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Monday, June 27, 2016

[Weekending 26th June] Gosh... That long?

So it's been a while since I updated this writing blog. This is the result of a number of factors; work, illness... and just not writing.

To be honest I was on a bit of a downturn in regards to my writing up until last week, when suddenly my inspiration was back (I suppose spending 3 days in bed with a head that feels as if it;s full of cotton wool might do that to you). So undertaken this past 7 days (plus a bit more) we have:
  • A review of the Conspiracy X 2nd edition rulebook
  • A further edit on my Advanced Fighting fantasy adventure, and
  • 4000 plus words on an old Call of Cthulhu adventure - Dire Consequences. 
Maybe this is the start of delivering again?

Until next time! 

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Week Ending Update - 23rd May 2016

A week of editing and review, with a number of pieces of work almost ready to go -

  • Completed a one-sheet adventure for my Sundered Skies blog - you can grab Prize Fighter here.
  • Incident at Redview, the Dark Conspiracy adventure I've been chatting on this blog since it began, has a completed draft. Just waiting the last bit of art from Domi, and a good edit. I hope to have it posted on my DCtRPG.info site in June (I've posted a mock-up of the cover on that site's forum, if you're interested). 
  • Finally I'm about half way through the edit of my Advanced Fighting Fantasy adventure - The Oldest Tower. It's taken longer than expected due to the change of plot I made mid-adventure, and now I'm having to tie it all back together. 

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Week Ending Update - 16th May 2016

Another quiet week; I blame my wife, who has been home for the last couple of weeks. Jokes...
  • I drafted my next Sundered Skies article for one of my blogs.
  • I reviewed a couple of adventures I've drafted and need to push over into completed stage. These are for both Dark Conspiracy and Advanced Fighting Fantasy.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Week Ending Update - 9th May 2016

Another family focused week, with a bit of this and that done mainly over the Saturday and Sunday -
  • Tapped away on a The Esoterrorist idea I had. I'm guessing it'll be a long time before I get around to doing anything more on it...
  • Completed the May article for DCtRPG.info. I'm quite proud of this one...
  • A first for me - I banged out some very simple sci-fi wargame rules as well. My eldest son and I are going to play test these tonight.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

[Update] Week Ending 2nd May 2016

Feeling good about my writing this week, with the completion of a draft and the release of the Conspiracy X blog (as discussed last week) -
  • Completed the draft of my Advanced Fighting Fantasy Adventure - The Oldest Tower. Should be edited and out next week.
  • Released my new Conspiracy X blog - http://conspiracyxrpg.blogspot.co.nz/ - to the public. This includes a lengthy interview with Dave Chapman, and a summary of the existing publications in both the 1st and 2nd edition of the game. As an aside, the blogger tools aren't the easiest to use to get a functional layout (the code is a mess!).
  • Not exactly writing, but I also updated the forum software over at darkconspiracytherpg.info, and the theme template.  

Monday, April 25, 2016

[Update] Week ending 25th of April

The quietest week I've had in a long time in regards to writing. School holidays and family events limited my free time to just reading RPG material rather than writing it. Of everything on my plate, the only real progress I made was on a new Conspiracy X blog. That said, I did write a bunch of content for it, as well as conduct a text interview with the previous Line Dev - David F. Chapman...
 
I'd provide a link, but at the moment I'm simply working on the content and structure.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

[Update] Week Ending 18/04/2016

Another one of those weeks when things I've previously started begin to be delivered. This week it was:
  • An article on the Shattered City and Gateway for my Sundered Skies blog.
  • More work on various Dark Conspiracy ideas, including 'Incident at Redview' as well as my April update for the DCtRPG.info site - In the Referee's Toolkit.
  • Finally I worked further on 'The Oldest Tower', which has become more complex than I'd originally hoped*.  I normally refrain from predicting what I'll work on in the upcoming week, but I suspect this draft will be done this week.
* I was looking at another 'The Well' type of adventure, but my poor brain hates random dungeons that have no real reason to exist - I mean who has a tavern in a room you've got to fight your way too?

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Week Ending 11th April

Another quiet week on the writing front, with lots going on around home and at work. My achievements this week include:
  • More work on 'Incident at Redview', my Dark Conspiracy adventure.
  • Putting together a one-off supernatural noir Skype game. It went down pretty well, and might deserve a sequel this week. Lots of referencing Nameless Streets, a urban fantasy sourcebook by Charles Green
  • I have started adapting an old Mini Six setting I wrote - Guardians of Milndor - to the Dark Sagas game system. I like the simplicity of Dark Sagas and Guardians, a game of playing dark fantasy city watchmen, suits it well.


