"Hello,

     I was reading on The Grand Tapestry blog that you were working on an Encounter Critical/Urutsk game. As someone who enjoys creation and customization of material, will there be tools or tables to create some of what I've read about in the posts, such as ships, planets, alien races, creatures, pan-dimensional demons, cultures, etc.?

Kind Regards,

James"

I receive these questions regularly enough that I suppose i should address them here.  :)

Tools: There will be tools allowing the GM to create virtually anything, ranging from life forms to star systems to technology.  Players can create custom PC Human ethnicities and Other species as well as playing any of the 20 'races'.  Custom Classes can easily be accomplished by modifying or combining the 30 player classes.  Vehicle (including Starships) construction and Combat are included.

Tables: Most of the above Tools are Table-based, not only creating a high degree of variability in PC 'races' even between individuals of the same group; when combined with classes, the number of variation is too many for me to easily compute.  The GM can, in short order, determine the entire outline of a star system, its major life forms (including sentients), and determine culture, government, and technology.  Furthermore, character generation (procedural, to boot) creates the star system (or generational ship) -origin point for the character, as well as a sketch of 3 important NPCs in each character's background.  Weirdness and off-the-cuff gaming tables help the GM improvise in a way that adds content, not just some throw-away reference.

System: Encounter Critical is a d% system, which means it can be divided by 5 to turn it into a d20 based system with very little effort.  My alternate char-gen procedure speeds up play while adding optional complexity.  I've included combat elabourations, interpretations of more opaque sections of EC text, and have provided counters and terrain pieces for tactical miniatures combat -- as well as an entire mass combat section which integrates with existing EC combat rules.  Weapons expanded.  Many more mutations and other variations.

Format: I cannot give you a date of publication, but I can say that every day gets me closer to finishing the game in a releasable format with at least 45 colour PC-'race' illos and 20 colour PC class illos, among others.

That's all I can say about what actually exists so far.  I don't know about the Lulu PoD edition or the specifics about OneBookshelf pdf and PoD versions, but as I have more to say about them, I will announce them here.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Please address all game related correspondence here or to me on G+

-Kyrinn