Is C. J. Carella still around?

[JoeGKushner]

I remember back in the day this dude was a writing genius.

Is he still doing anything RPG related?

 

[Dragonblade]

Good question. He wrote all my favorite RIFTS books (along with Erick Wujcik). Siembieda should have just made him line developer and retired. Once he stopped writing RIFTS books (and Vince Martin and Kevin Long stopped illustrating them) I lost almost all interest in Palladium.

 

[llamatron2000]

Carella was responsible for Unisystem, which is used in most of Eden Studio's games, including the highly successful AFMBE. I don't know what carella is doing these days, though. Last Carella-written thing I read was Witchcraft, and well, that's a TERRIBLE book.

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

Amazon.com lists him as a contributor to GURPS Thaumatology, which released in Nov, 2008. So, apparently he's still doing some design work.

 

[Green Knight]

Good question. He wrote all my favorite RIFTS books (along with Erick Wujcik). Siembieda should have just made him line developer and retired. Once he stopped writing RIFTS books (and Vince Martin and Kevin Long stopped illustrating them) I lost almost all interest in Palladium.

Yep, I loved his Rifts stuff. Who knew South America could be so interesting? But he made it so interesting that it warranted two books to cover it.

 

[avin]

Who knew South America could be so interesting?

You don't know what you're missing

 

[jdrakeh]

Last Carella-written thing I read was Witchcraft, and well, that's a TERRIBLE book.

It's ironic that you would say this after praising his work on Unisystem, because WitchCraft actually pre-dates all of his Unisystem games — the Unisystem edition of WitchCraft is merely a conversion of his earlier non-Unisystem work published under the same name by Myrmidon Press

 

[Nikosandros]

Amazon.com lists him as a contributor to GURPS Thaumatology, which released in Nov, 2008. So, apparently he's still doing some design work.

He's listed as a contributor for that book because they updated the ritual rules originally published in GURPS Voodoo by C. J. Carella. He didn't actually work on Thaumatology itself.

 

[Nikosandros]

Last Carella-written thing I read was Witchcraft, and well, that's a TERRIBLE book.

Why is it terrible? I played it a couple of times at conventions and it seemed like a decent system. Does it have specific problems?

 

[Draksila]

CJ was working on the Unisystem generic book, which was supposed to cover anything from supers to slasher horror, called Beyond Human. Last I heard about it, however, was about a year and a half ago when they said the book was suspended indefinitely because CJ was suffering a bit of burnout. This was over on the Eden Studios boards, natch.

Personally, I love the Witchcraft/Armageddon/All Flesh Must Be Eaten books. While I'm tempted to say that Eden Studios has shot itself in the foot by not having any viable releases in going on two years now (unless you count two pdfs), I love the system and am keeping the books I have regardless of whether they sink or swim this year.