I think when Nigel and I started up this site we'd just been coming off a downer over Gateway and probably, over a longer period of time, Etherscope. as a result I'd been down on universal/generic systems for a while,stating claims to a "games should have their own systems that fit their themes" philosophy. Thinking back now I think I may have been a little bitter and perhaps all is not so bad.

That's not to say I think that philosophy has no merit - I love Qin, and think Midgard is perhaps one of the best things I've done, and is certainly great fun to play. I would also stand by the beginings we have of an Etherscope system. However, I also think that there's plenty of merit in a universal system that you can use to adapt to whatever game you like. It gives your players less problems in learning new rules systems, and as a games designer it allows my to concentrate on the setting and a few key new systems to capture the flavour of my setting, rather than building the whole thing up from the very bottom.

I recently found that a couple of systems I had been working on ended up looking very similar, yet were for compleyely different games. At that point it struck me that for some projects I don't want to spend time working on the system in depth. As such I have turned to our gaming group's current universal system of choice, Savage Worlds, for a quicker way in to many of the settings I have running around in my head.

So - what does this mean for our Black Orifice fans? Well expect a few more Savage Worlds products to be coming forth from here in the future. It might be quick new system tweaks or a short setting idea with a few associated Edges or Hindrances, not entirely dissimilar to the 99c setting we did for Gateway. We might even do some conversions of existing games that we are big fans of too (I've been putting down a few ideas for a Trinityverse conversion)

Anyway, a few things are in the works. Watch this space...

Ben