Meme Machine

Review of "Twisting Tales", by Clare Le May

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:48:46 GMT

Let me confess up front - Clare Le May is a friend of mine. We meet regularly at our local writers' group here in Normandy, and since I first read her short stories three years ago I've been hoping she'd finally take the plunge and publish a book. And here it is!

My favourite fiction is that which unsettles, provokes, challenges, breaks boundaries. Not just science-fiction and fantasy, not just traditional "weird" fiction, but Borges, Kafka, Bulgakov, Paglia, Marquez, and many, many others. And I love Clare Le May's stories: she has a voice so strong, female, yet universal, that she happily breaks through several genres to get to what she wants to say. If I had to choose, I'd say her writing was "magical realism" - her stories have a fable-like quality, like modern-day Brothers Grimm, light and open on the surface, unsettling and sometimes upsetting beneath. And yet for all their fantastic quality, they contain eternal psychological truths.

You can get "Twisting Tales" from Amazon or Lulu. It's an 80-page collection of eight short stories. If you like modern-day tales with an off-kilter world view (hey, you're reading this blog, who am I kidding?), then this is worth a look. Recommended - and I hope to see a lot more from Clare Le May.

Best,

Sarah :)

Link to Amazon.co.uk:

Link to Amazon.com:

Direct from GenCon 2011

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 04:13:02 GMT

So after a strenuous day of carpentry and ambience engineering (taking games out of boxes and putting them on shelves) yesterday, today marks the finish of the first full day of GenCon 2011. It's a *huge* con this year - a larger new exhibition hall, and a voyage of discovery for me of the Skywalks which cover more distance than our entire commune back in Normandy. The Cubicle Seven booth looks marvellous - packed with The One Ring first thing this morning, and heaps of enthusiastic fellow gamers queueing to partake in its bounty. It looks (and smells - c'mon, gamers, admit it!) awesome!

Tomorrow we should have Airship Pirates arriving for launch at 1pm, and Saturday the launch of Shadows Over Scotland, which I'm dying to see. There's been heaps of interest for both.

I've had time to scoot round the hall, meeting old friends and colleagues and new, and putting faces to names. Gameswise other than C7 titles, got my eye on Dust's Deadwood boardgame, which Will Be Mine, plus Fiasco, maybe Smallville, though it's still only day one!

Ran my first GenCon game today - Mindjammer 'Occam's Razor', which was great fun, especially with the players trashing the scenario midway through, necessitating a hasty regroup to rewrite! Ah, Fate!

Now chilling before day two tomorrow. Great to see everyone, can't wit to do it all again the morrow! And the ENnies!

Game on!

Sarah

*****

The Cthulhu Conundrum - Writing Historical Fiction and RPGs (Part Two)

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:02:49 GMT

In my last post I talked a little about the experience of writing period Lovecraftian fiction. This week I'd like to touch upon our latest pride and joy, the bumper book of Caledonian fun for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, Shadows Over Scotland. I worked as editor on this weighty tome, authored by Stuart Boon, and together I think we've forged something unique both as a game supplement and a written work.

Shadows Over Scotland is set in the 1920s, and as the title says in the country of Scotland, the northernmost of the four countries making up the United Kingdom. To the vast majority of modern readers, then, it has two factors mitigating against its familiarity: first, that it's set in a historical period some 90 years before the present day; and second, that it's set not in England but in Scotland, a separate country and culture.

Most Call of Cthulhu players and Lovecraft aficionados are familiar with the 1920s New England as the backdrops to most of their tales. There's a "shared world" understanding of the cultural conventions of, say, Arkham in 1927 - what day-to-day life is like, what cars people drive, what clothes they wear, what kind of food you can buy and eat in a restaurant or rooming house. As a British national, I personally always found it difficult to get into that mindset - I have a vague idea of contemporary American life from TV and the movies, and the few visits I've made there - but the 1920s?! I remember on my first Cthulhu game, exploring the haunted house in the 2nd edition rules, I didn't even know what cars people were driving - or if horses were common mounts in the streets of Arkham! That's a huge gulf of understanding of cultural context.

How much more then is 1920s Scotland a challenge? Somehow, in 288 pages, we had to produce a volume which would give a non-Scottish national - let's face it, many of our readers would live Stateside - a grasp of not only a different yet familiar culture, but also a different yet familiar era, enough to run a fun and exciting Cthulhu game. What do people eat? How do they talk? How do they get about? How do they behave? Scotland in the 1920s is not New England. Heck, it's not even Old England. Attitudes, language, beliefs, would be a constant surprise - even to those of us writing and editing the book!

We wanted a fun and playable book, of course - that's always the goal when creating historical RPG material. There's endless source material out there, some of it very detailed and esoteric indeed. But that's not what we were producing - Shadows Over Scotland is for Call of Cthulhu gaming, and not a research project. It has to be accessible, digestible, and above all great fun to play. So how to do that?

Happily (or unhappily, from the perspective of those alive at the time), there is one great unifying force behind all Lovecraftian material set in the 1920s: the First World War. Even in 2011, it's still probably too early to accurately assess the cultural and social impact of that conflict, but in the 1920s societies all across the New and Old Worlds are wracked with unrest and change. Scotland is no exception, and that very instability is a perfect environment for typical Call of Cthulhu investigators and investigations. More than ever, Scotland is in upheaval - new technologies, new ideas, and a painful departure from the prestige and relative plenty of the past.

That phenomenon - an almost chaotic change - is a great breath of fresh air and freedom to improvise for Keepers running Scottish scenarios. Shadows Over Scotland gives you heaps of material on the historical and cultural background of Scots society, descriptions of picturesque towns, uncanny and fearsome legends, terrible secrets, and of course Scotland's awe-inspiring scenery, as well as over a hundred pages of scenarios steeped in Scots culture - but at the same time there's an "openness", a sense that Scots life is gradually changing, which means that Keepers needn't be cultural experts to get the right "feel" for a Shadows Over Scotland game. A party of American investigators disembarking in Glasgow will have a whole ancient culture to explore...

As an editor, working on Shadows was a voyage of discovery for me, too. I'm profoundly English, and although I'm a bit of a history and culture vulture and love visiting Scotland, wandering Edinburgh's wynds and stalking the Highlands, I have no pretensions to "knowing" Scotland. The amount of fact-finding and detail-checking we did on Shadows has made me appreciate just what a different and unique place Scotland is - and was even more so in the 1920s - and what a humongous and awesome job Stuart Boon has done in putting this new supplement together.

Shadows Over Scotland is on the press now, and should be available from Cubicle 7 in the next few weeks. I think it stands as a great presentation of 1920s Scotland, its culture, people, history, and magnificent lcations, and also a truly unique environment for Call of Cthulhu gaming. I can't wait to see it finally see the light of day, and to see the hordes of investigators taking on the noisome Cthulhoid foulness which lies beneath its lochs and glens...

*****

The Cthulhu Conundrum - Writing Historical Fiction and RPGs (Part One)

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:52:58 GMT

Over the past few days I've finished a massive editing job on the upcoming Shadows Over Scotland supplement by Cubicle 7, for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG. It's my second time working on a historical Cthulhu piece, the first being The Apprentice, a 1920s Lovecraftian short story I wrote for the upcoming Tales Out Of Miskatonic University anthology by Mythos Press. Both of these experiences have given me a lot to think about with regard to writing period Lovecraftian fiction and RPGs.

Shadows Over Scotland looks to be a milestone for Cubicle 7: it's a lavish, 288-page hardback set in 1920s Scotland, filled with gorgeous source detail and heaps of suitably tentacular scenarios. By Stuart Boon, a Canadian Cthulhu aficionado and long-term inhabitant of Scotland, it's proved a real challenge and a learning experience, both in terms of exciting content, but also in terms of getting the balance right between historical accuracy and Maximum Game Fun. It's due out early August, hopefully just in time for GenCon.

The Apprentice was a similar experience, though personally, and from a writer's point of view, far more challenging. For this first of two posts, I'll begin there.

Let's be up front: writing 1920s Cthulhu fiction is artificial. Lovecraft, when he wrote, didn't think about the "period" he was writing in: he was writing in the modern day - even the thoroughly modern day - and his language, technological basis, and world view was imbued with the latest, best, and greatest in human thinking. His obsession with heredity and eugenics, his fear of atavism, his nihilism, his somewhat forced use of "proper" early 20th century American English, liberally peppered with slightly haughty archaisms, all came to him naturally as a creature of his time.

When we write period Lovecraftian fiction now, we try to deliberately blind ourselves to everything we've learned over the past 90 or so years. We ignore the Nazi eugenics nightmare, the knowledge of the Second World War, the social progress we've made since the Sixties and before. We immerse ourselves in a language and mindset that is no longer our own. If we're British, we even try to emulate not only American English, but the American English of the 1920s. It's a forgery - of the most intricate, deliciously delicate kind.

But you can't go too far down that road - and this is where the artifice is compromised. Lovecraft, for all his genius, had some pretty unappealing opinions from our 21st century perspective, and reproducing them in our Lovecraftian emulations leaves us open to accusations of all kinds of prejudice - racism, sexism, Anglo-Saxon supremacy, to name but a few. So we soften our Lovecraftianism; we edit out the unacceptable face of the Lovecraftian world view. We focus on the acceptable horror - the tentacled stuff which lurks in the shadows - rather than the *truly* disturbing stuff - the fact that the past, even the relatively recent past, was a thoroughly different country, with attitudes popular then which we'd find utterly repellent now.

So, in a sense, writing a truly "period Lovecraftian" story is impossible: we have to censor ourselves, and write something "acceptably horrific" to today's readers. Ultimately, we have to use our 21st century perspective to inform the concepts behind our faux-1920s fiction - otherwise it becomes irrelevant, an exercise in fakery, and ultimately unsatisfying, if not in utterly bad taste. The period Lovecraft fiction we write today is a simulation.

The Apprentice turned out to be a monstrous hybrid - a mongrel birth from a 1920s New England sire on a 21st century British dam. Perhaps that's what all modern Lovecraftian fiction has to be - and I wonder which bits of it Lovecraft himself would find most horrific, the tentacles in the shadows, or the Hideous Hybrid Futuristic Humans we've all become, claiming to be writing in his name, but in fact embracing some of the very ideas he so terribly feared?

