2017: Remember That It’s All in Your Head

Where to start?

Here's a TV moment that kind of sums up 2017: Tom and I were watching Crisis on Earth X. Sara walks up to Alex at the rehearsal dinner and starts tossing back drinks. When asked what she's looking to make go away, her response is, "Nothing. I just like the taste of scotch." Back in the (sort of) real world, Tom said, "She drinks like you."

So here's to making that fucked-up outside world go away, and to loving the taste of scotch. Or whatever.

Writing... well, it's been going much slower than it should, but it's getting better. I'm now calling the book The Nameless Way. I started the year off strong, then things began to taper off in the summer and really fell apart during Gen Con month. I tried backing away from gaming for a while, I tried silly resolutions, I tried, you know, stuff. I think what finally got me back on track was when I took a week's vacation around Thanksgiving, escaping not just conventions and all that structured gaming stuff, but the constant brain-killing drum of my day job.

There were so many games, though. We started the year off with a clump of 'em at Weird Realms for Tom's birthday. My D&D campaign there drifted off early. I never had more than two players and, after a couple of cancellations for illness and something else I think, I never much felt like trying to schedule another one. The Scrap Pile had been on hiatus since late last year for other reasons.

In March, though, my World of Greyhawk campaign started up. I did this partly because my friend Curtis's D&D campaign had gone on hiatus to wait for a missing player. This one has been lots of fun. We were running along every couple of weeks, tromping through old modules and stuff. It had a bunch of long-distance friends in it so that was cool too. After a couple of months, Curtis decided he needed to start his campaign back up without waiting for the other guy, so hey, double the D&D! We even had a brief Icons reunion for Giant Size Scrap Pile #3.

In the fall, we were finally able to stir the Scrap Pile back into action. Aaaand Curtis started an Icons campaign of his own. That put the count up to four. I was running an Icons game and a D&D one, plus playing in, well, same. Sometimes we were playing twice in one weekend.

Also, the Greyhawk campaign was huge. I was wrangling five to seven players every time. That's about as many as I can handle at a real table. On Hangouts I'm more comfortable with three or four.

October came around and, on top of all that, I needed to get ready for the games I was running at Carnage. I told everyone I needed time off from gaming stuff so I could do more gaming stuff. Carnage came and went. It was awesome as usual, but didn't do much to clear my head. Curtis has run one out-of-continuity romp-type game since then and I had a blast running the Scrap Pile Christmas Special, but I still haven't started my campaigns back up. I guess I will eventually, on a less crazy schedule... assuming anybody still wants to.

I love both of my campaigns, and I love my friends, but I can't function with humans flitting around in all my spare time. If this year has taught me anything, it's that talking to or even thinking about other people too much is like sleep deprivation. I can handle some overload, but the toxins build up quickly and take a long time to clear out.

Like I said before, the vacation helped a lot. Before that, I was too fried, even with the restored spare time, to even catch my breath. Now I'm starting to pull it together. The shorter break for my Christmas trip helped, too, even the part where I got stuck along the way for some surprise auto maintenance. I'm a little concerned about where it goes from here. Multiple week-long getaways are a privilege for the wealthy. Maybe spacing out the game sessions will do it, or at least get me close enough that some carefully planned shorter breaks will work. My day job didn't use to require measures like this but, since we got sold to Jabba, it's been generating too much psychic garbage for me to shovel out.

I've also been backing away from social media a little, especially Facebook. I still use the blather sites quite a bit, but I had gotten into some bad habits, like using them to look for distraction when I was in a bad mood, or using them to vent. It's embarrassing how long it took me to realize that both of those are more likely to make things worse. On a somewhat related note, the site that did the syndication or whatever you call it for this blog appears to have imploded. While it was nice to get the extra hits, having to come up with something to blog about every month was annoying, so... good riddance, I guess.

I put out the last major piece of the Qalidar RPG, the Qritter Qatalog, this summer. There could, theoretically, be other books later, because I've still got some material I could run through the grinder and release. I suppose I could also do a compiled edition, but I probably won't. With the monster book out, I've done pretty much everything I felt obligated to do. If anybody wanted to actually play the game, they could do it and not feel like pieces are missing. Well, they might feel that way, but they'd be wrong.

Other stuff: Hey, in February, we moved! Not far -- just across the expressway. It was a grueling slog of a move, but I'm really happy with the new place. It's a house instead of an apartment, it's quieter, the way it's arranged is more conducive to the way Tom & I like to do stuff, and when things break, they get fixed. Plus, balcony!

Anyway, my goals & plans for 2018 are pretty much the same as last time, because I'm still not there and I still haven't quit. I'll try to find some practical ways to stay on track.

