The Naked City Sourcebook available now!
Gaunts and the Underworld, coming Gen Con 2007!
NEW UPDATE: August 4
Have you ever wanted to have your own prison bitch? Well, GAUNTS AND THE
UNDERWORLD has you covered! Life in the big house can make for first-rate
noir-style role-playing, and a full chapter in the book has all the details
to help you set one up—just in case your PCs get into a scrape they
can’t talk their way out of. We’ve added a preview in the
Fiction section to give you a sense of what to expect. Check it out, and
be sure to visit us at the Studio 2 booth at Gen Con Indy in a couple
of weeks. We’ll be running demos and selling games all weekend!
July 22
We’ve just confrimed it: GAUNTS AND THE UNDERWORLD will be available
at Gen Con! If you’re going to be at Indy this year, stop on by
the Studio 2 booth to pick up our newest EDGE OF MIDNIGHT supplement.
We’re extremely proud of this one, and when you see it, we think
you’ll understand why. For those of you who won’t be at Gen
Con, GAUNTS AND THE UNDERWORLD will hit the shelves a few weeks later...
and to whet your appetites a little further, we have a new preview in
the Fiction section. Check it out!
July 6
Another preview for GAUNTS AND THE UNDERWORLD is now available in the
Fiction section! This entry is a brief look at con artists — criminals
who prey upon the gullibility and greed of their victims to claim untold
riches. More details will be available when the full rulebook hits shelves
this August. Stay tuned for more previews in the next few weeks!
May 28
The first preview for GAUNTS AND THE UNDERWORLD is now available in the
Fiction section! Take a glimpse at the corrupt lives of gangsters and
crime lords… just a taste of what’s waiting in the full rulebook,
available this summer! And stay tuned for further previews arriving throughout
the next few months. I’m endeavoring to have new sections available
for download once every couple of weeks.
April 8
GAUNTS AND THE UNDERWORLD is at the printers! We’re anticipating
a Gen Con release, so mark your calendars for August! The 176-page book
contains extensive details on the U.C.’s inhuman underclass, as
well as a wealth of information on more traditional criminals. Rules for
playing con artists, mobsters, and other ne’er-do-wells are included,
as well as chapters on running campaigns set in prison, planning and executing
armed robberies, and portraying fugitive characters on the run. No self-respecting
bad guy should be without it! Stay tuned to this intermittently updated
site for more information, previews, and more.
February 3
THE NAKED CITY is here, and available for sale at fine retailers near
you. For those who can’t wait, you can order it directly from Studio
2, or purchase the PDF download on their official site!
In other news, Book 3, GAUNTS AND THE UNDERWORLD is in the final stages of preparation. There have been a few delays with artwork and cover elements, but the wait has been worth it. The book has some truly gorgeous artwork... as well as info on running mobsters, con artists, bank robbers, and everyone’s favorite misunderstood monsters, the gaunts. We’re expecting it to go to press sometime this month and be available for purchase right around con season. Keep watching this space for more information!
Got an adventure? Got a cool character idea? Join us over at the EDGE OF MIDNIGHT FORUM on Yahoo groups. http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/edgeofmidnight.
Discussion has been pretty lively lately, and we’re always happy to see new faces.
January 5
New material is available in the “Fiction” section: PDF maps
for all six of the U.C. cities, the U.C. as a whole, and the Borderlands
nations to the south. The maps were drawn by Robert Lee and Cris Dornaus,
and come from both the core rulebook and The Naked City.
Speaking of which, THE NAKED CITY has arrived in the warehouse and will be shipped out in the next week. We anticipate a shelf date of January 22. Huzzah!
And for those of you unaware, we now have a Yahoo forum! You can find it here: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/edgeofmidnight.
I’ve also posted a link in the section below. Things are petty quiet right now, so come on by and give us your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.
December 9
THE NAKED CITY is now available for pre-order here
at the Studio 2 website. Pay no heed to the mock-up cover; the incomparable
Nate Barnes provided a stunning vista for the cover art, which should
be available for viewing soon.
Martin Hall has provided stats for various forms of animal life, such as guard dogs, poisonous snakes, and the odd man-eating shark or two. They’re available FREE for download in the “Fiction” section.
November 25
The EDGE OF MIDNIGHT GM’S SCREEN is now available for sale here
at the Studio 2 website. Orders are expected to ship on December 4.
THE NAKED CITY is currently on schedule for a late December release. We’ll say January just to keep things honest. In the meantime, we’ve added another pdf preview of the book FREE in the “Fiction” section.
