Always playtesting

It never ends, does it?

I recently re-ran The Fallen, a short Fate Accelerated Edition investigation for a couple of friends. It’s set in modern-day London, with the characters working for Desk 17, the weird department of the Metropolitan police.

The Fallen scene 1: Victoria Station Burger King

As was inevitable, the PCs did something slightly different to previous runs. Something I hadn’t thought of.

As this is a scenario on my website for publication, I felt I needed to update it. 

And so, I have. (You can download it here.)

Similarly, I am preparing Perfect Organism, my ALIEN scenario, for Furnace. And I’ve already spotted a few changes I need to make—and that’s before it hits the table. Once I’ve run it, I have no doubt there will be more changes.

The same goes every time I run a freeform.

Always improving

In a sentiment credited to numerous people, scenarios are never finished—they are abandoned. And each time I pick them up to rerun them, I find something to improve.

It never ends.

Sketching and drawing

I used to enjoy sketching and drawing, but now I only do it because I must. I’m not sure when I stopped, but I used to sketch monsters and creatures and spaceships, and they’d occasionally be published in gaming fanzines.

I was never any good at figures or faces (or real stuff generally). Instead, they were mostly things to support my gaming habit—Cthulhoid monsters and the like.

Most are pen and ink. Here’s a selection:

A shoggoth, underwater.

A thing (a shoggoth?) in a fishbowl. I always liked this one.

A map—presumably for a game scenario, probably Call of Cthulhu. I have no recollection of Littleford—I can’t remember which game this was for. I wonder what was significant here - the empty house? The recluse? Or the only named property, Joseph Morris? I used to enjoy drawing maps.

A spaceship of some sort.

A Type-S Scout (from Traveller) menaced by a giant space jellyfish. Look at all those dots! No wonder I'm short-sighted!

An alien—pen and ink, copied and then watercoloured.

Modern art

These days, my art is pretty much confined to items for Freeform Games. That means I end up drawings guns, or jewellery or other mundane items. While I find them a bit of a faff to do, I enjoy the process more than I think I will.

So this is the sort of thing I draw these days.

A lucky rabbit’s paw.

A book with a hidden compartment.

A sample case.

A teabag. I think that's the most mundane thing I've drawn.

A box of matches.

A pistol. I've drawn quite a few guns over the years.

Current writing projects

Here are my current projects

Vanished in Vegas

Vanished in Vegas is the next game from Freeform Games. It’s pretty much written, and Mo is happy with it. I’m now going through it and giving it an edit, tightening up the language and making sure it’s clear and easy to run for hosts.

It should be done in a couple of months—certainly by the end of the year.

A steampunk game

Another project for Freeform Games, I’m working on a private commission for a steampunk game for 30-40 people. I promised this by the end of October, and there may be more work after that.

Children of the Stars

Children of the Stars is the third episode in my ongoing first-contact series of freeforms (which has an overall title of The Fermi Solution, but I may change that).

I’ve been writing this over the summer, and I will run it in a couple of weeks. (I am preparing more posts on the writing process, so expect those to start soon.)

After that, I have two thoughts. The first is to write the next freeform, but I may also go back and see if I can turn The Roswell Incident (episode #1) into something for Freeform Games.

How I write freeforms: the book

I’ve been writing articles about writing freeforms longer for almost as long as I have been writing freeforms themselves. This article is the core of the book—the overall process I use for writing freeforms.

I’ve taken this and other articles and am picking the best and improving them.

Interestingly, there are sections I find that I haven’t written stuff on (such as the structure of a freeform).

This will not only serve as guidance for writing freeforms but also as something I can direct potential Freeform Games authors to. It will be nice to have something in one place.

I plan to publish this on Lulu when I get it done—probably in 2023 at my current rate of progress.

Tales of Terror website

Tales of Terror was my first ever website, hand-coded in 1993. It’s gone through a couple of iterations since then.

Over the years, I collected over three hundred tales, which for a few years were languishing on my hard drives.

I’ve since started uploading them to their new home. There are now over 200, with about 100 to upload before I’m done. At my present rate, I should be done in a couple of years.

Great Murder Mystery Games

www.great-murder-mystery-games.com is my murder mystery games website. It’s where I promote freeform-style murder mystery games—not only those from Freeform Games but other publishers as well.

The site feels fairly mature to me—there’s not much more content I feel I need to add. However, I spend a few minutes each week on site maintenance (tweaking pages, cutting text, clarifications) because I don’t want Google to think it’s a “dead” site.

Enough for now

I think that’s enough for now!

RPGaDay 22-31

Here are my answers to the final few questions for 2022’s RPGaDay in 2022.

22 - Who is your current character?

I’m currently playing Nyssa Jones, a GCHQ cybersecurity specialist in a game of Cthulhu Deep Green set in modern-day London. She also works for Artemis, an organisation seeking to save humanity from the darkness. Her handler is Mr Garland—whose name we picked because we had just finished a game of The Dee Sanction. Is it the same Mr Garland? We don’t know.

(And I say “currently playing” as that’s my only ongoing game at the moment—it’s been a slow summer for one reason or another.)

Cthulhu Deep Green is a kind of Delta Green for Cthulhu Dark. The system is a little more forgiving than Cthulhu Dark. Artemis is our equivalent of Delta Green.

23 - What situation are they currently in?

We’re investigating some attacks in East Hampstead, which has led us towards some disappearances and potentially even the Highgate Vampire from the 1970s. We found a mysterious old house that I found really creepy—I waited outside while my colleague bravely explored it. Whenever we think we are getting somewhere in the mystery, we have more questions. I’m loving it.

24 - When did you start playing this character?

November 2021. As we play weekly, that sounds like I should have played 20+ episodes by now. But thanks to the GM getting a new (and stressful) job, we’ve only played four times (I’ve run Fate of Cthulhu instead). 

We’re using a detailed Trello board, so it’s easy to pick up where we left off.

We’ll get back to it soon—I thought it might be this week, but we’re returning to Fate of Cthulhu instead.

25 - Where has the character been?

The game so far has been confined to London—we’ve not strayed further afield, and I don’t expect to, as London is one of the defining things about the game.

26 - Why does your character do what they do?

That’s a good question and one we haven’t explored. The meta reason is that she does the things she does because we’re playing Cthulhu Deep Green. I guess I should think about her motivations for doing this (but I love this kind of game, so I don’t need strong character motivations to enthuse me).

27 - How has the character changed?

It’s a bit early for that. And to be honest, I don’t expect we’ll play long enough for any character development—apart from the usual mental trauma characters get from a Cthulhu game.

28 - Roll 1d8+1, tag that many friends with your favourite RPG cover art.

I am generally underwhelmed by RPG cover art and don’t like most of it. I think the best-looking RPG is/was Traveller: I really liked the little black books for their understated elegance. That’s not really “cover art”, though, is it?

29 - Who would you like to see take part in #RPGaDAY?

I didn’t answer this one, but I saw one inspired answer that I really liked—the Queen!

30 - What should #RPGaDAY do for its 10th anniversary next year?

Realise that 31 questions is too many. These are starting to run out of steam—as are the answers.

I prefer fewer questions, more spaced out. 

31 - When did you first take part in #RPGaDAY?

This is the first year (although I participated in Dr Mitch’s 12 days of RPG back in December 2017). August is normally a bad month for me—we’re usually away for the first week in August, and then it feels like hard work to catch up.

This year, I caught covid and had time to sit at my laptop. So here we are.

Will I do it again next year? Maybe, maybe not. 31 questions is a lot, and I feel the quality of both the questions and answers dropped towards the end.