Next week: Part Two - Shadows Over Scotland, and creating a Lovecraftian 1920s Scotland

The Hard Sci-Fi Paradox

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:15:42 GMT

Okay, I admit it. I have a problem with the "hard science-fiction" genre. Not the novels themselves; but rather the entire concept of the genre - it's name, and the apparent "eyes-closed" ethos it espouses. It goes something like this:

Science-fiction is about what human beings will become in the future, how they will deal with the challenges of new technology, new social organizations, new experiences, and even new definitions of what it means to be human. Although it's not about technology per se, technology plays a major role in being an underlying cause of the changes providing these challenges.

So, it's speculative.

Now, a hundred or so years ago, it was widely regarded that all the known laws of physics had been discovered, and that theoretical physics was a "completed" science, with nothing more to do other than cross a few t's and dot a few i's. It was also believed that if you travelled more than 15 miles per hour in an automobile you'd probably suffocate...

The science of "tomorrow" (whenever that is) is going to be radically different from the science of today. In fact, given Moore's Law, and the general acceleration of the rate of change in our culture, it's probably going to be more different than it's ever been before. So different, in fact, that our brains and imaginations right now likely can't even begin to imagine (or perhaps even understand) what shape that science will have - there'll be new "laws", new discoveries, and the agreed orthodoxy of today will likely be swept away in an explosion of discoveries that are allegedly "impossible" today. Give a neanderthal your iPad; that's a gap of 50,000 years. Now expect a similar gulf in understanding to open between the world of today and that of only, say, a couple of hundred years from now.

Enter "hard" science-fiction. This genre, as far as I can fathom, prides itself on not relying on any science we don't consider "possible" today. So, no teleportation devices, no antigrav, no faster-than-light travel, no telepathy, telekinesis, or other whole bunch of stuff which often enables science-fiction to truly take wing. Instead, reaction mass, spinning habitats, hydroponics decks as far as the eye can see; and lots of grim, grey vistas of grease, lube oil, and rusty chains dripping with water.

Here's my problem: what's the point? If you're writing speculative fiction, then *speculate*. Don't restrict yourself to our 21st century "angels-on-a-pinhead" orthodoxy: be brave, paint with massive brush-strokes. I'm not saying we should abandon all "logic": we're writing stories, after all, and they require a sense of verisimilitude if they're not to be rejected instinctively by a reader. But at the same time, it seems horribly sad to decry a work of fiction which breaks through the glass ceiling of modern "hard science" orthodoxy and dares to dream.

Sometimes it even seems to me that "hard science-fiction" isn't science-fiction at all, but a kind of technological fetishism, and obsession with the minutiae of gears and crankshafts at the expense of the flight of thought. In that sense, space opera remains the bearer of the flame; somewhere speculative fiction is still permitted to truly speculate, without the artificial constraints of today's priests of orthodoxy.

There. That's my beef. I love me some science-fiction, right to my core. And I hate me the niggardly people who hounded Galileo to the pyre. I want my science-fiction to soar like Icarus and make me think something I've never thought before, not remind me that I need to clear the garage and do my taxes.

And if our wings melt while doing so, well, at least we flew ;)

Sarah

*****

How Far in the Future?

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:31:54 GMT

One thing's for sure - the future is approaching faster than any of us ever thought possible. Technology in particular seems to be keeping pace with Moore's Law, with every month seemingly producing some new scientific breakthrough or awesome gadget to change our lives utterly. Late this year I'm expecting my iPad to start doing what I say; already my TV can see me and react to my voice and gestures. A brainwave interface is just around the corner.

In writing Mindjammer, I wanted a universe where I had enough time to play with to assume that all these brain-screwing inventions had happened - but not so much as to render the human race completely intelligible to those of us alive today. If you sit quietly and think about it, homo sapiens in, say, 100 years time is going to be far, far more different from us now than good old hom sap was 100 years ago. We're going to engineer and augment ourselves to the max, increasing our diversity, capabilities, and even raw intelligence to the extent that we're rapidly going to become another species. A species which modern day humanity will struggle to comprehend.

Or not. In Mindjammer, "something happened" to cause Earth's civilization to stagnate. It got a helluva long way, sure: there are geneered hominids, an interstellar Mindscape linking people's brains together, slower-than-light space colonies, artificial intelligence, and the whole far-future shebang. But, for some reason, things stagnated. Earth's civilization - the First Commonality - decided enough was enough. It banned religion, dissent, politics, even news, and put a lid on technical and social innovation for thousands of years.

Until two hundred years ago. At that some, presumably, "something else happened", and suddenly humankind had faster-than-light travel. Suddenly, history began its inexorable march again - progress, change, disruption.

That's the melting pot; that's the laboratory, the mish-mash melee of conflicting forces which I'm using for my experiments in what-if, where humankind meets the challenge of becoming Something Other, and - what? Is found wanting, and fails? Or succeeds, and moves beyond whatever humanity has been before?

Like I say, I think we're going to be faced with these issues way before the year 17,000 AD. But Mindjammer is a place to game out possible outcomes of this greatest of challenges.

I'm up for going post. Anyone else? :D

Best,

Sarah

*****

'The Desert of Souls' by Howard Jones - Amazon review

Fri, 20 May 2011 06:30:50 GMT

I've just finished reading 'The Desert of Souls' by Howard Andrew Jones. I've enjoyed it so much I've decided to write two reviews - one for Amazon, focussing on the book as a literary work, and one for RPG.net, focussing on the aspects which are cool from an RPG point of view. Here's the first of those reviews, cross-posted on Amazon today:

'THE DESERT OF SOULS' BY HOWARD ANDREW JONES - A LYRICAL TALE OF HEROISM AND ADVENTURE!

'Desert of Souls' is a beautiful book - a tale of romance, action, and adventure. Imagine Fritz Leiber meets Arthur Conan Doyle in the world of the Arabian Nights! Two heroes - Asim and Dabir - begin a mission for their master Jaffar, one of the lords of a swashbuckling, larger-than-life 9th century Baghdad, which leads them deep into perilous intrigue and death-defying conflicts, and a quest far beyond their wildest imaginings.

In this his first novel author Howard Jones is already an accomplished writer, weaving a story with beautiful language and an apparently effortless mastery of the background of the Caliphate of Haroun el-Rashid. His prose is smooth, and sometimes deeply lyrical; his love of the desert, his evocation of ancient Basra and Baghdad, are a real pleasure to read. But it's his characters where he really shines: Jones has artfully managed to portray true heroes. Asim and Dabir, and their comrades, feel like real people, yet are also cast in an honest Golden Age mould - a perfect antidote to our cynical and divisive age. These aren't weak anti-heroes or tortured souls filled with self-doubt; they are people like you and I, thrust into extraordinary situations, and they rise to the occasion with a courage and humour which is as satisfying as it is stirring.

What struck me most about 'The Desert of Souls' was that Jones has succeeded in 'reclaiming' the world of the Arabian Nights for modern story-telling. Too often these days is the Middle East portrayed as a hostile, alien culture; in his novel Jones harks back to the love and respectful treatment of his source material shown by writers and adventurers such as Sir Richard Burton. It becomes a real place, a world we can understand, a people we can like and sympathize with as they face peril and ripping, action-packed adventure. It's a world of magic, mystery, and intrigue, but also one which touches on the themes of love, duty, loyalty and friendship which unite us all.

I thought of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser a lot during the Desert of Souls, but there's an optimism and light in Jones' characters and story-telling which is absent in Leiber's. His affection for his characters is clear, and we share his excitement that we are seeing two people at the very start of their path to greatness. I hope Howard Jones pens another novel quickly, and that we can follow Asim and Dabir's adventures as they grow!

*****

Event Horizon: Novel Achieved

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:44:39 GMT

For almost twelve months now I've been burrowing away in my literary hole on "Consensus", the first Mindjammer novel. Now at last it's approaching its end - but with agonizing, exponentially miniscule steps. The event horizon of "mission accomplished" seems always suspended in space like a water drop inches before my face, but crane my neck as I might I can't seem to get my lips round it.

With metaphors thus suitably mangled, that means I'm nearly there - the Mindjammer novel is 99% complete, final polishings over the next week or so. The past year since GenCon 2010 has been thoroughly mad. Working full-time as a writer, line developer, and sometime (read: a lot of the time!) editor for Cubicle 7 has been totally brilliant - a great way to be involved in a million zillion achingly awesome projects and help some of them through to the light of day. At the same time, I've been pounding away in my early morning writing sessions and at weekends on the manuscript for "Consensus", watching it grow from a myopically-blinking nine-stone weakling into the 125,000 word colossus it is today. It lurks in the corner of my room like a psychopathic guest, heavily armed and burbling mad visions from the depths of space, and generally upsetting unforewarned visitors to our humble middle-of-field Normandy shack.

Part of me is dreading finishing. For twelve months I've lived, sweated, grunted, and sometimes died with Thaddeus Clay, Max Proffitt, Jackson Stark, Lyra Da Luz, and all the other cast of thousands of Consensus. They've become good, if slightly insane, friends, and it's been a profound experience to see them step off the pages of the Mindjammer RPG and become "real" people, with their own voices, hopes, fears, dreams...

Right now I'm consoling myself with the knowledge that I'll be seeing them again - I'm planning to start work on a second novel this summer, sometime around GenCon, and re-visit the lives of those four heroes and all their fellows which I've just so thoroughly ruined in the first book.

I hope they'll talk to me... ;)

Sarah x

***

On Being a Busy Bee, and UK Games Expo 2010

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:24:19 GMT

Three months since my last post... what's that all about? Starting work as programme manager for cubicle7 certainly threw a couple of old faves into a cocked hat for a few months, including my livejournal posts, which were never too prompt anyway ;)

BUT - here I am, just returned from UK Games Expo 2010 and in a reflective mood - or possibly looking for tasks to put off tackling that mountain of emails in my inbox :D

UK Games Expo was great, and bizarrely enough too short! I made (as it turns out) the mistake of signing up to run two sessions over the weekend - one on Saturday "morning" (Legends of Anglerre), one on Sunday "morning" (Starblazer: Mindjammer). I say "morning", as the sessions run from 10am to 2pm. Add to that the 15 minute runover, the 15 minute debrief, and then the scrabble to eat and drink something for lunch, and basically it's 3 o'clock - and the con closes at 5, or 4 on Sundays. Urk! So, my time on the Cubicle 7 stand was perilously thin this time round - next year I'll probably do just 1 sesh, even though they were both great fun.

