September 2019 Update

GAME ON!

This month, I'm still crashing ahead with Project Blue Starlight, my current Call of Cthulhu scenario, but there are a few other things lined up, including things in the real world that might be of interest to other people in the real world, around London.

Sunday 27th of October sees the 3rd annual Game On, Werewolves charity event (technically it's only the second time it's been called that, as the first year was dedicated to a different charity). We'll be playing a big game of werewolf (Legacy) in the bad Moon Cafe, just south of the river, near London bridge and Borough. If you're interested, message me (or check out the event on Facebook).

Sunday 13th of October I'll be running a sort of Halloween themed (technically a B-movie Hammer Horror themed) scenario for Paranoia, the RPG of dark humour, where you get six lives in a dystopian future that's run by an insane computer just trying to make everyone happy. It's pretty slapstick (although, due to mutant powers, also pretty comic book gonzo), has a lot of player vs player action, and is just good plain fun. We'll be playing before Questing time at The Phoenix pub, near Oxford Circus. Again, message me (or keep an eye on the Questing Time Twitter account).

On Friday 27th September, again at the Bad Moon Cafe, there's a meet up for members of the London Tabletop Industry Networking group, for any involved in table top RPGs or board games. I feel somewhat like an imposter here, but it'll be my first time. I believe tickets may still be free, and they are literally free, but if interested you'll need to be invited to a Closed Facebook group. Let me know if you'd like to join us.

Aside from that, what's going on? I've still got Curtain Call on the backburner (I'm hoping the LTIN meet up might help me get that into the world), and a few ideas floating around for future Call of Cthulhu projects.

I'll be running my dark scenario Roots for some friends later this month, which is perhaps the most disturbing thing I've committed to words and thrown out into the world. I'm also planning to start running the Tatters of the King campaign (Call of Cthulhu), the Orpheus campaign (the standalone World of Darkness game), and at the tale end of the year a game of Ninja Burger based on Home Alone, and hopefully - I say this every year - a game of Unknown Armies set in snowy medieval Prague.

In relation to the very dark games I'm planning to run for my friends soon, I draw your attention to the free, 13 page Consent For Gaming booklet, for just checking you're not pushing your players TOO far. There's a handy form at the back, which I made a digital version of here that people can fill in. It's naturally, got a lot of flack from people who don't like optional rules being put into the world that encourage you to give more of a shit about your friends than your story, but these are people you're always going to have a hard time convincing might have their priorities screwed up.

Last few things. There's a great bunch of Kickstarters out at the moment - three came out yesterday and I immediately committed most of next month's money to them:

• Root, based on the board game, and using the popular Powered By The Apocalypse system, Roots lets you play cute cartoon animals in a Robin Hood style era, where the players are vagabonds, helping the simpler folk whilst the armies of the cats and the birds clash around the woodlands. It's better than that, honestly. Check out the link here.

• Heart: The City Beneath is the follow up to the popular RPG Spire, which was set in a dystopian sort of steam punk fantasy world that features dark elves oppressed by high elves in a massive towering... spire... Heart takes the action into the, ah, dark heart of the setting, moving away from revolutionary dark elves fighting the power and focussing on dungeon crawls through a living dungeon of darkness, madness and opportunity. Check it out here.

• SLA Industries, 2nd Edition, is a game that's been a long time coming. I always describe it as Blade Runner as if Los Angeles had been replaced by Gotham City, given as your players will player operatives sent out into a crazy world of masked serial killers, terrorist organisations and monsters, but it's so much more than that. Described as horror noir, and leaning into splatterpunk, it's all about the show - operatives do the jobs they do in an attempt to become wealthy and get high status in a world where media presence is everything, so don't worry about about the truth - just put on a good show, keep the idiots watching at home happy and you'll be rewarded. Genuinely, one of my favourite games. Check out the link here.

That's it for now. Bye!

June 2019 Update

A few things...

Stygian Fox writing has taken the fore of my (non-design work) creative writing, so some other things are taking a backseat. Noteably my own game Curtain Call, following further positive feedback, although I've worked on the lay-out a bit and started to set things up to produce as a downloadable product later this year.

