It’s official, you won’t have to wait long to get your hands on a copy of our newest game; Era: Lyres. Our Kickstarter is scheduled to begin on March 23^rd. Mark the date on your calendar and start deciding which of your friends is the best Lyre!

If you caught my Saturday post for Era: The Consortium and its comic, Counting Down From One, then you’ll know how I feel about playing a game in a world that you get to help create. It’s one of the best things about role playing games! There’s nothing better than a comic about a game to give you a sense of the world and the emotions of characters who live in it. They’re a starting place for all that imagination and I’m thrilled to tell you that Ed’s decided to create one for Lyres.

The story will feature three particularly well known Lyres and is going to be a tale of how they met and their first adventure together. I’ve read a few pages of the draft and so far these guys are a hilarious match up who take turns making me laugh and cheer. This will be offered as a Kickstarter reward either alone or bundled with the rulebook. I’m really looking forward to this one!

See you next week!

– A

Now that the art is finished and the stories are polished there’s only one thing left to do; layout design. Right now, Lyres is in the hands of our layout artist, Keith, getting some final tweaks. If everything goes as planned, I hope to get an example of a finished page for you to see very soon.

While you wait, head over to the stories available on the site and get familiar with the world of Yarnolth. Visit the Cozy Creature Inn and watch Geoff try to convince a bar full of colourful locals they’ve just been spared a gruesome death. Or, follow along at the Duke’s court as Randil and Adam do their best to maintain a professional atmosphere in their impressively rehearsed tale of the Cyclops King.

What will your story be?

– A

It’s new story day in our Era: Lyres universe. Take a moment to read and enjoy Court of the Cyclops King. Convincing a bunch of farmers and barmaids that you just pulled off the years biggest adventure is one thing. Doing it in a room full of royalty is on a whole different level! I loved writing this one…

Along with our new story I want to mention that the folks at Dice and Stuff are taking a look over the rules for Lyres and will be getting things together over the next month to create their first game podcast. Can’t wait to see what they come up with! I’ll keep you posted.

See you next week!

– A

The artwork is finished! Congratulations to Sofia and Keith for such an amazing job. From the pieces that I’ve seen (one of which is featured in this post!), I think you all are really going to love what they’ve put together.

We only have one more story to finish and that puts us right on target for a Kickstarter launch in March.

Frankly, we are enjoying playing it so much that we’re not ready to hand it out yet – we keep finding more excuses to do playtests!

In a week or two I hope to have another great Lyres story to showcase for you. Until then, keep rolling!

– A

The images are fabulous and the stories are coming along smashingly. Now all we need are a few willing souls to help us run through some beta-testing! Are you in?

As Lyres heads towards the end of its artwork and story creation cycle we’re gearing up for the first round of edits. The mechanics have been pinned down because of our initial playtest and we’d love to see what you think. So, we have decided to open up a limited offer to provide a playtest packet to the first few folks who show us some interest. You get a chance to be on the ground floor of a truly original game and your feedback will help us to iron out the creases.

To receive a beta packet, be one of the first four people to send an email to Ed Jowett – ed.jowett@sovcomics.com.

That’s all the news I have on Lyres for you this week. However, I do have a couple of general reminders before I leave you today.

– If you haven’t taken a look at it, consider coming with us to the London MCM Comicon event in May to help us with marketing. It’s an exciting event and we’d love to see everyone come down!

– Don’t forget that you’ve only got one more day before the finale of our Facebook game giveaway event. All that’ll be left will be the tears of disappointment for those poor folks who didn’t enter.

Until next time!

– A

If you haven’t already caught it, Era: Lyres has some great new art!

Sofia Michailidou is the artist behind these images and she’s really captured the spirit of the game.

You can find a few of her pieces on our sub-site front page banner right now but we’ll have to wait for the Kickstarter to see more.

The game itself is moving right along and we ran through a playtest over the weekend which went really well. The players loved it and we were able to make some good changes to the mechanics. This is going to be a fun game and I’m very excited to see where it goes. For a look at how one adventure might end up, read our first story;  Manticore’s Prize.

That’s all for now, check back next week for more updates!

-A

Welcome and come on in! There’s plenty of fresh new space in here and I’m loving the cozy fireplace atmosphere. We don’t have all the boxes unpacked yet but we’ve decided to help you get in the spirit of things by releasing one of our original stories from the Lyres universe.

That’s right, next week about this same time we’re going to post our first official story for Era: Lyres! So, make yourself comfortable and stick around.

Until next week!

-A

Welcome to a brand new year! 2015 is shaping up to be a smashing good time so let’s start it off with a drum roll. Patter along if you like…..

It is confirmed! The Shades of Vengeance team will be attending the 2015 MCM Comicon in London during October. We’ll have two tables like last year and if luck holds out we’ll have more games and comics to show off. Mark it on your calendar or tape it to your cat, whichever won’t run away.

While you’re waiting for MCM Comicon to roll around you can check out our newest addition – the Low Fantasy Storytelling game Era: Lyres! The sub-site is up and first images from the artist are looking fabulous. Dust off those viking horns baby, it’s time to get your pillage on.

As long as we’re on the subject of new games I have a question for you. Have you got an amazing idea brewing in the back of your mind? Do you wake up with the cold sweats thinking you’ll never be able to realize your dream of creating that awesome game? If you like what we’re doing here at Shades of Vengeance, take a minute and check out how we’re helping others achieve their dreams.

You can submit your own idea right here online and we will help with finding the right artists, writers, editors, running a Kickstarter campaign and so much more. We love gaming, we know that you do too and we’d really like to help you get that idea out of your head and onto paper! Trust us, your friends are tired of hearing about it. It’s time to take it to the next level.

Along with Era: Lyres coming out in the first part of the year, we’re also working on a large scale game to be released later in 2015. All I can say is that it’s going to involve superheroes and it will be in a style that pays homage to the 1990’s animated series most of us grew up with. Capes… no capes, where do you stand?

Last but not least I’d like to mention that the new voice you might have noticed in the News posts belongs to Amy “the Oracle” Allworden. I’ll do my best to keep you up to date and in the know. Don’t be a stranger, come on over and say hey!

-A