Roll Your Own Life (4) - Zebulon's Guide to Gamemastering

Despite the merging of several gaming groups, the prospect of playing in three to five games a week wasn't enough for me. I've been told on a few occasions that I'm an over-controlling, domineering, bossy git... I dunno, maybe they're right. But when I was a teenager, I wanted to be in control. I wanted to Gamemaster.

It was a bit of a shock to me to discover that there were other games out there. When I started gaming there really was just the big three out there - Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (because Basic was just for kids), Traveller and Runequest. There was a bit of a rule the groups had which made perfect sense - if you were a player in AD&D you didn't bring a Monster Manual or Dungeon Master's Guide with you to the game. It stopped all that nasty meta-gaming where the DM announced something like:

"You open the door and find that you're in the main Orc guardroom. Three Orcs turn to see you and stand."

First thing that would happen is the players would open their Monster Manuals and look up their HP and it'd become a boring wargame. Restricting the player's book access made the game much more exciting, and gave the DM more control. We could, however, each have our own Player's Handbook. (Later this would expand to include the various expansions such as Unearthed Arcana, and bizarre books that seldom saw use such as the Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guide.)

Where I grew up, there was nowhere to buy these game books. It was almost like a cult that required some secret knowledge to join, and the town had no way of getting hold of these books. All of the gamers in the town had requested copies of these books at the local library, and they did their best to acquire them - postcards would come through the door six months later to say that they'd managed to get a single copy of the DMG that would be fought over by a dozen or so of us.

The nearest place to buy the game books (again, the secret society initiation trials continued) was in the nearest big city. Hull.

Even that was a task of legend. 

A ninety minute bus journey into the city used up a fair amount of pocket money, and used up a fair amount of your Saturday. Precious gaming time! The bus had a nasty habit of taking the most scenic route possible as well, starting at our town and working out in random directions, sometimes going in the complete opposite way to get to Hull. My father always said that the roads were built by council workers who always had to have their backs to the wind, which explained why it was one of the bounciest, twisting, life-threatening journeys you could take.

Once in Hull, the only place to get games was a place called the Kingston Gallery. From the front it was an unassuming picture framers and gallery. I remember the first time going there with Cooper, my ever trusty companion throughout 90% of my schoolyears. We looked at the place, disbelieving the stories of game books that lurked within. But, in true Douglas Adams bureaucratic way, the real information you needed was up a narrow staircase that looked like you were venturing into the framer's bedroom, behind a locked door, and having to be escorted by the one member of staff keeping an eye on the framing business. Instead of a bedroom there was an open room with a counter, and a wall filled with rulebooks. Spinners held the smaller titles, like the many Traveller "little black books" and minis on blister-packs. It was like Nirvana. This was my place of worship. A dealer for my gaming addiction. Books, and books, and books and books of it!

It was here that I discovered there was more to gaming than AD&D, Traveller and Runequest. It was here that Cooper and I discovered that TSR had a number of other games out. It was here that I discovered Star Frontiers.

Star Frontiers was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Just the cover of it... wow. I mean look at it. Traveller was a plain black cover, this had a crashed spaceship, a cool guy with shades and an awesome gun, a hot girl, and what was that winged monkey thing? I had to buy this!! I could play science fiction and I could GM. Everything was in it, dice, counters, maps, two books, and...  a wax crayon! Amazing.

It had everything I could want to play cool sci-fi. I could run Star Wars...  it would be cooler than Star Wars, it had Sathars that could be shot in their millions, strange rubber dudes, and big bugs. Only thing you couldn't do with it?

Leave the planet...

That would require another quest into Hull for Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks! 

 (Although Cooper now has my Star Frontiers collection, I still have those dice. My first D10s...  It wouldn't be until I reconvened with the other gamers that I would discover what the wax crayon was for...)

Roll Your Own Life (3) - A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

I started with Traveller - around at JR's, someone I knew from school who was in a different House, invited by our mutual friend, Crud. You'll have to forgive the nicknames - they weren't great, they weren't always flattering, but it's how we knew each other. Hell, there were four in the group with the same first name, we needed nicknames just to keep things straight!

I don't remember how old I was, but it was before I moved house because to me, the trek to JR's may as well have been to Mordor. It was the other end of the sleepy little seaside town, right to the very edges of civilisation. It's only about 10 minutes walk really, but to my childlike, Hobbit-legs it seemed like forever. 

