THE BLACK HACK

The Black Hack is a Ultra Light First Edition Style Fantasy RPG

Basically TBH is a tabletop roleplaying game, played with paper, pencils and dice - one that uses the Original 1970s Fantasy Roleplaying Game as a base. But it adds and takes away elements to make it a distinct streamlined flavour of the original roleplaying game. 

For example its got :

• 20 A5 pages (page flicking is for suckers)
• Unified player resolution (aka only the players roll)
• Modern mechanics.
• Old school cool.
• Compatible with anything that uses Hit Die.
• 40 or so monsters.
• Spells for level 1-7
• 4 Classes.
• 0 calories.

Not bragging but it's currently a Silver Seller and got a rating of 4.5/5 with 16 reviews. You can read them on RPG.now here - and of course get the PDF for, like $2.00 ... yes, two bucks.

If you  want to get hold of a 'real' copy (go on, treat yourself) then you should visit Peter 'The Publisher' Regan's webstore here.

Theres also a vibrant G+ which I recommend highly, so go here.

ANOTHER SIMPLE DICE MECHANIC RPG SYSTEM

So a while back I posted about a simple 3 die (one page paragraph) RPG system. Read it here. So i've got another one - it's a little bit longer, but whatev's yo'.

Each character has 3d20, one for Body, Mind and Soul. These are Effort die. Players roll these die to to complete tasks, they need to roll a 4 or higher to succeed at any task - but if they do succeed they lose that die. A player can 'split' the d20's up, turning them into 2d10 or a d12 and a d8. Whatever combination of d4's to d12's they can - and they can 'reform' die together whenever too. Some tasks have an minimum level of effort, requiring a minimum Effort die to be rolled to accomplish the task, for example a d6 or a d20. Tools give you an advantage, increasing any Effort die to the next highest one d8 to a d10 for example. When you run out Effort die in any area you can no longer contribute to the adventuring until you have rested.

HERE'S HOW IM STRUCTURING MY SCRIPTED ADVENTURES

I've been very busy writing #HIVELIFE1979 so my time spent here on my blog has really dried up, but there's something I wanted to post for both you and for me. Whilst I don't think there's an absolute formula for a successful 'scripted' adventure - I know if I can get what I write to do the following things, its going to work on a primal 'reason to be engaged and get some closure' level.  It's just a skeleton, if the meat on the bones is shit, then the whole experience will leave a bad taste - but if you pack loads of imaginative and fun things that happen and the players can do, you're onto a winner.

It follows a basic scriptwriting technique of 8 steps (or key scenes)

1 - Status Quo & Inciting Incident  - The  world is shown to the players and they're told where they fit into it. Something happens that propels them to step 2

2 - Predicament & Lock In - The thing that happened at the end of the last scene now leaves the players with a problem or conflict they have to sort out. Their first step towards this goal puts them on a path they cant easily get off.

3 - First Obstacle & Raising the stakes - The characters must overcome the first step towards their goal this could be a medium sized dungeon or wilderness/urban area, also a number of options or resources should be taken away from them.

4 - First Culmination - The reason options have been removed in step 3 should be resolved, and it should be a harder task than they tackled before. Tone is important here, it should mirror the tone of the desired outcome and overall adventure.

5 - Subplot & Raising the stakes - The players will thank you for a little distraction, not too far off course but something thats not directly pivotal to the main plot, but is connected somehow. A great place to weave in some setting or story exposition. Continue to remove options or resources.

6 - Main Culmination - This is where the players deal with the final threat, the BBEG or whatever. They think they're done, this should mirror the vibe going on in step 4. Also you could give them some inkling its not quite over.

7 - New Tension and/or Twist - Everyone loves an encore, or facing the puppet master - the players should figure it all out and deal with that shit here.

8 - Resolution - They all live happily ever after, or do they? This doesn't even need to be played (although its fun to do it, but make it quick) just wrap up the events of the game with a short and concise 'read aloud box' if you want - players wont feel cheated as they should have had the satisfying ending of step 7.

Some further advice I've been thinking about. Some people will tell you scripted adventures are shit as you've got a railroad for the players to run on. I don't think thats the case if you do a couple of things. Plan what the bad guys are going to do - and plan what happens if the players don't stop them. The rest you make up at the table.

