Daily Thoughts, on a monthly schedule

It appears that I do not have daily thoughts. A disturbing concept, but there you have it.

My mother has been having trouble with her legs recently. Basically everything below the waist decides that moving is not in the cards. She has been in two hospitals for it and they are not finding a reason. Each time she gets back a little function and off home she goes. Surprisingly, at the age of 87, she is in a positive mood, she is sure she can overcome this one too. Gotta love the spirit.

I have been keeping half an eye on the OWS type protests. Not being a youngster I remember the protests of the 60's, I was there.

Declaration of Independence opening:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I love what they did here. First, they used the word Creator to include all beliefs. You can believe the Creator is Evolution or God, and it still works. They say all men are equal. Children of the poor, middle class, rich or oligarchs are equal, none are greater. And everyone of us has the born right to Life, Liberty and to try to be Happy.

Are the leaders in Washington trying to guide our country with these words in their minds? You decide. Go look, do your own research, examine their deeds, not the words.

OK, enough thinking, it wears me out.

Yes, we have ipads

We are still exploring the devices, but I can tell you that they are better than I expected. Artwork, accounting, writing and easy to handle anywhere, (So far).

There is so much in this little package that it is going to take a while to learn what it can really do.

I got more done on the new game with this in the first day than I had dreamed possible.

More latter.

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.

Updating the system

I am checking out all my regular programs here. I finally upgraded to Snow Leopard. So far it is looking really good.

I reworked the DS Sets page to include PDF sample pages of all the cards. It will give people a chance to try them all out and see what they think.

OK, off to check more.

To do what I want, or what I must?

Every day we face that question. Do we do the things we want to or do we do these things we must.

Life is a compromise, and it always has been. Right now there is a pile of work in front of me that I have to do. I could fill my days with work that must be done, but is that really living? Is the difference between an intelligent being and a rock that the rock always does what it must and the being does at least some of what it wants?

I am not going to be a rock, but there are some duties that I must get done before I can be myself.

Working Steadily, it is still all uphill.

The only thing I dislike about pushing rocks up hill is that a few always roll right back down the hill. The positive part is that most of the rocks stay on top of the hill. I like to remember the positives.

Sue and I made progress on our internal organization and our ambitious plans for the future. Prioritizing tasks is not straight forward. It has to be balanced between the tasks with immediate results, those with long term value and those that are risky/uncertain.

We are going to arrange for two week periods of seclusion about four times a year so we can consider what has happened, is happening and will happen. It also gives us a chance to enjoy each other. What can I say, I really like my "Sue" time. I think t is the single most important thing in my life.

Here at the Clanhold our kitchen water pipes have finally burst. They have been freezing off and on for 20 years. It was just a matter of time. Right now I am running pans of water downstairs to do cooking etc. We are going to reconsider the kitchen carefully. The pipes go through an unheated, unprotected area currently. We would have to move the sinks to change that, but it is not a simple decision, so we will not be rushed into a bad choice.

And what did the Oracle say?

And what did the Oracle say to us?

"What you seek is beneath the hairy balls of the Blue Frog."

Damn! We found the frakkin blue frog. It was a great stone statue some ten feet tall.

There it was, wearing the strangest Haberdashery you ever did see, but what would one expect?

Well, I pulled on my great Uncles beard and thought about this.

Finally I strode right up to that frog and said "What, in the name of your ancestors, is under your hairy balls?"

One stone eye opened and looked at me. It worked it's mouth until it could speak: "It is the secret entry to the necro's tower, now go away you little twit."

Friday, and what a start it is.

I got up, started the chicken slow cooking, took care of the dog, got Sue her morning coffee, emptied the water barrel and started to assemble my morning work set-up. Then *bang* pain in the back/shoulder. Stopped me cold. After half an hour on the vibration seat, it is moving again. On the up side, Sue has started making Sausage and eggs for breakfast, yum.

I did not get as much done on Crypt Crawl as I wanted. After the last couple of days my mind bogged down. I got pics of the dog, the new DS cards and started the mechanical work on getting the new DS card pages on the web.

