All posts by Rodney

Hi there, I'm Rodney. Writer, Game Designer, Editor, Kitbasher, Skateboarder, and Ork 'Ed Banga. But Nothing Without Christ!

Happy Thanksgiving

We’d like to wish all our US and Canadian customers a very special Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not a custom where I’m from, but I’m blessed to have joined my American friends in Japan to celebrate this special holiday before.

Image sourced from http://www.wpclipart.com/
Image sourced from http://www.wpclipart.com/

Personally, I’m thankful that I’m running Rising Phoenix Games full-time now, and that wouldn’t be possible without your support. Some of our customers have come back again and again, some have written sterling reviews on Drive Thru RPG, and many have picked up one of our products and enjoyed them with friends, and at the end of the day, that’s a big part of what this hobby is all about.

Our newest line is our Field Guide series of monster books, which includes Griffins—A Field Guide and Phoenixes—A Field Guide. The series is illustrated by the talented Mr. Bob Greyvenstein and written by myself. We have several more Field Guides in the works, covering fantasy staples as well as new creatures and races. Now, if you sign up for our newsletter, you’ll receive a copy of Baleful Strix—A Free Field Guide.

Sign Up Here!

We’ve also put out a new 1-on-1 adventure, Dying Dead, which is compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. We’re offering you a chance to win a copy by guessing what monsters we’ll be covering next in our Field Guide series. More details on the blog. But hurry, the contest ends on the 30th of November.

Have a great one and tell thrilling tales.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Griffins—A Field Guide Banner Ad


Flame…ON!

Our newest book is up on Drive Thru RPG!

Phoenixes—A Field Guide, the cover.

Rising Phoenix Games and The Figment Factory have brought you the second publication in our Field Guide series.

I could not be more proud of our work on this. And phoenixes! Man! Those birds have a place in my heart. Getting to do not 1 but 7 of them was a sweet challenge.

Of all the birds in this book, I think I’m most proud of the Japanese inspired houou, partly because I just haven’t found them in the core books, but also because they remind me of holidays in Japan, visiting ancient temples or checking out works of art by greats like Hokusai.

Oh, and wow, speaking of art, the art in this is top notch. I think Bob Greyvenstein is going to need to offer his illustrations as printed posters, they’re amazing.

You can grab the book on Drive Thru RPG and RPG Now.

New Monsters and Free Books

We’ve been hard at work on THREE new monster books, one of which will be available as a free download to subscribers.

Our production schedule looks like this:

  1. Griffins—A Field Guide
  2. TBA—A Field Guide (Art done, writing almost done)
  3. TBA—A Free Field Guide (Art done, writing done, currently in proofreading)
  4. TBA—A Field Guide (Art done, crunch done, fluff to be done)

Griffins—A Field Guide imageAny guesses as to what we’ve got planned? Leave a comment below and one lucky reader will walk away with a free copy of Dying Dead.

And don’t forget to subscribe for a chance to get your hands on that free field guide.

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View previous campaigns.


Contest Details, AKA, The Fine Print
The winner will be randomly drawn and announced on the 30th of November, 2016. To claim your prize we’ll need a valid e-mail address. Your prize will be fulfilled via Drive Thru RPG.

Griffins — Designing the Beasts

Griffins — A Field Guide, our first monster book, went up on Drive Thru RPG last week. The book, beautifully illustrated by Bob Greyvenstein, features six different griffin species, from a small griffin familiar to the large noble griffin and a terrifying evil griffin.

Designing the half-lion, half-eagle creatures presented a unique challenge. The beasts had to be varied enough to provide GMs with plenty of options, while still fitting in with the griffin theme. The trick, we discovered, was to design for specific roles. So we’ve got riding griffins (the noble, common and wingless griffin), others built for encounters (the feral and terror griffin) and the sorcerer’s griffin built as a familiar.

Our field guide approach is different from other traditional monster books in that we provide a rounded look at our subjects. We included griffin rider archetypes and a cavalier order—the Order of the Gryphon—plus sections on ecology and on rearing and training, to ensure there would be something for players too.

If you like griffins, be sure to check out the book, I think you’ll be impressed.

Tell Us What You Want!

I’ve been chatting to Bob of Figment Factory — who created our HeroGridz tiles — about doing a second set of sewer tiles. I want to reach out to you to find out what you’d like to see added, what themes you’d like covered and your general thoughts on the new line. Drop a comment here or hit us up on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. We’d love to hear from you.

We’ve also made it easier to collect HeroGridz tiles. Now you can buy individually printed tiles from One Bookshelf sites. Need an extra T-Junction? Just buy what you need, without having to buy another core set. We’ll be adding straight sections and junction/entrance tiles later in the month.

You can also check out our 1 inch tile line, I’d love to put more sets of those out if there’s much interest.

Surfin’ the Tube!

Hello hello hello!
We’ve just moved AND started this game publishing thing for reals. It’s exciting and a wee bit scary — but life on the edge always is. Awesome!

We’re super excited about HeroGridz, our new clix scale map tiles. I LOVE minis and miniature gaming, but I haven’t found many map options for my clix collections, especially modular sewer systems, so I got some made. I spoke to Bob from the Figment Factory, and he put together some awesome tiles. You can grab the Core Set on Drive Thru RPG — check ’em out!

Bob and I are working on some other things too, so watch this space.

June Update

Update time.

I thought I’d try posting some biweekly updates concerning Rising Phoenix Games  and my own writing and design projects. Onto the news…

I’ve contacted my successor, who will be taking over my teaching post here in Japan in the summer. She seems lovely and the perfect fit for the job. After 5 years on the JET Programme it’s great to be handing over to new talent.

That leads nicely into the big question: “What Next?”
In August I’m taking the plunge and going full time into game design, writing and development. This is a big step, but I’ve managed to build a network with some great companies, both in Japan and the USA, which means that my dreams are now a plausible reality.

And now for the highlights from the last two weeks:

Claustrophobia! got a 5 star rating AND an amazing review on YouTube.

– Lots of animals visited our town, we believe Kintaro is holding a sumo tournament in the area.

– Rodney has joined the Steampunk Musha team (but don’t worry, he’s still a Phoenix Gamer).

– Met with the owner of JAST USA here in Japan to talk about some programming work for them. If you’ve never heard of them go check out Steins;Gate and see what the whole visual novel thing is about.

– Father’s Day number 2 was amazing. We did a lovely little nature walk through the mountains. Didn’t see Kintaro or his friends.

– Secured a deal to write a role-playing game for an established author. More info in a few weeks.

– Wrapping up some setting development for our good friends at Wayward Rogues Publishing.

– And some other RPG design work is on the cards, just need to sign some contracts before I talk about that too.

– Finished reading Map of Bones by James Rollins, a very interesting read that’s going to lead to plenty of Wikidiving.

– And a bunch of other things are in the works. More on that later.

Till next time.