I'm thinking of backing away from conventions a bit. I'm already committed to go to Gen Con next year, and I'm not sure I could give it up anyway. It's a painfully expensive rampaging stress-monster, but it's also a freakin' amazing five-day party. I could, however, GM less and play more. Carnage, of course, is exempt. I could go to BASHCon and not run any games, or just run one off the books for my friends. It's a low-pressure shindig that doesn't even require time off from work. And maybe that's it. Tom's going to GaryCon with Monk, but I was already thinking of staying home to save up my vacation days... and bank some extra alone time.

I guess that's the end. Happy New Year!

Carnage Redux or Redact or Something

November 3-5 was the 20th anniversary of my favorite convention. I wasn't there for the very first one, and I can't even claim a perfect record since I started in 2009, but I go whenever I can. Carnage is the best.

This blog, on the other hand, is a mess. You should stop reading now. You have been warned.

Usually they have a theme, but this year it was "whatever." Kind of a look back at previous themes, they said. I suppose my Doctor Who game, as a mash-up, sort of fit, but that was just a coincidence. Turned out there was a full moon this year too.

It's been a mercurial, emotional autumn. I'm not entirely sure why. I probably wouldn't tell you if I knew. The relevant part is that this filter has been casting everything in weird shades, Carnage included. The games I was running were mostly outlined, but I started getting really stressed out over the last-minute preparation, stuff I've done plenty of times before, for plenty of conventions. I got grumpy over silly details when we stopped for the night in Syracuse the day before. It was a pleasant trip for the most part but, like I said, weird shades.

Tom drove on the way over, so I used the time to get stuff worked out for my private Thursday game. I had wanted to do more with the mythos established in Conspiracy X this time, instead of just doing my own paranormal thing like last year or trying to explain the whole universe like the year before that. I was fairly pleased with what I put together. We got in with plenty of time to stretch out. Steve was in the lobby and helped us unpack. The view from our room was a conversation piece. Ray would later dub it the Party Patio.

A last-minute convention schedule thing killed the game, so we just did the usual hanging out stuff, messaging friends in as they showed up, swarming from room to room at whatever point felt right. Eventually Tom & I walked with Matt back to his room (one of the condos) and then some time after three, Tom decided he wanted to stay there and drink some more. Matt is nocturnal, and he seemed to be okay with it, so he walked me back to the hotel and I slept while he returned to his waiting Tom. None o' my business what makes those crazy kids happy. I don't think it's, y'know, constitutional, but whatever.

Friday was the official opening day. Somehow I got out there before the registration desk got crowded, or maybe it was just running smoothly the whole time. After that I fussed around, did random stuff, stressed over what I was wearing with the coat to my Doctor Who game (I had packed several alternatives), and moved things around in the room for, you know, reasons. I also reserved a room for next year and tried to find out what happened to my missing credit card. Anyway, there was a game later.

I didn't actually play the Doctor, but it was my coat so I got to wear it for the picture. I was way nervous about wearing the silly thing across the hotel. I don't normally do stuff like that. Tyler's gleeful giggle-squee when he saw me was just what I needed, though. That's Rags and Steve on the left side of the picture. I don't know the two on the right in real life, but they were Janet and H.G. Wells in the game. It was a great group, but they almost always are. I was totally flying.

Tom was in a game. Cthulhu, I think. Seems like we started out in Steve's room and talked about how gaming was the best way to get to know people because, personas and stuff, wandered off to Scott's party, and so on. I brought the overcoat with me everywhere. I was a little bit zoned out at first and couldn't get into the socializing, but finally decided, hey, I'm here to have fun, so why can't I? So I gulped down... I don't know... it had some melted ice in it, so there probably wasn't all that much whiskey. Managed to impress Matt, at least. Or worry him. It also kicked in the human stuff so the party was fun. Then we were outside talking about dreams and things. Bound to happen eventually, right? Tom's game ran late, so I don't think I saw much of him.

So anyway, Saturday happened. I found the credit card I thought I'd lost right when I was about to give up and report it. Then I was stressed again about the Farscape game. In the course of writing scene outlines mostly on that little pad of hotel paper and filling out character sheets, I realized why I always get stressed over these games, even though I know I'm going to enjoy them. I love playing role-playing games. I especially love coming up with scenarios and running them. I just really, really hate starting them. Once that's over, I'm good.

But it was a great Farscape session. The nebari mad scientist played up to my standards, which I didn't expect. Because one guy showed up who didn't know the show very well, I even bent the plot a little to put him into a Crichton-like position. The guy playing the sheyang had written down a bunch of Farscape slang and worked it in throughout the session.