Sunday, April 3, 2016

Week ending 4th April 2016

Two months down, and I'm still going strong with this Marcus Writes blog!

A quiet week for me after Easter's massive update, but, shock and horror, I got side tracked reading an actual physical book! Will wonders never cease!

  • Did more work on my Dark Sun based Fantasy Age setting. It's pretty much ready to go...
  • I posted a post up on Marcus Muses - my thoughts of games where the setting and system fail to match.
  • I revisited an old Dark Conspiracy scenario idea, and once I got my head around some of the structure it is looking good. As part of this I got side tracked with another DC idea... but fortunately I wasn't distracted for too long.
  • Finally, my Esoterrorists adventure - The Breeders - got some work. I have to say that writing in a book seems much easier than typing up the notes - I have some sympathy for someone like Tolkien now :P

Monday, March 28, 2016

[Update] Long weekending 29th March 2016

It was a long week this week, with 4 days off for Easter. I have achieved a huge amount of writing (near on 10 thousand words in my estimate) across a number of projects, including some that actually saw the light of day! I think that is the real benefit of this blog so far, the number of 'things' that I've started to actually complete. Sure I've still got years of half done writing still sitting on my Hard Drive, but at least now something is getting done with it.

So what did I do this past week?

  • Completed an article for my darkconspiracytherpg.info fan site - this is an examination of The Pale, one of the major antagonist races in the game. 
  • The biggie, I released A Night on the Town, a demonstration scenario for Pelgrane Press' The Esoterrorists. Designed as an introduction to the GUMSHOE system, is comes complete with sample characters and a bit of gaming advice.
  • Talking The Esoterrorists, I also updated the page covering this game on my Unbound Publishing website. I've also popped up all the bits and pieces I've produced for the game, and am surprisingly impressed on just how much I've written for it over the years.
  • As you can imagine, releasing a product really gives you a shot in the arm for similar ideas, and so I spent some time working on The Breeders, a longer Esoterrorist adventure (I've previously mentioned here).
  • I also got the map from my friend Domagoj for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy adventure I started a while back. As a result, I ended up rewriting a whole swathe of changes to improve the background elements to the story (i.e. actually have one :P).
  • Finally, inspired by an actual play podcast, I threw together a quick background for a Fantasy Age version of the old D&D setting Dark Sun. What started out as a simple conversion morphed into a similar but different setting. Unsure what, if anything, I'll do with it, but I'm definitely in the mood for some Fantasy Age gaming.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Update - Weekending 21st March 2016

I've found that websites take a lot of effort to update and change, and more than one evening this week has been taken up with editing just one section of my Stormbringer site.

That being said, this week I:
  • Updated the Catalogue page of my Stormbringer site.
  • Created a page here on this blog summarising the various websites and fan pages I support. I realised this is the first time I've attempted such a summary, and I'm sure I'm missing things (in fact I know I've not noted my Mini Six fan site!)
  • I've picked up an old Stormbringer adventure (I've run a couple of times) and started editing it. 
  • I completed the full draft of my The Esoterrorists Demo adventure - A Night on the Town. This should be up on my Unboundbook.org site later this week. 

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Getting Things Done - Week Ending 14th March 2016

If you could sum up last week in a few words, they would be, 'review and reflection'. Looking back on my writing over the past 7 days, I have to say that I achieve a lot more than I had first thought, and, if nothing else, it demonstrated to me just how many projects I start without guiding them through to completion. Again, on of the purposes of this blog is to ensure that I focus on some of these 'products' and see them through to to some sort of result.

So this week I:
  • Wrote a post over at unboundbook.org summarising the status of a number of Call of Cthulhu scenarios I've mentioned over the last decade. Suffice to say the related thread over at Yog-sothoth.com raise the idea of Patreon again... 
  • Completed an article for my Sundered Skies blog, and posted that up on the site. Heir to the Throne, is a scenario idea that I've previously run for my Skype group, but this was my chance to put on paper.
  • Finally move forward on an old The Esoterrorist adventure. For the longest time I've been inching my way through a demon scenario - much like the one for Ashen Stars - designed to introduce new players to this specific style/flavour of GUMSHOE. Over the weekend I settled on a completed draft, and have received some great feedback from my editor-in-grief - (i.e. Emma, my wife).

