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It's been a couple of months since my last column, because life has been complex and keeping me away from doing too much with the website and our online prescence in many ways. Our basement reconstruction project has begun, so a constant background of hammers and other tools going has made it difficult for me to concentrate. We had our cycle of household birthdays and celebrations, the start of the Quartermain campaign with our rpg group, gaming days at the Putnam Cafe, and lots of other activities.
Along the way I made an organizational decision that we needed an equivilant of a 'corporate identity' for all our activities, as having a bunch of different organizational names and identities was getting confusing. We discussed this with our gaming group and among ourselves and have arrived at our new 'identity' Naughty Faerie Productions which will act as an umbrella for our activities on the net, in local gaming etc.
Why? Because were having trouble getting our work recognized by many of the so-called professionals in gaming, writing, publishing, and with origanizational groups. In order to get stores, clubs, conventions etc to take us seriously we needed a blanket name that seems corporate, and Naughty Faerie Productions will fill the bill, while leaving us lots of leeway and ability towards silliness and fun.
We've started to use it on the website, and will be including it in our Bios for our appearances on Panels at Arisia etc. Its hoped that by having a truly unique identity (Fantasylibrary.com is a bit too generic for some people) we should be able to get more visibility for all the things we do.
Projects Underway:
Quartermain is a free-to-use Science Fiction setting
for DOJ Inc.'s Hero v5 RPG. The setting is developing online as collection of web pages (which can be read online or downloaded), and we also have a Western Ave Irregulars ongoing campaign meeting once a week to playtest it as it expands. We're centering around the Security Team on the Diplomatic and trading center of Quartermain a few hundred years in a future with its share of aliens, smugglers and assorted problems that go with such things. Sort of a Hill Street Blues on Babylon Five with touches of several dozen author styles mixed in.
Perils & Panache is an upcoming roleplaying project, a combination of rule system and settings based around concepts of reincarnation, secret history, paranoia, counterfeit unrealities and mysticism. I'm doing reading research right now, and am working on 1920s Paris for the setting (focusing widely on the so called 'lost generation' ex-pats that inhabited Paris' art and literature circles), though other time periods and settings will be forthcoming if all works out. Its a multi-die system (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 but no D20!) drawing concepts from Ironclaw, Hero and our own previous works on Kaleidoscope! and Cosmic Synchronicity. The system is 'open ended' rather than closed, die pool based, and combines Design at Start with Develop In Play methods. It uses a card-based damage system (the 'misfortune deck') instead of traditional pure dice methods, and is heavily linked into Tarot Deck Archetypes at the character development stage. I'm hoping to have it playable by January.
Circulating Books we have continued to expand our policy of giving away books, primarily SF and Fantasy, via local conventions (as we have for the past 3 years) and now the Putnam Cafe in Cambridge. These get a Fantasy Library Free Gift sticker placed in them, including the name of the place we gave them away. We're also collecting books from folks who want to thin out their collections and want to get their books into the hands of the people.... we collecting them and redistribute them via our sources. Hundreds of books have been put into wider circulation this way, and we want to help more get out there to encourage folks to read and enjoy SF and Fantasy etc. If you have some books you'd like to so share drop them off (by hand or post) to: Joseph Teller 266 Western Ave #1 in Cambridge MA. If you discover some of our books getting out to unusual places outside the area drop us a line, we'd like to know how wide an effect we're having with this project.
Open Games Day another project we're doing in connection with the Putnam Cafe in Cambridge, is running regular weekend (Saturday) game events for the community. We drag out our collection of board and card games, and try to get folks to get back in touch with their inner gamer. Right now we're aiming this as a monthly event, but may expand if its popular. (Next one is Nov 23rd 1-6pm, Putnam Cafe in Cambridge.... corner of River St & Putnam Ave.) The cafe manager is gamer friendly and needs to show to the owners that gamers can be great customers if you let them have their fun!
Conventions! Kiralee, Cindy and I have all been asked to attend Arisia as guest speakers. This is our 3rd year as such on the program, talking and discussing gaming, publishing, the internet, books and popular SF/Fantasy/Horror media.
We also plan on attending Vericon on the Harvard Campus, which tends to be big on games and gaming. We won't be panelists there, since they primarily only ask alumni and professors to do such (and occasionally comics folks like the guy who draws Sluggy) but we will be playing games and having fun and promoting Naughty Faerie Productions. All this of course is in January, but we have lots or preparation for both conventions ahead of time.
Legal Notice:
Synthesis & Synchronicity is the meanderings of the mind of Joseph Teller and may not reflect the reality of your own personal universe. Contents are Copyright 2002 by Joseph Teller and anyone who wants to reproduce it in any way or fashion must request permission (although linkage to these is granted to any and all websites, mailing lists and newsgroups, their operators, posters and users if so desired). Unless of course otherwise noted within the text of the articles involved. Synthesis & Sychronicity is distributed by Naughty Faerie Productions.