That Time Of Year

It's that time of year when we look back and want to cry or scream for joy. There's been a bit of both here but overall it has been a trying year.

Blur is a simple concept that I think becomes overly complicated due to the breadth of its nature. But it is easy when you remember this-Blur is the line to stand on between reality and fiction, or non-reality if you like.

Blur is films like Inception and Moon, books like Scorch Atlas and Motorman (still a classic), ARGs (Alternate Reality Games), Transhumanism like Eclipse Phase, Jeepform, Norwegian style, Story games and Game poems.

Between the rise of sheer inventiveness and ingenuity of the indie scene and the explosion of the Open Gaming Content / Open Gaming License (OGC / OGL) scene gaming has taken on a whole new life, one that many can't get their heads around yet. We can play anything from an Original Edition fantasy game to something so abstract that many gamers don't recognize it as a game.

And that is the literal definition of AWESOME.

With the advent of the Virtual Table Top and online services that match players up it is possible to play any game any time from nearly anywhere in the world.

Wow.

May your 2011 be filled with excitement and joy of living and gaming and, as us old grognards like to say, may you always roll natural 20's.

Peace

Apologies

I would like to apologize to the many folks who are supporters of this blog and it's lack of attention.

The hardware / software problems that started off as bad were found to be much worse than expected so I have had to regrow the BLUR concept and coverage from the ground up. It doesn't help that I also decided to finish a system and epic series of adventures for a fantasy rpg a decade in the works.

Don't think I have forgotten about this place or the people who make it special. I set my resolution to be if I can't get my own BLUR material up then I will point readers in the direction of the bleeding edge of role playing in the meantime. There is so much excellent work being done out there that I am stunned sometimes by the level of cleverness and ingenuity that goes into the work.

The work I am seeing is so far ahead of its time it's almost hard to believe how far rpgs have come since those small groups of gamers first sat down at the table in the early '70's.

Here's to the new year and I hope to get much more accomplished here on the blog.

For those who have stuck with me I offer my thanks.

And a big thank you to Hugh Dingwall for getting me back in the game (pun intended :)

Normality Co-Author Speaks

After a period of life induced silence the dark masters of the ergodic beast known as Normality have resurfaced with news of new projects.

I recently contacted one of the creators of Normality, Hugh Dingwall, to see what was new and got the 411:

“The one thing I've done and finished is to set up Normality on Issuu so if you go to: http://youarenowunderthecareofthegoatplan.synthasite.com/normality.php you can see a wee "virtual book" version with turnable pages and stuff. Cute, but hardly world-shaking. Aside form that I have a couple of projects on the go.”

“Cassandra is a prequel to Normality loosely based on the premise that players are people who can sense the cataclysm that brings about the world of Normality coming, but they can't articulate their foreboding. So it'll be another doom-fest as people try to interpret their vision in a way that other people can understand, and almost certainly fail and go crazy. “

“Harmony is the working title of another game I'm working on with my brother, based around the idea of indulging in and reinterpreting standard high-fantasy tropes. The idea is to have a world where the default state is peace - everything chugging along in, well, harmony, and the players' job being to fix it. That means no evil or unplayable races etc. Instead, every race has a default philosophical outlook which is morally neutral - morality needs to come from players etc.”

He added:

“Harmony is a The Brothers Dingwall project, that being the name we put out The Penguin Harlequinade under. That just marks it out as being a bit lighter in tone than Normality-related stuff. Which, as you can imagine, is not that hard to achieve.”

Hope I’m on the list for the first sneak at Cassandra :)

Slow but sure

Yes, I know, things have been a little slow here but trust me the work behind the scenes has been ongoing.

As I re-examined my gaming past I felt myself drawn to my roots and have been having a great time exploring that history that brought me to Blur in the first place.

That and the fact that I have over 500 gig of material (JEEEZ!) that I'm sorting for all these various projects (play testing-reviewing-my own systems-other systems-source material-inspirational material) plus health and hardware problems and a lack of help because everyone else seems to be having the same kind of year that I am has slowed things but I have not forgotten about anyone and apologies to all those who deserved at least an email months ago.

I don't think my +1 sword of dragon slaying will work well against that alt world KGB agent...but then again, who knows.

More soon

Hooked Again

I couldn't believe the date on that last post, but a lot has been happening and since I've been bitten by the P&P rpg bug yet again I have to ride this pony all the way to the end of the track.

I realized that with all the commotion going on about the OSR that I felt at home in again in the community.

Granted, there are a lot of naysayers who seem to think that old school gaming can't be fun but I just feel bad for them. All they ever seem to do is sit around and complain about characters they can't seem to get right or how combat is too complicated.

