RPG a Day 2020, Part Seven – Couple’s Roleplaying

Posted on August 7, 2020 by fakedtales

My partner doesn’t really do roleplaying games. She’s played The Quiet Year once with my writing group, although she reckons that’s not really a roleplaying game. Then most recently there’s Fall of Magic which again is RPG-adjacent enough for me to get away with. I think the game of Fall of Magic was a little too wacky with two very odd, very different crab singers, but I can hopefully get her to try it again. Lockdown’s tricky for that, as our lodger is the only one of my regular roleplaying group who didn’t get on with it.

The lovely map from Fall of Magic

One of my favourite experiences of roleplaying with her was during Grant Howitt Day. During Battle Wizard Hats, she made a wizard who was… fine. One of the players had repeatedly narrated her actions for her and halfway as a grudge she made a Spreadsheet Wizard. As a man in deep romantic love with Excel, I of course approved. To be honest, a Spreadsheet Wizard felt pretty much in keeping with the level of oddness and fun which Grant Howitt games are known for. She managed to use her magic far more effectively and seemed to be far more comfortable, even if some of it was out of spite. It was nice to share my hobby with her, even briefly. I’m already blessed with a partner who plays board games with me so much (and cursed with never being able to win a game of Scythe or Lords of Waterdeep against her). I’m also pleased she’s managed to tolerate me talking about RPGs so much over the years. Hopefully at some point in the future I’ll be able to get a game of Good Society and possibly Warmer in the Winter arranged, which she’ll be up for joining.

Some of the hats from Battle Wizard Hats
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RPG a Day 2020, Part Six – The Endless Forest

Posted on August 6, 2020 by fakedtales

In the troupe D&D 3.5 game my group ran, I hit a turning point when I realised I was back to being a Forever GM and the sole person running the game. I had to do something more with the campaign to make my mark and signal that this was the start of a new era in the campaign. My brother had was visiting occasionally at weekends and joining in with the group’s game. He was a good, if slightly feral roleplayer, often forced into leadership roles and often demanding of their acknowledgement as the smart one of the group.

He returned briefly and made an elf ranger called Thorn. Thorn was an elf ranger with high charisma and little else going aside from wanting to romance the monk character of the player who always played anime women. That’s another story which started out creepy and ended up kind of adorably (they adopted a kobold).

Creepy trees

Anyway, the forest. I would use a forest as a kind of pitcher plant for adventurers in the future, but this was my first go. The group had to head in for a reason I can’t even remember. Recovering an artefact or something similar. They set out, did their usual bickering and eventually found a massive forest which was evidently the adventure site. It was creepy enough at first, as the forest seemed to go on far more inside than out. My brother’s character went out ahead to scout and we had a break. At that point I told him the following: He had been replaced and not to worry as his character will be fine, he’ll even earn XP like the others. He was a changeling who served the forest, which ate adventurers. It needed people split up and isolated, taken into the lower places where it could work on them.

Thorn suggested splitting up the party and to go with the evil magician of the group, Servus, played by Steve. He was a high elf blood mage, frail and sinister. Steve and Alfred were good friends, so when Thorn said he’d protect Servus, Steve believed him. When they were going through the wetter, wilder places and Thorn said he’d be able to keep Servus’ spellbook safe. When it was handed over, Thorn stabbed Servus in the back and left him to die in the woods before turning into a flock of birds.

The others didn’t fare much better. The monk, Astarte, climbed a tall tree and at the top could only see endless woods and giant birds watching her. Down at ground level were undead adventurers, their faces covered with flat metal plates, their bodies moving in ways no longer caring about moving like humanoid bodies should.

Eventually they found one of the ways down the bottom. I put on the Silent Hill 2 Soundtrack, which still evokes these scenes in myself and some of the others. Astarte was caught and nailed to a table, barely able to fight off the undead adventurers and get out. Eventually they found Servus and the real Thorn.

