Category: Blog information

Plans for this blog

I’m not quite sure how we ended up here. Near as I can tell, it went something like this:

  1. I started this blog to plug my eternal work in progress, Monstrous Mishaps, and to prod myself into working regularly at it. I also wanted somewhere to document my then-obsession with porting everything and anything to the Powered by the Apocalypse framework.
  2. In the pursuit of the latter, I did a deep dive into all things Warhammer 40,000 while I worked on my Dark Heresy port. In the end, I got sort of grimdarked out and wanted a palate cleanser.
  3. Arbitrarily, I decided to make a port of Aberrant. And since I figured that Aberrant was one of those games that had a weak core book and needed its entire run to make sense of, I decided to just get all the PDFs for it and read it from start to finish.
  4. I ended up hating Aberrant with a fiery passion, but at this point it occurred to me that since getting the full run of a game in digital form had gotten so easy, I could just get all the PDFs for a game I actually liked and do a full readthrough of it. I started with Torg.
  5. And then things sort of snowballed, and I ended up starting a full readthrough of the entire World of Darkness, and of a ton of other games besides, and then followed six months of frantic reading as I tried to digest several decades of roleplaying supplements all at once. I… may have a slight tendency to overdo things.

So that brings us to today, when I’ve decided to sit down and try to bring some structure to it all. In particular, I need to admit that I can’t read AAAAAAAALLLL THE THINGS!!!! but need to decide what to focus on, at least for starters. So:

  • I will continue to work on the quickstart for Monstrous Mishaps, and try to make a post every two weeks to chronicle my progress. I need to get this thing done at some point, if only for the sake of my self-respect.
  • The Vampire: the Masquerade readthrough (which will eventually become a general World of Darkness readthrough) will continue. I am not at all confident that I’ll ever be able to finish it, because at a conservative estimate it will take me over 15 years, and I just don’t have a 15-year attention span. But so far I’m making good progress, and I hope to at least make it to the start of Changeling: the Dreaming, that game being a particular favourite of mine. Expect continued monthly installments, to transition to twice-monthly installments by the end of the year as we hit the start of Werewolf: the Apocalypse.
  • The Deadlands readthrough I’m going to try to stick with, and expand with its companion games once I get to them, though I’ll admit to being on slightly shakier ground there. I love the craziness of the supernatural elements, but I’m less enthused with the cowboy stuff that’s the mundane foundation. We’ll see.
  • The Paranoia readthrough will, I think, have to end with the first edition, or at least get put on the back burner. Judging from the unenthusiastic stats I’m getting, no one is particulary interested in reading those entries, and honestly, I’m sort of lukewarm on it myself. I love the humour, but again, I’m just not thrilled enough with the gun porn and space age stuff that it’s parodying to enjoy wading through the nitty-gritty details.
  • The Dragonbane readthrough will continue to the end of the second edition, but after that it might be slowed down considerably as well. Again, I’m not sensing even a tiny bit of an audience here, and honestly I can see why – it’s really just standard fantasy for the most parts, only interesting to me because it was the one I started out with. Shame about missing some of the later adventures, which were sort of insane, but there’s just too much humdrum stuff around them.
  • The Torg readthrough, despite likewise not being a crowd-pleaser, will however continue to the bitter end! The game has a managable number of reasonably short books, and what’s more, I think it’s an underrated classic and I’d like to contribute to it being remembered more.
  • That leaves me with two holes to fill if I want to continue at the current pace. I am still considering. The Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying games have the attraction that I think more people would be at least somewhat interested in them, and of course they were in some sense what started the whole thing and I’ve already read a bunch of them. On the other hand, they’re kind of… not very entertaining or well-written? A sexier option might be Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which would also keep some old-fashioned fantasy in to replace Dragonbane, but it does mean starting fresh. As for the replacement for Paranoia, I am sort of torn between Rifts and Shadowrun. I feel like the latter is more polished, but the former has more personality. Both of them are also kind of daunting, with supplements in the hundreds. I’ll have to think on it.
  • The Daggerheart readthrough will be finished if it so kills me. Which it might. FROM HELL’S HEART I STAB AT THEE, YOU OVERRATED PIECE OF CRAP! I will, however, continue to stall by doing writeups of new-ish games I actually like in place of new Daggerheart installments, but when I can’t find one of those it’s time to expose myself to another dose of my personal kryptonite, smarmy smugness.

So that’s where we’re at. I hope some of you will enjoy what’s coming. Please like, share and subscribe, etc, etc, and so on and so forth.

Welcome

Well, hello there.

This here is my blog, on which I talk about all the roleplaying games I write on. There are usually a fair number of those, because I absolutely do not have the powers of concentration to stick to a single project. I offer very little guarantees about what the post will be about on any given week; it’ll be whatever shiny thing caught my attention just then.

Some of the games will be new rule sets for existing game settings, because I have strong feelings about what rule systems should look like and what they should be aimed to accomplish, and hardly anyone else seems to share those feelings. I’ll make those rules available to anyone who wants to have a look at them. Right now, my five projects are Mummy: the Resurrection, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Mage: the Ascension, Blue Rose and Dark Heresy, but doubtless I’ll start fiddling with others before long.

There is also the ambition – but please don’t hold me to it – to work more on my own original games. The main ones I have cooking are Monstrous Mishaps, a comedic urban fantasy game running on a diceless system I am quite proud of; Heroes of the Ice Age, a low fantasy game set during a time of encroaching glaciers and hungry sabertoothed tigers; and Starlight Dreams (name subject to constant change), a game of divine power that might not be quite as absolute as you were given to believe. I have some plans to sell those once I get all my ducks in a row (but have you ever tried herding ducks? They’re freaking impossible to get in a row!), so hopefully there will eventually be some links to drivethroughrpg here.

So there you have it. Mostly, this place is just an excuse to log whatever I’m fiddling with at the moment. If you find something to interest you here, though, nothing would please me more! See you around.