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I have a request that many of you might find fun.

I want to put sample NPCs into the next iteration of the game, but I suck at making characters. Bores me to tears and I'm terrible at optimisation. So, I would very much appreciate if anyone who's interested would send me a PM so that I can send you the newest rule set and you, yes you, can get a sneak-peek and make a character that will end up in the game. If you give me your full name, I'll even give you a "created by..." credit!

Hi all,

I've been flogging this for a couple of years now, so here it is: Phoenix, rising from the ashes of Deeds Not Words, a superhero expansion pack for d20M. Yes, I know about Mutants and Masterminds, but Phoenix stays far more true to the d20 rule-set, and yes I've read Blood and Vigilance, but Phoenix provides much more in-depth rules. So although those are both great games, I'd like to think that mine fills a difference niche. Here's what you get for the low low price of one mouse-click:

Chapter 1: Character Creation

Detailed instructions on how to make a superhero using our point-buy system for ability scores and, then, Character Points for everything else. You start play with 4th-level characters and you get 10CP per level (including those first 4). Also, Ads and Comps, a bunch of little things that make your character more interesting.

Chapter 2: Classes

At last count, 13 D&D-style core classes (level 1 to 20), tailor-made for superhero/pulp adventures, plus optional rules for using d20M classes in a superhero game, or using the Phoenix classes as d20M-style Advanced classes, and finally, an optional "Generic Superhero" class, if you're serious optimisers.

Chapter 3: Skills

A few new rules to go with Phoenix, specifically the Device system, but basically d20 standard, here.

Chapter 4: Feats

Exactly one metric crap-tonne of new feats, and many tweaked old feats, specifically made for a building superheroic characters without powers. Also note that you can just buy feats with Character Points in Phoenix, so you can really go nuts with them.

Chapter 5: Powers

Over fifty pages of superpowers, as well as detailed rules for creating new superpowers (because there's no such thing as too many powers in your system).

Chapter 6: F/X

Altered rules for magic, psionics, and "supertech" in a superhero setting, including casting lists for Phoenix's f/x classes, the Mystic and the Psion.

Chapter 7: Combat and Movement

Expanded/new rules regarding combat with super-powered characters, including rules for swinging around on a web line, running a super-speed, and even having combat in space. Space, I tells ya!

Chapter 8: GMing

Tips, tricks, and optional rules for running a superhero game.

Chapter 9: Enemies and Allies

Still under construction, this chapter presently includes several templates for use in Phoenix games, specifically several fantasy species, as well as robots and androids. In future, it will also include generic power suites and sample hero/villain characters.

Please download the file and enjoy. The greatest compliment to the designers is to have an awesome game (and tell us about it, of course)! All feed back, suggestions, and even complaints are welcome.

Hey, thanks dude! I appreciate that.

I should point out that it's based on Deeds Not Words, which was created by Scott Lynch, and my partner in crime for a lot of the developement of Phoenix (in fact, he was the lead when he was on the project) was Jayson Stevens, although he bowed out a couple of years ago (something about two girlfriends and a kid to take care of... them's some high quality problems right there). My good friend Dan Anderson has been helping me out for about a year and a half, basically playing back-stop on my logic/math. The current document is about 70% me, 30% other people, and at least 25% overlap between the two.

It's posted here, Brilliant Gameologists, and Girl-Wonder.org. It's not technically done yet (still working out some kinks), but given that it's free, I won't worry too much about people complaining about typos. If you have any suggestions for other places to put it, I'm all ears.

Between myself and my co-conspirator, Dan, we've run about a half-dozen games, and there are a few groups in the US and one in Argentina playing, that I know of. I'm going to run another game in the next few weeks, under the most recent updated rules. I'm sure I'll learn more stuff from that.

No, a real-live group, a bunch of good friends here in Edmonton who share my general tastes when it comes to gaming. I've never done play-by-post. It sounds infuriatingly slow.

So the idea is you "send to all" and conduct everything via email? The GM would roll all the dice and just tell you what you got, that kind of thing? It's funny, now that I think about it, that could actually go pretty quickly if you have a group of people who are all firing off emails all at once, but boy howdy, it would destroy your day at work.

PS: Am I the only one who's kind of flummoxed that you can't type "c*ck" around here? It's a verb and the name of an animal. That there's pretty silly.