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Week that Was Websites - 2nd to 7th March 2015



This week I didn’t do much in the way of writing, as I mostly focused on updating a couple of the websites I run supporting my favourite roleplaying games. Back in September 2015, almost all of my Wordpress (this is the name of the Content Management System I use) sites were hit with malware, which took quite a bit of effort to recover from. As part of this I noted a couple of my more venerable themes (think style templates) were starting to get outdated (both in look and feel, as well as their core code). Life, time and laziness delayed this until last week when I wanted to make a post on one of the pages, at which point my desire to update the site kicked in. For convenience (i.e. because I’m into simple), I decided to utilise the same theme for one of the other sites that needed updating, but as per usual I can never leave good enough alone, and was soon tweaking the code and settings in my vain attempts to create the ‘perfect’ design. Of course, with any new Wordpress theme, the size and type of images on the site needed review as well, and this probably took most of my effort over the past week. So as a summary:
  • I updated both my www.stormbringerrpg.com website, as well as the www.unboundbook.org one. There’s no new content on these sites, but they look much nicer!
  • I did get an evening one of my Sundered Skies adventures as well, and as such A Heir to the Throne is almost ready to pop up on my Sundered Skies blog.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

[Update] 29th Feb 2016

One of those quiet ones this week, where family and gaming took priority over writing. When I did get to write, my focus was on older material I've previously started by not seen through to completion (who'd have thunk that from me :P).

  • I added quite a bit to one of the Conspiracy X adventures I planned out a few years back (and ran at Kapon 2015). 
  • My Advanced Fighting Fantasy adventure continues a pace, with it now being called ' the Oldest Tower'. A map is being produced by a mate of mine, and while it is a rather simple adventure, I like where it is going. 
  • Finally, I discovered my old The Esoterrorist folder (which I had thought lost in the great Hard Drive Collapse incident of 2015). As is my want, I charged head first into reviewing and rewriting some of these, and I've a hope they might see the light of day soon.  

Sunday, February 21, 2016

[Update] 22/02/2016

Another week down and I surprise myself by actually updating my blog. As per usual I can barely seem to focus on one particular thing at any one time, but at least I'm doing something!

Highlights for the week include:
  • More work on my Advanced Fighting Fantasy Adventure - The Loneliest Tower
  • Completed my January article for my Dark Conspiracy fan site - a review of A Gathering Evil novel (yes I know, I'm running late okay :P). I also started on my Feb article as well...
  • Completed some Dark Heresy Cheat Sheets for my Thursday Skype game. These worked well, even if they were underused (yes the mechanics are dense at first glance, but the basics are pretty straight forward).
  • I also updated my live journal blog with a personal observations on my game mechanics perspective. To be honest this was more to keep the blog from being deleted than anything else, and covers a bugbear I have with RPG mechanics.
  • Finally, I created a whole new blog to become a repository for the various articles, adventures, etc. I've written over the years for one of my favourite game settings - Sundered Skies.
So yeah lots and yet...
 

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Weekend writing

As per usual, I was stop-start in my writing over the weekend. However, I did achieve a bit on  a number of things:
  • Kingdoms of Qadar - This actually started life as a setting for the Mini Six game mechanics, but after reading through Fantasy Age (the generic incarnation of Green Ronin's Dragon Age RPG), I've started to adapt it to this simple D20-like clone.  ETA - unknown
  • The Oldest Tower - My Advanced Fighting Fantasy Adventure - I planned out the core narrative.
  • Gamebook Reviews for Fighting Fantazine - After reading through Stormslayer (again) I have collected all my notes into a structured document.
Looking further into the week, I'll be focused on both the Oldest Tower, as well as creating some 'cheat sheets' for the players in my Dark Heresy game (to speed up combat over Skype),

 

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Welcome to the first post...

As I settle back into a regular work schedule, it is my goal to be more proactive on managing the creative projects I am focusing on. At present my focus is on a couple of ideas for:

Advanced Fighting Fantasy

After a great session with my sons and their friend, I have a renewed interested in this game (as published by Arion Games). In the last week:
  • I've started writing my own adventure - the Lonely Tower.
  • Created a number of cards detailing the damage/damage-reduction stats for each weapon/piece of armour in the game (this is to help the kids in future).

Dark Heresy, 2nd Edition

Last night we completed the 2nd session of our initial adventure (Dark Pursuits) from this campaign. As the intro scenes from this published scenario are quite linear, I've written an extensive number of leads/subplots to 'flesh' out this introduction.