So Where Have I Been? And Where Are We Going?

(WARNING: This "return post" is incredibly self-indulgent. If you want to skip over a bit of navel-gazing, just come back for my next post that will have, you know, CONTENT.)


Hiya everybody! It's been...well...

(checks calendar)

...a pretty long time, actually. I'll bet most of you thought this corner of the gaming blog-o-sphere was long-ago dead-and-buried. You have every right to think that seeing as I went from close to two to three posts a week to as few as one a month last year. So what happened to The Savage AfterWorld?

The last couple of years have been busy for Your Friendly Neighborhood Sniderman. My wife and I moved, got a new house, took on extra work to pay for it all and just got busy with Real Life Stuff. Seems like every spare moment was focused on either making money or spending money I didn't have. Aside from that, my gaming interests shifted around a bit. Got serious involved in  board gaming, so role-playing took a backseat. Most of my online activity shifted away from Blogger and toward G+ and Facebook, where I'm fairly active on both sites. So you've probably been seeing my presence on the Interwebs, just not...here.

And, creativity-wise, I dipped into a bad case of the lulls. I've noodled around with some long-stagnant projects, but I haven't really felt a need or drive to get any of these out of my brain and into your hands. Those times I did drag out my notes, maps, and rulebooks to work on something, I stared at the screen, thought about what I wanted to do,....then went to YouTube and watched cat videos or something. Just a crushing bout of "Analysis Paralysis" -- knew what I wanted to accomplish, but didn't know how or where to start. So I just didn't.

Fast-forward a year...

All that changed recently. Why? Because tomorrow is the first day of October. My favorite season -- autumn -- is here. It's the time of Halloween and horror. Full moons and falling leaves. It's when I'm overflowing with horrific scenarios and gaming ideas. I've been rereading Cryptworld and delving into Eldritch Tales. I've got Arkham Horror: LCG on my table now, and Tiny Epic Zombies waiting in the wings for a go. In about a month, I'll be attending Gamehole Con for the first time (and it's the first gaming con I've been to in almost year). I've got gaming on my mind and on my table and on my nightstand. I'm so filled with creativity and nervous energy I'm gonna burst.

And I'm planning on channeling that energy into The Savage AfterWorld.

At one time, this blog-o-mine was a warehouse of every gaming idea that passed through my consciousness (and my subconsciousness as well). Scenarios, NPCs, supplements, adventures, creatures, and monsters sprung forth for a myriad of game systems, and all found their way to these blog pages. And I miss bringing them to you. So today The Savage AfterWorld begins anew. What will you see here? Well, I'm not certain quite yet as TSAW was always written in a "stream-of-consciousness"-type process.My goal is to get back to posting at minimum once a week in the coming year.

So stop by and join me, won't you?

We're Not Dead Yet...

The Savage AfterWorld returns to to regular posting this Halloween season. Stay tuned...

"Quill Noir" '30s Pulp Detective Setting for Quill RPG Now Available

Quill: A Letter-Writing Roleplaying Game for a Single Player is one of my favorite stand-alone solo games, as this review I wrote will attest. Last year, I wrote a scenario supplement for Quill called Quill Quest, in keeping with the pseudo-medieval theme of the original game. However, the open-ended mechanics of Quill seemed to be easily adaptable to other genres, other themes. So I stripped away the fantasy world trappings of original Quill and placed the game smack-dab in the middle of the 1930s pulp detective era. Hang tough, gumshoes, as you're about the enter the rough-and-tumble world of Quill Noir!

The case had me bewildered. I lit up a Lucky Strike and leaned back in my chair, propping my feet up on my desk. Lacing my fingers behind my head and closing my eyes, I mulled over what Sgt. Ward had said. Despite the fact mob boss Felix Bunte would be free to swoop in and take over the waterfront district, I didn’t think he had anything to do with Martino’s murder. It was too sloppy to be one of his goons. The blood at the crime scene had come from someone else; there were animal hairs clutched in Martino’s hand; and there was a cigarette butt found near the body. My eyes popped open and I lept from my chair as if I had been seated on Ol’ Sparky. I lunged for the phone and hurriedly dialed the station as I fumbled with my hat and overcoat.

“Sgt. Ward? Yeah, it’s me. Grab a couple of your boys and meet me at Luanne McKenzie’s place. Yeah, Martino’s girlfriend. I want to ask her again how she hurt her hand. Stop by Judge Smalls’ place on your way and get a search warrant too. I want to check out any fur stoles in her closet as well as what brand she smokes.”

