More Cowbell + An Image-

A villa located in Hexland, on the moon Yolm, orbiting the gas giant Malthesaen; part of the STARBLADE: Adventures Amid the Shattered Stars (sub-)setting, and part of the Urutsk Cycle. Circa 2001

I have spent the past week clearing out a 10' x 10' storage space from last year's move, and I have found a few treasures that coincide with portions I am currently writing. These go back to the early to mid 90's, before the OGL was a glimmer of desire in Dancy's fancy, and my suggestion to write new material for dead systems was laughed at by my closest friends (of the time).

One graph I plotted was too complex for even the then current version of Wolfram Mathematica, as the nice gentleman on the phone explained; something about the iterative additives to multiple co-dependent dimensions being to much to process at the time, if I remember correctly. Well, I've not only found the graph, but the hand-written rules for the feedback procedure. It gave me a warm, tingly feeling. :D

Seeing all of this work from pre- and early-2000's that is exactly what I am working on again, now, is really a snazzy feeling overall. But, I will say that my biggest mistake was ever listening to conventional wisdom, as it cost me over a decade of progress, and now my mute innovations have percolated up through the strata of Jungian space to become the provenance of other names, and other games. HaShem is funny that way. Makes you appreciate the private triumphs more when they happen, I suppose, in a rueful, 'what if' sort of way...

As I lay in bed at 4am, before the rain began, I thought back on my 30 years of game design, and all of the scores of systems (not including variants or revisions) that only a dozen or so folks ever saw or played. If each of them metaphorically represents a cosmos in the Metacosmos of The Grand Tapestry, then I've sown a lot of grain, to uh-- mix ... metaphors. :-|

Nothing profound to anyone else but me (and possibly Scott C., Karl P., and a few unsavories we know).

Hoping your gaming goes well this weekend.

[Wargaming][Gaming] RPG History and PreHistory-

If you haven't already read THIS, please consider doing so. I also heavily suggest reading THIS.

All of that makes me want to finish Volume I and jump right into my wargaming rules for Urutsk, but as they are for the latter Autumn era, I'll have to keep my reins tight until the appropriate time.

If only I knew where Karl P. is at and how to reach him, I'd make every effort to get as many games of the Second Tyrrhean War played on the squad-level as possible during that time.

We used tan plastic army men of the vaguely Vietnam-era style for the mainline Khark warriors, and Blockmen [*] figures and cowboys to represent the Resth Clan Confederacy troops defending their fully-staffed and equipped, air-dropped firebases.
Using a reallly nifty rule from Leonard Hung's Cathy Arts of RolePlay (I lament losing my copy of that brilliant game) where Chi allowed for any sort of linear movement at full rate, we had the equivalent of Khark 'ninja' sappers simply hop over the perimiter defences (if they had detected them) and up into the gunners' tower. My d6-only based rules were fast and vicious, and the sappers would almost always kill in hand-to-hand. Once the sentinels and heavy weapons were neutralised, the mainline Kharks would swarm en mass and only lost once or perhaps twice (but that was nearly a total kill on both sides), regardless of who played them. Memories of this weird mustard, olive, and khaky flower-print as being the jungle terrain and utilising the actual shapes and sizes of the print to act as degrees of cover just make me long for those late night, back patio, Hialeah games when I came down from the hell that was Jacksonville.

I had rules for single-shot, musket-era volley-fire, so there is nothing stopping me from releasing those rules either at the end of Vol. I or at the dawn of Vol. II.

We'll see...