Character Generation Library - CyberGeneration

Welp, about time I check this one off the list.

For those of you who don't know, there was a period of time where I had the line license for CyberGeneration. It really was the first RPG I ever got into. This was the game that got me into roleplaying, this was the game that after no one had touched it for years made me want to start making product for it. This was the game that I kind of burned out on pushing it for so many years, but I still love it oh so very much. I don't get to play a lot of RPGs so I haven't brought it to the table, but whenever I open the book I get all those old NPCs running around in my head shouting to get out. I also own two copies of the main book, but last time I checked I can do this by memory alone.

Anyway, for those of you who are like "What is this game?" CyberGeneration started out as a spin off expansion book to Cyberpunk 2020 and then got a second edition and became its own game. It used a streamlined version of the Interlock system, which was the system that R. Talsorian used for mostly everything from Mekton Z, to Cyberpunk, to CyberGen even used to have a fusion with Hero System at one point in time.

History lesson is over. Time for a character.

Step 1. Pick a yogang.

With all the expansions there were 28 different yogangs to pick from. I'm just going to grab one from the book, and since it seems rather topical I'm going to go with a Rad. They're the political activist kids who would organize and agitate for change. Since this is still Cyberpunk, the upper case C is important, they aren't above using psychological tactics to get what they want done.

Step 2 and 3. Provide Details and Description

Game asks next for Gender (it's Sex but this was 95 so let's update our language here and now), Age, Height, Weight, and a description.

Last few characters have been dudes, let's make a woman. She's 16 and is 5'8 and who cares about weight because again let's update this for the future.

Description is going to be a lot easier. She's been politically active forever, and has been fighting for democratic reform as long as she can remember. The setting in the world is that US is gone and replaced with the Incorporated States of America, and this character has been organizing grass roots movements to try to make small democratic reforms. Lately she's been fighting for the rights of Carbon Plague victims because she doesn't trust any of the propaganda coming from the government and the corporations because she's heard it all before.

She's Chumash, and was born and raised in Night City. She's got long hair, that she frequently braids, and is button fiend. If there's a button for an event, she's got it someone on her button coat. It's just a regular denim jacket, but the buttons are all over it. It's even helped her out in a fight a few times, and ended up stabbing her once or twice.

Step 4. Yogang stuff.

When you pick your yogang, you get some gear to start the game with.
1. Personal V-Term
2. Armored Duster (AR5) with 20 pockets inside
3. Tracker and 10 Tracer Pins
4. Light Handgun

Step 5. Stats

You get 50 points to put into your stats. There are nine of them. A lot of them look familiar, there's INT (Intelligence), REF (Reflexes), EMP (Empathy), LUCK. There are some ones that are very Cyberpunk. There's an ATT (attractiveness) stat (because it's cyberpunk, the how you look doing things matters in the game). A COOL (how well you keep it) stat, as well as a TECH stat for technical ability. There's a MOVE and a BODY (strength) stat as well.

Minimum is 2 maximum is 8 with 5 being the average because in Cyberpunk you max stat is 10 . I figure someone who is very brainy, and not afraid of physical stuff but isn't someone who wants to spend a lot of time with tech.

INT 8, TECH 2, BODY 6, REF 5, MOVE 3, EMP 8, COOL 7, LUCK 5, ATT 6

Not much of a runner either, but she doesn't try to be in places where she'll have to run.

Step 6. Your Wounds

Because she's got a BODY of 6 that means her HITS are 6 (basically HP, but it's more based around a streamlined version of the old Cyberpunk Interlock system).

Step 7. Skills

I get 40 points to put into my stats. There are 11 basic stats, and 1 yogang stat. Everything has to have at least 1 point in it, and the maximum is 8. Having a 3 in a stat is considered average.

The list is a condensed list, and it's something that I've always enjoyed. I like it when there are a lot of things that cover a wide range of possibilities. List of skills are:

Streetfighting - Punching, Kicking, Shooting
Jockstuff - Running, Jumping, Climbing up a tree (hiding the makeup up there)
Blend - Making yourself vanish in normal looking situations
Streetsmarts - How well do you know the people on the street, what to do, what not to do
Schoolin' - General Educaiton Skill
Little Angel - How well you can make adults discount you for being teens
Thiefstuff - B&E, thieving stuff, that kind of thing
Get A Clue - General notice and awareness
GenSpeak - The ability to communicate in slang or code
Fearless Leader - How well you can get people to follow you
GoGo - Driving, riding, moving things with wheels really.