Tom joined up this time. He had been in a game earlier, but it was a train wreck. There were also  some other guys Steve knew, and Rags. Matt had appeared briefly during my game, then looked confused and disappeared again. The rest of us went back to Steve's room, where they all talked about beer forever. Like, all the stuff about types of hops and how much malt and I just kept seeing myself screaming and throwing furniture around until they choked me into unconsciousness. I guess I could have tried to change the subject, but I just kept hoping it would get better. Eventually it did, and then we wandered off to the big party.

Matt still hadn't shown up, so I texted him and, before it even got to his phone, he appeared at the door. I think he might be Satan. Or one of Satan's interrogators. I'll have to be more careful about squawking his name in the future. Anyway, circulated around the party a bit, talked to Scott and Andre, talked to Petra, who strongly recommended being carried on a litter, talked to this weird flying centipede thing that came through the yellow gateway. The rent-a-cops came a couple of times to shush everybody, and eventually it was time to go.

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and I returned Steve's coffee cup, talked to him for a bit, then wandered around looking for someone else to pester, but there didn't seem to be any more open doors. There was a gnarled tree that I could have taken a picture of but didn't. I always start these things out planning to share insightful comments on the weekend's games or art or something and I always end up rambling on about who I hung out with and where. Oh well. Insight is overrated. Anyway, Tom and I packed up and left the next day, and drove to our usual stop in Syracuse.

The next day we did a little exploring. Saw some woods that still had pretty leaves, and a lake, and found a really good Mexican restaurant.

Enclave

I stumbled across this place while I was walking to pick up the car yesterday. There's a fairly major intersection, with one distinctly smaller and homier road that goes off to the west. Right past another ordinary crossroads, the neighborhood street dead-ends at the entrance to this cemetery. I had been close enough to it before to know it was there, but I figured, despite the enticing entrance, it was still just gonna be a cemetery.

Yesterday was a nice day, though, and I had plenty of time to get where I was going. I walked through the gate and was immediately flanked by pine trees. They were all pretty old, and one of them was really striking, towering over all the other trees. Ordinary pine trees might not be as seductive for other people as they are for me. I grew up around them, playing in forests carpeted with brown needles and pine cones instead of crumpled up leaves. In my twenties, I moved off to other places with mostly hardwoods so, to me, pine trees are youth and wide-eyed exploration. Pine trees are magic.

Beyond that, there was an odd assortment of other trees and, of course, graves. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at headstones. The names wouldn't mean much to me, and, while I wasn't in a hurry, I did eventually have someplace to be. It wasn't really the history that drew me in, anyway.

It was a little bit cloudy, and, while the cemetery itself doesn't have a thick canopy, the occasional shaded nook offered patches of luxurious twilight. The busy street was not even a quarter mile away and there were houses even closer, but somehow I felt the kind of wide-open emotional freedom I usually only feel alone, at two or three in the morning.

Am I being morbid here, going on about a cemetery? I don't think so. My mind certainly wasn't on death, or even much on dead people, beyond occasionally wondering about the story behind an interesting stone. At the back, my path turned into a small loop around a big one with several smaller stones around it. It looks like just a monument or something to identify the area but, as far as I can tell, these are actual graves.

Past that, the property ended at a metal fence and a sharp dropoff into a narrow valley. This isn't a great picture, but shooting between links in the fence didn't give me a lot of options, and I didn't like any of the shots that included the fence. I really wanted to climb over and take off into that valley. It felt like somebody glued a piece of home onto the back of this otherwise flat neighborhood. It was the exclamation point at the end of all the little things that made this enclave feel so disjointed.

Of course, for all I knew, somebody nearby owned that valley and would blow my head off with a shotgun for trespassing. Plus, I did have an errand to complete, so I went back the way I came. I half expected the gate to transport me to a foreign country, or a century in the future or something, but nope, it was the same old afternoon in the same old town.

I wonder if I should go back.

Gamed Out

I've got so many regular games going (and I'm running two of them) that it was dominating my weekends, so I'm taking a break for the rest of October. Partly this is so I can get my events for Carnage ready, but that won't take all that much time. I think the other part is that I just need to clear my head a little bit so I can write more.

My August Memories

Yeah, that looks about right.

Gen Con 2017: FIFTY!

So yeah, that whole, "not going to Gen Con anymore" thing didn't stick, and I'm glad it didn't. Nothing else is Gen Con. I had been a little anxious about the fact that they sold so many badges that they actually ran out, but the crowds didn't seem any worse than usual, so I guess they managed it well.

