Sunday, November 14, 2010

Adventures in blogging

I'm the first to admit, I'm an inconsistent blogger. I know I should be more regular in my blogging habits, and everyone who has an opinion on the subject says you need to be posting at least two or three times a day if you want peoplke to come badk regularly (and thereby make any kind of cash from your margin ads).

I was really slack for a couple of months while my wife was in hospital, and I don't apologise for that - I understand that for some people with sick loved-ones, getting all that anxiety and pain and heartache out to their online audience is cathartic and may even help them to get though the rough patch, but Jess is a pretty private person, and anything I wrote about that time would be mostly about her, so I had to respect that.

SInce than, I've still been slack.  There's some upheaval at work at the moment due to an ongoing restructure and "right-sizing" (I'll save my disdain for the newspeak of the corporate world for another post) and I think that it would be inappropriate (and a red-flag for potential future employers) if I wrote about that. But to be honest, that's not what's keeping me from posting either. I'm even making headway with the RPG setting I'm writing (which, for anyone with an interest, I'm going to start blogging about here).

The fact is, I just don't think I'm that interesting.  So instead of beating myself up over not constantly updating The Scoop with all the latest from my world, I'll be concentrating on the other blogs I'm trying to get up and running, and the other sideline projects that insist on my time, like work, and marriage.  This doesn't mean I won't post on The Scoop ever again.  It simply means that when I don get to it, or if I just don't have anything to say, I'll feel a lot less guilty about it.

So, until I've got something interesting to announce, that's me out.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Of new rules and grognards

I am just at the moment familiarising myself with Triple Ace Games/Cubicle 7's All for One: RĂ©gime Diabolique RPG, with a view to running a game for my gaming group.  All for One uses Exile Game Studio's Ubiquity system, which looks good on paper, but I've never played Hollow Earth Expedition (though I've heard a lot of great things about it, and I promise I'll get around to it sometime), and every plan fails on contact with the players.  

In the last couple of years Savage Worlds has become a default system for the group, and a few of the guys can be a bit hidebound when it comes to trying new rules-sets (I've run RTT, RuneQuest, True 20, Summerland and Trail of Cthulhu games over the last three years with varying degrees of failure).

So I'm looking for two things; I'd like to hear anyone's thoughts on the Ubiquity system - how it plays, what tweaks or house rules they introduced, stuff like that.  I'm also keen to hear any advice on offer for getting grognards to try new things (games written in the last fifteen years, for example).  Post your thoughts here and maybe wwe'll get a discussion happening.