I’m on a small break from writing right now as both the stories I’m working on have sort of come to a fizzled end while I try to work out a couple of plot snags that have cropped up. I’m going to set them aside for a day or six and let them lay fallow in the hopes that when I pick them up again I’ll see them with new eyes and will be able to take things farther than before. It has worked in the past, so I’m not too worried that I’ll never pick them up again type of thing, but I just have to keep myself in the habit of continuing to write stuff even if it isn’t part of what I’m working on.

To that end I’ve started to flesh out a new campaign for Gurps that I hope to eventually run at some point. I don’t know if I ever will run it, but I’m at the stage now that I’m just going to toy around and tinker with ideas and see how far things go. I’ve been toying around lately with a number of ideas revolving around the Infinite Worlds concept that has become the base setting in the fourth edition of Gurps but with a number of changes that would deviate enough from that setting to make them unique.

My original focus was on something similar to the TV show Sliders, but after thinking about it some, I realized that to really be a good campaign it would have to have a lot of detail, even if it wasn’t visible to the players, to be truly immersive and realistic. The more I thought about it, the more it drifted from a very cool campaign idea to something I’d love to do if I had the inclination, background material or the properly receptive audience.

My next idea was possibly running a pure Space campaign, but Space/Sci-Fi/Futuristic campaigns are another one of those genres where accuracy is imperative, and numbers and number crunching are next to godliness kind of thing. Or they would at least be in the framework of the campaign idea that I wanted to run, and right now it is a little more detail/effort than I wanted to concentrate on. Plus, in all honesty we already have a solid and good Space campaign (and GM) in our gaming group so why try to compete with something we’ve already done type of thing.

Finally I came to rest my fevered brain on a concept that was a nice generic amalgam of the previous two ideas but was still unique enough to be something new for us campaign-wise. It was an idea that would give me enough leeway to blur the lines of history and mythology if need be and also be something that didn’t have to be too technically accurate every step of the way. To top things off, the idea already had a movie, 8 seasons worth of tv episodes, and a spinoff series in the works for me to plagarise and draw plot ideas from…

And so… GURPS: Stargate was born.

So far I’ve decided that it’s going to be a retelling of the whole story from the beginning, but from a different perspective, and with different protagonists/antagonists. That way I don’t have to worry about the stuff like “what did/would Jack O’Neill do” or “but Apophis died in such and such episode…”. The players are the first ones going through the wormhole for the first time and they won’t end up on Abydos and it won’t be Ra or Apophis that they run into. There will still be System Lords, Goa’uld, Tok’ra and the Asgard and so on and so forth, but it’s all up in the air as to how they fit together

I really haven’t decided yet whether I’ll try to run the game as a 4th edition campaign or just stick with 3rd for now out of sake of ease. Once I start to firm up the campaign plot and background info I’ll work out the hard rules details and go from there.

After that I guess it’s time to see if anyone in the group wants to play kinda thing or even if they have time to do so.

Okay, so it’s been awhile since I did one of these stupid internet tests and posted it for the rest of you to see, so here one is… Enjoy.

So, who here (other than me) has tried to write an Epic Fantasy Novel, or even just thought about it at some point?

Well, get off your butts and read this before you get started… it will save you loads of time trying to think up something remotely original.

If for no other reason you can at least read it and discover Robert Jordan’s Sekrit Writing Skillz0rs.

Anyways, insomnia is a pain in the ass and I’m gonna try and get back to sleep.

Pax

Yarr Matey! Sunday be Talk Like A Pirate Day. Ye know the drill by now, ye scalawags.

Some of you may remember a week or two ago I mentioned something about writing again and how what I had written to date really had no definite form or purpose beyond me getting back into the groove of writing again. Sadly I have lapsed over the past little while and haven’t written a damn thing recently.

Luckily though, even though I haven’t been writing, my imagination has been grinding the gears non stop and surprisingly came up with a tangible story plotline that I can easily adapt to my “practice blather” that I haven’t touched in a few days.

