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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

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	2010.02.06 03.00 Haiti charity total As of the end of January, Drivethru RPG raised $178,900.00 for Doctors Without Borders. This is actual money donated to the charity, after deduction of credit card fees and other unavoidable expenses. The actual amount donated must have been about 5% higher. My modest contribution was inclusion of Diana: Warrior Princess in their $20 games bundle, which raised most of the money, but I don't think I can claim much credit for the final total; the nominal value of the bundle was just under $1500 and it included several other RPGs, not least the Serenity (Firefly) RPG. This implies that there are probably at least eight thousand gamers prepared to spend $20 to help a good cause, or interested enough in the hobby to know a bargain when they see it. I'm VERY encouraged.



	2010.01.18 20.41 Help Haiti via Drivethru RPG Drivethru RPG are offering to match $5 or $10 donations to Haiti relief made through their site. http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/ e.g. you donate $10, they pass on $20 to Doctors Without Borders. It's already reached $2,785.00 They're also putting together a VERY big "Help Haiti" bundle of PDFs which will sell for $20 - one of the PDFs it includes will be Diana: Warrior Princess, the nominal value of the bundle is already over $500. All proceeds from the bundle will also be passed on to Doctors Without Borders. This isn't on line yet but ought to be live in the next few days. If you put money in as a donation as above you will be given a credit towards the purchase of the bundle. update Tuesday evening: This goes live at Midnight, EST tonight.



	2010.01.12 22.34 Thorne Smith Novels Updated I've finally got round to adding Thorne Smith's 1930 detective novel Did She Fall? to the collection of Thorne Smith novels on my site. Due to an unusually complicated US copyright situation these books will NOT be added to the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM; American readers should NOT follow the link, since these books may still be in copyright there.



	2009.12.15 20.38 This year's Xmas card I've put this year's Xmas card on line, once again a triumph of Victoriana: Illustration here Double sided PDF (print double-sided then fold double) here Single sided teeny PDF (print single-sided and fold twice) here They're all fairly small files.



	2009.11.08 11.17 Dragonmeet 2009 I'll be running two adventures at Dragonmeet 2009 Slot: AM Slot System: Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril Adventure title: A Ceres of Unfortunate Events The Smithsonian Institution needs scientists and other personnel for an interesting mission - exploring the water-filled interior of the asteroid Ceres. Somehow the adventurers have exactly the right combination of skills they're looking for. It's the opportunity of a lifetime... just hope it isn't the final opportunity of your lifetime. 3-6 players 2-3 hours characters provided. Slot: PM Slot System: Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril Adventure Title: Earth Girls Aren't Easy After the mysterious death of a mine owner, his daughter must travel to Titan to unravel his affairs and get the mine back into production. Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to make sure that she doesn't rock the boat too much. Titan has a lot of secrets, and it will be a disaster if some of them come out... 3-6 players 2-3 hours characters provided. As usual I'll also be selling stuff for charity. If I understand things correctly I'll be in the basement near the stairs - same place as last year. Hope I'll see some of you there.



	2009.10.11 04.05 UK Postal Strikes Between now and Christmas there will probably be several UK postal strikes, which may add delays if you order CD-ROMs from me. I always use first class letter post for customers in the UK, and air mail for customers overseas, which ought to help a little, but until the present dispute is resolved I can't make any promises about delivery times. If you're thinking of buying the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM, downloading may be the best option - it's cheaper, and you don't have to worry about the post office!



	2009.09.03 20.43 Sue on the Plinth For those of you who liked the dragon illustrations by Sue Mason in Forgotten Futures X but don't actually know her, she had an hour as one of the art exhibits on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square this afternoon, telling stories etc. It's a very entertaining hour, on line here.



	2009.08.25 22.56 Steam! Congratulations to the team which has smashed the land speed record for a steam car and returned it to Britain for the first time in more than a hundred years.



	2009.07.26 05.57 Minor updates I discovered today that a couple of articles had gone missing - not entirely sure how it happened, but since the directories were missing it seems likely that I forgot to load them to forgottenfutures.com when it moved last year. Many apologies. Future Dictates of Fashion is an article on the history of fashion from the late 19th century to the 1970s... published in 1893 and not perhaps terribly serious. D'Ordel's Pantechnicon is a wonderful satire on the Victorian and Edwardian magazines used as a source for Forgotten Futures - it includes rules for creating your own, a sample magazine, and more, and explains a LOT about illustrated magazines of the period. Additionally, I've updated the homepage at forgottenfutures.com to link to more articles.