It was great to see the old faces and put some names to new ones, including Brass Jester, Darren and Gillian Pearce, Ralph Horsley. Had a great time playing Anglerre with Steve Dempsey (gbsteve) and Brian, with a cool denouement involving an unexpected trebuchet and some truly enormous fire arrows (curse those declarative powers of FATE points! :D), and a truly awesome outcome to Escape from Venu (Mindjammer) with Craig and Owen where it turned out the person who'd kidnapped the Amidan princess and delivered her to the nefarious Venu was actually the *starship*! Darn, I wish I'd written that in the official version now! :D

What else? Well, toy purchases were suitably awesome as ever. I always take the chance to strike out on something I wouldn't normally buy when I'm at a con - having "discovered" absolute gems such as Godlike, Unknown Armies, Capharnaum, Umlaut, Duty and Honour, Zorcerer of Zo, and Exalted (ok - a rough diamond, that one ;) ) that way. This time I came away with the absolutely splendid Wild Talents (gotta love that alternative history - Watchmen turned up to eleven!), Reign Enchiridion, the Qin Bestiary, a big pile of sailing ship miniatures (yup... my Legends of Anglerre campaign has turned *very* nautical), and - finally - the Armitage Files.

A word on that last one. I got Trail of Cthulhu at Dragonmeet last year, and despite being generally enthusiastic had a few reservations. Basically, I loved the fact that Ken Hite (princeofcairo) had absolutely exploded the "trudge through the same old Mythos" aspect of CoC by making the whole Lovecraftian shebang mysterious and undetermined again. You know the thing: "hell, I can lick Cthulhu - 700HP, I reckon a handful of spitfires should do it in about 15 minutes flat. Less if we throw dynamite". Right - very scary... BUT, with Trail, Ken nixed the whole "stat-up-a-god" nonsense and even broke out the *definition* of Cthulhu (or Nyarlathotep, or whatever) into multiple different possibilities. Which one's true? Does it matter, if the world's ending?

So - that suits my mindset perfectly. The sheer indeterminacy predicates a subtle menace to the setting - you can't actually *know* what you're up against. Plus, improv and consensual story telling can occur - there is no overarching canon truth (Nodens save us from "Canon"!) to railroad your game.

BUT, the Gumshoe rules seemed at odds with that - at least initially, in the ToC rulesbook. By declaring that "clues are always found", and the "GM decides the outcome, then plants clues leading to that outcome"... well, it seemed pretty railroady, at least on first read. Not personally my cup of tea. So, despite having a refreshingly schizophrenic quality befitting a good Cthulhoid game, ToC languished unplayed on my shelves the past six months.

The Armitage Files changes all that. I can imagine it being *hated* by a certain type of GM and player, but for me it propels Trail from "second place to CoC" to "cutting edge", in one fell swoop, step, or slither... Railroading is *GONE*, *TOAST* - the Investigative skills of the PCs now become the de facto checklist for the GM to determine what kind of clues are going to be found, and - and here is the MOST IMPORTANT BIT - the GM becomes an investigator too, as the players and GM work together to figure out what the hell is going on. Now *THAT* is what investigative roleplaying should be about. Not the GM deciding whodunnit and then guiding the PCs blindfold to a predetermined conclusion - with ToC / Armitage Files, the GM doesn't even know how it's going to end. And that's the starting point for all kinds of awesome.

I take my hat off to Ken, Robin, and the Pelgrane guys - this makes me want to run out and play ToC today. I'm already dusting off Masks of Nyarlathotep and planning to mash it up with the Armitage Files to make *the* awesome improvisational Cthulhoid campaign. Haven't been this excited about Cthulhu for years :D

OK - that turned into an impromptu mini-review, but there you go. Good writing deserves it, and the Armitage Files is worth every penny.

So - what else?

Well, the Cubicle 7 job: that's turning gradually awesome. Initially we've been fighting a bit of a publication logjam, which I get the feeling we're about to release bigtime. But the next year or two look to be truly amazing for RPGs. I love the way C7 prioritizes quality above all - we have some great products coming. I'm responsible for Starblazer, Legends of Anglerre, Victoriana, Qin, other translated games, and Call of Cthulhu (the Cthulhu Britannica line), and we have a corker of a release schedule lined up. On my own writing front, I'm spending half my time programme managing the C7 stuff, the other half writing my own thing, either for C7 (Mindjammer, various Anglerre projects), Chaosium (Chronicles of Future Earth needs a players' guide, if the core book ever comes out), or fiction (short stories coming out shortly (!), plus a Mindjammer novel in the works). It's a whole busy time, but gorgeously fun and stimulating.

Next stop - a couple of months of down periscope again, and then surfacing for my first trip to GenCon. See you there!

Cheers,

Sarah

*****

Legends of Anglerre: Old School Nostalgia

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:48:53 GMT

I'm getting really excited about "Legends of Anglerre" appearing on the shelves this spring. It's my first foray into writing a complete RPG, and it's a biggie - the fantasy version of "Starblazer Adventures", Legends of Anglerre will be the first full-blown fantasy rpg using the FATE 3.0 rules.

For the past 7 months, Legends of Anglerre has been my daily routine. First, a bucket load of new writing, then a careful process of editing, condensing, rewriting, polishing, testing, proofing, until the manuscript hit just the shape I wanted to consider itself finished. And it's looking so cool.

First is the old school feel. Like Starblazer, Cubicle 7 have gone for a clean black and white interior with minimal decoration and plenty of luscious 80s art from the fantasy issues of the Starblazer comics. Just crack open the book and it breathes high fantasy, sword and sorcery goodness. All the familiar chapters are there - character generation, game system, races, occupations, skills, equipment, magic items. It's in the "Powers" chapter that the twinkle of something different begins to spark. Not "Spells" - but "Powers". In Legends of Anglerre, your supernatural powers can take on any manifestation you want. You want a Sorcerer casting bolts of flame? No problem. You want a dragon breathing gouts of fire? Same rules, different cosmetics. And here's where it gets sexy: the advancement system works for both. You can play, as a PC, a young fire dragon, and track his growth and advancement as he adventures, getting larger and more powerful. Hell, you can even play the doomed heir of a dead race with a Fire Demon bound into his sword - and the same advancements apply, as the hero discovers greater and greater powers in his demonic sword.

It's a tiny shift of mindset, but suddenly the old school vibe has gone all multi-faceted, and the rules morph into whatever your game requires, while still fitting comfortably and snugly in the palm of your hand.

It goes further. The second half of the book includes rules for creating, fighting, and even *playing* sailing ships, star boats, castles, war galleys, war machines, kingdoms, guilds, temples, and more. These "constructs" and "organizations" have character sheets, statistics, skills, aspects, the whole thing: they use the same rules (with minor tweaks) as characters. Everything slots together like a well-made jigsaw, and you can zoom in and out from character level, to castle level, to kingdom level, and back again, without any sense of changing "game system". You can even use your personal experience advancements to improve your castle - or your kingdom!

This gets me really fired up. All within the same, simple, elegant system, with no added complexity, suddenly it becomes possible to play the complete plot of, say, Stormbringer or Lord of the Rings. All the sieges, mass battles, soul-searching, angst-ridden moments of despair, the mental battles with demons and arch-villains, the elation of supreme power. Legends of Anglerre even provides rules for becoming a god!

My pet project immediately following Anglerre's release: I want to write an old-school D&D style "module", for the Legends of Anglerre game. It starts off homely, familiar, comfortable - just what you'd expect from a "module". Then it takes off in an explosion of possibilities, bringing in all the innovations of the FATE Anglerre rules, and your old school adventures go where they've never been able to go before. And cram that into 32 pages ;)

Anglerre!

Cheers,

Sarah :D

*****

Translating "Kuro", and other news

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:43:57 GMT

"My name is Madono Chiyumi. I’m 26 years old. For the past few months I’ve been working in a robotics shop in Akihabara district in Tokyo. I should say 'Shin Edo'. The city’s been renamed...

On the 4th of May 2046 I was in one of the electronic voting booths in my district, like so many others. There was a blinding flash, followed by a howling gale, blowing up neon signs and turning the transparent umbrellas of passers-by inside-out. Then darkness fell.

When the electrics came back on we still didn’t know what had happened. We only learned that later, on the television: an atomic bomb, fired in error by the Panasiatic Federation as a result of an earthquake, had hit us. But there we were: still alive, not burned, not even injured.

The world accused us of having secret weapons, an atomic shield which had stopped the bomb, a signal we were getting ready to make a major attack. Soon an international blockade surrounded Japan, cutting us off from the rest of the world, demanding answers that we didn’t have.

For nearly six months, we’ve been prisoners in our own country, and the Divine Wind shows no sign of stopping. But I know now it's more than just the storm.

Since the Kuro Event that 4th of May, 2046, I see my dead sister caressing the crows on my balcony every night."

*****

The above flashfic is from the Kuro RPG, a game of Japanese futuristic cyberhorror by French RPG publisher Septieme Cercle, which Cubicle 7 are publishing this year and which I'm currently translating. Despite speaking Japanese and having lived in Japanese for 5 years in the early nineties, Japan as a setting for RPGs or as a source of RPG material is something that's never really been on my radar, except for a brief stint at FGU's Bushido in the early 80s. Perhaps Japanese culture is too "close" to me to appear a sufficiently exotic setting, or most RPG incarnations of it too far off the mark to feel credible; Kuro, however, looks different. Neko ("cat" in Japanese) is the nom de plume of Septieme Cercle's Valerie, author of Kuro; she's also a Nipponophile and Japanese speaker, and in this game it shows. There's a real feel for Japanese society "from within", as something real and realistic, rather than something to be gazed at and poked from outside, and I'm hoping the English version of Kuro will get people as excited as I've been reading it.

