When I initially imagined myself going on vacation at this time in the calendar year and the lifecycle of the big project I’m working on, I imagined myself gracefully exiting the scene that is my workplace with things either finished enough that there was time for a breather or with my coworkers prepared to attend to whatever trickle of work came in while I was away. Unfortunately, over the last two weeks (as I’m writing this as I sit in an exhausted sweaty heap in my home office far too late at night on the day before I leave on my vacation, this is actually four weeks prior to the day this post goes up) I’ve been absolutely swamped by work. I’ve been leaving work at increasingly late times as I’ve struggled to balance the work that’s been pouring in against trying to finish the items on my to-do list that have fallen by the wayside over the last month and a half of increasing business, all while trying to get my coworkers up to speed so that the work can continue while I’m gone since all of the different pieces of my project are at a crucial stage where they can’t just wait a couple weeks for me to return from my vacation. I finally managed to get the last things done tonight, at about a quarter to ten in the evening after an almost fourteen hour day. I’ll be able to rest easily, as a result, since I won’t have anything left dangling over my head, but I am so absolutely exhausted that I don’t even feel tired anymore. I’m found some state beyond even exhaustion where nothing matters and my numb sense of self can continue to push my body until I run out of things to do or I collapsed because my body refuses to listen.
Continue readingPreparation
I’ve Got Moving On The Mind
One of the major upsides to being an orderly person is that packing does not take as much mental effort. Sure, there’s a bunch of stuff I have to figure out if I want to keep it or throw it away, but I don’t really need to organize my stuff. It’s already very organized and I’m just going to be moving it from where it is to a series of boxes and then back out somewhere that at least sort of matches where it currently is. Books will still be on shelves. Games and puzzles will still probably be in a closet somewhere. It’s not like i’m going to change how my books are sorted. Everything that needs to get packed together is already together. Everything that hasn’t moved from where it sits in my closet in the three years I’ve lived in my current apartment is automatically marked for “keep or toss” assessment. I’ve still got all my old boxes, I haven’t added to my collections much (thanks to the austerity I’ve observed over the past three years), and now all I’ve got to do is slowly, carefully pack it all up and set it to the side to be eventually deposited in whatever room winds up being my library/living room/office space.
Continue readingPost Vacation Check-In
Well, I had a great time. There’ll be more coming about all that (especially once I’ve had time to sort through pictures and decide what is going where when it comes to social media and my blog here), but I wanted to interrupted my previously planned posting order to do a few updates about my schedule. I’ll get those out of the way quick so I can talk about something more fun/contemplative for the rest of the post.
Continue readingYou’re Probably Going To See A Lot of “No New Infrared Isolation Chapter This Week” Posts This Month
Life is, once again, kicking my ass. I’d like to say that I listened to my friends for once and decided to take it easy rather than continue to work through the stress, exhaustion, and series of incredibly demoralizing events involved in the past five days, but I genuinely just have not had time or energy to do anything, no matter how much I’d like to. Work has been busy, life has had a series of unfortunate events for me (nothing emotionally destructive like most 2023 prior to last week, thankfully, but it has still been a lot to process and work through every. single. day.), and I’ve been struggling with depression again because of all that on top of returning sleep struggles. It has been a pretty miserable and unredeemable week only made manageable because I’ve been getting a sense of accomplishment (and utter mental/physical/emotional exhaustion) from my day job, so it’s been a bit easier to go without all the writing I normally do to get that.
Anyway, if I keep going too long here, it’ll turn into a full post and the whole “do less so I don’t hate myself, my life, and the entirety of creation” thing I’m trying to do will have failed, so I’m gonna go. Have a great weekend and get some rest. I’ll be doing my best to do that while also attending to the million other things I’ve got to do this month… No real rest for me until April, unfortunately. Who knew international travel took so much preparation?