I can remember it must have been before I moved as I have a distinct memory of trying to create a new RPG based on TRON the moment I saw it at the cinema - so I must have started gaming around 1981-ish. (My first attempt at creating my own RPG, the TRON RPG started with the thing that I equated was most necessary to run a game - a map. I started designing the game grid on graph paper... and that's about as far as I got.)

There was a second Traveller session, where I created a character that I have no memory of - I don't really remember any of my Traveller characters, they all seem to be ex-Navy in their 50's who died the first time someone pulled a gun. However, after the second Traveller game I was invited to the new group's other game, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

Some of The Eight, circa mid 90's at one of our many reunions.

I have to admit, this was all new to me, and most of these people were unknown to me except in passing at school, but there were three active RPG groups in the town that we knew of. I was blissfully unaware of the third group until I started chatting with my fellow gamers this week to refresh my memory for these posts. Anyway, there were three groups - one was the group I'd joined, and you'll have to forgive me if I get this wrong - (JR, Pete, Jinx (who didn't hang around long after I'd joined) and Crud), another was running on the other side of town (Milo, John, Campbell, Norm, Gladys), while a third had splintered off from the first group - they quickly discovered things like home-brew and girls and stuff, while we remained (mostly) dedicated to the gaming cause. While the two main gaming groups were geographically disparate, there was some interchangeability between the members as some of us (Bragi will agree with me on this) discovered we needed more gaming than one group could provide. Why just go to one game a couple of times a week when you could be in two groups and game up to five nights a week? Awesome.

Anyway, I digress...

Pete ran AD&D at his place on the kitchen table with the largest, most epic DM's screen you'll ever see. It was 3ft tall, and possibly 4ft wide with a single fold in the middle. Made out of something like chip-board or kevlar or something, it was the biggest and most over-the-top screen I've ever seen in all my years of gaming. I think there were charts and tables and stuff taped to the inside but no one ever saw around it. It was the screen of doom. 

It towered over the table casting its shadow like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, driving us poor gamers into a killing frenzy. All orcs must be destroyed.

It appeared that Crud had come up with an epic mission, to actually see the map that Pete was using to DM, and began chiselling away at the side of the screen with the metal nib of a propelling pencil. By the time I'd started playing with the group, the successful hole had been filled with what must have been an entire tube of Araldite epoxy resin that had solidified into a strangely organic sculpture that Giger would have been proud of.

Pete's voice boomed from behind the screen and I remained fascinated as strange 10' measurements were translated by Jinx carefully onto squared paper and the map of the dungeon was unveiled before us.

AD&D was completely unlike Traveller to me. I hadn't really read much fantasy as a kid, but I'd been given an existing character - Ivanhoe. He was a 9th level Paladin, complete with armour and +5 holy avenger. He'd been in the group for years, levelled up from a starting character, and had been passed from one player to the next when they'd become bored with the prospect of being a goody-goody. To me he was the ideal character. It would shape my gaming for years to come, and despite some dabbling with rather rubbish barbarians (thanks to Unearthed Arcana) or inept thieves, I always returned to playing Paladins. In fact, I kinda played paladins in other games as well... Star Frontiers? Paladin. Runequest? Paladin. 

Of course, this would finally change with one of the most memorable games of our gaming history - Odyssey. But we'll come onto that later.

[With thanks to Milo for the photo]

Roll Your Own Life (2) - Like a Virgin

Like Pulp said, "Do you remember the first time?" They always say that you can, and they're right. I remember my first time... I can't remember how old I was, but I was still at school (secondary school as they called it in my day, though they probably call it High School now, so they can be like the ones the kids see on TV) and it was a Saturday. A friend of mine (we'll just call him Crud, not the nicest of nicknames but it wasn't because he was cruddy, he just liked the word and used it a lot - and it kinda stuck as a name) suggested we head over to a buddy of his' place. Crud had planned on going to JR's for a game, so I was invited to tag along. I had no idea what was going on...

Wait, you thought this was going to be about sex didn't you? Nooooooo, this is about Traveller. My first game. 

I must admit, I don't remember a great deal about the game except where it was, and that I was engrossed - which was surprising considering I had no idea what was going on really, and I didn't even have my own character. I suppose I did what every gamer does at their first game, especially one where you've joined a game in progress - I kept mostly quiet, rolled when necessary, and just tried to take it all in.

But it was enough to get me hooked. And I must have behaved myself as I got myself invited back to a second Traveller game where I spent most of it rolling up (or rather mustering out) a new character.

