Power Sources

OK, so I can't seem to stop talking about how cool my new Extended Mission campaign is. Sorry, I'm just really excited. After 25+ years of wanting to run an all robot game its finally come together and it rocks.

I wanted to do one last post on the subject before talking about something else. I've put together a collection of a few of the inspirations and sources that have influenced this campaign and I wanted to share it was everyone. If you find it difficult to see how some of these sources relate to each other or the game idea...awesome. That is how a good Barking Alien campaign works. Place twenty vaguely related concepts into a blender and press purée.

Books:
I, Robot, Inside The Robot Kingdom, The Robot Book*, The Velvet Glove.

Films:
2001: A Space Odyssey, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Bicentennial Man, Ghost in the Shell, Hinokio, Iron Giant, R.U.R. , Star Wars (All), WALL*E.

Games:
Eclipse Phase, Metamorphosis Alpha, The Morrow Project, Transhuman Space, Traveller.

Television:
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and SAC: Second Gig, Serial Experiment Lain, Space: 1999, Star Wars: Droids.

Science Programs:
Aftermath: Population Zero, Alien Planet, The Future is Wild, If We Had No Moon, Life After People, Planet Earth

Science Articles, Information and Projects:
Artificial Intelligence, Robonaut, Robots (General Categories, Types and Related Information)

*My father purchased this book for me in 1980 from a used book shop in Upstate New York. It loved it literally to pieces and I have no idea at what point I lost it but I am seriously tempted to purchase time bad boy off ebay.

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In the Windmills of My Mind

Here's a little bit of what's been going on in my life and on my mind since last I was posting regularly.

I have had the pleasure of seeing my nephew more often then I expected and enjoyed every minute of it. He's awesome. Now if he would just hurry up and reach the age where he can understand an RPG rulebook...

I am taking apprenticeship classes to become a professional dog trainer. If I could do anything with my professional life outside of gaming it is this. I just love dogs.

My mention of Ace of Cakes last post reminded me that one of the things I've wanted to do for a very long time was, for my 40th birthday, get Charm City Cakes to do an 'in scale' Green Lantern 'Lantern' cake. Unfortunately, they were not taking orders during or even sometime before and after my birthday. And, you have to place the order 6 months to a year in advance (or at least you did at the time I checked). Damn. Well, there's always 50...

I am currently running two games, one regularly, the other slightly irregularly.

The first is a monthly, year long campaign of Mutants & Masterminds, destined to end this December. Like any true superhero rpg was have a cast of colorfully costumed do-gooders, numerous evil villains and a world conquering high tech organization, time travel, alternate histories, mystical menaces from the past and at the end an alien invasion.

The second and more "whenever we can pull it off" of the two, is a Ghostbusters game run using a homebrewed combo of the original Ghostbuster RPG by West End Games and Memento Mori's very sweet game, InSpectres.

Next year I want to run something else to replace my M&M game and for the life of me I can't decide what. Leading the charge of my idea cavalcade are The Wizarding World (a homebrew Harry Potter universe rpg), the new and ridiculously awesome sounding Eclipse Phase from Catalyst Game Labs, a Western with a just a touch a' steampunk and supernatural stuff to reckon with (system unknown) and maybe, just maybe, Ars Magica.

While I'd really love to get back to my favored gaming genre of Science Fiction/Space Adventure, only Eclipse Phase has really wowed me in the recent wave of SF games to come out. If anyone has any recommendations I'd be happen to listen.

Ok, that's all for now, hopefully you'll see a more regular contribution from me once again.

Later Days,

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