RDNA selected Zombie Attack as an Image of the Week!

This is a cool feather in my cap, and Ah'm so proud that I could bust a button! One of the potential illustrations for our upcoming book, GUTSHOT: Night of the Living Deadwood, was selected by an online community called RuntimeDNA as one of their Images of the Week! 

One of the RDNA Images of the Week for Aug. 8, 2014

I'm a particularly proud pappy (all my illustrations are "my children," so ta speak) because I put a lot of work into this one, and am pleased with the way it turned out. I really like the look of terror on Sheriff Mike Foreman's face, and I think i achieved just the right amount of "ick" in that gutshot he's giving the zombie (yeah -- I like that it's a gutshot).

Another thing that makes me wanna hoot-n-holler is that this accolade comes with a prize! I got to pick out an item from their 3D store. Now, there were limitations, such as no software or bundles, so wipe the gold fever from yer greedy little eyes. This is an Image of the Week award, not the lottery!  And nevertheless, Ah'm pleased as punch to be winning it. RuntimeDNA seems to have pretty high standards all around. I really like Daz3D.com and Renderosity.com, but Ah gotta be honest -- there's just something a little classier about the RDNA folks. Can't really put muh finger on it, but the items they offer are just a smidge better than some of the other stuff out there.

So, Ah know none of yuh could bunk down fer a good night's sleep without knowing what I chose from the store. I will admit, I did poke around a bit, but to be honest, there was never any doubt. Last September they came out with an outfit that I've wanted ever since I saw it. It was a stylized saloon gal outfit, and I've always pictured her as one of the characters in the Deadwood book, probably pulling out a Derringer and shooting some undead gambler right between the eyes for having an ace up his sleeve.

The outfit is called Rockabilly Burlesque, and I think it's just the right mix of sexy, period-appropriateness, and steampunk. With these clothing items (and some of the jewelry) available to use on my own copy of the Victoria 4 figure, I will be able to pose her and create new illustrations for the Deadwood book. Of course, my work will be in b&w (since that's how the book will be published). But still, I think I'll manage to make good use of this outfit.

Copyright 2013 RuntimeDNA.com 

Stay posted, folks. Things are gonna start getting interesting around here!

Arnica Sneak Peak: New Shed Design

Not much to report right now. My thumb is getting better and I've resumed my normal work schedule of casting parts and tooling (i.e. sanding) them. Orders are shipping and things are moving forward. The position of the cut does make it hard to mix mold rubber, though. Silicon rubber is very thick and holding the mixing rod puts a lot of pressure on my thumb -- exactly on that cut. So I won't be making any new molds for a few more days, yet.

When it heals I'll be focusing on making replacement molds for a few damaged parts, as well as making extras of key parts (like the wall of the bank, for example -- right now I've only got one mold for both walls and a second wall would really come in handy). After that, I'll move on to making some new molds for some new buildings, including the long-awaited Adobe collection.

We'll also be offering a new building for a set of original designs I've started working on: The Miner's Camp. You see, when we add the adobe buildings to our set, we'll have most of the major buildings that you need to create a nice Western town. The keyword being "nice." I'd like to add some more buildings that aren't so nice, nor so big. In other words, I want to create a set of small shacks and shanties like those you might find in a mining camp.

Here's a look at the first building I've designed (which, obviously, is based on our current Attached Shed).

New Shed Design

This photo shows the master pieces glued to a board that will serve as the basis of the master mold. As you can see, it will have a slopped roof with one end higher than the other. I'm hoping this will create a dramatic profile when compared to the other buildings in the town. Also, the flat roof (to the left) could serve as a place for outlaws to wait while ambushing people -- if the slope doesn't prove too steep, that is.

I'm also hoping that this model will offer a little variety to the various board & batten buildings we currently have. Also, it's a very small building, so it's low cost should prove to be popular. I've no idea yet when this will be released, but probably sometime this month. I'll keep you posted.

Remember, you can buy all of our Western Buildings at the Arnica Website.

See ya back next week for more behind-the-scenes fun.

Arnica: Lights, Camera... Bubbling Rubber!

