Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Head Colds and Junk Food Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 31, 2017

Well, ugh. I’m sick, and I’m still waiting on a new computer. That’s fun. NOT. The laptop is still proving adequate for gaming and general computing.  My saves (unless “in the cloud”) are all on the dead machine’s hard drives. So I have been taking the opportunity to play some old but unfamiliar games here […]


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Cirsova #5 (and 6) Preorder Open, and Altered States II in Paperback!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 25, 2017

I am currently on track to have at least as many stories published this year as last year. Which is AWESOME. My goal is to exceed that.  I’m still working on that. Anyway – my first completely new story for 2017 is coming out in March, in Cirsova #5. They are now taking pre-orders… sort […]


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Gamedev Addicts Anonymous…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 24, 2017

[At the weekly meeting of Game Dev Addicts Anonymous] Hi, I’m Jay. Hi Jay I’ve gone nearly 30 days without game development. Congratulations! No, it’s driving me crazy! It’s mainly because my primary development computer went on the fritz and died and I’m waiting on a replacement. I haven’t touched it because I couldn’t transfer my […]


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Call of Cthulhu – the (next) Video Game!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 20, 2017

I discovered the Call of Cthulhu game in a review in the pages of Dragon Magazine back when my only experience playing RPGs was from those published by TSR (D&D, Boot Hill, Top Secret, and Gamma World). I read the review about three times, and told my best friend about it. Later, he got the […]


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Book Impressions: The God-Touched Man

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 18, 2017

I felt a little guilty because I haven’t read The Smoke-Scented Girl, one of the first books by Melissa McShane.  We even have a paperback copy! And here I am reading the next book in the series, The God-Touched Man. On the plus side, I can happily say that while I assume that some of […]


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Pulp RPG Bundle … Like chocolate and peanut butter…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 17, 2017

Maybe the I’m the only one around these parts that might be interested in this. I’m posting it anyway, just ‘cuz… Pulp! RPGs! In a bundle! Sadly this isn’t a PC RPG Bundle*. But if you are a dice and paper gamer, this is something pretty cool nonetheless! Four dice & paper RPGs (PDF versions) based […]


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Mythica 5: The Godslayer Impressions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 16, 2017

I may have to watch Mythica: The Godslayer, the 5th and final film of the indie fantasy Mythica series, another time to figure out how I feel about the film. Since the idea of watching it again is appealing to me, I guess that’s a pretty good indicator. Actually, I want to re-watch the whole series […]


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Cyberpunk is dead, long live cyberpunk!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 13, 2017

In his introduction to the new cyberpunk anthology Altered States II, Isaac Wheeler of Neon Dystopia suggests that a lot of what cyberpunk envisioned back in the 1980s has come to fruition today. We’re living cyberpunk. Not just technologically (in some ways, our technology has exceeded the wildest dreams of the authors in the 1980s), but culturally. He […]


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All Hail the New Computer Go Master

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 12, 2017

Man, I remember spending weeks obsessing over how to write the ultimate Go playing program that would do this. It looks like Google’s Go-playing program, an updated version of the tournament winner from a few months ago, has used a stealth approach to become the unofficial champion… masquerading as a human player in online play. It […]


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Mein Desktop Ist Kaput!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 11, 2017

My desktop computer is dead. Again. 🙁 I can resurrect it for brief periods, but not long enough for transferring a large backup, apparently. I haven’t seen unusual heat values causing it to automatically shut down, just the ol’ Blue Screen of Death. Well, okay, it’s Windows 10, so it’s the new Blue Screen of […]


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The Emotional Journey of Creating Something Great

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 10, 2017

This probably doesn’t need much commentary… … But I’m going to add some anyway. A depressing truth: That journey looks the same regardless of whether you’re making crap, something okay, something good, or something great. It just ends at different points along that line. But anything worth trying is going to go through that process […]


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Final Hours of the RetroEngine Sigma Crowdfunding Campaign

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 9, 2017

The RetroEngine Sigma seems like it’s a stylish and easy way to obtain emulator console gaming. Since the best value I got out of the failed “microconsole” revolution was its value as an emulator platform, and putting together your own emulator out of a Raspberry PI is a non-trivial task, I get the appeal. If […]


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Elite: Dangerous adds long-awaited content in coolest way possible

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 6, 2017

There was one alien race in the Elite series waaay back when – the Thargoids. They were present in the first game as enemies. Insofar as it had a storyline, the Thargoids were involved in the story of the third Elite game, Frontier: First Encounters. As I understand, they weren’t enemies in the that one. I […]


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Bring a Friend to Hyboria, Faerûn, the Northern Realms, or Post-Apocalyptic Earth

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 5, 2017

After yesterday’s post, several people asked me “Who actually asks if RPGs are dead?” If you are computer RPG fan today, and you are even casually plugged into what’s appearing on the major digital distributors, you get a pretty good idea of there being more games coming out in this genre than you have time […]


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Are CRPGs dead or dying?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 4, 2017

TLDR Version: Are you kidding me? We’re in the new golden age of computer role-playing games, my friends! There’s never been a better time to strap on a digital sword (or laser gun) and enjoy some dungeon-delving fun on your PC. You just have to know where to look. Full Version: I was one of […]


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For 2017, I …

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 2, 2017

It’s a new year! Time for resolutions, right? For 2017, I want to: 1) Write all the stories! 2) Make all the games! 3) Be the best husband and father in the world! 4) Rock the day job so we’ve got money coming out of our ears! 5) Read all the books on my backlog, […]


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