Worry the Bottle, Mamma; It's Grapefruit Wine
We arrived around noon on Wednesday, after stopping not far out of town to chill the night before. I love Crowne Plaza. It's full of statues and rivety construction stuff and trains. We checked in, unpacked, and headed to the bar, where I had a cocktail with whiskey and various kinds of bitters and stuff. We chatted with somebody else who was hanging out there for a while before I wandered off to buy some Gen Con swag. They had set up a tent outside and it was right across the street, sort of. I grabbed a t-shirt, a shot glass, and a bigger glass, which I think they said is meant for a particular kind of beer, but I'm going to use it for bourbon. I also picked up a shirt for Tom.

I was developing the beginnings of what I was afraid would turn into a nasty headache, so I went back to the room to take some painkillers and lie down. When Tom texted me that people were starting to arrive for our Wednesday night thing, I was relieved to find that the headache was gone.

Kick Off Your High-Heel Sneakers; It's Party Time
There was already a good crowd, including several people I knew and several people I didn't know. They had already given Caed her birthday cake. I was still a little groggy, but their energy infected me before long. Jerry showed up with the GM badges and handed those out. Several ideas were discussed for next year's events.

There was a decision to head out to another bar. I don't recall if there was a reason beyond why-not. Maybe drink specials were involved. Somehow we ended up in at least two different bars: Kilroy's and Cadillac Ranch. I was in the second one, mostly talking to Bill and Andrew. And, I don't know, there was something about generational stereotypes and smoking and Katie having to go do stuff and maybe that the bar was technically closed and they weren't supposed to have let us in in the first place.

Some Funked-Up Music
Thursday morning was bustling and chatty, and then abruptly very quiet. Once everyone else was gone, though, I left the quiet behind and dove into the crowd.

I picked up my coupon book and this year's Gen Con d6. I thought I might eventually look at the rest of the coupons to see if there was anything useful, but I never did it.

Then it was on to my D&D game, Fane of the Froghemoth. I had never gotten around to doing much preparation for any of this year's games. At the last minute, I cranked out some pre-gens, borrowed some maps of real places from the internet (I think the frog cult had actually taken over Saint Patrick's Cathedral, somehow located in the middle of a park), and flipped through the monster selection until I had a decent idea what was in there. Yeah, after the title, the stuff I did with the monsters at the last minute was all the inspiration I ever had on this.

Needless to say, I was a little nervous. On the way there, though, I heard a band playing "Yub Nub" in the hall. And sure, I resent the Ewoks as much as any other good Star Wars nerd, but I can't help but smile when I hear that song. If my cash hadn't been buried in my bag, I'd have left them a few bucks. I certainly owe them.

Anyway, the D&D game: once they got into the temple, they found that the frog priests had all been wiped out by cranium rats and a sort of mind flayer/beholder hybrid that was living in the high priest's skull like an intellect devourer, but not bothering with the cap. Below that, they found some treasure and a shaft down to a dead brain pool, where the ghost of the elder brain attacked them. After they found out what had happened and wrapped up, they decided, that, since it was just a one-shot anyway, they might as well go back and fight the froghemoth.

And they killed it. It was partly because I gave them some pretty good stuff in the treasure pile, which was only there to help them fight the ghost brain. They also did a good job setting it up and fighting it, though.

They also were really interested in the Dungeonesque books I was using to save backpack space. I would've told them Studio 2 had 'em in the exhibit hall, but I didn't know it at the time.

Blues and Elvis

I needed to head back to the room to swap out my game books, so I took another quick run through the exhibit hall on the way. I can't remember exactly what I bought when, but I think I picked up something. Doesn't matter, I guess. Then I went to meet Tom, Jordan, and Scott for dinner in High Velocity, the sports bar under the RPG rooms. Tom had waited through a couple of no-shows for his games and I guess had mostly been spending his time coordinating get-togethers like this one.

Scott jumped in on The Nightmare Tree, which made it a full table. I was even less prepared for this than the other one. I came up with the idea that the tree was a portal earlier in the week, and most of the other key concepts in High Velocity a few minutes before. We ended up with some night swamp-trekking, a random bigfoot encounter, a trailer house lost between dimensions, transcosmic spiders, psychic powers, and gadgeteering. And it actually worked.

Somebody Else's Favorite Song
Tom was off to an early morning (well, early by my convention standards) start. I think he brought me breakfast Friday. There was one day that he did. I was never up early enough to go, myself. So anyway, I stumbled into Archer: Something Something Danger Zone a little bit late.

So there's this thing I had done at Carnage that worked really well. I had appropriated some cards from an Archer board game with quotes from the show. As each player worked the quote in, I gave them a determination point and another card. Since I was switching from Icons to Vortex this time, they were story points instead, but it actually worked better here because multiple story point spending is more of a thing.

Only, somehow, I left my cards in the room, this time. I handed out the character sheets for discussion while I frantically texted and called Tom, who had just left. The payoff on that was going to take a while, so I went on and started the game.

