Long-term PARANOIA players already know about this, but all those recently decanted Troubleshooters who've only picked up the game recently should check out The Toothpaste Disaster, a Lexicon game run by Allen Varney during the development of the 2004 edition. It's a fantastic source of ideas for PARANOIA and a great way to immerse yourself in the game's mindset.

Development of the second of the new rulebooks, the BLUE-clearance IntSec book is now well past the half-way stage. Soon you will know the mandatory joy of Cone Rifles, Cortex Bombs and Sector Happiness Indices!

...'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.'

A combination of real life issues late last year wiped out about a month of writing time, so I've been frantically catching up ever since. Prison Planet's done for Traveller, I vaguely recall writing a Paranoia mission (that explores some of the ideas we'll be using in the new books due later this year), and I'm currently blazing through Aslan as quickly as my little fingers can type.

The Aslan book will use a similar format to the Spinward Marches sourcebook - it'll be 60% Aslan rules, background, starships and other material, and 40% sector guide. I'm leaning towards using the Trojan Reach sector, as it's half-controlled by the Aslan and is right next to the Marches, but people above my pay grade need to sort through the tangle of canon and semi-canon details related to the Reach. In the meantime, I'll be over here looking at this shiny concept art.

In other news, I've just survived Warpcon for another year. There is a singular joy in explaining to Paranoia players that the next step of their mission is, simply 'grenade testing in a grenade factory'.

It's the little things that keep me going.

I've hardly written more than a few words in the last two weeks, for various non-work-related reasons. Tonight was the first time I've really been able to sit down and get any serious traction, polishing off a chapter of Prison Planet, a S&P article and some bits of the B5 Universe guide for Loz. Unfortunately, this barely makes any dent at all in the mountain of stuff on the to-do list, which includes revisions to Hammer's Slammers, outlining two more Traveller books, and writing a Paranoia adventure in what spare time I can find.

Ha, I say. Ha.

(And despite this, I still went out and bought Fallout 3, and I'm looking at Gears of War 2 covetously.)

More than writing, though, I'm looking forward to gaming again. I haven't picked up the dice in two weeks, which is an uncharacteristically long gap for me, and I was right in the middle of Pendragon and D&D4e games...

Hi all,

Thought you might like to be kept up to date with a few bits of not-so-significant 'news' from the Mongoose Studio.

First off, we had the Battle on the Rim tournament this past Saturday at the Croft Sports Centre in Swindon. 24 hardened Call to Arms gamers vied for the winner's trophy. Congratulations to Scott Young who overcame all opponents to win with his Gaim - nice to see the new fleet doing well.

Back at the ranch those of you asking for Phil the mail order guy probably ought to be told that he's actually called Russell. Not quite sure where the 'Phil' bit came from but now it's stuck as a nickname, so there you go.

What else? Well, I'm the only one from the Studio in the last week not to be struck down with the flu bug which has hit Mongoose Towers. Luckily the print shop guys didn't succumb. They are clearly a hardier breed.

Chris Longhurst is currently living it up in the States on his holidays (Chris appears to know people all over the world - he went for a long weekend in Arizona earlier this year!) and Adrian is due back today after going to see Rush in concert Friday night. For those of you under 35 Rush used to be a very popular 3-piece beat combo from Canada (I think) back in the 80s. I thought they were all dead but looks like that isn't the case.

As for me, my son Ben's under-11s rugby team (go Wootton Bassett!!!) got to the semi-finals of the huge Supermarine tournament in Swindon before going down 2-0 (in tries) to a very good Stow team. That was my entire weekend accounted for, but as matt would say, "it's a lifestyle choice". :)

Right. Secrets of Skelos, a revision and expansion of the old Scrolls of Skelos supplement, is done (ish - still a bit of refactoring and fiddling to do) so I'm moving full-time onto Traveller. This weekend will be taken up with going through the Traveller-5 ship documents and reshaping the simpler rules that Mongoose Traveller will be using.

Monday morning, I create a document entitled "01 - RTT - Traveller". Then, I start panicking and procrastinating and telling myself that playing Halo 3 is research. (These glimpses into the creative process are provided free of charge.)