Sooo, today, Crypt Crawl Monsters. I have a layout for the stats that will allow me to do cut and paste for the mundane enemies in encounters and adventures. I am probably going to be behind on the first adventure and the first village for the Beta release. I will get the monsters done today. Think the adventure and village will take about a day each to finish, and I'm not working Halloween. I am just not sure which to get up and finish Sunday. Maybe I can get both, but do not put any money on it.

Ah, Saturday is here!

Dishes, scrub hall, wash clothes, basically catch up on cleaning. More CC Beta card sheets completed and posted for testing. May try to sneak some in today.

Tomorrow I will try to assemble the pieces of the rules. They are done, they just need assembly and tweaking. I will do a separate FAQ PDF. That way as people ask questions I can add to the FAQ and do a new version from time to time.

Trying to think out best communication to use for our gamers. Must research doing a Crypt Crawl Newsletter.

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*

Monday, Sue is due back today!

I talked to Sue last night. The Con went very well. She will try for a table there again next year. She is tired and I plan on treating her well when she gets back.

It took me all day sunday to get the new pages done for the new card sets. The Tigrean Werecat character set page is here. and the GM feature set is here. The biggest problem with the sets is how to let people know what cards are in the sets. I think these new pages will make it clear what is in the set. The character set should be here tomorrow and the GM set should be a week away.

For Crypt Crawl I put together some more common monsters this morning. I am up to 41 common monsters so far. I need to create some common animals for using in villages and farms. I have the basic villagers done and lots of undead. Brain eating is popular among zombies, but others find it to be a problem. Zombie Bears, nasty, brains taste like honey, just ask them.

I also need to make progress on getting more DS cards into sets. Rogue and Wizard are up next. I also need to make pages for all the sets like the new set pages. It will go faster now that I have a template I like.

I have some deep thinking to do on life style. I have run out of milk and eggs. It is about a mile to a decent store and two miles to a good store. The question is, do I start getting off my butt and walk to the store, or wait for Sue and the car. It is really a question that we all face in small ways. Now that I am in front of such a simple question I am seeing all the issues behind the question. Health, exercise, and world view. Why does the mind ask all these questions, and how do you shut it up? Of course, I have a perfect excuse, I am too busy to consider either the issues or take the time it would take to walk to the store.

Well, breakfast is over, time to walk a dog.

24 hours without my Sue

I am up and moving. Dog and cat walked, fed and talked to. Spoke with Sue last night. She is at the FurFright Hotel and doing fine. The drive was straight forward.

My cookies turned out really good, but I think they are too sweet. At 150 calories each I ate a pile and froze half for when Sue gets home. I need to look into some changes in the recipe, maybe some milk instead of a cup of butter, and more cinamon. I will work on it.

Continued work on the Crypt Crawl RPG game. I have opened a Blog for the new game. This is a link to it and on the Crypt Crawl Page the Crypt Crawl Updates link leads to the blog. I have also started filing in some of the specific sheet pages on the download page. What is added are Info Links. These pages talk about the specific sheets. I need to have these in place for the grand November 1st uploading.

Next up I will be going to our in house wiki and updating some of the FAQ's. These will be poured into a pdf for the downloads.

More later.

Sleepy me.

I am not sure why I am sleeping so much, but I am feeling better, just tired. *sigh* Such is life.

Had a lot of fun Tuesday night running the Crypt Crawl game. The holes in the game are closing up nicely. We are working on the presentation and wrap up for the rules. Among those thoughts is finding memorable name for important rules features.

The Terrible Two's. Not good to roll a "2" on 2d6. You are stunned, surprised, or just bemused. You will use your actions to "Recover", then you are back to normal.

Streaks. Rolling a 10, 11, or 12 is good. You are on a streak. You will roll another 2d6 and add it to the result. Oh, 10, 11, 12 again? Keep the streak going! An initiative roll of 29 really happens. 50 plus damage in a swing? yup. A defense roll of 34, sure, why not.

The Defensive part of combat has changed in Crypt Crawl. Every time you get physically hit you get a 2d6 Defense Roll. No set number. A Terrible Two equals no (zero) defense... Armor has to be Activated by using an Action. If you have an Active Armor number, it is added to the 2d6 roll... If you use an Action to Parry you get to add the Parry adding the Parry Values of your equipment.

And finally, the third pic from our last game.

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.

Just a little difficult to get restarted

My excuse for slowly getting back to work is this irritating lung infection / congestion that is just hanging on. I am pretty much back to speed, but the work start up is coming slow.

