The Keyboard Speaks

There is the castle and then there is the outside. They are one and the same.

The beautiful forest is home to a hunter’s lodge and flowing close by its stone foundations, a deep river flows. It meanders between both the trees of the forest and the lofty stone gazebos, open-air temples and the fifty-yard wide metal ducts that poke up periodically from the loam of the forest floor. When it reaches the forest’s edge, the river encounters only stone; gothic archways in the walls lead to corridors, leading to more passageways and yet more. The river plunges down one such passage until the vista changes to a subterranean river, lit only by torches placed at irregular intervals on the walls that frame its progress. More archways and passageways lead from the river channel, small landing areas are dotted about it, walkways sway above, bustling with denizens. Bobbing along its course is a primitive raft crafted from small bits of flotsam that have been lashed together. A dozen pairs of eyes stare from the junk at the people on the riverbank. The river next enters a large courtyard, splitting it in two. Each side of the courtyard is riddled with opening and passageways and above the waterway is storey upon storey of walkways and openings, leading to yet more passageways, and then, yet more. The river then enters a narrow tunnel, and the only company it has are the spindly beings that cling to the walls, coming and going into tiny apertures in the wall and barking excitedly at the men on the raft. The river then emerges into sunlight and a rocky channel carved into a mountainside by millennia of erosion. To each side of the channel, the castle rears again; gargoyles peer at the travellers from tall towers that dot the skyline for as far as the eye can see. Maidens watch the raft pass by wistfully, wishing to be taken away to new climes. Eventually, the flotsam raft passes from their view. Then, framed by cyclopean buildings to each side, carved and raised on a hundred mountains, with innumerable warrens, passages, mighty dwellings, sewers and a thousand other buildings hidden below each peak like the ice of an iceberg; showing only the tip of its immensity, the river and its raft pass beyond the stone horizon…To be confronted with yet another vista of crowded turrets, walkways, stone temples, barracks, covered cloisters and buildings of a hundred types; all clinging to the earth like limpets. Desert, jungle, grassy plains, icy wastes; they have all been claimed by the castle.

The river passes beyond these Stone Horizons on a journey that few take, to dump its waters into the sea. Boats dot the water here and trade, hunting and piracy take place here much like any other ocean. There is one difference though. If you can find the right ship captain at the right time in a suitable state of inebriation, he will tell you, “Across the ocean? The castle is there matey. The castle is everywhere and the castle is everything. Let’s hope whoever built it never wants it back eh?”

Welcome to Stone Horizons, where the castle is everywhere and the castle is everything!

Well, the ENnie award nominations have been announced and both of the things i contributed to in the last year have been nominated! The WFRP Companion for Best Supplement and the Liber Fanatica website for best fan site! So, my first forays into RPG writing have both been recognised! I was a small cog in both endeavors of course, Jude asked me to collaborate on the Companion article and i only joined the LF crew pretty late. So many congrats to Jude (and thanks for inviting me to work with you on the Trade article), Wim, Henrik, James Walkerdine and all the others who have made LF super cool for the last 2 years. Congrats also to Green Ronin and Black Industries for an impressive haul of nominations and to Steve Darlington and Jody Magregor for the impressive nomination of best writing for Children of the Horned Rat.

I feel a bit spoiled now. Will the other 3 projects i'm working on receive similar recognition next year? I doubt it very much, but i'm hugely happy with a 2 for 2 record as of this moment, so pardon me a bit of undiluted self congratulation.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: White Stripes

Not happy with writing for three current game lines, i've been tinkering with my own systems for a while now. I've only started putting a bit more effort into it in the last couple of months...and i've discovered that i get really enthused over my current project and then come up with another idea that supplants the previous one(s).

Having said all that, i'm jumping up and down with joy at my latest home-brew attempt. The mechanics i've been playing with are those that i was going to use in previous homebrews, but they have been refined and simplified a fair amount. This one just could be the one i finish. The idea took me yesterday afternoon to complete. I've done the mechanics already, have an advancement system done and am currently working on character backgrounds. Once that is done, i just need to do some explanation as to how skills work and how you assign them, a bit on equipment and then an introductory adventure. I could be done by this time next week!! (well, maybe two weeks then)

My thoughts as to the name of the game so far are either Bloodhounds or The Game is Afoot. Should give you a clue. Anyhow, i'm off to write up the Interrogation Matrix...

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: John Fogerty

...and it's coming to me. Too much excitment to hold in on this one, but i'm trying. Honest. The new ASOIAF RPG from Green Ronin will be splendiferous, balls-to-the-wall and many other colourful terms.

