All Right, All Right, I will Post!

I am still keeping up the kitchen cleaning routines. This is not as easy as it sounds. I tried adding regular excercise, but that failed... I have been able to expand the cleaning to vacuuming the floors and cleaning up some "piles" of "valuable" collections. In general the house is improving.

Not sure what I did, but the spinach I planted is dying. I just planted some more to try again. The Oregano, Basil, and Green Peppers are looking good. The scallions are having some trouble, but I think I kept them too wet. I also tried planting some peas to work that out. Not having done any gardening for forty years certainly has taken a toll.

Now, on to some Crypt Crawl updates.

We are starting the game with the idea that card points will cost more as the character gains experience. We also need a way to increase the characters Actions as they play. You will notice that a character (the Tigrean in the previous post) has just two actions. Starting characters gain their First Echelon card immediately, and it grants one additional Action, giving them three to start with. The Echelon card also tells how much role-playing experience it costs to buy a card point. We started really low. The characters should get to the second Echelon in the first game.

The trick here is that a character buys to 25 Card points at 10 each, then they take the second Echelon Card for further purchases.

Now, I better get to work writing the next two new DS shaman card commentaries. After that I need to bathe a dog, go buy some bricks and print bards.

Living is not as easy as one might assume.

I have maintained my housework/organization for another day. I had a moment of weakness and almost skipped it, but where would that leave me? So, in response I have added a short excercise routine to the schedule, now that will show me...

I got some good work done today, but I got distracted by the Crypt Crawl revisions and I worked on that too. It is really getting simple, at least in the mechanics. The characters role-playing experience will be used by the players to grow the type of character they want. We are relying primarily on Ace card choices to differentiate characters rather than a long string of characteristics.

Well, let me show you what I'm talking about:

WARNING! Secrets being reveled!

That is correct, just four stats left. If you want to be a Brawn fighter, then you will just have to spend the role-playing points to do it. Same goes for Ranged and Finesse fighting.

The Raw character has two actions per combat round. Experience will increase that. Most everything in the world, except for pesky demons and a few big monsters, will have just two actions. As soon as the character gets three actions they get good.

Oh yea, each character starts with nine lives. In Crypt Crawl the characters start dead and use a life, or two, to be brought back to life to fight your killers.

The "Cc" in the bottom corner tells you this is a Crypt Crawl card.

OK, that is all for today. Absorb it, consider it. If I'm real lucky I will be able to demo at StormCon, but do not bet on it.

Good Morning World!

Yesterday we took the day off. We did little besides do grocery shopping, spend time together and talk about many light and dark subjects.

Somewhere in here Sue and I are starting to dance around some central subjects that we need to resolve. Fortunately, these are not relationship problems. That is one area we have always talked about, and I have to say, that is working fine. There are, naturally, some rough moments, but we can deal with those.

What we have to do is too look at the aspects of our life that float around us in a haze and never really come into focus. They are always in the "I have to do something about that" list.

To be able to even grapple with these issues we need to become more organized. I have started by the simple step of keeping the dishes done, garbage maintained and kitchen generally clean. That may not seem like an organization issue, but it is. We have a tendency to push everything aside and do a task, ignoring everything else. Both Sue and I do this. By keeping one spot organized and tidy I am finding keeping related "things" organized is easier. It has made it so I can conduct my food consumption in a more considered way.

*short break here, music plays* OK, I have coffee and sent Sue a note on a thought that whirled through my brain.

The second home duty I have started work on is the laundry. We have enough clothes to go a while and in the past I have done laundry when we ran out of clothes to wear. That resulted in piles of dirty clothes appearing in truly weird places. Best not to talk about that too much, the imagination runs wild. I am now doing the laundry on a regular basis, keeping it to one or two loads at a time and putting them away. I am already finding it easier to locate stuff I need in the house as I work. It it not as likely to be buried by clutter.

I am going to continue to spend time in organizing from the bottom up in the vague hope that it will make me somehow more methodical while not limiting creativity. The hope is that the improved comfort may actually stimulate creativity.

Wandering off to a new subject...

I have ignored the new Crypt Crawl game design for a few weeks here. We had just discussed a series of tweaks that mean needing all new cards etc. when I ran into Origins and Anthrocon. I opened the files last night and found that while I had been away from them my mind had done a good deal of sorting and editing on the job. In a couple of hours I had remade the Characters, Echelon cards, and the basic Expertise Ace cards. I also got a good start on the Items. The next couple of weeks heading into StormCon are going to be hectic, so I am not sure when I will be able to carve out time to get back to Crypt Crawl, but I will.

OK, enough, I have Travels of Kit pages to work on, New DS card pages to write and create and more, but I should be done with the housework for today!

Watch the Twitter feed for what I get done.

Six hours? Is that it?

It looks like my body is limiting me to about six hours of work and then it just shuts down. No thoughts escape. The world becomes a blank.

I have been starting my day with two to three hours of home tasks. Get Sue her coffee, make breakfast, do the dishes, a spot of yard work, including tending the compost and the plants on the porch. After that it is noon and I get to work. E-mails, writing, shipping, and web maintenance takes up most of the six hours, and then it is brain lock.

I am sitting here absolutely certain that I had a list of things to do, but now are coming to the fore. oh well, I guess I'll study the podcast performance arts. Maybe I can learn by osmosis, although it may be better to call it learning by "sound propagation".

Getting back on track here

I am coming to the conclusaion that life is too important to spend all of it running from project to project. I am taking this week slow. Time to smell the flowers, stare at the sky and consider the trials and tribulations of humanity.

That means I am working some, but basically I am enjoying the things I have.

Hmmm, my mind has gone blank, so I am off to stare some more.

Conventions, work, friends and fun

It is friday night at Anthrocon in Pittsburgh. The crowds here are lively, excited and bigger than last year. Sue is busy doing commissions right now. They are big here. She has a good number of works to complete. I've bumped into a series of DS players. Maybe we can arrange for some games here next year.

Origins went well last week. There were a lot of DS players in attendence and Russ and the Guild folks did a great job of handling the games. We could not ask for a better group of players. You guys make it worth going through all the trials to try to keep up.

We have run out of sets two and three. It looks like the new sets will be a success. I'm going to put together a couple of GM sets before StormCon. I don't expect those to sell as well, so I won't print many.

The stress of two big cons on two weekends is showing, Sue and I are both getting a little edgy. I guess there will have to be extra cuddling next week to compensate.

Well, I have more printing to do for the morning, so I will go now.