Observations of the Fox

Here's a few of my scattered accumulated thoughts for this project... Draw three cards. If you drew more red cards than black, use this list to prompt today's response. (The lowest card determines the rank question.) A - What do you want most? 2 - What is stopping you getting it? 3 - What else do you want? 4 - What is stopping you getting it? 5 - What won't you sacrifice to reach your goals? 6 - What might you sacrifice to reach your goals? 7 - What will you sacrifice to reach your goals? 8 - What have you sacrificed already? 9 - What do you want people to know about you? 10 - What don't you want people to know about you? Face - What dream did you have last night? (Add the red joker, if not already present in the deck) If you drew more black cards than red, use this list to prompt today's response. (The lowest card determines the rank question.) A - Who do you like most? 2 - Who do you like least? 3 - Who do you respect? 4 - Who do you owe a ...

I've been reading through a few Judge Dredd comics... some of the classics... some more recent stuff... the "Judgement on Gotham" Batman crossovers... the "America" story arc... ...in light of current politics (and given that a lot of these stories were written over 20 years ago), the satire is viciously delicious. Given that I've been reading these comics for detail research regarding my "Arcology Tower" project, almost everything fits in with what I've done and my memories of the overall structure have generally reflected the oeuvre. A few things I'm finding interesting are the finer points... certain character calling knives "stanleys", even to the point of having "laser stanleys" that might be used for cutting into flesh for scarification purposes...the strange cults and gangs who often have names that allude to groups in our world... mysterious relics and arcne technologies that might link this world to other un...

I'm starting to womder if I should just write a setting, or a hack that can be used with 5e, or with one of the many flavours of OSR, or one of the other syste,s that has some kind of open license. Personally, I've always thought that this was a cop out... like sticking a new coat of paint over something that everyone else has already got. I wouldn't buy a product that was in this vein, but it looks like there are a lot of folks out there who would. My artistic integrity says "no", my contemplation of monetary issues says "yes". Artistic integrity is winning out at the moment.

I'm determined to get a printed version of FUBAR ready before I go back to University, I'm also running a revised version of "Dead and FUBAR'd" at EttinCon at the end of the month. that means I need to start doing some layout work and it also means I need to finalise the text. The original version of FUBAR was deliberately experimental in it's page layout, and I feel the new version needs to be just as artistic, but perhaps a bit more user friendly. There are certain elements of the rules that people have indicated elusive over the years, so I'll have to make sure they are clearly explained with plenty of sidebars and play examples. Luckily that stuff is written up. The new version of the rules will probably blow out from 50 pages to 96, but that's mostly due to extra explanatory text and the inclusion of a setting. I did a series a few years ago where I looked at games I liked, then analysed them based on where certain game elements were place...

I don’t blame the Christians; the old stories say that some of them were decent enough folks. Nor do I blame the Muslims, or that mythical group called the Jews…hell, I don’t even know if we had all that many Jews around these parts. I don’t blame the Buddhists, the Taoists, the Wiccans, or any of the other cults of the old world. All the old cults had their beliefs about the way the world worked; their convictions were so strong that they fought wars with one another over who was right and who was wrong. I don’t blame the scientists, but in some ways they were just as bad. The tinkering of the inventors, the theorising of the ivory tower researchers, and the experimentation of the practical technologists gradually eliminated the unknown. They defined the world into what they could see, and what they wouldn’t believe. But they were like mayflies seeing only a tiny fraction of the world’s season, gauging their knowledge on a single volume of life’s encyclopaedia. I don’t bl...

I just spent a fascinating week away from the outside world. Separating my thought patterns from previous cycles, discovering new thought patterns, illustrating my long standing comic project, reassessing priorities, gathering insights. One day I might share a bit more about my experiences, once I get the chance to process them properly.

I'm about to embark on a new journey in the world of roleplaying...a freelance writing gig. I've been in contact with Avalon Games , with regard to their upcoming series of booklets entitled "How to be a Great..." The aim seems to be the production of a series of booklets focusing on different aspects of the roleplaying hobby...from GMing to Playing, Character Writing, Scenario Creation, etc. It's a nice idea and while I put my hand up for "How to be a Great GM", this booklet was taken. So I've opted for "How to make a Great Dungeon". If this works out, I'll be submitting a few more Great Booklets to them.