Surface Level

Two years ago today I released the first public version of Drier Deserts, Hotter Suns. Immediately after that, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Vancouver, where I was living at the time. As I had been working on the project on and off for about eight years at that point (making 2022 now year ten!), it was awful timing. It really killed my motivation to work on games. A bit of playtesting has happened, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. You see, I came to learn very early on during those days that I absolutely hated running games online. As a referee, I am very active . I love to stand up, walk around the table, make big gestures etc. That really doesn't work online. It was also hard gauging people's reactions to the new awesome rules I had just written. These might sound like excuses but there's no denying the fact that I was having a whole lot less fun playing RPGs and making them. It really hurt the project and my playtesting efforts. It's not all bad though! The playtes

In sci-fi games, it's pretty easy to forget that the player's ship is their literal home. I'm always a fan of it being their "home base", but that can often be overshadowed by it's utility as a people mover. To make it feel more lived in and homely, I'm experimenting with the bottle episode . Essentially, trying to set an entire session aboard the ship.   The easiest way to accomplish this to set the session during the time it takes to travel between two locations. This works great for a lot of reasons. You can easily lead into it from the session before (ending that session just as you are departing), and it can lead into the next session easily (the session ends when you arrive at your destination). Like a filler episode, it nicely slows down the pace of the game and gives a sense of scale on a temporal level. The other benefit is that if the session doesn't go well, you can fast forward to the destination. Alternatively, they can be set onboard the