	2009.07.21 17.24 Flatland RPG - Doctors Without Borders I've just donated another £60 to Doctors Without Borders, the money I've received for The Original Flatland Role Playing Game over the last year or so. This takes the total raised for the charity to a slightly disappointing £160 plus gift aid, about £205 in all. If you haven't already bought the game please consider doing so - all of my proceeds go to charity. You can buy it at these sites: Steve Jackson Games - e23 Drivethru RPG Or donate directly to Doctors Without Borders Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières



	2009.07.03 11.56 Baritsu articles on line I've given permission for the two Baritsu articles from the FF CD-ROM to be put on line as part of a martial arts collection. You'll find them here: http://www.sirwilliamhope.org/Library/Bartitsu/



	2009.07.01 00.43 Canal Priests of Mars For everyone who has been asking for it... The complete Canal Priests of Mars is now available as a PDF from Heliograph Inc., print version to follow in July / August: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=63094&filters=0_0_0_0&manufacturers_id=2551 Can't do better than to post the blurb.. BASK! In the glory of London, hub of Empire! TRAVEL! Aboard a luxurious ether liner! MARVEL! At the wonders of Mars! Our heroes help Martians accomplish a holy mission in London, then travel to Mars aboard the Princess Alexandra, the largest and most luxurious ether liner ever built! Throughout their journey they must face the hazards of London, the Ether, and Mars, compounded by mysterious enemies bent on stopping their Martian allies! The original edition of Canal Priests Of Mars cut slightly over a third of author Marcus L. Rowland’s manuscript to fit GDW’s adventure format. The Complete Canal Priests Of Mars restores the cut material, features all new artwork by Paul Daly, and adds many useful player handouts. Enjoy the "author's cut" of a classic Space 1889 adventure, or experience it for the first time! To which I can only add a heartfelt "Huzzah!"



	2009.06.26 10.51 Dragonmeet South-West It's a little late to mention this - apologies - but I'll be running a couple of games at Dragonmeet South-West on Sunday 28th. For full details see http://www.dragonmeet.co.uk/



	2009.04.30 20.43 Download the FF CD-ROM and save! UK postal prices have risen again. Because postage is now by far my biggest expense, I've decided to try offering the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM as a download - a 450mb zip file. The price is £2.00 off the normal UK registration fees, £3.00 off the normal overseas fees: £16 instead of £18/£19 for a first time buyer £10 instead of £12/£13 for a previously registered user who buys the CD for the first time £6 instead of £8/£9 for a repeat buyer. Anyone who registers will be sent a username, password, etc. for downloading it, good for 48 hours. If for any reason you need to download the same release again that will be free, but you'll have to request a new password. When the next release of the Forgotten Futures RPG is ready you'll be able to download the distribution disk contents in the same way. For the moment this offer applies to the full Forgotten Futures CD-ROM only; if things go well the Charity CD-ROM will eventually be made available in the same way. A lot depends on how big an effect this has on site bandwidth, and whether it becomes necessary to upgrade to a more expensive hosting account.



	2009.04.15 14.27 Log of the Astronef 3D illustrations. Mateen Greenaway's collection of 3D illustrations now includes a couple of images based on Forgotten Futures II: The Log of the Astronef. As I understand it these are still work in progress, but already pretty good. Some of the other steampunk illustrations on the site are also well worth a look. http://mateengreenway.com/steampunk/Aeronef.htm



	2009.02.07 08.09 Payment in Dollars? Someone in the USA sent me a query from an academic email address that keeps bouncing messages. I've decided to post the reply here: "How much is the FF CD-ROM now in American dollars?" I take payment via paypal, so you just click on the appropriate fee for "rest of the world" which automatically enters the price in pounds; PayPal does the conversion automatically. The current rates are here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/payment.htm Just click on the option you want - which I'd guess is "Order the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM: First Time Buyer - £18.00 / £19.00 choose £19.00 (Rest of world) then click on the PayPal logo below. If you don't already have a PayPal account you can pay by credit card at the PayPal site. PayPal use the current exchange rate, whatever it is - when I originally sent the mail a couple of days ago it was 1.42222, so the £19 fee for a new user of the FF CD-ROM worked out at about $27. Hope this helps.



	2009.01.20 18.18 Show Me The Money! The pound plummeted to a new low against the dollar today. Which leads me to remind anyone from the USA who might have been thinking of registering Forgotten Futures - it's priced in pounds, not dollars, so the odds are that it'll never be cheaper for American customers. Buy now before I have to put up the price!



	2009.01.01 14.59 Small site changes I've made some changes to the design of both of my sites, most notably a redesign of the game download pages to improve clarity and reduce clutter. This is most obvious on forgottenfutures.com (and .org), but there should also be a slight improvement on forgottenfutures.co.uk I've also replaced all (I hope) of the files that got mislaid when I moved to the new hosting company, fixed a few links, and made a higher-resolution version of the logo which resizes with page width - the old one was low resolution and didn't resize. If anything seems to have gone horribly wrong please let me know!



	2008.12.20 22.38 Season's greetings! This year's Xmas card is from a 1908 article on Christmas cards. I have no idea what the original message might have been, mine is just Season's Greetings, and Best Wishes for 2009 Marcus L. Rowland You'll probably want to open these in new browser tabs or windows! For a big version of the picture: For foldable greetings cards: Single sided PDF (1.4mb) Double sided PDF (1.4mb) Many thanks to Phil Masters for posting his card, which reminded me that it was high time I got my card on line and suggested the PDF versions.



	2008.12.17 22.24 New source for Forgotten Futures / Diana / Flatland PDFs I've just uploaded the main PDFs I publish to DriveThruRPG.com Hopefully this will help to get them to a wider audience and more reviewers. They're also still available through e23.com, and the free PDFs can be downloaded from my web site.



	2008.11.17 17.35 Crisis? What Crisis? While nobody is keen on the present financial crisis, it's probably an excellent time to remind my US readers that Forgotten Futures is priced in pounds, not dollars, if you buy on-line. At the current exchange rate registration is cheaper for US purchasers than it has ever been before. It probably isn't going to last, so register now!



	2008.11.11 16.22 Dragonmeet 2008 I'll be running the following adventures at Dragonmeet at the end of the month; both are set in the world of Stanley Weinbaum's science fiction: With A Grain of Salt The Venusian colonies depend on regular supplies of salt to refuel the atomic blasts that provide them with power, but their only source is the great Brightside salt flats, several hundred miles sunward beyond the deadly Hotland swamps. When all contact is lost with the mobile factory that collects it, and two shipments in a row fail to reach the British colony of Venoble, it’s time for the League of Nations Patrol to investigate. 3-6 Players, 2-3 hours Warlord of Mars For decades China has been in a state of near-anarchy, ruled and plundered by rival warlords who grind the peasants into poverty. Now General Fong, one of the most merciless of these rulers, has somehow reached Mars with a group of his most fanatical supporters, seized one of the remaining Martian cities, and proclaimed himself Emperor. How will the gentle Martians react to his oppression? Why would he want Mars anyway? And what can the adventurers do to stop him? 3-6 Players, 2-3 hours Please note that these are test runs - I'm still working on the settings etc. so there may be differences in what eventually appears.



	2008.10.09 17.50 Bug Fix - With The Night Mail I've just discovered that there was a small error in the story With The Night Mail by Rudyard Kipling on the Forgotten Futures CD-ROM release 6; the latest release adds four more illustrations from its first magazine appearance, but only three of them were included correctly - the fourth was a repeat of the second. I've now fixed it on this site, and on the CD-ROM. If you're running the files from your hard disk simply save the current version from my site to your drive. If anyone wants a replacement CD-ROM I am prepared to supply one, but I will have to charge for postage - it's much cheaper to copy the files from the CD to your hard disk, replace the file mail.htm with the on-line version, and burn a new CD from the files. Apologies, this is one of those stupid things that should have been spotted and fixed before the CD was released. FF CD-ROM Release 6.1 fixes this bug and adds the Forgotten Futures Compendium, which can also be downloaded from my sites.



	2008.09.25 02.33 Compendium on E23 I've put the Forgotten Futures Compendium onto Steve Jackson's e23 web site as well as my own, if anyone prefers to download from there: http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=ROW006



	2008.09.21 12.38 The Forgotten Futures Compendium On Line The Compendium is a new release for the Forgotten Futures RPG, containing material that for one reason or another hasn't been included in previous releases of the game: THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GEOMETERS A Crossover Adventure For Forgotten Futures & The Original Flatland Role Playing Game When the High Circle vanishes in front of hundreds of witnesses, the only possible answer is abduction into the Third Dimension. Are the adventurers up to the task of rescuing him? Not that they actually have much choice about trying, of course… ~ CURSE OF THE LEOPARDMEN A Forgotten Futures Adventure By Alex Stewart Murder and mayhem strike an isolated British colony, and there's evidence that the murderer is more… or less… than human. Can the first victim's odd account of an airship journey hold the clue? The only way to find out is a voyage into the very heart of darkness… ~ THE ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT Victorian & Edwardian Advertisements & Scenario Ideas What secrets lurk behind the lurid claims of advertisers? Are their products entirely safe, or even slightly effective? And who are those odd people who want to thin your hair, lighten your complexion, make you drunk or buy your false teeth? A brief sprint through the world of period advertising, with scenario outlines and verse by the late great William McGonagall. As an experiment the Compendium has been put on line as a PDF only - I will add an HTML version if there is enough demand. http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/compend

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