The Grand Tapestry

A villa located in Hexland, on the moon Yolm, orbiting the gas giant Malthesaen; part of the STARBLADE: Adventures Amid the Shattered Stars (sub-)setting, and part of the Urutsk Cycle. Circa 2001

I have spent the past week clearing out a 10' x 10' storage space from last year's move, and I have found a few treasures that coincide with portions I am currently writing. These go back to the early to mid 90's, before the OGL was a glimmer of desire in Dancy's fancy, and my suggestion to write new material for dead systems was laughed at by my closest friends (of the time).

One graph I plotted was too complex for even the then current version of Wolfram Mathematica, as the nice gentleman on the phone explained; something about the iterative additives to multiple co-dependent dimensions being to much to process at the time, if I remember correctly. Well, I've not only found the graph, but the hand-written rules for the feedback procedure. It gave me a warm, tingly feeling. :D

Seeing all of this work from pre- and early-2000's that is exactly what I am working on again, now, is really a snazzy feeling overall. But, I will say that my biggest mistake was ever listening to conventional wisdom, as it cost me over a decade of progress, and now my mute innovations have percolated up through the strata of Jungian space to become the provenance of other names, and other games. HaShem is funny that way. Makes you appreciate the private triumphs more when they happen, I suppose, in a rueful, 'what if' sort of way...

As I lay in bed at 4am, before the rain began, I thought back on my 30 years of game design, and all of the scores of systems (not including variants or revisions) that only a dozen or so folks ever saw or played. If each of them metaphorically represents a cosmos in the Metacosmos of The Grand Tapestry, then I've sown a lot of grain, to uh-- mix ... metaphors. :-|

Nothing profound to anyone else but me (and possibly Scott C., Karl P., and a few unsavories we know).

Hoping your gaming goes well this weekend.

New batch of the bug.
--This one was nipped in the bud with a shot of Lysol, Airborne, and a Zycam Swab. Now it is just fatigue and occasional headaches.

I forgot to mention this last time: Both Officer Max Rockatansky, and Lt. S. D. Bob Plissken are aboard the Aelbaan shuttle and have a gaggle of semi-feral kids native to the Aelbaan Starship as their wards. These two are along for the ride, and have felt suitably upstaged by the PCs.
--This is the second time that the duo have appeared in one of my games.

After the Khem's tele-experiences on the planet, the Yirinn character who had been gifted with a Black Metal alloy seven-bulbed lamp-stand (decorated to appear as a braid of roses) lit the oil reservoir with Elemental Fire. This produced softly writhing fractal shadows that fell in a circular pattern around the device.
--With this effect, the Aelbaan Starship changed attitude and began to alter its course as almost palpable Shadow Plannar effects could be felt by Tyb.

The Aelbaan who had occupied one of the System Ships (in which the shuttle the PCs are occupying is located) began to launch the System Ship. The System Ship then re-entered 'normal space', which was anything but, and the craft began to shake and shudder as its relativistic velocity and the wrinkle in timespace they were immediately caught in did not mix well.
--The Aelbaan informed the PCs that they needed to jettison roughly the same mass as the loaded shuttle to act as an explosive charge in their attempt to break out of the rut of the rolling space fold. Quick calculations by the PCs suggested that they would fail.

I'd like to explain more, but the blog is a poor substitute for the detailed information contained in the forthcoming Vrun Players' Module product.

The Party bickered a bit, but ultimately, the shuttle was jettisoned and sucked directly into the Charged Vacuum Emboitment. This was no surprise to the Khem, whose ancestor had heard that the other colonists had experienced the same event which led to their finding the curious planetary system.
--Debris started to cling to the shuttle's hull as Ashta saw a swirling multitude of possible timelines and past/future events.

Players had to leave early for various reasons (a date, and us fetching C.'s and M.'s sister at work), and so we called it there.