Bully Pulpit Games
Posted by Jason on February 1st, 2012 — in News
It is now February, when the grim clutches of winter deaden our normally cheerful hearts. Haggard and shot though with the icy chill of bootless melancholy, we realized we had to do something to bring cheer back into our lives, and fast! And what better way to spark the fires of friendship and collegiality than to give a bunch of stuff away?
All through the month of February we’ll be uploading free stuff to the Website. Most of it will be small games and all of it comes without a warranty – this material hasn’t been playtested to the BPG standard and may be deeply weird. It’s all workable, though, and we encourage you to check it out and give it a try.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on our Free Game February offerings, which will remain available via the downloads page under the “free games” category indefinitely.
First up: Dungeon Squad 2!
Posted by Steve on January 3rd, 2012 — in News
The entire Bully Pulpit team (yes, both of us!) will be taking the corporate jet to Oakland this month for a pair of great Fiasco events at the world-famous Endgame.
On Saturday, January 14 we’ll be helping to run Improv for Gamers with Mia Blankensop, Karen Twelves, Matthew Klein and Sean Nittner. We’ll be using Fiasco as a way to demonstrate how to use improv techniques to improve role-playing games, and just based on the attendees it looks like a lot of fun.
Then on Sunday, January 15th, Endgame is hosting a FiascoCon, and you’re invited! The event will run in two sessions from 11am to 6:30pm and there are just a few spaces left across both sessions. If you’re anywhere nearby and like fun, go to the Endgame website and sign up! We hope to see you there.
Posted by Steve on January 2nd, 2012 — in News
Kicking off our 2012 Playset of the Month series for January is De’ Medici, a bit of classy Italian comedy written by Giulia Barbano and Renato Ramonda of the Janus Design collective.
Florence, 1559: a city of opportunities for men who have the guts to pursue them. Here, struggling artists find rich patrons, visionary architects create their dreams, ruthless mercenaries get lucrative contracts, and shrewd merchants become as powerful as kings.
Ever since the times of Cosimo the Elder, the bankers, the Medici, have ruled this city. Sure, way back then it was still called a democracy, but the art, the armies and the votes were all paid with Medici money. The words of the heretic monk Savonarola shook the consciences for a brief time, bringing back a glimpse of the Republic; but the Emperor and the Pope put the Medici back in charge, with Duke Alessandro.
Upon the Duke’s assassination twenty-two years ago, the merchants and lords of the city enthusiastically welcomed young Cosimo, the barely seventeen years old son of the mercenary warlord Giovanni delle Bande Nere, who had never lived in Florence. The nobles saw him as inexperienced, weak, and an easy puppet to manipulate.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Posted by Steve on December 22nd, 2011 — in News
Happy Holidays, Fiasco fans! As a special seasonal gift, we’re finally releasing Chris Bennett’s infamous Los Angeles 1936 for everyone to enjoy!
“I needed a drink. I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.” —Raymond Chandler
In Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, circa 1936, the sun-blinded streets would just as soon put a knife in your back. And all the diamond-edged glamour of a Hollywood starlet can’t save you from a fall off a 30-story building. Enter the black and white world of smoky nightclubs and faded apartment hallways, where every crime is shot “on location.” There are many grand dreams waiting to be unraveled. Are you ready to enter the labyrinth?
Originally released only as a Gen Con special exclusive, Los Angeles 1936 is one of the first and best Fiasco playsets. Chris wrote the initial version before the game was even finished, and his enthusiasm and forward thinking are partly responsible for the current Playset of the Month model.
Chris has been one of the biggest supporters of the game since the beginning, and is a true friend to Bully Pulpit. Thanks for all your help Chris, and for letting us keep this playset to ourselves for so long!
Posted by Steve on December 2nd, 2011 — in News
Bully Pulpit Games is looking for an artist! And not just any artist–we need someone with an uncommon style to work with us on our new tabletop, pencil-and-paper roleplaying game Durance.
Durance is set in a penal colony in the distant future. The art for the game consists of the sketches of a Marine Lance Corporal who is observing her strange and often terrible surroundings, telling the story of daily life in this remote and brutal outpost with pen and ink.
Our artist needs to be accomplished at sketch art. The look we’re after is observational slice-of-life, but the lives being observed are set in a gritty, industrial future on a remote planet. The individual pieces will have a pulled-from-a-notebook quality and will, as much as the text itself, introduce readers to the futuristic colony, her citizens, the convicts, and the lives they lead. As the artist on this project, you’ll be taking the lead in establishing the look and feel for this setting based on art direction and references we provide.
The art will be naturalistic and we are vigorously avoiding a typical RPG, animation, or comic book look. We want the pieces to really showcase what our imaginary Marine is observing day to day around her. Sketching styles vary and we don’t have a particular visual look in mind, as long as it is well-crafted and communicates the feel of the game.
If this sounds exciting to you and you like the idea of working on a tabletop, pencil-and-paper roleplaying game, please get in touch! Send a link to your portfolio to art@bullypulpitgames.com. If we like what we see, we’ll follow up with the complete art specifications. BPG is responsive, easy to work with, and we pay on time.
