Work continues per usual. Words are going down, being revised, art is coming in, going into the text, the surgeon’s cutting in, my gallbladder is coming out.

Yeah, hadn’t worked that last one into the schedule. I’ve been fighting gallbladder issues for months now. The original surgery got bumped due to an out-of-country move that didn’t happen. Potential impending circumstances dictate I get the procedure done sooner than later so I’m going under the knife tomorrow. This is an in-and-out procedure that I sincerely hope won’t impact things too much but, well, it might.

So I’m running full steam ahead, trying to get as much done as possible before and after. I’ll keep you all in the loop.

Work continues! The big bad beast of May 16th looms in the distance like a dragon coming to roost but I vow to slay it. Worst case, I throw Shawn Gaston toward it and run. (Kidding, Shawn.)

So, real quick because I gotta get back to work, here’s where things are at.

The Book
Writing, editing, layout, and more illustrations. It’s coming together, and initial feedback has been really good. I’m excited for you folks to see this.

Sounds of Bedlam
I’m getting updates and revisions from Ed and, wow, is this thing coming together. I’ll be putting together another teaser for you all soon.

Five-Story Drop
I’ll be pulling back the curtain on the five scenarios that will be included in the game’s first supplement next week.

Also there’s this:

If you backed the Kickstarter at $60 or higher, you were promised dice. And this is what you’re getting! A full set of dice (d4, d6, d8, percentile d10s, d12, d20) that you can use for Savage Worlds—or any game you please. As a special thank you, and for use as your go-to Wild Die, this set will include a second custom d6 featuring Vincent’s bandaged hand coming straight at ya, based on Shawn’s artwork (which the book uses to note Wild Card characters).

The dice will be available for individual sale after the pre-order as well, so don’t fret.

The Pre-Order
The pre-order has two weeks to go, and I’d love your help in letting folks know about it. People can save some serious cash and…

ALL PRE-ORDERS OF STREETS OF BEDLAM WILL INCLUDE A SIX-PACK OF CHARACTERS, so your group can get up and playing right away.

You meant to pledge to the Kickstarter but never did. Or Kickstarter doesn’t work for your country. Or you just found out about Streets of Bedlam.

No problem. You can still get a great deal on Streets of Bedlam and make sure you get your copy as soon as possible.

From now until the corebook’s release (currently slated for May 16th), you can get Streets of Bedlam in hardcopy for $25 ($5 off the final book’s MSRP of $30), get it in PDF for just $10 ($5 off the PDF’s MSRP of $15), or get both for just $30 (a $15 savings).

Title: Streets of Bedlam: A Savage World of Crime + Corruption
Size: 6×9, 240pp
Binding: Paperback
Stock Code: FSZ201
Back cover text:

Bedford and Lamrose. Two sides of the same river. Two sides of the same coin. One, an affluent metropolis teeming with industry and aspiration. The other, a cesspool of crime and vice. Both dirty, both begging for the match that will set this whole city on fire.

Bedford and Lamrose. Locals call this place Bedlam. It’s a fitting name.

Streets of Bedlam: A Savage World of Crime + Corruption is equal parts neo-noir, pulp detective fiction, and a bit of the ol’ ultraviolence thrown into a cement mixer and poured on top a heap of nameless bodies no one will ever miss.

It’s a modern urban setting full of despicable people doing awful things in the name of G*d, money, politics, or to pay off old debts. The stories shine light on the dark places of the human heart but it’s about finding diamonds in the rough, about good people in bad situations. The heroes may have questionable means but they have good intentions.

Of course, you know what they say about good intentions.

This setting requires the Savage Worlds Deluxe rulebook from Pinnacle Entertainment.

Pre-Order the Book + PDF bundle and SAVE $15!
The print copy will be sent via USPS First Class Mail soon after release. A code to download the PDF from DriveThruRPG will be emailed to you once the file goes active.

Print + PDF Bundle: $30 (plus S/H)

Pre-Order the Book
The book will be shipped using USPS First Class Mail soon after release.
Print Only: $25.00 (plus S/H)

Pre-Order the PDF
The PDF will be available through DriveThruRPG in mid-May. Save $5 by pre-ordering yours, and I’ll send the code to you as soon as the file is up.