GANGS ROBOTS AND MONSTERS

#HIVELIFE1979

Gangs & Factions

The Sheriff of Slough

Warlord Tony and the Smiley Boys

Yabber Boys

Rozzers

Tippers

Rotterdam Terror Crew

Waste Nomads

Petrol Heads

Civil Servants

Womens Institute

The Bakers Dozen

Milkmen

Robots & Monsters

Flick-Knife Kids

Lusardi Bot

L.I.N.D.A

Cassette Face Bastard

Void Frogs

Suits

Psychic Diseases

Mega-Moth

Giant Slug

Fish Guys

Phasic Ameoba

A.I. in Mundane Objects

Special Individuals

Duke of Peckham

Nanna Hood

Donny Muurda

Tinfoil Brothers

Mr TOAD

Andy the Automaton

The Black Snake

Asbestos Sisters

THE HUMBLE HIGHSTREET - HIVELIFE1979

Local produce for local people. Mostly speed - but in the summer we do a roaring trade in petrol and jam-jars. Nanny Hood runs the 'charity' shop with her merry fucking men and Dale's gone mad seein' invisible frogs. Open Monday to Friday, closed at the weekends due to rogue traffic-works.

Also rules are down and in somewhat of a final state, nows the time to play-test the shit out of them. Drop a name in the comments so I can get a schedule of games going. #HIVELIFE1979

A PRETTY USELESS ONE PARAGRAPH RPG THING

I made this whilst brainstorming rules for #HIVELIFE1979 (oh you haven't heard yet?) and came up with this as a fun experiment, kind of inspired by Ultima Online, what I played far too much of as a kid and +Oli Palmer. Not sure if this is ripping something off, I just needed to get it out of my brain.

Every character has 3 stats, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, assign a d6, d8 and d12 to each. You roll one of those die when testing your attributes - needing a 5-7 for success, or 8-12 for success with a benefit. Everyone has HP equal to the max Strength Die. Each hit in combat deals 1 wound, 2 with Heavy weapons. Resolve landing hits as you would an attribute test. You can get armour die, d4 or d6, when you take a hit roll it, if you roll 4+ you ignore the damage.Wizards make up their own spells because they're wizards. Thieves get a +1 to any roll once per turn. Warriors start with 2 extra HP.

BOOM

HIVE LIFE 1979 - its a thing.

"Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!

It isn't fit for humans now,

There isn't grass to graze a cow.

Swarm over, Death!"

Slough - by John Betjeman. 1937

HIVE LIFE 1979

The Iron Lady rules from Deep Bunker One, 3 miles below London's crater. The year is 1979 and welcome to Slough, the last remaining Hive city in Britain. Don't wander into the Ash waste. And yes, you too can experience the luxury of life inside a compulsory residency hive-facility.

The Tinfoil Brothers extort the market traders downtown, while Donny Muurda sells prohibited weapons from his bedsit compound. Yabber boys drive-by corners over dope and the punks, 2-Tones and greebos compete for tinnies of air at the Disco of Death.

Treasure maps scribbled in Porno mags, Gang warfare, Radioactive Slugs, Slag pits, Psychotic vending machines,Violence, Profuse apologies and Robot car-bombs are a part of daily life here.

And all the while the hive heaves upwards building on its waste, burying the past. 600 years of movement is a lot to forget, treasures from the Renaissance wait amongst unnameable terror for the daring - or desperate to find. Life can be short in Slough, whether you take a chance or not.

HIVE LIFE 1979

Foam Golem

Trigger warning - puns

Foam Golem's are commonly found being used by spurned lovers spiralling out of control, shitty adolescents who haven't got a clue what they're fucking with and completely deranged masochist that thinks its funny to watch you get smothered to death by a semi-sentient mattress.

The general procedure behind creating a foam golem is that you have to kill someone on the foam, and be casting ritual magickzzzz. Thus binding their animus and rage to the foam, bringing it to life.

Foam Golem have a close relationship with their creator, after all they killed it and brought it back as foam, that shits personal. If a creator gives the Foam Golem an order, but hasn't slept on it in the last 24 hours the Foam Golem will make a morale check, if it fails it will - flip out.

If you get a Foam Golem wet enough its weight will quadruple - with all its actions at a disadvantage, but damage doubled and with resistance to all non magical damage.