It was a little clumsy in places, but it was a good shot of horror in a D&D game, it changed some of the characters and their relationships. Later on I’d experiment with a very different kind of endless forest in Dungeon World which ended up much worse. I’ve more recently found this horror easily found in Trophy Dark, a story game which is specifically a tragedy about adventurers going into a forest that doesn’t want them there to take something which doesn’t belong to them. I heartily recommend it if you want this kind of horror game.

Beware the stag man
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RPG a Day 2020, Part Five – Touching Tributes from Players

Posted on August 5, 2020 by fakedtales

I’m going to preface this by saying there’s no reason for players to give gifts, it’s not something I encourage or demand, but it’s really lovely when this kind of thing happens.

I started hosting fortnightly community RPG nights for all of 2019, missing one week and deputising one player to run in my stead for that time. It was fantastic and at the moment we’re still all social distancing, so I’ve had to move my sessions to online spaces instead.

At the end of 2019 I was sent a Christmas card from Alex, one of the players who’d been in the community nights for a long time. He mentioned about how much he’d loved his time in that space, which was really touching, a good sign that the nights were doing exactly what I’d wanted. Then there’s this dolphin pen:

Dolphin pen!

Yep. It’s pretty special. Michał and Joanna brought it for me, saying they felt it fit my running style, which… yeah. They’ve got me there. It’s made a great pointy stick at the dolphin end, and I’ve made sure it gets used in games like Pasión de las Pasiones.

Pasión de las Pasiones is fantastic, check out the quickstart

At GenCon UK I was running a game of Spycraft in what was pretty much a massive tent in a Butlins. There were only two players and this being Living Spycraft they both came with Snoop characters. When there was a power cut, they both left without really saying anything. I sat there, not really sure what to do but busily making notes for my home campaign. They showed up, having gone to their chalets to bring beer. I’m not even a beer fan, but it was a really nice gesture, so I drank with them as we waited for the lights to come back on and to play through. Out of the games I ran that weekend it was one of the most fun, and the kind of mission where two Snoops and a briefcase full of legal documents won the day as effectively as a group of bikers and combatants. I miss Spycraft, and would love to see a Forged in the Dark version one day.

One of my Living Spycraft adventures, found pretty much only through web archives.
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RPG a Day 2020, Part Four – Vision as a great narrative prompt

Posted on August 4, 2020 by fakedtales

“Okay, what does that look like?” is a question which has become a constant in my games. I love it as a prompt and I’d only really noticed that I keep asking it recently.

In some RPGs you start to get that thing of, “use whatever skill, just roll something,” but that’s not great. As an example, in Trophy Gold one of my players asked about checking out a statue of Saint Hester for anything untoward. He had ‘Gods’ as a skill, but also ‘Trances’. He originally said whether either of those would do, so I said they would but he’d need to tell me which one and explain what searching the statue looked like as there would be potential narrative consequences. Gods could be knowing how the statues are carved, what the symbols mean and whether anything interesting’s there. Trances would be sitting, meditating and trying to get visions about something out of place.

Games like Blades in the Dark are great for that sort of conversation. As the GM can’t ask for an action roll, it’s up to the players. If they ask for something potentially quite unorthodox you can always ask what their action will look like to sort out the settings for the position and effect. Action rolls are a negotiation in BitD, so the narrative needs ironing out a little just to know where you stand.

Finally there’s the glorious, “What does that look like?” when a player character messes up an enemy. “What does it look like when you destroy this skeleton?” lets the player know they can go hogwild with how to describe what they’ve done.

So if in doubt, ask your players what the thing they’re doing looks like, whether it’s to ascertain better what they’re doing or to add flavour & grounding. I mean, asking players in general is fantastic and should be encouraged, but this in particular has become a mantra for me of late.