The guy who played Archer had seen every episode and was a little drunk already. The woman who played Cheryl had never seen it before, but somehow channeled the character with disturbing accuracy. Everybody was great. In their attempt to get from New York to Geneva, they crashed two planes, repeatedly interfered with each other, and somehow eventually accomplished their mission. At some point in the middle of this, Tom did show up with the cards, and there was much rejoicing and praise of his Tomly valor. A couple of times, they had those things flying so fast that I could barely keep up.

The Girls Don't Seem to Care What's On
After that I joined Tom, Caed, and Scott downstairs at High Velocity, then went back to the room and actually fell asleep for a little while. When I came back, I found that, although the Aqua Teen Hunger Force event had sold out in seconds, none of those people were there. I waited around until fifteen after, labeled my empty envelope, and turned it in.

I really wasn't disappointed. Not even another energy drink had been able to completely wake me up this time. I might have found a spark if there had been enthusiastic people ready to play, but then again I might not have. I think I just burned myself out having so much fun in the Archer game.

So anyway, I shuffled back to the room, watched TV for a while, and went to sleep. I think I posted a picture of Arnim Zola on Facebook, too. Arnim Zola is cool.

As Long as the Mood Is Right
That was it for my scheduled events. Saturday was all about the shopping and the freedom.

So yeah, I wandered all around the exhibit hall, went back out, wandered past the line for the costume contest or parade or whatever it is, and even went outside.

I think at some point I went up to the JW to check on Tom and Jerry but they were busy or not there so I went down to High Velocity and had a couple of rum & cokes. Then I wandered around some more. Finally Tom or Jordan got ahold of me and we grabbed a bite to eat. I think.

Jordan had wine and bread and blackberries in his car, so we went to get those and then I went with him to tour the exhibit hall. I don't remember what Tom was doing while we did that. Jordan bought a card game (the same one you'll see in my second loot photo, later on). We hooked back up with Tom and decided to find a place to play the game and drink the wine. Scott was there. I can't remember if he had joined us earlier or was just showing up now.

We found a side room in Union Station and got set up. I had been planning to get together with another friend -- let's call him Brian, because that's his name -- so I let him know what we were doing and invited him.

The game was a little bit like Cards Against Humanity, but instead of just tossing out one card, the judge for the turn draws one random card, places another card either before or after it to create a sequence of events, and then chooses the best submission from the other players to conclude it. I enjoyed it enough to pick up my own copy.

Play Till Dawn

Brian went off to do his own thing and the rest of us went back to the Crowne Plaza bar. The Flying Buffalo gang was also there so we said hi. I took this picture because I thought the different layers were interesting, but now I think that might be Kenneth Hite over there on the left. Not sure.

Tom suddenly realized he didn't have his backpack anymore, so that was sort of a mini-crisis. There wasn't anything too valuable in it, but obviously it had some useful game notes and stuff. It turned out later that it had been picked up, and was being held for a Mr. Campbell, which was why they didn't tell Tom about it the first time he asked. We never found out who the enigmatic Mr. Campbell was, or what happened to his red backpack.

No Static at All

Tom had a Sunday morning game, so once again I slept late and wandered off to see what I could find. I did find some things, as loot photo number two will attest.

Then I wandered around a bit. I had been curious about the construction at the Marriott, so I went to see what was up with that. This led me to a fairly quiet nook with comfy chairs where I could read some of my new stuff for a while.

Then I thought maybe Tom was done with his game so I went over to the JW. He was not only done, but long gone. The next logical place to look for Tom would be the bar downstairs, but there was no reason to rush, so I sat in one of the chairs over there for a while too, just taking in the gamer traffic.

I did, in fact, find him down in High Velocity. He was talking to a guy he had jumped into a space marine game with. I joined them and had a bite to eat while a couple we knew from BASHCon joined us.

After another quiet time, we went over to Acapulco Joe's just because we wanted to, then came back to the room again, where Brett contacted us about meeting up in the Crowne Plaza Bar. We found him dressed as Captain America, with a couple of other Canadians, and joined them for drinks. Jerry showed up too. Turned out to be a really nice after-party. Some ridiculous bean-bag tossing sport came on ESPN and we had a great time making fun of it.

Later, Tom & I ordered room service and the next day there was an eclipse.

Tom's blog is here. Don't believe his lies.

New Goal

Complete rough draft by the end of the year. Preferably sooner. Normally I write very deliberately and don't have to do a lot of revision. I think I need to take a different approach to really get going again.

I can do this.