It was a big deal not only because I'd started roleplaying, but also because I was expanding my circle of friends. I wasn't a popular kid - chubby, funny looking, picked on, teased, bullied, yes. But not popular. I had a best friend (and if Stephen King was writing this he'd say that we were both perfect candidates for "IT"'s Loser's Club) and we spent every weekend together playing video games (ZX Spectrum, or Atari VCS). My circle of friends expanded to a couple of other kids, mostly those who had moved into the area and were assigned to me to "show them around" because I was obviously "reliable". This was great because not only were they great friends as well, but it wouldn't be long before all of us, friends old and new, would be engaging in the epic roleplaying adventures that stretched before us.

This new gaming group were mostly people I didn't normally associate with - they were in a different "house" (yes, we had houses, just like Harry Potter). Suddenly my circle of friends had grown from three to eight (sometimes more), but we gamed, and we gamed A LOT. Four to five times a week, evenings and weekends. We were "The Eight", friends I've known and kept for over thirty years. Friends I'll hopefully introduce to you over the coming weeks.

Roll Your Own Life (1) - Introduction

Things have been a little crazy over the last couple of months. My mother has been in hospital for the best part of two months, and I've been trekking up-country to visit at every opportunity I've had.

Spending time at my old house brings back a lot of memories, and this is just part of the reason for this series of blog posts.

The second reason started with an innocent photo. It was Origins 2012 just a couple of weeks ago, and Dom (my publisher at Cubicle 7) went to represent the Cubicle 7, especially as they were up for a number of awards including two nominations for RPG of the Year, and a nomination (and a win!) for Best RPG Supplement. Dom posted on the Cubicle 7 Facebook page a little photo of him with Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, who were taking in the sites at the convention. I'd been fans of both of them for ages, Felicia Day inspiring the whole webseries thing I was involved in for a while, and Wil Wheaton has become an icon of all things good and gamey (you really should check out his amazing webseries TableTop on the Geek and Sundry Youtube channel if you haven't already).

Seeing that photo reminded me of something I'd been meaning to do for long time - to read Wil Wheaton's autobiography (which is the best way to describe it) "Just a Geek". I'm about half way through, breezing through in a matter of hours, and it's inspired me to reflect on things myself a little as well.

Finally, the last reason for starting to write these little blog-posts is my amazing wife. She had a theory about how the friends you have through roleplaying gaming share a camaraderie that could be equated to being in a war. Your friends and yourself have been through epic battles, intense situations and some moments of levity that will remain with you. I meet up with the friends I had at school and the conversations can often become filled with tales of our games, what happened, and what we did wrong almost as if we were really there and experienced the adventures ourselves.

So while I've been trying to work on WILD (and I think the system is completely fathomed now, and the back-story is coming together nicely - and is so epic it could lead to some form of fiction...), trying to concentrate on things like that can be hard. But all this reflection and nostalgia has inspired me to chronicle my life, seen through the eyes of a gamer.

Gaming has been a big part of my life. It formed my circle of friends at school, friends I've known and kept in touch with for over thirty years. It got me my first job (normal job that is, working for the County Council), it's sort of how I met my wife, and gaming was a hobby that became a dream job writing them.

I'm calling these posts "Roll Your Own Life" - it comes from playing AD&D a lot as a kid/teen, and our DMs (whether this was Pete, Milo or Bragi - names that will make sense in future posts*) had a tendency of shouting "Roll Your Own Death" and throwing a D20 at us when it was Saving Throw time. Just seemed to make sense to call these posts "Roll Your Own Life" - almost like those choose your own adventure books...

[*I've since been informed that "Roll Your Own Death" came from Bragi... Pete had the tendency of throwing a very large eraser at us when our hitpoints were running out, meaning it was nearing time to roll a new character!]

Some Assembly Required

Been a hectic couple of weeks. By now, you'll probably not only have seen my review of Avengers Assemble that was kindly hosted by those cool guys at Forces of Geek, but by now you've probably seen the movie (if you haven't yet, don't worry, my review isn't too spoilery at all - but the video I'm going to embed below is...). However, there's a tale to tell regarding the Avengers...

It was a strange sequence of events that came about thanks to my blogging for the UK SyFy Channel website. I'd done a series of features and reviews for their site, and due to this I was invited by the incredibly cool press company behind The Avengers movie to go to a screening of the film and to attend the UK Press Conference. However, the SyFy Channel's site hasn't been working with the bloggers for a while, so I called upon those excellent dudes at Forces of Geek and asked if they'd like me to review the film for them. Thankfully, the US has to wait an extra week before the Avengers opens there, so a review from a British reviewer is a particularly early scoop for them, and they said yes.