#GABOS

1. The gang members identify themselves by tattooing their little finger on the right hand completely black.
2. When in their territory the gang lookouts use bird calls to identify police and enemy gang members, these change frequently.
3. The gangs headquarters is in another district, and they use black birds baked in pies as message runners.
4. The majority of money the gang makes through the sale of white lotus is funnelled into political donations through a series of front businesses.
5. The gang is run by two brothers, one of which is attempting to establish himself in a legitimate printing business empire.
6. Gang members have stashes located in local vacant properties, these rotate every 1d4 days.
7. The gang use organised giant turtle jousting events as a cover to meet rival gangsters and players for parle.
8. Members play a dare based game that involves drinking increasingly potent vials of poison.
9. The gangs main gig is transporting huge sums of illicit valuables sown into counterfeit lederhosen.
10. The gang bribe the pixies and faeries who live beneath the streets to regularly change the direction of signposts they maintain, to throw off anyone not familiar with their territory during critical moments.

Ouch!

Check out +Patrick Stuart 's OSR Doctor class, his g+ thread inspired  this, a thing what I done drew :

Damage Dice Roller Rules Yeah!

All damage dice should be rolled on the table, if you take 1/4 your total hitpoints in an area then you take disadvantage on all rolls that utilise that body part. Crit dice always roll maximum, but the location they land in ceases to work, and you will bleed to death in the number of rounds as indicated on the die unless the wound is staunched (cost an action or something). If of course if you can land a crit die on the head - its game over.

This is a5 size, I considered a4 but thought it might be a bit big? I like the idea of the head being a smaller target and rewarding a steady calculated die drop.

You could make a bunch for different creatures - a beholder would be cray cray.

Some things Witch.

1. Every night a witch transformed into a beautiful black horse visits a virgin girl, she is hypnotising her, making secretly and slowly poison her father.
2. A witch has lost her giant son, and is looking for people to help her find him.
3. A witch travels the country side carving deep runes and markings into stones with her finger.
4. The head of a beheaded witch will repair if rubbed with salt then covered in soil dug under a full moon.
5. Fishermen know the location of a witch who will sail to the bottom of the ocean for a fee.
6. A witch asks passers-by to remove a four leaf clover under her chair, she cannot get up whilst it is there, and was tricked into sitting down.
7. A midwife is a witch maintains perpetual youth by sucking blood from the navals of infants - not killing them so never discovered.
8. A witch transform her lovers into small woodland animals.
9. A witch's curse causes a young ruffian to mew like a kitten an neigh like a horse.
10. A witch terrorises a group of spinning lady's for being lazy, by hexing them with warts and grey hair.

art by thomas evers

Lockpicking as a skill check is dull as fuck.

The title sufficiently illustrates my thoughts on the subject - So here's my work around:

Rather than resorting to a simplistic test of abilities for picking a lock, an alternative is to play a small dice game to determine success, Assuming the character has the correct tools and time - do the following :

• Roll 5d6, one at a time. A player may re-roll each of these die once as they roll them (apart from 1’s). They are then 'held' in place.

• Each die represents a tumbler in the lock, rolling a 1 indicates the tumbler has 'frozen'.

• Once all die have been rolled and are 'held', a player me re-roll 3 die of his choice, 1’s cannot be re-rolled.

• Total the 5 dice (ignoring 6’s) the score is compared to the locks difficulty number

• 6's indicate a 'loose tumbler' therefore not contributing to the unlocking of the mechanism.

A simple lock would have a difficulty number of 6, a sturdy lock would be 10, a reinforced castle lock 15, and technology beyond our understanding is 20. 25 is a god-lock.

Disclaimer : I understand that these rules more than likely do not follow the physics of actual lockpicking, but that is weighed against me-not-giving-a-shit and wanting a fun little dice game to replace a boring skill check and inject some drama/excitement at the table. So there.

#RollBelow

Roll Below Record Sheet

Here's the record sheet for the ruleset i'm working on, dubbed 'Roll Below'. I've made good writing progress, i'm at 10 pages of condensed but playable rules - but still lots to do. Click to make bigger -

How to End Awkward Handwaving.

So I started watching the WoTc staffers play through the Temple of Elemental Evil, the videos well done, they look like their having fun so all round good effort. I think its important to record yourself and watch other Referee's at work, if you can remain impartial to tone and content you can learn a lot of things. Skip to about 9 minutes in. 

Mearl's starts asking his players to narrate something they did during a small road trip, and you can feel the energy slump in the room, players staring blanking thinking "Shit, what do I say?" they don't know the parameters they can operate inside of. They don't yet feel at home in the world, so how do they impose themselves on it for maximum-fun-time-effect?

And i'm sure this is a trick most of us have tried at one stage or another, I know i've done it before and its met with limited success. There's always moment were peoples mouth goldfish as they have no fucking clue what to say. And I've always found that a little uncomfortable, disturbing the vibe around the table - 'tis better to keep things flowing I think. How do we do that? Grains of sand is how.