If you want to find out some more details, check out the Green Ronin site. They have a funky forum set up just to discuss this. So head over there! What, you're still reading? Oh, a link. Sure.

http://www.greenronin.com/phpBB2/

Current Mood: happy

Most of us play RPGs to actually play them. It's not much fun if you are forced to do something that you don't want to do. I'm thinking of things like Fear, Charms or Sugestions and the like. The stuff that essentially makes your decisions for you, removing your free will and forcing you, the player, into an avenue that you might not want to travel down.

Seems like every system that i see that has dedicated fear rules or magical effects that screw with your character are pretty much the same. You lose control for a while. Great once or twice, if annoying, and a source of roleplaying posibilities as well, but does the choice in the matter have to be removed from the player?

What if things like rolling fear checks, gaining insanities and fear spells, charm spells etc relied on the player they affected to decide what happened? Would everyone just say "oh, bollocks to that. I'm not scared!" every time? In times of need, then i expect that most times that would be the response. If you're just triggering a glyph and no-one is around then maybe people wouldn't mind so much.

So, i think that the key to putting the onus on the player and not the rules is to have incentives for the player to act according to the stimulus (or a variation on it), so that a fear spell may result in him running away during a big fight, or curling into a ball. But, this has a good effect either later down the line or right there and then. Maybe seeing their comrade go comotose sends a shot of adrenalin through the other characters; +1 to hit and damage right now! Or added movement or a Strength increase until the battle is over. Maybe the affected character gains a bonus to future rolls if he succumbs this time, maybe he discovers that he now has a sixth sense where his fear is concerned, so that he might be able to avoid it in future. Maybe it is as simple as awarding bennies for use later in the session for the player giving up control of his character because of fear or charm.

Or it might just be as simple as saying to the player that he suffers a certain amount of minuses if he chooses to disregard the effect on him, but he can act normally (with fear anyhow), then if he buckles he get rewarded like above.

Current Mood: okay

So, i only have 2 thousand more words to write before i'm out of freelancing jobs for the first time since, well christmas, i think. It will be odd to get home, stare at the computer and go "huh?" instead of frazzling my brain on plots, plans and the odd motivations of strange people in an imaginary world.

What comes next i wonder? One can only hope it proves diverting and stimulating. So until i have anything to report, i guess i'll fill this blog with ramblings.

Speaking of which, i haven't spoken much about Tottenham FC this year. What started as a difficult campaign ended with a great run in the league which resulted in a 5th place for the second year running. More European football next year! Huzzah! And Dimitar Berbatov rocks. Hope we can keep hold of him over the summer...

Peace out kids.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: The laughing Gnome

Liber Fanatica IV has finally been released for the slavering masses of WFRP fans to lap up. It's a free pdf download available from the LF website here:

http://www.liberfanatica.net

It has all kinds of goodies in it, from an in-depth look at Altdorf University, to guidelines for library research, counterspells, a look at the celestial bodies and my own piece on the Alchemy practised by the Gold Order.

Enjoy!

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: CSS - Lets Make Love & Listen to Death From Above

So after a half dozen listens, i'm fairly noncommital about the new Rush album - Snakes & Arrows. Musically, some of it is bordering on great, lyrically, most of it is bordering on crap. Seems to me that the lryics get in the way of the songs. That's probably why i like the instrumentals more than the rest (mainly). Certainly not Neil's best efforts in the songwriting department and it sufers from the one good, one poor album cycle that Rush seem to have ever since Hold Your Fire really.

The exception is Spindrift, which is a cool song. Other than that, Hope and Malignant Narcissism are my favourites on the album.

Distinctly average IMO. I think i'll stick Vapour Trails back on and follow it up with Caress of Steel.

Current Mood: listless
Current Music: Vapour Trails!

A year, almost to the day, since my last computer totally dies on me, my 'new' one decided for some bloody reason to have a fit last week. Some garbled message about 'fatal error' and suchlike and i found that i had to restore a lot of files that had bizarely been lost. Luckily, since last year, i have been doing some backups, but still not enough, alas.

I've been hastily re-writing some stuff and hoping that it resembles what i had before the meltdown. The computer has been behaving since then, so i'm no closer to understanding why it happened.

Still some wordage to restore, so this is a brief one!

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Snakes & Arrows - Rush (bought today!)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music: Waking On Sunshine - Katrina and the Waves

Been a while since i posted. I've been insanely busy writing for money! Got two new projects that are a short turnaround, finishing off some stuff for Green Ronin and done the edits on my last WFRP job. I am eagerly awaiting news on a new project that i should learn about after the GAMA trade show. What that is, who knows? But the mystery itself is exciting. I doubt i'll be able to say anything here even after i find out about it, but i'm hoping it's a goody. Things are beginning to take off a bit on the writing side. If only the money was decent...

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: My computers fan

So after weeks of having to run around after ill parents (not that i begrudge it at all) and having it impinge on my RPG work, today that ended. Not because they have got better sadly, but because i've got worse.