As I mentioned, I did the review, but the Press Conference? Now that was a surreal experience. I'd never really gone into the posher areas of London before, let alone Claridges Hotel, possibly one of the poshest and fanciest of five star hotels in the capital. I'd arrived early, so I lurked around outside while Rolls Royces dropped off and picked up people in suits, wondering if I really belonged here... Inside, the Marvel publicity department had booked the Ballroom, and decked the place out with the huge Avengers display as a backdrop.

Now comes the couple of downsides - one, I couldn't film or take photos at the event once it had started. Professional photographers were there to take pics and the publicity department would release them to the reviewers later. The other downside is that I couldn't audio record the event as my phone had died the previous night. Typically, I'd turned it off for the advance screening of the movie, and it just refused to come back on. On a particularly major night when friends and family needed to contact me as well...

That being said, I took a couple of photos before it started, mostly of the cool backdrop and table they'd set up for the stars. One of the advantages of getting in early? - Sitting on the 3rd row, just a matter of feet away from the stars of the movie.

I also took a pic of me there, just to prove I'd gone.

Edith Bowman, Radio 1 presenter, was in charge of the proceedings and came out first, letting us "press" know the rules of the conference. Then came the stars. I won't go into detail about what was said at the conference, as the whole thing can be seen on the Youtube video (produced by Digital Spy) embedded below - WARNING: THERE ARE MAJOR SPOILERS IN THIS VIDEO)



[As a side note, at 0:22sec there's a camera pan to view the answer to the first question, and the camera whizzes over to the right. There's a tall guy in a white shirt on the second row, I'm sat one row back and off screen to the right. Just out of shot. Don't worry, spoilers start about 15mins in...]

Very strange being in the same room as these people. They're all horribly attractive. Robert Downey Jr is just Tony Stark. As you can see in the video, he's just Tony Stark all the time. Scarlett Johannson is rather purdy, and Jeremy Renner was very jetlagged. Cobie Smulders (who plays Maria Hill in Avengers) is gorgeous in person... you can see why these people are actors, and why they didn't cast uggo the ugly as I'm known in some circles.

Anyway, that's about it for the conference. It was very cool. Didn't last too long, but being about 15ft away from these people was possibly the ultimate end to the trip to London to see the excellent movie. (Seriously, go see the movie, read my review!)

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On a more serious note, the blog posts here may be less frequent over the coming weeks for a couple of reasons. 1) Blogger is no longer supported by my ancient Mac. It's just a mass of crap on screen and I can't actually make new posts or format them in any way, and 2) had a bit of a family crisis which obviously takes priority. I'll post here as and when I can...

Until then, stay multi-classy.

The Gift of the Gaming

It's been a little while again since my last post, but it's been a busy few weeks. This last week saw not only my birthday, but also my wife's birthday and our wedding anniversary. Gifts were given, and my wife being the complete star that she is, knew exactly the sort of thing I like... GAMES!

We took a trip into London, and visited three suppliers of RPGs in one day! Besides the game section of Forbidden Planet, we checked out a couple of the biggest FLGSs in the capital. First on the agenda was Leisure Games. Resisting the urge to purchase the rather epic Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition, I gained the rather cool Cold City RPG.

Haven't had chance to read it yet, but I've heard great things about both Cold City and Hot War. Though typically, I didn't realise it was a partner publication with Cubicle 7 until after I left the store. Looking forward to reading it!

While at Leisure Games, the wife managed to find a very cool set of blank dice. Chessex make this rather cool little set which is essential to the design work I've been pondering for WILD.


I'd been thinking about incorporating some form of "Wild Die" to add a bit of a "critical" element to the dice rolls in the game. I was initially thinking of something odd, so I ordered some of the more bizarre dice that don't usually get used in RPGs (D14's, D16's, D24's), and even looked into getting some custom made irregular dice (snub cubes, that sort of thing), but cost is always an element. So I started thinking about using D12's, with 2 or 3 sides coloured differently. May not even make it into the game, but it's something I'm playing with at the moment.

Next stop was the very cool store Orc's Nest, another FLGS, only with two floors of goodies squirreled away in there. First time I'd ever been in there, and they really do have a lot of cool stuff.

On top of Forbidden Planet, it was good to see all three of the big RPG suppliers in London all stocking the Doctor Who RPG, and it was even cooler to see that Orc's Nest had Conspiracy X 2.0.


