A New Years Resolution

A New Years Resolution

Blogging is powerful.  I began blogging in earnest professionally, because noting a software technique helped me remember it, and documenting it publicly meant others could use it.  By serving others, I served myself.  But I have also learned that being forced to produce material by a deadline is an excellent way to teach yourself something, and a way to get yourself to finish what you started.

And so, last year, I set a goal for myself to finish up all of my GURPS material that I had lying around, and to publish it in weekly blog posts, to gain the habit of regularly blogging, and today, I kick off the result of that year's worth of labor.  I simply enjoy GURPS, so diving deeply into that topic will be fun for me and will help me build this useful habit.  Next year, I might turn that habit around and put it back into programming, or perhaps I'll expand it into full publications.

So, here's the plan, my few and faithful followers: Every Wednesday of this year, I will make a GURPS blog-post. That's 52 GURPS blog-posts!  This isn't some off-the-cuff New Year's Resolution. I've already worked most of the material out, though it isn't completely finished, I'm afraid, but that's part of the nature of this resolution: Publicly making this promise means I'll revisit it enough to polish it and hand it to you, dear reader.

I also believe it's easier to blog when you've already written the content, so I have written some of my blog-posts in advance.  I already have the first 4 blog posts ready to go, and the first will be up on the 6th of this month.  My topics will include, but are not limited to:

Psi-Wars: An obvious knock-off of Star Wars, a ready-made setting that you can jump right into.  The intent of this series is to create, before your very eyes, a rapidly prototyped setting inspired by a popular franchise. When this series is finished, I hope that in addition to you having your own "It's totally not Star Wars" setting to play with, you'll have an idea of how to go about rapidly prototyping your own "It's totally not Warhammer 40k" or "It's totally not the Lord of the Rings" or whatever else it is that you particularly enjoy.

Cherry Blossom Rain: The famous chambara campaign that my players still won't shut up about.  It'll include a discussion on my design notes, a description of the setting and why I built it the way I did, fully-developed chi powers, templates, and a discussion on how to customize martial arts to get the experience that you want.

GURPS Cabal: Extensive notes on spirits and demons, words of power, template conversions from 3e, historical research and comments on how to run it, and discussions of useful books to help you get started on the path of consulting occultist.

Heroes of the Galactic Frontier: An extensive campaign framework, including templates, rules for running, aliens, starships, civilizations and technology, all for your TL 12^ heroic captain-and-crew gameplay, inspired by works like Star Trek, Farscape, FTL, Masters of Orion, Star Control, Quintet, Artemis Bridge Simulator, EVE, and Endless Space, and many more.

This is the stuff I have prepared.  We'll have to see how far I get, what I can finish off and what I cannot, as I suspect that I have more material than I can unveil in a year.  I hope my results delight you, dear reader, and reward your faithfulness, and I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.

In the meantime, if you just can't get enough Mailanka, feel free to peruse my blog.  There's lots of GURPS material under the GURPS tag.  Have fun!