I've been busy this week on all things Arnica Real Estate. Not only did I get the new mold for the Boardwalks made, I also made a replacement mold for the side walls to the board & batten buildings. These molds got ripped to shreds last Christmas. One wall went because of malfunctioning mold release agent and the other went due to an error mixing resin. Mostly, though, they went because they were old and had outlived their capacity.

While I was making that mold, I whipped out my trusty camera phone and shot a short video of what the rubber looks like while we're sucking the air out of it in the vacuum chamber. It's not much of a video (just 2 minutes), but I think you'll all get a kick out of watching the rubber bubble around as it "came alive."

If you'd like to watch it over at YouTube, Click Here.

More About Molds

You see, molds don't last forever. As they age they get brittle and lose the slickness that is necessary for the easy removal of the cured resin. Without this slickness, the mold fails and tears when you pull out the finished piece. One question that's been asked a lot is, "How long do these molds last?"

The Arnica Work Table

Well, pilgrim, there ain't no good answer for that. You see, we use different types of silicone mold rubber and they each have different properties. As you can see in this picture, we use three types of rubber: purple, green and yellow.

Yeah, I know it's more of a teal or a turquoise or soa foam... I'm a guy working with chemicals and power tools. Right now, I'm just going to call it "green."

Each of these is slightly different. The yellow is made by a major company called Alumilite. We use their Quick Set Mold Silicone which sets in about half an hour (and completely solidifies in 4 hours). This is a good, fairly stiff rubber that is good for holding details and is justly famous for its long-life and durability. It's a bit expensive (the boardwalk mold had 410 grams of rubber and cost about $20 to make). That might not sound like much, but when you consider we've got 40+ molds... well, it adds up. We also have to be careful of that stiffness, as it can make it harder to de-mold smaller parts.

A look at the pump and the pot (vacuum chamber)

The Green is the 2125 from MPK Enterprises. The company is run by a guy by the name of Mike, and he's one of the nicest and most helpful guys out there. You can reach him through his site at www.hobbysilicone.com. This particular silicone rubber is very flexible which makes it ideal for small parts like the awning posts you can see in the photo above. It also has the advantage of holding details very well. In addition to small pieces, we use it for some of the roofs, as the flexibility makes it easy to de-mold the large flat panels. Finally, it only runs about $10 a pound, so it's less expensive than the Alumilite. 

The purple is the pleased spiritualist -- er, I mean "happy medium" between the two. We use MPK's Extra-Firm 135 because it's more flexibile than the Alumilite, but more rugged than the green. If I had to pick just one rubber to use for all occasions, I would choose the purple. Fortunately, I don't have to pick just one. As with any job, you need to use the right tool for the task at hand. Figuring out which rubber matches which mold master is a bit of an art, but I'm getting better at it.

Just as there are different molds for different situations, we use different resins for different applications. Come back next week and we'll talk more about why sometimes we use white resin and sometimes we use tan.

See ya then, amigos!

WIP: Waiting for the Jury Prize Announcement

I had originally planned to announce the winner of the Showdowns & Shootouts Jury prize selection today, but that is not to be. As you will recall, the voting on the contest closed this past weekend, so we had our winner. It was actually a fairly close race, with the winner being decided by only three votes!

We sent an email to the winner but we haven't hear back from him. Since we don't want him to read about this before we've personally contacted him, we're going to put off this announcement until next week.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peak at the Work In Progress (WIP) illustration that will run with the story. Once again, I'm using Strata 3D CX6 to create this image. BTW: You might recognize the cowboy on top of the trophy as being the miniature that was in the bottom of last week's whiskey bottle image.

This image is still very rough (and, of course, I removed the winner's name from the plaque). So far, I'm mostly happy with the design (which, I must admit, is loosely inspired by my own Origins Award sitting on a shelf in my office). So far, I like the general shape, but there are some technical issues I need to resolve to make the image look better. For example, flat surfaces do not really look great with reflections. They tend to look lifeless and uninteresting. I may need to add some curvature to the name plaque, or get creative with my reflection maps in order to make this work.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this sneak peak of this image. Oh, and if you're interested in this sort of thing, here's a wire frame view to show you what the image looks like as raw geometry without the pretty textures applied. As you can see, there is a lot of detail on the cowboy figure, which was actually exported from Poser and placed in Strata 3D. It actually has a lot more detail than I need, but I don't feel its worth the hassle it would take to create a good, lower-polycount version of the model.