The yogang skill that a Rad has is called Organize, which is your ability to get people out on the street doing thing. It's also your ability to prey upon people's weaknesses to get them to do what you want.

Seriously, the game is so different the older I get. When I was younger, I didn't see the sinister side of a lot of the yogangs but holy hell there's a lot you can do to play this dark.

Anyway, skills. Fighting isn't a priority, but not something to ignore. Not much for running and jumping, and for blending either. Which means that I think she's not one for pretending to be something she's not.With that in mind, this is what I got:

Streetfighting 3, Jockstuff 2, Blend 1, Streetsmarts 5, Schoolin' 4, Little Angel 1, Thiefstuff 3, Get A Clue 5, GenSpeak 3, Fearless Leader 3, GoGo 5, Organize 5

That's 40 points on the button. Again, I used to do this a fair bit.

8. Your Mall Stuff
I'm not going to buy anything, because one of the cool thing this game does is that it plays the first session as character creation. It gets a bunch of characters from disparate walks of live and gives you a stressful situation for them to deal with. Doesn't even ask you to do all these stats first. I starts with "Who are you, okay run for it."

9. CyberGen Type
This is also something that comes from the game. I rarely had people start evovled, but it happened fairly quickly. To be honest, it was a great way to get players who might not have been into the game into the game a lot more because now they had cool powers that made them hunted by the government.

10. Your Tag
Time to name the character. Random.org a letter and it was N so I'm going with Nichole "Pins" Lloyd because that was also randomly generated with a name generator. Pins is what I'm keeping though because I like it.

Below is the character sheet, int two parts because you can't fill the PDF, and editing it to type in it is also ... prohibited ... for some ... reason.

I gots Interviewed! - RPGamer.com

One of the fun things that happened was an interview with Scott Wachter at Fan Expo 2011. We talk about the pun that is my company name, CyberGeneration, Geasa and Critical!: Go Westerly and some future projects!

You can listen to it here!

CyberGeneration Announcement!

Well, since Kathryn over at the CyberGen Webcomic, CyberGen2027 made a bit of an announcement I guess I should make it official here and on the website.

Firestorm Ink has officially given up the CyberGen License.

It's been a really long and hard six years working on that line, and trying to come up with the products that we thought would do well with it. We've met with mixed success, and with the feedback we're getting with Geasa and Critical!: Go Westerly, we felt that it was for the best that we focus on our products and games, since that's where the future lies for us.

It's been a great ride, with a lot of great memories but now that time has passed. I'd like to thank anyone and everyone who showed up to the events, bought our CyberGeneration stuff and were a great support. We'll still be selling the supplements that we created, but we won't be making any more.

Right now Shapeshifter Studios, the same people who do CyberGen2027, are in negotiation for the rights to make the RPG. We wish them well, and will help support them if they do get the rights, so we're not completely going to keep our fingers out of that pie. We're just not going to be responsible for baking it anymore.

Report - Gen Con 2011 - The Turning Point

Normally I find that I have a lot more fun at Origins than I do at Gen Con. It just seems to me that the atmosphere was far more relaxed than anything at Origins while at Gen Con it's nothing but pushing as fast as you can all the time.

This year was the Turning Point. This year I walked in and felt like I was going to have a lot more fun this year than the I've ever had. We had arrived in on Wednesday, because I come in with the Canadian Contingent for Catalyst (yay Alliteration), I had a day to just kind of acclimatize myself. No more rushing to get there and jumping right in, it was a far more pleasant experience. Maybe it was the better mindset that I was coming in with, there's an announcement that's coming forward that might have something to do with that, but it was just different, and better.

That being said what happened to me at Gen Con?