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RPG a Day 2020, Part Three – Plot Threads

Posted on August 3, 2020 by fakedtales

Peter Molyneux, famous video game designer and hyperbolist, mentioned a kind of ‘trail of breadcrumbs’ when talking about Fable 2. The idea was that it would be a sprinkling of golden glitter which directed you ahead to your mission, so you wouldn’t focus too much on a minimap instead of the world itself.

It’s a little tricky trying to do the same with RPGs. I’ve run games so long I’ve been accused of being a railroad GM, but I’ve also run games with such an open sandbox that players sit around, unsure what they’re supposed to be doing.

I’m not 100% sure of the right level of visibility of the breadcrumbs for groups in general, although your players can often help. I had a real problem in my Tremulus campaign. The default setting is a small town and it suggests that players have characters who are fairly recently returned to the town, having originally been from there. We had one player who followed that remit, while the rest made basically vagrants. One was a hobo, another was a travelling conman who played at seances until he stumbled upon a real one, then the third was a gravedigger who lived in his van and did have a relative he was a bit distant to. The system gets you to generate a bunch of plot threads for local mysteries and then hopes the players will solve them.

The problem with this game came when the player who followed the remit left the group. Everyone else was wondering why they stayed in the town and why they didn’t just leave. The worst thing was they were right. They didn’t have any motivation to stick around. I called in a ringer as a player, who I briefed on my problem. He made a local boy who’d left and come back to play politician. Getting that buy in just from one player was fantastic. It meant he could pull the others in as people who weren’t really known or accountable. He was tied into the mystery, as was the aunt of the gravedigger.

It’s a tricky thing to do right. I love bringing players in to help, but that’s only one way of helping try to lay out the threads seamlessly. Personally I’d love to hear what other people have done with their plot threads to keep players following the breadcrumbs.

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RPG a Day 2020, Part Two – How I Changed a Campaign Many Times For Better or Worse

Posted on August 2, 2020 by fakedtales

Change is today’s theme. I’m a fickle GM and there are a few systems which I’ve grown tired of. Mainly D&D, admittedly.

I ran a troupe D&D Third Edition game for a little while. That sounds contradictory, but when I say ‘ran a troupe game’ I mean that. It started out with everyone running a session using the many d20 system adventures I’d bought and not read, but their stamina ran out. Most of them hadn’t run games before, so fear often took over. When they tapped out I ran more and more games until it was just another D&D 3.5 game I ran. I had two groups and three campaigns. I’d grown sick of it and once it was just me running it, I switched over to the Unisystem as the All Flesh Must Be Eaten zombie RPG had a fantasy system. It was great, but I chickened out as there were no methods to balance the game and I still believed that was a relevant factor in games. I then abandoned the troupe game and resurrected the old ‘main continuity’ campaign with Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play Second Edition (WFRP).

WFRP was great. I did have to fudge some things, by converting the characters and fake running them through progression to a spot where they went from their humble origins to their much more competent evolution. The world suddenly got a lot darker, to fit the style of WFRP. Mud, blood and shit-flecked. It’s been the best thing which happened to that campaign with some brutal moments and all the weirdness of a campaign I’d run since I was 16 and didn’t know any better. I’m probably going to drag my notes out when I run DIE sometime.

My later experience with switching systems was great at first but fell apart.

My ‘gritty BSG style reboot’ of my old campaign world basically took tropes and elements from the old campaign but nothing more. I loved Spycraft and the Fantasy Craft RPG was taking so long to come out, I decided to run D&D 4th Edition.

I ran a season in 4E and I enjoyed some of the combat mechanics, but it felt like the story and drama weren’t serviced by the system. Between season one and two I switched to Fantasy Craft, which was fantastic. I’d had enough time to learn the system and prepare what was going on. The group were fleeing their hometown which had been destroyed by the undead and dragons. I knew roughly what they were doing so I could manage the clunky GM-facing rules. The players adored their side of the rules and it was understandable. Compared to the other d20 system games it was more open, allowing more than just fighting in combat, having good companion rules and even a system for a court case which nearly broke the team apart.

