February, Flooding, Flying, and Falling

February

As we move through this whole month, I continuously find myself ridiculously giddy every time I sit down to work on Section Two. The results, I think you all can see from the Ninja template, definitely meet my unstated but implicit in all things HiBRiD design goal of clean, efficient, simple, and functional.

With February not quite over, the statting out of templates is well over halfway complete, and completing the section by March remains a goal well within sights (I am averaging one template every day and a half). Panic rolled in at the beginning of the month as fears mounted that a bug in Scribus messed up my properties values, but when I realized I'd somehow altered view setting wrong and I fixed it...then....shazam!...I was rolling again........

Section Three is all ready for layout and just sitting in the queue, chomping at the bit.

Flooding, Flying, and Falling

In the flurry of activity working on the book, ideas have been flooding into my frontal cortex as to the GenCon 2013 scenario. 

I changed the current working title to "Snakes on a Plane at Canyonside" and while I only have about five pages done, it feels really good to have the 3-hour/4-point plotline set out. As I have in several other Gen Con games, flying vehicles will definitely be prominent in the game (as can be surmised by the title), as will falling from great heights..or NOT...! (hey I can't give everything away!!!) One thing is for certain: the action is definitely going to be fast and furious.

 

To create the scenario (just as an inside scoop), I am taking the maps and monsters from my 1995 GenCon Dungeons and Dragons DMing debut game "The Twists of Tui-Te' and converting, tweaking, upgrading, and definitiely HiBRiDizing those components to fit it in with the "Eighties Action" genere.

While I have been working on the scenario, an interesting development seems to be evolving. Only five pages into the project, it would seem that the simple act of mixing the two genres almost instantly converted it from an old school Dungeons and Dragons first edition game to what in my my mind represents a perfect example of HIBRiD gaming. As I look back upon the past HIBRiD games (a process you may all see as something I always do while I am creating), the mix of reality and just a small bit of fantasy to prevent predictability seems to have been present in every scenario I have ever run. Ever.

The salient point of this is that originally, I wanted HiBRiD to be a universal, all encompassing generic system. But with other games and systems for that (FUDGE=Mustang, GURPS=12 year old Oldsmobile, Synnibar=Johnny Cash's One Piece at a Time Cadillac!?!!??), the refocusing of HiBRiD to represent what gaming is to me seems to have been a good choice. So what is a HiBRiD game? It is action. It's witty banter. it's pushing the laws of physics. It is an enemy who has a supernatural advantage over you. It is **** yeah!