Games that I ran:
I had two games of Geasa go off and 1 game of Critical!: Go Westerly go off. That means that the one CyberGen game that supposed had 6 people, and in reality only had one, failed ... again. I'm sure that this is a sign that I'm only not slowly starting to understand here, I think I'll get it eventually.

Geasa Game 1
We ended up playing in the second century, with a Devil trying to be good, an Angel trying to understand humanity, the head of the Catholic Church and a Macedonian Spy looking to get out with his information.

A couple of great Fae moments. The Spy was trying to escape and instead had to stick around because of his Fae. He ended up just paying half of his travel costs when he was compelled to investigate a fire because it might have to do with his mission. Annoying, certainly and he railed about it a little bit.

The second bit was right at the end when the Angel, trying to negotiate between the Church and the Old Believers for peace ends up being compelled to blame the Old Believers that they had made up that someone had stolen their artifacts and riots in the streets ensued. Which is where we ended it because of time.

Geasa Game 2
The second game of Geasa didn't go as well, mainly because the group mostly didn't get it. When four fifth of the table sit there and wait for you to tell them what's going on it's hard to run a GMless game. They had an interesting dynamic between them, because they had come in as a group. You could tell who was their GM and how they were used to just kind of letting him go, and most certainly he could go and tell a great description and a wonderful narrative, but he just didn't seem to be able to let go. It got me thinking and will probably lead to a blog post on Geasa later on.

Anyway, they were a motley group of characters. We had a pirate trying to reform, we had a fisherman who lost his ship to taxes, a smuggler on the run from his former employer, a tavern wench wanting something more and a noble dandy looking to escape an arrange marriage. When I saw this I went, "Hey, this is the best start of a pirate crew ever" but I didn't say anything because I like to watch the stories develop but it kept stalling. Not what I had in mind, but the story in question. Eventually it culminated with their GM guy going, "I don't know where we're going! I don't know how to get there."

Now maybe I got lazy and didn't explain goals enough, because that's supposed to be what drives you. Maybe it was a case that I should have taken a far more proactive approach to what's going on. Maybe Geasa isn't for everyone and some people are going to have a hard time with it. Whatever the reason, I don't think my answer of "Well, we'll find out when we get there" satisfied him, but oh well.

Critical!: Go Westerly
The Game of Critical went off beautifully as well. Geoff and/or I will have to come up with a new scenario for the next con season, but we'll have a couple of months to pound that out. However, You All Meet in a Tavern ended up with some gems for lines.

Stelph: "Is this Human Seawater? Elven Seawater is far superior."
Angelique: "You just suck the fun out of every trap."
Barnabus: "There you go perpetuating stereotypes. 'Peaceful Protestors' and 'Blood-thirsty elves'"

I really can't wait to get this book out. We've commissioned the art, and now it's just the last edits and the getting of the book together.

The Stuff that Came Out and/or I Picked Up

I managed to pick up a copy of Bulldogs! and Unhallowed Metropolis Revised. I also got a copy of Blood Bowl Team Manager which is perhaps the best deck building game I have played (Yes it's a Deck Building Game, but it's not the only focus of the game). I picked up Escape from Aliens in Outer Space which looks pretty damned awesome but I want to wait until I have at least 6 people playing.

Smirk and Dagger ended up putting out an amazingly addictive Dice Game called Suttaku which I think everyone should go and pick up. It's got 12 beautifully created large dice for stacking and is one of those games that you can play quickly and end up playing 10 games before you feel any desire to stop, but then you pick up the dice and you just want to keep rolling.

What Else?
I ran into the awesome people that I always run into. I got to laugh, and have fun and enjoy myself and feel that Firestorm Ink is actually doing stuff, and possibly stuff that people want to see.

Now to finish up Bulldogs! and Unhallowed Metropolis ... and Eclipse Phase (which I should have done ages ago).

Which comes first, the Setting or the Rules

So I did a little bit of an unscientific poll on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. The question was, what should come first the Setting or the System.

Now, I should clarify this question as what should come first in the book. Would you rather read the Setting first or the System first. I got 17 People who said "Setting," 2 People who said "System" and 5 people who said, "Get it together asshole, find a way to merge the two."

