List #5: Lost Projects

First, a small programming note: Since I'm doing a bit more exposition than I originally expected,* I think it's in everyone's** best interest if I cut this back to a M/W/F posting schedule.  At the least that will make it less likely that this experiment ends up on a later version of this list.***

* What, me be overly talkative in print?  Shocking.  I guess I still don't know me very well.


**  Read: my


*** Segue!


Today's list is a confessional listing of former projects that I never followed through on.  It's a bit on the shorter side because I've limited it to projects that I actually kind of sort of wish that I had continued or at least made more progress on.  I've also restricted it to projects that I was central to, as opposed to things where I was purely participatory.*

* R.I.P., Worlds Largest Game.


(1) Buffy the Vampire Slayer Retro Reviews.  The late, no-so-lamented project of re-watching all of Buffy and Angel and doing recaps of the experience lasted all of 9 episodes* of Season One of BtVS.  This was actually a fair amount of fun to do - obviously the episodes themselves were great (even if they were sometimes so campy that they were great), and Buffy is almost certainly my favorite TV Show Ever.**


* Actually, it seems like it may have been 8, as I appear to have skipped from episode 7 to episode 9.  Impressive quality control for a project that lasted such a short time in the first place.


** Ooooh, another highly-original list idea!  These things just write themselves!


Unfortunately, due to my tendency to overdo things, the damn reviews themselves were becoming a beast to write, with fairly little payoff in terms of reader interaction and whatnot.  Also, it's not exactly like nobody else had ever done the same thing.  Not that I knew that at the time, but still.  Makes the enterprise seem even less necessary (and you have to conserve that precious internet space, of course).

I still have a wholly-theoretical plan to actually re-watch the series in order, but it's hard to imagine re-engaging with the review process, nifty though it was for a brief moment.

(2) MMMMMmmmmmmm!  The fun new game from B&B Enterprises, Ltd. was to have replaced Charades in the living rooms of an adoring American public.  The idea, for those of you who don't remember it,* was that instead of bare pantomime, contestants would be allowed to communicate through the usage of the word "mmmmmmmmm."  Thus, you could shout, whisper, murmur, or intone "mmmmmmmmm," even using intonation or stops to communicate with the guessers.

* As if anyone could forget, of course.

Instead of boring old-timey Charades categories as "Movies" and "Famous People," "MMMMMmmmmmmm" used fresh, hip new selections such as "Movie Quotes,"* and "Things You Want To Pound and Pound With a Shovel."

* e.g., Baby Fish-Mouth.

** e.g., The Repetitive Overusage of Baby Fish-Mouth.


Sadly, all of the detailed specs for the game were lost in a fire.  Otherwise we could play it over and over and over again.


(3) Buffy the Vampire Slayer Role-Playing Game.*


* What???  Shut up.  So I liked Buffy alot.  So did alot of people.  Hrmph. 


The basic idea here was to focus on the witty quips and interpersonal relationships.  Players would take the Willow and Xander type roles, while The Buffster would be an NPC controlled by the GM.  Whether or not the evil would be vanquished would never really be in question, so the game was to be all about the style of the vanquishing and the associated whatnot.  Different characters would have different sub-goals that the others didn't know about, that kind of thing.

Believe it or not,* I actually had a ream of notes on how this would work.**  Unfortunately they were on my first-gen blackberry.  Which I never synched.  And then it died.  Oddly, I didn't have much desire to re-create all the stuff I had previously done, so the game is lost to my periodic fevered imagination.***

* Because I just know that you all think I'm totally way too cool to do something like this, and not nearly OCD enough....


** "Work" meaning getting close enough for an informal session of morons to play it for giggles.  No fantasy that Joss would license it out or something.  Not that he asserts just a ton of quality control or anything, but still.


*** Obviously, if this tragedy didn't happen I totally would've followed through.