In addition to Cold City, the wife bought me the excellent Mouse Guard RPG. We've been fans of Mouse Guard for a while, but I'd never checked out the RPG before. Based on The Burning Wheel RPG, there are some really nice elements to the game play in there - seasonal and environmental factors, the Nature of a Mouse and how "mousey" or "human" you are, and the use of Traits. Really good read. And the added bonus is that it was signed by the creator of Mouse Guard himself! Bonus!! And such a nice little hardback format too - square and compact. The sort of proportions I was thinking for WILD...

Final cool purchase of the week was a complete surprise. The eagerly awaited Marvel Heroic Roleplaying core rulebook. I'd bought the PDF the moment it came out, but I knew there was going to be a delay getting the "in print" version over here in the UK due to licensing, but it appeared! Excellent! Possibly would have preferred there to be a hardcover, but that's just me. My computer is so old it struggled a bit with the PDF so now I can really explore its intricacies and see what all the discussion has been about.

That's given me plenty to read for the time being - I think a hardcopy of Leverage RPG is going to be the next purchase, as the PDF I bought is so slow on the ancient computer, but in the meantime there was a particularly excellent delivery from Eden Studios this week - the Kickstarter copies of Conspiracy X 2.0: The Extraterrestrials Sourcebook arrived, along with my author copies, and the T-shirts.

For those of you who didn't Kickstart Conspiracy X, the Extraterrestrials Sourcebook is hitting distributors this week in the US and Europe, so please badger your local FLGS to get it in. And reassure them that the Conspiracy X 2.0 Core Rulebook is still in print to complement it. *hint, hint*

The Irony is not lost on me...

How typical is it that I'm supposed to be writing about Dreaming, and the worlds of Dreaming, and I can't sleep? Bloody typical. So instead, I'll sit up at 1am, try to fight off this head cold that I've probably gained from my day job (being the hive of public germs that it is), and sit with the cat upon me, writing my latest thoughts and updates.

WILD is progressing, albeit slowly. Not wanting to give too much away, I've made a radical deletion of a lot of the rules used in Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space and it is going a little more interpretational and freeform. It'll suit the game more than being too fixed in the heavy rules.

I've also decided to try to incorporate some random inspiration and interpretation story elements that'll give the GM plenty to draw upon when ideas are drying up, but also to add that weird random element that dreams sometimes have - giving the potential of the whole "Oh, I didn't realise my front door was connected to my old school classroom," effect. Trust me, it'll make sense in the end.

My poor unsuspecting test subjects (AKA, playtesters) have just about generated characters. Most have gone for older characters, which is a surprise, and the latest to be created was assisted along with the new Trait creation rules, for the whole new Traits set. It may be a little while until I'm confident enough to GM the game, I'll need to bash the test scenario into shape first...

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Anyway, while I wrote today I watched another inspirational film to add to the list. This time, Parasomnia. A low budget horror movie from 2008 that was created and directed by William Malone, the chap who did the excellent Dark Castle remake of "House on Haunted Hill". Lacking studio backing, this really was a labour of love, with just enough budget to lure Jeffrey Coombs in to help.

The tale follows the story of a young girl, Laura Baxter, who's a parasomniac - meaning she sleeps most of her life, waking only for a fraction of the day and can fall asleep with very little warning. She's being haunted in her dreams by a crazy, hypnotising serial killer, Byron Volpe, in an adjacent room in a psych ward. So, when Danny falls for the sleeping beauty and steals her away from the ward, the serial killer attempts to recapture her, both in the waking world, and in the dream realms.

It's not bad, it feels like a straight to DVD movie, and it tackles some ideas that have inspired stuff for the game, but it's not sure if it wants to be A Nightmare on Elm Street or something different.

Well, the cat has just gouged chunks out of my legs, so I shall go to bed (after applying antiseptic) and hope for inspirational dreams.

Which reminds me - if anyone wants to suggest movies, TV series, books or even music about Dreams, that may inspire or help with the writing of WILD, please let me know in the comments!

Pleasant dreams...

Podcasting and Probabilities

It's been a little while since I've talked about gaming, my last post being mostly about a dream-like movie. Not a whole lot has happened with the game, but I did have a bit of a moment of clarity and I may (emphasis on MAY) have focused on a system. Nothing major, it's just the core mechanic that I want to get down - there are loads of permutations, and bizarreness to build around it.

If you imagine that the basic mechanic of Doctor Who is Stat+Skill+2D6=beat a difficulty, it's how that mechanic is implemented that makes the difference to the feel of the game. But without a core mechanic, it's hard to write the bits that go around it.

