About Ozzie Fitch is a tale of hope, of struggle, of friendship through the trials of life, but mostly about pain. The pain we carry, the pain we share, and the pain that could cripple us if we are not careful.
Some hide their pain, turn from it in an attempt to maintain their veneer of adulthood. Some succumb to it, turning bitter and cynical as they see any joy or passion for life as a morbid lie.
Up next, I will be posting a very experimental piece of work, Ozzie Fitch.
Ozzie Fitch is a tale of hope, of struggle, of friendship through the trials of life, but mostly about pain. The pain we carry, the pain we share, and the pain that could cripple us if we are not careful.
Some hide their pain, turn from it in an attempt to maintain their veneer of adulthood. Some succumb to it, turning bitter and cynical as they see any joy or passion for life as a morbid lie.
With that short batch of Cliffside Short-stories finished, I am now forced to look at what comes next for my Saturday postings. Of all the writing I’ve done, what fits best in a sidelong once-a-week format? I have more short stories, but not enough to outlast the weeks of books I have to upload. Do I write more short stories? Use Saturday to upload drafts and show my process? Only post personal bloggings about how I feel or what’s going on in the news today?
A whole new website design!
With my RPG treatise finally complete (or at least as complete as anything ever is, in my head…) it is time once more to return to the dark and twisted world of Edmund Moulde, and the second book of the Macabre Quadrilogy.
In many ways, this book was supposed to be the first book in Edmund’s story. I had imagined a very Rowlingesque (sans bigotry) opening of the odd little Moulde boy being tested after he used the chemicals from his sister’s makeup kit to revivify his dead pet rat.
Wait, wait!
Not finished yet, I guess…
Call it an errata, if you wish, but the truth is there are simply too many games and too many complex aspects of RPGs to ever really be “finished.” Even in the process of writing this, games have come out that are far better examples of, say, experiments with Game Balance or explorations of real-time than the examples I used.
And that’s nothing compared to the subjects I haven’t even broached.
Hero Quest is the best game ever made.
The best thing about Hero Quest is the gold. Every quest grants your characters gold that can be used to acquire cracking equipment that improves your character’s chances at surviving their next quest.
Okay, but is Hero Quest really an RPG? Perhaps, perhaps not. If it is, it certainly leans heavily into the strategy-board game side of RPGs, similar to the RPG-like Gloomhaven or Betrayal at House on the Hill.
Goblins? is an RPG. In it, you play as a goblin.
It is not unique.
In recent years the prevalence of Goblin-focused RPGs has exploded. There’s Goblins in Shadow, Noblesse Goblige, Gobs of Gobs, Hannukah Goblins, The Goblin Warrens, Goblin Country, You are 100 Goblins, Now Go Save the World, Goblins and Grimoires, I’ll be Taking That, All the Kings Goblins, Journey through Goblinland, Those Little Bastards, We Gank at Midnight, Goblin Market, Disgusting Little Freaks, Stacks of Goblins, GOB, Goblin Karting, and Three Goblins in a Trenchcoat; and that’s certainly not all of them.
So ends the first story in the Edmund Moulde quadrilogy. With some time to spare before my treatise on the medium of RPGs is finished, I will spend the next few Saturdays uploading some short stories set in what I ended up calling The Cliffside Universe
After all, Brackenburg is only one of the major cities in the Britannian Empire, and a steadily decaying one, at that. There is room for stories across the globe as the world slowly changes from steam-punk to diesel-punk, and no one city is better suited to display the variety and complexity of that transition than Cliffside, hub of trade, adventure, and diverse stew of humanity.
Mission Accomplished is an RPG inspired by shows like Archer, The Venture Brothers, and Better Off Ted. It’s a game about being a team of super-spies who save the world on a weekly basis, usually in 30-45 minute increments. You drop into dangerous situations, mix things up, and then get out of there and back to HQ, a job-well-done.
But that’s only half of the game. The second half is the HR meeting, where the complaining, bickering, and blaming happens.
