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Showing posts from May, 2017

Dunwich Committee on Student Safety

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Just finished another story featuring my Dunwich Committee on Student Safety. It's with my beta readers now, then it hits the submission rounds. Now we move on to the next story...

Thoughts On Wraith: The Oblivion

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Talking about World of Darkness Games from White Wolf always eventually leads me to Wraith . I loved Wraith: The Oblivion —LOVED it! I have nearly all of the books released for that line. I think I might have been the only one because that game line never sold particularly well. Most of my friends either never played it or just didn’t like it. I think I only ever managed to play it three times (always had to run it) and never for very long because the players found it depressing. As much as I loved it, here are the problems I saw with W:tO : It can be relentless depressing and most people play a role-playing game for some kind of escape and to have fun. The players also playing each other’s shadow was a great idea, but hard to do well and often lead to player-versus-player drama. So much about Wraith is character-centered and character-driven that group play was very difficult to pull off or explain. The whole flavor of the game with the Kingdom of Stygia, the Death

New World of Darkness Editions

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There’s going to be new editions of the World of Darkness tabletop RPGs, or at least for right now a 5th Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade and a 5th Edition of Werewolf: The Apocalypse . (The anniversary editions from Onyx Path are the 4th editions)! I played a ridiculous amount of WoD games—a ridiculous amount. And while I came to like other games from White Wolf more and discovered other games outside of White Wolf I probably like better overall, V:tM is what got me into tabletop RPGS. And a vampire LARP is even how I met the lovely wife. So here are my main hopes and dreams for the new WoD lines as a whole: Decide whether the meta-plot matters or not and stick to the decision Decide whether the different game lines mesh or not and stick to the decision If they do mesh, adjust the cosmology so the different worlds make sense together. If they do mesh, publish rules for how the different powers interact and affect the different supernatural creatures F

Political Post: As Cherry Pie

One of my writing goals has been to try to focus my political thoughts into essays that I submit elsewhere. My first piece is up at https://riserevolt.org/ . And before you go read it, because I have a good feeling it's gonna anger a lot of people, here’s what I’m trying to get at it with it—I'm not advocating violence, what I'm trying to point out to you is that wishing something isn’t so, doesn’t make it so. The elites want you locked into a mode of thinking, right? About everything. It’s only when you’ve acknowledged the truth, that you can deal with something meaningful--in this case, that's having a conversation about how to get around violence effectively. Because what most people do when they "protest" is mimic a fictional construct, so it’s utterly meaningless and mostly accomplishes nothing other than maybe making them feel better. Read my thoughts here:  As Cherry Pie

Marvel Flavored Dreams

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When I daydream about writing comics, if the dream is Marvel flavored, it's either this:  Or this:

The Mummy and the Universal Monsters Universe

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The Mummy ? Hmmm… I get it. I do. These sorts of “creative” decisions about properties come down to simply what the suits think will make them the most money, right? What you as fan think will make a good story doesn’t matter. What you as a fan think about the integrity of the characters doesn’t matter. Kill your internal monologue—it’s always what the execs think is going to pull in the most money. Universal looks around, they see all these connected film franchises that regularly pull in around a billion dollars, and so they naturally want their cut and their monsters movies seem like a good place to start. Once they start looking, what do they see? Del Toro’s Crimson Peak was a complete failure, Dracula Untold with Luke Evans fizzled at the Box Office, The Benicio Del Toro attempt at The Wolfman was another flop, all their big plans for Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing (including a TV show called Transylvania) were shelved after those box office returns, and finally they come to

Nephilim: Occult Roleplaying

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I know it's had multiple editions in France and I remember reading something about a legal issue with the rights after the original company went out of business, but, man, someday I'd love to work on a new English edition of Nephilim.

The Problem With Doctor Who

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The 10th season of the new Doctor Who is now underway. Despite tons of buzz about this seasons being the best DW has been in a long time, it will be the last with both Capaldi and Moffatt. As we get closer to a new Doctor and a new showrunner, I see a lot of talk about what went wrong with DW and why the ratings have declined. Most of the talk seems to center around either the writing under Moffat or the Doctor as played by Capaldi, or some combination of both with varying degrees of chief responsibility. I know both contributed to my decision to stop watching DW until there was a new Doctor and a new showrunner--(the stupid, stupid scene with the Doctor playing electric guitar on a tank was when I decided I was done even trying). A few articles have also mentioned the trouble with the companions under Moffat (the most insightful one I saw wisely pointed out that Moffat spent too much time making Clara special and not enough time making her likeable). And one mentioned wh