OK…this is just friggin’ creepy. Even for California.
Other than that…not much going on right now. Work is proceeding, as always, and I’m still prepping for NaNoWriMo. Design work is still apace on Apollyon Noir, and in gaming news, I’m still running my bi-weekly Buffy game, and now I’m getting ready to kick off a play-by-IM RPG of Doctor Who with a like-minded friend–a prospect that I’m very jazzed about.
For some reason, Autumn always puts me in a mood for Who. Not sure why, really…but it spills over into other bits of Anglophiliac Phantasmagoria: Victorian Fantasy, Sherlock Holmes…hell, in recent years, even Harry Potter. There is something about the crispness of the air and the smell of dry leaves and chimney smoke that makes me think of plummy accents and baroque science-fantasy. Gawrd luv ye.
I’ve been dying to do a new version of a Doctor Who RPG…I’ve even gotten my foot in the door with BBC Consumer Products (licensing division)…but I have to recognize that even if I did pony up the licensing fee (which would be no small feat, because I’m sure the BBC doesn’t recognize the concept of ‘small press’), I haven’t got the time or the energy to devote to running yet another RPG company. Still, it might be worth a shot to simply put together a proposal. Couldn’t hurt, after all.
Or hell, maybe I just do one as a fan, not as a commercial venture. Put it up on a website and let folks have at it. That might be the way to go, when all is said and done. Just a labor of love. Might be fun, as well. Something to think about.
This past weekend, I attended the wedding of Aaron Rosenberg and Jen Purcell of Clockworks Games. Aaron is a long-time friend, and one of the guys who I got into the industry with, back in the days of Epitaph Studios. Even more amusing is the fact that I was there when the Bride and Groom first met, and my fiancee, Laura, was actually the Groom’s roomate and a friend of the Bride, who engineered their first date.
Aaron and Jen produced a mock-up “Playbill” as a wedding program, and Laura and I were pleased to see that we were mentioned in the backstory. The rabbi officiating at the service was a friend of theirs, and a gamer, so during his advice to the couple, he put it in gaming terms, which was hilarious: life as a diceless LARP, and to which they were now adding the “marriage” supplement, which introduced new skills (like compromise), new character types (husbands, wives, and families…which are groups made up of 1d4+1 characters), etc. About half the guests “got it”, leaving the elderly aunts, uncles, etc. looking around confused at the chuckles going off in the crowd around them.
A beautiful ceremony (and my first attendance at a Jewish wedding, so fascinating for me as well), and a remarkably cheese-factor-free reception. Not once did the DJ play “The Chicken Dance”, so that was a plus.
Of course, Laura and I now have to start planning our wedding.
No pressure.