barrongan

LIR RESPATI BUMIDAYA

25-Dec-11
Well That's Going to Be a Bad Influence
Was stuck at the in-law's house yesterday for over 10 hours (and to think I used to dread the holidays when I'd be all alone... note to self: make sure the next wife is an orphan)... I take my notebook on these trips because, well, what the hell else am I going to do?
Didn't get much done because of course the TV had to be on, playing Christmas concert TV specials most of the time. Made me aggressive - but I bet being forced to watch Andrea Bocelli sing with the Muppets would do that for anyone. And remember the 90s when Nightwish was this absolutely bizarre idea? Now here's Tarja Turunen singing in a church in front of Finland's President. Nothing completely ruins a fun thing - retroactively, even - quite like respectability.
Damn yesterday was torture.
So the few notes I did take were all about some rather, ah, interesting monsters and spells. Of the "I did that that zombie attack picture from Grindhouse and I just published Carcosa so let's use those as a new normal baseline and explore where we can go from there," variety.
So that ends up with a bunch of "I can't really use any of this, can I?" stuff.
Oh, look, one of my Christmas presents was a copy of Alan Moore's Neonomicon. I really like Lovecraft and I really like everything I've read by Moore but I'd never even heard of this. How did my wife find it?
(looking around this morning, this is how Moore himself describes it, if you're unfamiliar: "Lovecraft was sexually squeamish; would only talk of ‘certain nameless rituals.’ Or he’d use some euphemism: ‘blasphemous rites.’ It was pretty obvious, given that a lot of his stories detailed the inhuman offspring of these ‘blasphemous rituals’ that sex was probably involved somewhere along the line. But that never used to feature in Lovecraft’s stories, except as a kind of suggested undercurrent. So I thought, let’s put all of the unpleasant racial stuff back in, let’s put sex back in. Let’s come up with some genuinely ‘nameless rituals’: let’s give them a name.")
(also, check out this analysis of the book... I wonder if any of these ideas could work for RPG books?)
After reading Neonomicon most of that "I can't really use any of this, can I?" stuff in my notebook seems rather middle-class now.
Which leaves a couple things that still have potential, and some idea corridors I wasn't before considering are now open.
If you're familiar with Neonomicon, you're thinking the worst of this right now. Which is good, because that sense of dread is the coolest thing ever. But I do have limits, as there are certain things I'm not willing to play out in a game with other people, either at my home table or with random people at a convention, so I wouldn't ask you to do so. But hopefully this can instead be something else entirely that takes you by surprise. That will hopefully be good. And make you think "You can do that?" while looking at it.
(oh, I also received Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium RPG. Haven't read it yet and am not familiar with it at all, although I'm told it should be right up my alley. First thought after a quick page-through is this book has no business being 8.5x11 format and whoever decided that was a good size for RPGs in general, and this one in particular, needs a damn spanking)
16-Dec-11
My Friend Matt is Not Helpful
Well, when he's not designing logos for me he's not.
I'm trying to come up with a good 400 word blurb for Isle of the Unknown's "Featured Product" message on RPGNow.
Since I suck at this kind of this sort of thing. I can make cool stuff, publish cool stuff, talk your ass off about it... but I can't sum it up without being corny.
330 hexes of adventure, with over 100 unique monsters and more magic and mystery than you can shake a stick at! The Isle of the Unknown is a setting that can be inserted in any traditional fantasy role-playing campaign.
That's bland and sucky, right?
So maybe I should get sarcastic. Landed me a wife off of OKCupid, worth a shot.
330 hexes of adventure, with over 100 unique monsters and tons of magic and mystery and more. DAMN is it cool. See that cover art? How cool it is? The coolness of that cover is totally representative of the coolness inside this bad boy. The Isle of the Unknown is a setting that can be inserted in any traditional fantasy role-playing campaign.
hmm. So I ask Matt for some advice. His suggestion?
Without Isle of the Unknown your campaign is as naked, evidently, as everyone on all of my covers.
*sigh*