18 May, 2025

New from Black Campbell: Rum Row

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

We’ve been gone a while, but the first adventure for our “Prohibition Cycle” — Rum Row — is out on DriveThruRPG.

“Rum Row” is a 2-4 hour scenario for 3-5 players where the characters are roped into a bet — which crew can make the run from Bimini, stop to pick up alcohol at Rum Row and land it in Fort Lauderdale, then return to Bimini first? What could go wrong?

The scenario is written for Ubiquity, but we’ve added some suggestions on how to tweak for other systems like Spirit of the Century‘s FATE and Director’s Cut, the excellent engine for Outgunned Adventure by 2 Little Mice.

 

3 September, 2024

Come Join Us at the New Black Campbell Review

Posted by blackcampbell under General Ramblings | Tags: , , |
Leave a Comment 

It’s just getting started, so there’s not a ton of the material that’s here just now, but I’m starting to port over the more popular stuff from this site to there. Come join us.

We’ve got the main page where everything new shows, but it’s also now broken into pages for games and geeky stuff, movies and entertainment (reviews and the like), firearms, and motor sports — this set up allows the fans of certain content and maybe not others to exclude those and get what you want.

 

22 August, 2024

Big Changes Coming for Black Campbell

Posted by blackcampbell under Life Unconstructed | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

Over the next few weeks, a lot of the content from this site will be migrating to the new site on Substack: The Black Campbell Review. There will be a lot of the same types of things we see here — a tighter focus on RPGs and other nerdiness, but there will also be a review site for things like firearms, motorcycles, ans other manliness once I’ve got my feet wet over there.

Eventually, this site will get decommissioned or turned into a storefront for Black Campbell Entertainment. I haven’t decided yet.

As for Black Campbell Entertainment — there’s a few new adventures being written right now that will hit DriveThruRPG in the next few months. We will also be branching out from our usual pulp action material that has been the core of our work toward other genres — sci-fi, horror, and maybe even a bit of 5e related stuff. We’ll be sticking to PDF for the new stuff, for now, as DriveThru has gotten finicky about the layout process for print and I have to retrain myself on some of the software to get around their nonsense.

A lot of this has been percolating since about 2021, when we pumped out two books in six months. We’re a small outfit and that combined with the COVID idiocy and a full time job burmed me out something fierce. It’s taken until a few weeks ago, when my school decided to go to what I derisively call “course in a can”. The school bought curriculum that is pre-packaged, often scripted, and where it’s been tried, demonstrably lackluster. No room for academic freedom, no room for reteaching or getting off schedule, no room for the students, who are to be “aggressively monitored” (as are the teachers). So I decided to walk away.

Now I have the big question: do I pivot to writing and creative work and leave teaching — something I’ve been doing at college and high school for almost 15 years; or do I go find another job in the classroom and hope things get better. The wife is of the opinion I should do the former. We’ll see.

For now, however, join me over at blackcampbell.substack.com

 

13 May, 2021

LIVE on DriveThruRPG: The City of a Thousand Minarets, a Guide to 1930s Cairo

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , |
1 Comment 

It’s only been a few months since we got The Marvelous City out, our guide to Rio de Janeiro for the Ubiquity system. There’s been a few hitches with getting the book out in print with DriveThruRPG due to their new print setup, but it is live on Amazon.

While we were in the beginning stages of that book, we were approached by Scott Glancy about doing a book on Cairo. I had a look at his initial notes and material that had been developed for an abortive computer RPG and signed him up right away. He turned in the second draft of material in November, right as the Marvelous City was going online and we’ve been furiously working on getting “the Cairo book” finished.

Now, The City of a Thousand Minarets is live for PDF on DriveThruRPG.com with print versions coming soon. Then, this summer, we can turn our attention to getting the FATE version of book books out.

 

12 March, 2021

Coming Soon: The Cairo Sourcebook for 1930s Pulp Games

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , |
Leave a Comment 
c

We’ve barely gotten The Marvellous City out the door before we turned our attention to a sourcebook for 1930s Cairo for use with Ubiquity and Fate. The turn around time was brutal, especially with a rough semester for the high school and community college I work at, plus an ongoing illness…but it’s on it’s way.

This one will be the first Black Campbell product not written by (or mostly written by) Scott Rhymer (yours truly). The author on this one is Adam Scott Glancy, who approached us through the Ubiquity RPG group on Facebook and asked if we would be interested in publishing him. After having a look at his initial notes and work, I was thrilled to welcome him aboard. I will be penning the adventure or two that will go with the city guide, but most of this is his baby. I am handling layout, editing, and the like, so right now the PDF is probably about a month away, and another for print — depending on if i can get DriveThruRPG to work with us.

That said, The Marvelous City and most of our back catalogue is hitting Amazon.com, as well as DriveThru. This book will most likely follow that route.

For those of you waiting for the FATE version of The Marvelous City, it’s on the way, and will get some love after this one drops for Ubiquity.

 

27 December, 2020

Now Available: The Marvelous City

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , , |
[3] Comments 

The Marvelous City, our pulp guide to 1930s Rio de Janeiro for the Ubiquity system that powers Hollow Earth Expedition and Space:1889 (among others) is now live on DriveThruRPG.com.

The PDF version and now the print version is available at Amazon.

The Marvelous City is a 90-page book covering the neighborhoods and major sights of Rio, the culture of the city including music and dance, capoeira, and the more mystical aspects of macumba (or mandinga, if you’re not throwing aspersions), with an adventure written by Anthony “Runeslinger” Boyd. Cost is $9.99.

 

8 November, 2020

Final editing for “The Marvelous City” Underway

Posted by blackcampbell under General Ramblings | Tags: , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

I’ve received the last material from Black Campbell’s friendly neighborhood Runeslinger and final editing for our 1930s pulp Rio sourcebook is underway. The Ubiquity version will hit a few days before the Fate version, as we have to still do the system specific changes.

Stay tuned! Possible news on another book in a few days.

 

18 March, 2020

The Sublime Porte is Now Live!

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , , |
[2] Comments 

pdf coverThe Sublime Porte is now live on DriveThrRPG for both Ubiquity and Fate. This sourcebook includes two adventures and maps to the Old City and “European” City, as well as the Grand Bazaar and Topkapi Palace.

The print versions are about two weeks away (hopefully) as we wait for the proofs to come in.

 

22 January, 2020

Crawling to Constantinople…

Posted by blackcampbell under Life Unconstructed, Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , , |
Leave a Comment 

The editing work on the Fate version of The Sublime Porte is almost done, and the work on the Ubiquity version is complete. We’re just waiting on the art before assembling the book for publication.

 

 

28 November, 2018

Gateway to the East — A Sourcebook to 1930s Istanbul

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , , |
Leave a Comment 

bannerI’ve been hammered this semester with a fair amount of work. The college I work at doubled up my classes (yay, money!), and my teaching certificate program (wait, haven’t you taught for years…yes, but not high school so that’s entirely different! But it’s not…), and the usual collection of life stuff, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busting out words on Gateway to the East, our upcoming guide for pulp-era Istanbul. As with the other Black Campbell books, it’ll be for use with Ubiquity and Fate. I’m estimating a final page count of about 80 pages — on par with our Shanghai book, Queen of the Orient. There will be two adventures included in the sourcebook.

Depending on work schedules next semester, I’m hoping to have this out by the beginning of the coming summer, as end of summer seems to be a popular time for the Kickstarter campaigns of other games to fire up and we got lost in the onslaught this year.

 

Next Page »