Whatcha Been Up To?

I've been up to no good and proud to say so. Best news is I haven't been caught.

OK - the reality is that I've been up to quite a bit on the game front, but not made the time to sit down & write about it. Went to the first Endgame MiniCon of '08 a couple of weeks ago and ended up having dinner with fellow GM Brian Isikoff. He has a gaming podcast '2d6 In A Random Direction' with Endgame co-owner Chris Hanrahan. Cool stuff. We talked about blogging a bit. A couple of days after the MiniCon, Chris sends out a note that he's back on his blog. A few days after that, my archaeologist & gamer friend Matt Armstrong http://www.anthroslug.blogspot.com/ e-mailed his fellow gamers to let us know that he'd re-started his blog. Sooooo, I'm back on mine.

What's been happening since June of '07? The San Francisco game group has been going strong. Almost everyone in the group has run something. Without exception, they've been great games. We only missed one month and that was a last-minute break-down. I've run Paranoia, Unknown Armies and my own Blood Brothers style game using BRP (Chaosium) rules. B-Movie Horror mayhem with influences from the Grindhouse films. I'll run it as a single 8 hour 2-part session at KublaCon '08. Anyway, it's a kick-ass group and I'm glad it's come together.

At the home game, I concluded Feng Shui, then ran InSpectres for awhile and moved on to Serenity using BRP rules. Chaosium is supposed to publish BRP as a stand-alone system and I keep hoping it will come out. Still waiting guys...since October guys... Anyway, the Serenity game just wrapped. We called it Metamorphosis as we were using BRP (though I did buy the Serenity RPG for ref material). The captain named the ship Metamorphosis and we went with it. The game started well, but drug on and got a bit out of control. Gonna have to do some damage control, have a chat with someone. It was fun to create character sheets from scratch and start from the basics adapting BRP. Gotta say I was actually glad to be done with it. Unlikely I'll go back to it, but ya never know. At least 1/3 of the players expressed some dislike for the game - something that's never happened to me before. Others had a really great time! Go figure.

So I'm taking a break from GM'ing the weekly group. More time to get to my writing projects - like this blog. I also need time to prep my games for KublaCon. It's still months away, but I want to be completely ready beforehand as I'm running 4 games, most of which run 8 hours and don't start until 8PM (don't get me started on that - maybe later).

I haven't been doing anything on the screenwriting front. OK, not quite true. I went to the screenwriting Expo in Oct 2007. Great event as always and I came back deciding to stay in touch with people and work on making my own horror film. Have an idea for a re-write of one of my scripts and an original zombie idea. Exchanged e-mails with several people for a time and then faded, as usual. Got people excited about the project and then pfffff, I couldn't maintain. All I've really managed to do is put games together and attend several good games. Can't read a novel, can't get much writing done, haven't made it to the movies, have had the same Netflix selection since December. I did get most of the interior of my house painted. I also got a ton done at my dayjob - even got a raise. Also got hooked on Pandora online radio. Soooo coooool...

Actually went to DunDraCon this year. Didn't get it together to actually run. Went for Sat-Sun. Was in 4 games. 2 rocked. 2 bit. Took fellow gamer/friend James. His 1st convention. Now he's talking about going to Kubla!!! Good lessons from the one's that blew. Got to play Dunwich Horror boardgame. I now own 2 new boardgames - Redneck Life & Zombies!!!. Have been able to play them both with the weekly group as the Metamorphosis game failed to wrap. Big time fun with both. Anyway, I got to hang with the Chaosium folks and talk about products with them - like BRP...

Most recently there's been the EndGame MiniCon. I ran InSpectres in the 10AM slot with only 3 people. The 4th person didn't show. Still, we had a great time and one of the players bought a copy of the game. Cool!! He'd been playing Prime Time Adventures and wasn't having as good of a time. Was supposed to run BRP Horror for the second session, but player flakage caused cancellation. Got into Brian Isikoff's game instead. Good to meet and hang with Brian, who also runs Paranoia. Also got to try out the Spirit of the Century system. Very cool system. Next post I'll discuss some elements of the 2 games I played in that I'll look to incorporate into other games.

Really wanted to get into the Don't Rest Your Head game in the last slot, but initially it was full. Then Brian Isikoff's girlfriend had to cancel and I got her slot. Thanks Jenna! (I think it's Jenna) Anyway, Ryan Macklin ran this most excellent game. I gotta get me a copy - maybe when I go up for GoCon #2. Meanwhile I've been trying to read the rules for Fear Itself. As with other Robin D Laws stuff, I love the essence, but have a difficult time with the writing. That plus I only have a few minutes at a time to read. Gotta find a block of 4 hours to read the whole thing. It's now a freakin' jumble in my head.

That's it. Waaaaay to much for a new post, but I mostly just wanna more foward from here. If you've read this far, you must be very bored indeed. Thanks!