It never fails – about an hour after I posted last night (saying that I can’t tell you yet about my Avalon Games “secret project”), the new issue of Game Geek hit the interwebs, and within its pages lies Part One of my new Steel & Glory genre set.

It’s called Steel & Glory: Spaghetti Western, and I don’t guess it would take a genius to figure out the nature of the source material.

The full set will contain eighteen new S&G characters, complete with cards and tokens, plus terrain and object tiles. Four of the characters have been published in Game Geek #19, available as a free PDF download from RPGNow.

Many of the characters in Steel & Glory: Spaghetti Western are based directly on characters from famous Italian westerns; in fact, three of the four characters presented in Game Geek #19 are straight from the movies. Part of the fun of the game is to try to identify the movie characters. If you’re going to take a stab at it, I’ll suggest you stick to the verbal descriptions and the special powers, but ignore the illustrations (kick-ass though they are); only one of the three remotely resembles the actual actor (and it’s the only one of the three that you’re practically guaranteed to get right).

I’ve been told that Game Geek issues 19-21 will contain parts of Steel & Glory: Spaghetti Western and the complete game will be available later. If you’re planning on trying it out, bear in mind that the magazine doesn’t have the rules to the game and you’ll need one of the full Steel & Glory games to be able to try out my characters; as usual, I recommend Men of Bronze as a good starting point.

But even if you don’t have S&G, you can still have fun trying to guess the identities of the three actual movie characters in Game Geek #19. Fire away in the “Comments” section below if you think you know who they are.

Meanwhile, other game projects just keep chugging along. I’m going to edit some more existing S&G products, create another S&G genre book or three, and then take a deep breath, drink a couple of Shiner Bock beers, and decide what to get into next.

Have fun! – Steve

Copyright 2011, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.