Wednesday, October 5, 2011

What Goes Around Comes Around

Ugh! My poor neglected blog readers! How I wish I could eat, breathe, and sleep RPGs for a living…then I could keep up with my blog as much as my other RPG projects.

Unfortunately, I have “real” job and family considerations that split my time. I suppose I could quit my real job and devote myself full-time to writing/role-playing…unfortunately, there’s this certain “lifestyle” to which I’ve “become accustomed” and right now, I can’t see being able to keep it up with a publishing (printed and electronic) only type gig.

So you all have to suffer. Because once again it’s fall and football is in the air and I’m feeling creative and that means little writing projects keep popping up that I put my (very small amount of) free time into. This week it’s a new Tiny RPG…not a micro-game, because it’s already longer than 1 page and I ain’t planning on condensing it. However, there’s no plan to stretch it into a full-length 64 page RPG (that’s “full length” for me)…hell, it might not even hit 5 pages.

Play-testing will commence Thursday.

Several Years Ago I started getting into this whole “design thang” and made the first half-hearted stabs at writing my own RPG. The particular game I was writing was a little something-something with the working title “GW7” and it was supposed to be MY version of Gamma World.

[actually, my FIRST attempts at game writing occurred long before that, but they aren’t anything I would consider RPGs…nor exceptionally playable]

Why “GW7?” Because back when I was writing it (long before the 1st retroclone hit the market), I was thinking of it as the “heir” to the historical legacy of Gamma World, and by my count (at the time) there were six editions of GW:

- 1st edition Gamma World
- 2nd edition Gamma World
- 3rd edition (Marvel SH) Gamma World
- 4th edition Gamma World
- Alternity Gamma World
- D20 Gamma World

SO, yeah…#7 was going to be MY number. Except then I got distracted by a one thing and then another and then this whole OSR deal and my blog and B/X Companion, etc.

Skip ahead a couple-few years and we have several post-apocalyptic games floating around, including Octane and Barbarians of Lemuria and Mutant Future and the latest version of GW from Wizards of the Coast (not to mention several high profile video games)…all of which leads me to feel like, meh, why bother with returning to the subject? If I wanted to, I could pull out any of these other games (or my old copy of 2nd ed. GW or Twilight 2000) and run a post-apoc game. Hell, I could still run an edited version of Rifts (and still might…some day). There’s no need for me to create a PA RPG. Like, at all.

At ALL…did I mention that? Yeah. No…there are plenty of nuke-mutant games on the market, past and present.

But then I started watching Steel Dawn on the Netflix, and I picked up a copy of the totally overworked/overwrought Airship Pirates RPG and I started revisiting some of my earlier PA posts on this blog…and then I started thinking about how such a game might work with a slightly updated version of the system I was using for my micro-game Out of Time. And I got a little inspired at the thought.

I haven’t brought up post-apocalyptic (GW-style) role-playing since October 2010…I guess what goes around will eventually comes around (until I finally get a game written and "out-of-my-system").

So, yeah, I’ve been working on that (and one or two other things as well) which means I haven’t been posting to the blog as regular as I would like. But hopefully, I’ll find some time to get to it over the next few days. At least I’ve got Friday internet access again!

: )

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