Far too much going on in my mind

I seem to have too many thoughts floating through the old brain bucket. I find myself following one string after another across my mindscape. Unfortunately my attention wanders and I become entranced by another fleeting thought. Well, the result is several dozen unfinished ideas. Far more than I can actually follow.

I will see what I can do about exposing a few of the ideas.

A subject I spent far too much time mulling over is: does one play a character in an alien world or are they playing the rules with a characterization? In one case a person is immersed in the world and they stretch themselves to see from a new viewpoint. In the second the player is surfing the world on top of the rules. Both are valid and fun. In reality the acting community acknowledges these styles as Method Acting and Classic Acting. There are, in both role-playing and acting, a blend of these in every session.

Why, you ask, do you consider such questions? I wandered into this one while I was working on a campaign background for the new game. The players and GM's need different information for different styles. If a player's character is played as if it was a real world, then specific rules references may interfere with there game. At the other end a person riding the rules with glee finds extensive descriptions and emotions a pain, they need the rule to go by. They question for us is how do we balance these demands in setting up everything from a single encounter to a campaign region. To be able to balance our output we need to understand the ways people are using that output.

So, there you go. If I had any sense I would actually review and rewrite these pieces, but I think I will just go on spitting out rough gems rather than carefully polishing them.

2010, I am looking forward to it.

This is going to be a good year. I can feel it in the old bones, even if they do act up.

OK, Here is a link to a comment on Fear Mongering. I just thought this was both true and humorous. Take a read.

I am Pampering Sue.

Most of my time right now is being spent pampering the exhausted Sue. Baths, foot rubs, home made pizza (she liked it!), home made donuts (They are getting better) and whatever else I can think of.

I am carefully going over each sheet of cards for Crypt Crawl, getting the words right and having them checked. The second batch is up and should be working.

We have a Crypt Crawl blog for announcing specific Crypt Crawl news. You can visit the Crypt Crawl blog here. I will also continue to mention what I am doing with Crypt Crawl here and on Twitter, although the Twitter followers I am getting are almost all art fans. *sigh*

Sue is on her way to FurFright.

OK, I am here at home, alone, ready for some partying. Oh, wait, she took the car. Oh, well, I'll just. But wait some more, I like partying with Sue... what is the sense of a party without Sue?

I guess I will get some Crypt Crawl work done, in fact, I just finished laying out the first 20 monsters for the Crypt Crawl Monster Parade One.

I also started some chicken in the slow cooker. I am having sandwiches and more with chicken. I have a hankering for cookies. Can't work now, time to bake!

Day Off Tomorrow

I'm looking forward to Saturday off. I am revising the Crypt Crawls 200+ cards for final a Alpha run. I have to have all of them revised, printed, and cut for our basic group by Tuesday. Why did I start this?

I am also able to make reasonable basic rules based on the cards as they come along. Things like Character Creation rules etc. I am also working on the initial village cast members etc. for the GM.

One of the flaws in our DS releases was not enough background and scenarios. Using a simpler system we will be able to make GM accessories/adventures much more often.

Well, back to it.

Oh, I'm setting up our in house server as well. Entertaining is learning all the server administrative functions.

Back to it now.

Home and Staying there!

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday just staring at the walls. They seemed to have a life of there own. The movement of the shadow spirits had me entranced. It is, I'm afraid it is a symptom of not quite being one with our physical world, and exhaustion.

So, at 11pm wednesday night I started moving furniture. This drives Sue crazy so she has her fingers in her ears and is saying "la la la" and a few other choice words. I can't blame her, but it relaxes me. Now, where to put the couch...

Work is stacking up, oh well, I'll get to it. I have some creative dreaming to do.

I have a new office set up completed, I like it. This should work. I think I'll move on to some other tests of the space.

All day Packing

I have spent from 8AM trying to find and pack everything we need for Origins. Sheeesh, I'm finally nearing the end.

I will be bringing the card cutting equipment with. I have a number of laminated sheets that need finishing. We are also nringing our art printing set up.

All-in-All, this should be both a lot of work and a chance to talk to old friends.

See you at Origins, or AnthroCon the next week.

The Basil and Oregano are Transplanted

I am working on relearning some old farming skills. I have lettuce, spinach, onions, oregano, basil and flowers planted in pots on the porch. The peppers are just poking their noses up through the ground, so I guess I have them too. When we ate dinner Sue used some of the oregano and basil in the omelets. Really good food. I keep thinking I need to learn to grow some food, especially right after a trip to the store.

I am working on getting the new card web pages up for people to read. It is going slow because I am trying to get them printed as I get the description up on the web. I am getting rather creative with the card write ups, it keeps me from getting bored.

