I've had to severely curtail my Play By Remote activities of late. Working full-time takes, coincidentally enough, a lot of my time, and so I can't really run any games. I'm still involved in two Play By Remote games, and I'll have a few details about old ones below. I am, as my wife can attest to, a total game slut... I play lots of different systems, and most of them hold some sort of special place in my heart. I'm also something of a snob, in that I'm never really satisfied with systems that lack elegance and style. That's a large part of why I tinker and write for RPGs.

I'm involved in two Ars Magica PBEM games. The first is the aptly-named "Transylvania Saga", on Yahoogroups. It only started in October of 2004, so its just gotten on its feet, but my magus is a Jerbiton named Andrei Kilianus, a faerie-blooded werewolf named Hyrcanus Father-killer, and, of course, a wide variety of grogs.

I am also involved in the Haunted Springs Covenant, an Ars Magica PBEM moving into 5th edition. I am playing, as is usual, several characters. First is the maga, Zorya, an owl Bjornaer who is someone else's character. This is a character who is so not suited to me; I'm secretly hoping that she dies, but I'm going to play her faithfully. I am also playing Father Theodolphus, a former apprentice turned Orthodox clergyman, who has been adopted by a Merinita magus of the covenant. Of course, there are several grogs; Kale and Maurus Theodosius are a couple who fled the burning of Constantinople, while Nikodemos and Iakobos accompany Theodolphus.

A Pound of Flesh

A Pound of Flesh was a Shadowrun Play by Post game I used to run at The Editor's Wastebasket. Originally, I was going to run the game so I could get familiar with the Shadowrun rules again; it turned out, though, that I wound up running a Shadowrun game for my group when I was at school, so I already had my refresher on the rules. However, time constraints mean that I have had to shut down the game. I wish I could continue, but it's just not feasible.

The group was engaged to break into a company known as Synthecon, Inc., a Houston corp which manufactures biomedical equipment. In my version of 2061's Houston, Synthecon also does its own research and development, and sells anything it comes up with to another corp for production. They managed to develop a food supplement that would allow ghouls to forgo human flesh... so long as they put the supplement on normal raw meat, ghouls would react to it like human flesh. Synthecon has already won Dunkelzahn's award for the project, and the runners are pre-emptively stealing the supplement, and the information on its creation, before it can be auctioned off. For those who are interested, I have the majority of the background information still available.

The Pendulum Halts IV: The Dark is Rising

This game was one of a family of PBEM's, all set against the same backdrop. Vecna has broken free of his imprisonment in Ravenloft. He has torn apart Sigil, killing the Lady of Pain, and begun a war which stretches across the Planes and touches nearly every crystal sphere. I was playing in two of the four games, one in the Forgotten Realms, the other on the Planes, and running the fourth: The Dark Is Rising, in Ravenloft. The teaser for the game is located at the link, and will tell you the original concept for the game.

A Grave in Shallow Sand

This is a Palladium Fantasy Play By Post that has finished; of the original party, only 3 people survived, and one of them is imprisoned in a mystical limbo for being too much of a bastard. It was over at the Editor's Wastebasket, being run by Thoth. My character, Gorion was a Quorian Fire Elementalist. A Nightlord by the name of Nartach has subverted a tribe of Minotaurs, and is planning to use them to take over the Palladium World. Together with his army of Hunters and Hounds, plus the minotaurs and a slew of other demons, he has driven the Gromek from Raag Vir; we're currently going to war to take it back... "we" being a group of adventurers originally hired to find a minotaur graveyard and a few gromek who survived the raid. Unfortunately, Gorion died at the hands of an elemental summoned by another party member.

The Pendulum Halts

The original Pendulum Halts game had been running for over a year now, but has now ended due to GM overload. It has its own website at The Pendulum Halts, and is being run by Chris Roberton. Set in the Forgotten Realms, the members of the Army of the Thunder Peaks are fighting hard against the minions of Vecna. We began with the assualt on Raven's Bluff, have traveled to Sigil and the Ravenloft Domain of Cavitius (the former hold of Vecna), and are now staring down one thousand Kracken, a variety of lizardmen from a far crystal sphere, who seem immune to the cold of winter which is around us.

