Category Archives: Uncategorized

Earthdawn Gamemaster’s Compendium!

Another part of the long wait is over. The Earthdawn Gamemaster’s Compendium is now available in PDF from DriveThruRPG.com for $29.95. But wait, DTRPG is also running a 20% off holiday sale! That means you can get it for only $24! We’re practically giving them away! Order now!

The hardcover print editions are expected in January of 2006. Stay tuned to this feed (or www.earthdawn.com) for more information on specific release dates!

Serenity Now!

Well, not actually now, but Joss Whedon’s Serenity is available on DVD tomorrow. If you missed it while it was in theatres this past fall, do yourself a favor and rent it. Despite its relatively poor performance at the box office, it received a favorable overall rating (80% at Rotten Tomatoes).

Even if you aren’t familiar with the series that spawned it, the movie is very accessible to new viewers. Of course, I highly recommend the DVD set of the series as well, but the movie is a good starting point if you’re daunted by the 4-disc, 14-episode series (which you really should to see in order).

When I get out of work tomorrow, I’m heading over to pick up my copy. All you fellow browncoats out there be sure and do the same!

So much for my goal…

…of having updates on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Here it is, late Thursday (technically early Friday), and it’s my first update of the week.

There is an update, however. Today (my first day off in over a week), I finished up the script for my latest Camarilla podcast, recorded it, and uploaded it here.

The More Things Change, Episode 2 (8:13, 7.53 MB)

Please remember to observe the distinction between in-game and out-of-game reality; their ‘public’ existence here does not equate to public existence within the framework of the Camarilla’s Requiem setting.

That’s all for now. I’ll try and have an update for tomorrow. See you then!

First Snow

We got our first real snow of the season today. Not a whole lot — only a couple of inches — but I had to shovel the sidewalk, so it counts. Down south they got a lot more; news reports are putting the total at about a foot of snow. Better them than us.

I don’t have a whole lot to talk about at this point. My “vampire podcast” was pretty well received, and generated a bit of in-character controversy. I’m working on the second one now (and it should be available sometime next week).

If you haven’t encountered the webcomic Questionable Content, you really should. It’s very good, and the storyline that ran over the past two weeks was wonderfully funny and heartbreaking. The arc in question starts here, and while a familiarity with the strip and its characters makes this arc even better, you should be able to pick up on what’s going on pretty easily.

One final note — we’ve finished our pass through the proof-draft of the Player’s Compendium, and should be getting a new draft here in a week or two. Hopefully it looks good, and we can hit the big red button to go live with it.

I’m off to do dishes and general household chores… enjoy your weekend, and I’ll see you on Monday!

New “Riders on the Storm”

Today’s update is a new entry in the Riders on the Storm journals, over in the Earthdawn section. A somewhat brief entry by the Swordmaster Mica, it covers more events during their trip through the underground river tunnels below Throal. Here’s a direct link to the entry.

Enjoy the update, and I’ll see you on Friday!

Added note: Caught up in the frenzy of HTML coding and the like, I also added a section in the Other Games section that has links to the in-character audioblogs for my Camarilla character, as well as transcripts of the recordings themselves. Enjoy, if you haven’t yet!

Round-robin writing

We’ve got an interesting little game/exercise going on over on the Living Room Games Forums. November was National Writer’s Month (or someting like that, I forget exactly), and somebody came up with the idea of trying out a round-robin writing exercise.

Here’s how it works… each writer gets 1,000 words (give or take). In the course of the overall story, they can introduce 1 protagonist, 1 antagonist, and 1 plot element. When they have finished their 1,000 words, the next person on the list picks up from there.

We’ve been through the list of seven or eight ‘players’ twice now, and while the results are a little uneven from time to time, it is shaping up to be an enjoyable exercise.

You can read the story thus far by following this link.

Friday’s Promised Update!

You know how yesterday I promised that I would have an update for today? Well, I do.

I am (as I may have mentioned in the past) a member of the Camarilla, White Wolf’s Live-Action Roleplay group. My character in the Vampire: The Requiem chronicle is Sam Walker, a reltively new vamp who’s background is in radio (specifically, that particular brand of late-night talk that deals with the fringe — paranormal events, conspriacy theories, and so forth).

Sam holds the position of harpy in the Bangor court. A harpy is a gossip, newshound, and generally keeps track of one of the most valuable bits of currency in vampiric society — status. It is common or harpies to present a regular ‘report’ of sorts — kind of a news account or gossip rag talking about who’s in, who’s out, and anything else of interest to immortal nocturnal bloodsuckers.

Well, I decided that I would kill two birds with one stone… Sam, being a child of the modern age, was going to do his harpy reports as an audio commentary, recorded and distributed via the internet. This would also give me the opportunity to play around with Audacity, a free audio recorder editor I recently downloaded. I have recently become hooked on podcasts via iTunes, and am toying with the idea of expanding into that area.

Anyhow, I finally finished my first show. It’s about 9 minutes long, and weighs in at just under 8MB. You can download it here. It will probably stream if you just click on it, but it’s probably better to right-click and “Save as…” instead. My bandwidth will thank you.

A more comprehensive page with transcripts and the like is in the works, but the file is the actual update for today. Listen and enjoy!

Bustin’out

Well, November was pretty much a bust for updates, huh?

While cruisin’ the electronic highways, I’ve been checking out the advice given by successful, regular bloggers, and the one bit that seems to keep cropping up is that earlier word — regular.

I’ve been bitching to myself that I haven’t been taking advantage of the space here, I’ve been slacking on the updates, on the writing, blah, blah, blah. Well… here’s my commitment for December:

At least three updates a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I realize that today is Thursday, but it’s also December 1st… a great opportunity to declare my resolution. Hopefully I’ll build momentum this month, and get something resembling a regular update schedule in line.

So… starting tomorrow, expect something from me. I haven’t any idea what it will be… but I tend to perform well under pressure.

If you have any suggestions about the sort of stuff you’d like me to natter on about, just let me know (via e-mail or the comments).

Until tomorrow, then!

We have a book!

Hey all. Big news on the Earthdawn front. I got home from work last night to find a box from Booksurge on my desk. Inside was the draft-proof of the Earthdawn Player’s Compendium!

Jim got his copy delivered down in Kiwi-land tonight, so it looks like we are just a couple weeks out from honest-to-god release!

A couple of weeks because we didn’t quite iron out all of the technical bugs that were delaying the book — some of the tables have ‘blackouts’ in them. (Click here for a sample of what I’m talking about.)

As proof that we have the book, and to give you an idea of what the final product actually looks like, here are some sample pictures. (They are linked to a larger version for closer examination.)

Watch this space (or www.earthdawn.com) for more details on the upcoming release!

In other news, the Earthdawn Gamemaster’s Compendium is finalizing layout, and the PDF version of that should be available in about a week! If all goes well, we may have both books out in hardcopy in time for Christmas!