See you next week when we finally reveal the winner's name.

Gutshot Rotgut: Our Annual April Fools Joke

Yesterday was April Fools Day, and as I explained last week, I enjoy creating pranks for the holiday. Since 2006, Hawgleg Publishing has honored the spirit of the day by announcing the release of a fake product.

This year, our product was gaming-themed whiskey. That is to say, a boutique line of whiskey with a 25mm Western miniature in each bottle. We release the story at our Website (www.hawgleg.com) and TheMiniaturesPage. The story is a bit naughty, but for the most part it's workplace safe -- and it was a BIG hit at TMP. In fact, since April 1 fell on a Sunday, we were apparently the only company that took the time to create a joke (some years at TMP, there are easily a dozen fake products, but this year we were the sole provider, which actually helped us pull the wool over people's eyes more effectively than usual).

I also think the quality of our artwork helped sell the joke:

I created this image in Strata 3D, which is a 3D illustration program I've been working with for a long time (probably more than 10 years). It's a powerful, but lesser-known tool with a lot of horsepower there waiting to be unleashed -- as I hope you can see in these images.

I think this time I came very close to achieving photo realism with these images. They're not quite 100% perfect, but they definitely do a good job of looking like real product artwork. I also got several complements on the quality of the label:

I even had a few people ask for a full-size label so they could print it out and put it on their own whiskey bottle. As one guy said, he wanted to see if anyone would notice. If you'd like to see the full-size label, you can get it by clicking here. I wish I could take all the credit for the label, but I did start off with an existing label from a Chivas Regal bottle. You can compare them by clicking here to see what I started with.

See ya Thursday!

S&S Voting Report

This weekend we passed the halfway point in our month-long Showdowns & Shootouts Jury Prize selection process. So far, response has been about what I expected it to be with about 50 people voting so far. What I did not expect was that there would be one runaway leader at this point. One of the entries has an almost 2-to-1 lead over its nearest competition.

After these two big leaders, there are several other adventures racking up impressive voting. In fact, every single adventure has received at least one vote (and no, it's not just from the author).

I'm not going to taint the results by publishing who the leaders are, but I will publish the top five at this time (and they are listed in order of their publication number, which does not coincide with who's leading):

• SS001 - Ambush at Coyote Canyon! by Al Theobald
• SS002 - Bullets for Breakfast! by Ross Edwards
• SS003 - 1,000 Horses for Helen! by Carmen Cerra
• SS004 - Hurrahin' the Sky Pilot! by Dan Hash
• SS005 - Holed Up! by Lance Gamble

If you don't see your favorite adventure up there, it's time to vote or stat campaigning to convince your friends and family to agree with your choice and get them to cast a vote, too.

You can read the adventures here: http://www.hawgleg.com/2007_contest_winner.asp
You can cast your vote here: http://www.hawgleg.com/polls_vote.asp?PollID=1

By the way, remember that everyone cast a a vote is eligible to win a saddlebag full of cool prizes!

Voters’ Drawing Prize (valued at about $60) Randomly selected from everyone who votes Whitewash City Starter CD ($15 value)  One item from the Gutshot General Store (approx. $20 value)  One copy of the collected S&S paperback book (approx. $20 value) Gutshot miniature: ($5 value)

See yuh back here on Thursday fer our next, 

regularly scheduled pow wow.

Rules Q&A: Movement rates and attack modifiers

We got a question through the Hawgleg Website last week, and I reckoned it would be a good idea to share it with ya'll, in case this has caused any of you to scratch yer heads.

"When taking an action, I attack 1st then move, do I still apply applicable movement modifier to shot even though I moved after shooting?"

Movement and combat is definitely a tricky matter, and it can cause some headaches unless you pay particular attention to tracking the movement rates for all miniatures during the game.