I have several projects that I should be getting done, but I have also learned that I need to have a portion of real life and porno time too.

We have continued to play the new rules. We are going to try adding an extra step in the ranged weapons that will be a "to hit" roll. Just like in DS the Ranged Weapons just feel to over powering. The basic idea is a 2d6+COR roll versus 2d6+Evasion. You only get the Evasion part if you actually try to evade, otherwise it is a +0. It needs testing, but we will see.

I also designed a sweet mathematical system for converting role-playing points earned into card points. It works perfectly. Unfortunately it is just too convoluted and people are having trouble following my wonderful method. So, my play testers told me how it should work. *sigh* They are right...

Anyway, we are making good progress, and it is really fun. I just wish we had a lot more time to work on it. We have to get the basics working so we can publish an alpha version to the web for everyone.

The Cons, Origins and AnthroCon are going to cut out about three weeks from our play testing. I dream of having a version for StormCon, but I doubt it. Maybe just enough to get people a taste of the game. One must have dreams.

Raining

That means we soaked here and the print sheets for the cards can't be worked on today. Probably just as well, the printer has started yelling about "order Cartridges". *sigh* normal behavior.

On the positive side I can get to work on more of the card pages for the web.

Sue, Mocha and I are busy as a werewolf at a wakana convention. With the heat rising I have had to abandon my winter room. It is a "hot" room upstairs and I spent most of yesterday cleaning moving and expanding the network to handle the changes. It all went well, so I am pretty much ready to work.

OK, off to order Ink.

I have lost my mind. If you see it, e-mail it back to me.

My biggest problem right now is that my mind spits out more random thoughts than I can type, speak, or even make notes on. It is like an RSS feed where all I get are the titles and snippet of the commentary.

I have solved the education system by integrating it into a localized setting with parental and professional access. It also provides neighborhood emergency employment, local broadband WiMax internet and a community center. Nothing to it, now if I could just find the rest of the article in my brain.

Several commentaries float through my mind on the stupidity of how the corporatist economic system has nearly destroyed capitalism in our country. I am amazed that people can't see the difference between our current socialized corporatism and the free capitalism that build our nation. But then again, I am not inundated with their constant advertising on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, ABC and other so called media news outlets. Let the brainwashing continue.

What ever happened to the idea that some features of society needed to be public and others private? The idea was that a society decided what were essential services, and provided those. Everything else (the luxuries) were left in the hands of the capitalists. We decided that having a Highway system was an essential service and made a great one. Now our government is selling it cheap, secretly and piecemeal. When did we, as a society, discuss that? Ah, forget it, nobody even notices all these changes, I am probably the only one who misses the old USA.

Who says I am paranoid? Who says I am opinionated? Well, OK, you are right. Maybe I am the last true conservative, who knows. Conservative Frauds abound, and people are listening to them all the way to Fascism. Oh, well, I am probably too late, democracy, capitalism, compassion and free thinking are obviously outmoded concepts. Maybe they have just been so corrupted through successful propaganda scams that they are unrecognizable.

Thats it, enough ranting, it is late here.

Cool Sounds of Summer

Sue and I have both bought Swamp Coolers from Air and Water, Inc. and we have had a really good impression of these people. We have a pair of New Air machines that we are using instead of Air Conditioners. They don't give one that dry throat feeling.

Anyway, I got an e-mail from them with the terms of a contest. Usually I just ignore these things, but I really can recommend Air and Water. The last machine we got arrived broken and we had no trouble returning it and getting a good one. Sometimes you get the best view of a company when something goes wrong. They responded quickly and replaced the machine.

Part of the contest was to find three songs with "Air" or "Water" in the title and do a blog posting, so here goes:

Candle on the Water by Helen Reddy
Walk on Water by Neil Diamond
Hold Back the Water by Bachman-Turner Overdrive

I went through the artists that I listen to and finding Air or Water in a title is not as easy as you might think.

So today I am doing a blog about Swamp Coolers and I do not feel bad about it at all. I do recommend that you take a good look at the Air and Water people for a Swamp Cooler.

Ongoing work

I have had to spend a few days completing outside work so I have been remiss in posting. Most of the outside work is done on the quiet, therefore no mentioning specifics is allowed.

I have found a typing training program and I am spending a few minutes a day working on it. I guess I'm never too old to learn a few new skills.

I have also added some porch gardening to the schedule. I have Onions, Oregano, Basil, Spinach, Peppers, lettuce and Marigolds going, or in process. Just a single tray or a few pots of each. I have a lot to learn, so I am growing just a little of each. Sue wants Peas and I will plant a tray of them later this week.

Tonight is Playtest time. I am, of course, not ready...

Now I need to cut some cards I have printed and then get the Valarian cards ready to send off a new set of cards to print.

