Faint Pulse -- Yet Signs of Life

No, wait -- don't go! Your initial assumption that I'd abandoned this blog for dead was hasty and incorrect!

I'm still here. OK, yeah, there was a hiatus, a stepped away for a bit. In my defense, the world seems to have no shortage of existential threats to share, so...

OK, so, with that said -- I wanted to share a little list of updates and to-do items that lie ahead for me. Each of these will likely have a post that elaborates on the details. 

• Last September, I released my first, official RPG publication -- a third-party scenario for the Mothership RPG!
• Next on my writing agenda is to rewrite an adventure I recently penned, playtest it a second time, and then lay it out and publish it.
• After that, I want to draft and playtest a rules-lite cyberpunk hack.
• Somewhere amid all of the above, I aim to launch an Instagram account for my game publishing brand, Abhorrent Vaccuum Games -- or maybe adapt my personal account to somehow do double-duty? We'll see what works out. 

Anyway, here goes a new attempt at keeping things active here. Fingers crossed, more to come!

All the Matrix's Many Faces: Cyberpunk RPGs

The cyberpunk genre always lends itself so naturally to an RPG context. I guess it's not too surprising -- there are lots of gameable aspects to it. And, to be honest, I'd be surprised if there was some established genre that wasn't being mined for content by game designers. It walks that edge between a dark, near-future dystopianism that's very relatable to a modern audience and far-side, high-tech science-fiction -- and walks it in a way that feels very natural and is invariably appealing. And, of course, liberally peppering it all with a hearty dose of the film noir aesthetic will only make it even more appealing to a gamer's palate. Multiple great tastes that taste great together: it's like a role-playing sundae. (In which case, what's the butterscotch? The gritty, urban landscape? Certainly, though, the cherry at the top has a monofilament stem.)

I decided that, instead of doing another installment of my prior RPG Tasting Menu series, I would share a few, quick thoughts on the cyberpunk RPGs that I've played over the years, then focus some future posts on a connected project that I've been working on.