Thursday, January 28, 2010

My Gen Con 2010 Events

Here are the descriptions of my events:

Aqua Teen Hunger Force at the Mountains of Madness
Lightning eyes, meat morphing, a magic belt (with all the powers of 70's super-group, Foreigner) and... shake power? Can even these fantastic abilities save you when alien horrors stretch their non-Euclidean tentacles across Tripod City? Get a sneak peek at TAG's "Powers Out of this World" (POW!) super-hero role-playing system and have fun impersonating your favorite characters from the cartoon.

Beyond the Caves of Chaos
Adventurers from a variety of worlds and genres travel back in time to a certain Keep on the Borderlands in pursuit of ruthless temporal raiders from Qalidar who hope to unearth a terrible secret lost in the caves. (True20)

Crime Wave: Lightfoot Island
Get a sneak peek at TAG's "Powers Out of this World" (POW!) super-hero role-playing system in this insular extension of the multi-GM Crime Wave scenario.

And, nothing is confirmed yet on the schedule, but here's what I submitted:

RPG1009103
Crime Wave: Lightfoot Island
08/05 -- 10:00 AM 4 hrs

RPG1009102
Aqua Teen Hunger Force at the Mountains of Madness
08/05 -- 3:00 PM 4 hrs

RPG1009117
Beyond the Caves of Chaos
08/06 -- 11:00 AM 4 hrs

RPG1009123
Aqua Teen Hunger Force at the Mountains of Madness
08/06 -- 07:00 PM 4 hrs

RPG1009119
Aqua Teen Hunger Force at the Mountains of Madness
08/07 -- 09:00 AM 4 hrs

RPG1009120
Beyond the Caves of Chaos
08/07 -- 02:00 PM 4 hrs

RPG1009121
Beyond the Caves of Chaos
08/08 -- 12:00 AM 4 hrs

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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

ToMonk Gen Con Games

Mostly this is here so I'll be able to find it later. Still gotta submit mine.

Tom:
RPG1008528 Return to Cthulhu Mansion 08/04/2010 07:00:00 PM, 5hr
RPG1008494 Crime Wave 08/05/2010 09:00:00 AM, 4hr
RPG1008496 Cthulhu, Round Midnight 08/05/2010 10:00:00 PM, 3hr
RPG1008499 The Wrong Side of Pluto 08/06/2010 11:00:00 AM, 3hr
RPG1008503 The Wisdom Goddess's Quest 08/06/2010 02:00:00 PM, 3hr
RPG1008507 Oasis in the Oort 08/06/2010 07:00:00 PM, 3hr
RPG1008508 In the Midnight Hour 08/06/2010 10:00:00 PM, 3hr
RPG1008513 Trouble in the Water Front 08/07/2010 09:00:00 AM
RPG1008517 Wrestlers Versus Dracula 08/07/2010 02:00:00 PM, 3hr
RPG1008521 Over the Top 08/07/2010 12:00:00 AM, 3hr
RPG1008523 Fly Me To the Moon 08/08/2010 12:00:00 PM, 3hr

Monk:
RPG1008542, Crime Wave Eastside, 08/05/2010, 10am, 6 hrs
RPG1008530, The Ghost of Deadman's Curves, 08/07/2010, 1pm, 3 hrs
RPG1008524, Fanclub Fandango, 08/08/2010, 10am, 3 hrs
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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Editing Task Update

Well, I got a bit into my editing, but not as far as I hoped.  It's a longer story than I remembered, but it's fairly rewarding work because, as I said or at least implied, there is some great wordplay, some of which needs just a little bit of tuning.  (At least, it looks that way to me.  We'll see what the author thinks when I hand it back to him.)  Doesn't look like I'll get much done tonight because we're going out to watch some kind of sporting event in a bar.  I'll keep posting progress updates here.  On the work, I mean; not the sporting event.  I don't really think anyone cares, but it gives me a small motivational boost to commit to it in public.
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