Mother Driving and a Good Game.

I took my Mother in for her check-up. Her new at home Dialysis is doing well. At 84 she is handling everything with good humor and efficiently. She should be around for a good while longer. Actually, she is the youngest of her generation in my families. Her sister is 90. My Uncle on the other side is 91 (and he has been declared dead once already) and my aunt is 92. All in all a long lived cranky bunch of relatives.

At about 5 PM we assembled for another session of the new game. It is working extremely well in the basic version. I am ever so slowly righting the rules as we play. I really want to sit down and get it out now, but that is unreasonable. We are playing now with nothing but Universal cards. These are the cards which will be the foundation of all the further campaigns. Each world will then have its own specialty cards added to that campaign world.

I am going to start explaining some of the mechanics as I go along here. It will help me organize them in my head and get people prepared for the differences between DS and the new game.

Initially we do not have any shape shifter characters in this game. Dragon Storm has covered that aspect well and there is no sense in duplicating that work. So far we have eight races, but I think we will wind up with about eighteen choices. Each race has some type of special ability, but we are not going to create additional racial cards. A simple distinction should be enough to make the game fun for everyone and allow people to play the variations.

We have eliminated Anchor cards and Boons from the game. Everything is run on Aces. As you gain Role-Playing Points (Experience) you gain card points. At certain points you earn a new "Circle" (Level) based on the ideas in the DS Lifeline cards. That is the only way you gain Stats. It is also the only way you gain additional Actions. Therefore how many "things" you can do in a round are tied directly to your prior experience. Everyone agrees that this works well, but the guidelines will have to be carefully written as the process is unlike DS and thus causes some early confusion at each new "Circle".

In general everything in the world starts with two Actions. i.e. they can do two "things". The characters in this first campaign (We are calling it the Genesis campaign) start with three actions. They can do three "things". We do not have Independent Actions in the new game. Everything takes an Action to perform it. Every Ace takes an Action to activate the card. The card tells you when it may be played.

The characters come from Dead spirits and have had new bodies grown for them (Using technology from the Blackwind Dragons). They get nine lives total, so we have resurrection in this game.

For right now I am going to post this and set down to carefully right up the Circle Guidelines and then turn it over to the alpha players next week. I should be creating pages for the new cards, but if I do not carve out the time for the new game it will never get done. So, something looses.

Well Then, Another day is ending.

Back to work, back to work.

I placed the order for the first set of standard cards today. We should have them for MarCon so people can see what they look like. Considering the timing and production schedule I think after these first sets we will be doing them all in the 18 card/$5.00 format instead of the 36 card/$10.00 format.

Got the 17 special order cards ready to print. 14 of them will be DS cards, the other 3 will be campaign cards. I have started the web pages for these to cover the guidelines for the cards. I am putting them in the new card page with a link to the page. The page is here. Just two so far. Maybe late tuesday night I'll get more, but probably Wednesday.

The Bone Orc Boon is going to give the Orcs an advantage over the other races, so I added Racial Boons as a category to submit card ideas. If it bothers people they will submit ideas, if it is not a problem they won't send in ideas. That page is about here.

Tomorrow will be pretty much lost for progress. I will be taking my Mother to the Hospital for her check-up during the day and I should get back in time for the Play test game I'm running. I have some new creatures to try out, based on some thoughts from Sue.

So, while I won't get any DS done tomorrow, I should be making good progress on learning more about life.

Sunday Morning, Wonderful Weather!

Nice lazy sunday morning. Sue is working on e-mails and then our Origins Ad. I'm covering e-mails, etsy, fur affinity and blogging updates.

We are going to be taking this week off, so little if any work is going to get done, it feels good. My congestion is just about gone, so I caught it in time. Sometimes I get so busy I don't notice an incoming illness until it is too late and it gets me. This time it is nothing.

I see that no one has tried the card submission page yet, or, it did not work. Which is it? Here is the link again, just in case you missed it.

I am enjoying peoples blogs, but I too don't post much. I did like the finished angels and now that I've seen these tomatoes, I think I'll be planting a couple on the porch monday. I am also watching Nit's health and wondering if they will make it to MarCon, that is where I usually see them.

Well, that is probably all the excitement you guys can handle in a single day, so I'm off to work on laying out the new card sets while Sue works. She hates to be the only one working.

Life is never normal

I have been busy working on a lot of projects, so I have neglected my blog posting, sorry about that.

Right now my "extra" time is being used to pamper Sue. I will be getting back to regular updates, really I will.

Working Hard, but I'm Smiling.

I have gotten the new DS cards ready for Sue to fly out with on Thursday morning.

Then Sue and I took a nice afternoon break, and well, I'm in a good mood.

