Post-Apocalyptic Games, Dystopian Futures, and Another Expo!

Here we are officially into fall 2014. It has been an interesting past few weeks, that’s for certain, considering that Calgary got hit with a snowstorm just before we arrived from the Philippines. But we sprang back from it and have been enjoying above seasonable temperatures since I posted my last blog.

As one might have expected, the week was spent mainly searching for work, but I still managed to be somewhat productive during this period of time.

As luck would have it I had two interviews on Wednesday and was offered the position at both companies on Thursday. I had to make the choice and ended up choosing the better paying of the two.

C’mon, it only made sense after all.

So fortunately my unemployment streak, if you don’t count the time I spent in the Philippines dealing with my father-in-law’s funeral, I’ve only been out of work for a week.

Pretty damn good if you ask me.

Over the week I’ve been polishing the Powered Armor book and coming up with more ideas for various rules that will need to be covered. The really hard part when it comes to writing this book is all the accessories and delving into all manner of sources for inspiration, including older games. I’d have to say that just the accessories alone take up nearly half the book!

Speaking of inspiration, I will be delving into a mess of video games and coming up with versions of the various armor and seeing what sort of accessories and modifications that are available in each game. I know for certain that will add far more to the end product and hopefully it will make my readers happy.

I was also quite pleased to see that over the past few weeks another four issues of Wisdom from the Wastelands have managed to become copper best sellers over at Drivethrurpg.com.

And next week issue 43: Optional Combat Rules 2 comes out! There are numerous new rules to frustrate and annoy your players with included.  Even some that I alluded to with the numerous conversions that I posted while I was in the Philippines.

The nice thing is I have ten months of issues sitting with my editor at the moment and he’s been asking tons of questions, which I have been taking the time to answer. So over the next ten months my readers can look forward to Alternate Character Advancement, TWO weapon issues, Underwater Rules, Artifact Quality and FIVE issues devoted to harvesting.

So that means I can spend the next ten months working on my novels, Powered Armor, Robots and Vehicle source books.

November is not all that far off (scary, if you ask me), and that means that the whole novel writing challenge is about to take place. I am seriously thinking of entering the challenge and using that month to begin work on the sequel to ‘Sword of Kos: Dark Inheritance’. Will I? Only time will tell for sure. I have just over a month to make my decision on this.

As anyone who has followed my blog for the past year will already know, I’m quite the fan of the post-apocalyptic genre.

Gee… ya think?

Sarcasm aside, I recently found a couple of games on Steam that are worth checking out. The first is called Hard Truck Apocalypse. Think Mad Max but with bigger trucks and none of the primitive weapons. It’s a Russian game, so the translation is laughable most of the time, but still the whole road combat is quite fun and you can upgrade your truck’s cab and box, as well as buy bigger and better trucks and weapons.

It’s cheap, like $6.00 so you won’t have wasted too much money on it. I have yet to beat the game but I am enjoying the combat and trudging along. Of course I will use it for inspiration when it comes to my Vehicle source book.

When I was still in high school there was a classic game called Wasteland, the supposed predecessor to the awesome Fallout series. If you didn’t know before, you will after reading this… Wasteland 2 has been released on Steam as well! $40 so not too pricy, although I think my computer may not be quite powerful enough to run it properly. I have only started playing it so I can’t give you any initial thoughts about it. Incidentally, if you purchase Wasteland 2, you'll get a free copy of the original!

If you are a fan of X-com, there is also a similar game called Xenonaughts available on Steam. So far I’ve only played three missions into it and it is very reminiscent of X-com. Graphics are not quite as good and the gameplay is pretty much the same. It’s cheap, only $20 so give it a whirl. Once I’ve had the time to play it more in depth I will post my thoughts on it.

I was able to snag a free pass to see Maze Runner on Wednesday with my son. Overall it held my attention, although it was rather confusing in places. It definitely was a little on the gory side so I wouldn’t take younger teens to see it. Still I enjoyed it and I’m now contemplating picking up the novels to see how the whole series will play out.

That reminds me… why is it so many current teen series are all about dystopian futures? Take the one that is best known… Hunger Games. Then look at the other recent releases such as Divergent, The Giver and now Maze Runner. Why are all these bleak, anti-establishment novels becoming so popular?

In my humble (not?) opinion wouldn’t teens and young adults (hell many adults as well) be more interested in reading about a better future, a future with hope and promise? After all, look at the state of the world today (then again, when hasn’t there been turmoil in the world). I personally would much rather look to the stars and see what lays out there for our future.

I would think that people would rather be able to escape into something that has promise. Oh, wait… video games, MMO’s and social media seem to be what a lot of young people are using to escape the real world now.

Even I do that. Then again I have never been much of a news follower. Too damned depressing all the time!

Next Sunday I may not be posting a blog. I might not be until Monday. I may not even post at all. The reason is that my family and I are going up to Edmonton for two reasons. The first is that my son is going to write a final test for his EMR (Emergency Medical Responder) license. That is going to take two days.

The second reason is the third annual Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo. Gonna meet Alice Cooper! Well and the actors that play Raj and Harold on the ‘Big Bang Theory’.

I honestly doubt that any of my readers are from Edmonton, but if you are, and you see a guy dressed as a colonial marine, stop me and say howdy!

Anyhow that’s it for yet another week. What is really amazing is that I’m only like six weeks away from having posted a blog for a year straight with only a few late blogs and I think only one missed blog the entire time.

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Until next week (possibly, see above), peace!

Chris Van Deelen is the author of the Skirmisher Publishing LLC sourcebook  Creatures of the Tropical Wastes  sourcebook, co-author of its  Wisdom from the Wastelands  game supplement and contributor to the  'Sword of Kos: Hekaton'  Anthology.