Fantasy Craft was great, but as the game broke into more of a sandbox, there wasn’t any easy way of coping with that. I was going through a phase of loving the New World of Darkness, which was a great toolbox. I converted the game to that in time for the midpoint of season three and used the Changing Breeds book to deal with the animal totems the PCs were imbued with. There was a problem here. That book sucked. It was really unbalanced, and there were… other problems. We had some great sessions and the plot grew to some insane levels, but it was difficult trying to cover for the issues Changing Breeds had.

This is where things get shaky. I changed over to Fate for season four. Things escalated to a massive level. There were armies being gathered for one massive battle including wooden war-mechs and a cloud of dragons with blade-breath raining murder on the people below. Fate Core was on Kickstarter and looked fantastic. I fell in love and realised that as we needed less feats or merits giving fiddly little bonuses, but big iconic moves and things which impacted the narrative. We needed Aspects. This was, in theory, great. One problem was the conversion, which I tried getting the players to do, figuring they’d know what they’d want to be the core of their characters. One of them had incredible analysis paralysis with Aspects, let alone Stunts. Another player spent about 30 minutes after each session in a back and forth about how Fate didn’t work. We had our epic battle, closed out the season and sadly never managed to pick up for our final six-session season as one of the players moved out of the country.

I don’t think returning to Fantasy Craft could have been better as high level d20 always made things more fiddly. Returning to WoD wasn’t really an option. I still believe Fate was a great choice, but badly executed by me. Maybe changing over to WFRP 2E would have helped, although the characters were near superheroic by that point. I remember pondering Exalted, but then converting things from Exalted’s themes to Fallen Kingdoms’ would have been a nightmare. I guess my advice here would be that if a conversion is needed, open dialogue with the group if good, as is making sure what everyone needs from the game and what the system is capable of providing.

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RPG a Day 2020: Beginning A New Campaign

Posted on August 1, 2020 by fakedtales

The topic for day one of RPG a Day is ‘Beginning’. I’ve written about starting out as a roleplayer before, so instead I thought I’d talk about starting a new game.

There’s something magical about starting a new campaign and the primordial fire we get to play with in session zero. As time’s gone on, I’ve tried not to build too much beforehand when I’m running a game. A logline, a pitch for the group. I try to offer a few different potential games to play, remembering the trinity of:

  • What is the game about?
  • What do characters do in the game?
  • What do players do in the game?

Once a game’s picked, I tend to do a dash of prep. A few names, a few places, some ideas about the big dramatic beats which can change later if necessary. That’s all fine and standard. The magic comes later, when you add players.

I started out running games very much with stories I wanted to tell, but as time’s gone on, I’ve learnt to leave empty spaces. What do the players want to experience? How can we make it together?

An example is the Wall campaign I ran using Dungeon World. We started out with the world. I had a bit of paper with a wall a thousand miles long, with a capital city at the centre point. Beyond it, only desert and demons. I asked each player to add a landmark, a civilisation and a mystery, doing the same myself after each of them had a turn. That loaded the world up with interesting things we all pitched in, then we were ready to make characters. In making the characters, the players were asked a lot of questions, like what it meant to be a paladin in the world, where people learnt magic and so on. By the end, we had a world which we’d all contributed towards which felt deep despite only having existed for a few hours.

Since then I’ve done things like use The Quiet Year by Avery Alder to map out the backstory of a community in Apocalypse World. I’ve found games like Beyond the Wall, which builds this sort of thing in the system itself, or Masks. Masks has a couple of questions about the backstory of the characters and then questions everyone answers about when the team came together. I love that, as it helps establish not only why everyone’s already in the group, but also potential threats for the future.

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A Quick Update – Reclaiming My Productivity

Posted on April 23, 2020 by fakedtales

There’s a lot going on in the world at the moment with lockdowns and such, so I’m at the point where I’m trying to push forwards.

