Gaming

For those of you who are unfamiliar with role-playing games (RPG), a simple search on Google will give you many answers. I characterize it as interactive story-telling games with elements of murder mystery dinners, improv comedy, and board games all mixed together. As of this writing, I’d recommend the RPG page on Wikipedia for an in-depth look at RPGs in laymen’s terms.

If you know what RPGs are, you might be interested in conventions where you can have an experience similar to that of a kid in a candy store. Perhaps the best known con (as conventions are known) is GenCon. For more information see the GenCon Website. I got to go again in 2010, but that time as a helper at the Cubicle 7 booth. Cubicle 7 is Savage Mojo’s print partner, and SM is the company I’ve been doing a lot of work with over the last couple of years. See below for more regarding that. In 2011, I’ll be there as a Savage Mojo representative in SM’s own booth in Entrepreneur’s Alley.

Since some time in late 2008, I became a playtester for a setting, Relic, in Suzerain by Savage Mojo (formerly Talisman Studios). I’d been part of two gaming groups that met regularly. One of my colleagues stumbled across an opportunity and we took it. Since my organizational side wouldn’t bear any more delays, I volunteered to co-direct the sessions. We tested a published adventure toolkit  (AKA module), Bitter Fumes. We created our own prelude in the setting, of which I ran two duplicate sessions at GenCon Indy 2009 (Intro to Relic). Somewhere along the route to getting things done, my previously mentioned colleague and I worked out that I’d direct solo for the rest of the test. One thing led to another, and I was offered to write the next adventure toolkit, The Ratten Wakes, which is was meant to be second in a set of three books. I finished it in September of 2009. After several unforeseeable delays, was scheduled for release in January of 2011, but then was killed altogether. I’d also been writing Return of the Ratten, the final book in that series, and working with the company owner to retool the system rules. See my writing page for more information.

Game Demonstrations

As part of Savage Mojo and our own Obatron Productions, I’ve demonstrations with as many local and semi-local game companies as I could as well as at GenCon. My husband and I have participate multiple times as part of Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s (PEG) Savage Saturday Night. If we get back to doing that, it will be added to my calendar.

The premise for Suzerain games had been:

You’ll play a member of a licensed relic-hunting party, but there’s much more to it than playing in the dirt. Who knows what mysteries await, how structurally sound the newly discovered ruins are, what in the darkness lurks, or who happens to be coming with a knife at your back?

Bring a d20 set, if you have one, and a pencil. I’ll have pre-generated character sheets representing all the published races. Play a fury – a werewolf-like character who can regenerate to heal quickly, a dwarf – not the traditional kind, but one that is an elemental race with the ability to walk through stone walls and plunge into the earth, an aurora – a light-manipulating humanoid who can jump from shadow to shadow just by concentrating on doing so, or a human who walks a world filled with magic and mayhem.

With our own games, you could be anything from an amphibious humanoid in Tunse’al to a spirit who still protects the world in which she died in Retribution.