I've talked about the idea of grains of sand before, small story seeds being much more useful than a blank slate or constraining campaign background. Give someone a grain of sand and they can turn it into an oyster.

So when Mearl's ask his players to narrate something that happened, really he should be telling them what happened, but asking how they handled it. Your'e allowing the player the power to create fiction and hand wave all the action, tell their story - but giving them a framework to build on. Here's some examples of things he should have asked :

• Someone in a position of authority is rude to you.
• Someone in dire need asks for charity.
• Someone offers you something stolen.
• You beat someone at a game and they get angry.
• People are gossiping but they don't know you overheard.
• An unexpected terrain feature impede's your progress.
• A travelling companion falls gravely ill. 
• The weather threatens to spoil your rations and possessions.
• You become separated from the group.
• What do you say to the pompous man being horrible to his staff?
• What do you do when you find someone lost possessions? 

Also asking 'what do you do?', 'what do you say?' etc, can spark an initial burst of creative propulsion. They have to think of something, but your giving them a very definite yet broad starting point. Then just hand-wave the rest. If they beat someone up, don't roll dice, just accept it and move on. I'd also argue that its important to frame the conversation in the past tense. These are things that have happened, decisions already made. Not things happening right now, they are by default already part of the fiction not current events.

I'd be grateful for any other things to challenge players with during hand waving moments, so drop them in the comments - 'Till next time dorks.

If your advice is shitty, you will be told - and playing d&d with kids.

So I got into a small e-beef yesterday, I'll withhold names so stupid people aren't made to feel stupider. But the exchange sparked a strong reaction in me and I wanted to parse that and hopefully use it to create something positive.

The topic was "...wondering if any of you could offer any advice for running games for children of varying ages " 

To  which  I  responded "Top tip: Say yes - to everything, even if the rules wouldn't normally allow it. Just do it and you'll discover what its like to play with someone who's imagination is completely uninhibited by adult social constructs, its fucking amazing."

I wish I could post the comments that followed that nugget of wisdom, but the person has blocked me. I shall however attempt to paraphrase from my addled memory "Playing with kids is fun, but they're all over the place - you will need to railroad them" Now I know i'm paraphrasing, but they actually used the word railroading. Someone actually suggested that railroading was not only a good idea, but necessary to make the game better. What the fuck?

We all know that railroading sucks, and  works  against player agency - a key ingredient in excellent-fun-times around the table. And of course I know that its important to structure games, and heck, I'd even say under certain circumstances (such as a time limited con game) that you might want to railroad your players to a satisfactory conclusion. But this is not that, so why do it?

Also, lets not confuse table  etiquette  with gameplay structuring, I  reprimand  my kids if they start to muck about, I pull them back into focus if they're distracted - but never ever ever - ever do I setup simplistic, linear and frankly boring problems for them to solve because their minds haven't been hammered into an adult way of thinking. They thrive in a sandbox, both imaginary and real, so take advantage of that.

So my response?

"Why play a  collaborative   storytelling game with some of the most inventive, creative, uninhibited people you will ever have the fortune of playing with, only to impose a whole bunch of shitty boundaries? Thats dumb."

And thats really all there is to it.

So if you're going to play with kids (you should by the way, its a blast) keep the structure loose, listen, prepare to say 'Yes' to everything, listen again, get some props, ask them to create fiction, involve them at every level and  remember that their imagination is 1000% more vivid and fertile than yours is  - despite what you might think, oh and listen some more. 

Armor Class is stupid.

Armor Class is really fucking stupid.

So I put on platemail, and I become harder to hit? Dummy. I know guys in heavy armor were surprisingly agile and fast, but putting on thick steel over gambeson just slows you down. It is great at stopping blows that do land from making you bleed and die, however.

So if armor is damage reduction, how do we hit someone? Melee combat is an exchange of blows*. Much like boxing, your looking for a series of telling blows that will earn you points. Or corpses. If we want to simulate that exchange both sides needs to roll. Static numbers won't do, because we need the winds of fate. So however you work out an attack roll, mirror it, then you've got a defence roll. A chance for the attack to land a blow, and the defender to turn it. Ever have players saying "Aww can't I parry it?" Not a problem anymore.

