in the same way in Era: The Consortium (the duality of Pilot and Fighter bringing strength to both!), I definitely feel that these two games offer something new and different.
Card Games
Champion of Earth has been a great success this year – so much so that we’ve actually had a Kickstarter for an expansion already! This game, where you fight to defend the Earth against alien invasion has proved extremely popular at conventions and we hope to continue to see it grow.
Evil Overlord is finally ready for its release, which I expect to happen in 2018. Picking up the pieces after an alien invasion is never easy, but it does provide loads of an opportunity for an Evil Mastermind hoping to take over the world and declare themselves Overlord. We’ve been offering demos through the second half of this year at conventions and it’s been a great success!
Era: The Empowered
Development for our third roleplaying game has finally hit its stride, with Artwork being produced and the writing being tackled in an organised way.
This is going to be the second game we create which offers something on the scale of Era: The Consortium – multiple playable eras which give you a different types of game depending where you jump into the timeline. I’m very excited about Era: The Empowered finally emerging and I hope that you’ll enjoy it as much as we’ve enjoyed making it in the new year.
Era: The Chosen
I’ve been developing Era: The Chosen for almost a year now.
With the aim of “Doctor Who meets Turok”, this game has inspired me in a way that few others have in recent years. Working with Darren and Jennifer on this has been a really great experience, and Mikhail has once again done a fine job on the artwork.
Again, I expect this to emerge in 2018.
Licenses
I will remember 2017 as the year we really embraced the idea of getting licenses as a company. We’ve been hunting for a few really important (to us!) licenses for IPs that we think will fit the Era d10 Rule Set very well.
I’ve announced one already – we’ll be making the Battlecruiser Alamo RPG for Richard Tongue’s amazing series of novels in the Triplanetary Confederation universe. I’ve worked with Richard directly on this – he’s written a good amount of the book personally, which I could not be happier about!
We’re in pursuit of a few more which are near and dear to my own heart and I hope to be able to give you some good news on those before too long.
SoV Comics
2017 was also the year we decided that SoV Comics should be run a little more separately from the game creation arm of Shades of Vengeance.
Johnathan Lewis has been doing a fantastic job, and we’re produced a number of comics this year, including more work for Penumbra and the Bug War, as well as Violete.
We’re actually producing more comics as we speak and we intend SoV Comics to have its own location at the MCM Comicon in May 2018! With any luck, we’ll be able to continue to pull in great reviews like we have for Penumbra and continue to make more of these awesome comics!
Audio Work
We’ve been working really hard on a few different audio projects which Amy has recently announced. We’re going to be showing them to you in the new year, but it’s worth calling out both Leo and Amy’s work on this stuff – the three of us have been working really hard on making Radio Free Taranis something that you won’t want to miss!
Leo is also working on recording an audio book version of the Era: The Consortium rulebook. I’ve heard several of the stories and he’s doing a fantastic job. I, for one, can’t wait to listen to the whole thing!
In Summary…
We’ve achieved a lot this year. We’ve published 17 new books and card decks, we’ve put in a lot of the work to things you will see in the new year…
I think 2017 can be marked a success for Shades of Vengeance and we’re looking forward to seeing what 2018 will bring!
– Ed