THE PDF PRE-ORDER IS OVER. But don’t fret! You can now grab a PDF copy directly from DriveThruRPG.

I’ll say it right out of the gate: Streets of Bedlam will not see release this month.

I am truly sorry for this but I don’t expect the delay to be major. I am currently aiming for May 16th, which I think is a really solid target.

The reasons for this delay are:

1) I have decided to add more stuff to Chapter One. It just wasn’t selling the city to me. It felt lacking so I’m putting in more details, more places, more tools for gamers to make Bedlam their own.
2) I want to test the Archetypes and systems some more. I’m happy with them overall but want to make sure they’re awesome.
3) I want more art. I love the visual style of this game so much that I want even more art in the book. I can only push Shawn so hard before he bites though, so I’m putting in some buffer room.
4) It’s bigger than I thought. I originally estimated this book would be 192pp. Yeah, it’s going to be at least 240pp, and I wouldn’t doubt if it goes even longer than that.
5) I’ve been looking into other things. I’m currently working up some pretty special/awesome announcements that I plan to make in the coming weeks. I think you all will dig them.

So that’s the big news. Thank you for your support and understanding. Streets of Bedlam means a lot to me, and I want to do right by it and by you, so I appreciate your patience. I will do my best to make your wait worth it.

Without further ado, and pending any final tweaks, Shawn and I present the cover to Streets of Bedlam: A Savage World of Crime + Corruption. We hope you like it.

Shawn Gaston already laid down the science in the previous two installments. Let’s see how he brings it home.

From Shawn:

Step 8: I scan in a very rough background image. This was actually drawn in negative, and then I inverted it. Originally all of the black areas were white and all of the white areas were black. It’s a trick I used now and then on Doors and Windows, and I thought could be fun here.

Step 9: I detail the background. This consists of two slightly contradictory steps, cleaning up a lot of the lines from the original, and also adding a lot of distortion/roughness to the whole thing.

Step 10: I paste in a distorted version of the cityscape from our logo in to the background. This will mostly get covered up by the figure in the center, but it’s a fun detail that amuses me. At this stage I also shade in the windows on the buildings.

Step 11: I widen things out a little bit, to make room for our hero. I also distort the background a little bit more here.

Step 12: I unhide Fallon, our Bulldog. You can notice a very obvious flaw here, where the black shadows on Fallon cause him to disappear on the black background behind him.

Step 13: I experiment with a few things, and in the end settle on a combination of adding a slight glow behind Fallon as well as a solid white/grey outline around him. Now all that’s left are a few details and slight tweaks, so I send the whole thing off to Jason to get his opinion.

(And I liked it! Shawn and I then discussed how to bring it home. — Jason)

Step 14: Final touches! I lowered the horizon line, to enhance the idea that we’re looking up at this as opposed to being at normal eye level. I also switched the side the store front window is on and added some posters to the walls and some broken windows to some of the buildings. I added a moon and stars to the night sky, placed so that when we have the red band across the moon will be mostly covered. The moonlight meant I needed a bit more of a highlight on our hero. I also tweaked the cigarette and gun smoke, and made a handful of other minor changes.

Shawn then sent it to me for final placement and trade dress. What he didn’t know is that I made a few changes to my original idea.

So what’s the final cover look like?

Stay tuned.

Today, we continue Shawn Gaston’s process of illustrating the cover.

From Shawn Gaston:

Step 4: Shading! To get that really angular look, I set up another layer beneath the line art in Photoshop, and used the polygon lasso tool to block out areas that I then filled in with a very large brush.

Step 5: I finished shading in the smoke, as well as added our two textures. The rough scratchy layer covers many of the Streets of Bedlam illustrations, and I knew I wanted that same look for the cover. The blood splatter is the cover’s one dash of color, along with Fallon’s lit cigarette. I also tweaked the shading a bit, lightened his face somewhat, and darkened the coat.

Step 6: At this point he’s mostly finished, so I brought back the mock up of the cover’s trade dress to get an idea of how our hero will look on the book itself.

Step 7: I decided he was too low, and not angled enough. Comparing the current version to the original pencil sketch mock up, I shrink him down a bit, move him up, and then angle him to the right a bit This is an advantage of making the cover in Photoshop as opposed to creating an entire painting that is then scanned in or something.