What was an innocent enough early morning coughing fit suddenly had me rolling around in agony after something went twang in my back, causing silly amounts of pain and not much movement. A whole day of waiting for a doctors appointment and i've found that i've torn a muscle, damaged ligaments and displaced a rib (at the back of my chest, eek!) because of the swelling caused by the first two. I ain't gonna get much sleep or movement in for the next week or so.

On the plus side, this has given me the time to take on a new RPG freelancing gig that i'm pretty stoked about. In a strange way, i wish that i'd done this a few weeks ago so that i didn't need to let down a decent guy who i was working for. Swings and roundabouts i suppose. So for the next week or 10 days, i'm going to be high on painkillers and strap myself to my computer so that i can get much good wordage out.

So Rob Vaughn, sorry i didn't nearly kill myself at a more opportune time and Henry Lopez, really looking forward to working with you in the coming weeks!

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: The Sweet sound of my own moans

Well, that's one project finished (hopefully). All the edits have been finished and it's been sent to the great editor in the sky. This one has been a year, yes, one year, from inception to conclusion. I can only hope that there isn't another round of edits that puts it into the 18 month bracket. Still, the changes were worth it and made the finished work better, so i guess it's been worth it.

Now to buckle down and finish the other two outstanding jobs, one a fan project and one for those worthies at Green Ronin.

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Cat Scratch Fever - Ted Nugent

The next three weeks are going to be busy, busy, busy. I've got the final edits to do on my Alchemy article for LF IV, i've just received edits for a WFRP project and have a first turnover deadline for Freeport in three weeks time. Not to mention finishing off a rush job that i'm already overtime on. Many, many words to come from my keyboard in the next 21 days. I can feel some blisters coming....

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Montrose

That's were i am at the moment. In a bleak house. Running out of money, running out of time and running out of energy. In a deep, dark, hole. I'm a stranger in a strange land, in paradise lost and a spectator to Lovecrafts ancient evils awoken.

That is all.

Oh and bloody Spurs lost to Chelsea in the FA cup. That makes my day even better.

Current Mood: So incredibly fucked off
Current Music: The ticking of the tell-tale heart

Well, the word on the street is that a new license to produce George RR Martin's Game of Thrones RPG is in the offing with several companies in the running for the new license (don't know who they are yet). The Guardians of Order hardback is a beautiful book and adapted nicely to the feel of the novels. I, for one, would sell my own grandmother for the opportunity to write for the new game line, whenever it is announced and whoever gets it. Hell, i nearly started writing a conversion using WFRP for it, as well as my own supplements for the GoO book.

That book got me jazzed and the demise of GoO really hacked me off, but this news is great! Fingers crossed that someone groovy gets it and i have a chance to write for it. (He says in true pimping stylee).

Huzzah!

Current Mood: jubilant
Current Music: Joe Walsh

Although i can't talk about the specifics of my work on this line of products, those helpful people at Green Ronin have put up a page detailing the new Freeport line. This gives out a few nuggets of information and teasers as to what is coming down the line.

http://www.greenronin.com/freeport/

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Los Lobos

BI have just put up my latest fan material.

It's all about what "the dirty hobitses have in their pockets."

http://www.blackindustries.com/?template=WH&content=fanmaterial

Current Mood: working
Current Music: Kaiser Chiefs

Get those thinking caps on! What is the song title and the artist of each of these snippets of lyrics?

1.
"the first time i got it, i was just ten years old,
i got it from some kiddy next door,
i went to the doctor and he gave me the cure,
and i went out and got it some more."

2.
"ah yes to yes, to a-ha to yes, why the sun, why the sun."

3.
"Talk me down, safe and sound, too
strung up to sleep. Wear me out, scream
and shout, swear my time's never cheap.
I fake my life like i've lived; too much,
I take whatever you're given; not enough"

4. (easy one!)
"Read 'em and weep, the dead man's hand again."

5.
"You're very young, but you're over age,
i don't care, 'cos i like your style."

First off, i've said hardly anything about my beloved Tottenham Hotspur during this current season. It's been a middling season so far in the league, but we got to the semi-final of the carling cup and are in the quarter-finals of the FA cup and the last sixteen of the UEFA cup. So, it's not all bad. A great 4-1 win against Bolton at the weekend and we are suddenly in the frame again for European football next season. Which would be nice 'cos i doubt we'll win the UEFA cup. Also, even though he cost upwards of £10 million, Dimitar Berbatov looks like the real deal and is a snip, even at that price.

Enough about football. At long last, my Liber Fanatica alchemy article has been submitted and recieved edits. Hopefully the document will be out soon. However, having struggled through this project due to multiple factors myself, i don't begrudge anyone extra time to get things done. This is a fan product, after all, and we all have multiple other things to do in our real lives.

Anyway, look out for the next LF soon. As soon as it's released, i'll post a link here.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Master of hair rock - Van Halen!