Isn't this about "the game is what you make it"?

So I have brushed off a few projects and broke out a few binders filled with notes from 2 fantasy campaign settings that I feel compelled to work on and release under the OGL just as soon as I figure out what system to lean them toward. Or maybe just make it generic so anyone running an old school rules set (original, clone or otherwise) can benefit from them.

That doesn't mean work has stopped here on Blur-rpg. To the contrary, The first Blurred Vision is nearing final compilation and I am working on a set of custom rules to provide a simple engine to play Blur if you have no other particular favorite.

I wish all this were happening a little faster and trust me, I don't sleep a lot these days, but I'm dancing as fast as I can. I have a few test runs to make with my file storage service and then we can get on with it.

I appreciate everyone's patience during this period. This work has been the bright spot in an otherwise dismal year.

Chin up, the weirdness will soon begin. Strap in and enjoy the ride :)

I DON'T KNOW The Role-Playing Game

This Role-Playing Game (RPG) is designed to be a very simple system ideally suited to a single-evening adventure. It was written to provide an RPG where an adventure can be designed and run with little preparation from the Game Master (GM), and where character creation can be finished within a few minutes by experienced players. New characters can be introduced and removed with ease, so a steady gaming group is not necessary. Indeed, GMs are encouraged to take turns running the game so that no one GM burns out on it.

Why the I DON'T KNOW system? I wrote this game hoping to eliminate some of the evenings where no one could settle on a game to play.

"What do you want to play tonight?" "I don't know."

And so it begins. Read more at:

http://www.cepheid.org/~kiz/idk.html

Lacuna: Part 1-The Creation Of The Mystery And The Girl From Blue City

Although not a freebie this indie is full up with great ideas (seemingly a mix between Harsh Realm and Cold War era Soviet trappings) it merits a look for someone looking for something to help work their way up to Normality (Which I still consider to be the best example of Blur ever).

Below I have tried to bring some sense of the game play to your attention in case you wonder if this is worth a buy or not.

http://rpgblog.typepad.com/rpg_blog/2005/10/lacuna_part_i.html
http://forum.rpg.net/tags.php?tag=lacuna
http://www.dreadgazebo.com/lacuna/
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=409373
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=463336
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=412532
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=425383
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=411524
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=385684
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=371133
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=365941
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=270337
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=110848
http://memento-mori.com/lacuna/

Apologies for the brevity in the opening. The large glowing piece I had written to open this entry was destroyed during the OS crash. I'm not just tossing this off, it is a far more interesting game than I have had time to write about again. And just maybe it can inspire your own Blur campaign.

I will write more on this latter if given a chance.

Time

So sometimes things take longer than you think.

Recovery is still underway but much improved from surgery. And finally a solution has presented itself to another problem, so that has been taking up a lot of time.

This blog has suffered and I'm still trying to contact a possible helper. But everything chugs along. At least I've been able to post a few worthy videos that walk that fine line.

I have enough material to do 500 posts. It just has to be typed and posted. It will be. If only the power of thought could accomplish this. God, the blog would be a constantly scrolling fountain of information.

Now I shall return to the churning sea of material and paddle toward the shore of organization. With any luck I will have a hold full of goodness when I make land.

Keep the faith. The key is forthcoming...

Update

So time flies when you're having...no...wait a minute...that's not right.

So with another surgery just over a week away I will drop a few thoughts to keep this trickle running.

I'm thinking of taking on a helper. There are a million things to be done and if I just had someone to sort things it would be a tremendous help. So I'm thinking of calling someone up and seeing what we might work out.

After finally sorting the data after the OS crash and making backups I am finally getting back to writing material and getting things ready for both Blurred Vision and the 2 blogs. I have a ton of video to post at the Tumblr site and have almost got a Lacuna article/resource page ready to post. Now if I could just get around to printing out the OpenD6 material and studying that I think I might write a set of guidelines for using it with Blur. Remember, from Normality to whatever system you are most comfortable running they will all work with Blur. That's the whole idea. No need to learn 500 pages of new rules. The story is the thing and the adventure of creating that story the fun of it all for GM and player alike.

Something fresh from RPGnet

REVIEW OF Time & Temp - Unbound Edition

Time & Temp is a new game that I heard about on Indie Press Revolution’s podcast and I knew immediately I had to try it out. The game is simultaneously about time travel and soul crushing temp work. Set in the modern day, the player characters are temps who work for Browne Chronometrics, a company that fixes temporal anomalies. Since the more important a person is, the more their presence messes up time, they logically send temps as the least important people imaginable back in time to fix problems.