Instead my eye is turned towards Stygian Fox and their new Patreon. My first scenario is already out there, under the name The Unbearable Likeness, and can also be found on DriveThruRPG. My second scenario for the Patreon is a scenario I'm calling When This Blue Starlight Dies, for which I've done the above artwork. I'm not sure whether it'll be in the final product (I like to think it will, as I've very happy with how it looks), but for now it's to prod and poke my brain to get it into the right frame of mind. The above robed figure in the skull-like mask is, effectively, the 'end of level boss' who the players will have to find a way to defeat, banish or otherwise escape from.

I hope he is suitably terrifying.

2019 Update

I realise I'm not great at updating my blog, as I usually just spill my mind out onto Twitter and Facebook, and assume people who care are taking notice. With the idea that maybe that's not quite the case, here's my current update.

• Above is the cover design for Curtain Call, as it stands. I've not made too much progress since December last year, largely because it occurred to me to jump onto projects that I'm doing in conjunction with other people. But, still, this is my only properly fleshed out storytelling game, and I'm always happy to get good feedback about it so - to that end - I'm happy to send people a playtest version. 
• Cthulhu Adventus and Halfway, both for Stygian Fox, are still both in the pipeline. I've started tackling the former, whilst ideas for the latter stir in the back of my mind (it'll be a two book affair with, in a style not dissimilar to Stephen King's IT, the players playing first as kids and then as adults - potentially this also means that the kids' book will be one of those 80s/90s nostalgia trips that everyone seems to be doing).
• Writing - I've signed up to a mentoring programme that means I'm being encouraged to write 500 words of fiction every day. Which isn't quite working, because I'm also researching (or just reading) gaming material on a regular basis, and real life requires me to spend quality time with my kids every so often. But I have got two short stories on the go at the moment, one that's a no-fantasy story about a lonely girl who is drinking at home on a rainy night, and the other which is a sci-fi / cyberpunk / transhuman / Black Mirror affair that I'm really enjoying. If you bug me I may release copies into the world, as and when they're finished.
• A fantasy game has been lingering in my head for ages, based on a love of old Fighting Fantasy books and, frankly, any dungeon crawler game where the adventurers run into the guards serving the evil overlord. There seem to be a bunch of games that allow you to play 'the bad guys' but I'd like to write this one game - sooner rather than later - as a love letter to the games and gamebooks of my youth, a darkly humourous game that allows you to play somewhat a band of dysfunctional guards who always seem to possess a random item that will help the adventurers get through that one room further into the dungeon.
• Largely, much of my current inspiration is coming from the Plot Points podcast, which has pointed me toward investigating specific fantasy games. Very much worth checking out, just for the sheer variety of game covered.

Thanks for reading.

Early November 2018 update...

Just a quick one.

The Werewolfing is done for a year. We've raised £250.07 - thanks everyone involved! The fundraiser page is still open, if you want to throw money at it:

https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/simons-giving-page-215

The next few projects I'm working on are as follows:

• Curtain Call is a personal project. Already pretty much written, but just needs editing, words shuffled around, graphic design done. It's a game about death, or rather the journey from life into death wherein, as the events of a weird night or journey unfold, one character in the fiction realises that they might be dead or dying, and all the other people around them are figments of their imagination, supernatural entities or the spirits of their dead companions. A small project I need to get out out of my system.
• Cthulhu Adventus, for Stygian Fox - I need to finish editing the Mythos section, originally written ten years or so ago! Still, a small project, I suspect.
• Halfway, also for Stygian Fox - something that is for modern era Call of Cthulhu but that will have some similarities with Curtain Call I suspect. Set in the world of dreams, but not as you've previously seen it, it's likely to get surreal, dark and disturbing.

Anyhow, that's it for now. I've got a week of next week, but I'll be in Ireland celebrating, amongst other things, my wedding anniversary. I've got some time off in December but, really, I'd love to have Curtain Call done by that and, with any luck, the Cthulhu Adventus bits will be done by the end of the year and I'll have made a start on Halfway. No idea when I'll fit in little writing projects around it, but I suspect I'll have to take a few breaks from these other projects just to get an injection of new ideas.

