I love Lost, even now after all this time. It’s a terrible thing to admit, I’m sure, but there’s the truth.
This April 1st, I wrote a review of the Lost board game for Who Dares Rolls. In fact, I wrote about it three times. I don’t know how successful that was, but here are the links to those reviews.
Back in the old gaming site, Hooting into the Abyss, I reviewed The Quiet Year. It’s a map-making game where in three or four hours you make a map of a community and tell a story of a year in their lives. It’s great, you should all throw the designer, Avery McDaldno, $8 for something that awesome.
If you’re not certain of that, she and Mark Diaz Truman co-wrote a spiritual sequel called The Deep Forest. You play a community of monsters who have taken the land back from human colonists. My report on it can be found on Who Dares Rolls.
A couple of things.
First of all, I’m a massive podcast fan and there are some amazing RPG, “Actual Play” podcasts. Inspired by a friend from work who used to be a role-player and now experiences the games by listening to podcasts, I thought I would make some recommendations.
For people who don’t know what I’m going on about, think of it as semi-improvised radio dramas. My article is found here.
Secondly, I have started to appear as a guest and now a regular part of the Who Dares Rolls podcast. We’re part of the Ministry of Board Games Tabletop Media Network, the third largest tabletop gaming podcast group. I gather we are also the third tabletop gaming podcast group. Still, it’s all up from there. You can hear my dulcet tones on the podcast here.
I’ve been concentrating a lot on Lightning and less so on my short fiction, which is a bit of a shame. I was inspired by this Terribleminds flash fiction challenge so I visited the link and one of the titles was the above, “The Mist in the Bridge.” I love multiverses and with the state of comics at the moment and my recent watch of Coherence, I thought I’d play around with that topic.
I may revisit, polish or extend this, but clocking in at just under 1,000 words is my story, The Mist in the Bridge.
I guest star on a podcast now, as part of the Who Dares Rolls crew. I’m also a bit of a podcast addict, so I wrote an article about some of my favourites.
Think of RPG podcasts a bit like improvised radio drama. I describe some of my favourite channels and series within them. If you’ve ever wanted to listen to a post-apocalyptic drama about a dolphin in space marine armour, a 1920’s train ride, sexy monsters, mech-based war and drunk Dungeons & Dragons, then check these out.
My article is here. I hope you enjoy it.
I introduced the people of Who Dares Rolls to what role-playing games are and can be, so I needed an example to show people how cool games are. I landed on a recent play experience because it was great, but pretty harrowing. It’s tough going and reading through my notes brought back so many strange and horrible moments.
The game is Carolina Death Crawl, by Jason Morningstar.
The review is here.
I also wrote the deathbed journal of my character, Private Robert Shanks; Scofflaw and Deserter.
A Final Fantasy license has collided with a jumble of random words and created Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy: Curtain Call, which is an awesome game despite the silly name.
I wrote about the game here on D+Pad Magazine. You can download the demo free on the Nintendo 3DS eShop if you like the sound of it. The game’s been out a little while and assume it’s probably fairly cheap now. If you have a 3DS, it’s worth the punt.
I’ve been part of the video game blog D+Pad Magazine for a while now, but did you know Fred Black and I run their YouTube Channel? Almost certainly not, given our viewing figures. That’s okay, I forgive you. You were probably all very busy
Have a look at our channel here and our many, many Let’s Plays, combining writers who know very little about games and classic games which have long been forgotten… possibly intentionally so. Often intentionally so.
The highlight reel looks like this. Trigger warning for random screaming.
I’ve started to write for Who Dares Rolls, a website which deals with tabletop games. I’m a friend of Ben Hendy, who introduced me to the site and explained that they had a big RPG-shaped hole which I could fill.
I joined the site and have been posting on there a little while, but my first article was hacked. I put off posting here, then forgot to link to it for ages, but now I’ve appeared in podcasts, videos and articles but not mentioned them here at all.
Here is my first article, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go,” which is meant as an introduction to role-playing and how it’s an amazing hobby.
Last year I triumphantly shouted to anyone who would listen about how I would be publishing the first ‘season’ of my Lightning novellas in 2015, starting in April 2015 so that the final part would be launched in time with Christmas 2015. One episode a month with a gap at the midpoint to fit a bit of a cliffhanger and give me some catch-up time. I guessed I would need the delays between ‘episodes’ to edit the stories, but I didn’t realise it would all take so long and that my lack of knowledge in the field was quite as much as it is.
The season is written, that’s a start. I have a little of the supplementary material also written, but not much yet. That’s far shorter than the season itself though, so it should be easy enough to get done. So here’s what’s left to do.
I’m going through the episodes myself first, just to make sure they make basic human sense, then throwing them at four readers so they can rip them apart like the jackals they are. The big hope is that they won’t find anything shockingly wrong, story-breaking or horrendous. I plan everything to a crazy level, so it shouldn’t ever hit that point. Still, one of my readers found a continuity issue which had remained untouched in a couple of drafts. Hence the need for readers. Episode One is with the readers, I’ve gone through Episode Two but have yet to send it off. Episodes Three through Eight will be handled in order as I keep going through my tasks.
The readers throw back my work with notes, hopefully praise, probably thousands of things I’ve done wrong. I have Episode One back from one reader so far. Each one can be dealt with later than the last, luckily.
Then there’s the scary other things. The bonus content, the covers, the webcomics (I’ve given up on the idea of a video project, but a couple of short-form webcomics would be pretty cool). Then a Lightning website to act as a central hub for everything in the series, linking to wherever I’m selling the ebooks from. Gods, there’s marketing to work out… so much.
I’m undaunted, I still plan on releasing Lightning Episode One, “Crash Day,” in 2015. That’s the main goal, but April’s probably too near even to get the story edited, find a cover artist and get the first couple of short stories finished at the same time.
The current plans for launch dates have the season finale, “A Very Lightning Christmas,” end up launched in December 2016 so it still fits with Christmas. Episodes will release every two months either starting from October (using the gap month content as a bonus month full of fiction) or August (using the gap month content inserted in the release schedule).
Everything else is yet to plan.
There’s the other work I do as well; my comic reviews on the Google Plus comic book community, my video game reviews on D+Pad Magazine and soon my work for Who Dares Rolls, a tabletop website. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to start up Explosion High! properly, too.
Here’s to a busy 2015 and hopefully getting published!
Faked Tales 