What I have managed to do is keep the kitchen cleaning habits I developed this summer going forward. I really think Sue is in a better mood when the kitchen is cleaned each morning. I also think my life is mighty fine when Sue is in a good mood. I have made the whole cleaning, breakfast, dog car, and Raising of the Sue, into a two and a half hour ritual in the mornings. It even includes four big cups of strong coffee for myself. That covers my day from 7 am to 9:30 am.

What I can't decide is if I should try to add a regularly scheduled deed from 9:30 to 10, like working on learning to garden again, or if I should try scheduling work periods later in the day. I know that between the Dragon Storm, Crypt Crawl, Art web work, Web Design jobs, Shipping, manufacturing, blogging, podcasting and whatever else I have my fingers in, I miss too many necessary details. I need to somehow keep track of each of the tasks in a way that helps me catch everything and yet does not consume too much time itself.

Sue and I are investigating the wonders of the computer calendar, and I think there are some possibilities in here. The tasks, events, notes and to-do functions combined as a unit have serious possibilities.

As usual my thoughts are skipping around in my mind, jumping in and out of my subconscious in a rather random fashion. Maybe if I divide the house and yard into a series of five "zones" and schedule one of them for an hour of work each day. That may make it possible to maintain a larger area around the home. How in the world does a traditional "housewife" do it? While I am trying to work this out , Sue is making most of our meals and maintaining the bathroom. We do our shopping as a team. I do laundry on the weekends. Yet we are always behind. *sigh*

All right, enough of this, my schedule says I am working on a podcast, so I better get a move on.

Back to work and trying to keep up

Well, we are back to work. After two weeks of just doing almost nothing it is a strain trying to get back into the swing of things.

I am keeping up with the basic housekeeping I started a while back. The kitchen is getting daily maintenance. You know, dishes done, garbage dealt with, counters etc. Getting this done, plus rousting and feeding Sue and Mocha. Walking the dog fits in here too, but in my groggy morning state I do make errors, and Sue reacts badly to the leash... but Mocha likes breakfast in bed... Anyway, the process takes 2.5 hours in the morning. The clean kitchen routine is helping Sue to get to work and it is worth it.



The second home routine I am establishing is to do laundry on saturday off. I am not sure this is a good way to do this. We travel a lot and once a week on laundry may not work out well. I may have to try to schedule laundry twice a week to cover the "on the road weeks". Maybe add it to the wednesday schedule.



In addition I am using the computers calendar to start scheduling so I get to everything, or at least don't forget anything. Today, tuesday, is aimed a working on the Crypt Crawl game with a long game in the evening.



I did routine maintenance on my portable and discovered the hard drive is showing signs of weakness. With all the data on it I decided to buy a new bigger Hard Drive. A 500 GB one is on the way. The current one is 320 GB and mostly full. I then checked the old portable and the Hard Drive in it is showing serious flaws in seek and temperature control. That baby is about gone. I am going to take the hurting drive and put it in the back-up machine, giving it a big boost in size (now a bad 120 GB, going to a weak 320 GB). It should be fine in the back-up computer.



OK, I'm going to close this out. I am running behind today, *sigh*, I am not sure this scheduling concept will work. My reliability is questionable.

Every Action in the game must be accompanied by using an Action.

During any game designed by Susan a Gamemaster is constantly called on to interpret the results of player actions. They use experience, common sense and their understanding of what the chaotic universe is doing currently. Sometimes the GM rulings seem to go contrary to what the player expects. Because this multi-universe is chaotic, even actions performed yesterday may be different today. Susan's rules design creates a multitude of possibilities for every action. To help the players sort through the ever changing universe, we have created an official in-game appeal system for the new games.


- In Game Player Appeal Process -


The player may expend one of her characters actions to perform a rules appeal. The player will state their case as to why they think something different should happen. If other players want to join the appeal and talk, they will also need to expend an Action. The GM will listen to the speeches carefully. At the conclusion of the commentary the GM will thoughtfully consider the players words. The GM will either agree with the player and change the ruling, or they will not. Once the GM has made a second ruling the appeal process is over and the game continues. The appeal is over.


