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Roll the Bones
May. 13th, 2019 02:51 amI’ve made a few relatively deep dives into old Spycraft material - Dark Inheritance and the Shadowforce Archer core and the 1960s Decade Book - in the last couple of weeks. DI is still a little bit of a heartbreaker for me; it just fascinated me from the jump and I think it had such fantastic potential. But, the creator had gotten in bed with a distributor that badly overextended itself, and a lot of product got lost or destroyed, and that was all she wrote for DI.
Anyway, there was some fantastic stuff in those early d20 system days, and a whole lot of promises that didn’t come to pass. I’ve lost count of the Spycraft/Fantasycraft stuff that was announced and fizzled for various reasons. Goodness knows that I’ve come up with some promising ideas and let them wither on the vine. I’ll probably do it a hundred more times, if I’m honest with myself. Finally putting some real effort into the PMC thought experiment has felt pretty good, and overcoming the Word collapse from a couple of weeks ago was quite satisfying. I would love to recapture some of the heady vibes of that time in the hobby - and not just in my game writing.
Working overnight - obviously, I mean, the posting time is something like 2:45AM - and listening to Coast to Coast AM. First half of tonight’s show was a survivor of some kind of abusive cult and wow did she have some horror stories. One tale felt a little familiar, if maybe even close to home - being punished for not being enthusiastic enough in her worshipping. I won’t say that I was ever physically abused for a lack of churchy vigor, but not wanting to go to church was a notable sin in my childhood. Don’t want to go? Well, then no Sunday dinner out or since I don’t want to go to services, I clearly can’t want to go see friends or whatever. I don’t think it really had anything to do with some kind of concern about my spiritual well-being; more like social pressure and tut-tutting at Mom&Dad if my brother or I weren’t there. I don’t miss it, that’s for sure.
Anyway, there was some fantastic stuff in those early d20 system days, and a whole lot of promises that didn’t come to pass. I’ve lost count of the Spycraft/Fantasycraft stuff that was announced and fizzled for various reasons. Goodness knows that I’ve come up with some promising ideas and let them wither on the vine. I’ll probably do it a hundred more times, if I’m honest with myself. Finally putting some real effort into the PMC thought experiment has felt pretty good, and overcoming the Word collapse from a couple of weeks ago was quite satisfying. I would love to recapture some of the heady vibes of that time in the hobby - and not just in my game writing.
Working overnight - obviously, I mean, the posting time is something like 2:45AM - and listening to Coast to Coast AM. First half of tonight’s show was a survivor of some kind of abusive cult and wow did she have some horror stories. One tale felt a little familiar, if maybe even close to home - being punished for not being enthusiastic enough in her worshipping. I won’t say that I was ever physically abused for a lack of churchy vigor, but not wanting to go to church was a notable sin in my childhood. Don’t want to go? Well, then no Sunday dinner out or since I don’t want to go to services, I clearly can’t want to go see friends or whatever. I don’t think it really had anything to do with some kind of concern about my spiritual well-being; more like social pressure and tut-tutting at Mom&Dad if my brother or I weren’t there. I don’t miss it, that’s for sure.