I’m still working full time, which is good. My workplace is pretty much prepared for us to work from home indefinitely which is proving distracting at times, especially with paying too much attention to catastrophising about the world. I’ve found that my anxieties about getting old and still not having published much at all is taking back over, so maybe that’s a sign that this is becoming normal for me now.

I’ve got a few irons in the fire and I need to focus on getting them done. So I thought I’d process this all out loud (kind of) and publicly here. This was I’m not only showing you what I’m doing, I’m making myself publicly accountable as doing this, and possibly giving folks some ideas.

First of all, I have a lot of projects, so I’ve started a Trello, and I’m trying to keep things cut down a bit and point me in the right direction.

trello

I have some work I still wants to do for Who Dares Rolls, some of which I need to find my notes for, some I’m fine putting off for a bit as I know I’ve got a bunch of things in the pipeline there already and can prioritise other things. Mistbirch Mythos’ proofread has a deadline of November as that’s when NaNoWriMo starts and is as good of a deadline for a novel proofread as anything.

Emma and I bought a day calendar to hang up in the kitchen and put stickers on when we did writing-based things. It stopped pretty abruptly at the start of all this, so I want to try and get that going again. Basically anything at all writing-based counts, whether it’s searching for artists, editing or making words. I found that in previous years I’ve had issues recording progress with editing as it rarely adds many words and sometimes removes them, which looks odd on a word count spreadsheet like the one I keep. I’ve also modified that to accept a general ‘I’ve done editing’ note on the far end as something to keep my combo of days when I’ve written going.

Lightning Banner 4

Lightning

Ah, the big project. I’ve noticed that the rolling Amazon KDP license ends on the 26th, so I’ve decided to untick that option and look into using places like Itch.io to host the first novella as well. I’ve been apprehensive about promoting it for a couple of reasons. The cover’s not great. I love Nathan Paoletta, the logo he made and the support he gave. He went along the design specs I asked for and was cheap, too. Still, I’d rather go a different way so I’ve made new covers for all eight novellas. I’ve been concerned about the cold open of it and that I literally used ‘not like other girls’ as a phrase there. It turns out on rereading it that I didn’t, but I still had some changes to make to fit the later novellas. I’m giving it a very quick skim before compiling the version with the new cover. I’ll see where else it could be hosted, as well. I figure the more coverage the better. I’m also still dabbling with the idea of a comic version, but that’s not my main priority.

Speaking of KDP expiring, the Cuckoo anthology is also expiring in June, so if I can sort out Lightning Episode One then I’ll do the same with this.

 

Amnesiac City

At the moment I’ve been having some help from Matt Hardy at Mad Robot in my artist hunt for this. I’ve got the first three issues scripted and some sample scripts to send out to folks. It’s still something I’m not incredibly confident with, but with some help I’m getting there. I’ve put off starting scripting issue four yet, but I’ll get there.

 

Explosion High!

I’ve broke the back of this, as I revisited my old version which was a bit too 2000’s era webcomics. It started as a webcomic, so that made sense, I guess. Now I’ve got a lot more energy into it, a larger plot going on, but in the background of individual issues with a couple of fun stories within them. I made a bunch of extras when scripting the first story of the first issue and now I love almost all of them which might be bad, given how joyously deadly the school is. I’ve been adding to the Explosion High! revamped series bible today, along with making the light pass on Lightning. You can see the shocking lack of productivity and my writing day combo meter here:

sheet

The number next to the date is how much I’ve written this year so far. The ‘1’s are when I’ve added to the word count or edited something. Again, I’ll be trying to make that combo meter go up more in the future.

I’ll hopefully be posting more here about the upcoming changes to Lightning Episode One, or any comic news, or indeed chattering about games.

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Roleplaying Games to Play While You’re Isolated at Home

Posted on March 17, 2020 by fakedtales

In times like these when you’re possibly self-isolating, working from home more or just not seeing so many people, you might still want to roleplay. Sure, there are online tools and I might get into those at some point, but maybe you’re not keen on that. Here are some games for one player, some games for groups of two or three and a couple of letter-writing games to try out.