Sitting and cashing up at the day-job, the realisation came to me, and I had to stop and write it down on a scrap of paper. Then the next stop was (a) typing it all up so my notes made sense, (b) sounding it out to the genius gamers that I've been brainstorming with to get their feedback and (c) work out some probabilities to see if it's fair and works.


We'll see. It may all change and go a different route. When not thinking about the core mechanic, we had an excellent discussion about how the game can be used. And I have to admit, some ideas that came out of that surprised even me! I thought I'd worked out the many possibilities of WILD, but the scope is even more immense and bizarre than I thought.

I'll post more as and when it happens.

Meanwhile, I'm on the interwebs a bit more - I recently did a podcast with the cool guys at CarnageCast - (You can download and listen to it HERE). The podcast is a great chat about my work on Conspiracy X 2.0 and the game's recent revival thanks to Kickstarter. Give it a listen, hopefully I won't say "er" or "erm" too much during it.

Until next post! Sweet dreams!

The Nobody that Nobody has seen...

Before I start ranting about how amazing the film Mr. Nobody is, I should make something clear first - I had no idea what this film was like before I watched it. Okay, I confess, the wife and I are big fans of Thirty Seconds to Mars, and my wife had become a little obsessed with cool frontman Jared Leto, picking up some of his lesser known films. Sure, everyone's seen Fight Club and Requiem for a Dream, but we'd heard he'd made this odd reflective movie just before he started on his 300+ gig tour for Mars, and I thought I'd get it for wifey for Christmas/Yule last year.

With nothing much on TV a couple of nights ago, we popped the Blu-Ray into the player with very little expectations, only to witness the stunning, multi-layered, reality hopping genius that is one of the best films I've seen for a while.




Mr. Nobody is a hard film to describe. Initially, it's a story of the last mortal - Nemo Nobody. At the age of 118, Nemo is the last human whose life hasn't been prolonged with medical advancement to a state of immortality. In his final days, he's interviewed about his life and Nemo tells the tale...


As he tells the tale, we see his life play out - but here's where it gets wacky. Starting with the hardest decision of his young life, choosing when his parents split whether to go with his mother to the States, or to remain with his father, he decides that every decision shouldn't be an either/or - it should be both. Why choose one or the other, when you should be able to choose both paths?




From here we see Nemo's multiple existences - the life in the States with his mother, and the girl of his dreams, Anna, as well as his life in the UK with his wife Elise, or his life with his wife Jean. These multiple lives splinter even further - we see Nemo die in a car accident, and not. We see him live with his incredibly disturbed wife Elise, and watch her die shortly after marriage in an explosion. We see him bored and married to Jean, and wander off letting his fate be decided by the flip of a coin.

We even see another reality where Nemo doesn't exist, a strange dreamlike reality where huge blocks of ocean are being lowered into holes in the sea. We see Nemo have a scooter accident and end up in a coma, and we see another possible future where he travels in suspended animation to Mars.

Trying this all together is the narration of the ancient Nemo Nobody, and some rather cool "Open University"-esque bits with Jared Leto in his best tweed explaining the physics of the universe, the big bang, how time is perceived and the multiple realities caused by every decision.


Sometimes, when you're watching a film you're enjoying, you have that moment when you think "Man, this is absolutely genius". It's hard to pinpoint that moment in Mr. Nobody. The obvious moment would be the bit that hits home to us all - the 14 year old Nemo is sitting at the side of a lake, and Anna sits next to him. He tells her that he doesn't want to swim, as "swimming is for idiots", and she goes away despite his liking her. We see his life play out a little, and see that it was doomed to be spent far from Anna. He ponders, "why did I say that?" and we rewind to the same moment, where Nemo says that he can't swim, and Anna stays with him.

How many times have we pondered our decisions - just the smallest of things sometimes in our past, and wondered how life would have changed, how things would have been different, if we'd only said something different, done the right or better thing? It's some thing everyone can relate to.

Maybe the moment in the film that sold it for me was the awesome camera shot near the beginning of the film when we see Nemo wake, brush his teeth and walk off, but the camera shot watches the reflection then goes into the mirror and follows the reflected world, where words are reversed, people move backwards, or do they?


Or was it the moment when the helicopters are airlifting in blocks of the sea? I remember looking over to the wife and she looked at me with a knowing glance - knowing that at that very scene I was loving every minute of the film.

The film is a complex but rewarding watch - at 2 1/2 hours, it's not a short experience, but the great thing about it, is the explanation of the whole film. There's always that fear, getting near to the end of a mind-bending film like this, that you get the pay-off, and it sucks. I started to worry when the word "Architect" was used, but... I really had nothing to worry about.

