Timothy Ferguson's Blog, page 77

February 2, 2014

Final update for the vanilla covenant page

IMG_6924Two months after I planned to finish the project, I’m drawing a line under what’s been done. It’s over 10 000 words of starter information for new troupes,  including setting, statistics, mystery initiations and plot hooks. The piece is coherent, although it could be expanded in several ways, and underdevelops the Welsh material.


I’m glad its finished for this year – I’m ready to move onto other writing.


 


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Published on February 02, 2014 05:42

January 11, 2014

More updates to the vanilla covenant page

So, Another thousand words on the vanilla covenant page.


The additions for today are another map of Bristol, some myths about the islands, and the story of the nymph of the River Severn. I also set up the next update, which is a Mystery path based on the Cult of Nodens.


My free time is really constrained right now, so I’m thinking this work needs to move toward conclusion. The easiest way of closing it out, I believe is to



finish the Cult of Nodens.
describe Southern Wales.
set up plot hooks from the material.

You can see here I was angling toward writing The Patient Art, which is the Aquam  supplement I’ve been musing on for a year or so. I still want to do it, but I think I should get the vanilla covenant finished first. The Patient Art is too big an idea to fit in with this project, as it would dwarf the other sections.


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Published on January 11, 2014 05:48

January 3, 2014

Quick post: skipping a week

Sorry gang, I have a week filled with medical diagnostics. So, no update on the covenant project for now.


2013. I’m so glad you are gone. Seriously. I thought the whole slow torture with Amber thing was terrible, but then you had my doctor calling me three days before Christmas saying “You know those turning 40 baselines? We need some more tests.”


So, 2014…time to kick it up a notch because otherwise I’m giving up on the Gregorian Calendar entirely and getting my years somewhere else. The Mayans have some brand new years, apparently. So, yes. Quality control 2014! Quality control!


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Published on January 03, 2014 05:42

December 27, 2013

Ars Magica : The Harvest

Skokloster Castle

Skokloster Castle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


I’ve been collecting books for years. In part this is because I’m a librarian, and so I’m trained to see the value in written things. In part it’s because I’m an Ars Magica author, and so I have a tendency to pick things up and think :”One day I may need this for a book on X.” The problem is that crunch time has come. My library is expanding at a rate that makes it useless as a writing tool.  As evidence, I cite the shelf of books my wife and I bought in England three years ago. All of them were selected because they are basically pure Ars source material. Since I came home, I’ve not opened a single one.  Too much other material to be going on with.


And so, time to weed. This is a library term (although younger librarians may prefer the more politically-correct “deselect”).


Some of my books are simply going to go to the charity shop, and many are just going to go in the bin. There’s another library secret: we kill more books than you’d dream possible. Someone needs to be the undertaker for books, and giving them to charity when we know they are worthless is just spineless. The rest are going to be sifted for use before being weeded or added to my small list of reference books which I’m keeping. Time for my library to end one cycle of its life.


Time for a harvest.


The plan is to assess and harvest at least one book a week.  That gets me nowhere near my target for discarding, but I presume some of the books will be of only middling use, or will be so full of useful material they will graduate to reference.


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Published on December 27, 2013 23:37

December 17, 2013

A quick update on the Vanilla Covenant Project

IMG_6686It’s still fermenting away on its own page. New this week: complete stats for the other three Companion level characters. Next week I’ll be skipping for the holidays, then returning with some grog kits, and the beginning of the serious folklore work. You might think the 5 000 words of folklore you see there now is pretty impressive, but no – Ben has sent me some cool stuff, and I’m working on sources of my own, so I see the whole thing topping 30 000 words by the time I’m done.


One change in plans: I’m not at all interested in doing the senior magi now. If you’d like to do them and have them added in, you go for it. Maybe in time I’ll get the fun bits done and come back around to the idea of doing the magi? For now, though, they are no longer included in the project.


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Published on December 17, 2013 20:22

December 7, 2013

Stats up for the autocrat over on the vanilla covenant page, and an odd image I discovered on my hard drive

So, the vanilla covenant project is moving forward again: stats for specialists this and next week.


Also, I found this on my hard drive while I was cleaning out.  I’m guessing I did it before the associated book came out?


Rcolour


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Published on December 07, 2013 05:24

November 9, 2013

Graphic Novels MOOC interview

CoverI was interviewed about a MOOC I was studying, and the interview has just been published. It’s at the tail end of this bio piece about my lecturer.


http://www.westword.com/2013-10-24/news/william-kuskin-university-of-colorado/


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Published on November 09, 2013 23:12

November 3, 2013

Vanilla is everywhere because it is delicious

IMG_6098Over on the Ars Forum, people have been suggesting we don’t have enough material for new players, and so I’ve decided to write some material which is based on making the obvious design choices. It’s about a covenant which is a castle on a hill by a faerie forest. It’s in Summer, and has senior magi. This simple beginning material is my project for National Game Design month. If you’d like to add material, please comment!


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Published on November 03, 2013 06:53

September 25, 2013

Four weeks ago, when Amber died: a minicomic for Comic Books and Graphic Novels (via Coursera)

An explanation for why the blog has been so quiet of late, and a rough draft for my graphic novel essay.


Cover

Cover


Page 1

Page 1


Page 2

Page 2


Page 3

Page 3


Page 4

Page 4



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Published on September 25, 2013 05:05

August 12, 2013

Go Play Brisbane August 2013 – Sesion One

In the first session I played Lady Blackbird. We did some character generation, and my take was this:


 


Rodriguez the Space Ninja


Silence (Movement, Attacks, About Motives)


Destroying Things (Precision, In Person, Retrotech)


Gadgets (Improvised, Retrotech, Stolen)


Keys:


Impatience with frivolity


Desire to perform a single, decisive action which resolves situations.


Secrets:


One Perfect Movement


Strangely Relevant Ancient Wisdom


 


We played a pirates in space game, which transformed into a heist game after the opening credits, which rolled as my ninja leapt from the hull of the exploding Navy cutter he’d just sabotaged, to float serenely through space before colliding with our ship’s view screen.


My ninja had a heap of fun, mostly by suggesting truly horrible things which would resolve the situation at a single blow, only to be told be the captain that this was now “Plan B”. He was a little taciturn, but he did get to say “Let’s steal enough explosives to blow up Disneyland.” which shows how far the game devolved when we needed to rescue our favourite Dive Bar (Handsome Jack Dive - Proprietor) from the Megacorp. In Hindsight I think Rodriguez and Strax are brothers in philosophy.


Thanks to the other players and GM. It was a great introduction to a light and fast system.


In session 2 I ran a Victorian Era Steampunk Ars Magica reskin, which I’ll be publishing here later in the month. As a teaser, though, there was a +3 bonus for doing anything in a stereotypically English way, which led to the magus with Curse of Circe bawling out the French swine who opposed him, and the group using the horn that provides any drink in any quantity to cross a crevasse in a Welsh coal mine on a lake of tea.


 


 


 



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Published on August 12, 2013 06:14