Its been a pretty quiet summer here as back to school approaches, I ran a single session of TMNT and Other Strangeness (and hope to run it again) and a short campaign of Shadow of the Weird Wizard for my DnD Summer Camp this year (the 3rd "class" I've taught). The Kids in our Thursday game (graduates of the previous two years of DnD Summer Camp) are taking turns DMing right now so it has given me time to get some extra work done. I'm continually impressed how talented each of them are. My Friday game sees us playing the 5E Vecna campaign when scheduling allows and I'm not running anything on Wednesdays right now.
Running a family business in this economy is pretty challenging but we all keep plucking away it and God willing we will come through the other side eventually. For the first time in years Comics are outselling Magic: the Gathering which I attribute to an initiative we made about three years ago where we started marketing to younger customers of all genders and having my 25 year old son and 22 year old daughter taking over larger roles. I think the icing on the cake is our ComicsHub Point of Sale that has an App to allow you to order or preorder from us 24/7.
I've spent the last few months counting down to Mongoose Publishing's Dark Conspiracy powered by their Traveller 2E (now funding on Backerkit) and am going all in on the project. I have always loved the game and hope to do something with it later this year or early next.
Yesterday, I picked up Cypher Character Rulebook, the 2E player's book from Monte Cook Games, and am impressed by the changes they made to it. There are no longer only 4 Types as the genre now dictates the number and role a Type takes which I think is a big plus. I also applaud the Wound system as a nice change from using your Pools for doing cool stuff AND your "hit points". Cypher was always easy to run and I think the changes make it even easier to do so. The books production values, clarity, and ease of use (yay hyperlinks) has improved and I prefer this book over the expanded version from few years ago that, because I felt like they were trying too hard to be GURPS and it just came off as dense. I also like the order information is presented and look forward to the GM Guide and the new Bestiary. If you do pick it up the Cypher Unlimited Discord is very active and Sean K. Reynolds posted there about a quick conversion for how much damage enemies now do in Wounds which I have posted below.
The new edition of Cypher has me looking at some of the past creations/adaptations I did years ago on here and reignited my creative juices. I've found my interest in 5.5 diminishing, though my love of World of Warcraft has piqued my interest in its November release. Overall, my interest in the D20 system is waning a bit. I really like the bare bones nature of Traveller/Cepheus Engine (I keep realizing I really don't care for Feats or Classes at this point) and prefer it to Basic Role Playing. Even my passion for Shadowdark has diminished significantly.
I'm hoping for that inspiration to translate better into posts on here.