My personal preference goes to Setting first rather than rules. It's one of the reasons why I like the Shadowrun books a lot. I like reading them because the Setting inspires me to figure out nasty, horrible things to do to the players while rules just tell me how it's possible to do nasty horrible things to the players. I tend to feel that I have a pretty good grasp of how, it's the what that needs to be inspired.

How does this apply to what I'm doing? Well I've got two projects currently on the go. The first is the next edition of CyberGeneration (which we're lovingly calling Evolution 3.0) and the other is a fantasy game I'm working on with Geoff Bottone of Slug Fest Games called Critical!: Go Westerly, which I might have talked about once or twice on this blog. Figuring out how we're going to lay out the book is a big deal, because as Adam Jury has complained about frequently you need to know these things before you really get too far in the writing part of the book.

Planning, planning, planning, or something like that. Measure twice and cut a million times because I suck with tools.

One of those expressions.

So with Critical!: Go Westerly we're stuck with introducing a new world to people. What I want to do with this world is actually start writing books and stories using it, because I think it's that entertaining a place. That means I think we need to showcase the world and put it front and centre. I want people to be amused by it, and want to dive into the various places and build their own stories. I want to make it a CC license so that people can write stories, and it's okay for them to write stories. I think it would be a lot of fun. That the pipe dream there.

Pipe dream? Possibly, but I think it's doable. So there.

With CyberGen what I did like about the 2.0 book was that character creation was built right into the book as an adventure. You didn't need any of the stats to start the game and it threw you into conflict right away, running from CorpSec and throwing all the juves together in the same spot. It was a lot of fun. The thing is, I want to try something different with 3.0. I want the characters the have a life before it gets ripped away from them. Make them feel more connected to the world rather than just starting on the run. I mean, it was great and it makes for an awesome con game but it always seemed to drag for me when it came time to transition to a campaign.

However, much like other games where you have a heavy metaplot setting (Looking at Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Mechwarrior) you need to make sure that people feel engaged in your setting. That they want to invest their time there.

I think that's why the Setting comes before the rules if you can't find a way to integrate the two of them. It is a way to get people engrossed in what your doing in a way that numbers generally don't.

CyberGeneration 3.0 - Let's Talk About ...

One of the things that I loved and loathed about CyberGeneration was the Slang that came in the book. Each yogang had their own slang and their own way of speaking, which I thought was great. Then I read further and saw that they really tried to define it in the book, which I thought wasn't so great. Yes, I know that it didn't say that this was all the slang that they used, but there's something about a list in a roleplaying game that stymies the imagination ... or at least my imagination.

Language evolves, and it's one of the things that can create a level of distance between the reader and the work they are reading. It's what causes that stereotype to happen, "Kids these days and their butchering of the language" and all that. I mean, A Clockwork Orange isn't nearly as interesting a book if it isn't written in Nadsat.

That being said, we kind of made fun of the slang in the 2.0 book. What kind of outrageous line could we come up with using the slang from a single yogang. I can't really remember much, the term "Chrome Plunger Beast Man" came into play, but they were all pretty out there and they all felt really ridiculous. I don't know anyone who didn't giggle a little bit when reading them.

The other problem I had is that the way the book was structured, it made it sound like all yogangs of the same type used the same slang. That's patently absurd. I use words that were common place up in Northern Ontario, and the people in Toronto and Nova Scotia all look at me as if I've grown another head. And for those people who I subtly reference, yes "huck" is a word that means throwing stuff out ... where I come from. So there!

Back to the game, when people feel that it's superfluous or ridiculous it's something that needs fixing. Originally I wasn't going to include any slang stuff in the yogang sections, because I felt that anything I had in the months / years I've been planning a new edition didn't address any of the problems that I saw. Then, just recently I got to thinking. What if we let the players define what slang? Give them some direction, I mean tell them that Glitterkids like to use movie / gossip / tabloid lingo in their slang. Quotes from those places will start to pop up, but it will be relevant to them rather than something imposed on from the outside.

I think this helps a lot because you can get people who create their own slang, and then they might be more inclined to use it. One group of Glitterkids might end up calling an upstart a Hepburn, but another group might use it as a complement but they might actually use it rather than have me tell them what it means and then laugh at how silly my mind is.

