So, you're Caretaker of the World (that's the Number One, the Big Boss, Head Honcho, You Know Who) and your advisers are lining up to tell you how things are out there. You listen absently ...
He secretly admired her but they never really clicked. Until one night when she called out-of-the-blue sounding cryptic and urgent and needing him to go to her. He had no idea how his world was about to change.— Logline. FADE IN The freezing mist oozed up the river bank and slowly filled the main street. Echoes from late night revellers lingered in eddies drifting away half heard. He...
To define it simply, Gamesmanship is “The Art of Winning Games without actually cheating.” But shouldn’t winning naturally follow experience, practice and determination? Quite often, but the lesser player can still win if he employs a little tactical Gamesmanship throughout the match. So many books have been written on the subject of games and the tactics of play, but so few...
The church congregation had just started to head home after the service when three bat-like aberrations descended from the heavens like fallen angels. Wrong time. Wrong place. — Logline. Not wholly human, nor completely vespertilian, their bodies glistened as they came, tumbling through the night sky with abhorrent and deliberate ease. Their wide, empty, white eyes pierced the darkness...
What started out as an intended moonlight encounter ended up as a close encounter.« — Logline. Eerie. Haunting. Secret. Until now. I have to tell. It’s been gnawing at my soul on still evenings; evenings which conjure the memory of that night, that place. Ugh, it makes me nauseous even now. What happened? You really want to know? OK, but it’s really no big thing, it’s just...
Or, Why Movie Universes are suffering from Cosmic Inflation. Movies, or more specifically, movie universes and franchises like Marvel, DC, the Hunger Games series, Harry Potter, Warhammer, the Divergent series, etc, are big. But are they getting too big? The TV Analog In television, a show is developed to run over a series of episodes. Depending on the run, this can be a handful like 6-10 or a...
Episode 2 in the Legion series expands the back story a little and drops our protagonist into a new mystery on the fringes of science. Shady characters, hitmen, corporate dealings, science and religion are all intertwined.
Stephen Leeds, AKA 'Legion', is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialised skills.
Encyclopedia Entry: Religion is thought to be a form of Group III: Zoophaginae pandoravirus. The virus itself is thought to be benign, but for the existence of the satellite virus which exists in many, but not all, Homo Sapiens ...
Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself.
About 40 years ago, I discovered role-playing and Dungeons and Dragons in one of the after school clubs. It revealed a universe that allowed me to flex my storytelling muscles and enjoy a mixture of fantasy and sci-fi and feed the escapist dreamer inside.
Over time, I played (and story-led - marked with *) many systems including Call of Cthulhu*, Shadowrun, Dungeons & Dragons*, Middle Earth, In Nomine*, Bushido, Chivalry & Sorcery, Chill, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Gammaworld, Hawkmoon, Stormbringer, Immortals*, Marvel Super Heroes, Paranoia, RuneQuest, Vampire: The Masquerade*, and a couple of systems my own devising (Medieval* and Parody*).
I explored live-action role-playing – eventually running my own club and creating my own LARP systems (Fools Gold and Dream Conquest) – and usually found myself in script-writing or game-master duty, writing over 500 individual live adventures over the period (usually weekly), many linked into the world events of the fantasy land we created. I also volunteered for Curious Pastimes and Lorien Trust at their main LARP events (special effects at the Ritual Circle), and did a little script work, cameos and improv for Curious Pastimes. I was also the South East's Editor (UK) for the LARP magazine The Adventurer. The biggest event I ran was a 10-month modern-day "murder mystery" LARP set around parts of Kent where characters were "always-on" and could get updates and interactions at any time outside of scheduled events. That was in the 1990s.
I was also the artistic director for English Heritage for their live Halloween Horrors events at Fort Amherst in Kent from 1998-1999.
Now, I write as the mood takes me with occasional competitions and challenges, and this year (2020) I will be taking on #NaNoWriMo.
Here's to the future!