Double Chuckers

I was so going to write November's blog post at the end of November, but things sort of got away from me again. (Ah, the social whirlwind that is the life of a games designer!)

This year really hasn't let up, which means I'm feeling a wee bit worn out. And, while I swore back when I started keeping (a bit more) up to date with this here blogging malarkey that I wouldn't combine posts, I'm going to combine November and December's ramblings or I suspect they'll never get done.

Anyway, it's New Year's Eve and a time for reflection. So, here goes:

Egyptian grammar continues to be pretty much a complete mystery to me. I'll swear the academics have made half the tenses up just for the hell of it, because I certainly don't remember them from French, German and Latin classes at school. (Granted, those are a very, very long time ago now, but even so...) As a result, my translations remain in baby talk for the moment, but I'm hoping that the penny will drop at some point. My tutor, bless him, has just accepted that I will rename hieroglyphs that have been badly carved (rave Godzilla being my favourite of the entire year). In spite of his continued bemusement as to why I ask him to do these things, he not only gave me the translation for "Do not read from the book!" but also helped us to have accurate Ancient Egyptian charms in a supplement (The Shadow Over Providence). Classes continue next year, and I look forward to the ongoing challenge.

There's been a fair few books released this year that had my dabs on them. After a while, you sort of forget what came out when, so I think, in the end, it was 10 books in either physical or pdf (or both), plus consultation on at least 3 more from licensees. And that's just the ones that made it onto people's real and virtual shelves - there's over half a dozen more that are still in the production pipeline that I also worked on either as a writer, editor, developer, or some combination of all three.

And then there were the award nominations: Origins and ENnies, for both my work at Green Ronin and Chaosium. And some awards as well (Call of Cthulhu for the actual win!). It is nice to receive recognition - a lot of people put a lot of work into making these books and that pat on the back means a lot, if for no other reason than it makes you stop for a moment and think "Yes, we have done something pretty cool, haven't we?" And then it's back to the grindstone to get the next thing out.

Conventions: phew, yes. There were more than a few of those this year. OrcaCon (US), CarcosaCon (Poland), DNI Fantastyki (Poland), UK Games Expo (UK), mini-Kraken (Germany), Ropecon (Finland), Necronomicon (US), Kraken (Germany), AetherCon (virtual), and Dragonmeet (UK). Sadly no Steampunks in Space this year due to illness, which was a real disappointment as it's always a fun one.

There were quite a lot of interviews as well this year: Bayt al Azif, AetherCon, The Rolistes, live on Finnish day-time TV (a distinctly surreal experience), several Scandinavian podcasts, and one for the Finnish equivalent of the BBC! I'm pretty certain there were others as well, so apologies if I've forgotten any. As I mentioned at the top, this year has been something of a monumental blur...

Running things: I continue to be allowed out to run games and workshops both in the local area and further afield. Things kicked off with the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set launch in January (in association with the lovely folks at Travelling Man Newcastle, Meeple Perk and the Boutique Beats Bakery) and it never really stopped. Somewhere along the way was Free RPG Day and running things at both stores, along with a workshop at Meeple Games in Durham and numerous games at Meeple Perk. And then there's the embroidery talks and workshops, as well. It's always great fun to escape the writing hovel and talk to actual people, and share my love of games and embroidery with others. 

Looking to the Future: as some of you may have noticed, Chaosium now has the licence to produce a Rivers of London RPG. I spoke to Ben (Aaronovitch) at a book signing in Newcastle a little over a year ago about the possibility and, after a lot of work behind the scenes by my colleagues James Lowder and MOB, and Ben's agent, John, the announcement was made at Dragonmeet. It's met with a lot of positive feedback, so now the job of developing the system begins in earnest. I'm line editor for the project, as well as remaining as associate editor on Call of Cthulhu, so next year is likely to prove even busier than this one. As a fan of the books, I'm very excited about the whole thing as it's something I've been wanting to do for a while. Daunting? Yes - but I'm putting together an excellent team, and I know they'll do a good job. And Ben knows his stuff when it comes to gaming, so collaborating with him is going to be very interesting.

On the Cthulhu front, there's a lot on its way. All I can say is watch this space (as well as official channels) as to exactly what, but there is much goodness in the pipeline: some old and refreshed, some brand spanking new.

