(no subject)

So I replaced Ed Greenwood (who's at WotC) as the speaker at Phantasm this year. It was a bit odd being at a podium talking about gaming to all comers. I can't tell you exactly what I said, since I mostly babbled in response to questions from the audience.

I also ran Æternal Legends. I brought my A-Game to the session and it was a blast.

After tweaking the base system and the specific rules for so long, playing with the finished product was a great pleasure. One cool thing was watching how the combat system and characters intersect to create some amazing teamwork. Our elf and dwarf each used their Strength Spheres to effectively gang up on the orc lord. One thing I liked was that even if a character misses, they levy a speculative Wits cost to the opponent, helping their allies. The elf's ability to double Defence costs set the bad guy up; the dwarf's ability to bypass armour knocked him down. The gnome got creative with his magical invention power at several points, too.

The magic system was also a bunch of fun; with spells streamlined to three basic power levels and a descriptor-based freeform system, the Wind Witch PC was tossing all kinds of cool things. At one point, she blew a ball of flaming pitch back on the pirate subway that was chasing their rogue magic GO train. Lots of stuff happened, which fit our design goals in that we wanted the game to be *thick* with action.

I sold three copies at the con, which was nice considering that hawking anything was a secondary concern.

Unfortunately I couldn't run Mage today, since I got really sick last night. Apparently I'm now allergic to something in those orange Hallowe'en cookies. I've never felt my throat swelling shut before. It sucks. So I've been kicking back today, relaxing, Halo-ing and pondering my next mess o' words on my current contract.

(no subject)

So I replaced Ed Greenwood (who's at WotC) as the speaker at Phantasm this year. It was a bit odd being at a podium talking about gaming to all comers. I can't tell you exactly what I said, since I mostly babbled in response to questions from the audience.

I also ran Æternal Legends. I brought my A-Game to the session and it was a blast.

After tweaking the base system and the specific rules for so long, playing with the finished product was a great pleasure. One cool thing was watching how the combat system and characters intersect to create some amazing teamwork. Our elf and dwarf each used their Strength Spheres to effectively gang up on the orc lord. One thing I liked was that even if a character misses, they levy a speculative Wits cost to the opponent, helping their allies. The elf's ability to double Defence costs set the bad guy up; the dwarf's ability to bypass armour knocked him down. The gnome got creative with his magical invention power at several points, too.

The magic system was also a bunch of fun; with spells streamlined to three basic power levels and a descriptor-based freeform system, the Wind Witch PC was tossing all kinds of cool things. At one point, she blew a ball of flaming pitch back on the pirate subway that was chasing their rogue magic GO train. Lots of stuff happened, which fit our design goals in that we wanted the game to be *thick* with action.

I sold three copies at the con, which was nice considering that hawking anything was a secondary concern.

Unfortunately I couldn't run Mage today, since I got really sick last night. Apparently I'm now allergic to something in those orange Hallowe'en cookies. I've never felt my throat swelling shut before. It sucks. So I've been kicking back today, relaxing, Halo-ing and pondering my next mess o' words on my current contract.