Last September, I wrote about the end of a tabletop gaming group and, in the last paragraph, mentioned that I regretfully couldn’t get into a game, Palia, as much as my two friends were. Oh, how the times have changed. Mostly for me, since my two friends are just as into Palia as ever, but I’ve been getting into it more and more over the past month and finally hit the point where I was playing it by myself, even when they weren’t online, which is the sign that I’ve stopped playing a game because my friends are playing (which is a perfectly fine reason to play any number of games and the main reason I’ve played pretty much every single massive multiplayer online game I’ve ever played) and started playing it because I enjoy it. Not much of the game itself has changed, aside from various quality-of-life improvements, additional story elements, and some expansions to the core aspects of the game (it is still in pre-release development), but I’m currently enjoying it more than I have before. It took me a couple weeks to figure out why, but as I finally locked into the gameplay loop over the past few days, I was able to figure out what about this game has caught me this time around.
Continue readingAuthor: Chris
Mood Music For Themes And Villains I Might Never Use
When I start building out a world for a tabletop game, if there’s a particular feeling that I’m trying to achieve as part of that build, I will usually create a playlist to help me zero in on it. I’ll do the same thing for villains, sometimes, though I tend to avoid it since I generally want my villains to be a framework with some goals and ideals that will be given greater detail and a final shape through their interactions with my player characters (however remote or limited those interactions are). I make playlists a lot more as a player, usually one for every major step along the path of my character’s journey that go from being vague ideas to solid, smaller playlists as I hit those major beats and see what shape they’ll take, but the practice that started as a player in a D&D game has grown far beyond that point. I’ve relied on it as a part of my worldbuilding and NPC development more heavily in recent years, as I’ve moved away from standard fantasy worlds and instead built worlds to reflect past failures (from when my weekly Sunday game had a Total Party Kill and we decided to start a new game in the distant future of the world they failed to save) or to reflect specific themes (like the one I built and adapted to first a Heroic Tragedy D&D campaign and then to a game of Heart: The City Beneath). For these more thematically focused worlds, the playlists have been super helpful in reminding me of the tone I’m supposed to be setting as I flesh out bits of the world my players are about to encounter or create things out of whole cloth on the spot as I run the sessions.
Continue readingInfrared Isolation: Chapter 30
New to the series or certain you’ve missed a chapter? You can find the introduction Here and the table of contents Here.
Continue readingHarrow The Ninth’s Narration Made For A Harrowing Read
There will be spoilers for Gideon The Ninth and Harrow The Ninth in this review, starting in the third full-sized paragraph. There will also be some minor hints at spoilers in the second full-size paragraph, so tread with caution.
Well, I finished Harrow The Ninth. You’re probably reading this a day after I wrote about my initial impressions of the second book in the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, but it has been two days since I wrote that. I was too busy on Friday to write a blog post during my breaks at work and then far too tired to write anything once I finished. So, since I was burned out, exhausted, mentally drained, depressed, and incapable of determining if anything would actually be fun, I decided to toss aside my reservations (and cautions) about reading Harrow the Ninth in my current mental state and dove in. Eight hours later, it was half past three in the morning and I’d finished the book. I didn’t exactly disassociate my way through the book, but I basically did. Time left no impression on me and not in the way that happens when I get sucked into a book most of the time. This was a new one for me. It wasn’t a negative experience or anything like that–I actually wound up liking Harrow the Ninth more than I thought I would–but I definitely wasn’t really in control of myself. I didn’t really feel like I could pull myself out of this weird mental state. Normally, I forget that I’m reading at all and don’t even think to stop. This time, I just couldn’t stop. It was like I lacked the agency to stop, which kinda fits with the whole “mild disassociation” thing I had going on.