As for conventions, I'm off to Bellevue again in just over a week for OrcaCon. I'm not expecting to do quite as many conventions as this year, but then I wasn't expecting to do quite so many this year either!

So, as the old year fades and the new one begins: be safe, be kind, and enjoy your games, and may the New Year bring you peace, happiness and contentment.

See you on the flipside!

Ne'er Cast a Clout...

...'Til May be out, etc., etc., etc.

I know there's some debate as to whether that's May (the month) or may (the blossom), but all I can say about the month is that it was yet another busy one. June is shaping up exactly the same, which is why this blog is a teensy bit late in coming.

First: back on the hieroglyphics. Slightly rusty after a bit of a break, and one of our tutors is still insisting on giving us tests every fortnight, but it's still great fun translating dead people's wishes from ancient monuments. (We're currently only having classes every fortnight rather than every week). We even got the joys of rave Godzilla as one of the hieroglyphs - allegedly it was supposed to be a baboon, but the carving was appalling and looked far more like everyone's favourite kaiju bopping on down.

As I knew I was going to be at UK Games Expo, I even plucked up the courage to ask our more serious tutor what the ancient Egyptian for "Don't read from the book!" would be, just in case anyone asked me to sign a copy of Masks of Nyarlathotep. He was very obliging, even though he didn't entirely understand why I was asking and why one of my classmates got a fit of the giggles when I made the request.

In the end, no one asked me to do any signing that required hieroglyphics, but I can now yell the correct phrase in ancient Egyptian at a mummy, should the need arise. It sounds really cool, too...

A goodly bit of May was spent finishing off my last large scale piece of editing for Blue Rose for the foreseeable future. As my job role at Chaosium changed from 1st June, while I can still do bits of freelancing for other companies (and Chaosium are very happy for me to do so), I no longer have the time available for big projects.

Or, rather, I probably could squeeze them in, but they wouldn't get the time, care and attention I like to give to my work, meaning I'm not prepared to do it. Books are needy creatures and require a lot of editorial input - even the really well written ones - and I'm not going to sell the book, the authors, or myself short when it comes to a large project. We all deserve better than that.

I've thoroughly enjoyed working with Green Ronin, particularly Blue Rose's line managers, as their Benevolent Dictator in Chief: first with Steve Kenson and then Joseph Carriker, both wonderful, generous, creative men who encouraged my nitpicking and endless questions. I hope to be able to work on Blue Rose again sometime soon, albeit in a reduced capacity. It's a game I'm very proud to have my name on.

I was also busy editing a Call of Cthulhu scenario that will be available at an upcoming convention (to be announced shortly), and organising various convention visits. I'll be popping over to Poland (Wroclaw) in Mike Mason's stead for DNI Fantastyki as a guest of the lovely people at Black Monk Games, Chaosium's Polish licencees. I've not been to Wroclaw, but my hubby has, so I know all about the gnomes and plan on spending a day hunting out as many as possible!

I was also interviewed for an upcoming Call of Cthulhu magazine (more details when I know the release date), and spent some time implementing playtesting and proofing comments on Children of Fear before we headed off for our day at UK Games Expo.

I always enjoy booth work, especially at larger conventions, where the sheer number of attendees can be a bit overwhelming. Having been doing it for a while now, I also know a lot of people, if only to say hello to and ask them how their current campaign is going. This year, I saw a very old familiar face: Jared Earle of Nightfall Games.

Those of you who know me know that my gaming history is closely tied to Nightfall and SLA, and they were the first people to give me a paying job in the gaming industry. I even still have a photocopy of the first cheque they sent me! So, it was lovely to see Jared and get to spend time catching up with him in the bar on the Friday evening. It had been over two decades since we'd last spoken, but you would never have guessed. Quite significantly (largely because Jared nagged me to stay up late even though I'd been up since stupid o'clock), as midnight came around and I became a full time employee of the Chaosium, I was sitting between Jared and Mike, neatly book-ending my gaming career to date. 

I know I've said it before, and I will say it again: gaming has been very generous to me and has given me the opportunity to work with some wonderful people and to forge some good, and long-lasting, friendships. While I've lost touch with everyone I was at school with, and virtually everyone I was at university with (unless they're fellow gamers), my gaming frienships - the oldest ones at least - have been going for well over two decades now, which isn't too shabby in the grand scheme of things.