-Robert Dushay

Read The Whole Review

Thought this sounded interesting.

CIGARETTE BOY "A Mock Machine Mock-Epic"

This piece was nearly finished when the great dual OS collapse occurred. I had hoped to bring the target a little close to gaming material faster but I am having to re-create most of those notes from scratch. So for the time being I will introduce those unfamiliar to the world of Cigarette Boy.

"In a future world of perpetual war and corporate subjugation, an AI Agent is summoned by its owners to initiate a data search in the world's electronic "Metasource Omnifiles." Its assignment is to put together a dossier on a mysterious rogue known only as "Cigarette Boy." Trouble is, the AI is having a bad day, feeling a little under the weather, not actually up to snuff. If the truth be told, our agent has become, by some strange twist of neurons, totally deranged! Instead of assembling the usual tidy "hyperdocument" of "print scans," "vidfiles," and background data, the AI spews forth a horrific mass of jargon, ephemera, and frustratingly tiny fragments of useful information. It seems to have found the right crypt, but exhumed the wrong corpse."

-Darick Chamberlin

So begins one of the first encounters with a work that defies description. If Blur has a first novel this may be it.

"START :
START SOLOPRINT 'E-CODE' FUGITIVE AUTOSCHEMATIC OF X-STATION PROTONOVEL OUTLINING "C" : [RECRUIT NUMANGA COPYCAT SKIM SACCADES : ACOLLIDE I.D.C. AUTOSCHEMA VIA ELEVENTH HOUR REBEL IONS : IGNITE OVERCLEVER COPYCAT PHAROAH SCANS IN "CIGARETTE BOY" SEQUENCE CUTS VIA DYMOSAURICK RE-EXPLODERS] : INVESTIGATIONS IN PANGELIC GLASS CUTS PARTIALLY THROUGH THE 'ATOMEROTIC EYETALIER' : DEVELOPED AS PROPOSAL PROPERTY ALONG SKIM "C" TRAJECTORIES TO E65813 AND PROPOSED AS MOCK SOLOPRINT TO THE MACKERT CORPORATION : [FLAG AND FILE 'THE MACKERT CORPORATION'] : START : ADD 9O DOCUMENTS FROM THE UMBILICO CHESSBOARD ANTI-MACHINERY GRID : ADD ALL THREE ACOLLIDED 'LAVA' GRIDS : [DIAL-UP AND SCAN] : "

Challenge yourself to the material as written or try out the machine like podomatic audio version. An important and striking work that points towards new directions in the future of the written word and the manner in which we use and understand it.

Cigarette Boy Links

http://www.cigaretteboy.com/
http://www.evolutionzone.com/kulturezone/c-g.writing/cigarette.boy.txt
http://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPgraf/Media/cigaretteboy.htm
http://www.noisetank.com/cigaretteboy/

CIGARETTE BOY
"A Mock Machine Mock-Epic"

http://cigaretteboy.podomatic.com/

In Todays Scenario

Suicide puppet attempts to traverse his living room , aided by his last surviving kitty, to retrieve the Amoxicillin from the bathroom while watching the thunder snow.

Will he beat the cold and flu like symptoms? Will the anti-biotic cure him or just make him itch? Will his abode be once again cut off from the outside world by solid sheets of ice?

Stay tuned!

a novel for the Internet about London Underground in seven cars and a crash

When I first laid eyes on this work back in the 90's I realized that our perception of the novel had changed forever. I have been a Burroughs fan for ages and a reader of many volumes by many authors that pushed the envelope, but this was the first time I had ever seen anything quite like this.

Geoff Ryman is an award winning author in his own right, but 253 took us to a whole other world of narrative and structure.

Take the ride yourself

253

Wide World Of Blur Update

So I went ahead and added a feed in from WWoB to show the most recent 5 posts. That's all that mess you see to the right at the top of the column. One less step I have to take.

New Blur Media Blog

Rather than clutter this blog up with video and other mixed media I decided to start a tumblog for posting media that serve as inspiration or entertainment for those interested in Blur.

There you will find video, audio and whatever else I come across in my travels that fit nicely into the world of Blur.

I will post here whenever it is updated. Just think of it as Blur TV :)

You'll find it located at:

http://blurrpg.tumblr.com/

A Bit of Words

Slowly things are settling into their new orbits. Home life is still touch and go, but I did run into someone if my sleepless rant didn't scare them to bad. Apologies for my rambling that day in the computer store, but having no sleep for nearly 2 weeks and having just left a session with my dentist I must have been approaching the level of Dudley Moore in the movie 10.