Thus Says the Tao

One of the challenges of adapting a role-playing game campaign to a novel is getting the characters, settings, and events as close to the original as possible without bringing in details that are meaningless, contradictory, or just plain ridiculous. A lot of this is stuff I worked out before I even started the first draft, but since I had some dead time at the day job that won’t work for art writing, I thought it would be fun to talk about the process. I’m going to start with Shao Tsang instead of the story as a whole, because there were some additional labyrinths to thread surrounding his history.

Shao Tsang was my brother’s character in the game. His original thought was to create a monk but, after some unusually good attribute rolls, he decided to go with a psionicist. Monks in Second Edition AD&D were watered-down fighter or cleric characters, while psionicists had high requirements and much more interesting abilities. 

Originally, he had telepathic powers similar to the ones we see in The Nameless Way. Not much later on, though, he wanted to switch to psychoportation and psychometabolism, which would, among other things, allow him to do more kung fu-ish stuff. This may have been driven partly by a new supplement purchase. I can’t remember. In any case, I indulged him with a quick diversion to work the change into the story and it was all settled. 

Mike would later sell a couple of stories featuring this time-manipulating martial arts version of Shao Tsang. He also wrote a longer one which I don’t think has ever been published. This set of abilities presented some problems for my Shao Tsang, though. For one thing, I was bringing in Seisha, who also has martial arts skills and psionic abilities, earlier. I’ve downplayed the psychic abilities in my version, but that makes her talents more like martial arts Shao Tsang, not less. Sure, she’s sneaky too, but the stuff she does in a fight wouldn’t be nearly as impressive if Shao Tsang did it too.

Another problem is Mogdar. As a wizard specializing in time manipulation, a lot of the stuff that would be fun to develop for Mogdar would already be in Shao Tsang’s playbook. Mogdar won’t be doing silly Hong Kong movie stunts with it, but that barely helps. We would, again, have a character learning and showing off tricks that Shao Tsang was already doing.

Finally, the whole kung fu aesthetic is boring to me, especially as an element of sword and sorcery stories. The fact that "monks" weren’t too impressive in the version of D&D we were playing didn’t bother me at all. I even scrubbed a few of the far eastern trappings from Seisha. You won’t see the word "ninja" in this book, for example. That’s a minor obstacle, though. I probably would have left it in and found ways to make it fun if not for the issues with Seisha and Mogdar.

So my Shao Tsang isn’t much of a fighter, and he doesn’t distort time. Instead of being a "monk" he’s just a monk. He’ll keep the psionic tricks, Seisha will keep the martial arts tricks (plus a few other surprises), and Mogdar will keep the temporal tricks. None of this affects their personalities, though. I kept almost all of that. 

There’s another issue connected to one of Mike’s stories and one of mine, but it’s more about a particular set of events than about the character. I’ll talk about that in another post.

Argle Bargle

Work on The Nameless Way has been sluggish lately. I'm still putting in my time every day, but I seem to spend a lot of it staring at the screen. Maybe I'm stressed about Gen Con, which promises to be a zoo this year. Maybe I'm stressed about other stuff. Maybe stress has nothing to do with it. I'll keep plugging away. I am still creeping forward, after all, and I need this book.

Qalidar Qritter Qatalog

The Qalidar Qritter Qatalog has been released. It'll be in stores in a few months, but you can get it on DriveThru and Amazon now.

Anyway, once upon a time, there was the 2013 Pre-Release Edition of Qalidar: Resistance. It was somewhat hastily assembled, but it was the complete game as it existed at the time. All the character stuff, all the rules stuff, all the setting stuff, all the monster stuff. My original intent was to build the final release of the game on the same model, and put out a "quick-start" in the meantime, possibly with a Kickstarter once the additional writing was done. Part of this final project was that major sentient "monsters" would each have a profile section with technology, organizations, the whole deal, instead of just an entry under a stat block.

Other stuff happened and I needed to put it all on hold, so I took down the "quick-start" and replaced it with the Basic book. That book is limited to fifth level, but otherwise it's a full, playable game. I figured that would do for a while.

Time passed. I had another idea. I was, by then, certain that I would never want the crowd-funding chain around my ankle. I also had another project going which was much more important, and putting together a big ole game book would be too much of a distraction. The other thing was, I thought it would be nice if the people who bought Qalidar Basic could consider it a step towards the whole game, instead of just a disposable intro pamphlet.

That brings us up to The Fire Within. I figured I could use those species profile sections I was talking about to frame individual supplements. I was also thinking of using them to zero in on pieces of the setting. Anyway, for that one I went with the Stardust. Most of the book, to be honest, is taken up by character-building stuff and expanded rules for organizations. There was a lot of that crunchy stuff that didn't make it into Basic, but needed to be published. It still gave me a concept for the title and the cover, though, and the section that really is about fire people is pretty cool.

