Welcome to July

For those of you following along at home, you may see that most of my RPG efforts have been aimed at Mutants & Marvels for several months now.  And it finally culminated in the release of the print edition last month (of which I have sold exactly one copy so far).

During that period I tried to generate a “community” of sorts on Facebook with a Group devoted to the game.  But, while I have gotten several new likes with the release of 2.0, and a few devoted commenters, the discussion part hasn’t really caught on.  Not sure what I expected, so I’m not all that disappointed about that.  Still, it’s there if anyone is interested.  One thing that the group has served well is as a place where players can ask for rules clarifications.  I actually love those little “How would M&M handle this?” type of things.  So, if you have the game, and something doesn’t seem to jive, feel free to ask on the group.

The unfortunate side-effect of being a one-man show when it comes to writing the stuff I do is that burnout comes on a little quicker.  With a stable of writers, editors, and artists, I could hand parts off to others, and step away for a bit until I need to look at it again.  But, when it’s just me, I get to look at everything.  Basically, what I’m saying is that I am all M&M’d out right now.  So, I think I’m going to just let it sit and marinate for a while, while I work on other stuff.

One thing I have been working on lately is a martial arts micro-game.  I think I may have mentioned it before, but it’s basically a martial arts-themed variation of the idea behind Steve Jackson’s Fantasy Trip games (mostly Melee).  It’s called Fists & Fury, and right now it’s about 8 pages of rules and ideas.  It’s a pretty simple system, with a mechanic that is basically a streamlined version of the mechanics used in M&M (in fact, it started out as a supplement for M&M, but I changed directions with it after I got started).

Initially, it was simply about creating fighters, and pitting them against each other on a hex grid.  But, as I was writing, the RPG gamer in me started wondering how much it would take to expand it into a full-on RPG.  My original idea was to create a second set of rules for that.  But, after I realized that the system in place was so simple that it wasn’t going to be very long in form, I started adding optional rules for things like skills, backgrounds, and whatnot.  And now I am considering creating a complete setting book that you can play F&F in as an RPG.  Something along the lines of Avatar.

I’ve always thought that show was perfect for an RPG.  But, since no one is doing one, and I could never afford to get the rights to do one myself, F&F will just have to be my surrogate.

Anyways, as for actually playing games, my gaming group is on hiatus for the summer, due to family vacations and such.  We plan to start back up in August with my wife’s Dragon Age game.  Still waffling on what character I want to play for that.  But right now I am leaning towards a female city-elf swashbuckler.