I changed the d20 mechanic to an Arnesonian roll–below–attribute system, so its sweet simplicity mirrored for a defender to roll below an attribute also. We can the parse the outcome and do something interesting with them. Win-Win. Win-Lose. Lose-Win. Lose-Lose. Plus there's crits with each roll (currently natural 1, no confirming)

Once you start doing all this, then you're looking a re-write of all the core systems you'd expect from a Medieval Fantasy RPG - not now mind you, another time.

*Not that i'd actually know, Im only lightly familiar with re-inactment. The closest I can get is watching the full contact melee's on youtube - and even these are blunt weapons with no kill strikes. On the other hand i'd remind myself that it also needs to be gameable and fun so essentially, fuck it.

Roll Below, yeah?

Like almost everyone and their nan in the DIY d&d scene, I've had a ruleset on the stove, bubbling away for some time now. I've been a little quiet with work, not meatspace gaming as much as i'd like and my PS4 has started to suck less and less of my time away - so I decided to begin the process of collecting all the various rules, hacks and add-ons that make our system tick.

I've dubbed it 'Roll-Below'. Its based on a bunch of stuff we've played over the years, plus its been in interested opportunity to scrap the shit we don't like and create something specifically for us, i've bullet pointed a sort of patch-note below for the major changes.

• DC's and target numbers are gone (Im fucking lazy and stoned so less thinky the better). If you want to perform an action or do something, you roll a d20 and try to get it under your attribute. Under is a success, on or over a failure. 
• HP are gone, everyone has one wound. Lose that wound and you have to roll on a serious Injury Table, assuming your Party survives or recovers you. (How many times can an ogre stab you in face before you decide enough is enough?)
• When you attempt to wound someone with an attack, you make an attack Roll, they also make a Defence roll - different shit happens depending on whats rolled. (Combat is an exchange)
• AC is gone, Armor is now damage reduction and provides advantage when defending against certain type of attacks. (Your armor doesn't stop you being hit, its stops you breaking out in sucking chest wounds)
• Every weapon/shield has a 'unique attribute' that makes them effective in certain situations. (everyone likes shopping choices)
• Classes are Warrior, Wizard, Thief Elf, Dwarf. (OSR roolz)

Its developed to be less a set of house rules, more a new system. I've also put some hours into making it fairly compatible with existing content for other rules-sets. Stuff doesn't directly convert into the system but i've got some good tools letting you run content without needing stats. For a long time i've been generating stuff at the table so thats really just a natural evolution of that habit.

With all the new stuff, were still playtesting. But its all pretty solid. I might make an open call for people to check it out over Roll20, get some wider thoughts and feedback - Give me a shout if that sounds like something that would float your boat.

Embuggerance

Here's a thing what I made, plus some rules on Encumbrance. Buckle up, shits about to get cray-cray.

Gameable Encumbrance. Works with any system. Do the following.

Weight is now abstractified (real word?) for the purposes of quicker gaming, less math and more dungeon. Every item in the world has a base weight of '1' - This represent not just its weight, but also how easy it is to carry, and cumulative effect of carrying lots of shit.

For example plastic spoons don't weigh much, if you try to carry five thousand of them with nothing to put them in, you're pretty fucked.

Every time you pick something up, write its name in one of the boxes in the pack. You can carry upto your Strength stat in items.  If you carry more that your STR you encumbered and every d20 roll you make is at Disadvantage. Some items can have certain qualities that make them harder to carry taking up 2 or more (or less) slots:

• Fragile – Items that are prone to breaking, or prone to damage must be carried with more care. (+2)
• Long – Objects longer than 5ft in any dimension. (+2)
• Cumbersome – Things that are shaped in ungainly or awkward ways, they are difficult to store or handle. (+2)
• Heavy – Objects that despite their size require greater effort to move. (+3)
• Lightweight – The item is designed differently than normal to be light, or uses unusual/special materials (-1)
• Ergonomic – The item has been crafted to be easy to hold or carry, its weights is thoughtfully distributed and is comfortable. (-1)

A purse of 100 coins weigh 1, a strongbox or chest is need for higher sums - they tend to be Heavy and or Cumbersome. No item drops below its base weight of 1. 

These are all WIP rules, i've not had a huge amount of meatspace gaming to test these out - if you've got anything to add, let me know.

Eye food

A Gouch Supplicant

Recipe for an Old School Dungeon

This is a romp and some assembly is required - Read the list, get a map, populate the dungeon. These are mostly all from my favourite modules of  old - with the serial numbers filed off. Depending on the crawl you might want a whole heap of empty rooms also - but i'll be buggered if i'm going to amend the list, you can do it when you prep.