Progress on the third book in The Edge of Midnight line, GAUNTS AND THE UNDERWORLD, is continuing apace. Text is completed and artwork is on its way. We anticipate having the book off to the printers in January, with a release date of March, 2007. Stay tuned for updates!
We are beloved in France! Guide du roliste Galactique has published a glowing review of our book here. For those of you who don't speak French, check out the equally glowing words from RPG net here. Yay, critic love!
Stay tuned to this site for more!
November 6
After a lengthy delay, we’re back with new material and new information
on upcoming products. The first month’s sales have been resoundingly
successful and we’re pressing forward with a slate of new sourcebooks
and other products
The EDGE OF MIDNIGHT GM'S SCREEN will be available sometime in the next few weeks. Keep checking this site for more information.
THE NAKED CITY is at the printers, but slight delays on that end have pushed its release back a bit. It should be on shelves in January, just in time to ring in the new year! To keep you up to date, we'll be releasing a series of previews in pdf format, FREE to download in the “Fiction” section.
Also in the “Fiction” section is the introductory EoM scenario run at Gen Con 2006. Fans have been asking for it, and now it’s available as a pdf download.
The Edge of Midnight is a pen-and-paper role-playing game, initially
designed during my tenure at Alderac Entertainment. When the company and
I parted ways, they were gracious enough to let me keep the rights, and
I’ve since worked on finalizing it with the help of the good people
at Studio 2 Publishing. Most of the names you’ll see on the credits
worked at AEG at some time or another, and we like to think that it’s
still an Alderac product at heart.
The game itself began as a notion of making film noir more viable
for traditional RPG dynamics. Some of the genre’s fundamental tenets
make party role-playing a challenge — the emphasis on individuality
for example (How can you logically run a team of characters in a genre
which emphasizes loneliness and isolated anti-heroes?), or the paradoxical
combination of a specific period (the 1940s) contrasted with utter timelessness.
With The Edge of Midnight, we set out to try and solve these
problems: to create an environment that is uniquely noir and
yet comfortable with a group-based role-playing format. Take a look around
the site and read a little bit about the game’s background and universe.
We hope you’ll see the same potential in it that we do.
Keep checking back in to learn more about The Edge of Midnight,
and let us show you how cool noir role-playing can be!
Rob Vaux
Claremont, California
LINKS
Contact
Us
You can email us here with any questions or concerns you may have.
Studio
2
Our partners in crime and the purveyors of the game in question. Check
out their other fine products as well!
Yahoo
Forum
A place to meet and chat about the game. I'm lurking about fairly often,
and several other key folks are involved as well.
Alderac
Entertainment
My home for many years, and the place where the bulk of The Edge of
Midnight was created.
Crafty
Games
The new headquarters of Spycraft, run by fellow Alderac refugee
Patrick Kapera and his merry band of lunatics.
Gregstolze.com
Greg is one of the gaming industry’s true visionaries. He’s
also an old and dear friend who first got me started designing RPGs. Check
out his site and marvel at the seething wonders of his brain.
Noir Links
Some fun links to the world of noir.
Ultimate
Pulp Gear Archive
Colin Chapman's great site for clothing styles, automobiles, weapons,
and other equipment from the Edge of Midnight era.
The
Internet Movie Database
A list of the top 50 noir films, according to the readers at
IMDB.
www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
A great primer on the genre, with details on some of its best works.
Crime
Culture
Another good essay on film noir.
Ten
Shades of Noir
A deceptively simple site chock full of noir goodies. Includes
some great pictures and a very good essay by one of the genre’s
most prominent scholars, Alain Silver.
www.darkcity.com
The official movie site for Alex Proyas’ Dark City, one
of The Edge of Midnight’s chief inspirations.
www.thrillingdetective.com
An invaluable resource for noir and detective stories of all
kinds. Includes biographies of some of the genre’s best, specific
links to which are provided below.
Raymond
Chandler
A site on Raymond Chandler, dark prince of the genre.
James
Ellroy
A site for noir author James Ellroy, whose work is as hard core
as they come.
Dashiell
Hammett
A site on Dashiell Hammett, the creator of Sam Spade.
Elmore
Leonard
The official site for Elmore Leonard, whose crime fiction takes a slightly
more jaundiced look at noir.
Ed
McBain
The official site for Ed McBain, whose 87th Precinct books helped define
the police procedural.
Mickey
Spillane
A site on Mickey Spillane, creator of Mike Hammer.
And finally, the last word on film noir (it's a wav file). http://www.martinsfilmnoir.com/noir.wav
