Tag Archives: Claustrophobia!

Claustrophobia is Four! Celebrate with Us!

Claustrophobia!, the game of little gnomes in tight spaces, turns 4 today! Celebrate with us and get 40% off Claustrophobia! when you buy it from our store. Full details below.Claustrophobia Cover

“This is pretty much up our alley.”

— John Arcadian, Gnome Stew

Grab your pointy hat and say goodbye to the daisies, it’s time to embark on a perilous subterranean journey as a brave — or suicidal — garden gnome.
Face grueling challenges and unique monsters as you explore the dark places, traveling aboard the HMS Keeton, a scratch-built, nuclear-powered drilling rig with a mind of its own.
Claustrophobia’s unique mechanics and elegant rules system emphasize cooperative story play, providing the perfect mix for an evening’s hilarious insanity. Just add friends and dice.

 

*Use the code ‘FourGnomes’ on checkout.

The coupon is good for 40% off on Claustrophobia!, until the 7th of June, 2020. Use the coupon code ‘FourGnomes’ on checkout to redeem your discount.

A Brief History of Claustrophobia!

Personally, I learned so much from making Claustrophobia! If you’ve ever wanted to make a game, then the best advice I can give you is: go for it. The process is worth the journey, and each game you create will help you grow as a designer.

Claustrophobia! isn’t perfect, by any means, but it taught me so much and helped me do a much better job of later projects, such as the upcoming Nightscape: Red Terrors TTRPG. It’s one of the reasons why I treasure the game, it was a stepping stone towards going pro.

Here’s a look at the various logos we had for Claustrophobia! I think they speak for themselves. Hiring my brother Don to take on the art and layout of Claustrophobia! was one of the best decisions I made. The book wouldn’t have been nearly as good without him, or my team of playtesters.

The Future of Claustrophobia!

Work is already underway on Claustrophobia! Expanded, the second edition of the game. I’ve learned so much in these four years since the book launched, and there are many things I want to do with the system, that revisiting and expanding the system into a fully formed RPG just makes sense.

I’m toying with licensing the core mechanics under a Creative Commons license, which means you’ll be able to use the mechanics in your own published games. I’d love to see Claustrophobia’s community grow, and supporting creators is one way I can see of doing that. What do you think?

New Fiction

Don’t forget to check out our latest fiction from Valkyrie: Ragnarok. The crew of the dwarven mine crawler known as the Rat face new dangers and have tough decisions to make in Soup With the Enemy.

Bowls

Madness Cards Available Again

Our Madness Cards for fifth edition are available again!

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, card printing was unavailable for a time, so we used the opportunity to update the set. This meant that we had to reorder print proofs, but we did and they look great. Madness Cards are available through Drive Thru RPG.

Madness Cards Set
Madness Cards for fifth edition.
We’ve got Madness Cards coming for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Second Edition too, so watch the blog.



Black Friday Specials

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals

Black Friday is practically here—depending on where in the world you are—and Cyber Monday isn’t very far off.
We’ve got some great specials for you.

All Products 17% – 30% off on Drive Thru RPG

 

Claustrophobia! the hilarious game of suicidal garden gnomes on a mission to the depths of the earth.

Claustrophobia Cover

Field Guides — Never leave the tavern without a good guide. Compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Phoenixes | Griffins | Curiosities – All 30% OFF

All Products 17% – 30% off on Drive Thru RPG

Griffins - A Field Guide Chilling Curiosities - A Field Guide

Phoenixes | Griffins | Curiosities – All 30% OFF

Steel Forge Games

Steel Forge Games has a sexy new website, and they’re also offering their titles at 30% off!

Bullet | Might – Both 30% Off

Bullet | Might – Both 30% Off

Gamers for Graaains!

Christmas is coming, but for a lot of people around the world Christmas isn’t a time of happiness and presents. When you’re struggling to feed your family, Christmas is just another day.

But it doesn’t have to be.

This season, we’re calling on gamers to help us collect rice and upper-cut hunger in the face, at least for the season. Our goal is to collect 1 million grains of rice by Christmas, and we can only do it with your help.

