The Dark Before the Dawn

Update: New episode of my Kin of Cerberos RPG online.

Another session of my RPG campaign Kin of Cerberos was played, and the story is once again online for your reading pleasure. This marks the finale of the current 'season', which took almost exactly a year to play. (Six sessions isn't a huge amount for a year, but it's a decent number for our group, I guess.) It also marks the beginning of at least a brief hiatus, during which I hope to try running something fresh. As I said in an earlier post, I've been running this campaign exclusively for three years now, and that's a long time.

To Ashes

Update: New episode of my Kin of Cerberos RPG online.

We played another session of my current RPG campaign. I've been running this game for three years now, even if sessions have at times been infrequent at best. That's a long campaign by our group's standards, the longest since I've kept a record of my games. (I don't remember for how many sessions my Dragonlance game back in the nineties ran. I doubt it was much longer than this, though.) Perhaps it's time for a break soon, time to try something a little different, if only for a few sessions. But not before a climactic ending to the current story arc...

The summary of this session is available online, like usual. It's not very long this time, as I didn't have much time to plan for the game. (Well, I had a couple of months, really, but I was too lazy to start planning before we actually settled on a date, and then it was too late.)

Crime Scenes

Update: New episode of my Kin of Cerberos RPG online.

We played another session of my RPG campaign Kin of Cerberos. Not much to say about it, really. The story can be found online, as usual.

The Tell-Tale Hearts

Update: New episode of the Kin of Cerberos RPG online

Yup, after another break of several months, I finally ran another session of my current RPG campaign. Although a fairly simple scenario overall, there were some pretty big plot twists!

We've been trying to tweak the combat system, but I'm still not happy with it. We had one fight scene, not even a particularly tough one, but it must have eaten up half the time we played. Honestly! Ok, we spent some time reading up on and discussing rule details, perhaps partly cause it had again been a while since the last session, but still... I really don't know how to make the system lighter but still provide enough variety to keep the fights interesting...

Welcome to the Benverse

Update: Added (the beginnings of) a Benverse Encyclopedia to the RPG section

Many of my RPGs in recent years have been set in the modern day, including my current campaign, Kin of Cerberos, and past games New Angel Evolution and Beyond the Bridge: The House. I didn't design these settings to be compatible to start with, and indeed there are some elements in their backgrounds that are quite different. However, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it would, in fact, be better if the games, and possible future games set in the modern day (or recent past/near future), took place in a shared universe. Not only would it make crossover scenarios possible, but I'd have a wealth of ready material, characters etc. that I could potentially use in future games.

So, as of today, my past and current modern day games officially take place in the same world, which I'm jokingly referring to as the Benverse, for lack of a better name. This move should actually have very little bearing on my current campaign. The characters will be aware that a nuclear bomb exploded in Alaska in 2003 (as told in my earlier campaign, New Angel Evolution), but that's pretty much it. To help bring these game worlds together, I've written the beginnings of an 'encyclopedia' that describes crucial concepts, events and characters from the various games.

I should carefully read through all my old plot synopses, to see if anything needs retconning, as the campaigns weren't initially designed to be compatible. But there shouldn't be anything major, I think. The greatest differences are probably in the backgrounds that I'd thought of in my head, rather than the details given to the players. You can't tell an audience too much, after all. You've got to retain a feeling of mystery.

So what is the Benverse like? It is an alternate Earth, very much like our own, but with some crucial differences. Namely, the existence of various supernatural forces. It also follows a different timeline from ours, including, for example, the nuclear explosion mentioned above.

As I've made clear in my blog, I've been reading a lot of comics recently, both from Marvel and DC. I'd be lying if I said this had nothing to do with my desire to have a larger, shared universe for my games. But the fact is, it makes sense, for reasons I described above. So far I've run, and am running, too few games for there to be much interesting crossover in them, but who knows what the future might bring?

The Apple Tree Strikes Back

It was kind of spooky just now to look out of my window and see white petals falling from the apple tree in the wind. Not enough to fill the world and transport me to an alternate reality, like in yesterday's Kin of Cerberos session, thankfully. There's a fair amount of white on the ground around the tree, though.

They said my X-Arcade might ship today. I hope it will. That way it could possibly make it here by my birthday on Friday.

The Apple Tree

Update: New episode of the Kin of Cerberos RPG online

We played another session of my Kin of Cerberos RPG campaign today, and the story 'synopsis' is now online. The episode is titled The Apple Tree. The story was inspired by the fact that there is an apple tree in full bloom just outside my window. It's a strange ghost story, and fun to run, even though it suffered some from being designed, once again, at the very last minute. Not much more to add.

The Hunt Is On

Update: Latest episode of my Kin of Cerberos RPG online.

An actual update this time. We finally got around to playing my Kin of Cerberos RPG campaign again, and the story of the latest session is now online. As RPG sessions go, this was hardly one of the most complex. But the main thing is that we got started again, and the seeds of a new, interesting storyline have been sown. This was the tenth session, in fact, which makes it my longest running game since my Xena RPG Triodia. And it looks like this will be my top campaign for some time to come.

I used paper figures for the first time, and was fairly pleased with them. While they're not as impressive as proper metal of plastic miniatures, of course, they're easy and cheap to make, and I'm sure I'll be using them more in the future.

Testing... One Two Three...

It's been a while, once again. Nothing new. Ben comes and he goes. Right now I'm setting up an environment for writing and publishing these pages directly on the web server. This'll make updating easier. But there's one or two hiccups still. Except future updates sooner than a year from now.

As for news, there's not much. My adventures in the world of operating systems took a new turn, as I bought a new MacBook last summer. I've been very happy with it, and Mac OS X, for the most part. No, it's not exactly all Free Software, but it's a hell of a better than Windows. And being a Unix system, OS X is quite compatible with much of the Free Software scene.

Update: I think I've got the hiccups pretty much sorted out. As a Christmas bonus I've added a new episode of my Kin of Cerberos RPG campaign, as well as two new video game reviews, Guilty Gear and Viewtiful Joe.

Spring Cleaning

As promised, I've returned to running a roleplaying game after a longish break. The campaign, called Kin of Cerberos has it's own page under the RPG Resources section, including background information about the setting and the stories of the game sessions played so far. Still waiting to finish a couple of video games so I can write reviews of them. I've been too busy with other stuff lately to get back to playing them...

Well, spring in Finland is still quite far off, but I managed to clean my room. And it needed cleaning, I can tell you... I even scrubbed my keyboard, which was covered with brown muck... And nothing much else to say. I'm leading a boring life, as usual.