Anyway, I have hacked away at the wheat field of the gaming world and will be posting on several games that I think fit nicely in the Blur universe and list of films, books, music, etc I hope to start filling out shortly.

Blurred Vision #1 is still cooking. I know it will have an expanded list of websites that are great for in game material. Also, an article on how to build your own Blur campaign for $0.00 and where to locate a plethora of materials. Then there are the 'suggestions' to add to your own Blur world to aid player and GM alike.

So much material and at times overwhelming, but I am bringing it together. The burdens of the meat world have been insane and I have admitted to 2010 not being to impressive up to this point, but I am hoping to get that turned around if it is within my grasp to do so.

Again, apologies for slow response times all around. Hang tight and dream your way into that space in between the real and the unreal, into the Blur.

Patches

At 6:15am this morning my wife woke me from a coma like sleep screaming there was something wrong with Patches, our cat who had appeared ill yesterday and was checked out by a vet and found to be in 'perfect health'.

My wife rushed him to a vet and at 8:15 I got the call he had passed, due to some undetected heart defect he had been born with.He was only 10 months old.

Words cannot express the impact this has had on our life. Raised from the day he was born by us and nurtured along with his baby sister his loss in our family will reverberate through the days and weeks to come. He was a little dynamo that kept a room powered even when he slept.

My head hurts and I have a hole punched through my stomach. We have to get his sister tested because it is a genetic defect and she may be dying as well.

I hope to keep my mind occupied but if you don't see a posting or a return email know that I am here, just trying to piece things back together.

Until then, go tell every living thing you care about that you love them and give them a hug.

Goodbye Patches-you will not be forgotten.

I want to whine...no, really, and badly

I have thought of resurrecting an old website I used to run called 'Things I Be Mad Hatin'.

After the near complete meltdown and a mediocre at best recovery of my Acer/Vista desktop a few weeks back, last night, while casually trying to take a break, I was hit by a little piece of virii trash with many names but only one result-total loss of the c drive and its contents. Mind you I had 4 layers of defense to prevent such a thing from happening which it blew straight through without even a warning pop up .

Luckily I had backed up the material for the most part but it was nice to know that my most hated nemesis, MS Vista, and Win7 are the only OS it attacks.

I would like to shake the guys hand who wrote the thing. I have beat some insidious little bastards but this thing was a work of art. I mean, taking over Windows Defender and shutting off all your other protection in a blink of an eye (I thought it was a pop under it went so fast) and not even being able to access safe mode or pull up a restore point...now that's talent.

Another day in the land of Blur...god I could use a cup of coffee and fresh pastry.

So, the good news is it just took up a lot of time. I moved all of Blur to the laptop weeks ago and the work is coming along nicely.

Hope to post a few new bits today...just as soon as I get that coffee :)

(Several hours after above was typed) And then one of my cats is sick...I'm going to start screaming now...you might want to cover your ears...

FROM THE BLUR BOOKSHELVES-A READING LIST

These books are recommended not just as direct source but as inspiration in narrative and how worlds might be constructed. think of them as tasty lubricant for the brain. More to follow.

RIDDLEY WALKER-RUSSELL HOBAN

Riddley WaIker is set in an unspecified, post-apocalyptic era in the future, when dogs have become humanity's enemies, and history is a rubble of allegory. It's told in a language that recalls the "smashed mess of mottage" of Finnegan's Wake, but Mr. Hoban's inventiveness guarantees that the language of Riddley is his own creation. Guttural yet eloquent, we hear in it echoes of rudimentary English (and a tendency toward sagas) that evoke Beowulf, mixed with remnants of the technological catchphrases and political jargon of the 20th Century.

WILLIAM GIBSON-IDORU
Amazon.com Review
The author of the ground-breaking science-fiction novels Neuromancer and Virtual Light returns with a fast-paced, high-density, cyber-punk thriller. As prophetic as it is exciting, Idoru takes us to 21st century Tokyo where both the promises of technology and the disasters of cyber-industrialism stand in stark contrast, where the haves and the have-nots find themselves walled apart, and where information and fame are the most valuable and dangerous currencies.
When Rez, the lead singer for the rock band Lo/Rez is rumored to be engaged to an "idoru" or "idol singer"--an artificial celebrity creation of information software agents--14-year-old Chia Pet McKenzie is sent by the band's fan club to Tokyo to uncover the facts. At the same time, Colin Laney, a data specialist for Slitscan television, uncovers and publicizes a network scandal. He flees to Tokyo to escape the network's wrath. As Chia struggles to find the truth, Colin struggles to preserve it, in a futuristic society so media-saturated that only computers hold the hope for imagination, hope and spirituality


RICHARD PAUL RUSSO-CARLUCCI

Collected together for the first time in one volume-this is Richard Paul Russo's critically-acclaimed science fiction trilogy featuring police Lt. Frank Carlucci investigating high-tech crime and corruption in a near-future San Francisco.

