Category Archives: Gaming

Shadowrun: My Friend, My Enemy

6 Replies

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.”

Continue reading →

Note for later

Leave a reply

I was making a joke on my Facebook status about how I had a strong urge to play D&D 4e and watch Veronica Mars, but I didn’t think the two were related. As I considered a response from someone, the question occured to me: What if they were?

I don’t know that I’ll ever run this, but as a quick note: Adventuring academy. Dungeon delves and other adventures are a growth industry. As much as I’ve made pithy comments about a character’s backgound versus their character class, what if there was a school for people to learn how to be a Fighter or Rogue or Warlock or Barbarian or whatever.

Not sure what system I would use for it. I could justify everything from D&D4e to Savage Worlds to Best Friends to Primetime Adventures. And, heck, I don’t know when I’d ever actually have time to run it. (Maybe a one-shot at a con?) But I’ll put it on the back burner for now.

The Sprawl

5 Replies

A couple days ago I picked up Running Wild, the critter sourcebook for Shadowrun 4e. It’s a pretty cool looking book with some fun concepts. Overall, though, I’m left with the feeling that this would have been even cooler to have this book come out four or five years ago when the game was still relatively new and I was still playing it.

This is becoming a recurring pet peeve for me. I had a similar, and perhaps stronger, frustration when the Runners Companion and Unwired came out. They both represented core books that really would have been nice to have when they released all the other core books.
Continue reading →

Now for something completely different!

2 Replies

I’m getting money for some game writing I did! Several years ago, when I thought I wanted to be a game designer and writer, I took a royalty-only project for a company called Seraphim Guard. They were known at the time for a small game book called Heartquest, a game of romance in shoujo manga. I got tapped to write a game book for fantasy anime called Spell-Slingers and Sword-Saints. I wrote it. The book went into limbo. The company changed hands a few time. I parted ways with them finally under bad terms.

About a year ago, the new owners of the company contacted me because they realized they had the rights to publish this game book. After some time, the decision was made to have someone else finish the missing bits of the manuscript and just cash me out rather than deal with the royalties. So, yay! Money!

One Hit Wonders: Houses of the Blooded

4 Replies

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this game for a while, which I’ll touch on a bit farther on. I’ve been wanting to toss this onto the heap for a while to see how it goes. Plus, I’m wanting to use an abbreviated version of these rules for my half of Grindhouse at ACNW this year, but didn’t want to fly in blind.

Continue reading →