To the question above, the short answer is no, you would not apply the penalty in that instance.  Let's break it down:

• Clem is running with a pistol in his hand down the street of the town because Jake is after him. Clem runs the full 12 inches and then stops. At this moment, until the start of his next action (when his name is pulled out of the hat) he is considered to be Running.
• Jake's name is pulled from the hat. Since he has a rifle, he decides to Walk 3 inches and take a shot at Clem. Let's say they are 8 inches apart. Jake has a TN of 7 and rolls the dice and gets a 5. We now look at the modifiers: +2 for medium range with a rifle, but -3 because Clem is running. 5 + 2 - 2 = 5. It's a miss. Clem considers the range and modifiers and decides it's not worth it to waste the ammo (after all, with the rang
• Clem's name is pulled from the hat. He is no longer considered to be running. In fact, as far as game play is concerned, he skids to a stop, turns around and takes a shot at Jake. Clem also has a TN of 7. Since he is no longer running, he does not have any movement modifiers. As for range, he is at 8 inches with a pistol, which puts him at long range and a -1 penalty. Jake is walking, so there are no movement penalties in that regard. So Clem rolls the dice and gets an 8. Looking at the numbers we see: 8 - 1 (for range) = 7: which means a hit! Clem rolls 1d6+1 damage and gets a 4.
• Jake now decides to take his Retaliation Shot. Remember, Retaliation Shots are instantaneous -- so this happens before Clem can start moving again. Jake rolls a 5 (5 + 2 (range) = 7) and gets a hit! He rolls 1d6+2 for damage and gets a total of 8! Clem is now moderately wounded, which will affect his ability to move and shoot.
• BUT, since all damage is applied at the END of the Action, it does not affect him right now. So Clem decides he'd better skeedaddle out of there as fast as he can, so he runs a full 12-inches away and hopes it's far enough to save his life, because now he's hurting.

Hope that answers the question. By the way, this might vary slightly from what you can read in the book. We've modified things since it was written, and subsequent editions and errata will correct that. The game is always evolving and this is how we actually handle this situation in games we play.

By the way, keeping up with movement can be a bit tricky, which is why we use red & yellow tokens under our minis to indicate movement. The yellow token indicates that the figure is trotting, a red token indicates he is running. This tends to help sort out a character's movement rate at any given time.

As you can see in this picture from an early playtest of Gutshot: Night of the Living Deadwood, two of the figures have reddish disks under them. These are used to indicate that they are running. The two figures (upper left) are on yellow disks to indicate that they are Trotting. Figures without any disks under them are Walking, and those three guys with the red splats under them are dead. Note that in the upper left corner it looks like two figures are on that one yellow disk (okay, it doesn't look that way, they are both on it), that's just because the zombie on the square base rushed the other figure and kinda knocked him off his disk. That sort of thing happens in games.

Although we do sell these tokens at our Website, you really can use anything you have on hand to help keep track of this. In a game with only a few minis, you can actually just leave it to memory, or have a notepad and jot down the current movement rate of each figure as it changes. But in a big, messy free-for-all like the one above? Movement tokens are probably the best way to go.

Hope this helps clear things up. See ya'll next Tuesday.

S&S: Why did it take so long? Part 3

The next gap is almost a year long, and it's harder to explain from the news headlines. I was almost put in the hospital again during that time, but was able to recover with bed rest. And Arnica started selling in earnest. And the 10th and 11th adventures we selected were BIG adventures. They were probably overly ambitious because they each included some really cool extras. Dion Duran's "I Hit a Vein!" has a PDF map for a poster-size underground gold mine that can be printed out, one page at a time, on your color printer. And Tom Reed's "White Water, Bloody Boulders!" comes with 13 pages of map tiles to simulate a wild escape on a white water rive raft. Both of these bonuses took extra time to flesh out... But I (for one) think the wait was worth it. These two adventure accessories will turn any game into an ace high fandango!

Remember, you can get all of these adventures for FREE over at our Website: http://www.hawgleg.com/2007_contest_winner.asp

The Last Hurrah

I think the hardest part to explain is the final big gaps. It took us almost a year to publish the 12th adventure, and then another year for the three of us to force the matter and actually vote on who won. That honor, of course, went to Tom Reed's "The Great Dry Gulch Bank Robbery!" Now, part of that delay did come from the fact that we had wanted to print a 13th adventure to make it a baker's dozen. But we finally realized that this had been sitting idle for far too long and we just had to end it. So, end it we did.