Here's a picture of the cover (so far) for Curtain Call. 

EVENT: GAME ON, WEREWOLVES - 27th October 2018

GAME ON, WERWEWOLVES

October. As the nights noticeably encroach on the daylight hours, and Halloween draws ever closer, we turn our attention to the monsters that lurk in the shadows, and of man’s ignorance of them or the bold attempts to fight back against them. 

It’s perhaps a simplistic metaphor for the fight against cancer, and yet there’s something admirable in taking on that darkness that could, conceivably, affect any one of us in our life-time, either directly or indirectly. In the past year alone I’ve seen two friends diagnosed with cancer and have begun treatment. Undoubtedly many of you will have similar experiences.  

In my own small way I’m trying to make a difference by raising money for Stand Up To Cancer, by organising an event based around a game that I’ve been playing for close to 15 years. Indeed, one of the afore mentioned friends, Kate, has been playing the same game with me for much of that time. Werewolf is a social deduction game where-in the players, usually a group of between six and twenty people, are all secretly assigned roles. Most of them will be humble Villagers, ordinary humans like you or me. But hidden amongst them will be Werewolves, who prey on their human neighbours, night by night. If you’re lucky you might also find some other roles at your table, such as the Seer, who might be able to detect who the Werewolves are before being killed, or the Hunter, who will take someone with him or her when killed.  

The game takes place over a number of rounds that represent, alternatively, Night and Day. During the Night everyone closes their eyes, specific roles being asked to open their eyes and select targets, whilst during the Day the village awakens to see who has been killed during the moonlit hours, and are required to deduce who amongst them is responsible for any deaths. It is only by successfully lynching a Werewolf (or a lucky shot by a Hunter) that the villagers can hope to eradicate the Werewolf menace. Should ever the village be composed of a number of Werewolves equal to or greater than the remaining humans, then they take over the village and satisfy their hunger on the few surviving members.  

On Saturday 27th October, partway between a full-moon and Halloween, we will be holding our Werewolf event from midday and into the evening, kindly hosted by The Thirsty Dragon venue in Greenwich (https://thirstydragon.co.uk– 166 Trafalgar Rd, London SE10 9TZ).There will be several different copies of Werewolf available for people to play, as well as similar games based on similar mechanics but based on different themes (members of the mafia trying to pick off the civilian they hide amongst, cultist trying to kill off party goers, alien horrors disguising themselves as researchers and soldiers, agents of a dystopian government infiltrating rebellious freedom fighters), but the big game that will be running will be the ‘Legacy’ version of Ultimate Werewolf, where each game will have a knock on effect on each of the Legacy games that succeeds it. This game accommodates from 8 to 15 players – I myself will be moderating, and am not included in those numbers – so arrive early to sign up and avoid disappointment. 

I’m asking that everyone who signs up for a game on the day pays a small fee to join each game (£1 for a game, or £5 for the Legacy game), but people are free to donate on the funding page whenever we want. Hopefully this page will be updated with pictures through the event, for anyone unable to make it in person. 

Thanks for reading!  

Simon Brake 

(@psibreaker)

Stand Up To Cancer fundraiser page here:https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/simons-giving-page-21

Facebook details for the Event can be found at:
https://www.facebook.com/events/876560915874844/

For the curious, I recommend this particularly good podcast about the game: 

https://www.stufftoblowyourmind.com/podcasts/a-game-of-werewolf.htm 

EVENT: Necrinomicon Charity Stream, 25th-26th August 2017

EVENT: 24 hour livestream event of Call of Cthulhu gaming and associated activities
CAUSE: Raising money for blood cancer charity, Leukaemia Care
DATE: Saturday/Sunday 25th-26th August 2018 
LOCATION: twitch.tv/necronomicondiscord

DETAILS: In 1928, in his story Call of Cthulhu, author HP Lovecraft described Cthulhu, or rather a statue carved into its likeness, as "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind."