I'm not yet up to full speed on the Kuro work; I'm doing some translation in dribs and drabs, but I'm expecting to knuckle down seriously roughly April, once Mindjammer Adventures and Legends of Anglerre are both out of my hands. I'm hoping what's left of the translation should take no more than a month or two - we'll see!

In other news, Legends of Anglerre (aka "Starblazer Fantasy Adventures") is now in layout, and looking delicious. I'm really getting quite proudly parental about it; I think we've done a really nice job of transforming the Starblazer rules into the fantasy genre, without just changing the labels. It's a fully-fledge FATE FRP in its own right, standalone and separate from Starblazer Adventures, yet completely compatible - if you want your starship to touch down on a magic-rich world of wizards and dragons and start blasting the hell out of castles and war galleys while sorcerers try to torch your laser cannons, you can - the rules work seamlessly cross-genre.

For me, the biggest pleasure with Legends of Anglerre has been writing a magic system which can "do" Tolkien to my satisfaction. The Hither Kingdoms, the high fantasy setting contained in the Anglerre core book, lends itself easily to D&D-style play; but also, with only a little mindshift, is an incarnation of that Middle-earth spirit of mysterious and unfathomable magic. I'm going to look forwards to taking this further, both in my house campaign and in future Anglerre scenarios and supplements.

Also, "Mindjammer Adventures" continues apace. The Mindjammer core book appears to be selling very well - review copies have now also been sent out, so I'm looking forwards to seeing some reviews on the Net. Mindjammer Adventures is the second book in the series - as much toolkit as the core book, meaning everything is detachable for use in your own campaign, but also playable in the New Commonality Era as is as well, which is my focus when writing. It contains 4 humongous scenarios each with a different take on the transhuman theme, and I'm hoping some pretty unique RPG experiences - some of this stuff gets very weird! - as well as heaps of new rules and goodies. I'm finishing up the first playtest draft in a few days; my target for layout is 21st March. Onward!

"The Chronicles of Future Earth", my technofantasy setting for Chaosium's BRP, is underway again, and I'm hearing from Chaosium they're hoping to make an official announcement at the end of the month. That'll be very gratifying - I wrote the core book over 18 months ago, which sometimes feels like forever: it'll be really nice to see it finally hit the shelves.

Lastly, on the fiction front, I believe "Tales Out of Miskatonic University", the Cthulhu fiction anthology from Mythos Books containing my short story "The Apprentice", is finally at the printers. This has also struggled to see the light of day; I'm looking forwards to seeing how it goes down. I still have an edgy modern Cthulhu short story called "Disclosure" doing the rounds; I'm hoping that will find a home in an upcoming anthology soon. My other fiction writing right now is all Mindjammer-oriented; I'm working on short story #3 (of 8) out of "The Songs of Old Earth", a novel in short stories which I've promised myself will be my big project for the second half of this year, once Mindjammer book 3, "Planeships and Slowboats", is finished.

Looking back on this post, I certainly look busy! Happily this year so far I'm keeping a grip on my "family time", which lost out somewhat last year. I'm working an 8-hour day, 5-day week (more or less), which feels a lot more sustainable, and is keeping Chris (the Brown Dirt Cowboy) happy too!

Hugs and good gaming to all!

Sarah

*****

Solenine - Mindjammer in Mirrorshades

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:57:42 GMT

Here's another teaser from the "Mindjammer Adventures" supplement now approaching playtest - the flash fiction at the head of the scenario "Solenine". It's due out spring 2010 - approximately April / May.

*****

The Core Worlds are as weird as hell. People live forever, yet lead repressed lives of drugged-out bliss. There are traditions thousands of years old, incomprehensible caste systems, terrifying social intrigue. Religion and democracy are illegal, and you can buy and sell xenomorphs like you would a set of clothes – just don’t try and do it with money, or they’ll treat you like you’re some degenerate hick from the boondocks. The Core is as different from the Fringe as you can imagine; sometimes I have trouble believing we’re even the same species.

Solenine is the only place I’ve found which gives the weirdness of the Core a run for its money...

I got her handshake before I saw her, and then my virtual vision had her pegged as she came through the crowds. There were people everywhere. Monitor band flagged up names on some of them when I focussed, some had privacy up.

“Welcome to Solenine,” she cast at me, as my peripheral awareness scrolled through her profile. “I heard you were trying to confirm my death record was a mistake...”

She was casting some expensive perfume at me as she walked up, scent of violets, taste of purple, even the sound of bells in a forest somewhere. Classy stuff; I let it in, I always liked that stuff. By then she’d walked up to me, and I could see her in the flesh; pupils dilating, nostrils flaring, iridescent lips glowing to deep red – specially for me, I knew – barely parting to show pearly white teeth as she breathed warm all over me. Was that a flash of aftersex she cast, too, as she did? Barely a subliminal – but her slight smile told me she knew I’d got it. I tell you, if this girl was an eidolon, I didn’t care whether she was delusional or just feeding me a line.

“Put it back in your pocket, Max,” cast Lyra from the rooftop. “This girl’s got some weird m-band activity. I can’t get a fix. She’s an eidolon all right – but her m-band looks like an avatar, too.”

Shit. “Not human, then?”

“Not any more.”

*****

The City People

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:31:28 GMT

Here's a little New Year teaser from the upcoming "Mindjammer Adventures", the second Mindjammer book, scheduled for March 2010 - the opening flash fiction from the adventure "The City People".

*****

We all patched into the probe’s sensorium, picking up the strange sights, sounds, and smells of this alien world. Maggie kept a running commentary: “Okay, this is where my sensors show the stage-2 probe went down. I’m still picking up a residual trace, though it’s not broadcasting any more. Remember we’ve lost 2 probes already this morning doing this, so I’m not wasting any more – this is a recording.”

We were – or rather the probe was – in some kind of forest. Weird over-specialized plants everywhere, no wildlife. Very odd, but fitted with the planetary profile. The probe wove through lianas, tangled undergrowth, ferns bigger than a flyer. The place stank, but it was also deadly quiet. Unsettling. Biodata scrolled down my peripheral vision, then suddenly flashed up an anomaly.

“What the hell is that?” cast Lyra in disgust.

“Okay,” interrupted the ship. “This is where things get weird. Weirder. Whatever. There’s a life form over there – through that dense patch of foliage. Keep watching. It’s only a flash.”

It was. The probe broke cover, and suddenly amidst all the green there was this flash of pink, and a stink like the rankest body odour ever. I got this impression of something huge – monstrous, monolithic, big as a house, but sitting there. Then – and my flesh still crawls – there was a groan. A really human groan. Then the probe went down.

There was silence. Dr Clay looked up.

“We’re gonna have to go down there.”

*****

Mindjammer Adventures is a collection of 4 Starblazer Adventures scenarios for the Mindjammer setting, really taking the whole transhuman concept to town and having a space opera blast with it. I've always thought scifi gaming should be able to preserve the transformative, intellectually challenging aspects of good scifi writing, while at the same time marrying it with a cracking action-packed gaming experience, full of gung-ho heroism, Science! and blazing blasters. It's great to have the opportunity to test the theory! ;)

*****

Janus with Two-heads

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:00:13 GMT

Here it is again... the end of a year. A completely arbitrary division of time, ignored by pretty much the entire of creation except for a handful of monkey boys and monkey girls on this small blob of mud in the backwaters of the Orion arm... But still somehow it matters.

2009 was an excellent year. The world didn't end - again - which is always a plus, and we made another 12 months in our experimental, drop-out, primitive, pseudo-Mediaeval communistic existence in a Normandy field. This year I spent mostly writing - a hard-earned privilege - and Chris, the Brown-Dirt Cowboy, did pretty much everything else, which meant growing enough food (both plant and animal) to keep us going for a year, acquiring and chopping enough firewood to get us through the winter, and supervising (and doing!) the ongoing renovation of our wee old farmhouse.

For me, the main theme of the year was Cubicle-7 and Starblazer Adventures. Thanks to chrisbirch, angusabranson, and Dom McDowall-Thomas, I moved into a mode of pretty constant writing activity. 2007 and 2008 had been a gradual build-up to a full-time writing existence - 2009 was when it finally happened. I wrote Mindjammer by mid-July, the transhuman supplement for Starblazer, due on the shelves pretty much any minute now; I ended up lead writer on Legends of Anglerre, the fantasy version of Starblazer, working with a cool bunch of gamer-writers on producing what I hope is going to be a great new FATE product for 2010; I wrote several short stories for an upcoming Mindjammer novel and also some for a Cthulhoid collection; got solidly behind the next Mindjammer book, already half-written, and began work on translating 7th Circle's "Kuro" cyber-horror RPG set in a near-future Japan, again for Cubicle-7, to be handed in sometime this coming spring. Wonderful fun, and good concentrated work - and I'm never happier than when I've got my head down scribbling something! :)

Publication of my "Chronicles of Future Earth" setting for Chaosium stalled this year, despite almost getting there mid-year. It's been waiting for 18 months now, which has been frustrating at times. However, Dustin assures me things are still on target, so we'll keep fingers crossed and hope for 2010!

I also went to RPG conventions, for the first time in my life! First was Concrete Cow back in March, followed by Salon du Jeu de Societe in Paris in April, UK Games Expo in Birmingham in June, IndieCon in Bournemouth in November, and then finally Dragonmeet at the end of November. It's been such a cool experience getting to meet and greet the great and the good of the RPG world, who I shan't even begin to name here for fear of missing someone out! Suffice it to say it's been amazing getting to know such a cool bunch of friendly fellow-gamers; I don't think there's a cabal like us anywhere else out there, not that I've come across. That combination of enthusiasm, sense of fun, friendliness, obsessiveness, and burning creativity is completely addictive.

A good year, despite the gathering clouds of economic gloom; one to look back on fondly.
So, looking forwards to 2010... I hope again it's a good year for everyone, that everyone stays healthy and happy, that the world keeps ticking along and we bend in the wind. This coming year we should get the house a notch closer to where we want it, finishing the second (and larger) bedroom upstairs, and getting the land a bit more rationalised - more pasture, less veg - and generally holding our own against the burgeoning and fertile nature which surrounds us on all sides. With regard to writing, I'd like to see Anglerre hit the shelves shortly and be well-received, put out another couple of Mindjammer books, complete the first Kuro translation and start on the second, and - here's a big hope - write most if not all of the Mindjammer novel-in-short-stories I've been working on. That last one is ambitious, but it's always good to *aim*.

