I am fighting the urge to down tools and go because it’s Christmas soon. It doesn’t help that my eldest insisted I put up the tree about five days ago! We did this last year and went on holiday to Lanzarote the week before Christmas. So my diseased brain thinks we are doing that again this year! 🤣
Are you confused by this new festival of mine?
In December last year, Elaine’s (who died last August) bungalow had 42 pipe leaks during a cold snap while we were on holiday in Lanzarote. It suffered five days of flood damage. Insurance was fully paid out last week after a long, drawn-out process of drying the property and haggling over the details of the claim. The old boiler was a sticking point that dragged out the process by a month.
Today, our ace builders are fixing and improving it so we can finally sell it! I could barely sleep last night with the excitement.😀
And the best bit?
A skip! A skip! My kingdom for a skip! Now, after three years of skip envy, I have my own skip. All that useless crap that has been clogging up my house for the last five years can GET IN THE SKIP.
Although my Monkey the RPG is based upon the novel Journey to the West, I first came across it via the translated Japanese TV adaptation, which was shown on Thursday at 6 pm on BBC2 in the 80s, simply called Monkey. This YouTube video does a good job of exploring it.
So to celebrate Evie’s GCSE results (which she passed with flying colours), we went off to Blackpool Zoo, which is now my favourite local zoo and much much greener than when we last went there a good five or six years ago!
Well, my latest game, Lost Fools of Atlantis, has ended its run on Kickstarter after a numerically significant 23 days. Part ritual, part goof, while it’s not gone stellar money-wise (of all the Kickstarters I’ve run it’s funded the least), it’s been too much fun and restored my sense of humour in what I’m doing with D101 Games. I’ve got a supreme sense of achievement and a clear path – even in these very uncertain times.
As I sit here way past the Witching Hour, as is my want, considering occult matters, consciously dreaming and setting up magical events for fun and, err, more fun, using YouTube as an Oracle, it spat out three shorts by the late great Alan Watts, one of my favourite pathfinders and Not-Uncles.
I’ve been worried about getting old and painfully dwelling on my own mortality, so this was the first one to flow out…
I sat there all warm and fuzzy – having nothing to do with the fact it’s an extremely hot summer’s night – and then almost instinctively came up with a wobbler. “What about all the people, especially my nearest and dearest, who worry all the time?” So then this flowed out from autoplay.
And finally, to complete this classic trilogy of the answers to all life’s problems, a favourite of mine that I realised in my late twenties in the late 90s (but have doubted many times as I have repeated the same vicious cycle of becoming serious and static, and breaking down and learning to laugh again – well no more!).
So I’m going to go away now and sleep when I’m tired ๐
After what seems like an age of teasing people on my Twitter and D101 Games Facebook account, I’ve revealed my latest game, Lost Fools of Atlantis.
I’ve been working on it for the best part of a decade. At the start of this year, I set myself the date 23.05.23 to bring it to Kickstarter and let the general public decide whether it’s worth my time (and theirs) to develop and release. I’ve tried to chicken out and pull away many times, especially over the last couple of days which have been unbelievably stressful on the family front. Daniel Barker has been cheering me on as I send him rough drafts and has created a lovely logo for the Balance System (the narrative d20 system, which is sort of an evolution of Monkey) and this stunning piece of artwork for the book.
Lost Fools has deliberately been written as a Dark Comedy. It’s very satirical, almost sarcastic in places (punk RPG?), but without being sloppy. You can take the underlying system, the Balance System, and use it for other things as long you don’t mind there being any hit points, damage dice, movement rates, or other relics of roleplaying games’ wargaming orgins.
You can sign up to be notified when it goes live on Tuesday 23rd (its also the URL for when it goes live for 23 days until June 14th)
Fingers crossed that it funds because otherwise, I will burn/delete all copies, and we will never talk about it again.
After a winter, I’ll always remember as cold and wet today it’s nice enough to sit out. Just won’t go rolling about on the muddy lawn ๐
In other news, my latest rpg book, Reboot the Future, turned up today looking glorious. Big thanks to Paul Mitchener for letting me use his Liminal system, Dan Barker, for the two covers, and Jeshields for all the internal art.
Very taken with the latest Star Trek, Stanger Worlds. Not only is it new shiny Trek and visually striking, but the characters are sympathetic, presenting intelligent and positive solutions to their problems. Also, while every character has their issues, the rest of the characters are supportive and compassionate. Overall the characters face some pretty awful situations, but through skill and heart, they come through strong. 
It’s a big contrast to all the Sheridan Taylor stuff I’m currently obsessed with (Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown etc), where it’s all a race to the bottom 
Normally at this time of the year, I’d be crawling back under my covers after a brief post-Christmas burst of energy and optimism, followed by a crash due to cold weather and catching the back-to-work snots.
So much excitement….I’ll think I’ll have a calm down in a darkened room ๐
Ironically our real-life Christmas decorations, which we’ve had up since the last week of November due to us going away to Lanzarote for a week, have just gone back into the attic – because even the prime architect of Christmas year (the stylish and exuberant Evie) says it doesnt’ feel like Christmas any more. ๐
With four pages to fill for the Signed and Sent version of SimpleQuest, I wrote a quick introductory adventure. My Demon of Self Doubt immediately told me it was crap and pointless. To which a more positive voice shouted back,
“SHUT UP! IT’S GOT A GOBLIN CALLED RINGO IN IT!!!” ๐