And then came the next delay, which is entirely on me. We needed to set up a software solution for people to vote on the winner of the Jury's Prize (that is to say, second place). The problem was, I couldn't find an available solution that we could afford (honestly $99 to run a contest for one month?). And the freebie solutions didn't have the functionality we needed to capture email addresses, or if they did, they limited us to 100 respondents. Since we couldn't find what we needed, we decided that I should write it myself.

The really sad thing is, I got about 80% finished with the coding and back-end tools in two weekends, and then my work schedule went crazy and my computer crashed (my work was safe online but I didn't have an ASP development environment set up on my new laptop). That's when things REALLY slowed to a snail's pace. Countless distractions and other issues just kept putting S&S on the back burner until -- you guys really should thank him -- Paul got me to focus on it again so we can finally put this puppy to bed.

And that's where we are: Finally putting it to bed after starting it five years ago. This puts us 3.5 to 4 years behind schedule. I've got to say... Hawgleg has the most patient fans on the face of the earth. I think they always knew we'd get it done... it was just a matter of when. And, of course, that "when" is now.

Putting it all into a nutshell

I've had time to think about what happened and why. There were some reasons for some of the delays, and hospitalization and hurricanes are darned good reasons as to why we got thrown off track. But (and you decide if this is a reason or an excuse), I think it comes down to this: We underestimated the time and resources we would need to complete all the projects we had lined up and, because of that, we lost momentum on the S&S contest. 

I think we've managed to lasso the momentum right now and will manage to keep it going for the last mile of this journey. We're going to get the prizes awarded and delivered to the patient winners. And then we're going to pull the material into a book for the people out there who would like to purchase a permanent hard copy for their records and, let's be honest, to give one final thrill and some serious bragging rights to the fine gents who entered this contest. When all is said and done, they will have their work printed in a game book that they can show off to their buddies and to woo the ladies (okay, I suspect it will be more showing off than wooing, but you never know...).

By the way, just because we are collecting the Showdowns & Shootouts material into a book does NOT mean we are taking the original adventures offline. Our intention is to keep those up there as free downloads for anyone who wants to mosey by and take a gander at them. After all it's taken to get them up there, it would be a downright sin to do anything else.

Tuesday, come back for a rules discussion on Movement & Modifiers. 

S&S: Why did it take so long, part 2

I think we really started off well. I had the idea for the Showdowns & Shootouts contest in December 2006 and when I ran it by Murphy and Paul, they loved the idea. I then set about getting the prize support for it and together we worked up the rules and came up with the general guidelines of what we were looking for: Class adventure ideas that would be easy to play with 1-4 teams and didn't require strange miniatures or terrain. We also weren't looking for someone to write high-quality prose that fit our house style; we wanted basic ideas, character names and game set-up (maps, objectives, and other cool stuff). We wrote this up on our Website and opened it up to both the Gutshot community and the general public.

Our goal was always to collect at least 12 high-quality adventures and put them online where they would always be available as a free download as a PDF. The idea was twofold:

1. It's a reward for the people who have already shelled out their cash to buy our book.
2. Potential customers might read these adventures and think they were cool enough to invest in buying a copy of Gutshot. (Yes, we're nice guys, but we ain't averse to capitalism!)

When we started, we had no idea what kind of reception we would get. We needed at least 12 good adventures to complete the contest... and in the end, we hand danged near 50 submissions, and there wasn't a stinker among them! Every single person who submitted an idea took our guidelines to heart and wrote something that -- with some level of editing -- could be published as a quality game that would be fun to play. To put it mildly, the only hard part for us was agreeing on which adventure to print next.