My original character for this game was Bern Steelhammer, a dwarven fighter/psionicist. Sadly, he died in combat with a mind flayer, but not before striking several strong blows with his warhammer. Now, I am playing Zeren, a Githzerai fighter/psionicist from a monastery that once stood in Sigil. With the destruction of Sigil, his memories of his brother monks has begun to fade, until he can barely remember anything about them. Soon after that, he was exposed to an artifact in Cavitius which opened to him every mortal mind in Vecna's keep. The combination of those events unbalanced him. He is now convinced that he is not just a zerth, buth Zerthimonn, the quasi-mythical savior of the Githzerai race. The faded memories of his past life are lies planted by his foes to confuse him, so he keeps his "true" identity silent... he does not know who his enemies are, and he does not want them to realize that he is free of their lies. I'm also playing a character named Slerszek, a Varanid (a type of lizardman, closer to a monitor lizard than anything else) Ranger, dedicated to Hoar, and the destruction of the Kracken and Susshi. We're back in business with this game, though things have taken a downturn, as we're lost on an alien world, trying to find an artifact of great power.

The Pendulum Halts III: The Circle of Ages

The third Pendulum Halts game was also run by Chris Roberton. This time, we are out amongst the Planes, a group of high-level adventurers transporting a relic known as "The Circle of Ages", rumored to have the power to recreate the multiverse... or, hopefully, keep this one from being destroyed. This game started in March of 2001, but in that time we've fought our way out of the Gate Town of Mechanus, slain a Yellow Dragon, and taken her three wyrmlings into custody, hoping to turn them to good by having them raised well.

My character is Kappelheim Tavartarr, a gnome bard (with the Loremaster kit). He's middle-aged and a little bit cranky, but his life's quest is to find the gnomish goddesses. When he was young, he found a mention of them in a long forgotten history tome, and he has searched the planes for them ever since. Until this began, worked for his cousin (many times removed, though he doesn't know that), Nip, retrieving artifacts of value for customers from places across the Planes. He made a good living at it, but this adventure (and the destruction of his home in Sigil) have thrown him into the middle of the greatest adventure the Planes have ever seen. We've done a fair bit of travelling since the beginning; we're currently on Krynn, preparing to travel to Baator via the portal of Raistlin, in preparation for heading to the third layer of Baator... oh, and did I mention that we're going to try and talk Tiamat into helping us against Vecna? However, I haven't heard anything about the game in several months... I don't know where we are, now.

Codename: Replicant

A while back on the ShadowRN mailing list, I was begging for a Shadowrun PBEM. I'd done the stupid thing of reading through some Shadowrun books, and I was jonesing pretty hard for a game. Well, Iridos said that he had an idea for a game, but it was going to be a little bit unorthodox... it would only have one player, and his character would have amnesia. He doesn't know anything about his past, and is a bit spotty on some aspects of life in the Sixth World. It sounded intriguing, so I agreed to play (besides, as I said, I was jonesing really hard for a game...).

The game has been going on since February of 2001, and I still don't know much about my character. He's slowly feeling out the world around him and, while he's doing that, he's working a job. When he was busted out of the hospital, he was concealed by a forest spirit that lived in a downtown Seattle park. In return, he agreed to find some people who were threatening the park... and thus the forest spirit. As the information on his target was given to him in an old Mr. T. lunchbox, he's adopted the moniker of Mr. T.... he simply tells people who ask for more that his last name is hard to pronounce, so he uses that to save time. He doesn't know much about himself, still, but what he does know is here. Unfortunately, Iridos and I both ran out of time for things like this, and the game is on hiatus.

Fading Suns

Unfortunately, this campaign ended due to computer problems on the GM's part. My character was an Ukari Engineer named Majak. I don't know him that well, yet... since I didn't get to play him, it's hard to say what he'd have been like.

Servants of Light

This was a just-beginning Palladium Fantasy PBP that was taking place over on Play By Web, then moved to Role-Play On-line. Our group had been hired in Llorn to create a temple near the dark city of Kaash for the Church of Light. My character, Od Brogansson was a follower of Belimar who couldn't stand the Gods of Light and Darkness... still, a job is a job, and that's what he had to do. This game died due to lack of player interest... people just disappeared on us.

Age of Darkness

This was a small PBEM that a friend of mine was running in Palladium Fantasy. I was playing a Wolfen Ranger, but the game died.