We are watching our food carefully this week. Lots of yogurt and fruit meals. I need to make sure Sue's tummy is nice and calm for the big flight to Further Confusion.

I have just about got her print books caught up. Then I can get the new 11x14 prints matted for FC.

Just because I do not have enough blogs and websites to keep track of I figured I should get her set up with a fur affinity website. It's a way to let people there see Sue's newest art and hopefully get back to our other sites. I think it was tracking down flaredragon's excellent music that got fur affinity back on my mind. The site is available here.

Next I need to get a special order card done for Flaredragon, Sue just finished up the art. It will be a print available at the con too.

Now, back to it.

Face Book and Marketing

Yet more for you to digest today.

I am spending some time learning the new "social networking" protocols. like Face Book, and Twitter. The game industry we are in has been cornered and forced into a niche by a number of circumstances. Most are not the industries fault, so this is not an anti-game industry rant.

What my thinking is that we have to sally forth into the world and try to draw some people over to take a look. At conventions we are competing for a static pool of players. Our ability to grow is going to depend on bringing people to gaming. Susan has art that people "out there" like. I need to spend as much time s possible reaching out with her work and get them to follow the bread crumbs back to us. She also has her comic abilities that she has been itching to get back to.

With her art I have gotten good success on Etsy and now I've added Imagekind to the list of sites to watch/maintain. I am hoping that these sites will get people over here. We have also started the My Online Comics site to reach to another audience into our family of sites. Now I need to get our community to help spread the word on these to the non-gamers they know. I am just not sure how to do that.

I have started using twitter to announce projects completed etc. The few actual followers I have acquired are one DS person and a lot of art followers. It has the advantage of being quick and easy, plus I can use the feed on here to let you guys track what I'm doing. I paste the updates into the future LJ DS news blog using Mars Edit and post that twice a week. I'm trying for Monday and Thursday for the mass announcements.

On sites like flickr and Facebook you can share images and try to lead people back to the sites. If any of you are on one of these, let me know as I am starting to learn them and would be glad to "friend up" with you. I just put up my facebook info on the right column here. I am relying heavily on Sue, and others, for materials, so I don't expect her to do more than her current Blog.

The marks mysteries podcasts have a large audience and would be a great thing to do, but honestly between writing, recording, rewriting, rerecording and editing they take 40 plus hours for a twenty minute episode. At least they do for me. The positive aspect is we are close to 10,000 downloads.

A big problem we need to overcome is that DS is now a big daunting game, especially if you have never played table top rpg games. I need to find the time to create a new game that gets back to the simplicity of the original DS. We can even use some of the lessons learned to avoid some of the pitfalls and bumps we have had in DS. That way the new people will have some game to buy, learn, master and then move to DS - Hopefully.

Basically I want you guys to understand why I'm doing a lot of what appear to be unrelated blogging type stuff. If you understand it, maybe I can get you guys to go forth and spread the word among friends, family and beyond.

If you guys have any thoughts, suggestions etc. please drop me a comment.

Back To work

I actually took most of the weekend off, what a strange concept. I enjoyed the time with Sue, but she worked more than I did. It is tough to slow her down, but I think I need to to keep her from burning out.


I am forcing myself to do some writing every day now. It is in short fragments scattered through the DS pages. I need to get back the skills that got me published some years ago. At the same time I can transfer more of the "feel" of Sue's world to the DS players. It may help all of us.


I sometimes loose track of entertaining web pages and I stumbled back across one of interest. It has some funny and biting animated cartoons. You can check it out here.


I am back to baking bread, but so far the result has been less than stellar. I sometimes wonder how I loose skills. I wish I knew if they returned faster the second and third times, but I've never tracked it well, so I will have to guess.


That is it for today. I'll keep putting up short updates on the twitter feed to the right as I work. Now I need to get back to the Winged Cat story fragment....

Another Week Ends

I've had a pretty productive week now that I have been able to clear out the Conwebs from my mind.

For me doing creative work requires a calm atomosphere away from the hubbub of loading the car, driving, unloading the car, running around at a Con, loading the car, driving again, unloading the car. Followed by manufactureing replacement items, new items and repacking everything. Then do it all again. The whole sequence takes about two weeks per convention, no matter how big, or small, the Con may be. That does not even cover the effects of eating food that does not sit well with me, and causes no end of health issues for me.

I am hoping that I can use my blogging to let me access some creative time during the Con season of March through November plus January. With just December and February as creative months I find myself with dozens of unfinished ideas throughout the year. I have no idea of how many of those ideas are better than the ones we are now persuing, I have little or no way to test them. The end result is a good deal of frustration knowing that a whole lot of fun is being missed by me.

Ah well, I have to quite complaining and get back to work.