I won't spoil it for you, but the reason behind the whole film works perfectly, and it all makes sense. It's a dream of a film, with dream-like images that will remain in your subconscious for years to come. I'm already eager to rewatch the film, and I hope you take the opportunity to give this unseen gem a try.

Up the Hill Backwards

...as Bowie would say. To say I've been throwing ideas around for a long time now for the game system for WILD would be putting things mildly. But just recently I've been doing things a bit differently and seeing if it works, and there are a few things to thank for that...

First up, strangely after discussing this with the lovely wife last week, the BBC posted a news feature (entitled "The Myth of the Eight Hour Sleep" which you can read here). Basically, it discusses the theory that our sleep patterns have been frelled by artificial lighting and other things, and the whole "I must get eight hours sleep" is a myth. What is revealed in Roger Ekirch's book "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past" is that in the past we went to bed was the sun set, slept for about four hours, then woke, did things for a couple of hours, then went back to sleep again for another four hours.

I was chatting with the wife about it as it sounded like some of the Transcendental Meditation she was looking into, how those two hours in the middle of the night can be some sort of "super clarity" time, when the brain is active, working well, but rested and uncluttered from the day.

I must admit, I had that moment last night, having gone to bed early due to stinking head-cold. I woke about 1am, with a clearer mind, and realising what I should be doing.

Which brings me to the second part. I'd been looking at some videos online about RPG design and stumbled upon John Wick's series of videos discussing just that. Something he said in the second or third one really struck home...

With his business partner, Jared Sorensen (who did the awesome "Lacuna - Part I: The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City"), he came up with the big Four Questions of RPG design:
1) What is your game about?
2) How does it go about doing that?
3) What behaviors does it reward?
and 4) Why is that fun?

Which got me thinking about how I was going about writing WILD. There I was thinking about a generic system that I could adapt for other things, when I should be thinking about what I want from this game.

And then the moment of revelation came. Sod the character stats, and which dice and whatnot... what I should be concentrating on is how Dreams work in the game. And bingo... it came to me. With the excellent advice from Derek (who was one of the rules brainstormers for Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space) I think it's just about sorted.

Now all I have to do sort out what the characters can do, what they want to do, how they'll get up to it, and what mechanics are needed to facilitate that.

It's just a bit different from how I normally do things. Rather than starting with Stats, dice mechanics, and then seeing how it all works, I really am walking up the hill backwards, doing things from the reason to have a rule, rather than the other way around. Hopefully, this will result in a better game system for the setting, something simple, easy to use, easy to remember without lots of referring to rulebooks - that's intuitive and makes sense for the game.

Anyway, enough chatting, I need to get some work done!!!

Until next time!

Sweet dreams.

Systems are doin' it for themselves...

Another sleepless night. I don't know what's going on. I'm supposed to be writing about dreaming, and I'm not sleeping enough to actually dream. I spend my time laid in bed (or woken by the cat's demands for food) pondering over game systems.

A couple of days ago, I'd just had this idea for the actual stats for the characters, woke fully thanks to the cat, and wrote them all down (hence my Twitter comment about having a breakthrough). The more I thought about it, however, the more I thought it wasn't the huge breakthrough I wanted, it was just an idea...

Last night was the same. I was drifting off to sleep after a day off from the day job spent reading game systems and watching some Youtube videos about RPG design, and I suddenly thought of a dice rolling system that hadn't been used before. I got up, scribbled it down, and went back to bed, thinking about it...

Then, five o'clock this morning, I woke again from a half-sleep, with another realisation about the system. What I'd written down was far too complicated and time consuming. And I'd thought of something new. What do I need Attributes for anyway? Why am I getting so bogged down in traditional gaming? No, it's not going to be super weird just for the heck of it, but the very nature of the subject is lending itself to a different type of game system. It could be the way to go, but it needs a bit more thought and pondering.

It's odd. I can see what I want the book to look like completed. I can see in my mind the layout, the design, the size, the colour and the shape. I can see the interesting gimmicks I want to add - like augmented reality codes. I can see how an iBook version of it would look, complete with animations and "going deeper" options in the text.

But can I nail down the system?

Soon. Hopefully. Even if it takes another couple of sleepless nights...

My Gaming Career (in Lego)

This morning, my lovely wife was about to depart to see family in London, and gave me a couple of Lego minifigs. Before I get too carried away with this post, I have to say that we're both big fans of Lego, spent Christmas putting together Hogwarts, collect the little minifigs, and I can't wait for the Avengers and Lord of the Rings sets due in the summer.

