blog · Conventions

A Fresh Start

Victor Raymond
View of the gaming room in my basement
The gaming room in my basement, where my Wednesday Night Game group meets to play Tekumel.

The Sandbox of Doom is back.  After a two-and-a-half year hiatus, I am bringing my blog back into production.  The Sandbox is where I will post my views on various issues in tabletop roleplaying games and gaming in general, as someone who has been playing for a good long time.  There are a number of topics related to this re-start:

  • Traveller Tuesdays.  I am definitely picking this back up, right where I left off – looking at psionics and their place in the 1977 rules.  Since I started that series several years ago, I have run several different Classic Traveller adventures and campaigns, started playing in James Maliszewski’s Riphaeus Sector Classic Traveller game, and had several decent conversations with Marc Miller.  All of that is grist for the mill, looking at the 1977 rules for insight into CT.
  • Games, art, and social science.  Of late, I’ve noticed that there have been various attempts to talk about tabletop roleplaying using social science framing.  I want to explore this more, mostly to draw some better boundaries between art, social science, and gaming.
  • Games worth paying attention to.  One of the great things about going to conventions like GaryCon and GameHole Con is that I’ve had the chance to pick up some fantastic tabletop gaming materials, mostly related to the Old School Renaissance.  Just to make sure that they don’t sit on my shelf of honor, I’m going to be reviewing them and providing links on how to get them – the best thing about the modern day and age is that we can produce marvelous games and support one another in doing that.
  • The World of Tekumel.  There are a bunch of really cool things going on with the World of Tekumel, and I want to share them with you.  I have been running a “Fresh Off the Boat” campaign for the past 8-9 months, and it’s been going very well.  There are other projects related to the Tekumel Foundation that are also underway and in process, and I’ll be talking about those, too.

Lastly, I am setting up a small games company, Ancient Academy Games LLC, to publish some of the material I’ve put together for various games.  More news on that as it develops.