Webseries with a Message

You may (or may not) know that many years ago I was involved in producing a webseries. Just a little comedy series, heavily influenced by The Guild, Spaced, and Scott Pilgrim. It did okay. Things happened. I don't want to talk about it.

However, through that I did meet a bunch of cool people who have continued to make webseries and internet movies. Rather than talk about my experiences with webseries, I just wanted to highlight a little series that has recently hit the internet.

Jack Gregory has been making movies and films for as long as I've known him, and he's never given up. His latest project is clever, emotional and really hits hard.

His series "Welcome to Icinicorp" is the simplest set up. One camera. One room. One actor. Improvised.

Set in a dystopian future where emotion is outlawed, the actors are given the premise and run with it. It's powerful stuff that deals with mental illness in a raw and emotional level. It's never an easy watch, but shows just how you can get a message across in a video, with zero budget, zero tech, and a whole lot of drive.

The first three videos are up online. As I said, it's not an easy watch - it's not the laugh a minute I was aiming for in my efforts - but it highlights a lot of issues and deserves a look and sharing.

Okay, back to the usual game-related nonsense next post, I promise...

Gaming Nostalgia: The FASA Catalog Spring 1987

One of those #ThrowbackThursday things, I was looking through one of my old games (Did I mention my copy of the old FASA Doctor Who RPG is signed by Tom Baker?) and found this rather awesome gem - a snapshot of gaming history...

The FASA Catalog of Games and Books - Spring 1987

My scanner is under a pile of books somewhere, but I took some photos so you could join me in reliving the glory of FASA's wares of the day - Battletech, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and... Top Gun??

Stay on Target!

I know, it's been a while since I did a blog post. I'm sorry. Things have been happening behind the scenes. However, I wanted to spend a little time to show off some rather cool accessories that I was given for Christmas!

Just before Christmas, we had our first game of Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG (Edge of the Empire). Hype was building for The Force Awakens, and we were all curious to see how the RPG ran - and we all had a blast! It's a little more complex than I'd have gone for, remembering the old days of WEG's D6 Star Wars. But we're keen to start a proper campaign now after the Beginner's Set.

In the meantime, I had my first game of X-Wing! I'd bought a few ships ages ago, just because they're really pretty, but hadn't had chance to play it. I was very impressed at how fast and easy that game was, and the simultaneous decision making made it very unpredictable. The first game was really fast, only ten minutes and Luke Skywalker fell foul of a pair of TIE fighters. Really cool. And I'm looking forward to the next game.

Some good friends of ours saw that I'd started actually playing X-Wing, and (because they're awesome) bought me a couple of ships. However, in addition to this, Cam - the man with the laser behind the awesome company Chimeric Garnish - crafted some amazing accessories to help with the X-Wing games in the future.

Cam creates amazing jewellery as well as cool gaming accessories with plastic and lasers, and crafted these amazing manoeuvring templates for use with X-Wing. They even have the Rebel Alliance symbol on them! Awesome!

Not only that, there's a cool range guide he's made as well!

In addition to the cool range of templates and range guides...

...he just messaged me today to let me know that he's expanded his range to include the status markers for target locks, stress, evade, and focus tokens.

Swish, huh? And it means that when you go to an X-Wing tournament, you're not going to be arguing over whose tokens and range guides are whose!

You should check out the game accessories on the Chimeric page - HERE!!! - and his awesome geeky jewellery can be found here!

You can also follow the cool game accessories at the Chimeric Designs Facebook page - HERE!

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Until next time, live long and prosper, may the force be with you, and above all...

Stay Multiclassy!

What happened to all the writing?

Good question... What did happen to all the writing?

Yeah, just like this, only instead of Tim and Daisy (and Colin), imagine Me, Debs and Marla (the cat)

Not really sure. Christmas in retail has this horrible effect that leaves you exhausted and unmotivated for almost a whole month afterwards. So January was mostly spent recovering, staring at the TV with a cat happily sat on me, and wondering what to do with the rest of my life.

I had great plans - they were all listed last blog post. Finish the novel, finish WILD, do more, more, more!

That blog post also mentioned how our brains are constantly striving to do more. To be more successful.

Then I read this blog post by the fantastic Jessica Abel, "Imagining your future projects is holding you back". And thought, yeah... that's me. So much planning. So many dreams. No doing.

So, yeah. In limbo. Not writing. Lots of plans. A bit lost.

Maybe next post I'll know what I'm doing.