Most Wanted
Well, Origins has come and gone and sightings of Most Wanted are pouring in. It seems the book has left a favorable impression with those who have seen it, which can only be a good thingtm. I'm eager to see this one at Gencon myself :) But as Lavar Burton would say, "Don't take my word for it" - you can read more about it here:

Most Wanted/Combat Missions Thread in Spycraft Forums
Most Wanted Thread in Spycraft Forums

wh00t!
Well, the move went swimmingly - only 6 hours from house-to-house on the hottest day of the year with about 1200 lbs of trash and garage sale stuff in between. Cleaning was another story...but I digress. I'm approved for my loan, with a few minor conditions, and should be signing the papers in a day or two. BOOYAH! I'm still without phone on the homefront, and broadband is at least 12 days away, but I'll live - more time to finish the next 2 proposals for our friends at Paradigm, knock out the Dragonstar material and do a little pinch-hitting for the 2003 Shadowforce Archer Threat Book (the Shop, for those in the know) and Stargate. Now to set up my desk...

28 Days Later
***WARNING: Some Spoilers Follow***

A good friend of mine's favorite movies are zombie movies - if he could get a picture of George Romero tattooed on his ass he would - so I ended up seeing 28 Days Later this Friday for a little A/C and relaxation before the big move. I'm sure you can read a boatload of reviews on the film on the web now, but my impression was that the movie is a very good, very intense film for the first half, then turns into Day of the Dead (3rd in Romero's trilogy) for the second. What bothered me the most was not so much the plot (which is never the strong suit of a zombie film - it's always a few humans clinging to their humanity while trying to repel wave after wave of undead) as it was the inconsistancy of the characters.

It's like the screenwriter wrote the first half of the script, set it aside for 6 months, then returned to it without rereading what he had written. Jim, our hero, who is allegedly reluctant to kill, flies off the handle and brutally murders a soldier (sure, it was the guy who shot the bleeding heart sergeant, but still, like that?), while Selena, who hacked apart her compatriot of 4 weeks when he had a cut on his arm after the zombie attack, doesn't try to fight or cut her way out of the situation with the soldiers (the 'give me my knife back' scene wussified her in particular). Unlike Day of the Dead, in which the characters are all trapped underground, the soldier's compound was not secure - they could have bailed. I liked it, but the second half, I feel, detracts greatly from the mood set by the first.

I Hate Moving
Well, this weekend I'm making the big move - into my first house, my own house. God what a pain - it's not so much scary as a pain in the ass making your first purchase a private one. Sure, I'm saving a lot of money in fees and even getting the house lower than market value, but it would have been a whole lot easier if I had a realtor helping me out. I'll probably have to duck out round noon to go home and try and pick up the slack with the preparations (everything is pulled to the surface, but its the miscellany that kills you in the end) so we can move tomorrow. My new house won't have broadband set up til the 11th, so blog posts may be a little more infrequent for a while. I'll still post stuff here as I find inspiration.

In Other News...
I got a prepress draft of Most Wanted on Tuesday and I'm happy with it! The writing still holds up (IMO) after 2 months of not looking at it, and the art is cool :) For those of you who are not AEG forumers, the book contains tons of stuff to tool out your favorite Masterminds, Henchmen or Foils, including a new prestige class (the Terrorist), rules for crowds and hysteria, notoriety, a dozen new feats and tons of stuff for beefing up the Fixer/Pointman Mastermind System, including agendas, threat resources, and other badness. Oh, and there's a rogues gallery of 18 new fleshed out NPCs at three levels of challenge to threaten your good guys, in case you were looking for more. The book was well-received at Paradigm and thus far I've not heard any criticisms from AEG - we should know more about a release schedule and whatnot once Origins is over this weekend. Hopefully it'll be ready in time for GenCon Indy - if so, I'll be 'round to sign it!

Hey there!

Welcome to my stupid little spot in the massive nebula of blogs popping up on the web. I've built this dumb little place where I can share the fascinating details of life as a game designer (freelance of course) and talk about cool stuff I think of as I go. There probably won't be too much going on here, that this will remain on-topic most of the time, or that I will update it frequently, but I sure as hell will try (NDAs not withstanding).

Soooo...my name is Alex Flagg and I've been a professional (i.e. receiving a paycheck) freelance RPG designer for about 6 months, but I have been designing games in the hopes of being a professional for 4 years. I started off with a little fantasy project (which still hope will one day see print), then moved on to video game design for Strike Force, then wrote another RPG, which is in negotiations to see print in about 2005 (we'll see).

I started my most successful project about 2 years ago, a d20 game currently codenamed Project X, as a gift to a friend. After working on the game for about 8 months and making what I felt was good progress, I ran into an awesome little game called Spycraft which happened to have a good bit in common with Project X. I got to know Spycraft's mastermind, Patrick Kapera, through email and we both came to agree that Project X could be a significant contribution to the Spycraft line. As we were tying up negotiations on how exactly Project X would work at Gencon 2002, Patrick hired me to work on Spycraft, where I cut my teeth on professional game design.

Since officially joining the team 8 months ago, I have worked on 6 books, including The Fixer/Pointman Class Guide (Goodfella prestige class, Organized Crime department); Shadowforce Archer: European Commonwealth (first seat mechanics, including all classes save the Assassin, all non-fringe feats, rules for presence/celebrity, psionic powers, the Shadownet and the Prague chase map); The Faceman/Snoop Class Guide (with Clayton Oliver - prestige classes, investigation rules, lots of stuff on persuasion and interpersonal interaction to the tune of 40,000 words); Most Wanted from Paradigm Concepts, a book of villains and villainous options for Spycraft masterminds; Shadowforce Archer: African Alliance (prestige classes, foot chase rules, gambling, skills and psionic powers); and Stargate (foot chase rules that may not make the final cut :( and perhaps some NPC classes). I'm a busy boy, with lots more work in the pike, including some work on Dragonstar with my good friend Will Hindmarch (fellow journeyman designer and owner of The Gist Mill), more SFA and Spycraft stuff for AEG and Paradigm, and of course Project X (soon!).

*phew* So that's me. More as it develops.