Silvervine fan and friend Alana Smith just got this incredibly kick ass tattoo of her Silvervine Character – Marybeth Annalynn Bobbilee Sparkleshine the III. You can see the SVG logo right there in the picture she sent. She just raised the bar of Silvervine fandom.

So the question now is “Are you cool enough to get a tattoo of your SVG character?” Until the answer to that is yes, you will never be as cool as Alana.

P.s. Alana is going to be running her own games in her world at Con On The Cob. You should definitely check out the Zoot Suit Gang games if you are going to be there.

When we started Silvervine 7 years ago, it was little more than a time filler project in between games. Matt Solomon and I had played a game of 3rd ed. D&D that ended in a rules dispute. Imbibing copious amounts of sake, we talked about everything we’d love to see in a roleplaying game. 7 years later, we’ve put the main book out and gained a decent little following. It has gotten a lot bigger than we planned, but that’s good. It’s taken us by surprise and we’ve grown a lot more than we ever expected.

For the last few months, we’ve been talking about our expansion plans and decided that we really needed to move into some larger (not my refurnished basement) offices. We also started kicking around some crazy ideas. One of those being the fact that we all like beer and some of us have always wanted to run a small restaurant/microbrewery.  About a month ago we found a beautiful foreclosed 2,500 sq ft office building in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio that was zoned C2 for restaurant usage. The upper floors have enough space for the Silvervine Offices and storage for print runs, and a basement can hold the microbrewery. Yesterday, we closed on the building and are beginning renovations. One year from this exact date, we plan to open the Silvervine Games Microbrew Pub and Offices. We’re still mulling over some fun names for it, but we plan to have gaming nights and make it an environment friendly for gaming. Here is a mockup of the space as planned. Mind you things are bound to change in the next year, but it is an exciting development! More to come soon!

Now that Con on the Cob is over and our first print run is mostly decimated, we thought that we would show you what life at the Silvervine offices is like on a daily basis.  Yeah, kind of like the picture below, life as an employee of Silvervine is  being Kilted all the time, slightly off sync with your fellows, and frolicking through a green meadow full of rainbows and unicorns.

So the real story behind this photo is that there was a vendor called Fantasy Visions who set up a green screen and had a choice of photos you could be shopped onto. Not being ones known for over-seriousness, we decided that we needed to do a can-can line with the unicorn option they had. There are a few more that we had them do, which may or may not get posted here. Until then, enjoy the zaniness and the lack of shame that we at SVG revel in every day. 

7 pages left, 3 of them are being written by Jason Novak (our new freelance writer) right now.

That leaves 4 to go, and 2 of those (Cirro) just need a re-write. I find this hard to fathom . . .

- JA

I’ve just finished running the final official playtesting game before the core rulebook is released. This game was a test of high level play and had an awesome ending.

General conclusions?

• Silvervine plays much like other games at higher levels. "Regular" challenges are easy for players (especially in the ever-telescoping party we played with) but they can still be challenged with special powers and interesting strategies.
• High level play in Silvervine is much more cinematic and narrative based. Powers can be brutal but are subject to good dice rolls.
• Players had a whole lot of fun being badasses and a lot of their later level purchases were to justify their long-term goals.

There are at least 2 non-official games of Silvervine being played that we know of, and Brian Keller has been running a bunch of games at New York conventions. With the rest of the work on the Core Rulebook being minimal, it won’t be long before every game being played is with the final product!

- John