CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

It’s happening, but it’s happening slow. Babes will be finished – most likely by year’s end. I will start to re-post the older sections here. Why? Well, two reasons. The first is that it has haunted me since I saw the setting. Always. At first the magic of the Fireborn setting , and then the challenge of writing for it, and then, finally, the story that came to mind. Always the story. I want to see the end. And, finally, Applemans, whose comments you will see on the previous posts. He, or she, is the second reason. Without Applemans, I would not have been able to even begin to justify the time to finish this story. I *might* have eventually made time for it, but it wouldn’t have been this year, as I have been very focussed on doing the “sensible” thing with university and my other writing. So, you need to thank Applemans for his, or her, encouragement, and polite insistence that the story had to be told to the end. And so do I. Thank you, Applemans. As to the rest? ...

In late 2004, I discovered a roleplaying game called Fireborn, and immediately fell in love with the setting. I bought both books, and downloaded the supporting PDFs that used to be on Fantasy Flight Games' website. As I read, I found the system was very different to the d20-based games I had been playing. It had curly bits! Now curly bits were not a problem and, after a couple of weeks of reading, I managed to wrap my head as around them as you can get without actually playing, and that was where the problem lay. Everyone I knew was busy playing something else. Living Arcanis and Living Greyhawk were pretty big in my area at that time, and then there was the Camarilla, Magic the Gathering, Warhammer, and real life. Short story - no one had spare playing time, and I struck out on all fronts. That left me with only one avenue for exploration: writing a campaign, and I had just the idea... While the Fireborn setting revolved around the concept of adult PCs as reincarnated dra...