The S&S Timeline

The contest opened on Jan. 31, 2007. Our goal was to have all of the adventures published by the end of that year and then wrap the contest up by the first quarter of 2008. As you can see, that did not happen. Here's a breakdown of the timeline, as culled from the Hawgleg Website's news archives:

• Showdows & Shootouts writing contest offers more than $500 in prizes , Jan. 31, 2007
• First Showdowns & Shootouts adventure ready for download, April 26, 2007
• Bullets for Breakfast -- New Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure Online, May 25, 2007
• Sawbones release Mitchell from Hospital, June 26, 2007
• 1,000 Horses for Helen -- New 'Showdowns & Shootouts' adventure now online!, July 20, 2007
• Fourth Showdowns & Shootouts adventure released, Aug. 15, 2007
• Holed Up: New S&S adventure ready for download!, Oct. 4, 2007
• 6th S&S Adventure: Stand-off at Muckhole!, Oct. 14, 2007
• 7th Showdowns & Shootouts adventure ready for download, Jan. 8, 2008
• New S&S Adventure Released, Feb. 25, 2008
• Hawgleg Publishing acquires Arnica Montana Real Estate, April 28, 2008
• Klaus needs a Holiday New Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure online!, June 8, 2008
• Ike Strike -- Hawgleg suspends operations due to hurricane, Sept. 22, 2008
• Hawgleg reopens after Hurricane Ike, Oct. 22, 2008
• I Hit a Vein 10th Showdowns & Shootouts adventure released, Nov. 12, 2008
• Hawgleg announces Draw! RPG, Feb. 5, 2009
• 11th Showddowns & Shootouts Adventure ready for download, May 4, 2009
• Arnica Pre-Release Bonanza Sale!, Aug. 12, 2009
• Pre-Release Sale Closes, Sept. 12, 2009
• Final Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure published!, July 13, 2010
• Showdowns & Shootouts winner announced, June 19, 2011
• Vote now in the Showdowns & Shootouts Contest, March 1, 2012

I've highlighted the 12 adventures' release dates in red.

As you can see, we did really well up until the sixth adventure, and even the seventh & eighth weren't too far off schedule, especially when you consider I spent about a week in the hospital in early 2007 and had a few subsequent relapses of a health issue that kept me bed ridden during that year. No, in spite of that, we were doing okay.

And then we bought Arnica Montana from Mike McGraw. Honest to gosh, we had no idea how much of our time and resources that would take up. This was new territory for us and we don't regret it at all, but it was something new and the learning curve was tougher than we expected. Being honest again, I don't think we're masters of this technology or business model even to this day. But that's another story.

By the Ninth Adventure -- Klaus Needs a Holiday! -- we were almost back on track, and then Hurricane Ike hit. My home was severely damaged and we were without power for 16 days. We left town for part of it (my folks up in the hill country had power and my brother was getting married, so what the heck, we rode out part of the aftermath with my kinfolk). And there was some serious aftermath. 

Hurricane Ike Damage

Yes, that is a tree on the side of our house. If you look closely, you can see the other tree that smashed the corner of our garage... tapping our cars inside (fortunately, our other cars were at my wife's folks' house, so we got a ride over there and were able to drive around the devastated city while Houston limped back to life.

Ike took a lot of wind out of sails and scuttled us for months (hmmm, maybe I should stick to Western lingo and say, this really put us off our feed). There was so much to deal with in the aftermath that we didn't even think about the contest for a while. Hawgleg actually closed for an entire month, and we didn't get our next adventure out until a month after that.

I wrap it all up next Tuesday in Part 3

Showdowns & Shootouts: Vote Now to Pick a Winner

As I said Tuesday, the time has finally come, mi amigos. We have finally opened the voting for the second-place prize in our long-running and much-delayed Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure Writing Contest. The details are all over on our Website, so you really should mosey over there and read it in detail.

Here's a relatively short version of what's going on:

• Back in 2007 we started a contest where people would send us ideas for adventures suitable for use with Gutshot. Some were real short (set-up and some loose ideas), others were real detailed with character names, stats, and detailed maps and game objectives. The contest is, of course, called Showdowns & Shootouts.
• We selected 12 of them, rewrote them into a standard format and posted them online as free PDFs for people to download for free.
• We got some of our gaming buddies to help sponsor the contest: Arnica Montana, Hotz Game Mats, Whitewash City, Knuckleduster Productions, and Scale Creep Miniatures all donated prizes... in fact, all told we've got more than $500 in prizes! Again, check out the main site for a list of all the goodies.
• Back in last summer (yup, summer 2010) we finally printed the last adventure. Yeah... there was a HUGE delay, which I'm gonna talk about shortly. Then in Summer 2011 we finally got around to decided who won the Grand Prize (we call it the Judge's Prize). It was awarded to Tom Reed for his adventure, "The Great Dry Gulch Bank Robbery!"
• Now it's time to select the second prize, which we call the Jury's Prize. This one will be selected by the general public at the Hawgleg Website. It's a contest that's open to anyone who will (hopefully) take the time to read the adventures and pick the best of the group (not counting Tom's two entries -- he's already earned one prize). You can get the adventures for free here:  http://www.hawgleg.com/2007_contest_winner.asp
• The author who receives the most votes will win the Jury's Prize and get more goodies than he can fit in his saddle bags (again, hit the main site for a full list).
• Now, here's the cool part, everyone who votes in this contest is eligible to win a $60 prize package. Yup, just for taking the time to vote, you could cash in on some cool stuff!

