Friday, October 06, 2006

New Toy

Three weeks to go. Three weeks before Guild Wars Nightfall goes live. And the silence of the collected ur-brain that is putting this together gets deeper as we all make a sudden, mental downshift for that climb of the last hill, reviewing that which we have accomplished and weigh it against that which we wish to accomplish. The WoW expansion has moved out of our intial launch window - we have a month free of the two million pound gorilla's landing. And Neverwinter Nights 2 has slipped, ever so slightly, from before our arrival to slightly after it.

All systems are go.

But enough about that (and I probably speak of it only through weariness). Instead the weekend, before the final push, I plan to curl up with Wolf Baur's new release, Steam and Brass, which I received yesterday by dint my being a patron of this unique experiment. And by "being a patron" I mean waving a twenty at him and shouting "Flying Monkeys" in a Wicked Witch of the West voice. And while I was not as deeply engaged as some patrons (never even checked out the ongoing LJ), I am glad to be among the few and proud that have a copy of it.

And it is interesting, in that we have a limited number of people engaged with this project, so it truly is a limited edition. This is no module or sourcebook that anyone can get - instead it gives all of its owners a leg-up on running it. One of the down sides of being a hard-core Cthulhiac, for example, is that you (and most of your hard-core gaming group) will pick up the latest product, which makes it a little hard to run "Masks of Nylarthothep" (and given the tendency to reprint, very difficult indeed). Here, we're fewer in number.

Anyway, for the moment, I'm just to veg out with the new toy, making notes in the margins and devouring it wholesale. And if I run it, I'll tell you about it. And for those that missed out, he's planning on doing it again on a new project.

In the meantime - Flying Monkeys!

More later,