Yes, I’m alive! I swear I am! If you don’t believe me, feel free and try to check my heartbeat. I might not let you. Not let you in interesting and violent ways.

I’ve toyed with the idea of creating a cyberpunkish sci-fi world for a while. By “a while”, I mean “ever since the release of 30 Seconds to Mars’ first album”. The second album just didn’t cut it for me. They lost what made them unique. Anyways…

So the idea behind game pitches is to throw away game concepts in the wilds of the interweb, either as inspiration, or just to get rid of them from my mind. Shall we?

Title: 22XX

Catchline : “They say folks thought we’d have flying cars by nice, a few decades ago”

Synopsis : In the early 2100’s, something happened. Nobody was quite sure what is was, but it happened. Half of the Eurasian continent dissappeared. In a few short minutes, more than half the population of the planet vanished, never to be seen again. They said it was aliens, some kind of super powered monsters from above, but neither the UE government or the FCS have the right answer. In any case, the planet planet panicked (with reason), and decided to band together to form a United Earth, UE. It’s been over a century, and we’ve done nothing but gear ourselves for the next attack, forgetting a few things about the Earth’s citizens in the meantime.

Nowadays, you find your survival yourself. Laws are mostly a suggestion, unless a third party pays you to uphold them seriously, technology stagnates, except when in comes to space travel and weaponry, and the moon was turned into an eerie prison-colony, smiling upon our heads every night.

Mood : Bleak nihilism, fatalism, maybe horror, maybe conspiracy, maybe both.

Genre : Cyberpunk-noir with some harder sci-fi elements

Soundtrack: Le Peuple de l’Herbe, Pawa up First, Vampire: The Mascarade: Bloodlines… The usual noir-horror soundtrack, apparently.

I feel awesome doing this. It’s my first time feeling like I have to explain a hiatus. I’m finally a true blogger…

“Sorry guys, real life’s been catching up to me, so I haven’t had much time to write lately.”

The truth is, I’ve met a girl. A most awesome, smart, beautiful young nerdy woman who’s been taking a lot of my time lately. I, for one, don’t mind the least. But yes, it does mean I was too busy cuddling to geek out online.

No worries, my friends, I forget none of you! I plan on getting back to my writing the second I can get my mind back together in an happy, geeky mush of grey cells. Hell, I have a few posts in mind for you guys!

With love, from Kimyou

Today marks the first anniversary of death of the one guy who rivals Stan Lee, as far as the Gods of Geek goes : Gary Gygax is still dead.

On this day, last year, I learnt the death of Gary. It was like hearing of the death of that really cool uncle who told us the most awesome of stories. I took about a week to accept he was gone, and that I never had, or never will, meet a great man, perhaps the man who’ve, short of my own father, had the most influence on my life.

In the last ten years, I’ve played more or less the equivalent of 90 straight days of DnD, I haven’t been a day without having a thought of the game since I got my AD&D core, in high school. I live with gamers, hang out with gamers, hell, my cats play with plushie d20s!

This post is simply to thank the brain behind it all, the guy who gave us all the stories we still talk about, who made it possible to explore underground lairs, imagine we were warriors, heroes, made us escape for a little while the rather unrewarding world we live in. Since he came by, since he got that idea with Arneson in the late seventies, nerds have been rolling 20s all over the place.

Thanks, uncle Gary. I’ll kill monsters and take their stuff in your honor, you have my word.

And to all my readers, think about it a bit. How much time do you spend gaming, whatever the game? How much time do you spend thinking about gaming? Hell, most videogames out there are somehow influenced by Gygax at some point. Just give the man a thought, a minute.

In his name, get your favorite d20 and roll it, now (or soon). I got a 13.