DON WEBB-THE DOUBLE

From Library Journal
John Reynman awakens one day to discover a man who looks just like him lying dead in his living room. John's subsequent dealings with police, his relationship with the female lawyer he hires, and his attempt to learn about his double all take place in a surreal world punctuated by arid humor, graphic sex, and bizarre characters. As he stumbles across arcane clues a weird witness, two books in a car, three men at the door, a strange message on his laptop he ponders the reality of death.



STEVE ERICKSON-AMNESIASCOPE

A postmodern flaneur in a spectral, futuristic L.A., the narrator of Erickson's foggy, metafictional fifth novel is a former novelist known only as "S." Self-absorbed, verging on paranoid schizophrenia, S delivers a sustained, often hypertheoretical monologue on the nature of cities and memory, on the compulsion to write and have sex and on particular movies and people who may or not be figments of his imagination. S's L.A. is a surreal city of ruins, divided into dozens of time zones and lit in concentric rings by official "backfires" meant to separate it from the "new America" to the east. S lives in a dilapidated art-deco hotel and works for a newspaper that operates in the bombed-out Egyptian Theater, but spends much of his time with his girlfriend, Viv ("my little carnal ferret"), trolling the bohemian demimonde-a fanciful realm of voluptuous prostitutes, tortured artists, drug addicts, strip joints and bookstores. What S ultimately seeks is love and redemption; yet he's trapped in a kind of psychological Mobius strip, as the city itself, the fires that consume it and the people who walk its streets appear to be nothing more than projections of his own musings on entropy and lost identity.

Trying To Get Back On Track

I could whine for 3 straight screens. It wouldn't get you any closer to some fresh piping hot BLUR.

So hardware/software/doctors/heavy meds/dead clothes dryers/etc/etc and here we are.

Again, from the top...and with feeling!

CLIQUE: The Uncollectable, Unplayable Card Game

CLIQUE: The Uncollectable, Unplayable Card Game

By Syn

Ever wandered around your local game shop, club or a convention, and seen a group of card geeks, huddled together as they play the latest CCG? There they sit, with their piles of rare cards, talking in what seems like another language. Excluding you by the mere fact that you haven't got a clue what they're on about, and haven't the required several hundred pounds to spend on acquiring a deck that would match theirs. Ever been annoyed by this? Of course you have, and not only have you thought 'bunch of sad bastards', you've also considered how to get your own back..

That's where CLIQUE comes in..

Clique is a card game like no other. It is unique in that each set of cards is different, the cards have no real meaning, and the game is unplayable. The idea behind Clique is to befuddle, confuse and distress those sad CCG-playing bastards.

Read More http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue9/clique1.html

Absolutely brilliant. The true heart of gaming is answered with this. Having fun!

Nicotine Girls

"Nicotine Girls....is bent, brilliant, perhaps a little offensive, possibly not for the sensitive, and the most human, innovative thing to come out of the gaming world in years. Oh yeah, and it'll fit on about a page or so if you print it out. the whole game. go read it. I'm not sure if i LIKE it, and I'm reasonably certain it'd be uncomfortable as hell to play it, but i love this game just the same.

Read it."

-Chris Campione, in his weblog.


Nicotine Girls is a roleplaying game of teenage, lower-income girls looking for happiness.



Find it here

http://www.halfmeme.com/nicotinegirls.html



Further info:


How to run Nicotine Girls


http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=2711


Nicotines Girls-From A to C and back


http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17166.0

Update

After a reprieve from my latest appt. I have been sorting out the recovered files mess. Only about 40% could be recovered but I am back on the research and tracking down what I can remember. This material spanned a several month period of time and was long overdue for backup (due to lack of time from Dr. appts).

Won't get fooled again.

The hunt has brought a lot of new material in to view and some ideas I hadn't considered before. I hope the extra time is worth the payoff.

I've expanded the concept out into books and films that may prove useful in inspiring your game worlds or just provide a break away from the gaming portion without losing the central focus.

Currently I'm sorting again and preparing the release of BLURRED VISION pak:01. It will go into more depth and contain source material and places to locate source material both online and around the house. You would be surprised what can enhance a Blur setting :)

Until next time, (when it should be something useful and not just me chattering) be thinking about what all this means to you and start commenting.

Back to the word mines...