1. Super deadly enemy defending hidden shortcut to 32.

2. Moderately deadly trapped entrance disarmed with logical puzzle.

3. Monsters with unique 'trick' and comedy unaligned npc.

4. Potentially dangerous shortcut to 30.

5. Classic 70's D&D monster.

6. Habitat to justify creature from 3 living in dungeon.

7. Unusual or comic method of travel with potential damage or side effect  (travel to 8.)

8.  Enemies hidden in area with an effect (natural or man made) that provides concealment and is harmful to just the players.

9. Large group of low level enemies, plus items for later difficult combat in 28.

10. Magic trap that alters distance or time, with clues and loot.

11. Stairs incline up or down - mundane

12. Dangerous terrain with very deadly ambush monster.

13. Secret door shortcut to 14.

14. Deadly trap/insane combat encounter with pop culture reference.

15. Mechanical deathtrap

16. shortcut to 21 with potential of damage through movement.

17. shortcut to 22 with 50% chance of summoning monster.
18. Dungeon furniture gives random boon to players if figured out.

19. Trapped door with logical puzzle to bypass.

20. A trap that changes physics or the rules with good loot.

21. Delicate loot.

22. Monster that reduces PC effectiveness.

23. Amusing enemy - pop culture references/irreverent diversion.

24. Trapped item - item makes later encounter easier.

25. Complicated or magic trapped door - two fail States one deadly, one amusing.

26. Friendly NPC and trapped false door.

27. Make a sacrifice to unlock C.

28. REALLY hard combat unless have collected earlier items from 24.

29. Natural stuff living in its environment - offer a stealth or creative way around.

30. A primitive minded monster that doesn't attack just reacts.

31. Ambush cave critters' hunting ground.

32. Death trap.

33. Omnipotent dungeon controller tests players morals/integrity/knowledge etc,  with some oddball deadly ways to kills characters - plus a free escape is offered.

Potential reward Rooms (One, Some or all of them)

A. Treasure horde.

B. Massively overpowered monster - kill everyone.

C. McGuffin - preferably unlocked by 27.

#luckyifyoumakeitoutaliveyeah?

Acting High

Lingering in my brain pan is +Rafael Chandler 's #Narcosa. A game where people get really high, should offer some unusual roleplaying opportunities. Im not talking about fairly obvious stoner cliche's either. When I think about people being really high on drugs the thing that stands out for me is how infuriatingly hilarious it is to communicate with them.

Without taking shit-loads of ketamine the easiest way to put up that wall of obfuscation is by forcing a player to modify their speech pattern. It would be too easy to let them choose their own gibberish, plus theres a good opportunity to make this a fun distraction.

Buy/Steal/Make some children phonetic 'sound shape' cards like the image below

Then whenever your players finds themselves ingesting a quantity of drugs (or possibly other consumables) have them make a constitution save, or save v poison or somesuch. If they pass they're fine, if not deal them 9 cards - they can only say (I mean in the very literal sense, not just character talk) whats on those cards until they pass a constitution check, they can make one a turn. If they break the rules, they'll lose a HP for every infraction.

Of course every good drug/poison has an antidote or an upper to the downer, so should your drugs - make available in the world a solution, as whilst it might be amusing for a turn or two - I imagine players getting pissed off if this is used too frequently.

Eye Food

Ardeema Krama

- Sauce -

Reasons

This post has been sitting in my drafts for 3 months now and as you can tell it has been some time since my last post (7 months) I don't feel obliged to explain my absence from posting really, but recent events in my personal life remind me that life is temporary and should be got on with, not to ignore things that should be said or done - and that brings me back to writing again.

The prime reason I haven't felt the desire to write was having a close relative pass away at the beginning of the year, and as i'm sure you can imagine, I didn't much feel like writing or playing games at the time. Then immediately after I had to move house, so of course this was a huge spanner in the works - at one stage I was left without internet for 3 weeks. To top it all off, a week after moving - my computer (and sole writing tool) went pop. 

First world problems, i'm the first to admit. So please don't view this as a cry for attention, no. Just reasons. I also feel a personal apology is owed to my g+ hangout group I was playing with at the time I went dark, as I essentially dropped off the radar. So (chiefly) +Richard Penwarden, +Jeff M and +Franky Borny i'm genuinely remorseful for that.

Im glad i've posted this, I found it too easy to leave something that you don't want to do, then - the more its left, the harder it becomes to do.