Curriculum Vitae

The False Machine Book

I compiled all the decent posts on this site into a book. I am currently unable to bring out an epub version through lulu, but if you would like one, contact me.

Rumble City

Matthew Adams has done a game for tiny cars you build youself called 'Rumble City'. He did all the difficult parts (the rules) I did a mission generator and you can get the whole thing for free here.The generator is designed to encourage users to re-purpose things they would usually find in their normal environment into a surreal post-apocalyptic reality.

Swordfish Islands.

Jacob Hurst is doing this gigantic island scourcebook. he is soaking up a lost of varied talent from the OSR generally so it should be pretty good. For that I did some rumours of the elven ruins, a generator of elven ruins and some weird writing from a deranged elementalist. I also did a golem generator that gives you results in iambic pentameter and am currently working on a generator for normal shipwreck cargo that should be relativly dull, but useful.

Maze of the Medusa,

This is a gigantic dungeon, drawn by Zak Smith and keyed by me. The manuscript was about 40 something thousand words long and I am sure I invented something new in every room. It has been in layout for five million years and may, in fact, never leave layout.

Deep Carbon Observatory.

At the bidding of Zzarchov Kowolski, I and Scrap Princess have completed work on an adventure/module currently titled ‘Deep Carbon Observatory’ for Neoclassical Geek Revival. It is available now.

Click for a link.

Veins of the Earth / Pariah's of the Creation

Scrap has been working overtime doing monster illustrations for this. Go here to take a look at some of them. I have promised to try to get it published for June 2014.

ANTI-JOESKY TAX

The Joesky tax was that you get something useful at the end. This isn't useful, it's just a thing. If the normal Joesky tax is like getting a rebate, this is like the government coming round your house, taking one bannana and leaving an apple. There is no reason to it.

In an Observatory

1. Everything it built around the needs of the equipment.

The building is like a shell for the sensing devices, which are like the living things that build the shell and arrange it to their needs. So imagine the sensory heart as a living thing and make curling home for them.

2. There must be no obstructions to its sight. The sensing height must be thrust alone into the void, no other part of the building may obtrude upon it.

3. The central core of the building must be veiled and unveiled. It is vital that nothing damage the sensing heart, but the heart must be periodically exposed to do its work. The defences must be strong but mutable.

In A Place Of Trade

1. Nothing must obstruct the mutual flow. Great volumes must pass each other continually and be exchanged across a known axis.

2. Spaces must be large, secure and defined. There must be room for everything that needs to move or rest. Everything must have a place and that place must be clear and known and easily guarded. (There are more internal pressures than pressures from outside.)

3. The spaces for owners are smaller and adjacent to the spaces for the owned, but finer, more important, more clearly arranged for comfort, leisure, status and hierarchy. As if a small parasite ruled over a great unwieldy beast and drank from it.

An Imperial Fortification and place of Domination

1. It must not be part of the world, but impose upon it. It must be like a crystal in thick liquid. A straight scar on a curving fruit. A jagged burr found in a sock. Its shapes must not be the shapes of the space where it is.

2. Nothing must get in from the outside, but any force may be projected. It is like a valve of violence. It lets violence out, it resists violence from without.

3. All within must be controlled from one central point. The core controls every space around it. These spaces in turn control each adjacent space. There are no uncontrolled spaces.

Then I had thoughts about ruins. Now these rules are useless for actually making something but I was thinking this way anyway and it seemed important at the time.

Are there Ruin Rules?

1. A ruin is like a boast or a broken promise. It must not be what it was. It must clearly show the intent of a design so that anyone looking at it can see what it was meant to be. At the same time it must clearly fail to fulfil that intent.

2. A ruin must puncture time. It must draw the mind of the observer through it to another time and they must feel the unreachable distance of that time.

3. A ruin must be indifferent to those within it. Though a product of organized thought, it has outgrown it.  It is part of time and nature now and entropy is throne’d invisibly there. It can never entirely be reclaimed. A ruin does not believe it is a ruin. In it’s own mind it is as other and pure and a mountain or a cave or a stream. It cannot be broken, it cannot be ruined. It regards you as you regard it.