I wish everyone out there a peaceful New Year, and a happy, healthy, and fulfilling 2010, wherever you are and whatever you're doing.

Be well, and may your god or guiding principle of choice go with you,

Sarah xx

*****

The Unbearable Awesomeness of Exoplanets

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:37:07 GMT

It's been an amazing year for homo sapiens. At the beginning of the year, NASA announced they had "probably" found life on Mars - an announcement casually ignored by pretty much all the mainstream media - and since then the discoveries of exoplanets has come thick and fast, with telescopes like Kepler hunting down and speccing out an amazing phenomenon: the realization that there are planets everywhere we look.

This week we discovered possibly the best candidate yet: a planet roughly three times the size of earth, a mere 40 or so light years away - right in our backyard - composed almost entirely of water and with its own atmosphere. It's orbiting a red dwarf - one of the oldest and most numerous stellar classes - and while it may not be the most promising candidate for life (it's probably not in the star's habitable zone, though with red dwarfs and the exotic nature of the planetary conditions that may be a moot point), it's DAMN close, so much so that the discovery of an earthlike planet in the habitable zone is pretty much now just a matter of time.

It's worth thinking about that for a moment. Sometime in the next few years, we are going to discover planets which are "earthlike", ie with oxygen-rich atmospheres, water, in the habitable zone of their stars. Given stellar density and the frequency with which we're finding this planets, it's conceivable that such a planet might be found very close to us. That's an awesome concept. Almost unbearably so: to have a whole other *world*, just out there, almost within reach. For the first time since we evolved, in our lifetimes we're going to have found a place other than our own planet where we can probably live. It's also ironic: just at the moment when we could realistically look towards the stars and say, "we belong out there", Western society and government appears to have succumbed to an almost criminal loss of imagination and confidence, and utterly lost its sense of the grandeur and ambition of human destiny. Instead we're pootling around with the tittle-tattle of mass consumer culture, obsessing about the minutiae of faux-celebrity indiscretions, ransacking our economies and cultural heritage like some child pulling a tantrum.

Perhaps it was ever thus. The announcement of life on Mars was swallowed by the great swamp beast of mass culture without so much as a belch, so the revelation of a nearby earthlike world may go the same way. But then again, America wasn't colonized by corporates and couch potatoes, but by misfits, dreamers, and those looking for a new life and an escape from the stifling repression, poverty, and endless warmongering of post-renaissance Europe. Maybe the soon-to-be discovered New World will eventually be colonized in the same way?

If so, reserve me a seat ;)

*****

Cthulhoid Gaming

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 13:51:04 GMT

Over the past 18 months or so I've been toying with an idea for a pseudo-Cthulhu horror game, loosely set in the modern day, very gritty and with a strong realistic vein. Today we played the first session, and had a blast.

I decided to use the Unknown Armies rules for the first session, both because I wanted to understand how UA played, because I thought its grittiness and psychological approach would be cool, and perhaps mostly because as it's not a "Cthulhu game" per se, it would give me a lot of creative freedom and not require me to have an overarching Cthulhu explanation for everything from day one. For me one of the secrets of a good horror game is a real sense of the unknown, of the mystery being truly unfathomable, the evil truly unmentionable, and sometimes following the Cthulhu mythos too closely tends to impose a straitjacket on the ultimate explanation behind all the plot machinations. UA posits an alternate cosmology, but at the gritty level we were playing, that cosmology was largely irrelevant: none of us (including me as GM!) really know *absolutely* what's going on, which left everything feeling vague, unsettling, potentially horrific.

I liked the gritty feel of the UA rules - very bare, almost austere, no little twiddles and fluffs to get you out of trouble. I totally loved the depth of the madness meters: that's a grand bit of crunch which really builds on the fragility of the modern psyche in a very playable way. I thought the Minor / Significant / Major skill checks system was pretty cool, too, providing a good mechanism for investigative play, and also a bit of elbow room for interpretation in an otherwise very binary ruleset.

I wasn't quite so sure about the combat system, though. It's happily very lethal, which is perfect for the genre - we had one single car crash all but kill a character, which was excellent - but it did fall a little flat when both sides failed their rolls, meaning we were all aware we were skirting around (and trying to avoid!) a potential "slog it out dicefest". It did mean we had to get inventive with tactics and goals, which was very good: the goal of combat wasn't "kill the other guy", but rather "get the bag off him", "kick him in the balls and leg it", etc. But I need to build my scenarios so combat *failure* doesn't necessarily spell game over.

All in all though it was a cool session, letting me work through the ideas I've been playing with, and hopefully leading to a more multi-faceted scenario / campaign writeup when I get to it. I'm still not completely sure which set of rules I'll end up going with, but I want to play around with the UA rules a bit more yet and work out what they can do.

*****

Creative Piles

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:07:56 GMT

In the post-Dragonmeet Sunday lunch last week,corone , gbsteve , Graham Walmsley, and I were discussing the enormous piles of papers and books which litter the floors of our houses and apartments in a stubborn refusal to bow to the commonsense simplicity of shelves.

Piles seem to be where it's at. They're an organic, living thing, unlike the stagnant stasis of a bookshelf - they move about the floor, incestuously swapping genetic code with other piles, budding off new micropiles, coalescing with other piles to form awesome megapiles, and all the time creeping, creeping, across the floors and psyches of our lives.

My piles all have one single Abhothic point of origin, a pool of primal paper pile protoplasm from which they creep and flollop through my house (some have even made it outdoors, and now infest my barn, hanging around like delinquent swallows' nests with sinister agendas). It's the left hand side of the sofa, just by my feet, where I sit. I have a habit of plonking things down just there. Even after my desperate and frequent attempts at self-rehabilitation ("Hi. My name's Sarah, and I'm a pileaholic..."), when the floors are swept clean in some puritanical broomstick frenzy, it's barely a matter of hours before the first paper or book is now there again. Just a singleton, to start with - innocent, bright-eyed, virginal, like butter wouldn't melt. Blinky-eyed with "I'm not a pile... I'm just a book which Sarah put down for a minute. I'll be gone in no time at all". Until you look again, of course - within a day or two that book has gathered to itself wind-blown accreta like dry leaves in a gutter - a variform clutter of character sheets, inspired notes, sketchmaps, and "must keep for later" scrawls of incomprehensible legerdemain. Within a week, it needs dusting. The cat starts to accept it. It gets hoovered around. Yup, it's a pile.

I long for the future of cerebral implants and brainjacks, when I can distribute my memory storage in elegant cyber-towers in glistening black and green virtualities. For now, my personal braindump is actually that - the labyrinthine curlicues of my mind, towering in uncertain parchment skyscrapers and manuscript mesas prefiguring a marvellous interlinked future.

Distributed computing? That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I've even got an idea for a story about it... hang on, it's here in this pile of paper somewhere. Just a minute...

*****

Mindjammer at the Printers!

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:41:29 GMT

It's happened at last: the whole of Mindjammer has been signed off, layout done, proofed, print proof signed off, and we're now printing, all being well for a release well before Christmas! Some last-minute delays with layout pushed us from October, through November, and finally into December - that's been a heckuva learning experience and *wont* happen again! :D But basically we're done - the book looks lovely, the guys at Cubicle 7 have let me put in pretty much everything I wanted to, and the New Commonality Era is open for Starblazer business!

It's been quite a genesis. Mindjammer evolved from the backstory of a campaign setting I've written for Chaosium, entitled "The Chronicles of Future Earth" (due out "soon"), and rapidly grabbed me by the throat and demanded I write it down. From the very beginning I was completely fascinated by trying to model cultural conflict in a roleplaying game in a way which was exciting and playable - a way where PCs trashing the setting (as they do) would actually have a quantifiable effect on that setting. A big part of Mindjammer tries to do that.

But more than that, I wanted to create a scifi setting which was gung-ho, exciting, as immensely fun and enjoyable as your best rollicking RPG sessions; one that didn't get bogged down in gearhead-dilemmas and all the problems of trying to second-guess the nitty gritty of far future hardware. I spent the best part of 2008 toying with various game systems trying to do just that: and then, almost exactly 12 months ago, I received the Starblazer PDF preorder from Angus, Chris, and Dom at Cubicle-7, and it was my "Eureka!" moment - THIS was a ruleset which would allow the New Commonality Era to fly!

Technology in Mindjammer is *very* advanced: the society of the NCE is *completely* alien to anything 21st century hom sap has ever experienced. Hopefully the "suspension of disbelief" premium which many scifi settings require you to pay is relatively limited in Mindjammer: I wanted a setting even *I* (cynical old bat that I am) could believe in, and the New Commonality Era is my best attempt.

At the same time as all the weird, super-advanced, highly-evolved, transhuman and posthuman stuff which the campaign *reeks* of, though, Mindjammer also had to be PLAYABLE. I've had countless scifi sessions in the past where everyone's banging their heads on the table trying to work out the vectors and trajectories of fighting starships, discussing the relative penetration of slug thrower rounds, and debating the functions of gauss weapons in electromagnetic fields, while all the while the campaign *fun* meekly staggers into a corner and dies. So - playable. Accessible. Fun.

Hence the Expansionary Era in Mindjammer, where the Commonality is discovering lost colony worlds, some with ancient, semi-fossilized cultures, some strangely similar to our own. Star Trek did it: Al Capone alternate evolution, but it was always absolute hokum how and why that could happen. Not in Mindjammer: the setting actually explains *just how* some of those worlds mirror or refract ancient Earth cultures - and how the Commonality is taking advantage of that, or sometimes suffering culture shock itself. The upshot is that if you want to play a gung-ho 21st century mindset in Mindjammer (or even a 28th century neo-Japanese Technoninja!), there's a homeworld for you somewhere out there!

We'll see how it goes. I've posted colour maps and images of some of the Darradine Rim worlds on the Mindjammer website (www.mindjammer.com) for free download; there's lots more to follow. Also, I'm working on a second book, entitled Mindjammer Adventures, which contains new rules (specially for the "interstellar brainjack internet thing" called the Mindscape and "Technopsi", technological psionics, and also four humongous scenarios which really push the transhuman thing to the max (one adventure is set aboard an enormous sentient living organic spaceship... venting waste gases... whew...).