I'm not sure I'm ever going to write those other profiles. I don't spend anywhere near as much time on game design as I used to. I still have all the original monsters, though. I put a lot into them, before their book got pushed aside, and they've just been sitting here on my hard drive since then. Some of them weren't even in the preview edition. I always felt like, without all the weird creatures, Qalidar wasn't really Qalidar.

So I crammed all the old monsters and the new monsters into one book and that's what we've got now.

Superhero RPG DNA Revisited

So, three years or so into my superhero campaign, I thought it would be fun to revisit the Superhero RPG Appendix N Blog Challenge and talk about what really typified my style. I should say our style, though, because it's not just me. Throughout the process, I've adapted to what the players were doing. Even when I wasn't asking them what sort of things they wanted to do next, I was looking at what they had enjoyed before and trying to think of things that would challenge or amuse them.

So yeah, the old list is behind that link up yonder. Here's what it looks like now:

1. Fantastic Four: No change there. I cribbed a whole story arc and a couple of shorter outlines (including the most recent one) directly from FF stories, and it'll always be my first love where super-heroes are concerned. I was tempted to put this one in a larger font size or something, just to be sure I'm being clear.
2. Uncanny X-Men: As before, mostly the period from the death of Phoenix to the resolution of the Brood storyline. The overlapping plots and character arcs bouncing around in this period feel a lot like our game to me. Also, it had space adventures and time travel and Doctor Doom and Magneto and even an issue where they went to Hell.
3. Archer: The conflicting characters thing from before still applies. Another Archer-like element was the way the game veers from standard super-hero fare to hilarious weirdness and back without warning.
4. Excalibur: This one is new to the list. Take a group of characters who all kinda got shuffled out of other titles, cram them into a quirky transdimensional lighthouse, and go nuts. The tone feels right. They bicker all the time, but still mostly like each other. The run I'm thinking of doesn't go much beyond #50. I lost interest when Alan Davis left... again.
5. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: Anybody remember this show? It was corny and weird at times, but mostly it was just unabashedly comic-booky. This is another newcomer to the list, although it might have made the other one if I'd thought of it in time.

A bunch of stuff dropped off the list just because I felt like the influence didn't materialize. I suppose it still might. I used Baron Karza and Dire Wraiths and Deathwing in the campaign, but it still never felt like a Micronauts or Rom story to me. And, I dunno, they've just never seemed to be desperate enough for it to be Farscape, despite the other stuff I said about it still being true.  

Maybe in another three years it'll all be Vertigo titles and gory anime flicks. 

Scrap On!

The writing is going well. I've got the heroes crammed into an underground labyrinth loosely based on a real cave, and further developments are revealing more about why Ezren acts the way he does and what he's up to.

The reason I'm posting this, though, is that, after a long hiatus, there's another Scrap Pile event in my schedule. It's likely to be followed by yet another hiatus, so I want to make it special. Luckily, I was already planning to present this as Giant Size Scrap Pile #3 because it would have been a sort of "welcome back" kinda thing. I've already written down a lot of what I wanted to do, so the adventure just has a few kinks to work out and a few more details to write down.

Looks like I'll also be running a game of Timewatch at some point.

Also, the Greyhawk campaign is still going strong. We're playing that next week, too.

Here's Another Damn Blog Post

Happy?

Greyhawk Again

Couple more Greyhawk sessions:

Secret Rooms

Undaunted by scary voices, they soon found a hidden trapdoor with a stairway under it. They found a barracks room with a big dining table and a pirate-looking dude whittling. Creeping up on the dude, they took him captive. They asked about Ferok and the dude said he was Dobbins, Ferok's butler. He said they preferred to keep "troublemakers" away, which was why they didn't do much to maintain the place. Looking around, they found a dead knight of Keoland covered with mold, and Sakura was attacked by giant centipedes in the kitchen upstairs (different stairway).

In a different nook, they found a bedroom/office which apparently belonged to the bossman. After looting it, they moved on to the door in the back that said, "DANGER" in big letters across the wooden slab that barred it from their side. In this room, they found a bunch of skeletons with bright green slimy stuff crawling all over their bones. Beyond this room, another secret door led them to an alchemist's laboratory. They snuck up behind him and clocked him on the head, knocking it clean off because he was actually just a skeleton (the non-reanimated kind) sitting in a chair. He had some books on alchemy, a number of goldified items on his table, and, clutched in his hand, a weird pale gold pebble, which Jinso immediately claimed.

Smugglers and Sneks

They started to explore the rest of the house, but some weird screams brought them back to the basement, where they found Dobbins edging his way off towards the other end of the big room. He said he was trying to get himself a bit of grog, but he was going the wrong way for that. A bit of searching revealed yet another secret door, this one leading into some artificially-enlarged caverns.

