The Meme-Mandated, Semi-Regularly-Updated, Occasionally Coherent Thoughts of G.M. Skarka
Curiouser and Curiouser…
Apparently, alleged terrorist Sami Al-Arian was a guest of Bush advisor Karl Rove at the White House, even though he supposedly had been under investigation by the FBI for six years at that point. This is from Friday’s Washington Post (and yes, there is the occasional, annoying “please give your gender and zip” market-survey thing to go through before you read)—but why hasn’t the rest of the media picked this up and run with it?
Irons in the Fire
Alrighty…a few of you have requested a run-down on what projects I’ve got underway. So, without further ado…
Apollyon Noir: Being developed with Jason Roberts, for Thyrsus. My RPG rules are actually a secondary part of the larger project. I would go into more detail, but Roberts has rightly suggested that we sit on this while we lay out the ground work. We’re planning something new here, and we don’t want to get scooped before we’re ready to launch. Suffice to say that we’re presenting a product that will concentrate on delivery of an entire Intellectual Property, rather than just a game.
Untitled Pulp Project: This is one of the pdf projects that I’m developing for Adamant (hence the development of a new corporate site, etc.). I’m working on this one with Storn Cook, spinning out of a discussion that we had on RPGnet. We’ve just started on this one, so more detail will be forthcoming. The only thing that we do know right now is that it will be an “UberPulpWorld” setting, rather than generic, and will also be presented in serialized format (the rules will be split into 4 seperate short pdfs, rather than 1 large one).
Fearless Monster Hunters: Currently the working title for my classic monster-hunting game inspired by the classic Hammer Horror Movies (three links there, check ’em all out). No angst. No “monster within.” See monster? Hunt monster. DESTROY monster. Save generic 19th-century random-european village, complete with pultritudinous young thing.
Daikaiju Eiga (Giant Monster Movie): Card-based RPG/battle game of theKaiju genre. The players create their own monsters and supporting cast, and play out battles (along with subplots).
Terminal Identity: My take on a literary-cyberpunk roleplaying game. An attempt to bring the actual cyberpunk genre to gaming, instead of the near-future-black-ops-merc-team weapons-fetish wankfests that have given gamers a flawed definition of the field. This one is probably one of the most back-burnered of all of the projects, simply because I’ve learned of a good handful of indie designers are working on similar topics.
FVLMINATA D20: The D20 translation of Thyrsus Games’ alt-history Romans-with-guns RPG. Currently trying to figure out a way to make it more than just a simple plug-in: D&D in Rome.
A few other things in the works, too….including more work on a novel that I suppose I could best describe as Luther Arkwright meets Perdido Street Station meets Doctor Who meets the Virconium stories.
…and so it goes.
New Email, Old Politics
First of all, just a quick note to let people know that I’ve changed my email address. The old adamant.rpg.net one will be inactive from here on out.
Second–I caught the premiere of Real Time with Bill Maher last night on HBO. Good to see him back on the air—even better to see him in a live, uncensored format. My favorite part of last night’s show (aside from when Chris Rock responded to shrill conservative fembot Ann Coulter with an incredulous “What the hell? Are you fucking the President?”) was the section of the evening that Maher calls “New Rules”. The best one:
“New Rule: Enough whining about the French. At least they’re standing up to the Bush administration, which is more than can be said about the Democrats….”
Ouch. Too true.
Another good line last night, during the debate about why we’re going after Iraq, instead of Bin Laden: “It’s like I lost my keys in the garage, but I’ve decided to look for them in the living room, because the lighting is better in there.”
Hit upon a disturbing political theory of my own this morning: it’s more than a bit paranoid, but perhaps even more frighteningly, makes some degree of sense. What if the Bush administration’s North Korea policy is driven by a desire to convince the American people that the idea of a “missle defense shield” is necessary? Think about it–we sit back and largely do nothing, until such time as it becomes conclusive that North Korea has nuclear weapons, and has missles that can reach the US (Right now, we’ve sure of the latter, but only suspect the former…they have the ingredients, we’re not sure if they have the finished product). So, then, the Bush administration turns to Congress and the American people and says “see? Told ya we need a missle defense shield…” and Ratheon or Grumman or General Dynamics gets a big fat contract for a multi-billion dollar system that currently is viewed as a folly.
Wouldn’t surprise me.