The funny thing, to me at least, is that the story that I’ve stumbled apon in my head is now chronologically set many years prior to the original story that I’ve been trying to write now for years. It’s a “world” prequel of sorts, meaning that it’s set in the same world and things obey the same rules and have the same cosmology, but that none of the characters that I’ve familiarized myself with exist yet.

It’s kind of odd. For me the world is already all layed out in my head and, while I have only the barest sketches of things written down, few beyond me have read them and are familiar with it’s nuances. In my mind it’s perfectly logical for me to just take up another tale in a comfortable setting and run with it (and I intend to), but I find it a little worrisome that this new story itself will have to wait until the original story sees the light of day so as to introduce the reader to the world and to lay the groundwork of understanding type of thing.

I could always just write this new prequel as a stand alone event, but I feel that it would be lacking without the prior mythos of the world that would be established in the first story. Plus the original story doesn’t work (at least in my mind) as a sequel to this new story. One defines the other, but the reverse isn’t true.

Either way, I’m going to do a brief rewrite of my practice blather to pull it into line with the plot outline that I’ve stumbled upon and run with it from there.

Here’s hoping it all works out in the end.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my submarine lair. It’s long, hard and full of seamen!

*Long pause*

No? Nothing? Not even a titter? Wow, tough sub…

– Dr. Evil

And with that I bring you the goofy madness that is….

Evil Genius

It’s similar in style to Dungeon Keeper, where you’re the bad guy trying to kill the good guys who are invading your dungeon, but rather than it being set in fantasy medieval times, it is in fact set in the middle of a cheesy 60′s spy movie (a la Austin Powers or any of the Bond Movies).

I’ve just downloaded the demo and am off to kill some Good Guys.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s the case I can now say I have about 2 and a little under half a pictures worth of something. It’s nice to be in a habit of writing again. I haven’t being doing it daily yet, but we’re slowly moving in that direction. Yay me!

In an odd bit of web news that vaguely relates to this post’s title, I found this article about a camera that was blown up and it’s final images.

Other than the fact that I’ve become addicted to HBO’s Dead Like Me tv series, there isn’t much going on in my life at the moment. I’ve started job hunting… yet again and hopefully I’ll have something soon so as I crawl out from under the morass of bills and meager living that is my life currently.

I’ve also been bouncing a couple of ideas around in my head as premises for a new campaign, but I haven’t really finalized anything yet. Mainly because I want to see how the current fantasy game that I’m in goes and how stable the group is together before posing another idea to them. Plus, if we do decide to do something, then I’d actually have to work on the campaign and all that crap, and I’m much more capable of shirking it off and being a lazy sod (trust me, I’m good at this bit). Oh well, we’ll see how it goes.

I just realized that Doom 3 was released a little bit ago and I’m missing out on all that zombie/demon killing goodness. *sniff*.

That is all… I shall now go back to moping.

Yup, you guessed it. This is a brief, totally useless post.

I am going to attempt to blather on the blog with a little more regularity now. I can’t (or won’t) promise a daily update (because we all know my life isn’t THAT damn interesting) , but I’ll try and post every couple of days or so. At least that’s the plan thusfar.

Didn’t get any writing done today as I spent most of the afternoon/evening/night in bed feeling very cruddy. I still am feeling just as cruddy but I got up a few minutes ago to turn the computer off and figured I’d post quickly before crawling back into bed and hoping tomorrow will be better.

And so to bed.

I started writing again yesterday. I was surprised at how difficult it was at first but once I got into a rhythym of sorts it started to flow a whole lot easier. I think I only managed to get about a thousand words all total down on paper but it was nice and refreshing to actually just do it rather than listen to the gerbil wheels in my head spin endlessly. I really doubt I’ll keep what I wrote because looking on it now with a critical eye, you can definitely tell that I’m someone who hasn’t written anything in quite some time. The good thing about this is that tomorrow (later today or whenever) I’ll be that little bit more prepared to write and things will come easier…. or here’s hoping at least.

And with that I shall go and do whatever blog posters do whenever they’re not blathering away in their blogs.