After watching Guardians of the Galaxy a few times in the theater, I’ve felt more inclined to try and dust off my idea for a space cowboy Apocalypse World hack. I’ve yet to successfully complete an Apocalypse World hack of any sort, so this might be a dubious effort. But I figure I can at least poke at it for a bit.
Many years ago, I tried writing roleplaying games. I ended up quitting. But now I have a couple projects I’m poking around. So here’s some rambly thoughts on that.
I’d be lying if I said general ennui and frustration with roleplaying games is some new thing. I’ve been dissatisfied with a lot of roleplaying games for probably the last decade, but occasionally it spikes up and I want to rant and foam a bit. I almost had a new post written when I bought the newest edition of Fading Suns. It had changed a few things, but left in a lot of the bits I thought were ill conceived. Now Shadowrun 5th Edition is coming out and I feel similarly frustrated. I want to grab someone and yell, “You left the bodies and you only moved the headstones!!”
On the flip side, a lot of Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts have made gaming a whole different level of fun. And it’s gotten me to dust off a lot of game ideas that I’d otherwise given up on.
This weekend represented the first convention I attended in which I got to appear as a panelist. RustyCon is one of the smaller conventions in the Seattle area that caters to the general fan community. The impression I got is that they consider themselves a bit more of a family friendly convention compared to Norwescon. According to their site they have membership of about 500-600. It didn’t seem that crowded to me, but then there were parts of the convention we just never went to.
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Once again, the soon-to-be-wife and I flew out to beautiful, scenic Livonia, MI, to spend four days drinking deep from the well of playing make believe in an Embassy Suites while a couple wedding receptions raged in the background. That’s right: Ambercon.
Here’s the recap.
I’ve really loved running the Shadowrun campaign I’ve been doing. I’ve had a stellar group of roleplayers who have really made the game come alive. I’ve also learned a whole lot.
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I don’t normally read the long emails that come in from DriveThruRPG.com. Usually I just scan through the products the mention to see if there’s anything I want, and then hit “Archive.” but sometimes I find something nifty. This time it’s an article by Stephen Chenault that originally appeared in Crusader Magazine. The money quote for me came in the middle:
I recently read the first collection of Conan shorts by Robert E. Howard. It had been a noted gap in my reading. While I’m a fan of old pulp novels, especially stuff by Edgar Rice Burroughs, I’d never read any Howard. Even the better authors of that period can be a little hit or miss for me, and so I’m always a little iffy about delving into an author I’ve never read.
A few things I’ve had on my notes to write about, figured I’d jot down some thoughts.
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Taking a bit of a break from other writing to poke around on here.
Because I’m an addict, I’ve been mulling around what I’m going to run next. I have, at any given time, three or four ideas that I’m poking around. This usually results in me pulling down game books and poking through them, leaving them scattered around the apartment and frustrating my girlfriend with the mess I’ve made. I also bounce these ideas off my girlfriend to get some feedback.
The other day the girlfriend said, “I know what I want you to run next: A Shadowrun game that doesn’t suck.”
