Bastard's Notebook

Woohoo! Cog Wars just picked up a great review!

Ok, so some of you may remember a good long time back when I was working on writing up a bunch of setting stuff for an RPG known as The Cog Wars. It's a great game- steampunk, youthful rebellion, crotchety old saboteurs, sentient clockworks, and the like. And the_tall_man , originator, developer, and lead nutjob on this grand old project, has now released a gamma version of the corebook- all the setting stuff, all the rules, Ok, ok, damn near all the setting, rules, etc etc, you'd need to play- just a dire need for some light editing and playtesting. And I no longer have a regular campaign group to inflict it on.

So, those of you who're of a gaming mindset, please- go forth. Grab the FREE PDF. Play the shit out of it. Or just read it over and find the pure brilliance/errors of our ways. Let him know what sticks and what doesn't. All that.

Time for the finale, ladies and gentlemen. You've followed our bold adventurers through four of the five major stages of a Cog Wars game, and now it's time for the epic conclusion, complete with cannonfire, and flying machines- steampunk at its greatest.

For those just tuning in, this is all fiction pulled straight from the game, which will be released some time in October. So, for the next few weeks, I'll be releasing a piece of fiction from the game on every Wednesday. These pieces were intended to be color fiction for each of the five main phases that a single campaign of The Cog Wars goes through: Discovery, Disruption, Revenge, Vignettes, and now, Confrontation.

Now for a bit of background on the game world itself. The Cog Wars is set in the independent city-state of Tiran, a Steampunk capital filled with mad science, alchemy, and adventure. Players can take on the role of Kids, Geezers, or Cogs (living clockwork automata) in a depsperate fight to free the city from the grip of the masterminds that have taken control behind the scenes.

As this is the last planned installment in this series, go keep your eyes on the official site for further updates about the release of the game, which should be fairly soon. Or, go check out the journal of the man responsible for this whole thing, the_tall_man.

( Cannons! Flight! MADNESS! )

As if I haven't been enough of a post whore already, check this latest preview for The Cog Wars out- with text from me included! Now I just need to bust my ass on finishing out the rest of the text for this......





Just click on the picture to download the PDF.

Ok, I'm getting sick of this.

With the new cafe job (both new as in a new job for me and a new cafe-it's only been open for 12 days now.) I've been schedule for about 20 hours so far this week. Want to know how many of those I've actually been allowed to work?

Four.

The wonderful owner keeps turning my scheduled shifts into "on-call" shifts, which loses me both money and time, since I keep (why am I bothering?) leaving those hours open to actually work. And of course, the loss of income and time raises the whole stress factor, which means my artistic work is suffering. I've had a map drawn up and mostly completed for the Tiran project for days now, but I've been under enough stress that I just can't get the damn penciling on the thing done and get it inked. Same goes for the writing.

ARGH!

So, fuck it. bastard owner decides to stick me on-call today, and I'm just going to be working my ass off on my own shit. I am sick and tired of dealing with business owners who lack the stones to actually allow their employees to work.