Quill Noir takes place in the world of 1930s pulp crime fiction novels and 1940s hardboiled detective films. In Quill Noir, clever gumshoes try to solve baffling cases while gangsters and gun molls thwart their efforts to bring the guilty to justice. Using a new Quill letter format, “The First-Person Narrative,” you'll compose your solution in a first-person perspective, as if you were mulling over the facts of the case to yourself while sitting in your seedy downtown office, interrogating a suspect in a back alley, or staring down a mob enforcer. Quill Noir contains six new Character archetypes (the Private Eye, the Plainclothesman, the Dilettante, the G-Man, the Newshound, and the Enforcer) and four exciting cases for you to solve.

Quill Noir is now available in PDF at Drive Through RPG. (A copy of Quill: A Letter-Writing Roleplaying Game for a Single Player is required to play.) Both Quill and Quill Noir (and Quill Quest too) are available as Pay What You Want releases, so try before you buy, if you prefer. Also, Quill and Quill Noir have been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

AcadeCon Day 2: Cryptworld Thralls And Dungeon Shirts

Good morning everyone and welcome to Day Two here at AcadeCon, the Dayton-based convention produced and run by The RPG Academy. It's 6 a.m. as I start typing up today's post, and I'm fueling up with a box of Entenmann's donuts and a cup of Death Wish Coffee before I head down for the day. The open gaming area is open 24 hours, so I'm curious to see how many bleary-eyed stalwarts pulled an overnight campaign. Let's go find out, shall we?

• Today I got to wear my Old School Dungeon Map t-shirt at a gaming convention! This shirt is based on the Classic RPG Map cloth design I created that now adorns many dice bags. I had this made at Zazzle, and it turned out fantastic. (Oddly enough, I saw someone else wearing a dungeon map shirt, but his was the Tomb of Horrors, I believe. Wish I had gotten a photo...) Want one of your own? Check out my Zazzle store!
• When I went over to the con floor early this morning, I actually found one game of D&D (5e, I believe) that went all night. The players looked a bit exhausted, but one still managed a weak "Yeah, got 'im!" fist pump as they took down yet another creature in the wee hours. Game on, my friends. Game on.
• I had signed up to play a DCC RPG game this morning, but my throat was a bit hoarse this morning and I didn't want to blow it out yelling for four hours, so I bowed out. After trying (and failing) to find a pick-up board game in progress, I instead returned to my room and broke out my Kickstarter-fulfilled copy of Untold: Adventures Await and ran through a solo game. (Expect a review of this Story Cube-moderated RPG in the future!)
• Returned to the vendor hall and discovered a copy of Kobolds Ate My Baby! Played this game years ago, and was pleased to find a copy for purachse! ALL HAIL KING TORG!
• Sat down at a table to grab a bite and was joined by two friends who were also here for the first time. Speaking of first times, they also attended their first Gen Con this year -- the massive 50-year anniversary. "So, what'd you think of Gen Con?" I asked. "Crowded. So very, very crowded," they both said nearly simultaneously.
• Holy crow, this afternoon, I had my first duel CRYPTWORLD player death in a convention-run game. Dying in a CRYPTWORLD game is pretty difficult, as you typically run out of Stamina and fall unconscious LONG before you take that last Wound. But I had two players who fell prey to a few Critical Wound results. As we played my adventure "Unquenchable" (available in the future "Burial Plots" supplement), one player was horribly (HORRIBLY) managed by one of the THINGs, and he began to transform into one of them during the game. Another player was down to a few Stamina points and one Wound due to a series of bad rolls, and he ended up getting strangled to death by another thrall. The transforming player, who missed a Willpower save, became truly evil and shot his teammates who then returned fire, nearly killing him. He was taken in by DAPA where he'll spend the rest of his short life being examined before he's dissected like a lab experiment! The players loved the horrific nature of the way the game ended (two survivors crawling out of the forest) while I was left with my jaw dropped as the sheer carnage that occurred!
• And, with that, the evening comes to a close. Nothing really scheduled for the evening, so I returned to my room, played a solo game of Camp Grizzly, and am now retiring to bed. I'll be getting up early tomorrow to return home (meeting the wife for pancakes!), so I'll close out by saying "Thanks AcadeCon! I had a great time!"