These are not the only RPGs out there, so you might want to have a look for others and provide any suggestions you’ve got in the comments.

 

Games for One

Quill

Quill by Scott Malthouse is a letter-writing game for one. You pick a character class, each with a different level of Penmanship, Language and Heart. There are several scenarios which you’ll need to navigate by writing a letter and rolling to see how the quality of your penmanship and your choice of words go. It’s an interesting game with several different expansions including Love Letters, a Lovecraftian campaign and an old school D&D version.

Quill

Thousand Year Vampire

Another journaling-type game, where you play the role of a thousand-year-old vampire. You’ve lived too long and memories can only stick around for so long. As you go through this, you start having to discard memories. I’ve only read a prototype of it, having forgotten whether or not I was a late backer in a true act of life imitating gameplay. It looks fascinating and can be bought here.

 

English Eerie

Scott Malthouse’s Quill may seem a little basic and can be played a couple of times over a lunch hour. If you want something a bit longer, a bit less certain, you might want to check out English Eerie. A journaling game set in different time periods, but all quite specifically English and weird. There are multiple scenarios which each unfold as you play, getting more sinister as you go. I still want to record the diary of my character in The Beast on the Moor at some point. This is the kind of game you think of when you’re walking on a hill on a grey day, looking at broken old farmhouses and barren trees with branches spiking out in every direction.

English Eerie

Metal Showcase 11pm

Did you know my review of this game is the second link on Google? The first of course is the book itself, but it’s neat that I’m up there. Think of this like Fighting Fantasy except you’re a kid who plays metal and needs to get a band together really quickly. It’s a short one-play game, but it’s really good fun. In addition to the usual things you also get to make things up and draw maps.

 

The Plant

Like Metal Showcase, this is a Bully Pulpit joint. Also one I reviewed. It’s free, which is always good, although you’ll need some cards or bits of paper to draw on. Your daughter has gone into The Plant and you are going after her. This is short and interesting. The more old, abandoned factories and warehouses I see, the more I think they’re the evil fairy tale places of the modern age.

 

The Beast

Are you definitely alone? You’ll want to be for this. You have found a beast, and have been having sex with it. An unsettling erotic horror game. You draw a card a day for 21 days, and then you reach the end of your journey. Then it tells you to destroy the journal you have made.

beast

Call of Cthulhu: Alone Against the Flames

A lot of the games I’ve mentioned are journaling games of some stripe. This one is a bit more Choose Your Own Adventure-ish, using the system for the Call of Cthulhu Role-Playing Game. I really like the character creation method made through a bus trip. I died when I played this, and I don’t really feel a need to go back to it, but I enjoyed what I played. The PDF version is free on Chaosium’s site, here.

 

Ironsworn

This grim fantasy game is closer to an actual RPG and can be played with more than one player if you like, but has a ton of tools to use for solo play. I admit I’ve yet to finish reading the book, which could be a mark against it for getting you quickly into play, but it’s so well put together that I can’t fault it. There are several decks of cards to help with the storytelling and a dungeon-delving expansion which was recently released.

 

Or any other RPG using tools like the Conjectural Role-Playing Emulator. It’s not the best solution, but it does work, using randomisers to work out different things and add uncertainty. There are also NPC tools to help with this, too.

 

Games for Small Groups

Maybe you’re not alone, maybe you’ve got a receptive player or two. Well here are some options for that.

 

The Quiet Year

One of my favourite games and one which even works with people who wouldn’t normally play a role-playing game. The Quiet Year is a map-drawing game about the life of a community after the end of the world. It might be a bit close to home, but can skew hopeful depending on the group. Each turn a player draws a card, interprets it and draws something on the map. It’s able to be beautiful, silly and dark. You need a deck of cards, some six-sided dice, tokens, paper and pencils to play.