And here's to many more years and many more friends to come!

Where Did April Go?

I knew there was something I had to do this month. Well, last month, but you know how these things go. But, having been ill for a week in April, I spent a lot of that month furiously attempting to play catch-up, and not entirely successfully.

The month started with me editing the updated edition of Katanas & Trenchcoats. Originally written as a gag and to raise money for a children's hospital, K&T riffs on Highlander and a lot of '80s and '90s over-the-top TV, cinema, music, and games to gloriously silly effect. And the new version may even be playable!

I edited a couple of the supplements for the first version, and they were always highly entertaining, although I did have to be careful with some of them because, never having watched Supernatural, I didn't necessarily get all of the jokes, so always had to check to make sure I wasn't ruining a gag with my cuts and changes. I can also squarely lay the blame for my love of the later Fast & Furious films at the game's door, because I had to watch them for research purposes to edit the car wizards supplement...

Plenty more stuff for Chaosium came sliding across my editorial desk, some of it ongoing sekkrit projects already hinted at on these pages, but also some new bits and bobs that will be out fairly soon as they're small but perfectly formed and can be slipped easily into the production schedule in a way that larger, more complex books can't be. Some of those larger, more complex projects are well on the way, though, so watch this space...

April also saw me in London for a semi-sekkrit meeting about a thing I've wanted to develop for a while. Can't say anything more than that at the moment, obviously, but keep your fingers crossed all the same. All I can say is that it's always very pleasant when someone who's work you enjoy turns out to be a thoroughly lovely person who you could easily spend hours gossiping away with.

The excursion also gave me an excuse to pop up to one of my favourite places in London: the Wellcome Collection - specifically, their Smoke and Mirrors exhibition about the psychology of magic. It being the Easter holidays, it was somewhat packed. There are also a lot of films you need to watch if you're going to get the most out of it, but even bimbling through in a short space of time is well worth it, especially if you run or play mystery RPGs.

Although my hieroglyphics class is currently on hiatus and doesn't return until mid-May, I did get to visit the Barker Research Library at Durham University on Easter Saturday to look at some wonderful 18th and 19th century books on Egypt brought out of storage for the North East Ancient Egypt Society by the wonderful librarians there. As well as some truly beautiful engravings of temples and artefacts, there was a fascinating report by Giovanni Battista Belzoni, former circus strongman turned Egyptologist (the sort of larger-than-life (quite literally, he was 6'7") character made for Call of Cthulhu and pretty much any other historical RPG you can think of), wherein he described crawling through a tomb full of mummies and accidentally crushing them when he had to stop for a rest, then had to stay there for another ten minutes or so to avoid breathing in too much of the mummy dust he'd just created...

I also ran another Call of Cthulhu game at my friendly local games cafe, Meeple Perk. This one was a repurposed scenario originally written for Vampire: the Masquerade some 20 years ago. It only got half-played at the time due to one of the players bringing their friend along to the game; a friend I didn't know who was a total rules-lawyer jerk who wouldn't stop complaining about all the mistakes I was making and how he would've done it much better seeing as he knew everything about V:tM (yes, that guy). I ditched Vampire entirely at that point because I was still too young and inexperienced to tell him where to get off and couldn't face trying to run the rest of my very Gothic, Durham-based (and heavily story-telling-based, as opposed to a "I iz powerful vampire wot can kill everythingz - worship me!" slaughter-fest) campaign with him in the room.

I'm pretty certain this particular scenario may have a slight curse attached to it, though, as things didn't exactly go smoothly to start with on the CoC run either, but by the end it all came together. Several decades of experience and teaching later, I think I can pretty much cope with most things gamers can throw at me, even if it takes a second or two to get my bearings. And there was a lot of laughter, so Breath of Angels is now part of my convention game roster for the next 12 months (at least). I'm not retiring After Dark just yet, but Scritch, Scratch is definitely out to pasture now.

I like to write a new scenario for conventions every year. As I move more into editing, I feel the need to keep my writing skills honed and to create my own thing, rather than purely developing and polishing other people's work. Having that impetus to create a thing for a specific purpose really helps, as well - there's no: "Oh, well, I don't really have time because X, so I won't bother." Because, as happened with this game, it's often more a case of: "Oh, floof, the game's next week? I thought I still had a fortnight to get something prepped! Write, woman! Write like the wind!"

