Game on!

Tonight we were supposed to have a make-up session for our ongoing D&D campaign.  We're at a pivotal point in the story, where my character (and the party, really) is about to gain a very special weapon to be used in the current war with the forces of evil.  However, real life being what it is, we won't be able to play tonight.  So, we're back on our regular bi-weekly schedule next week.

In the meantime, I and at least two other players (including my wife) are jonesing for adventure!  To that end, the other player who isn't my wife is thinking of starting a new campaign to "fill in the gaps."  I'm excited about this idea.  Probably more than I should be, or thought I would be.  This is the same friend that ran an all-day marathon session of AD&D for his birthday last year.  Now THAT was fun!

Anyways, nothing concrete is in place.  In talking with him, he says he has a lot of ideas, and would need to hash out details of how it would work; what genre, what system, etc...  This, combined with Tim Shorts' Friday Question today, as well as an email from Scott Oden yesterday, has me thinking about gaming.

I think what I would like is a game that is focused on swashbuckling adventure with pirates on flying ships, and evil sorcerors, doing battle with dashing heroes, all for the hands of maidens in distress.  Something akin to Barsoom with magic and D&D races (elves, orcs, halfling, dwarves, etc.).  That would be cool!  Maybe Spelljammer, but confined to a single world.

Of course, I could be currently influenced by the fact that I am trying to finish up my Sword & Planet tale for Scott Oden's planned anthology.

Be that as it may, I have suggested a supplement for the Pathfinder RPG, Distant Worlds.  It looks awesome, and I really like Pathfinder as the successor to D&D 3.5.  I see it as an updated Spelljammer, with a Sword & Planet feel.  Sounds perfect!  Let me roll up my Elven privateer, so that he may clash swords with that dastardly villain, Blackskull!

All over the place...again.

Like many writers, I often battle a form of ADD when it comes to what I am writing.  And right now I am in the throes of yet another fight.  On the one hand, I have a research paper that is due next week.  I am making slow progress on it in the evenings, but it will be a challenge to get it to the required length.  I probably should have picked a better topic.  Oh, well.  Too late now.  And I have also registered for my next class, which starts in October.  I'm apparently a glutton for academic punishment.

Then there's the fact that playing HALO 3 on my xBox inspired me to start reading the novels, which in turn inspired me to start writing some military sci-fi of my own again.  Today, my attention seems to be focused on that.  I have already laid down nearly 500 words, and am only halfway through the scene I want to finish.  I'm taking some old, discarded ideas, and mashing them together to form a new one.  I do that a lot, actually.  But, I guess a lot of writers do.

Yesterday, my writing brain went to some heated social issues, and I felt compelled to write a short essay on one of them.  This essay will only be seen by a few people because it is a volatile subject, and I know that some people I consider close friends would be offended by it.  So, I will keep it mostly private, and chalk it up to ineffectual ranting.

Last night my friend Ken called me (just as I was sitting down to a few minutes of HALO...he has a knack for doing that), and we chatted a bit about writing.  Ken is one of the friends that I am attempting to put together an Sword & Sorcery anthology with, based on an original shared world.  We discussed that briefly, and I had to admit that I hadn't made any progress on it in a while. 

We also discussed ePublishing.  Ken is writing a serial of eShorts about an adolescent vampire that is really good.  But he is having a hard time finding an audience for it.  We're pretty sure that the target demographic (the Twi-hard crowd) has too short of an attention span for serialized stories.  he's considering pulling the stories he has, combining them and finishing the larger story, and republishing it as an eNovel.  I think that's his best bet, honestly.

And speaking of ePublishing, I am finally putting up another story for Kindle.  I had published THE ORC WAY (a sequel of sorts to PEKRA) last night, after laboring over the cover image.  But this morning, I realized I had made a formatting error, and the thing looks awkward in places.  So, I unpublished it, and corrected the errors, as well as made some content edits today.  Tonight, I will rework the cover image, since I am not all that happy with how it turned out, and try to republish it again.  I'll make an announcement tomorrow when it is available.

And finally there is the Sword & Planet story for Scott Oden's newest anthology idea.  I had made great progress on it, going so far as to write a complete synopsis (something I am only now learning how to do), and working through the first couple of scenes.  However, it seemed overly long for the 10k word limit, so I had cut a huge chunk out of the middle.  I sent it to Scott, and asked his opinions.  He said it could be 10k words, if written right.  But his main concern was that it wasn't very S&P, and seemed more like S&S or Alternate History.  It was then that I realized that all of the S&P elements (superscience technology, non-human races) were in the part that I had cut out!  Ugh.  back to the drawing board.  Now I'm not sure if I should rework the story, or just start over with something new.

Over on the personal front, my 17-year old daughter went back to Vegas last weekend.  I already miss her.  But the good news (unrelated to her leaving) is that we are trying to buy a house.  If we get the one we like, I will finally have room for a library and writer's den!  WOOHOO!!

I love Cat people!

No, not that crappy Stephen King movie. I’m talking about the long tradition in Sci Fi of having feline-esque alien races. I have to admit, I have a soft spot for these kinds of species. After a quick internet search, I found a really cool article on this subject over at Tor.com. So, I won’t bother re-listing the ones I know of.

Ok, I will mention David Gerrold’s Morthans (as in “more than human”) from his most excellent novel, Voyage of the Star Wolf, and sequels. Probably among my favorite cat-races.

So, if I’m not going to list them, why bring them up? Because I am making my own, of course! Not that this is something new. I’ve actually made or played cat-races in numerous RPG’s. I remember my very first superhero was for the old DC Heroes RPG back in the 80’s. I made Feline, a dude whose genes were accidentally mixed with his pet cat’s in a freak science accident (pretty standard fare for comics, no?). Feline has been made for every Supers RPG I have ever played to date since then. I’ve also made cat-races for different editions of D&D, and even adapted one from a 3rd party company for use in the Farscape RPG.

And now I am creating one for a Sword & Planet story I am working on. This one is inspired by the cover of the April 1985 issue of Epic Illustrated magazine (which I plan to acquire a copy of ASAP). Cat dudes fencing in John Carter fashion, with a hot, mostly naked princess in the foreground. That’s just freaking cool! Weird alien races are a staple of S&P, and its sister genre, Space Opera (Star Wars, anyone?). And I plan to embrace that tradition.

Speaking of Star Wars, in SW: The Old Republic, if you play a Trooper, your first companion is a Cathar soldier.  He's very cool.  And if you play an Empire character, you eventually go to that planet and get to fight a bunch of them.

Anyways, just thought I‘d throw that out there. So, do you have a favorite alien type? What are they?