Quiet Year

Quietus

Oli Jeffery’s melancholy horror game uses a pared down version of the Forged in the Dark system to tell stories like Haunting of Hill House, Oculus and Hereditary. I’ve read Quietus a couple of times and am eager to try it out… Eager might be the wrong word, given the subject matter.

Quietus

Murderous Ghosts

I didn’t manage to play a whole game of Murderous Ghosts as it’s a two player game and a third player unexpectedly turned up after we’d given up on him. This is a kind of narrative, competitive choose your own adventure. One player is a lost urban explorer and the other player is the haunted building they’re trapped in. It can get quite dark, quite easily.

 

Mars Colony

In a similar style to Murderous Ghosts, this is an asymmetrical game where one person is managing a Mars Colony and the other is representing the conflicts which appear. There’s a standalone expansion called 39 Dark which flips over to the citizenry and the issues facing them.

mars colony

Star Crossed

A role-playing game about a forbidden romance. Maybe you’re both people from rival families, or an AI and programmer, or cryptid and investigator… whatever the situation, you are two people who want to get together, but external factors prevent it. Played using a Jenga tower, you touch the tower when you talk and when you act, you pull a block from it. The trick is that you want the tower to fall as that’s when you act on your feelings, but you can’t have it fall too early or late. You can find out more about it here.

star crossed

The Hour Between Dog & Wolf

This game looks really interesting and creepy. I admit I’ve not played it but I’ve read Kate Bullock’s review and want to try it after that. This is a cat and mouse game for two players; a serial killer and someone hunting them.

 

One Missed Call

A very small and short game, you can even play this on a call with someone. You play a series of calls either taken or missed between two people. You don’t know whether the other person wants the relationship to get closer or father apart by the end of the game, but cross off options from the conversation list as you go. You can download it here.

 

You and I

An anthology of two player games. These include games where one player is a pilot and another’s a mech, multiple epistolary games and one where you communicate only through emails from an abandoned email account. It can be found here.

 

Dear Elizabeth

One of the winners of the 200 Word RPG contest in 2018, this is a game of Regency heroines writing letters to each other. Nice and simple, playable on either side of a door, but I’m sure you could actually write and post the letters to one another. It’s found here.

 

These are games specifically made for two players or for small groups. It is possible to run games intended for larger groups with only a couple of players. Let me know if you’re running something for a small group during this time, either from the above or anything I haven’t mentioned.

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Faked Tales Still Exists

Posted on January 9, 2020 by fakedtales

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. I thought I’d post a little update.

 

So How Has 2019 Been?

Pretty rough, with a few good bits. I had some work issues and health issues, both of which affected each other in some non-fun ways. They also helped persistently remind me of my own mortality and how little I’ve done as I crawl slowly towards 40. We’re still in Hellworld, as I’m sure you all noticed with December’s election and the world being literally on fire in places. I managed to get a good secondment at my work which has only just started. I like the company I work for and the sense of helping people out, superhero-idolising nerd that I am. My house things are still in the process of being resolved, but are at least closer than they were. I had inherited my late mother’s house, but it’s got issues and there were problems with the solicitors sorting out the deed transfer and the building society. Those are over, but there are still mortgage things to sort out.

 

Pity party over, what did I actually accomplish in 2019?

Cadavers: World Gone to Hell was released and received well everywhere it’s been reviewed. Specifically, Blob Detective has been name-checked on every place I’ve heard or read a review on. My dad asked me when I’m next writing Blob Detective as I should capitalise on it. So that’s all kind of cool. I’m still a nobody, but I’ve got something out there. I pitched half a dozen other projects to Mad Robot and have a couple of things I’ve been developing.