Not that I have a problem with my silly mind, it's just I'd rather put stuff that's going to be used in a book.

CyberGeneration - Combat Speed

There are a couple places that most RPGs tend to bog down and the speed goes from entertaining to boring for quite a lot of people. One of those places is combat. Combat, for all the fact that it happens quickly in real life becomes hours of agony as everyone plays everything so cautiously that they painstakingly map out every possible scenario before they commit to any action. It's one of the reasons why 30 seconds of game play can take 2-3 hours.

Saturday Night Skuffl (SNS) has this problem too but on through different means. There aren't a million special rules that you need to be aware of. There aren't all these Feats or Skills or Traits or Abilities that you have to consider when you're going to use. Instead what SNS has is a throw back from Friday Night Firefight (FNFF), a defense roll. When dealing with melee combat what slows down the game is the fact that the game has a defensive roll. It is a roll that does absolutely nothing other than to negate someone's attack roll.

This can make a battle go on forever, especially if two characters of equal skill are involved in the fight and they keep rolling high on their opponent's turn.

Boring.

Time to follow one of the design philosophies and speed things up. We're going to change combat so that whenever you attack or defend against a roll, the winner will do damage in combat. That way combat will go twice as fast because now there is guaranteed damage to happen on every single roll. Well, not including armor, but at least it will be faster than it was before.

This isn't a unique concept, many other games have implemented this kind of combat style, I just think it's particularly fitting to CyberGen.

CyberGeneration - Sponsors?

Someone over at the Firestorm Ink forums, a barren wasteland where very few people gather to talk about CyberGen and hopefully other stuff when I get that released, there was a discussion about maybe setting things up so that there is a Sponsor program. This Sponsor program would be something like Kickstarter, though I don't think that there would be a time limit other than when we get the book out, where you pre-order + extra and you get some cool stuff.

There are a couple of questions that come with this. What would you think would be a viable price point to get things. We're looking at making the book at the $20.00 point. What would be things people would be interested in seeing?

- Name in book as a Sponsor
- Special Cover
- Alt Cover Art
- Signed Copies (some people put stock in that)
- Personalized Copies
- Cool junk from my house prizes?

Suggestions? Ideas? Help me out here folks.

CyberGeneration - Design Philosophy

Well Blogger ate the other post so this one goes up first! Yay!

With the new release of CyberGeneration in the works I think it's a good idea to put out what my personal design philosophy is in regards to this book. That way I have something that I can refer to if I feel that I get stuck or that I'm playing with the fiddly bits too much.

I really think every project should have a Design Philosophy, and I regret the fact that I haven't really done one before now.

Anyway, here we go:

1. CyberGeneration's Rules need to be Fast:

The resolution mechanic is a straight forward one. It's Stat+Skill+d10 vs Target Number. However, it's the other things that really get me. Combat can take forever because it has a attack vs defense roll where nothing happens on the defensive end. It's got a lot of little bit rules in the evolved types that make you have to know tables and stuff that makes being Evolved kind of a chore.

The net. Oh goodness the net. It's still better than most nets out there, but that needs to be cleaned up something fierce.

2. CyberGeneration need to be immersive:

One of the things I love about the game the most is the setting. It's what really drives the game and is the inspiration point for some other games with dystopic teenage angst. Make sure that gets driven home every chance we get.

Also, I want to make sure that when people make yogangs they actually make yogangs. It's not, "I'm a Guardian" but "I'm a member of the Brickyard Boyz." Immediacy helps with immersion.

3. CyberGeneration needs to be darker:

Some people might say we're living in the world right now, just without the cybernetics and even that that's slowly becoming a reality. Hell with Kinects (nee NADAL) and Sixth Sense virtuality is clearly on the way. Make sure that this helps drive how much control there is around the players.

4. CyberGeneration needs to have more fight:

The big driving force behind 2.0 was the Cabal. The Cabal is not going away, but I want the game to help the players feel that there is a fight going on even if they aren't playing in the Cabal. Sometimes this shit is worth fighting for.

That's what I have so far. Any suggestions?