(Which is where having extensive research notes on everything I've ever done also comes in really handy.)

And finally, I started editing a big campaign book for Blue Rose - the last of the big freelance projects still outstanding before I go pretty-much full-time at Chaosium in June. I like working on Blue Rose - the inclusivity and richness of the world is really appealing and the Green Ronin folks are always fun to work with.

So, there we go: another month done and dusted, even if the write-up was a little bit late in coming. Tune in next month (quite probably, knowing me) for what I got up to in May...

The Twelve Months of Blogmas

So, for once, it looks as if I'll actually successfully complete a New Year's Resolution. Yes, I have indeed managed to produce a blog post for every month of the impossibly long year of 2018.

Bearing that it mind, it seemed sensible to do a round up of what I've worked on over the last twelve months. I can't tell you about all of it, but I can drop subtle hints for some of the stuff that I'm not at liberty to mention properly. I used to do an annual summary a few years ago when I worked for Modiphius just to remind myself of the break-neck pace of production on Achtung! Cthulhu, but I haven't done it in a while, so it will be interesting to see if this year was indeed as busy as it felt.

So, Call of Cthulhu and other Chaosium stuff first (in no particular order):

Scritch Scratch (Free RPG Day; published)
Masks of Nyarlathotep (published)
Call of Cthulhu Starter Set (published)
Terror Australis (published)

Children of Fear (in the production queue)
Secrets of Berlin (in the production queue)
Shadows Over Stillwater (in the production queue)
A Cold Fire Within (in the production queue)
Flotsam and Jetsum (the next organised play campaign; in the production queue)

Cthulhu By Gaslight for 7th Ed (we're still beavering away on this one)
Sekkrit Projekt 1 (no, I'm not telling you anything more than that; in development)
Sekkrit Projekt 2 (and I'm not telling you anything else about this one, either; in development)
Sekkrit Projekt 3 (short scenarios taking only 1-2 hours; in development and testing)

Women in Tabletop Gaming Month interviews (on the Chaosium blog)
After Dark convention scenario (which does now have a player-awarded subtitle, but I'm not saying it here as it sort of gives the game away)

Others:

Aldis: City of the Blue Rose (Green Ronin; published)
Shadowtide: A Blue Rose novel (game stat editing; Green Ronin; available electronically)
Other Blue Rose editing (nope, nothing to see here... yet!)
Holding On: the Troubled Life of Billy Kerr (playtesting, rules proofing; Hub Games; published)

Conventions:

OrcaCon
Mini-Kraken
UK Games Expo
Free RPG Day
Continuum
Necronomicon Discord Charity Fundraiser
Kraken
AetherCon
Steampunks in Space
Dragonmeet

(Funny - I could have sworn we were at more than that...)

Things definitely began picking up pace towards the end of the year after I finally managed to finish Children of Fear, although most of this year has been editing, proofing and development work. I am getting to write some new material for Cthulhu by Gaslight, so it's nice to have that change of pace again from persnickety error spotting (which I am pretty good at, by all accounts - probably something to do with reading DNA sequences manually from X-ray films and automated sequencer printouts in a previous life).

There were also a few podcast appearances (The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, Geeks of Cascadia and the Miskatonic University Podcast), as well as a short series of videos Mike and I did for Masks of Nyarlathotep over on Chaosium's YouTube channel. There were a couple of other podcasts who asked if I was available (usually!), but then I never heard anything more. Ah, well.

I also had to turn down involvement in several projects this year. It's not something I like doing - as a freelancer, there's always the fear of famine rather than feast when it comes to work, meaning it's a real struggle to resist over-commitment - but there really are only so many hours in the day, especially as I also delivered four historical embroidery talks and one all-day embroidery workshop, all of which take an inordinate amount of preparation for either an hour's talk or six hours of stitching (writing up requirements lists, producing worked examples and preparing take-home instructions).

So, yes, turns out it *was* something of a busy year after all. And next year is shaping up to be more of the same, starting with a launch party for the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set next weekend, followed closely by our first full convention of the new year in a couple of week's time (OrcaCon), where I'll be running two games and appearing on five panels!

It's also been a very rewarding year in terms of feedback from players and Keepers and the ongoing development of strong working relationships. I've met some wonderful people, run some very entertaining games, played in some very entertaining games, and visited some wonderful places in order to do so. I see no reason why 2019 won't bring more of the same, and I sincerely hope it does.

