By now, pretty much everyone knows that I'm a table-top roleplayer, and that I'm using that game format to sort out the creative content for my much bigger interactive ambitions, while I build a solid creative and financial foundation in film.  Probably, you've also heard me go on about what a completely backwards, frustrating process writing a role-playing game actually is.  Restoration took me five years, from the first notes to a completed e-book on the "shelves" at RPGnow.com.  I swore that I wouldn't even begin Shardfall until I had a proper development team behind me.

Of course, I ate those words when the bug came back to bite me.  I did take a year and a half off or so, but with only two years of development, Shardfall has been translated into the mechanics of Action Storytelling.  Admittedly, part of the reason it takes me so long to do these things is that the immediate financial incentives are...  well, they're not really incentives.  I tend to dive into my screenplays, and putter with my games.

Naturally, the rules of Action Storytelling were already hammered out in Restoration, which left the the world of Shardfall itself as the largest piece of the unfinished puzzle - my favorite part of the work.  Now, Shardfall is on sale at DrivethruRPG.com...

...which means the only interactive world in my brain uncommitted to paper is SkyChasers.  Where Restoration and Shardfall are hard, merciless worlds where heroes always pay a price, SkyChasers is the essense of adventure.  Where I've been making games with a sense of realism and action to them, I'm confronted with the challenging ideas of whimsy and play.  Where I've been making games for kids my age, I've now got to make one for kids the age I was when I fell in love with movies and stories.

Action Storytelling has got to go.  Given that it took years to find that system, I'm not thrilled about the idea of taking scissors to it and making paper dolls...

...or rather I wasn't, until last month.  Truly, I was concenred that I'd never figure this thing out, and after getting two games deep, I'd miss the chance to put my creative stamp on SkyChasers before handing it to my (currently unformed) development crew.  Nope.  It all fell into place, and now I'm two chapters deep into my rough draft, staring down my age-old nemesis: the rules section.  Now, for the first time, I know exactly what I want, and how this all works, and for those of you with kids, there's a very exciting treat coming your way... in a year or two.

I'll just post my summary of what SkyChasers is about for those that don't know:

Our galaxy is full of intelligent life, and to these titans and demons of the void, human beings are just little bugs trying to stay alive.  Since the day they came from the sky, we've spread to the far corners of space, nesting in their giant vessels and colonizing their worlds.  Like bugs, humanity is hitchhiking to an uncertain future.

Stranded in the cosmos, grown-ups struggle to keep our colonies alive while the bravest among our children stow away aboard alien starships, exploring worlds, finding trade routes, stealing alien technology, learning their power and using it against them.  This heroic order of space explorers makes the most of our tiny size and vast adaptability to steal a foothold in the stars and fight back against those who would squash us.  We owe them our future.  They're SkyChasers!

Using a new gaming engine currently in development called "Adventure Storytelling," SkyChasers will give parents and children the chance to share the greatest adventure humanity has ever known!