[As usual, three weeks lag here, if you aren’t reading this on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/blazeward). If you’d like your news fresher, and the monthly Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter, all I ask is a buck to help keep the lights on around here.]
Twinged my back yesterday, so was in a lot of pain and took stuff. Managed a soft dojo class last night, but skipped the ground work, because that was one thing too many, and I had barely enough spoons to make it home and collapse.
And finished off a (DND) campaign yesterday. Not DND. Not Shadowdark. Home-brewed variant that harks back to Old School Rules (1st edition DND and AdnD).
All well and good, but I’m taking over as GM in a couple of weeks (break for vacations) so I dug out an OLD copy of Gamma World. Post-apocalyptic scavenging, but I am mixing in a magical apocalypse, future (lost) tech, dragons, and ray guns (if you get really lucky on a dice roll). DnD was always about a better world that fell into darkness at some point (why else lost treasures in ruined keeps?) so it was natural.
Worse, been talking writing with Buchman and had a really strong idea for a cyberpunk fantasy world. And woke up Sunday with no open project, having finished Emmett #2 (of three initially planned, but…) so I sat down and just let backbrain vomit all over the page.
Totally into darkness, starting with a young woman librarian whose job was to narrate us into the world. Having fun, having written one short and started a second. At one point, three-quarters through that first story, I literally hit the “stop here and go invent a magic system” point so that’s what I did for the rest of the evening. Got one. Nice and messy, with social and economic ramifications. Then I needed to come up with new terms for things, because Neuromancer and Shadowrun, while both utterly lovely, are a little too stale for me. Needs originality.
It’s like reading a space opera set in a distant future, and everyone still uses the US Navy ranks from the last part of the 20th Century. Note, there were a lot of older ranks and systems that didn’t survive WW2, and constant change. And there exist other countries who had done other things.
Those of you who read my military space opera might have noticed that I experiment with things. Next spring, you’ll meet Harri when he gets blackmailed into commanding a ship with the rank of Warden. And he numbers his Steadholders from First down, depending on how many he has.
So, new cyberware descriptions. And a new magic system. Two of them actually, but I’m still working out some of the details in greater depth. And exploring the shorts to set up some larger piece that will be a series of some sort. Not stopping the SF, but writer brain wants to play (obviously) with magic in a contemporary setting. And space opera future, so this is just the next leg of a stool to throw in more cyberpunk.
Hopefully, y’all keep coming along for the ride.
shade and sweet water,
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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