Cadavers WGTH Cover

I took part in National Novel Writing Month again, running the Brighton & Hove community. I wrote a new version of Mistbirch Mythos, a kind of cosy murder mystery mixed with Lovecraftian horror. I lent much more on the cosy murder mystery side and feel a lot happier with what I’ve written so far.

nano 2019

I continued to write for Who Dares Rolls and to take part in our currently sporadic podcasts. This included our third ever live show at UK Games Expo. I’m hoping for things to get a bit more organised and regular there in the next year. I’ve liked covering independent RPGs there and hope to shine a light on more games soon, as well as diving into a few board games.

WDR Logo

The biggest new thing has been running RPG community nights at the Dice Saloon. I run my weekly sessions there and drew enough positive attention from passers by and the staff to be asked if I wanted to run a regular RPG night. It started small in January, with mainly the volunteer GMs I’d gathered and a single player. Then two players and no one else. It grew over the weeks to the point where it now needs 3-5 tables. We’ve featured a ton of different RPGs, including some of my favourites like Dungeon World, Zombie World and Monsterhearts 2. I’ve tried out games for the first time like The King is Dead, and we have of course had some D&D as well. It’s been an amazing success and hopefully will keep going through 2020.

rpg brighton

Photo by @arthurli on Instagram

 

What’s Next?

I listened to a great League Presents podcast about the RPG business and it made me think a lot about what I’m doing. I keep trying to do everything all at once, which Mad Robot’s Matt Hardy has often rightfully pointed out means I never finish anything. I’ve limited myself to the following list:

  • I want to write prose
  • I want to write comics
  • I want to talk about tabletop games
  • I want to talk about comics

If I can get the Blob Detective RPG quickly polished and published on Itch.io, then that’s cool, but I won’t be trying to make any other RPGs until I get other things published. I like the idea of making RPGs, but it’s not a big priority. That benches Murderboi Society (a few small Assassin’s Creed style games), Orphan Harvest (a board game), A Walk in the Dark and Inventory Quest.

A day after Matt helped narrow my comic pitches down from seven to two, I dreamed a great page layout for Lightning as a comic, got up, couldn’t find a pen and scribbled it down on a screen capture I took of my phone. I will be working on a tentative comic script. I also want to finish the rewrites on episode two of the prose version and to work out revising the already published episode one. There are a couple of things I want to change there; not much, mainly some Lena Parker things to avoid the ‘not like other girls’-ing of her. It’s pretty tedious and I owe her (and the audience) better than that.

Screen Capture

This has since changed, but it was a good instigator.

My comic projects are the big, main ones. I have two issues of Amnesiac City scripted and need to find an artist. This isn’t something I’ve done before and I’ve been too exhausted to try, so I’m going to change that early this year. Hopefully I can get assistance from Matt, who has found some amazing artists for his work. I’ve got Explosion High!, which I’ve not formalised a plot layout for and does have one artist (it may end up having more). It’s undergone some big changes going from a webcomic format to a proper comic.

I’ve got a physical copy of Mistbirch Mythos to proofread and cut apart with red pen. My goal at the moment is to get it in a state where it’s ready to publish or burn & rebuild by the end of 2020.

Who Dares Rolls went through some quieter times between work patterns, kids and such. I want a more regular recording schedule for the podcast and my brother was pressuring me about pivoting to video at some point. We’ll see if I can work out how to edit podcasts first and then where I can go. As my Hostage Negotiator Actual Play series felt a bit too small to post on WDR I’ll continue posting them here, although with the Career expansion coming out soon, I might just power through all of the packs, continuing on to the next one even if I don’t succeed at the mission.

Faked Tales still exists and I still pay my renewal fees for it. I want to be more prolific here, even if it only consists of little pieces of writing. I enjoyed writing about comics at first here and then on Google Plus (RIP) so I want to write a few things here about them. I have a short story that’s kicked my arse for ages and want to get out. I’ve also been thinking about collecting, adding to and revising my post apocalyptic Brighton short stories as my horror work from here have been doing okay on Kindle.

We’ll see how far I get with all of these plans. As long as my next post isn’t me doing the same thing for 2021, then I’ll have succeeded at something.

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