Everyone who casts a vote in this contest will be eligible for a special Voter’s Prize package valued at about $60. The Voter’s Prize includes: Whitewash City Starter CD ($15 value) One item from the Gutshot General Store (T-shirt, mug, etc. approx. $20 value) One copy of the collected S&S paperback book (approx. $20 value) Gutshot miniature: ($5 value)

Not bad, eh? To vote in the contest, just head on over to the Hawgleg Website, kick back and read some great adventures, and then cast your vote for the one you like best.

You know, what, folks? It's late, I'm more than a little tuckered out from getting things ready (wrote the news story at the Website, created that graphic you see above, and even cleaned up a few coding errors I found in the back-end software that tracks your votes). So, I'm gonna sit back and finish my beer and we can palaver about the contest and why it took so danged long to finish during the next blog update on Tuesday.

Thanks fer yer patience, I'm beholdin' to ya. See ya Tuesday.

Deadwood: Working on the new logo

When I was prepping for OwlCon (wow, was it only two weekends ago?), I found myself scrambling to create some new materials for the Gutshot: Night of the Living Deadwood game I was running. I had the evening's adventure mostly worked out (it was a simple event called "Last Thing Standing!" -- I set up half the players as humans and half as Zombies and had them go at it to eliminate each other), but I needed some new character sheets for the new Revenant zombies.In our game, this type of Zombie is also called a "Character Zombie" because it's a dead man who retains his memories and skills... and can now only be killed if you manage to blow his brains out (and trust me, folks, these tough sons-of-guns ain't killed by a single bullet to the head -- they're tough).

Anyway, we'll tell more about these bad boys later. Back to my rambling story...

I was working on the character sheets and it hit me that I just didn't like the logo I had created (in haste, I might add) a few years back. It was always intended to serve as a temporary logo, and here I was still using it. You can see it on our Website on the Deadwood miniatures packages (for sale at our Website -- you know I never miss a chance to plug our stuff). For those of you who don't feel like taking a mosey over there, here ya go.

It ain't bad, but it ain't great, either. And it definitely was worth the short amount of time I spent on it. The top font is Algerian (one of my personal favorite Western fonts because it's classy and easy to read). The name of the bottom font eludes me, although I could look it up if anyone really wants to know. So, in a hurry, I modified the logo and came up with this new version:

The logo isn't 100% complete (I need to tweak a few things and consider how much blood we want dripping from it), but I definitely like it more than the first logo. The top has remained the same (Algerian, which has been customized with a black "shadow line") and Bleeding Cowboy. Now, even though Bleeding Cowboy font is a bit overused these days (just go searching for any Weird West stuff and you'll find more than you can shake a sexton's shovel at), I do like the way it looks here. Nevertheless, I suspect this will be another "interim" logo for our upcoming game. Nevertheless, you should probably expect to see this (or at least a version of it) on the Website until we finalize it for print.

By the way, if you're interested in getting this font for yourselves, you can grab it for free over at DaFont.com.

Started working on new material...

I, for one, am very excited that my "day job" schedule has changed enough that I will be able to shift energy back to the various Hawgleg projects we've had sitting on the back burner.

Upcoming work includes:

• Gutshot: Night of the Living Deadwood
• Showdowns & Shootouts
• Draw RPG

Coupled with some upcoming changes to our back-end practices (scheduling, accounting, etc.), things are definitely looking up to make 2012 a very exciting year for us. Keep checking here, and at our website, for more updates.

www.hawgleg.com