Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I just spent a large chunk of the morning backing up long-unused SQL databases and then cleaning them off the web server. Specifically, most of the old Reality Merchants data is now gone, leaving only the RMG blog, photo galleries, and now-defunct GYGO Wiki pages still operational. Most of these I’m just keeping around for nostalgia’s sake, although I do harbor the notion of running another LARP event or three under the Reality Merchants banner sometime in the future.

While backing up the data from various private wikis I’d been using to work on my own game design, I ran across the prototypes of both the “BMF” core LARP rules system and the 2nd Edition Streetwise LARP rules from which the former were derived. These triggered long-dormant chunks of memory regarding plans and design goals, and I already can see ways to kickstart them back onto their journey to exist and become tangible things. It’s time to convert them all into Google Docs. Perhaps a near-future project will involve me finally getting the Streetwise LARP into print, possibly even for free…

Deleting all this data and cleaning up my server has worked as a sort of “sounding of the death knell” for a prior chapter of my life. It’s one more vestigial limb of my East Coast existence that I’ve now mostly managed to amputate. The Reality Merchants had some good times, and we met some amazing people through our events – hell, for a while, I was actually engaged to a woman I met in a, ahem, fairly “controversial” event that we organized. From all my time in Atlanta, I can honestly say that I have more wild and crazy memories from the Reality Merchants crew than from any other source or venue, however great they may have been.

My life has been forever marked by those people, and I plan on keeping those galleries online and operational for as long as I possibly can.

Next in the other of business: setting up a cart & commerce system on this site. Why? For pre-orders, silly…