And mere days to go till the core book hits the shelves :)

Cheers,

Sarah

*****

Twenty Years After The Wall

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:39:11 GMT

In November 1989 I was a mere slip of a lass, still an undergraduate, fresh back from a year studying in the Soviet Union. I'd just spent 7 days interpreting in Peterborough with fellow student and chum Jamie Coomarasamy (now of BBC fame) for a group of Ukrainians from Vinnitsa. It had been a bittersweet week - we were impoverished students, they were impoverished citizens of the Eastern Bloc, unable to understand why (if the streets of the West ran with gold) we couldn't afford to buy them all they wanted. In those days, trying to explain the niceties of capitalism to communists was a complete paradox - yes, it's possible to be poor in a world where the shops are full of treasure.

Bittersweet too 'cos we all knew Perestroika was doing major things to the Soviet Union. During my time in Moscow, I'd attended concerts, get-togethers, parties, where the fresh air of change was blindingly clear, sweeping through all the old Soviet certainties. We'd listened to Viktor Tsoy and felt the fire of freedom kindle; we'd read Master and Margarita in the first ever Soviet edition; we'd talked freely, and even the KGB guy in our Ukrainian group smiled that he found himself with less and less to do. Everyone was aching with hope, waiting for something to happen.

Then, the 9th of November. It was a Wednesday, I think, or maybe a Thursday - that bit's hazy. The day the Ukrainians were due to go home - back behind The Curtain. The night before, we'd been to a funfair in Peterborough. I'd shared a big wheel chair with Boris (yes, unbelievably...) the KGB guy - he was there alone, and a bit shunned by the others. I felt sorry for him. He smoked Belomorkanal papirosy constantly, and I bummed a couple off him for old time's sake. As we wheeled high above Peterborough in the darkness, tears suddenly came to his eyes. He looked out at the (his words) "thousands of golden street lights, like golden stars... They always said the West was paved with gold, but I never knew it would be so beautiful. That people would be so kind." I'd experienced the warmth and kindness of strangers when I'd been in the Soviet Union - people with nothing sharing everything they had - and I felt choked, inadequate. What could you say...?

The next day we stood by the coach, diesel fumes, unhappy faces. Jamie and I had pooled our student pennies and bought little souvenirs for all the kids - pencils, rubbers, keyrings. Cheap tat, but bright and gaudy stuff for the kiddies to take home.

Outside, we stood awkwardly, smoking, waiting for the time for the Ukrainians to board the coach and go. Dragging out the last few minutes.

Then, suddenly, it came over the radio: The Wall was down!!! Everyone stood, stunned. Overnight, the borders had fallen. People were flooding West, then flooding back again. Not an exodus - not a refugee crisis - but a collapse of the entire Iron Curtain. In our group, people began to laugh, uncertain. Elena Nikolaevna began to cry. I felt I daren't talk or I'd burst into tears.

Boris the KGB guy came up to me, tears on his cheeks. "Now I'm definitely out of a job," he said, suddenly laughing. A huge, Russian hug - not just him, but everyone. It felt like a new world - and suddenly, the Ukrainians wanted to go home. Excitement - change. After 40 years of stagnation, history - for good or bad - had started its inexorable march again.

20 years ago today.

*****

Surfing the Chaos Wave

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:01:52 GMT

As a computer spod since the year dot, an active web user since 1992, and a former web developer, architect and business manager, I've been watching Google Wave with some interest. It's the first much-touted "killer app" since live messaging which actually looks like it will fulfil its promise of being the Next Big Thing.

One of the early tropes of the cyberpunk genre was the encroaching alienation people begin to feel when the pace of technological change begins to outstrip the ability of people to keep up with it. Call in "innovation fatigue". You can see that with some of the early adopters of Wave; a pervasive "ok, bored now..." switch-off from engaging with the new tech. That's fair enough; we're playing with what's effectively a beta release, here, and anyone who's not prepared for a steep learning curve and heaps of gremlins should just switch off and wait a couple of years till the technology matures. By then, of course, the *next* big thing will be on the horizon, and the next big wave of innovation fatigue. Anyone who's been around a while already knows that this technology will *never* mature - surfing the crest of the ever-crashing techno-wave is the best we can expect, and there's some who like surfing, and some who don't...

For those of us who can cope with the crashes, glitches, clunky interface, lack of functions, and all-round frustrating "why didn't they do *that* yet?" rawness of Google Wave, it's an astounding piece of technology. It's very amorphousness takes 2nd gen web tech to a new level - Web 2, like the internet, is becoming a *medium*, not an application, and Wave is leading us in that direction giggling and stumbling all the way. The question to ask is not "what can I do with Wave?", but "what can I do IN Wave?" No point criticising the telephone if you've nothing to say...

So, here are a few thoughts about where Wave is leading us, with a slant towards the RPG business (as that's where I'm currently at):

hyperlinked collaborations: the ability to group-produce documents, images, systems, narratives, in real-time with multiple contributors. Kind of a multiway conversation where everyone's utterance is not only recorded, but available for sequential playback.
non-time-restricted conversation: up to now, joining a human conversation (virtual or not) has been a question of trying to work out what everyone's saying and maybe asking for a summary. No longer: conversations are no longer fixed in time; new participants can come and "replay" the whole conversation before joining in. Most amazingly from the human cognitive standpoint, participants in conversations can actually *go back in time* and thread off new topics and conversations from previous utterances. A conversation becomes a 4-dimensional object shared between an unlimited number of participants - the full implications of that are yet to dawn on us.
increased cyborging: many of us webheads (and I include portable iHeads and txtHds in that too :-) ) are already accustomed to being cyborgs to one degree or another. We go through life dimly aware that in the back of our minds there's this virtual socket into the Web where almost unlimited knowledge waits. Few of us say or think "bugger, I don't know the answer" any more - we say "I don't know - hang on, I'll find out", and look it up. We're cyborgs already. With Wave, the cyborging goes to a new level: it's become ACTIVE. Passive connection to knowledge is one thing: active connection to a infosphere of multidimensional (and multidimensionally *connected*) constantly changing conversational exchange and *creation* with ceaselessly regenerating content and changing participants is something our primate brains have NEVER had to cope with before. No wonder we're getting some instinctive kickback; this is a WEIRD experience which no human being has ever had before. Again - full implications a few years down the line.
privacy concepts challenged: this is one I experienced pretty quickly in Wave. I'd been having a conversation with someone, one-to-one, and suddenly a bunch of other people got invited. Fine, but the unexpected corollary was that everything I'd said *up to that point* was also available for them to "listen to", not just everything we were going to say after. Talking via Wave, you have to assume that *anybody*, any where, any time, may be able to replay your words *and interact with them*. It's not just a Forum: it's like having your email open for everyone to read, anytime, anywhere.
embed fun and games: here's the coolness right now for me, immediate future. Imagine an RPG Wave demoing a particular game or scenario. You've got participants, etc, even lurkers watching it unfold. All good. Now, you can EMBED that Wave directly in your game's product page on the net, next to demo docs, download links, purchase buttons, videos, promos, graphics, the whole thing. And the Wave will update in real time. Imagine that: all of your PAST AND PRESENT gaming experience and convos about a system become part of your marketing material. Transparency is always a challenge - but the potential is awesome.

That's it for now - thoughts and impressions after a week of Waving. I may post a follow-up with more if anyone's interested :-)

Cheers!

Sarah

*****

Legends of Anglerre - Why It's Awesome

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:48:13 GMT

As some of you know, for the past few months since completing Mindjammer I've been immersed in writing large chunks of Legends of Anglerre, the fantasy version of Starblazer Adventures. I'm also editing the book - compiling the disparate chapters of this immense beast into a single volume hopefully slightly less cyclopean than its august predecessor.

So - a FATE fantasy roleplaying game, Starblazer Adventures but with dragons, magic and swords. I'm really excited about it; the more I've been working on it, the more I've come to realize that we've got a cool little puppy on our hands here. It's a full-blown fantasy roleplaying game, meaning you can play pretty much any kind of fantasy game with it, from old school D&D, through Swords and Sorcery, to angst-ridden Elric, Byzantine intrigue, or superpowerful Exalted-style campaigns with casts of thousands. Plus - and here's when it's got me - it uses the same spectacular Fate engine of Starblazer and its serene parent Spirit of the Century.

Like Starblazer, Legends of Anglerre takes the toolkit approach, but it also comes pre-loaded with two very solid settings - a Swords and Sorcery one, and a High Fantasy one. The Swords and Sorcery setting is the "Anglerre" of the title - a pseudo-Moorcockian world filled with evil sorcerers, jaded kingdoms, and demonic swords. It was the subject of several Starblazer issues, and is a cracking setting for that Stormbringer-flavoured game. The High Fantasy setting is "Lords of the Hither Kingdoms", written by myself. It should be familiar to anyone who's ever played, say, D&D, or Warhammer, Tunnels and Trolls, or Glorantha; it's a mediaeval fantasy setting of elves, dwarves, dragons, and high magic. A little bit more than that, though; it's Tolkienesque, too, with many of the same epic and melancholy themes that Tolkien used running in the background. The magic system is broad and accessible, but there are some little tweaks that you could also play a Middle-earth game with it without too much trouble.

I've been writing Legends of Anglerre with Chris Birch of Cubicle 7, of course, and also a "working group" comprising Mike Olson (of Spirit of the Blank), Tom Miskey (Spirits of Steam and Sorcery, etc), and Marc Reyes. Our goal with Legends of Anglerre was that someone familiar with a game like D&D, could pick it up and run with it straight away, that it should feel like a home away from home, friendly and familiar and accessible. It's basically a zero-prep game, and friendly to newcomers - you get help with character generation, easy to use templates, careers, plenty of power and skill write ups and tons of examples of how to do stuff. But - and this is where it gets cool - it follows the "FATE Fractal Principle", which means the more you drill-down into specific areas of the game, the more detail and coolness you get. We've made sure that despite its easy-entry, it's got a lot of depth, and should provide plenty of fun for gamers wanting to stretch the system as far as it can.

