I’ve been a fan of Crimson Skies since years ago when I wandered around a convention and found a table bearing a stack of posters, every one of them bearing the CGI image of a Fairchild Brigand- an aircraft as signature to the game as the Warhammer was to Battletech back before all the lawsuits got started. I picked up the original board game as well as the collectible miniatures version and both the PC and XBox games. I’ve never been a tremendous fan of pulp adventure, but Crimson Skies was something else entirely.
Of course, with FASA going under, and then WizKids, and Microsoft abandoning the property, and now Tinker & Smith saying they’ll do something with the IP someday, there’s not much to be found. If you’re lucky you can get your hands on a copy of the old board game- which I still own. But in as much as it makes for a nice tabletop diversion, what I really wanted to see come out was a RPG. The addition of out-of-aircraft options in the clicky game convinced me that it would be a good idea, but it wasn’t one that seemed ripe for development. So how to go about it?
The answer ended up falling into my hands in the form of White Wolf’s Adventure! game, a variation on their Storyteller system that’s set up for pulp adventure. While it’s designed to be used with their own setting, the underlying ideas and options fit perfectly with Crimson Skies. And I’m fairly certain you can get a most enjoyable experience if you know what you’re doing when you adjust the system to fit the setting.
So that’s another project I’ll be working on, though I’ll be taking pains to try and keep things obscured so that you need both a copy of Adventure! (available as a .pdf) and a copy of the Crimson Skies board game (a more difficult acquisition) in order to play. It’s troublesome simply because I want people to be able to enjoy this as much as I do, but at the same time I can’t very well go infringing on something that someone else wants to do.
And as a note for Howard, I’ll be attempting to address your concerns with the Storyteller system. If nothing else, years of experience should help me avoid the pitfalls you’re worried about.