CyberGeneration - Design Thoughts 01

We've been thinking a lot lately on what we're going to do for CyberGeneration 3.0. We really want the game to do well and a new sourcebook is just step one in this process. The game was over 15 years old and desperately needed a new face and a little bit of clean up to make the game feel a little more immersive.

Here are some thoughts that we're exploring right now and I'm going to share them to see what people think, if there are any left over after the Game Chef thing. =p

1. Two Books instead of one.

No, I'm not going the Burning Wheel wrote which required you to buy the Character Burner and the Burner ... Burner to play the game. That I found frustrating, coupled with the fact that there were some skills that required the Monster Burner to use which just upped that level of WTFery, and annoying and is still one of the reasons why it sits on my shelf gathering dust. However, that is neither here nor there.

What we want to do is put forth a rule book with what you need to play, the rules, the setting in brief, some characters, some yogangs, some gear and go. The price point will hopefully be 15.00$ and you can buy that and get right into the game.

The second book would go more indepth. It would add more yogangs, it would add more detail to the setting but what it won't have are any rules on how to play the game. The reason for that is you would have already purchased the main book to buy the second one, or you already have a copy of second edition that you want to play it with. Hell, chances are you could probably play the game with a fair bit of tweaking in any system that you want.

2. Instead of Sourcebook we'd do a "Magazine Subscription"

Not that it would really be a subscription, but that is an idea, but instead of doing a sourcebook we'd do a magazine update where there are a pile of different options that you can get, information and flavour and gear and the run down of what's going on without having to have it be too centralized. It's kinda like the Eden Cabal itself, decentralized.

At the end of the year we could slap the pdfs together and make it into a book, organized by type of information. Say that if you bought all 4 pdfs, you'll get the book for free or something like that.

Good ideas? Bad ideas? Thoughts, comments, concerns?

Big Update! CyberGeneration the 3rd Revolution!

Well, now that the contract has been signed I can let this bit of information out.

We now have the rights to publish a third edition to CyberGeneration. That's right, we're going to be able to put out a new main sourcebook that people can get their hands on.

That's what we've got right now but stay tuned for more details.

CyberGen Webcomic!

Yay! The CyberGen Webcomic is back up and it's better than ever!

Check it out at cybergen2027.com

In which I get interviewed - Dreamation 2010

Hey folks,

There's an interview with the folks from Bacon Ice Cream productions over on Youtube.

Check it out

CyberGeneration - Combat Speed

Combat is one of those things in an RPG that tend to make you pull your hair out, well it tends to make me pull my hair out. Nothing kills the feel of a game of CyberGen than combat, after combat, after combat. It might work for other games, but when you're trying to get a good bit of teenage angst, you want to combat to be quick and dirty.

The current system for CyberGen, Saturday Night Skuffle, is a streamlined version of Cyberpunk's Friday Night Firefight. Now there are some things that FNFF does well, but one of the things it can do it take a long time, especially in melee combat, particularly between two skilled people. The main reason for that is there are a roll where the only benefit that you get is a lack of damage, in the game it's called a defense roll. That means when you get attacked, you don't do anything other than get out of the way with a good roll. If you've got a bunch of people who are doing nothing but rolling well on the defensive side of the battle, then it's going to take forever to finish up.

What I'm going to introduce here, is that in hand to hand combat there is going to be the same opposed roll but the winner is going to come out doing damage, even if you are the one being attacked.

This isn't a unique proposition. It has been used in other games, and I think it would work well here in CyberGen since the stated goal is to make the system get out of the way as fast as possible.

Dreamation 2010 - The Review

I got back from Dreamation and I have to say that I love all the double exposure cons. I do. They're were I got to meet a lot of people that I love and play a lot of new and exciting stuff.

Let me give you the highlights of what we ended up doing and then we'll talk more about the Con.

1. Playtest Geasa a couple of times.

There was one official slot of playtesting, which went really well. I think it's one of those games which is turning out to be a lot like Suitors. It didn't take a lot of tweaking to get the type of game that I wanted. Suitors went through three incarnations before it pretty much stayed as is. Geasa is looking like it's going to be just the first incarnation is going to do it. I might make one change, which is to give people stats of 4, 3, 3 and 2 rather than 4, 3, 2 and 2 but that hasn't seemed to be a problem.