Gamemasters have a tough time in rules discussions during the game. They are usually basing their rulings on factors the characters, and their players, do not know about. To reveal these secrets at the wrong time may well do the game more injustice than justice. For the players part they should be aware that Susan's multi-verse does not have firm laws in place. That means that identical actions are not meant to have identical results all of the time. Your characters are well aware of the anarchy of the universe. The characters are not surprised by the universes mutability, even if the players are.


Obviously this new rule is designed to try to segment rules discussions from the game proper. All Activities in the game require an Action to perform, so we are classifying questioning the universes operation as an activity. If the GM decides in the players favor she may even give back the Action, it all depends on the players attitude.


Commentary: As with all the new rules this one needs a good rewrite. The idea is to keep rules questions from disrupting the game.

Just Try It. A Basic DS RPG concept

When we first published DS way back in 1996 Susan had some basic concepts built into the game. We made some assumptions about how they would be handled by players and GM's. That assumption led us to fail to clearly elaborate some of those concepts.


Now that the modified 2d6 game system is on the horizon we have an opportunity to delve deeper into some of those concepts. As I was doing dishes this morning my mind began mulling over one such concept. We did not present it strongly enough in the original game. We are going to add a new Guideline to the new games. It is the "Just Try It" concept. There are slight variations here from the DS rules, they represent the Tweaking of the rules that hindsight has provided.


In Susan's concept of the multi-verse the characters are special creatures. Within these characters is the ability to conceive of, and perform, amazing actions, along with, of course, the mundane actions. To allow for this Susan created the 2d6 contest roll where the player rolls 2d6 and adds their bonuses to the roll. This becomes their contest number. The Gamemaster rolls 2d6 for the universe and adds it's bonuses. That becomes the universes contest roll. The higher number is successful. If there is a tie, the GM (Universe) wins the roll.


The question I want to approach in this piece is what a character can actually try to do. We have cards that represent many skills, spells abilities and more, in our crpg systems. When one of these is activated the player is going to get a bonus to their contest roll. That is pretty simple to assimilate. What becomes more complex is when a player wants to perform an action for which they do not have a card. These actions can be anything from climbing a cliff, riding a horse, or singing a bawdy song to distract the listeners. Basically anything the players creativity can think up. How do we make a contest roll for this?


To try to do this will use the standard contest roll. The player will roll 2d6, and, since they have no bonus, add zero to the roll. That will be there contest roll. The complexity in the contest roll comes in the gamemasters end of the roll.


The gamemaster is rolling for the universe, or at least a piece of it, such as the horse, listening crowd or the cliff. The GM will have to think quickly and determine the universes bonus. If the action is an easy one, such as climbing a steep stairway up the cliff, the GM may give the universe a negative bonus, making the action easy. She could even decide that the universe has a -12 bonus and the character succeeds. At the other extreme the GM may look at the action and determine that it is darned difficult. Riding an unbroken wild horse is going to be tough. The GM may, in this case, determine that the universes bonus is as +8. A very tough endeavor, but possible.


The Gamemaster has further decisions to make. How long does the action take? What may be the result of the action? What happens if the player rolls a "2" and has a bad failure? The GM also needs to consider if the 10, 11, 12 success rules apply to this situation. These decisions are done based on factors that the players are unaware of, and may never discover. Due to this confusion, and secrecy, players will sometimes want to protest, not knowing that there are special factors at work.


In the new guidelines the player may invoke an Appeal by expending one of the players actions to make an Appeal. I will cover this in a separate posting. For the moment all I will say is that if something uses game time, it is an action, and the GM's decision after the appeal is final, even if the GM says "You failed, your character, and you, do not understand why".


Now we come to the question of how far all of this may be taken. Throwing reality out of the window allows players to liven the game with their fertile imaginations. What if a peasant character wants to sing a complete opera she once heard? How about casting a teleport spell she once saw a wizard cast? Leaping over a 30 foot ravine? Repairing a war-bots eletronics? All of these may be tried by anyone, however, the difficulty should be extreme. We want role-playing to open the creativity, not limit it. It is all about having fun.


All right, now that I have perplexed my readers, that is all for today, I really should be cleaning house and prepping for GenCon, but this was in my mind. Someday I, or some volunteer, will try to compose this in an understandable commentary. Comments welcomed.

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.