Bushed

I had a wonderful time this weekend at AnonyCon in Stamford, CT—very good games, including one based off Three Parts Dead!  I’d had a chance to play the module before (the developer’s a friend as well as a fan) but it was fun to see how people who have read the book, and those who haven’t, participated in the game in different ways.

All of which made me think about putting together something like a series bible for roleplaying purposes.  On the one hand, the world lends itself very well to roleplaying—lots of competing factions, potential danger, scheming, and adventure.  On the other hand, the basic mechanics of Craft aren’t precisely compatible with most magic rulesets I’m aware of.  The closest I can think of would be something like the old Changeling: the Dreaming system, where if you spent your points properly you could make deals with inanimate objects, forge binding compacts with the stars, and stuff like that.  For moment-to-moment magical needs, many systems can approximate the behavior of the Craft in the book, though that approach puts more pressure on the GM to establish flavor.  I like trusting the GM in principle, but in practice I worry that too much GM trust leads to decisions that look arbitrary from a player’s perspective.  We shall see!  Bible-writing is fun whatever the results end up being.  (Don’t quote me on that out of context, please.)

While the Con was fun, I didn’t get to sleep Sunday ’til well after midnight due to the kind of bus-related mishap that will be hilarious about a year from now.  That, plus a weekend’s worth of sleep debt, made for a day much more conducive to staring at walls than to putting fingers on keyboard.  Oddly, in spite of all that I crushed my wordcount goal.  The plot continues to accelerate.  Characters are running into other characters at escape velocity.  I’m intrigued by differences between this book and others I’ve written.  I feel like I’m writing a Smiley book as opposed to, say, a Bourne novel—though we’ll see whether any of that makes it into the final draft.

Whatever happens, after this (and finishing the weird epistolary novel project now steeping in the background) I will be in the mood for consuming, and writing, something lighthearted and wacky.  Anyone save the world from aliens lately?