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.

One of the things I love most about having made a gaming system is watching fans interact with and make modifications to it. Recently I got something  just like this in my inbox. Silvervine fan Mike Rutenbar emailed me a word document character sheet that he made for the Silvervine system. It mimics the style and feel of “Old School” character sheets used for D&D prior to 3rd edition. The sheet was so awesome we made some minor tweaks and got Mike’s permission to upload it. So, as a final christmas gift to everyone here is Mike’s Old School Silvervine sheet. You can get it from our download section or from Drive Thru RPG.

http://www.silvervinegames.com/Svg/Downloads

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?cPath=&products_id=86971

Some News To End The Year And Start The New One

There are quite a few things being planned and finished right now at the Silvervine offices. I like keeping people informed, so here is a quick overview of some things going on with SVG.

1. Errata and New Print Run – It should come as no surprise to anyone that Silvervine Games is a very very small company. We do this mostly for love of the game but we have a dedication to making a quality product. It took us 7 years of working in our spare time to get Silvervine to a state that we decided was good enough to put out there. We got something we really liked and something that everyone who saw it really seemed to like. We sold out of our first print run over the course of two small conventions. That’s a great response if I ever heard one! But no book, especially one done by a very small group, is without errors and we’ve caught a few issues since release. Rather than do a new print run with the typos and errors from the first book we are going to make some minor changes where we can and have a new print run ready sometime in the beginning parts of the new year. We’ll also be making a valiant effort to provide updated PDF copies to people who purchased the first run. We’re not sure of the exact system yet, but we’ll set something good up. In addition, we are going to be making a static errata page on the website where people can find errata with ease. Expect these things sometime after January.
2. Player Picture Project and Next Products  – Some of you are familiar with the Player Picture Project and how we like to make use of character concepts that people have made at convention games. Check out the chapter pictures in front of every chapter in the Silvervine Games Core Rulebook and Cyrus Worldbook if you aren’t. Well, the player picture project is going to be springing up again in the first bit of January, but with some changes for ease of use. We’ll be modifying some sheets so that PPP releases and characters can be filled out mostly on the computer. So to all of you out there with a plethora of awesome characters, I’m looking at you Brian Miller – the man of a million characters, get ready for a new round of PPP awesomeness.
3. SVG: TLDR – One of my own personal projects that just hasn’t gotten off the ground yet is SVG: TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) a series of web videos aimed at teaching the game and certain GMing ideas to players and GMs. While many people learn games from books, many more learn them from other people. Silvervine has its own unique flavor that sometimes requires Game Masters to think in a different way. In SVG: TLDR, we’ll be imparting information your way in an electronic face to face. If you’ve got any topics or questions you’d love to have us cover, just shoot an email to contact@silvervinegames.com.

With those few tidbits to sate you over, we wish everyone a happy end of the year. We’ll see you all in 2011.

– John Arcadian, C.E.O. Silvervine Games

I don’t think I’ve shared this little beauty yet . . . It is the core crew of the Crimson Armadillo, done through our Player Picture Project.

The beautiful art was done by Andrew McIntosh. The characters of The Captain, Burke, and Ziggy the Ogre were played by Jason Pisano, Akira Barnes, and Brandon Grinslade.

In other news, there are Silvervine Bandannas on the way . . .

So I’ve only got 14 pages left to outline for the 80 page Cyrus section. The outlining is actually the biggest step. It is where I take all the conglomerated Cyrus information and decide what is actually going to make it into the final book. With a large bullet point list of things that I want to include, detailed with Setting Information, Adventure Hooks, Cool Factors, NPC names, and lots of other stuff, the remaining writing is easier. It is looking really good at this point and I’m feeling great about how Matt’s world of Cyrus is shaping up. We are pushing hard to have a final sellable book by Origins this year, but I’ll make no guarantees. We’ve been six years in the making and playtesting and I don’t want to have a half-assed product out there with my name on it.

Also, to whet your whistle, here is a bit of preview art, done by the incredibly awesome Avery Liell-Kok.

In it you can see the Rings of Cyrus, an idea of Matt’s that I wasn’t totally sold on until I saw this video: