For the foreseeable future, the site’s online store will be closed. If you want to buy any Omnihedron Games products you can get them from:

Leisure Games, London
Patriot Games, Sheffield
Direct from LULU
As pdf files from rpgnow

The store will return in the future…

I’m thrilled to announce that Beat to Quarters has been awarded the honour of being the joint 2010 Game of the Year by ukroleplayers.com.  It shares the title with Andrew Kenrick’s superb Dead of Night 2. Some of the comments from the voters were:

• Best ship to ship combat rules ever!
• Provides good-natured, boys-own adventure, even if you know nothing about Napoleonic warfare.
• An inspired character creation process that allows you the power to choose important aspects of your character’s story whilst also producing random & interesting snippets of back-story
• It presents a very cinematic,exciting system/setting with just the right amount of rules to keep it a “game” and still enables the to generate great stories.
• From character creation to interaction to skirmish level it’s all fantastic, interactive storytelling that gets everyone involved.

Just wanted to take the chance to highlight a few things happening across the web at the moment.

• Mikeythorn has posted an exceptionally thorough review of BtQ on rpg.net, scoring it as 4/5.
• Shane Ivey has created an excellent portal for his Yorkshire Rifles campaign with some exceptional Actual Play write-ups.
• I’m running a Play-by-Forum game of D&H at ukroleplayers.com if anyone fancies lurking for a while.

I’ve added two new items into the Resources section.

The first is the set of Quickstart Characters from the back of the 1810 Miscellany – just fill in the blank spaces and you will have characters ready to go! go! go! for the two military adventures in the Miscellany or any other game at your table.

The second is the three pages which highlight the changes between the ruleset for Beat to Quarters and that of Duty & Honour, so that those who wish to can convert from one to the other. In the future, all Duty & Honour material will be using this iteration of the rules, so its only fair to give this one away for free!

Omnihedron Games are proud to announce the release of Duty & Honour 1810 Miscellany.

The second installment of our yearly collection of articles and adventures for the Empire! system, the 1810 Miscellany focuses on taking your games to new and exciting places. Create new characters in the Deaths Head legion or step into the American Revolutionary War with the Hessen Jagers (by Gary Bowerbank). Cross swords with some of the most despicable villains of their time or sail the seven seas on the ‘Old Barky’, HMS Sirius. Travel to the sands of North Africa to rescue a very special Lady or take a trip into madness on board the Irish Rover!

Also included in the book are a set of ready-to-play characters for quickstart gameplay, rules for converting Duty & Honour to the more up-to-date version of Empire! in Beat to Quarters and a whole lot more.

The book is 78pp, B&W interior with art by Peter Frain and Andy Hepworth and retails at £6.00.  It is available directly from Omnihedron Games, Lulu and other outlets from 12th November and also in PDF format from RPGNow.

As Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day approach, it is important that we remember those that have fought – and are still fighting – in our name, across the world and across time. We play games which in many ways glorify battle and combat but there are many men and women who have paid the ultimate price so that we may be free to play those same games.

Take a moment to buy and wear a poppy or donate money to the Royal British Legion over the next few weeks and spare a thought at your gaming table for those that have gone before.

Having battled with the gremlins, the Online Store is back! In addition, I’ve had a long hard look at my shipping prices again and I still maintain that it is viable to keep them ultra-competitive, so flat rate postage around the world is back! The most you will ever pay for a bundle of games is £5 for postage. God Save the King (and the Royal Mail!)

Talk Like A Pirate Day is at hand again and already the world is being flooded by buffoons pretending to be brigands, privateers and neer-do-wells from the Spanish Main. It is the duty of every solid and hearty gentlemen to stand up against these fools and show them what’s what! To aid in this armada of common sense, I have reduced the download price of Beat to Quarters to $5.00 on rpgnow.com

So if you haven’t picked up a copy of the game yet, now is the perfect chance to give it a try and show those lunatics what a proper sailor does with their cannonballs!!

Forum poster and eagle-eyed wonder, ‘Ovid’, has managed to spot a number of inconsistencies in the Duty & Honour text – mostly terms which changed at the end of the design phase but were missed in the editing pass. A bit of D&H history. I’ve altered the errata to take these into account and a new version can be found here