Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The Resolution Will Be Televised?

"Bowel-shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse,
Assail him, impale him, with monster-truck force."
- Cake "The Distance"

I know, this is a bit of a shock, an update that isn't looking back to the dim and distant past! Instead, we look to the present, and the future. It's been a while since I've updated regarding what is actually happening, instead of being reflective and pondering over nostalgic memories. So, what's been going on?

Conspiracy X

First of all, the Kickstarter for the 4th book in the Conspiracy X 2.0 line (The Conspiracies Sourcebook) finished with an overwhelming success. I was absolutely stunned and blown away by the response. While that Kickstarter was finishing, I frantically proofed George's excellent layout and setting of The Paranormal Sourcebook, the 3rd book in the line, and it has now gone off to print.

The Paranormal Sourcebook is available now on DriveThruRPG here and a fine addition to any Unisystem fan's library it is too.

The Kickstarter for The Conspiracies Sourcebook was so successful, it unlocked the chance for production to start on Extinction, the official sequel to Conspiracy X, a possible future of the ConX universe where the aliens have invaded and humanity must fight back. Think Falling Skies, or V meets the high tech near future of something like Total Recall or Halo. It's gonna be awesome. 

The first promo art for the forthcoming game - Extinction
Most of it is already written by the god of Unisystem himself, CJ Carella, I just need to bash it into shape and plug in the game system. Tricky, but doable. Should be very, VERY cool. I've made a start already, just need more hours in the day!

WILD RPG (Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming)

Things with WILD have been a little on the back-burner with Conspiracy X and Extinction coming to the fore. I'm still working on it, and recently a large chunk of the "meta-plot" or backstory of the setting has fallen into place. The system is just about sorted, the setting is there, I just need to get writing more of it. I've made a start on that too, it's early days yet, but I'm hoping it's going to be cool. 

Been discussing interesting new avenues for it as well, interactive character sheets and animated/interactive eBook versions of the rules... but again, it's early days.

Videos

It's been a while since I parted ways with Cheesemint (or Cheesemint Productions Ltd as they are now), yet both my wife and myself have had comments congratulating us on becoming a Limited Company. So, just to set the record straight, Debs and I are no longer involved in Cheesemint's endeavors, and haven't been for a while. I'm still proud of what we accomplished with Unlocked. Matt and Adam made that climatic episode more amazing than I could have ever dreamed, and there's more drama, comedy, action and geek references in the 90mins of that webseries than the whole series of The Big Bang Theory. And the end credits of episode one is still one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

But that's the past! This is about the present and the future! Unlocked has been rebooted, and Debs and I have moved onto other things.

However, I have a camera. 

I've been reluctant to free it from its case, and have been for some time. I don't know. It just feels odd. I've considered selling it, it'd certainly help go towards buying a computer that is from this century - one that actually works with Facebook, or Youtube. But part of me is concerned that I waffle a bit much on here to be interesting and that a little video here and there would spice things up a little. Not too often though, after all, it is a little time-consuming - one of the reasons why I left the webseries production thing behind in the first place.

It wouldn't be anything too complicated. Sure, I had this idea for a webseries called "Players" which was about 30-somethings who met every week to play RPGs. You saw them dressed in the outfits of their characters and talking both in and out of character but in the setting of the game, so they could discuss girlfriend problems or issues at the office while battling orc armies. It would have been like Friends meets the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. But that was over a year ago, and I think I've lost my motivation for that.

I was thinking about something simple - just a video every now and then about RPGs, maybe taking a closer look at a particular game, as a supplement to the text blog here. The first one I was thinking about was covering the original Ghostbusters RPG to tie into the retrospective I'm going through at the moment. Maybe once WILD is actually playable I'd film some of the actual play. I dunno...  what do you think? Should I bother?

The future is in your hands.

Anyway, I'll return to my nostalgia trip next week, continuing the tale of the Ghostbusters RPG and how it shaped my gaming future.

Until then, stay multi-classy.

2 comments:

Tyler said...

Congratulations on the Conspiracy X revival and forthcoming Extinction! I'm looking forward to help kickstart it.

I'm a text-based person, so as long as some of your posts are still written -- especially regarding the ConX lines and WILD -- I'll be following along.

David F. Chapman said...

Worry not, I'd say 95% of this blog will be text based. Videos just take too long to produce. And unless there's something special to show off, like a game unboxing or something, that words don't quite capture, it's just not worth the time.

Cheers dude, and thanks for reading!