Take an example: powers. These are supernatural or magical abilities. Note that I don't say "spells": like in Starblazer, what an ability looks like is a function of the setting, not the rules. You could have a "Fire Power", for example: in the hands of a wizard, this would be Fire Magic; in the hands of a priest, miracles from the Sun God; for a fire elemental, its natural powers; for a dragon, its fiery breath. You get the idea: we don't dictate the "manifestation" of the power, so you can tailor them to what you need. The settings in the book provide guidelines of how those powers work in those settings, but there's loads of flexibility. The powers rules work the same, too - each power skill as written has a number of simple uses, so you can jump in and just play. But, the rules show you how you can modify these simple uses, customizing them to make your own magical effects. You don't *have* to do this, but we're pretty sure when you get the hang of it you'll want to!

The book provides a representative list of powers - there's eighteen or so, ranging from Death, Domination, and Dimensions, to Time and Transmutation. They cover pretty much the whole range of magic powers you could want. But that's not all; you can create your own easily, and we provide plenty of examples to show you just how.

So, that's the philosophy: a simple, accessible base, with lots of depth if you want it. The FATE fractal takes that a step further too. How about this, for example:

In Legends of Anglerre, you can stat up castles, sailing ships, guilds, and kingdoms just like characters. You can interact with them, your characters can lead them, they can fight. The scaling system means that your game can move smoothly from (say) individual character level, up to castle and construct level, up again to kingdom level, then back down again. Each of these "entities" has its own "character sheet", with skills and stunts, and they can interact with one another. Want to cast a fireball to take down the wall of a city? No problem - the rules do that out of the box.

So - you've got your character, he's getting all heroic and high-powered, so he builds himself a castle. As he gets more powerful, he can use his experience points to improve himself OR his castle. He could even get involved in mass battles and carve himself out a kingdom - and use his experience points on that, too! The system is massively interwoven, but all using the same, simple set of rules - the FATE fractal.

That's it for now. There's tons of other cool stuff in the book, including rules for mass combat, running your adventuring party as a "group character", families, dynasties, other dimensions, places of magic, demons, dragons, and even magic items as characters (even wanted to play Stormbringer as a character? Now you can!). It's as ramjam-packed with goodness as Starblazer, and due out for Christmas this year. Back to work!

Cheers,

Sarah

UK Games Expo

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:16:47 GMT

That was Saturday - Sunday, this is Wednesday... Finally arrived back on the farm in the wee hours last night / this morning after a 5-day UK stint with the in-laws, Brum, and London, shattered and extremely satisfied!

UK Games Expo was a blast. Nice and big with oodles of new toys, the most important of which for me was the hard-copy of Starblazer Adventures - no more PDF printouts for me! Hung out with chrisbirch who marvellously monikered my copy - thanks Chris! - and spent several happy hours jawing about the future of Starblazer, Mindjammer, and the upcoming Chronicles of Anglerre and End of Days books, and with Rich Stokes of Collective Endeavour too. As ever Jedi master angusabranson beamed beatifically over all and lent an air of divine and courtly splendour to the occasion, as well as endless drinks, double-entendres, and introductions to all the lovely people at C7, Leisure Games, and the whole dang hobby who seemed to have turned up, including the gorgeous actualsean and Starblazer-meister Marc Farrimond who ran a cool 2-hour bar-room bloodfest for me and a couple of philosophy guys from Warwick U (hi guys!). Also chatted with Andy Peregrine about the upcoming Victoriana 2nd edition and got some insights into his plans for global domination, which sound very sexy indeed, and got to meet Mike and Col from Leisure Games too, which was an absolute pleasure. Saturday finished with a famished food search and a slightly late (having been on the hoof for 18 hours by then, it felt late...) Pub Grub involving real ale (Fox's Nob... gotta love real ale) and fish n chips, for whose blessings I nobly sacrificed a week's dieting. Well worth it.

So - toys! In addition to Starblazer, I finally treated myself to Ars Magica 5th ed, after hearing awesome things about its magic system, Hellfrost Players Guide from Triple Ace, because it was gorgeous eye-candy and had some pillagable ice age ideas, and - complete impulse purchase - "Duty and Honour" (basically "Sharpe - the RPG") from Collective Endeavour's Neil Gow. This has some intriguing card-based mechanics, and Neil's exposition of the social conflict system had me hooked. Plus I'm on a whole 18th century thing at the moment (OK - Duty and Honour only *just* scrapes into the def, but what the heck), and anything a stone's throw from Doctor Johnson, Jane Austen, or the drug-crazed Romantics is cool by me.

On Sunday I did a pile of Hawking of Starblazer Wares, when the Mighty Tome began to fly off the tables (the previous Saturday having been filled with potential customers contemplating the task of lugging the Tome around the con for 2 days - they came back today!), and also got chance to punt Mindjammer, which is now inching ever closer to layout, with an on-shelf release in October / November this year, inshallah. I also got to meet Dominic from C7 for the first time and chew the cud about doing things with C7 and its sparkling future - great to meet you Dom, at last! :D

I got back to Harlow round 9-ish having been screwed by M1 traffic, just enough time to pass an enjoyable evening en famille with the in-laws and the Single Malts before setting out Monday morning for Chris Birch's extremely nice bohemian pad in the Smoke for a day selecting Mindjammer artwork, finishing up the Anglerre powers system first full draft, and making our plans for Global Starblazer Hegemony, which was nice. Thanks for your hospitality, Chris!

That's it! Tuesday was spent recovering and catching up with family, then travel home, where (gracias a Ryanair's finely-tuned Automated Delay System) I arrived just before 1 am in the wee hours of Wednesday. A great and productive long weekend, as ever made lovely and marvellous by the smashing folks at C7. Hope to see you again soon, guys!

That's me pretty much conventioned out for the summer - I'm aiming at IndyCon in November and then Dragonmeet London, but between then and now I have some games and stories to write! Onward!

*****

The Starblazer Difference - Hot-swappable Scenario Design in Starblazer Adventures

Fri, 22 May 2009 09:33:32 GMT

It's been a while since I posted, but there’s something that's been buzzing around in my head, so I thought I'd have a go at trying to articulate it. It's a bit abstract, theoretical, but bear with me. I'm drawing on my experiences with Starblazer Adventures, but it's also doubtless true for Spirit of the Century and FATE in general.

I've been writing a lot of Starblazer scenarios and campaign stuff recently, for the upcoming Mindjammer book, and I've been struck by what a different experience it is from writing scenarios for more "traditional" RPGs. Starblazer by its nature plays as a fast, furious, and inventive game, rollicking good fun with a hell of a lot of player involvement, but often it still just feels like a normal RPG. But it's not.

The whole player participation thing radically changes how you construct your campaigns and scenarios. In The Olden Days (and still now with more traditional RPGs), scenario writing is/was about providing a good, solid description of places, people, and critters, and also presenting enough plot detail that the GM could grasp the whole intended structure and "learn" it, before gradually revealing it to the players in the course of play. Pretty much any scenario would have this “implied plot”. Even if you avoid railroading in a scenario with a clear plot structure (no mean feat), a lot of the game involves the players trying to work out what the GM knows, and then navigate the scenario using that information.

Starblazer blows that out of the water. At any point, players can make Declarations, etc, and invent elements of the narrative out of whole cloth, which the GM then makes best efforts to incorporate. It's a bad GM in Starblazer who turns down player declarations because they don't "fit" the story / plot structure he's created; instead, you turn down your planned plot structure *in favour of* the player-created innovation.

It takes a few moments to realize what that does to your "planned" campaign. In fact, you can't really plan it at all, nor should you. In writing a scenario, for example, what I find myself doing is detailing the "starting assumptions" of the scenario - the status quo before the PCs turn up. That involves sketches of locations and people, sure, and also statistics - but the understanding is that all these are provisional, and subject to complete change during the course of play. A given bad guy may suddenly turn out to be a good guy, and vice versa, based on player narrative control. This means that although you have some control over how a scenario starts, you really have no idea of how it’s going to go as soon as it’s out of the gate. In a science-fiction campaign, this has major implications; imagine a first contact situation. You've set up the aliens to be basically friendly, but incomprehensible, and the "starting assumptions" are that the PCs (as the contact team) are going to aim to do a good job and bring the aliens into the fold as friends and allies. That’s what’s expected.

In Starblazer, you have almost no control, as GM, over how things go from there. The players may suddenly declare that the aliens are actually inimical, perhaps they want to eat people, maybe they have some terrible disease, or that there's already ANOTHER contact team down there who've gone insane in Colonel Kurtz fashion and are killing the natives. By the end of the scenario the entire planet may be a smouldering ruin, or your star empire may have a war - even a civil war! - on its hands.

That's an amazing power to unleash at the gaming table - and very exciting for the GM, too, as you really don't know where things are going - but how the hell do you link scenarios together into a campaign in such a game environment?

I don't lay claim to authoritative answers on that point, but here's how I'm handling it: I'm taking a "structuralist" approach. I'm viewing the elements of a given scenario in largely abstract terms, and although I'm cloaking those abstract structures in setting-specific chrome, it's possible to change that chrome radically without totally trashing the structure. You can even replace individual elements in the structure, “hot swapping” them with other elements resulting from player narrative intervention, without destroying its structure or utility. So, in the above example, you've got the following structure:

"Star Empire PCs contact Incomprehensible Aliens on Unexplored World. During the scenario, the Star Empire modifies the Aliens' life experience, and the Aliens may also modify the Star Empire right back. By scenario end, there is a Defined Relationship established with the Aliens."

That's very vague and woolly, but it allows me to swap chrome descriptions easily, and even to “hot-swap” large chunks of the scenario structure (people, places, events) and to expect to handle the scenario progress in a certain way. For example, by the end I know I'll have a status report on how the Star Empire and the Aliens are getting on. I don't know whether they'll be allies or at war, but I know I’ll be modifying the relationship between the two “polities” based on the scenario outcome.

This is where the Starblazer "fractal" comes in. By using organizations, etc, you can actually track the relationships between, say, Star Empires and Alien Worlds. By the end of the above scenario, if there's a developing war, I can actually make the result of the scenario into the first "exchange" of a conflict between the Star Empire and the Aliens *as organizations*. That's an amazingly powerful tool; it means I don't have to know in advance whether there's a war or not, and I can rely on the game rules to manage that war if there is one.