I Love To Tinker With My D&D Campaign Settings
Lately, I’ve been enjoying making lots of documents for my Dungeons & Dragons games. I know I talk about “understanding can serve you better than knowing” a lot here, but there’s a point where you understand so much you start needing to record it all somewhere so you remember it later. Generally, I like to keep these documents to broad, general strokes without a lot of specifics so I can cleave to my principles as a DM, but it is very helpful to have all the specific, complex systems worked out ahead of time. For instance, in the domain of dread I’ve built for my weekly Sunday D&D, I have a list of the various tiers of effects the players can encounter, the ways various encounters tie into those tiers, how to switch between tiers, and how the world/the people in the world respond to their efforts written down. What I add whenever it comes up are the specific debilities tied to the tiers as my players encounter them. Those I do not have built out ahead of time since I don’t need a name until it’s happening and the name and specific effect should reflect the situation the player character has found themselves in.
Continue readingMaking Interesting Characters for Tabletop Games
In the final entry of this week’s “Making Interesting Stuff for Tabletop Games” series, we’re going to talk through the process of what makes a character interesting. I’m going to continue to reference stuff from the past few posts, so read up about Interesting Worlds, Interesting Events, and What Makes Stuff Interesting if any part of today’s post is confusing (or, you know, if you’re interested in that stuff). If that’s too much for you to read, the main thing I’ll be referencing are the difference betweening knowing (being able to recite facts you have established) and understanding (being able to make decisions and answer questions for things you never anticipated). There’s a bunch of world building that I reference throughout the series, building further as I go through the posts, but most of it is fairly basic and shouldn’t be difficult to run with.
Continue readingMaking Things Interesting for Tabletop Games
Today’s post is a bit more difficult. I know it might sound strange, given the general assertions of the last two posts, about creating interesting worlds and filling those worlds with interesting events (both of which are suggested reading for today’s post since I am using the same examples and techniques across all of them), but I can’t give you a sure-fire method of making something interesting. I do my best to make things interesting for my tabletop games, but I still fail with a frustrating degree of frequency. I’m good at pretending otherwise because I’m quick enough to cover for it by pivoting to what my players are indicating they’re actually interested in. There’s no real way to teach the ability to pivot on-the-fly other than experience and getting to know your audience, so all I can do is hope that the general rules and guiding principles I use for determining what is “interesting” will be enough to help you get started. Like most of the worldbuilding and GM prep I’ve talked about recently, if you keep your preparation focused on understanding things rather than knowing things, you can almost always find a place to recycle them if your original use doesn’t pan out.
Continue readingFilling Worlds With Interesting Events For Tabletop Games
Once you’ve created an interesting world for you tabletop game, the next step is to fill it with stuff that is either currently happening, about to happen, or has happened. You really only need one to have one built out, since the others tend to grow out of exploring one, but it doesn’t hurt to have a few different options of each kind so you can run the game your players are interested in playing. You could try to predict that ahead of time and build the precise number of interesting things you need in that direction to make the world feel lived-in, but it’s usually more fun if you have a bit of each. In my experience, it always feels rewarding when the players find ties to past events that get them excited to learn more about whatever situation they’re in, when players can tie current events to past events when they initially seemed unrelated, and everyone loves a bit of foreshadowing that pays out.
Continue readingCreating Interesting Worlds For Tabletop Games
Creating a setting for a tabletop roleplaying game is a lot of work. Regardless of whether it is supposed to be the backdrop for an entire campaign or a temporary location your players find themselves, it takes a lot of work to get it ready. I have had a lot of experience creating worlds, given that it was always my favorite part of writing stories and running D&D games, and I’ve learned a lot of lessons about how to do it effectively and quickly. Not every setting can be created quickly, of course, some things just take time to work out, but I have a few tips and principles I stick to that help me create something I can use without making it so rigid that there’s no room to improvise and adapt as your players (or characters, for written stories) explore.
Continue readingAdjustment Period
As we move from the early days of winter into what used to be prime Polar Vortex season, I find myself wondering what adjustments the new year will bring. I remember when the term “polar vortex” was first bandied about in weather reporting, as a massive surge of sub-zero temperatures reached down from the north to rake its rime-coated claws across the Midwest, and how it was portrayed as a one-time thing. Now, it feels like it happens at least once a year. Last year, it got so far south it fucked up Texas. Say what you will about the politicians and political landscape of the state fucking around and finding out, many people who suffered most as a result of all that didn’t choose to leave their state vulnerable. No one deserves that.
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