Continue readingHarrow The Ninth Is Tripping Me Up
After many long weeks of putting it off, mostly to savor the anticipation but also because I started a book series, a TV series, and working my way through Dimension20, all on top of my usual pile of video games, podcasts, and YouTube series, I finally started reading Harrow the Ninth. I’ve had a lot of stuff to read or watch and I didn’t want to start on another book until I’d cleared some of that stuff off my to-do list, but I wound up getting into it because the past two weeks have been rough enough that I needed a NEW escape. Plus, I really enjoyed Gideon the Ninth and hoped that I’d be able to boost my incredibly low mood from the past three weeks by giving myself a bit of a treat. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple, since the second-person narration [which ultimately served a very specific purpose] was a bit too much for me to handle going into the book. I think I made it through about five chapters on my first attempt before I felt just too worn out by the book addressing me to continue reading. I can tell the writer, Tamsyn Muir, is trying for some kind of effect, but I’m not sure what it is yet and I’m not sure that it’s working since all I’m getting from it is confusion. I can only hope that it will resolve soon or that I’ll get past how weird it feels to me. Generally speaking, it’s one of those things that, as a reader and a writer, I can see the author is going for something but I can’t tell whether its just not landing for me or if they’re not doing a great job of it.
Continue readingSometimes You Have To Argue Even When They Won’t Listen
My most popular post over the last two years is “Don’t Argue If They Won’t Listen” and I honestly find it kind of funny how perennially relevant that is to my life. I was spurred to write that post after being talked over by someone who continued to insist I was wrong despite having no evidence or relevant experience to back up their claim. They were never able to provide a reason for this assertion and their subsequent insistence on ignoring my advice (that they had solicited) on a topic I happened to know a lot about forever changed the nature of our relationship. I was no longer willing to engage with them on anything but a surface level and I let distance grow between us since, prior to that point, I was the one doing most of the work to keep conversation going and make contact. Now, we rarely talk (this greater distance helped by the fact that this person also moved away a few months later) and while I miss the friendship, I do not miss the way it made me feel all the time. Unfortunately, as I’ve come to realize in my professional life, walking away or keeping your silence isn’t always an option.
Continue readingMaudeline Weather Musings
Winter seems to have passed. The snow will stick around for a while since it is close enough to freezing that the almost two feet of snow will take some time to melt (though most of it might be gone by the time you’re reading this since, at the time I’m writing this, there’s going to be rain between those two moments). The icy roads have turned to slush, the constant chill has been replaced by a heavy blanket of damp, and there’s fog almost every single morning and night (and even during the days sometimes, too, thanks to the heavy cloud cover). It’s officially spring weather and it’s still January. The long range forecast says that we might have a few more days that peak below freezing, but we’ll have even more days in the forties over the same span of time. It was pretty intense, getting all of winter crammed into a two and a half week period of time, but we sure got it all. Icy roads that the city doesn’t clear enough for anything but slow, cautious driving, multiple blizzards, multiple snowstorms that snow just enough to make driving difficult but not enough that the plows come out to clear it up, a plunge into the negatives where it is actually dangerous to be outside for more than a few minutes, and a whole heap of grey, cloudy days that don’t let one iota of sunlight through. All in a two-week period. What a winter this has been, even when it’s barely a month old.
Continue readingFinding The Right Game To Run
I’ve been working on putting together a modern fantasy setting for a new game I’m going to start in a couple weeks. We’re planning to play Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition since I’ve already got a ton of books for that and I’ve yet to find another system that feels as comfortable and malleable as D&D 5e does (most other things I’ve looked at feel a little too rules-light for the game my players and I want to play). Sure, there’s a lot of other much more open games where the only limitation is your imagination, but I’ve learned from trying to get people to play those games that a lot of people will freeze up if they’re presented with tasks or choices that seem too open-ended. Not everyone has the improvisational experience required to enjoy those kinds of games and a lot of people just want to play a game they already know so they can relax and enjoy themselves. Plus, I kind of miss it. D&D 5e, I mean. I’m still not planning to give Wizards anymore money, though I’ll admit that I’m running into a few problems with having all of my digital access to the 5e books I bought prior to last year’s debacle locked into one website since, unless I pay them money every year, I can’t share that access with anyone else. If I’d bought PDFs instead of digital access, I’d be able to share those with my players easily, but I honestly never thought I’d end my subscription to DnDBeyond and yet, here I am, subscription-less and trying to figure out how to make sure all my players have access to the same information I do.
Continue readingInfrared Isolation: Chapter 29
New to the series or certain you’ve missed a chapter? You can find the introduction Here and the table of contents Here.
Continue readingMid-Winter Depression Posting
Content Warning: I’m pretty depressed right now. I’m not, like, despairing or anything, but I’m pretty miserable and this post is about that. Best avoid it if you’re not up for reading about someone else’s experiences with depression.
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