2010 Busy-Ness

My list for this year is looking kind of daunting.  I haven't even managed to sort these, yet.
  • Edit Matt Franks' Freddy Tampa story for Tom's WHAP noir thing.  I can't even grouse about this being dumped on me, because I volunteered.  I saw gleams of coolness in this story that I was afraid another editor would smudge.  Maybe I won't do any better.  We'll see.
  • Finish Qalidar Old School, my conversion of Qalidar to the old style D&D variants, Peryton RPG, and Tunnels & Trolls.  I'm more than halfway done with this and originally stopped because I was hit with an overwhelming urge to write a T&T adventure (see a few steps down).  Then I had to prep my Christmas adventure for my trip to Arkansas.
  • Finish Peryton Basic PDF and get a Peryton RPG character sheet up for free on the DriveThru site.  I'm almost finished with this, if not completely.  I want to release it all simultaneously with Qalidar Old School, though, so it waits.
  • Gen Con business.  Lodging arrangements, registration, all that stuff.
  • Same deal for BASH Con in Toledo and a room for the Troll Hoot somewhere near Columbus.
  • Finish the short, untitled Tunnels & Trolls adventure that I started in the middle of something else I was supposed to be doing.
  • Finish the also-untitled werewolf adventure or another one for Swords & Wizardry (etc.) which, again, I abandoned for questionable reasons late in 2009.
  • Finish the book of True20 critters for Qalidar.
  • Write the Aqua Teen Hunger Force scenario for POW! that I'll be running at Gen Con this year.
  • Write the Qalidar/Keep on the Borderlands scenario for True20 that I'll be running at Gen Con this year.
  • Write an adventure for the T&T Halloween collection we're doing.
  • Find an editor for the Peryton Magazine/Newsletter/Bulletin/Whatever.  Must be cheap, brilliant, and willing to take abuse.
  • Cook up some small freebies and/or cheapies for Peryton RPG.
  • Someday maybe Isun (T&T) and Loar, which have been promised for, like, ever and may once again be put off.
  • Maybe do something with that Ezren story that I started back in... whenever. 2001, I think.
The most important one to get done is probably the Qalidar critters book, but I'm thinking maybe a low-hanging fruit approach might be the best way to get started.  The easiest stuff to pick off would be BASH Con, Freddy Tampa, Qalidar Old School, and Peryton Basic.  I ought to be able to get BASH Con and Freddy Tampa done tonight.

Hey, it's a start.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Interview at Mystic Visions

I don't think I've posted this here before, so here's me being interviewed by Eposic for their Mystic Visions blog:

http://eposic.net/blog/archives/178

Hopefully, we'll get to see that book pretty soon. In the meantime, here's a link to The Book of Exodi. I should warn you that, because my contribution constitutes a much smaller portion of its total word count, Exodi is necessarily inferior to the upcoming Out of Order, but it's still worth taking a look.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Fantastic Astronomy

I stumbled across a couple of articles today that really fired my sense of wonder.

As you read this article about early galaxies, think about what these people are doing.  Compare the number of years ago to the number of years after the Big Bang.  They're looking back at galaxies that existed before anything that even seems real to us existed, and they're telling us what those galaxies are made of.  Then they go on to talk about some of the many things we still don't know.  I'm reminded of some of the other early-universe cosmology stuff I've read, descriptions of an unbelievably alien reality.  It's thrilling stuff.

Earliest Known Galaxies Spied in Deep Hubble Picture
Anne Minard for National Geographic News, January 5, 2010

Compact, ultra-blue galaxies spied for the first time in the deep universe are the most distant—and therefore the youngest—galaxies anyone has ever seen, astronomers announced today...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100105-earliest-galaxies-hubble-deep-universe.html

On this next one, check out some of the anomalies they found.  My mind runs to wildly fantastic explanations, like maybe the "styrofoam" planet is a living thing with a complex cell structure circulating hot, light gasses like blood throughout its enormous body.  Somewhere out there, though, is the real answer, which I expect to be less rich in comic-booky fun, but just as interesting.  In any case, it's awesome that there are so many planets out there, and that so many other solar systems are so different from our own.

Five New Planets Found; Hotter Than Molten Lava
Victoria Jaggard in Washington, D.C., National Geographic News, January 4, 2010

Five new planets have been found orbiting distant stars—the first confirmed new worlds from NASA's recently launched Kepler space telescope mission, astronomers announced today...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100104-new-planets-kepler-nasa.html

The universe is fantastic.  It burns my brain trying to put even the watered-down details into one imaginary construct but, I have to say, I love the runner's high that the effort brings.

Funny Things Overheard at the Office #2

"I have a mission for you. When you get out to Arizona, take [name deleted] into the desert and leave him."