So, I've finally done it. After thinking about it for like a year, I've finally started my own OSR blog. I'm going to take this opportunity to briefly introduce myself and list off a few of the things I'm working on.
My name is John, and I'm sort of a professional blogger, in a different industry. Maybe I'll share more about that in the future. I live in Los Angeles.
I started my role-playing career with Shadowrun of all things. I loved it at the time but now, like most people who are familiar with Shadowrun, I love the concept but can't tolerate the mechanics. Especially the 6th edition that just came out– dear lord.
I'll probably never play Shadowrun again, but it has definitely informed my play style for other games. It's also informed my interest in settings– I really like stuff that blends sci-fi and fantasy, hence the name of this blog.
I finally got around to trying D&D– specifically, both 5E and Pathfinder– a few years ago. I enjoyed them, but after learning about the OSR I realized that that was the play style I was already gravitating towards in the other games I was playing, and immediately fell in love with the idea.
So far I've only played OSR games over Discord, but that's about to change. This month I'm starting up my first campaign– a slightly modified version of Esoteric Enterprises.
I've also been germinating a lot of ideas over the past year– here's what I've done at least some work on so far:
1. My near-future cyberpunk hack of Esoteric Enterprises. The rules are only slightly modified actually; it's more the setting that's changed a bit. The game will take place in San Francisco in 2032, so as cyberpunk goes it's closer to Strange Days than Shadowrun. This is just about done, and will be my first GMing experience other than a single session of Blades in the Dark two years ago.
2. A post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery game. Imagine a sword and sorcery type world a la Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, which advances to a 22nd century level of technology, then there's an apocalypse and the survivors go all Mad Max. That's the basic idea. I'll probably run this sometime next year once the EE campaign is over. This game uses a new rule system I came up with, still loosely based on B/X D&D. I'll share some of the individual rules and content I've come up with for it here as time goes on.
3. A new magic system. Well, two. One is a quick but weak spellcasting system that uses a verb-noun structure a la Ars Magicka, except it's both Vancian and free-form. Hard to explain, but I'll share it sometime. The other is a system for powerful ritual spells, closely based on the one in Silent Legions.
4. A bunch of hacks and add-ons for the aforementioned rule system– vehicle and chase rules, cyberpunk rules, transhuman rules, Rogue Trader style starship rules, domain level play, etc. I hope to get to run all of these some day.
5. A ruleset for running an SCP Foundation game. This one I might never actually do– rules are easy enough to make, but I'm not sure how to design missions in that sort of setting. I'll probably publish some of the stuff I came up with here though.
6. A ton of random tables, mission generators, and the like. So far I'm mostly designing them for the EE campaign, so I'll share them when I can do so without spoiling anything for my group.
7. A bunch of monsters, magic items and stuff, which I'll share when I can without spoiling anything for my group.
There's probably other stuff I'm forgetting, but that's what you can expect from me over the next few months, at least.
By the way, that Esoteric Enterprises cyberpunk campaign is open table and I'm looking for more players, so if you're in the Los Angeles area and interested, hit me up.
-John
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