Bitter Decision Looms

Wow! It's been a long time! I haven't posted much because I haven't been working on anything. Everything I think of seems stupid, fruitless, pointless. The small press RPG world is neatly divided between OSR and story games, with the area between taken up by non-small press. I have no interest in designing for either camp, and no one else has any interest in what interests me, so why do I bother? I may finish up All Out Of Time, the game I was working on, and not bother releasing it. I'm not sure what I can do about anything except just continue doing this all for just myself, my own game groups. There doesn't seem to be any sense in releasing anything any more.

StarCluster 4 Magazine 3

I have been quiet lately - not having a game in the works, I am not popping design things up here! But I am working on a third StarCluster 4 Magazine. These magazines are made up of essays based on things that come up in settings, where we can examine the subject in detail.

The subject of this magazine is Time and Money, so the essays and stories all deal with wither time, money, or both. So far we have essays on:

*Time Reckoning in the Cluster* - (ESSAY) How do you keep time on worlds with different rotations, different year lengths, tidally locked, and how did it get that way?

*Starship Economics* - (ESSAY) How do you make money in space? What is worth shipping between solar systems? What does handmade lace cost on different worlds? How do messages get transported? Simple, easy to understand, basic rules!

*StarCluster - The Voyage Out* - (ESSAY) What happened on the voyage here during the hundreds of years it took to get to the cluster?.What was it like before FTL was available and humanity was scattered and alone? How did humanity and cultures change?

*Time Away* (STORY) A couple decide to take a tour of their solar system in Jeshen Space, going to each of the inhabited worlds in turn. How do they get from world to world? Why do liners run run between some worlds and not others? And what about Naomi?

Recent Gaming

Had a wonderful time running my Sabre & World games Saturday! The PCs were total badasses and - with preparation and luck - took a flying ship away from some 30 bandits. They prepared a trap, and kicked major ass.

My Sunday game had the Science council that runs the exploration mission in full spate! Four habitable moons had been discovered around a close-in gas giant. All supported life already, but none were ideal. The other moons were also interesting for other reasons. The expedition had not expected there to be more than one, maybe two habitable worlds, and only carried 21 ground-landing probes and 3 water-landing probes. All the PCs present were on the council, and one was its new president. Wonderful academic political wrangling went on throughout the whole session! What a joy! Who got what probes, and where did we send them? Did we allow shuttles to land because of the shortage of probes? Who would be landing? It was one none stop argument!