To help, join us on FreeRice.com, answer some questions, and boom! You’ve made a difference.

All it takes is a little of your time, and you can leave the game running in a tab, for whenever you’ve got a free moment.

Till next time, Tell Thrilling Tales.
Have a great weekend and a happy Thanksgiving to our US friends.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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Fantastic February

Lots has been going on, so stick with me for all the Hot News. We’ve got some great offers to tell you about that you don’t want to miss.

When Flamingos Attack is the first official adventure for Claustrophobia!, and the perfect introduction to the game. It’s more than that though, as it sets the scene for a larger campaign I’m designing.

January was an excellent month for Claustrophobia!, and so putting aside time to support the game was a natural next step. That’s the thing about this industry; fan support is vital to the growth of any game, so I deeply thank you for getting behind us on this.

We’re just putting the finishing touches on a new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game compatible adventure too. Contagion’s Kiss is a location based adventure, with the PCs needing to break into a defended keep to solve the mystery of the poisoning of the town’s wells. We have some fun surprises hidden within!

Contagion's Kiss Cover

Contagion’s Kiss will be available by the end of the month.

We previously released our 2016 PDF bundle, and this month we’ve release a Pre-2016 bundle, which includes the updated Lunatic Labyrinth solo and 1-on-1 adventure.

We’re not the only ones with a great bundle out. Legendary Games has a massive sale on Pathfinder Roleplaying Game compatible books: 60 books for $30. You can grab yours on DriveThruRPG.

The last bit of news is that we’ve signed the compatibility license for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, since it will lend itself nicely to something we’ve been chipping away at.

That’s it for this month. Remember, you can get all the news, every month, by subscribing to our newsletter.

2017 is going to ROCK!

Quick, wish them a Happy New Year so we can talk about the wands!

Um, yes, Happy New Year. May 2017 be a truly prosperous year for you and yours. Rising Phoenix has a big year planned, with all sorts of projects in the works. 2016 was a smash hit for us, and 2017 promises to be even bigger.

Now tell them about the wands…

Sheesh, I’ll get to that! But first, the new game…

Imperiad Publishing announced that the Nightscape series of Lovecraftian horror will be getting its very own roleplaying game this year. Although Rising Phoenix Games isn’t the publisher, our head bird, Rodney Sloan, is designing the game, so we’re super excited for their offering, which comes out in September.

Here’s the trailer to the Nightscape movie.
WARNING: The following trailer is unrated and may be disturbing to sensitive viewers.

Rodney is also the new line developer for Steampunk Musha, an Asian inspired steampunk setting, developed by Fat Goblin Games. If you love Asian inspired worlds, consider yourself an otaku, are a Steampunk connoisseur, or love kung-fu kicking oni in the face, come join the team for a chat on Facebook.

As for our own stuff, Claustrophobia! has some exciting things on the go, with its first adventure sitting in layout. Right now, until the 23rd, the complete rulebook is on sale for 20% off on Drive Thru RPG. This is a great time to pick up a copy and introduce a new game to your group.

Claustrophobia Cover

We’ve also collected all our works from 2016 in one handy, discounted bundle. If you’ve already bought some of our books on One Bookshelf sites, you won’t have to pay for them again, so it’s a great way to grab any Field Guides you might still need.

2016 Bundle

Some of our fans might remember our popular Lunatic Labyrinth, our first product, ever. It has been hugely successful, with over 5000 sales to date. We’ve relaunched it, updating the text and added a map tile for the combat encounters, making it better than ever before.

Lunatic Labyrinth Updated

If you like what we’re doing, why not join us, we’ve put out an open call for writers. You can find more information on the blog.

If you’re a Pathfinder fan, of if you’d like to to get started with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, there are still a few days left to support a good cause and grab the fantastic Humble Bundle they’ve got on offer. Personally, I’ve been enjoying the Goblin comics, fun!

And that’s all I can talk about right now, except for those wands I promised you about.

Here’s a sneak peek at something Bob Greyvenstein and I are working on. Have you ever wanted to make wands more of a thing, like the wands portrayed in a certain wizarding franchise, in your Pathfinder Roleplaying games? Try these rules:

 

Personalized Wands

Attuned to their owner, personalized wands allow a spell caster to focus their magical powers and channel them with a great deal of accuracy.
These rules modify the rule for magic in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and can be used at your GMs discretion.