So there you have it. My next steps are to draw the background buildings, scan them in to the computer and then tie the whole thing together. Being as the titular Streets of Bedlam are in many ways the real star of this picture, I expect to put in a lot of work and detail on the buildings. I want them to ooze menace and character.

Come back tomorrow to see this whole thing come together.

Leading up to Thursday’s reveal, Streets of Bedlam illustrator Shawn Gaston gives us a look into the process of creating the cover:

From Shawn:

Step 1: Jason and I tossed many ideas and variations back and forth, eventually settling on on a close up of Fallon, our Bulldog, standing over the viewer, smoking gun pointed at you and buildings crowding overhead. I went with a kind of distorted, fish-eye look that I think we both really liked.

Step 2: Once we had the final cover idea down, I went back and inked the same line art from Step 1, focusing only on the character at the center of the cover. I kept the rough pencils of the background on the page, just for reference for myself.

Step 3: I cleaned up the line art in Photoshop, adding a few hard edges and making things a bit sharper. At this stage I realized our central figure was much too head on, so in Photoshop I distorted and tweaked him somewhat, to give more of an extreme, unnatural angle.

So far, so good. Swing by tomorrow to see Fallon come to life.

This past week has been a blur of faces as I work through the 250 minor NPCs and good dozen or so Major NPCs from the Kickstarter backers. And that’s not including the other Major NPCs. So, yeah, lots of characters for you Savage Worlds gamemasters.

The rest has been fine-tuning the Archetypes. If you checked out the Bulldog PDF preview last week, you got a good glimpse of what I’m doing for all the Archetypes in the book and the Kickstarter-exclusive Archetypes and the Archetypes I’ll be rolling out for special events and promotions and whatnot.

When I said Streets of Bedlam was all about character, I wasn’t kidding.

I’m having outsiders put their eyes on the write-ups to make sure the rules-related stuff is crystal clear. The game has a definite voice, and I really like writing that way, but I don’t want the mechanic and system stuff to be obscured by lingo or flavor. In fact, thanks in big part to Streets backer Josh Bazin, the “Can Take a Punch” Edge description for the Bulldog is now much clearer.

Anyway, working through the character sections of the corebook is like trudging through the swamp. It’s seemingly slow progress because it’s a series of heavy, concentrated steps. Once you’re free from it though, you’re running like the wind.

To give myself breaks, I’ve been alternating between PC and NPC work with setting stuff and scenario stuff. This is all coming together very well. I’m not 100% sure this book will be out in PDF before month’s end but whatever delay comes shouldn’t be crazy.

Sounds of Bedlam
The stuff Ed has sent over is jaw-dropping. Cannot wait for it all to come in. If you haven’t already, check out the teaser I posted last week. You can hear a full track on the trailer I posted a few months ago as well.

I’m so very happy that Streets of Bedlam will have a soundtrack of this quality. Thank you so much for making this happen. I never could have commissioned it without your Kickstarter support. I hope you all enjoy the tracks as much as I do.

Five-Story Drop
Outside the initial scenario write-ups, I haven’t yet touched this. My entire focus has been on the corebook.

In Sum
That’s where things are at! I have three full workdays this week and plan to get A LOT done. I’m aiming to finish up all but the last chapter this week. Can’t guarantee it, but that’s definitely the goal.

Later this Week
Could it be…the cover reveal?

I’ve talked a lot about Archetypes. As I see it, they’re a big part of the book and setting. The world of Bedlam is very character-focused, event-focused. As I write the text, the question “Does this facilitate story?” echoes in my head. Giving you all tools to create your own world, your own characters, your own stories is hugely important to me. And some of the best tools I can give are great Archetypes.

So, I’ve decided I want to start showing you all what I’m doing when it comes to character. Click the image below to check out the 4pp-spread for one of my favorite Archetypes, The Bulldog. The first step in character creation is picking an Archetype. (If you don’t like any of the pre-fab, you go off the Citizen Archetype as the “build-your-own” option.) The Archetypes are designed to help you create an interesting character who’s ready to play.

For those familiar with Savage Worlds, the nuts and bolts of character creation are identical. Points are earned and spent the same, with the same limitations. But Bedlam goes beyond that as well with drama- and story-driven Edges, Hindrances, and Skills.

Anyway, enough preamble. Check out the pdf below, and let me know what you think in the comments.

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