A cybernetic attack hippopotamus
All right, luvvies? And hello to the good half of the year, where the clocks have gone forward and I feel like there are actually enough hours in the day to do fun things.
I hope you're reading this in your inbox as normal, and not dredging it out of your junk filter. The move from Substack to Buttondown seems to have gone smoothly from my side, but I'm keeping an eye out for issues. Hopefully the only difference you'll see is the font. If you want to revisit past issues, they now live here.
Coming right up
- Merely Roleplayers: Main House finale and new Studio production incoming
- Super early short story work in progress sneak peek
- Project Bigbird progress and character Roles
- badges mate
Vigil: Cold Snap
is barrelling towards an epic finale on the Merely Roleplayers podcast.
The sixth and final act of Cold Snap goes out on 20 April. Then as usual, we're closing up the Main House to prep for the next Vigil adventure and opening the Studio for a more experimental one-off production.
This second Studio production will be Codename Mosaic: Ghost Recall, a loose follow-up to the fifth Blackshaw Saga production, Codename: Mosaic - though I expect it'll make just as much sense whether you're familiar with the original or not.
The original Codename: Mosaic was a Mission: Impossible/Brosnan-era Bond-style slice of spy-fi silliness, all gadgets and suave seductions and superscience villains, using our usual loose Powered By The Apocalypse roleplaying game rules. Ghost Recall changes up the system, using Mission: Accomplished!, the roleplaying/party game of super-spies and office meetings, by Jeff Stormer. Mission: Accomplished! is a satire of terrible corporate debriefing meetings where everyone vies for credit and tries to avoid blame for whatever went wrong with the project. We recorded Ghost Recall remotely, back in lockdown1, and took the opportunity to narrow down the satire specifically to terrible office meetings held on Zoom. We got a bit meta with it, but it also involves a cybernetic attack hippopotamus, so hopefully there's something for everyone there.
Codename Mosaic: Ghost Recall starts on Tuesday 4 May. Follow Merely Roleplayers however you prefer to get your podcasts.
And now for some unexpected work in progress
because my prose fiction writing mojo came back.
One of the reasons I started Merely Roleplayers in 2017 was that I was struggling to write prose fiction but wanted to keep telling stories somehow. Since then, I've definitely missed writing prose, but I've been creatively fulfilled enough without it. But this week, through some combination of re-reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and musing on possible plots for future Vigil productions, something started bubbling up. An idea for a short story and - more importantly - the will to start writing it.
The Sherrydown office had been gone six months when the house on Greenbank Lane went bad. Bricks and mortar had always been Stuart’s portfolio, but Stuart wasn’t in town any more. He’d been in the Sherrydown office eleven years, had served the community all that time, diligent and never complaining. But the second word got out that the Department was consolidating, Stuart had jumped on the redundancy package like he’d been waiting for it all his life. It had carried him out of town and the rest of the team had followed. All except for Verity.
Merely Roleplayers followers will recognise the setting and lore of Vigil. Having all that established story in the background definitely helps with getting out of my own head and just sitting down and writing.
I'm finding myself treating this project like a skittish bird. Sidling up to it, trying not to let on that I'm paying it much attention, in case it bolts. But I see the shape of it, and the style, and I can look at what I've written so far and I don't dislike it. Still, I'm not setting any goals or making any specific plans for this yet. I'll just follow it and see where it goes, even if that turns out to be nowhere.
Wanna form a band?
Then good news: I'm also making progress on the playtest document for Project Bigbird (working title), the roleplaying game of fierce talent tournaments.
Stripping down the game to its barest minimum is helping a huge amount. I want the finished game to support lots of different settings and stories, but for the purposes of the playtest, I'm limiting it to a band entering a battle of the bands. Without the goal of 'do the bare minimum required to get this thing to the table', I would absolutely get bogged down with all the tools players might need to build their own setting and adapt the shape of the game to work with it. But that's not the bit I should be designing first! There's no point airbrushing a cool wizard on the side panel before I've got the engine working!
Similarly, I'm only including four character Roles in the playtest:
The Star: You’re the centre of every performance. Everyone counts on you to light up the stage - and is rightfully wary of you blowing up their offstage lives.
The Rough Diamond: You’ve got talent in spades, but who will you allow to shape it? Someone in the band believes in you, but when it counts, can you believe in yourself?
The Wild Card: Without you around, it’d be easy to take a battle like this too seriously. When things get heated, you’re there to remind everyone that winning isn’t everything. But how far can that attitude fly when you and your friends are in sight of the big leagues?
The Dark Horse: You’ve been keeping your talent under wraps for a good reason. What could you lose when it finally comes to light? And what will you find that’s worth it?
I want the full game to include offstage, supportive Roles like the Manager and the Cheerleader, but for now? Keep it simple; keep it to members of the band.
With that progress banked, work on Project Bigbird is going on pause for a bit now while I prepare issue 2 of the Sherrydown Enquirer. I need the Enquirer ready to launch soon after the conclusion of Vigil: Cold Snap, so ideally end of April/start of May. As with issue 1 and Vigil: Playtime, issue 2 will give Monster of the Week gaming groups everything they need to play through their own version of Cold Snap, plus some extra Sherrydown lore.
Pointy objects
Left: Rolodex the Seasons is a song off The Scene Between by The Go! Team, and also a phrase that comes into my head any time the weather is acting a little bit out of season, which seems to be a lot of the time. I got this at a gig they played at the Village Underground, if I'm remembering right. They've got a new album on the way that I'm expecting to be the sound of a summer of joyful, fully vaccinated barbecues.
Right: It hasn't come out well on the photo, but the knife has the word 'WORDS' on the blade in a very extra Gothic font. This one's from Life Club - you can see the detail much better on their official photo.
I suppose I should claim the blur in my photo is just me being on-brand. Keep blurring boundaries and scuffing borders! Until next time,
Matt x