I wound up running a short but late game last night. I mentioned previously that a new player had been brought to my house by an old player, and that they were going to return on Saturday night for a game. The old player did; the new player was rather disappointed at having been called back to work a day early, and thus was not available. This might have been for the best, however, given that it was near eleven by the time we started (and only minutes after his arrival). We played until well after two–breaking my usual rule that games end between one and two, but the exception seemed reasonably appropriate since he had started in Prisoner of Zenda years before, taken a long absence from play, and recently picked up where we were (it often surprises me that we can do that). On Saturday night he managed, through many awkward moments, to rescue the king. It cost the lives of Fritz Tarlenheim, five soldiers, and seven chimney sweeps.

My wife had gone visiting in Delaware, so I put on the end of a taped episode of Burn Notice I had been watching (still not yet decided whether I like this), and then after that forwarded it to the beginning of the recent episode of Monk, and fell asleep watching this sometime after three.

Three hours later I was awakened. It seems that our dear daughter-in-law panicked over a dying kitten, and that there was an outrageous vet bill that had to be paid before it doubled. I had to travel to Delaware to sort out the matter, and had to be there before eight when the shift changed and another doctor would charge another fee. I knew I was asking for serious physical exhaustion, but it seemed the only way, so I went.

It was after ten by the time I was home, and that serious physical exhaustion was rising fast. I crashed, fully dressed, and did not move again until after five. By that time I knew I had to grill my hamburgers before I lost the light, so dinner became the priority. It was dark before I started my day; I still have chores to do.

I was not up very long before I got word that the kitten had died. That’s unfortunate, of course, but it was never really about the kitten.

Now that I have lost your attention entirely with those boring details of my life, I’ll quietly make a momentous announcement which no one will notice because you’ve stopped reading by this point. Years ago when we first went to print, we announced that if there ever were a “second edition” or updated version of the game, it would be one hundred percent compatible with the original. That means (as I keep explaining to the idiots who want to rewrite the game with an entirely new engine) that people who own the old book and people with the new would be able to sit at the same table and play the same game. Sporadically over the years efforts have been made to start work on this massive undertaking. However, it has now risen to a priority, and I have put myself at the helm of a reorganized rewrite.

It is fatal to make such announcements in this industry, because people assume that the new edition means the old one is obsolete. I will thus reiterate right now that the old edition is not obsolete, and will have some advantages over the new–the most evident one being that the old edition contains the full game system in a single book, and the new will be a three-book set. The advantages of the three-book set will be that it contains more material, more aids to play, and is better organized.

The first of those books will be the Multiverser Core Rules. This will take all the essential operating rules and put them together in a coherent and orderly fashion; it will include better character creation instructions, such as the on-the-fly character generation system. It will have what is needed to run a game.

The second book will be the Multiverser Skills System. This will primarily contain the skill listings, of which there will be some expansions and additions, more explanation of skill packages, umbrellas, and such, and some cleanup to remove mechanics that should have been elsewhere.

The third book will be the Multiverser Universe Creator’s Handbook. Material on how to set bias will be expanded with some aids that will make it clearer for the referee what is possible and impossible under any given bias curve. Explanations of special universe rules creation will be expanded, showing the spaces between the Multiverser Worlds, Story Worlds, and Game Worlds described in the original rules.

The appendices will be edited and included in the third book.

It will take several years before all three books are available, but the first is well underway (as I discovered when I opened the long-neglected file). I will keep you posted on my progress, as I am able.

We are also examining the possibility of releasing the old books in PDF format through an online e-tailer, but what I thought was a firm decision has become less firm, so we will have to wait on any announcement there.

–M. J. Young