And with that, dear reader, I wish you a safe and prosperous New Year. Be good or, as my late Great Aunt used to say, if you can't be good, be careful. (To which I add: or just don't get caught!)

A Game For All Seasons

September has now sauntered off the calendar and into history, so it's time for a blog post celebrating what I got up to during its blustery, somewhat sodden days.

It was mostly a month of working on projects I can say very little about, three of which are for Chaosium, Inc., and one for Green Ronin (a late entry that sneaked in just under the wire on the final weekend.) There's been very little writing going on, because all of the jobs were on the editorial side of things: actual editing, proofing, art direction, and development.

There was also a fair bit of research reading happening for a project slated for sometime next year. Although it's unlikely I'll be doing much writing for it, I'm probably going to be its lead, so I need to know enough about it to choose the right authors and create an outline that will be interesting and useful in game terms. But again, not much I can really tell you about that one as of this moment. (Although some of you may well be able to guess what it is, seeing as I publicly volunteered myself for it several years ago.)

A goodly bit of the month was gearing up for a LARP. Set during World War II, Wing and a Prayer followed a day in the lives of WAAF plotters at a World War I aerodrome pressed into service after the destruction of that area's main base. (And yes, it did take place on an actual World War I aerodrome: Stow Maries in Essex.) Most of the characters would be women (at least two-thirds), while the male characters would be pilots in the RAF responding to what the plotters were getting up to. Indeed, the tagline for the event was "A Woman's Place is in the War."

I'd signed up for the LARP precisely because it was about putting women front and centre of the experience, with the men attending very much as the supporting cast. Although many LARPs now are at gender parity in terms of attendance, focusing on the war time experiences of women doing such a challenging job was, as far as I knew, a unique opportunity.

Costuming proved to be a bit of a so-and-so, and caused much anxiety. Trying to get hold of surplus women's RAF costume (not quite authentic, but near enough for a weekend's LARPing) was difficult anyway, but getting it in anything other than small dress sizes proved to be impossible, leaving many of us feverishly sewing two skirts together or inserting extra panels to get things to fit. Given the unfortunate presence of the "costume police" at many LARP events, I was doubly stressed, as I've been on the end of various withering comments over the years about not having sufficiently accurate clothing and props. And then you have the whole brigade who don't think plus-sized women should LARP anyway because they're fat and look ugly in costume, spoiling it for all the beautiful people in their immaculate cosplay outfits.

I love to see cosplay, but to me it isn't LARPing - not on its own, at least. If you want to really go for it in the costume stakes at a LARP because that's what you enjoy - wonderful! Just accept that not everyone has the figure, time, skills or money to be able to do the same. It should be the roleplaying that's the most important element, but some people seem to forget that at times...

Anyway, thankfully, the costume police were noticeably absent from the event, and the hodge-podge nature of everyone's costumes lent it an even more authentic "make do and mend" air, completely appropriate for a World War II event. Everyone looked wonderful, and the black and white pictures produced by the event photographer quite often make you double-take as to whether they're genuine period ones or not.

 And as for the refs: they really knocked it out of the park. Not only had they gone to the trouble of building a working oscilloscope to act as a Chain Home radar screen, they'd wired the entire barn so people were in radio communication with other spotting stations (NPCs feeding us the necessary information) and with the pilots in the various RAF flights. The pilots, once scrambled, were in a separate room carrying out their sorties on what was basically a flight simulator, with the outcome of dogfights handled by a card mechanic, with the decks stacked depending on how well we plotters had done our jobs.

It was a tremendously immersive, exhausting and remarkable LARPing experience, very much rooted in the routine of being a plotter and having to handle the tremendous amount of information that was being thrown at you during a raid. We actually managed to break two bells, we were so enthusiastic when scrambling the pilots!

I'd always admired the plotters and the work they'd done (my Great Aunt's best friend was one), but having had just the tiniest fraction of their experience, under completely controlled conditions, made me realise just what an astounding job they did, under great pressure and with very little training. Watching the blokes come in during the final raid (100+ bombers heading for London during the Blitz) when it was all hands on deck, and seeing the realisation dawning on them of just what we'd been doing all weekend, and the admiration that followed, was quite something.

