What I'm doing (September)

If you’d like to support what I do, I have a Patreon now! You can ask me questions and suggest what I should write about next.

I'll also put drafts of Cosmic Dark scenarios up shortly. And there’s a post there now about weird scenario ideas, “Is it brilliant or is it crap?”. I'd love your support if you can.

What I’m working on

I’m at the dangerous stage of editing Cosmic Dark! I know the text so well that it’s tempting to rush. Instead, I’m taking it slowly, making sure I explain everything well.

It’s looking good. Right now, I’m editing the main rules and the scenario-creation instructions. The rules are based on Cthulhu Dark, but with new things to keep them interesting, and the scenario creation is all new.

I'm also working with artists and cartographers. Earlier this week, I had a great conversation with Lazarus on about three spaceship maps: the Exchange, the Transparency and the Invisible Hand.

It's nearly time to open Cosmic Dark for playtest. I'll share a draft of Extraction, the introductory scenario, on my Patreon shortly.

Here’s a discount

If you like history, have a look at A Shedload of Countess Dillymore, my collection of weird larps exploring queer history in the twentieth century.

You'll find games about wartime letters, lesbian clubs and public toilets. I think Disciplinary, in which a committee decides whether to dismiss an employee, is one of the best things I've written.

You can find the games online for free, on the Golden Cobra website, or the link above gives you all of them for three dollars.

What I’ve been playing

We finished Deadlands Noir, playing the investigative scenario Moonshine Blues. I liked it!

It's a traditional system: you roll to succeed. That means that, when investigating, you can fail to discover something. That's anathema in indie games, but it works well here, because there's enough redundancy: even if you fail, there's always somewhere else to investigate, and another way of discovering the mystery.

I found I enjoyed actually figuring out what was happening! I also liked the rules, with exploding dice and “raises” (that is, if you roll high enough, you get additional advantages).

On my Playstation, I went back to Lonely Mountains: Downhill, a peaceful mountain biking game. It has an interesting issue with difficulty: the pleasure of the game is rolling through beautiful scenery, but as the game progresses, the courses and challenges get harder. It becomes about beating the course, rather than enjoying the ride. It’s still a beautiful game, though, with surprising depth.

What I’m reading

I’m dipping in and out of The Platform Edge, a collection of railway stories by the British Library. It's such a weird collection, looking back to a time when trains were modern, horrific and deadly.

And I'm indulging my love of romantic fiction, with Mhairi McFarlane’s Don't You Forget About Me. It’s easy to read but has such brilliant insights into human nature and doesn’t shy away from hard topics. It's a genre I could never write but I love reading.

I’ve just read a sample of David Connor’s Oh God, The Sun Goes, which seems surreal: the premise is that the sun has disappeared, replaced by a grey hole. So far, it reminds me of JG Ballard, and I love it.

What’s next

This month, I’ll keep editing Cosmic Dark. I’ll keep playtesting it too, running through a mini-campaign. And there’s a stream for Symphony Entertainment planned for the future.

If there are things you’d like me to write about, tell me! Even better, go to my Patreon and ask me questions there. See you next month.