Anyway, the two minifigs were completely random, but they both represented parts of my roleplaying game writing. One was a grey alien, just like the ones in Conspiracy X, and the other was the tired guy, who can be posed so he's asleep or sleepwalking, very representative of the new game, WILD.

It got me thinking, I think we have Lego minifigs that represent 90% of my game writing career...

Challenge Accepted!

Okay, before the published stuff, I tried my hand at writing RPGs in the past - my first real attempt at getting published was writing (using a typewriter, and posting a manuscript to West End Games) a couple of adventures I concocted for their awesome Ghostbusters RPG. If it wasn't for the positive and encouraging letter I had back from WEG I wouldn't have tried to continue.


It wasn't until I started talking to the amazing guys at Eden that I actually saw my work in print.

While I submitted a supplement for All Flesh Must Be Eaten, my first published stuff was Project Editor on Terra Primate, the "Planet of the Apes" version of AFMBE. And look, there's a mini fig for it!! Terra Primate was a blast, and a surprise too - I was hired to take the settings and plug in the AFMBE rules, converting and adjusting for the new game, and it surprised me the scope of Ape related gaming! Cool stuff!








Terra Primate was cool, but working on Buffy The Vampire Slayer was awesome. I just playtested for the core set, but the future tech and a few additional weapons were mine in the Slayer's Handbook, as well as working as Assistant Editor on the Slayer's Handbook and Monster Smackdown. Real shame the game didn't continue. But, hey! Lego cheerleader! It's Buffy!










While doing that, I also helped with the edits on a few of the AFMBE supplements. Most of the work was on Zombie Smackdown and a Fistful of Zombies, but I also helped out on some of the other supplements, and did some rules help on Army of Darkness (groovy). I was surprised to see that Lego even did a zombie, but it's really cool. Need to buy a whole lot more of them though to get a horde!









After that came the badgering to Eden to convince them to let me change Conspiracy X into Unisystem. Thankfully, they agreed to let me do it, and I spent the next four years working on those books. The little grey alien Lego dude is great... fits in nicely with the Lego alien invasion range with the saucers, the abducted redneck, now all I need are some suited agent Lego minifigs! Conspiracy X 2.0 is having a new lease of life thanks to Kickstarter, and the supplements are starting to hit production right now!








And then, I have to cheat a little. Okay, so it's not Lego, but it's compatible with Lego. While Conspiracy X was on hiatus, I worked with Cubicle 7, pitching the concept of the Doctor Who roleplaying game to the BBC. Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space hit the shelves to critical acclaim in 2009, and the new 11th Doctor edition should be hitting the shelves in the very near future.








Which brings me up to date with my most recent project. At least, until Lego decide to do their Inception sets, with little Lego Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page minifigs, this little sleeping Lego minifig is the best representation of WILD I can imagine... so far. But then, you can dream of anything, so anything is possible in the game...

Which reminds me, I have some time off from the dayjob to get some writing done, and here I am writing about Lego! I'd best get back to writing the game.

Let's see... "It all began with a dream..."

Project Somnacin

All very interesting. Of course, the problem is, the moment a technology exists that allows you to go into other people's dreams, it's not just military training that it'll get used for, but the most probable uses - espionage and assassinations.

New Year's REVOLUTIONS

So 2012 is upon us. And we have just under 12 months before the end of the world (supposedly) - whether this is by zombie apocalypse, the sun going nova, or the return of the Saurian fleet from being trapped in the edge of a wormhole.

Not much to report, the wonders of a day-job in retail taking all of my time over the festive season. But things are getting back to normal, and I can get back to the writing.

WILD is progressing, I think I know the new system, just needs a few tweaks and maybe a brainstorm with some of my reliable game system guys.

Other projects are moving as well, but slowly. You never know!

Meanwhile, I've finished watching Warehouse 13 Season One (which was pretty darn groovy), and I watched the pilot for the already cancelled 17th Precinct - I can see why it never made it to series, while it was good, it just wasn't something you could accept easily. Harry Potter with its mix of a muggle world and a magical world was just about perfect, and 17th Precinct's take of everything being magical down to using plants as electrical conductors was a little too far to take. Had potential, but I think I'll just wait to see the Fables rip-off series that are currently screening in the States.

I just need to stop procrastinating, and start the whole darn thing!!!

This year could be big! It could be the last one, so if you're gonna go, go with a smile!