Bleed can be an issue after LARPing, particularly the emotionally-charged, Nordic style ones, but this event seems to have affected people in a very profound way; I suspect because of the intensity of the experience and the camaraderie it built amongst the various plotter shifts as we all pulled together to make the best of it. Hiding under a table during a blackout as German bombers thundered over head, unsure if we were their target, someone took hold of my hand in the darkness and asked if I was alright. It was a small moment, but very moving, and unlike anything I'd had before in all my years of LARPing. (The refs had rigged cameras in the Ops Room so they could keep an eye of everyone and make sure they were coping with their duties, and that moment of us all taking shelter caught them completely by surprise - they'd not expected it, but it just added to the whole atmosphere immensely.)

As a gamer, I have been lucky enough to play with some wonderful people and witness the creativity and passion of a talented bunch of folks exploring and evolving their hobby. Some of these experiments don't always work, but when they do, they are really exceptional. Not all gaming has to be profound and meaningful - there needs to be room for the lighthearted, frivolous and escapist as well - but the fact that we have access to a game for all seasons, depending on our moods and needs,  is one of the reasons our hobby is so very special.

The Merry Month of May

Blimey, here we are again and, like the rest of this year, May sort of went tearing by in a bit of a blur.

I'm happy to report that the first pass edit on the Aldis City Sourcebook went off to Joe Carriker (Blue Rose's lovely line developer) a little over a week ago and it's full of fun, interesting and useful stuff for your Blue Rose game.

Although I've played the game before (as I mentioned in January's post), I've not actually taken the plunge and narrated it yet. Now, after quite a few requests from gaming friends, I'm about to put that right at this year's Continuum games convention. It can be a bit intimidating sometimes to run something you've worked on, particularly in an editorial capacity, as people can expect you to be an expert on it. Because I hop around systems quite a bit with my job, that isn't always the case - I'm an expert for as long as I need to be for that given project and then I have to go and be an expert on something else. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing what the Continuum crowd make of it, and as long as we tell an entertaining story together, I'll be happy.

It looks as if the second volume of the Miskatonic University short story anthology I submitted a piece to is going to go ahead now, so more information on that when I get it. I'm really pleased the story should see the light of day as I had fun writing it. And there are a lot of other interesting looking stories in there, too!

We were lucky enough to go to a new mini-gaming break at Schloss Neuhausen, Germany, in May as well. The schloss is home to October's Kraken convention, a small but perfectly formed retreat where you get fed and watered to a ludicrous extent in very mellow and beautiful surroundings while gaming, socialising and learning to throw axes (yes, really). There were no axes at the mini version, but there was copious cake and beer, and an opportunity for me to test out my new Call of Cthulhu convention scenario. (As Scritch Scratch is this year's Free RPG Day scenario, I thought I'd better write a new one!)

In glorious sunshine on two consecutive mornings, I ran the players through a strange tale inspired by an actual event I attended at a local museum earlier this year as part of their After Dark programme (not uncoincidentally also the name of the scenario). Both sessions went really well, which was a relief as the scenario itself had been quite stubborn in taking shape, meaning that I was still writing it a few days before the convention started. (I also had to pay a visit to one of our local beaches for props for it as well...)

Often at conventions, I don't get a chance to play anything or be anything other than "on" in a professional capacity. What was really lovely about the mini-Kraken was that I did get to play games and just be sociable. As a result, I got to try three games I've been wanting to have a crack at for ages (Tales from the Loop, Ten Candles, and Blades in the Dark) and got to make some lovely new friends. All of the games were great fun, although sitting huddled under multiple blankets in the schloss' freezing undercroft in the pitch dark while slightly tipsy on G&Ts listening to the mice scrabbling about in the darkness behind you definitely made Ten Candles a particularly memorable experience!

A large proportion of May was dedicated to getting everything ready for Chaosium's contribution to Women in Tabletop Gaming Month. With 18 interviews in total (a 90% response rate!), the series highlights the contributions women have made to Chaosium over its lifetime, from established names to those at the beginning of their gaming industry careers. As well as promoting the stellar work these women are doing, I hope it also encourages other women to get involved as content creators, be that as artists, writers, editors, graphic designers, or in layout and production - all of which are essential roles in getting games out there for people to enjoy. As I'm writing this is June, I know the first two interviews have gone live, and I'm going to cheat and say you can find them over on the Chaosium blog.