Casting arcane spells with a wand cancels the material component of the spell unless the material component is more than 25 gp. The wand is used to execute any somatic component of the spell too. Personalized wands cost between 500 and 2,500 gp.

Casting without a wand is difficult, and even unpredictable. There is a 20% chance of spell failure for any arcane spell cast without a wand. If there is a somatic component to the spell, the chance of spell failure increases to 30%. Casting arcane spells with someone else’s wand, or using a spell storing wand to cast a spell not stored inside it, incurs a 5% chance of spell failure.

 

Till next month, Tell Thrilling Tales!
The Rising Phoenix Games Team

 

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.

Claustrophobia! Available June 1st!

Claustrophobia!, the game of gnomish insanity, is done, and on June 1st it will go live on Drive Thru RPG.

I couldn’t be more excited (or nervous). Donovan did some amazing work on the layout, art and design, and you’ll finally get to see that, along with added content about the world of garden gnomes and more. We’ve worked hard to polish the game and I’m sure fans old and new will be really pleased with what they see.

Claustrophobia! Lamp

You can keep up to date with all things gnome on our Facebook page. We would certainly appreciate a like if we can get it too.

Claustrophobia – Book Cover Revealed!

A bunch of years ago I began writing a book—a dangerous book—about garden gnomes. Many gnomes died because of this book, and many more will die for this book in years to come. Don’t let them die in vain…

In the coming months I’ll be launching the full, beautifully illustrated version of this RPG. Please like and follow the Claustrophobia RPG? page on Facebook and help me make this book launch spectacular.

Claustrophobia Cover
The Amazing Claustrophobia Cover. Illustrated by Donovan Sloan.

 

 

All the books!

We’ve got a bunch of titles that we’re about to publish, some book recommendations, and some lessons learnt from Disney. Enjoy.

Inspired in Japan
In my spring break I went to Tokyo Disney Sea, one of the world’s busiest amusement parks. What struck me was how much the park controlled the visitors experience, much like a GM control the player experience (there’s a pun in there somewhere).

Here are some ways they achieve this.

Visuals: Eye popping architecture, characters in costume, moving sets, smoke machines, lights, darkness. Every visual effect you can think of. We can use candles, light switches, props and costumes for the same effect, if not with the same budget.

Elimination of distraction: The park is cleverly designed to keep your eye—and attention—inside the park at all times. This keeps you immersed in the fantasy world that Disney creates. It’s also surprisingly difficult to see the exits to the park and quite easy to get lost in the labyrinth-like layout. Again, this keeps your attention where the park operators want it. The more we limit the distractions, the more our players are immersed in the worlds we create for them.

Sound: Sound, even the sound of birds in the trees, can really set the mood. It’s easy to do sound wrong, but I think the best thing is to keep it simple. Use sounds that set the mood you want but don’t distract players.

Avernos Unearthed
Everyone has a secret, and every secret has a price.

Avernos—Secrets is an upcoming free ebook that introduces you to the world of Avernos, a world where a secret war threatens humanity at a time of broken alliances and forgotten destinies.

Coming soon.

Rising Phoenix News
I know you’re as eager as I am to send your gnome from the garden and down into the deadly depths of the earth with Claustrophobia! And you don’t have too long to wait! The layout/artist guru-gnome just sent me a preview of the book, in all it’s illustrated glory, and it looks awesome. But I’m not going to show you anything just yet, I don’t want to spoil the big unveiling. Watch this space, you’ll be blown away.

Campaign Journal
I’m all over Pathfinder Society Quests at the moment. If you don’t know what Quests are, go check out The Silverhex Chronicles on Paizo, it’s a free download and well worth a read.

I’ve adopted the quest format for a bunch of once-off games I’m planning to run on Roll20. I’m so busy at the moment that it’s hard to squeeze in a game, but Quests only take an hour or so to play, making them perfect for busy people.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


Cthulhu Mythos - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com