Project NEMESIS

Clearly, I've gotten lazy. My promotion-fu has become weak and flabby. I rolled out eCollapse and figured that everyone who had Wild Talents or the EE would jump aboard, or that it would make its nut just because it had my glorious name on it. I WAS WRONG*. The thing's moving poorly. Maybe it's down to my cover. I fully realize it's an ugly cover, I but I hoped it was the RIGHT KIND of ugly, an ugliness entirely appropriate to the vandalized world of the eCollapse setting. But maybe not.

On the other hand, I'm not really an illustrator. I just play one on REIGNwiki. What I am, is a writer, and I think I did some decent writing on eCollapse. My goal, whenever I write anything but especially a game, is to have something interesting or cool or funny or at least wittily phrased on every page.

So over the last couple days I took my eCollapse print out from GenCon and went through it with a highlighter. There are some pages where I had to choose between a couple ha-has, and some pages that were fairly weak on their own, but there was only one page out of 131 that didn't have either (1) a sentence I was proud I wrote or (2) no text whatsoever.

But you don't have to take my word for it. In the hopes of scaring up some interest in eCollapse, I'm starting this thread and posting the cool bits from each page.

Ready? Brace yourself.

i) The skintight green bodysuit showed a perfect physique, the kind you used to have to work for in a gym.

ii) "The only rule of law is 'money talks'!" Zippy's crimson lips curled in derision.

iii) She fled, with a speed that only inhuman coordination could manage on four-inch stilettos.

(Page 1 has no text)

2) He may just enjoy dressing up, jumping off buildings, and punching cops.

3) If you meet someone cute at the library, try to work the word "trope" (it rhymes with "dope) into the conversation. Can't hurt!

-G.

*But at least I've now joined the tiny and elite club of people who admitted they were wrong on the Internet.

4) Cyborgs have been around since the first time a guy with a broken leg used a crutch, and they've been cool ever since the pirates started putting on hook hands.

5) Just like 20th century legal prohibitions on alcohol and sodomy, all this did was drive it underground and give criminal suppliers a rationale for price gouging.

6) "Remember those two guys who had the giant brawl over which one got to use the name 'Nutjob'? Seven civilian casualties and the guy lost a foot before agreeing to go by 'The Original Nutjob'?"

7) Something has exiled them from the dubious Eden of middle class toil, and they have remade themselves in the image of their beliefs.

8) You have to give him points for the long leather coat.

-G.

9) Creating a character for eCollapse is quick and, unlike much of what that character is fated to experience, painless.

10) [S]pitting on one's foes is psychologically satisfying.

11) [T]he major ejectors (about the size of a standard Denny's pancake) are under the jaw and behind the ears.

12) I'm not going to guarantee that if you do this you're going to become imbued with a sort of personal magnetism that seems nearly mystical to those in its thrall. But it's happened a lot so far.

13) Shockers die of organ ruptures and bleed-outs, but they leave good-looking corpses.

-G.

(I flaked on posting these yesterday -- hope y'all didn't start withdrawing.)

14) The third element is a protective plastic coating over your eyeballs so that you can't get blinded by tear gas or get sarin in your ocular cavity.

15) EXPLOSIVE PRODUCTION MOD -- Oh, the authorities hate this one.

16) It produces enough fog to affect everyone in about a ten-foot cube, so try to get your enemies to dogpile you before you use it.

17) After getting one superpower, it's not uncommon to want more. Specifically, people usually want whichever superpower was used to whip on their booty.

18) Also good if you're after inexpressible, bittersweet tristesse when you catch a whiff of your ex-girlfriend's perfume.

-G.

19) It's like a nerd pill, only, y'know, it goes in the other end. I don't think it makes you like Star Trek, if that's a concern.

20) It installs between your shoulderblades, hooked into the lungs so it can use them as a sounding chamber

21) I say that as a man who once installed a sixteen-inch uvula covered with PCP-dripping cilia.

22) Last guy who got one could hear a helium ballon drifting past behind his back.

23) What, that's-that's no uniform! Good grief, a, a motorcycle helmet and Carhartt coveralls isn't going to, y'know, strike fear into anyone!

-G.

24) The dream of those old-time steroid abusers is finally real.

25) Or, if you're eve less squeamish about radical alterations to the human form, there's, uh, this thing. It's kind of like a prehensile tail.

26) Your character wasn't born a crusading superhuman, didn't major in Civil Disorder in college and is far, far more likely to crash out in a studio apartment than a Fortress of Solitude.

27) My deepest fear is that God has a plan for us... and it's HILARIOUS.

28) Baby, I Love Drugs

-G.