Full Circle

When I started this blog I made a challenge to myself; post for a year. The goal, of course, was to maintain as long as possible. But a year seemed like a reasonable minimum. A standard by which I could say I had succeeded. As August comes to a close, we come to the end of that year. I'd like to continue, but life marches on.

Over the year I've been doing this other things have developed. Both D&D and Numenera, the systems in which I am most prolific and proficient, have established avenues for people like me to publish work online and earn some return on our effort. More importantly, however, my "real" professional life (which I'm not quite ready to abandon to do this full time) has reached a point where I have to invest more of my free time in going back to school.

The result of that last is that I need to shift my focus. Unfortunately, one of the costs looks to be this blog. While I expect I'll be back from time to time with a particular idea or when I need to let off steam, I also anticipate the avenues provided by the Wizards of the Coast and Monte Cook Games will draw more of my efforts. But, there will always be a few things that don't really fit on those channels; small rewrites of rules in those systems not big enough to stand on their own, or other games like the World of Darkness, Warhammer 40k, and Continuum.

So... this isn't goodbye. Just I'll see you around.

Until things, again, come full circle.

Welcome to the Shoppe

Welcome to the Wizard's Brewery.
A collection of the finest assortment of home crafted, personally brewed custom rules anywhere in the aetherwebs.

I've played role playing games of various types for more than 25 years. Everything from AD&D to GURPS and from World of Darkness to Car Wars. As a player I, inevitably, became the individual that wanted to do something with my character at or beyond the edges of the rules. This rarely pleased the Game Masters and, ultimately, has led to me normally being the one to run games I'm involved in. As a Game Master I encourage the weird and strange. When you play a game of the mind we don't need roads, we simply create them.
Like most gamers, I find myself playing a balancing act between enough rules structure everyone knows exactly what a rule does and enough narrative freedom that the table isn't limited to pushing buttons. That tension between "hard rule sets that can't breathe" and "squishy rule sets that do whatever the GM feels like today" is difficult to navigate, and often requires game masters to shore up the squishy and knock out the walls in the hard. Something I've spent far more time on away from the gaming table than I should probably admit to.
For many years, these collected house rules simply sat in binders. Imposed on campaigns to shift the flavor or made available to players as options as the situation called for. With the proliferation of the internet, I've decided I might as well set some of my creations free and, if people stumble across them, perhaps they'll find some use at other's gaming tables.

Welcome to the Shoppe, let me know if you see anything you like or want help finding something you need!

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