The books themselves are finally printed. Kind of like this:

Fidlar Doubleday have done their usual excellent job, the book looks great.

As a data point for the future, I thought it would be useful to post up how the pre-order period went for Hot War.

Pre-orders (only through IPR) ran from the 10th until the 31st of July. During this period, we received 39 pre-orders through IPR. Each pre-order received the PDF version of the game for free.

The PDF version of the game was added to DTRPG on the 16th of July, but not actually advertised until the 19th (for various reasons). During the period the PDF has been available, we sold 45 PDFs and gave 10 complimentary copies of the PDF pack away.

Much to my surprise and delight, a review of Hot War has already appeared. The esteemed Bruce Baugh penned an extremely comprehensive (weighing in at 4,000 words) piece on the new Tor Books group blog. You can read the complete review right here.

To lift a handful of snippets from the piece:

"This is an absolutely marvelous game that fills me with envy"

The demo script for Hot War is just about finalised and I'll be testing it out on a willing group of participants tomorrow evening. Prior to that, I'd love to gather some comments on the script, particularly on the characters.

Any and all comments and thoughts are appreciated.

Contents:

This demo pack for Hot War contains:

Demo script (this bit right here)

4 streamlined characters

Synopsis

1: Introduce yourself and the game

2: Frame the scene

3: Encourage conflict

4: Create dice pools and roll off

5: Someone narrates and assigns consequences

We're is delighted to announce the release of an upgraded version of the Cold City RPG.

Cold City v1.1 takes all the information from the original book and combines it with the Cold City Companion to create one comprehensive source for Cold City games. In addition to all of that, there's a new, revised system chapter that offers smoother gameplay and more guidances for participants.

Hot War, is now available in PDF format from Indie Press Revolution and Drive Through RPG. Priced at $13, the PDF package contains both full and printer-friendly versions of the game. The hardcopy will be available at Indie Press Revolution from August 1st. However, between now and then you can pre-order the book and get the PDF completely free!