Bill Coffin’s Septimus now available for free
Okay, let’s talk about – the Septimus Situation:
Septimus was written by Bill Coffin (personally one of my favorite RPG professionals of all time) and was originally meant to be published by West End Games, using their D6 System. In early 2008, WEG canceled the release of the book, claiming it would be too expensive to produce.
Flash forward to early 2009. Eric Gibson, then-owner of West End Games and Bill Coffin renegotiated, and we were told that Septimus would be released in August 2009 at a lower price ($42 as compared to the original $50), with changes made so that the interior was now black-and-white.
The PDF was released on August 15th, 2009 for a price of $20, which is a total steal for 364 pages of d6 goodness.
On a personal level – I pre-ordered the hard copy of this game close to 3 years ago and never got my hardcopy or refund, despite the fact that I paid for it. Granted, this is a drop in the bucket compared to what the old owners of WEG owe me for all the Star Wars stuff I wrote for them pre-1998, but I am still bitter all the same.
Eric Gibson had repeatedly made numerous, laughable excuses that hard disk failures and other unexpected editing/layout delays were the reason that the game wasn’t in print yet (well, before he quit answering questions about the delay altogether). While I do not believe Eric is a professional con man (like Ken Whitman is), and in all likelihood was simply a guy who had no idea what he was doing from the start with an RPG company – but his treatment of this book was really the nail in the reputation of West End Games. WEG was obviously less than a little forthright about using the Septimus preorder money to bankroll the game’s print run. And we gamers never forget.
A few months ago, Eric Gibson (finally) bailed on the RPG business, closed West End Games, and returned the rights to Septimus to Bill Coffin.
And Bill, feeding the truth about just how awesome he is, has just decided to release Septimus as a free download.
Free.
What’s it about? Here’s the product preview:
As one galactic empire dies, billion of people from thousands of worlds flood to their last great hope — Septimus.
Bill Coffin’s Septimus sets the players inside a Dyson Sphere made from an unknown and unknowable alien technology. Faction pitted against faction to control the sphere and the amazing technology therein — a technology so great that no weakness cannot be eliminated and even death is not final. But, even as the obsessed techno-cult, the Sindivar Extant seeks to build a Utopia around Septimus’ many nanofoundries, a dark secret spreads. The same technology that is a boon to so many billions of people contains a flaw, a flaw that may have spelled doom to the great originators, a flaw that threatens to crush Septimus and its inhabitants, even before the greatest of secrets yet remains undiscovered.
Whether you fight alongside the Extant and the Cadre, or whether you join one of the many factions seeking to wrestle power and wealth from the Cult, you are sure to find a game that is right for you. This 360+ page RPG comes packed with everything you need for many hundreds of hours of gaming. This books needs no additional material to play. It comes with the OpenD6 core rules, huge amounts of setting information, complete with area maps, plus the most exhaustive character generation and character option information ever in a single D6 System book.
Inspired by, and meant to capture all the fun of the Classic Star Wars roleplaying game by West End Games, this free-wheeling Space Opera also takes you science fiction fun to the next level. More mature and multi-tiered that Star Wars D6, Septimus includes elements of Cyberpunk, Transhumanism, Light Mecha, all the way to fantasy elements. Septimus’ vast territory only about 1 or 2% of which has been mapped, means an almost unlimited field to play in.
Go get it.
