Shared Sci-Fi Hiatus

I've been pretty quiet on my postings for the Shared Sci-Fi game that I spoke about a while ago. Which is a shame, as I was really excited about this concept, and a number of folks have done some really cool things with it. For me, though, it wasn't working. I think, for a couple of reasons.

The first was the narrative approach I was taking. While certainly fun, and a break from how I normally do a Solo game, it was causing difficulties. It's hard to both WRITE well and GAME well, at the exact same time. As a result, I think it failed as both a story and a game.

Secondly, the system. I was using the old Cyberpunk 2020 system, which I'm not terribly familiar with, so I had to teach myself what I was doing while playing, and it honestly isn't a game that works for me, as a Solo experience. Now, learning a game is one of the great reasons for doing a Solo game, but honestly I don't have a driving interest in learning CP--it's a cool game, and I'd love to play it for real some day, but I don't have enough people around me interested in it to make a real go of it.

So, the game kind of came apart even while I was doing it. I was tossing around various other systems that might work better--Palladium, Shadowrun: Anarchy, GURPS, D6, etc. None really worked for me. And then, it happened.

I got an email from Pinnacle, that the Savage Rifts books that I backed almost a year ago were finally shipping! I was incredibly excited for this Kickstarter when it first came out, but I've allowed my enthusiasm to damper over the months. I think that Savage Worlds is a great fit for Rifts, and I of course had the PDF's, but PDF's aren't really my "thing." They're wonderful for system prep, and even for quick look up while running, but I really can't use them to learn or dig into a system. I'm still something on an analog guy--I like have the books, and being able to flip back and forth with actual paper. So, I was waiting.

Now that they're on their way, I decided to wait until I have them, and do the Shared Sci-Fi thing with a game I actually WANT to learn and play with. I'll probably keep some of the elements of Krakatoa--I might just declare that this isn't happening on Rifts Earth, but instead on Rifts Phase World (their Space Opera setting), but other than that it will be a fresh start. I'm also going to do the game first, and then worry about writing it up all nice later on. Well, that's the plan of course.