So what does this mean for writing a campaign setting? Well, the first thing is to realise that whilst you can present a setting, and indeed loosely-linked scenarios, in a published book, you can't expect *in any way* that individual GM's campaigns are going to look anything like yours. Events could be *hugely* different. Imagine this situation: there's been a planetary invasion in the Star Empire by a bunch of bad guys. The scenario deals with trying to fight them off. Do the PCs win?

In Starblazer, you don't know whether the PCs win or not. You can’t assume anything. By the end of the scenario, the bad guys could be toast, or they could be the planet's new rulers. So how do you write a sequel scenario? Answer: you don't make the scenario dependent on the precise outcome of its predecessor, but you derive it from the predecessor’s *structure*. We know there's been a planetary invasion, so we know there are bad guys trying to invade planets. The sequel scenario can base itself off that, and shouldn't rely on precise details of whether the bad guys won or lost in the previous scenario. Starblazer - with its organizations and rules for cool things like Plot stress, etc - puts enough tools in the GM's hands that you can leave that kind of tracking up to the GM.

Think of it in terms of "layers". You have your "top" layer in a scenario, which is the abstract plot structure (Planetary Invasion, etc) of the scenario itself. This has chrome description laid over it, and you present some basic starting points there, but acknowledge the precise detail is up to the GM. Then you have a "middle" layer, which is the specific, day-to-day events of the scenario, what happens to whom and when and where, etc. Lastly, you have the "deep" layer, which is the underlying nature of the setting; "there's a Star Empire, and there's some bad guys who are kind of like this. This scenario is going to affect that”.

What this means is that when writing Starblazer campaigns and scenarios, you only write the "top" and "deep" layers. You don't attempt the middle layer at all; that's up to the players and GMs who run their games. One set of players could have the entire Star Empire erupt in civil war as a result of their actions; but the scenario you write should be able to fit smoothly in there, drawing on the fundamental setting "deep structure" layer and presenting a "top" layer abstract plot structure which can fit more or less any narrative.

In some ways, this is just good design, period. For any game, you should always leave the “middle layer” blank. But it's interesting that Starblazer (and FATE in general) actually *demands* this approach - it's built into the rules. Scenario plot structure isn’t necessarily completely freeform, but nor can it be clearly defined. In some ways it owes a lot to the concepts of sandbox and plot point campaigns, but it's more than that - a good Starblazer campaign guide provides a support and an inspiration to GM and player creativity, not a replacement for it. The Starblazer rules are a toolkit for play; a Starblazer scenario is a toolkit for adventure.

What does this mean in the long run? Well, I think it means any kind of “one true way” approach to a campaign will forever be absolutely impossible in Starblazer, which is *wonderful* news for GMs. I don’t think I’m alone in having suffered from that; the urgent need to keep up with everything published for a setting, and also the ever-increasing fear and frustration that if you dare to invent something for a setting, it may - oh, horror! - be contradicted by “official canon”. I personally HATE that; it stifles creativity something rotten. In Starblazer, trashing “canon” and “the official word” is a RULES REQUIREMENT! All any setting or scenario can ever be is a toolkit for adventure, and the creative control remains for ever with the GM. Long may it stay that way.

*****

Write-a-thon Over

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:05:35 GMT

So, this morning I emerged pallid and blinking into the daylight, struggling to remember the mechanisms of speech and surprised at the curiously symmetrical shape of the dominant carbon-based lifeforms of this planet...

Yup, been a-writin'. In fact, barely surfaced for air for about a month, there. It's beginning to seem there's a divine law that says, no matter how well organized you are, how far in advance you plan, the last 4 weeks on a manuscript are a bastard. Maybe's it's just because I almost always underestimate how big and how numerous those "little holes" in the manuscript are. You know, "hey, yeah, it's pretty much complete, just a few little holes here and there to fill in". Little holes, as in Krakatoa, the Ozone Layer, the UK debt mountain.

Anyway - it's done! The Mindjammer playtest manuscript is finished, complete, terminé. And long. At some point in the next month or two I need to do away with about 5,000 words. The Jedi Editing Technique I learned from Ancient Master Jones last year has meant I'm writing more tersely than before - great for me, but harder to chop out verbiage. We'll see. I'll take a big stick to it sometime this month and see if I can't make it shrink from fear.

Mmm. Got so figurative there I can barely remember what I was talking about. Ah - writing! That was it!

Well (it's my first use of "well" in this posting - paragraph five! Ladies and gentlementles, for abstemiousness with the word "well" in the face of uncommon temptation, I-a thank you...), well - Mindjammer over, I've also finished the first draft of the first story in the Songs of Old Earth. The Good People at the writers group ici en France have given me heaps of hints, tips, and miscellaneous feedback, plus The Brown Dirt Cowboy (aka my Chris) and Chris at C7, so I'll be producing a polished V2 somewhere in the next month. And also hopefully a first draft of the second story, "Slowboat".

I'm excited to be writing this cycle. I've wanted to attempt a "novel in short stories" for about a year, now. Toyed with a WW2-type thing late last year, but got fired up with the Mindjammer thing and found there's a story wanting to be told in there which is right up my alley - culture clash, languages, history, and Really Big Guns. Marvellous - what more can a (mildly psychotic) girl ask for?

Next up - Starblazer Fantasy. Much neglected whilst I was Off With The Mindjammers, I'm now going full steam for a playtest rough in the next few weeks, and at the same time tarting up the Chronicles manuscript for Dustin and Charlie with some of my Brave New Words wot I thunk up in the past year or so. Back then (!) 35000 words seemed barely enough for a covering letter with an electricity bill, and I struggled to cram everything in; something weirdly 4-dimensional happened since then, and I'm hopefully going to let a little air in. We'll see - I think the MS will be better for it.

That's it. Partially insane from overwriting, I shall now spend the next 2 days armed with lawnmower and strimmer trying to wrest control of the garden back from the assorted gnomes, wood elves and triffids who've since taken up residence there. If you don't hear from me, phone the guys from "Round Up" and tell them to carpet bomb the place...

Oh! Just forgetting - I'm at Salon du Jeu de Société in Paris this weekend, if anybody's there and fancies a chat. I'm hoping to hang out a bit with Angus from C7 and meet the guys from Septieme Cercle - if anyone's going and fancies a chat come up and say hi! I'll be the one looking for sushi...

Ciao!

*****

These honeyed words, this invisible keyboard...

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:21:19 GMT

Today, I thought I'd start a post without using the word "well". Yup, a bit of stylistic navel-gazing... So many things are happening on the writing front right now - and yet from the outside my life doubtless appears a hive of inactivity. Today I'm on my tod in Normandy, so the lambs and the land both beckon for TLC - there'll be little scribbling today, at least while the sun's up. But, on the whole, I find myself with wall-to-wall writing on the go, which is a dream.

First: Mindjammer. That's within a few weeks of the playtest draft, which is a stone's throw from the final manuscript, subject to peer review, feedback, typo-catching, and of course any editorial changes. I'm adding content at a frightening rate, which means I'll be removing words at an even more frightening rate in about two weeks to keep the wordcount on target and under budget. It's turning out to be better than I'd hoped for, which I put down entirely to the wonderful Starblazer rules - it's the first time I've come across a ruleset which just gelled with the setting so well, and kicked it off into all these amazing directions. Hopefully it'll be as fun to read and play as it has been to write!

Second: Chronicles. Actually seems to be coming back on track at last! We've had to make some tough decisions, but are basically probably going to be going with a new editor in May, with a view to fast-tracking it onto the shelves asap. I'm going to take advantage to make some "second edition" changes in the last half of April - I finished the MS at the end of July last year, so my thoughts have changed a fair bit since then, and there are a few things in the existing MS I think I could do better. Normally you'd have to wait for a Second Ed to do that - but thanks to the delays I'm getting the changes in even before the first ed comes out!

Third: writing. "The Songs of Old Earth" - I have a loose story map, and have started writing the first part (of about 8-10 parts). We'll see how it goes. It's quite an ambitious task - 8-10 short stories spanning a 10,000 year span of history, with different plots but unified by the common thread of showing just how Old Earth and the Venu ended up in such a crap relationship. Changes in Commonality society, technology, culture, etc, will be in there too. I find with things like this I can't plot it out too strictly in advance - I need to feel the freshness and surprise myself as I'm writing, so it's not clear how it'll go yet. So far it's looking promising.

Fourth: Starblazer Fantasy. This has been the big surprise of 2009 - it wasn't even on my radar at the beginning of the year, and it looks like it'll be my biggest job! :-) It's looking very cool - we have some very neat rules ideas, and some great thoughts for scenarios and settings, plus I'm doing my damnedest to project manage it in a very low-key way. We're hoping to have a rough playtest draft in about a month; then some very intensive writing in May and June, I'll warrant. Looking forwards to it - it's a big collaborative effort, and hopefully we can make it as good as the original Starblazer, but this time for fantasy!

Fifth: websites. The Mindjammer.com website is up and running, and should have some updates in the next week. I'm not sure yet if we'll keep the look and feel in the long-run - it depends on the look and feel of the Mindjammer Core Book, really. However, I'd really like to continue to use it for publicity and feedback, and probably hook up to the C7 forums or set up a separate forum as things progress. I've also got the Chronicles website completely on hold at the moment - we'll see how that goes, but it would be nice to do.

Sixth: Other Stuff. This is stuff for the second half of the year. I'm hoping to get down to a second and possibly third Mindjammer book - a quick Starships & Spacecraft type thing, followed by a "Starship Troopers meets Indiana Jones on Dune" type scenario following on from The Black Zone campaign. After that it's into the full "Kingmaker" campaign to do in 2010, C7 permitting! For Chronicles, I'd like to get Vales of Yala finished and out there - it's a very quick win - and possibly the smaller "Strange Bedfellows" (with a better name and some minor tweaks!). After that, it's probably the campaign sourcebook and/or a scenario pack; I'd like to do them in a single book, but wordcount will be an issue. We'll have to see if it sells well enough to justify that, I guess!

That's it for now. Generally feeling productive - but for the rest of today the great outdoors (and the sheep!) beckons!

S. xxx

*****