I’m almost finished with the PDF version of “The Map of Zombies.” I’ll be sending it to backers and posting it in the Mockman store soon (at which point I’ll probably update this page with a link).

Last night three friends and I playtested Ben Costa’s “Pang: Wandering Shaolin RPG”, based on 17th century Chinese history and his martial arts/wuxia comic Pang. It was really fun, and we had a good time; the system reminded me a tiny bit of the old game “Feng Shui” (perhaps understandably) but it was very smooth-flowing and there were lots of cool character bits and ways for players to affect the game world, in addition to just neat combat. (“I spend 2 Qi Dice and roll Bureaucracy — turns out there’s a decree from the Qing emperor that all soldiers & guardsmen must take a break to stretch their limbs every 2 hours! During their stretching break we sneak past the guards!”) I’m into RPGs that give players little ways to tweak and affect the gameworld and things like NPC behavior in a metagame sense — OTOH, I’m not so much a fan of pure story games where there is no DM and it’s just a collaborative exercise. I enjoy the *game* and *challenge* aspect, the experience of pitting yourself against an unknown element… but I also like these small ways to blur the PC/DM barrier. It’s food for thought for my own efforts at designing a game.

NEXT UPDATE: Monday!