“The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the evening star trembled into sight. It was deep twilight when the captain cried out and pointed. My brother strained his eyes. Something rushed up into the sky out of the greyness–rushed slantingly upward and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above the clouds…
Category: Game Design
Progress and updates on the game design process.
WotW: Earth – 21 Days of Invasion
The Narrator of the book was close to one of the arrival sites but this was not necessarily the most active site. He also spent more than two weeks (or a three week invasion) hiding in a collapsed house. He was not the first to discover the dead Martians at the end of the invasion…
Social Class in WotW:Earth
War of the Worlds: Earth is set at the dawn of the 20th Century. You have the legacy of Victoriana, the sunset of the British Empire and the rise of other nations including the independence of former colonies. Even back then, state education was available to all, the British Empire (even as late as 1921)…
Collaboration, writing and vision
This weekend I was busy with family duties but still managed to do a bit of work on WoTW:Earth. Most notably taking the draft ideas Aidan sent through and turning them into mechanics and flavour. Collaboration is hard. I’m very conscious that I’m an ignorant so-and-so with strong opinions and a jeadstrong way of doing…
What’s He Building In There?
Title taken from the Tom Waits track. This blossomed into a scenario where the PCs were sent to investigate a murder. A newcomer to a quiet US suburb was found beaten to death in his home. The house is trashed. And no-one else in the suburb heard or saw anything… Anyone else have done something…
WotW: Earth – Art
Last night I commissioned two art pieces from Storn Cook for the upcoming War of the Worlds book. I really like Storn’s art (massive thread on RPG.net here) and he was very nice when I enquired about the commission and explained what I wanted, even going so far as to suggest additional things. The ‘look’…
One for the millennialists…
Mike Cane 2008 reports that NASA got it wrong and an asteroid that they reported to have a 1 in 45000 chance of hitting Earth actually has a 1 in 450 chance of hitting Earth. It took a 13 year old German schoolboy to validate the figures after NASA experts forgot to take into account…
23rd Letter: Projects Campaigns
A Project-based campaign is as flexible as the players want. The G.M. may choose themes as he or she wants. PCs working for a Project are relieved of many of the worries of Network members or other independent espers. Usually they are not on the run, living out of safehouses or mobile homes, lack of…
Sexuality (part 1)
A recent thread on TheRPGSite talks about sexuality and sexual and/or gender bias. Art Cheesecake art in fantasy is a real issue. I thought it was mostly gone but there’s heaps of the damn stuff out there. You know – the male characters are ripped with muscles, the female characters are showing cleavage. It’s because…
The 23rd Letter
Balbinus on RPG.net responds to someone asking for sourcebooks about running a campaign about the whole concept of PSI powers: “IMO the best is a game called 23rd Letter, it’s basically Firestarter (the Stephen King book/movie) the rpg. Probably OOP but available I would have thought on ebay.” Thanks, Balbinus! It’s not out of print!…
Spiralling Down
I don’t blame anyone really. Sometimes I get angry or depressed and curse my friends, my family, the company, the system, the church and anyone else I can name. But it’s a short madness and like all things, it will pass. I haven’t slept very well in the last few days. Bouts of lethargy and…
WotW: Earth – The Second Launch
“Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience….
New Downloads
Some people were looking for them so I’ve put some downloads on the books page: Wildtalents fanzine 1 60K PDF Wildtalents 3 fanzine 1.5MB PDF Wildtalents 5 fanzine 373K PDF 23rd letter character sheet 22K PDF zombi character sheet 86K PDF If there’s anything else in particular that people are looking for, please mention it…
Man vs…
The topic of conversation this morning in the car was the substance of plots. Traditionally, we have plots which are Man versus Man (and yes, I intend to keep the male pronoun because anyone who would be sensitive to it likely has stopped reading a long time ago). Man versus Man This describes the quintessential…
OREs Magica
I spent some time at work today thinking about things that could be done with the ORE system. I admit that I’ve not yet had the chance to really test it in anger Part of this is to kick a bit of life into the forums at Project Nemesis as well as the ones at…
WotW: Earth – The Computational Analyser
“In the Spring of that year I had the good fortune to visit my friend, Mr Askell, at the Royal Society where they were pursuing development of a computational device using the research of intellectual giants who had gone before. Bright young scientists to’ed and fro’d with metal rods and some articles salvaged from the…
Life on Mars, by Disney
Six short movies (Youtube links) Mars & Beyond 1 of 6 – Man & the Sky and more: Mars & Beyond 2 of 6 – Mars in Pop Culture Mars & Beyond 3 of 6 – History of Life on Earth/Solar System Mars & Beyond 4 of 6 – Mars from Earth Mars & Beyond…
So you want to be a writer
I got this from the blog of reknowned comic artist PJ Holden So you want to be a writer? Or do you want to make a living as a writer?
21/100 Making a Miniseries
On my main blog I’ve been working through Chris Brogan’s 100 topics more as a method of amusement and to keep me writing. The rest of the entries have been a bit easier than the current one and the context of the mini-series would only make sense in the LateGaming blog as opposed to CIMOTA….