The Meme-Mandated, Semi-Regularly-Updated, Occasionally Coherent Thoughts of G.M. Skarka
It’s New Project Friday!
I normally try to stick to a single post at a time, but I just got today’s mail, and discovered my comp copies of Wyrd is Bond from Key20. I wrote one of the adventures, and the adventure hooks, and the game should be hitting store shelves next week, if they haven’t already.
“Mad shout-outs” to Jason and the Key20 crew.
The Secret Project Revealed
2004 is the year where Adamant Entertainment, previously a design house and then a PDF publisher, makes the leap to print production. Our first product, sticking firmly within our alternate-history niche, will be GLORIANA: DARK ELIZABETHAN FANTASY. We’re aiming for a fourth-quarter release, and we’re well on our way.
The game is based on and expanded from Cam Bank’s excellent Elizabethulhu, and presents all of the intrigue, adventure and drama of the Elizabethan world, precariously balanced between the forces of light and darkness. To quote some marketing text that will be appearing on the website (once it’s designed and up–probably another month):
The 16th century has drawn to a close.
Elizabeth is on the throne.
The Pope has called a Crusade to reconvert England.
The Spanish and the French plot invasions.
Cabals within the Court intrigue against the Crown and eachother.
The power of the Fae is waning.
The Court Astrologer is translating the Necronomicon…
and Darkness stalks the streets of London.
We’ve got some great people working on this one. Cam Banks and Clark Valentine brought the project to Adamant, where I joined the team along with David Melton (who worked with me on my old Age of Empire Victorian-age RPG). Lastly, we brought in the inestimable Phil Masters, whose material, originally written for a now-cancelled Elizabethan RPG, was a perfect fit.
This one is going to blow you away, folks. Swashbuckling, court intrigue, alchemy, Faerie magic, dramaturgy, and the forces of the Mythos…plus a helluva lot more. I’m excited as hell to be working on this, and I can’t wait to see it done.
In the meantime, check out Cam’s original Elizabethulhu materials via the link above, and also peruse this invaluable Compendium of Common Knowledge about life in Elizabethan England.
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In other news:
I got cast in the Royal Court of the Kansas City Renaissance Festival! Auditions were last week. I’ll be playing the King’s Herald, and Laura is one of the Queen’s Ladies in Waiting. This will be performance in front of the largest crowds I’ve ever worked for (KCRF draws a quarter-of-a-million people over its 7 weekends), and the first time that Laura and I will be acting together (usually we’re at the same site, but in different areas).
Also: I’m not sure whether I should be pissed or feel sorry for them–Allan from RPGnet contacted me today to inform me that they’re banning me from the forums, for (get this) making “blind insults”—what this means is that apparently if I make criticisms, even when not aimed at an individual, they’re choosing to interpret that as a violation of the “No Personal Attacks” rule. Of course, readers of this blog already know that I removed myself from RPGnet on Tuesday…so it’s pretty obvious that this is just an attempt to make it look like their “authority” had anything to do with that removal, which, obviously, it didn’t. Of course that worthless fat fuck Kuma will, I’m sure, correct people now, telling them that I was “banned” when they say that I left. Whatever. If I gave more of a shit, I’d actually try to do something about that…but I have to admit that it is simultaneously funny and sad that they’re bending so far into ridiculous interpretation of the rules to give them some reason to make an “official ruling.”
Ah well. Back to my currently-very-Elizabethan Life!
Life as a Meme
When you’ve been around a place, even a virtual one, for years, you tend to develop a reputation. Sometimes, this reputation can grow to eclipse you. That’s the situation I’m currently finding myself in on RPGnet. I’ve been kicking around those forums since they first came online, years ago. I’ll admit that my posting style can be abrasive, blunt and confrontational…at times. Certainly not 100% of the time, but the truth never makes for a good campfire story, and so the reputation grew. I’ll even admit that early on, I liked the reputation. The appreciation of the audience for the occasional skewering of some random jerk is, bluntly, addictive. So I would play to that audience, not realizing that I was obscuring myself in the process.
However, over the years, despite trying to leave that reputation behind, I have been unable to negate my own press. All it takes is one post in anger to reinforce the reputation, and no number of regular, non-inflammatory posts ever seems to make a dent in the image that is “GMS.” Never mind that on a per-post basis, there are plenty of others equally blunt and scathing, and some even more so. The meme is firmly in place. It’s referenced in discussions where I don’t even participate, and in a few cases, leaking onto entirely seperate sites where I’ve never visited. I’ve had people that I’ve never heard of telling publishers that they shouldn’t hire me because I would represent a Public Relations problem for them, because of my persona online.
It’s frightening…and also frustrating and exhausting.
So much so, in fact, that I think the only option that I have is to abandon “GMS”…to just walk away from RPGnet entirely. I’ve taken breaks from it before, but never tried to make it stick. It’s gotten to the point now where I feel like the public impression of “GMS” is seriously impeding me as Gareth.
I realize that this is a helluva lot of drama for a simple RPG-focused internet forum. It’s more than that to me, though. It’s a place where I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the past 8 years or so, and where my public persona has gotten to be a liabilty. I’m not going to post a melodramatic “farewell” thread over there. This post is melodramatic enough, but I felt that I owed people some amount of explanation, and this seemed as good a place as any.
I expect that “GMS” will continue to be a presence, even if I’m not there. Hopefully, though, after a while, the meme will die out, and people will find something else to talk about. In the meantime, I’ll be concentrating on writing, and less on my PR concerns.