Cosmic Patrol

First, the Omniwave Communicators are now active…come and join the discussion at the official Cosmic Patrol forums!

Second, as with Leviathans, Catalyst Game Labs is releasing Cosmic Patrol under Creative Commons. This means we not only want players to take Cosmic Patrol in fun, cool new directions, but we support it! The community will always generate fantastic and unique ideas for various aspects of any game and we want to tap that right out of the gate for Cosmic Patrol.

Catalyst Game Labs has begun work on the next Cosmic Patrol book: Into The Cosmos. Among the various sections, it will include a plethora of new Mission Briefs, as well as illustrations of various rocketships, from the Patrol to alien vessels. Here’s your chance to get in on this action!

Here’s the contest details…

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One of the most refreshing aspects of both Leviathans and Cosmic Patrol is that I can be freakishly open, including sharing way, way behind-the-scenes materials. In this case, I just signed off on the art notes that are now in the hands of the wonderful Leanne Buckley; she tackled all the art for the Core Rulebook and is on task for generating all the art for the next book, Into the Cosmos.

And just to show you how these things work, here are those art notes, completely un-cut (remembering it’s an internal document):

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INTO THE COSMOS ART NOTES

by Matt Heerdt | Cosmic Patrol

CHARACTER ILLUSTRATIONS

(8 Needed)

1. Annoran
2. Male Martian
3. Female Venusian
4. Rogue Robot Soldier
5. Hakhaze
6. Frog Men/Green Blight (Neptune)
7. Zhop the Humungulous
8. Ro-Men (Ro-Man/Robotic beings that enslave biological beings with a special helmet)

—–

ANNORANS

Explanation
Cat folks are cool. In Cosmic Patrol, Annorans (or panthera erectus) are not stupid creatures – they understand the concept of tools, clothes and the like, they just don’t care. They’re totally content living on their jungle world, sleeping in trees, hunting prey. But they’re jerks too.

Illustration Description
This illustration shows two Annorans – alien cat people mentioned in the Cosmic Patrol Core Rulebook. Annorans are barbarian cat people that live in the jungles of Annora, their home planet. Annorans don’t use weapons, but rely on their claws and teeth. There are two Annorans in this illustration – one is super furry and dark colored. The other is short-haired and has a smooshface. They are wearing simple clothes made of skins and giant leaves pulled from jungle plants.

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From the very first pitch for Cosmic Patrol it was never a mega property with half a dozen sourcebooks a year. Instead, it was a small, controlled set of products that would allow us to flesh out the universe appropriately, while ensuring it was an easy investment on the part of the community. (Obviously if it finds a large enough audience and that audience wants more, we’re happy to keep playing in a universe where we get to strap on atomopacks and wield atomatics….)

The current books we’re looking at developing are as follows:

Into the Cosmos: A book of missions with some new Patrolman. This is not a campaign book, but a slew of new missions and more in-depth information on the people and places of CP.

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Since I hear there are a few people out there that still haven’t grabbed our little red book, time to dive back into a discussion on the development side of things. As promised in the Narration blog, this will discuss armor/health/weapons/equipment.

If you look in that Narration blog, you’ll see dossiers for both Ken Costigan and Cometarian NPCs. Both have Armor, Health, Weapons and Equipment sections on the bottom portions of the dossiers.

Unlike most games, Armor is not a specific type of armor that changes when you upgrade or downgrade your armor. Instead Armor is derived from the Brawn and Combat Stat Dice, and represent the idea that the stronger and more effective a Patrolmen is in combat, the better armor he’ll be wearing, as well as the fact he’ll be better trained and more physical able to use said armor and withstand attacks.

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