90 years on and, even if you've played the tabletop RPG based on Call of Cthulhu and other stories by HP Lovecraft, the winged octopus headed alien god 'Cthulhu' might not be the obvious face of a charity fund raising event. But here we are. The Necroconomicon community on the Discord website, dedicated to bringing Call of Cthulhu gamers together in a friendly environment, are looking for writers, artists, podcasters and You Tube hosts - essentially anyone who has contributed to the game - to get in touch if they think they might be able to help with the 24 hour event.

The aim of the charity stream is to raise money for Leukaemia Care, as well as awareness of the disease.

Further details can be found on the Blasphemous Tomes website.

Undertow

I figured a blog post is long overdue.

 
For one thing it has been close to a year since my last post. I should probably update this more often - on perhaps a monthly or weekly basis. 

For another thing, my Facebook and Twitter banners have, for a long time, advertised that I have a story called Undertow, but it may not have been obvious where, why, or what it's about (it's actually a scenario for a game, but I'll address that shortly). 

Finally, a recent successful Kickstarter campaign has announced a scenario called Undertow for the game Delta Green which, I'd like to clarify now, is not the scenario I wrote. I wrote Undertow a year or so ago, for my friend Stephanie McAlea at Stygian Fox, and the book Fear's Sharp Little Needles, a collection of really short scenarios for the horror RPG Call of Cthulhu, that can be run at short notice with minimal preparation. The book was successfully Kickstarted a while back and should, fingers crossed, be seeing the light of day (or flickering candle) soon.
 
I won't say too much about the scenario here (spoilers!), but the hook is simple enough: a reclusive author publishes a novel after many years of absence from the scene, a book that displays knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos, and the investigators track him down to his home somewhere along the American coast. In many ways the book is a meditation on loneliness, depression and suicide. It is my hope that anyone that recognises that sense of isolation also recognises that countless people feel the same thing and pull through, and that if they can't find a way to escape the embrace of the undertow under their own steam it really helps to find someone who they can either talk to or spend time with without feeling harassed and judged. The scenario is a work of fiction, and no-one reading or playing the game is responsible for anything so evil or dangerous as to consider themselves without hope.

I know very little about Delta Green: Undertow, save what appeared in an update for their own Kickstarter: "First a dog and its owner vanished at the Tachee State Park beach, followed by four people combing the woods during the search that followed. What local authorities don’t know is that Native Americans claim the park is home to the Shadow. They say it is a place where the spirits of killers and criminals live on after death. Delta Green must team with an unlikely partner to continue the search." 

The game Delta Green is a spin off of the game Call of Cthulhu, so naturally there is likely to be some overlap in the theme of dark alien (incomprehensible) forces pitted against the characters controlled by the players. The title Undertow also lends itself to the themes of water (and thus it's no surprise that both stories contain beaches), and arguably shadows fall into a similar category, a shadow behind the item light is being shone upon not miles away from the dark depths beneath the surface of the water. 

A weird point of coincidence is that, in my scenario, one man and his dog also have an important part to play. That's just the zeitgeist though - as limitless as the wellspring of creativity may be, the streams and rivers they produce tend to run the same grooves and collect the same ideas along the way - arguably there is only a finite number of things that inspire us, and we're all reaching into the same pool to pull our ideas out of.

I'll be honest - I'm kind of intrigued to see whether there are other similarities.

Anyhow, my Undertow should be out in the wild relatively shortly. Delta Green: Undertow will take a while longer to see the light of day. I suspect my scenario won't be quite as expertly realised as the Delta Green one (those guys have been writing excellent material for years!) but I hope it is well received. If you're reading this Blog post off the back of reading/playing my scenario, please let me know what you thought of it, good or bad.

Thanks!


Footnote: the metaphor of the undertow was in a lot of the songs I listened to whilst I wrote my scenario.  If you can find me on Spotify, you might just find the playlist. :-)



I am friend to the undertow
I take you in, I don't let go
And now I have you
~ Undertow, Suzanne Vega