And I can finally say that Masks of Nyarlathotep is on its way to the printer gods and should be out in pdf form some time in July. I may have mentioned before how pretty it is and there's a whopping amount of play contained in its two volumes. It'll be good to see it in actual physical print come the autumn. I hope people like what we've done with it, but regardless, it was a tremendous project to work on in terms of experience.

I don't doubt I've forgotten something I was going to tell you, but perhaps I'll have remembered by the end of the month! So, until next time...

In Like a Lion

Once again, it's been a busy month here in the writing hovel. As you can see, I didn't quite manage to get two blog posts out in April, largely due to spending the last weekend of it in Prague with my lovely husband, Richard, on a belated 20th wedding anniversary holiday.

Prague was wonderful, and so inspiring. Steeped in myth and legend, the city gave rise to the golem and was home to loads of hidden alchemy laboratories during the reign of Rudolf II. We even got to visit one that was rediscovered during massive flooding in the city in around 2000 - great fun, and pretty spooky!

Along with its history, Prague has some amazing buildings. Not only are many of them painted with fabulous designs or trompe l'oeil, a lot have Art Noveau decorations, or just out-and-out odd things (plaques and statues) mounted on them - like the one we found of a duck-billed snake! The city is also home to two buildings containing beautiful libraries: the Klementinum and the Strahov Monastery. Although they won't let you into the libraries for a good rummage, you can gaze upon their magnificence, and the Klementinum tour also involves climbing several spiral staircases and rickety wooden stairs (almost ladders in some sections) to get to the top of the astronomical tower, where there are fantastic views over the city.

Another absolute gem was hidden in the grounds of the Petrin, Prague's hilltop park, complete with mini Eiffel Tower from the city's 1891 Exposition. Of course, I'm talking about the Magical Cavern, home of artist Reon Argondian's gloriously over-the-top artwork. If you want some seriously psychedelic and mind-bending images to inspire your scenarios (especially Dreamlands-based ones), take a peep at his gallery... As the first tourist attraction we went to in Prague, this place really got our trip off to a flying start!

Apparently, one of the things I said most over the weekend was "Oo, this would make an awesome setting for a scenario!" Perhaps one day...

In work terms, though, April continued to see progress on Masks of Nyarlathotep. It's going to be a whopper, and no mistake. As I mentioned in the last blog post, going through such a luscious book with a fine-tooth comb is a long, slow process and even then, there will be things we miss. As a friend of mine says, books aren't so much released as escape into the wild when you turn your back for a moment. Still, hopefully we've caught most of the big things!

Besides that, I'm back on editing duty for Green Ronin. At the moment, I'm working on the Aldis City Sourcebook, and it's always a pleasure to dive back into the world of Aldea. The book details the city of the Blue Rose and its eclectic inhabitants, as well as providing some interesting new mechanics to support game play in the world (as discussed in Joe's article) and a very sweet scenario by the wonderful Steve Kenson. My official title as editor on the Blue Rose gaming line is "Benevolent Dictator in Chief," a role I take very seriously indeed! The book is shaping up very nicely, and I'll be continuing to work on it through May.

Sadly, the Kickstarter I mentioned in the last blog post didn't fund. It's always disappointing when interesting projects don't come to fruition, but people only have so much time and money to devote to supporting creators, so it's understandable that not everything is going to get made - at least not yet. Which is what makes it even more frustrating when projects do fund, you submit your work, and never hear another thing from the developer, only vague rumours years later that you have to follow up on the campaign's public announcements page (and even then, you still have no idea what's really going on).

This brings me back to something I've mentioned before, and certainly touched on in the #AprilTTRPGMaker thread over on Twitter: communication is key. Yes, things go wrong, and real life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of projects that are often run parallel to people's day jobs, but not talking to people about those problems, pretending they're not happening, or just disappearing altogether, helps no one. On the whole, people are very understanding and forgiving if you keep them informed about what's going on. But not knowing? That just leads to mistrust in the long run, and makes people very wary of supporting you again in the future.

But, on a happier note: the sun is shining and it's time for a cup of tea. May promises to be another busy month as we gear up for the start of the summer convention season and trying to get various projects finished off and back to the publishers. Now all I need to do is get my new convention scenario written...