Observations of the Fox

Just when I thought I'd have some time to work on a couple of games and get a few long standing projects back in order... I end up on the front line. One of the "essential" workers in society, as a school teacher now required to generate physical lesson plans, as well as digital versions for students in rural locations where internet may or may not be a reliable thing. I'm sure things will calm down soon, but the nature of that calm is unpredictable at this time. More coming soon. --- P.S. It's really starting to feel like I'm writing the prologue to my own Apocalypse Daries story. I'm almost getting the feeling that it's time to swap out the LARP tips on my arrows for the live/hunting tips. We'll see where this goes.

This pandemic has hit fast hasn't it. A month ago, we heard there was an illness but it was mostly confined to China, with a few outbreaks that generally seemed under control in other parts of the world. NOw, it's everywhere. Folks are self-quarantining, others are disappearing (hopefully they'll be back after a social media isolation period), people are hoarding, infrastructure is collapsing. As a teacher in the Australian state of New South Wales, I have been deemed an essential worker in the community, which means I'm not on self isolation but I feel for the folks who are. It's really starting to feel like the opening scenes to either of the two game projects that I've been toying with for years. Walkabout starts with an undisclosed apocalypse. It alludes to some environmental catastrophe, and implies a time of darkness and chaos when people turned on each other. That basically derives from the Mad Max movies more than anythng about nuclear holocaust,

The Covid-19 virus is sweeping the world with mixed news and opinions swirling around it. It might end up being only a bit worse than the regular influenza epidemics, it might end up being a devastating plague that decimates the community. I suspect it'll end up somewhere between the two, but we'll see. The silver lining is that a lot of gaming companies have started offering their products free, for those of us who can't meet except in small groups. I'll try to share a few of them ASAP, because these deals won't last long.

This week only

I've finally wrangled the crew into line, the words have come in and have been sorted into a 32 page layout. It's going to be sent out to the Kickstarter backers shortly, then in a week will be made available on DrivethruRPG, Itch, and any other source where BGS is currently available. This has given us three issues that set the tone for the Sprawl. There's a lot to it, and far more that could be added to it, but now we're gettng to the point where further detail starts taking the setting away from being a generic cyberpunk, and toward something that is more focused. The next three issues will provide a specific setting within the Sprawl, in this case a residential tower, which might be utilised as a specific "mega-dungeon" campaign setting.

Every now and then I'll see an article like this one of these articles explaining what someone needs to become a great Game Master (or Dungeon Master) . Sometimes I read them and think "Hey, I do all that stuff already".  I keep thinking I should write an article like this (or even a series of them), but a nagging voice in my head keeps saying, everyone knows all this stuff. Today as I read the article it was different. There are a lot of new gamers out there, folks who weren't even alive when The Forge was trying to establish a standard lexicon of roleplaying theory, folks whose only exposure to games beyond their home table is watching some pre-scripted voice actors being railroaded through a couple of murderhobo scenes. Maybe it is time to develop a good series about new tools for inexperienced GMs/DMs to add to their toolkits.

It's always nice to see when someone is doing something in a similar stomping ground to one of my projects...something I can get a bit of inspiration from. Naturally, this post at The Amateur Dungeoneer , drew my attention. This interpretation of pre-Adamite inhabitants of the earth as fey, or intermediary beings between spirits and mortals, could easily work in tandem with the ideas I've been developing for Familiar.

I don't want "Familiar" to be filled with stereotypes, or "diversity tourism" where the struggles of real people are filtered through the lens of a "male, white, middle class, able-bodied, english-speaking, suburban" author. Of course the problem here is the fact that I am a "male, white, middle class, able-bodied, english-speaking, suburban" author. Hence my desire to get the ideas out there, to get input from people outside this specifc demographic that controls much of the narrative in western society. I want this to be a game for people from different backgrounds, and want this to have input from people from different backgrounds. Over the years I've seen a few calls to authors from diverse backgrounds. In some cases it's been heavy handed... "we want authors, but not if you're cis, white, and male". In some cases it's been met by massive backlash from "cis, white, male" authors who cry foul abou

One of the annoying things about developing a collaborative zine is when some of the collaborators don't provide the articles they promised, and when this impacts the ongoing release schedule. I had hoped by this stage that I'd have had all of the articles ready to go for the third issue of the "Beneath the Glass and Steel" zine, but I'm still missing about half of the text. I guess that means I'm going to have to write those articles myself... which kind of defeats the purpose of the collaborative zine. I'm not abandoning the project yet, especially when a whole bunch of people have pledged to the Kickstarter. It just means shifting a few priorities around.