And nothing more was said. I already had two campaigns on the go - the GURPS Supers and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer - so I didn't have time to concentrate on a third. Then the Buffy game came to the end of its first season and the Mage and the Hunter games started to happen (Mage more than Hunter). Then GURPS arrived at its dramatic conclusion and, what with Vampire now underway, it seemed that I was being left behind.

So I sat down with a rulebook and a copy of the Bible and started to figure out how I could end the world. I've approached it as a mini-series, rather than an ongoing campaign, since the end of the world is inevitably going to make my game finite. Knowing this, and given the biblical material involved, I decided to structure the game around a Requiem Mass (albeit an abridged one, with movements in no order I've ever come across before). Also, I adopted my usual three act structure and, with three parts each subdivided into three parts, I ended up with a nine-part chronicle.

The challenge wasn't really coming up with ideas - both the book and the source material provide tons of inspiration - but rather trying to work out what the campaign should be about. I'm a novelist by inclination and so it's important to me that my story has a theme. Once again, in my view, Demon proves itself superior to the other settings by having some great, operatic themes just crying out for an end of the world game. It's about Faith. It's about Sin. It's about Redemption and Good versus Evil. Lots of big, fundamental ideas for me to play with. In fact, I wish this wasn't a mini-series, because there is plenty of topics I would love to explore in an ongoing, but which I've had to drop in order to give this particular chronicle a tighter focus.

The plot itself was fairly straightforward to figure out. Obviously I can't make it too detailed because I don't know what the players are going to do, but I've worked out roughly where the game will go over its nine movements. Some material is from the official Time of Judgement book, some is suggested in the core rulebook, but most comes either from the Bible or from the Lucifer comicbook. I have borrowed so heavily from Lucifer, in fact, that I'm refusing to lend my players the (very good) comics until after the game. And I couldn't resist letting Gaudium have a guest appearance.

So, having got my plot and my theme, I then had to consider setting. The Mage game is set in London (and outer space - go figure). The Hunter game is set in London. The Vampire game is set in - wait for it - London. The Demon game was not going to be set in London. Absolutely definitely not. But this then left me with a problem: where was I supposed to set it? Los Angeles, the City of Angels, made sense, particularly in light of the fiction in the Demon books, but it was perhaps too obvious. I'd end my chronicle there, but it would start some place more exotic. It was that word 'exotic' that finally clinched it for me. I don't know if it was because I'd just listened to the Doctor Who CD Sympathy for the Devil or if I'd just read a particular issue of Birds of Prey, but I decided Hong Kong was my setting of choice. Hong Kong is a place I've wanted to visit for a long time, on I hope to visit quite soon actually, and, as a result, I already had a lot of information on it to hand. It was suitably western to be familiar to my players and suitably eastern to be 'exotic'. It was perfect.

So, plot, theme and setting. All that's left is character. Now character is a tricky area because the most important characters, the heroes, are not crafted by me. (I use the word hero in its classical sense, to mean a character whose progress and growth we follow over the course of a story rather than, necessarily, someone who is heroic.) These five major players are being developed by the remainder of my gaming group. It's still a work in progress in some cases, which with the first chapter being so close is a minor concern, but what I've got so far is very interesting. We have a Devil, a Scourge, a Malefactor, a Defiler and a Slayer…and if you want to know more you'll just have to wait for updates to the characters page. There are benefits to getting other people to create your cast, though. The details of their backgrounds provide fertile ground for the growth of a multitude of interesting subplots. (My players hate it when I say something's interesting. They seem to think I'm conspiring against them. They're right, of course.)

That still leaves the supporting cast to populate, and here I'm spoiled for choice. Once you start digging into angelic lore, it's difficult to know when to stop. It's a fascinating subject and full of some wonderful characters, a selection of whom will be making their presence felt within the chronicle. Of course, each character will be modified to suit the chronicle and to scupper any players who think they already know what's going on.

So now all I have to do is iron out the details of the first instalment (like how exactly I'm going to get this group of disparate fallen angels to go adventuring together). Still, I'm feeling pretty confidant. The strength of the material is such that I'd have to do something pretty major to ruin it. I hope…