The big problem is the amount of selection anxiety people seem to have. Because the game is showing that it really needs at least one person to take the lead, and make a strong decision. Otherwise people end up wondering what the hell they should be doing. Personally, I think with good examples in the book and more experience running the game at cons this can be mitigated. It seems to be a game that once one pass has happened people get it, and then they can get into it. The trick is going to get them going into it.

Our first game ended up being in the SF genre. This is interesting as the first one ended up with a Janitor who used to be a Nuclear Engineer but couldn't find a job doing that on the station. We had a Bartender who was looking for her long lost son. A ship Psychologist who was afraid of space and a Captain who wanted to get off the station while making life as miserable for the rest of the crew. It was pretty sweet.

The second one was a modern day setting, with a Priest, a Fisherman, an Assassin and a Town Drunk. It was a challenge to see the game try to deal with these disparate characters, and some of the Fae that were created were weird, but the game didn't suffer at all from it.


2. CyberGen LARP

We had about 30 people show up again for the CyberGeneration LARP. It was another bundle of chaos mixed up with some interesting stuff. We've finally got some sort of "plot" going, as in that one group has managed to get involved with the Eden Cabal. There was a suggestion that two things happen. The first is that there starts to be a little bit of plot. Nothing huge and railroading, but more let's have the rest of the world interact with the players because otherwise they end up all over the place and we spend our time running after them.

The second thing is that I'm going to be dumping most of the responsibility of running NAGA with the judges they have and focusing on the LARPs. The only time I had a slot go off was when I was unable to physically do it (like 1 hour after running a 5 hour LARP). This means that there will be two slots to come and play CyberGeneration during the day. Good time there.


3. Playing games with other people

So I got to check out a couple of games, which I don't normally get to do. One of them was The Fisherman's Wife by Julia Bond Ellingboe. I had a great time playing that game and enjoyed it's many austere qualities and the drama that exists between the two characters being tempted and either succumbing or rising to the occasion.

I got to see Brennan's How We Came To Live Here. I didn't get a chance to play, but I'm going to remedy that for Anime North. It looks really interesting, incredibly interesting actually. I want to go through the book and see what others think of it too.

I also got to play in a Zombie LARP. Not just any LARP. An Apocalyptic Zombie LARP. Which translates into me talking in a Southern accent for a while, bashing Zombies with a boffer wrench and make bad TV references all night. Seriously, amazing time. If you're in the area I recommend that you check out Dystopia Rising. Go play in their LARP or show up at DEX and play there.

All in all there were many good times to be had.

Review from Robot Viking - September 8th!

Look what I missed!

It's perhaps the best review we've gotten ever. I'm actually tickled pink and all the frustration of the past several years have suddenly melted away. I don't know if they'll come back at all but for right now I'm currently full of bliss.

Thanks Ed!

Mile High Dragon is a go!

Hey everyone!

Mile High Dragon is good to go! It's currently available at drivethrurpg.com and rpgnow.com!

It's only 10.00$, it's fully searchable, has an index and has enough bookmarks to let you hop freely between sections. Check it out!

CyberGeneration Webcomic

Hey everyone, there's a group of awesome people who have waded through the hazards of the RPG industry and have gotten the rights to do a CyberGeneration Webcomic.

I though I'd help them out with some editing and they've got the first page up and going.

Go check it out now! Now! I command it!

Dex Con

DexCon. What can I say about DexCon other than I love this place. It's where I get to see a lot of people I only get to see twice a year and hang out with them for several hours at a time.

The biggest thing I'm going to talk about here though is the CyberGen LARP that I run. Seriously, it's amazing amounts of fun. I don't know how this managed to get as big as it has over the past little bit but apparently people like it. We had 30 people doing stuff and the most I can remember about what happened was that things happened. I think there was a hospital break out. I think possibly a bus got tipped or something but ultimately it was awesome because the players made it so.

I might go into more detail later about Dex Con and the LARP but I just wanted to get that out there.