Wow, it’s been a while since I wrote anything here. Well, it’s been a busy time over Christmas and New Year. We had a wonderful time up in Murthly, lots of presents, etc. Abi’s back at work (3 days a week), and I’ve now gone part-time as well (4 days a week), so we’re both taking care of Mr Bobo when he’s not at Nursery.
And my Playstation2 broke down 🙁 On the other hand, Sainsbury’s gave me a full refund for it. And the refund was for the price I’d paid for it a week before Sony dropped their prices 🙂 On yet another hand, there is currently a nationwide shortage of PS2s, and hardly anyone has any idea when they’ll get them back in stock. I’m down on the local Game store’s pre-order list. They say they may have some in over the weekend, but it’ll be strictly limited stock. And judging by the pile of pre-order cards they had stacked up behind the counter, I doubt if I’ll be far enough forward in line. Oh well.
A few years ago, I got thoroughly burned out on role-playing. It was too much Amber that did it. Amber’s a great game, and it really broke diceless playing through into the mainstream. But despite having infinite Shadow to play around in, I found that it got a bit stale after a while. And going back to another system after Amber seemed, at the time, like a step backwards on the evolutionary ladder of gaming. So I didn’t. I just took a complete break.
But just before Christmas, I had an idea… And it slowly wormed its way through my consciousness to the point where it became ripe for a game. (Seeing The Lord of the Rings over the holidays whetted my enthusiasm even more.) It’s a fantasy kind of thing. Not true Middle Earth, not true AD&D…just a blend of worlds and mythologies.
I’m still building the maps and a lot of the background, but the world has already taken quite a firm shape in my mind. And the stories, characters and plot lines seem to be flowing quite freely right now. In fact, I’m having a hard time remembering them all for long enough to get back home and write them all down. (I suppose I should use my old Psion 5 to record them on the bus, but ever since that incident with the backup battery failure and the de-spooled tape drive back in 1997, I just haven’t found myself able to trust it completely. And my handwriting is bad enough without travel jiggles making it completely unreadable even to myself.)
When we go down South to visit Jules in February, I’m going to give it a spin–assuming that Mr Bobo will co-operate long enough to let us play a bit. I think I’ll probably put the background & stuff up here on the Sunpig web site, so it’s easily available both for myself and anyone who’s going to be playing. (Somehow the web makes it seems so much easier than the last time I created background info for a game. Cool.)
(Note to self: must also get around to uploading more photos on Alex’s site. We’ve got stack of them! And one of the main points of using Movable Type was so that we could more easily update the photos on his pages.)