Out thataway, they found a bunch of nautically themed dudes moving bolts of cloth and casks of something around. They tried to be sneaky, but got caught so there was a big fight. There were also some gnolls hanging around and a guy in a hood slinging spells. Upon his death, the hooded wizard turned out to be some kind of wingless insect creature with a long mosquito-like snout.

They also found a sea cave with boat anchored in it and some more silk and brandy. They explored the rest of the house and then went back to ask their captive some more questions. Seeing that they already knew what was up, he gave up trying to hide anything and told them about their smuggling operation and the illusionist Sanbalet who made the house look haunted and how they signaled the ship.

Dobbins seemed genuinely surprised that Sanbalet was really a giant weevil, but said he had seen him talk to similar creatures on one of their stops near the mouth of the Javan River.

The Nameless Way

There's some news about changing the novel formerly known as Gorgudai to The Nameless Way over at that site.

In not-really-related news, I reduced the prices of the print versions of Stars, Specters, and Super-Powers and Losing Lanterns to $5.99. Plus, if you buy the print version from Amazon, you get the Kindle one free through their Matchbook program. The print prices might go back up later, but the Matchbook thing will definitely stay on. I don't want anyone who invests in physical copies of my books to have to pay for the digital ones, but I don't always have a choice.

I've run the Greyhawk campaign again, but I still haven't written up the last session. And we're playing again, tonight. I'm thinking I may start doubling them up so there's not such a flood of session logs here. Maybe I'll record them somewhere else. I don't especially want to set up a whole other site like I did for The Scrap Pile, though. We'll see.

New Title

I’ve decided to drop "Throne of Gorgudai" and call it The Nameless Way, a title that’s been rattling around in the back of my head for quite a while, instead. Besides being easier on the ears, it says a lot more about where the book is going.

And where is the book going? Meh, I’m still not ready to spill much more than I’ve already said about that, but the writing is clacking along at a much better pace since I started committing to a schedule, so it’ll all be out there one way or another.

Sailing to Saltmarsh

The end of the previous session saw Tuckras, Jinso, and Vyph marooned on an island with a bunch of vegepygmies. This session, we met Anton, a young human cleric of Pelor, and Sakara, an elf rogue from the Lendore Isles. They were on a ship headed to Monmurg for reasons of their own when a storm blew them off course.

The ship crashed on -- you guessed it -- the island where the other three were. After rescuing everyone who didn't drown or get eaten by the giant eel, they got to know each other a bit. Vyph noticed that a large lifeboat thingie had survived the crash in pretty good condition, but didn't say anything until they started talking about building a ship of their own to get back.

The sailors knew where Saltmarsh was, but advised them to head for Monmurg first because it was much closer and they would already be rowing for a week in the crowded boat. Luckily, Anton and Sakara had managed to hang on to their provisions and were willing to share. And Vyph spent a lot of the time swimming on his own. They all made it back to Monmurg, where the sailors went their own way and the others headed for a nearby inn.

Everyone decided to stick together and buy passage to Saltmarsh, a smallish town on the edge of Keoland's border, between Dreadwood and the Hool Marshes. At Nick's Tavern, Tuckras spoke with a half-elf adventurer named Koral while Vyph terrorized Yuri the trapper for sporting a lizard skin (lizardfolk skin?) jacket and boots.

After steering the naive young Anton into a dockside brothel for giggles, they visited an apothecary and an abandoned shop on Crest Street where someone who might have been Ferok (the alchemist they were looking for) probably worked. They found a really moldy book and a note that led them to believe Ferok had relocated to the creepy old mansion five hours down the road to the east.

They picked up Anton and headed off to the seaside mansion, finding it overgrown and dilapidated. Inside, Sakara picked up some footprints, which they followed down the hall, investigating side rooms along the way. While poking around the living room, they were confronted by a ghostly voice which proclaimed their doom and laughed maniacally.

We stopped there for the night.

A Lizard Walks Into a Bar

(Two of our gang had to cancel at the last minute, so this was a quickie intro adventure. The character backgrounds for this session and some recent events are at the bottom.) After an awkward meeting in Monmurg involving Tuckras's spirit guides, Jinso had a few drinks and expressed his interest in finding more of his kind. Vyph, fascinated by the prospect of more "tiny meats," was willing to help, and Tuckras, after a brief argument with no one, also agreed.

Asking around, they discovered that a colony of halflings with "a bit of the same look about 'em" had been established on an island out past Fairwind back before the wars. They poked around a bit more, then hired some sailors to drop them off there. They found an overgrown jungle island where, after a bit of exploring, they noticed that small creatures were stalking them in the canopy.

This led to a fight with a bunch of fungus midgets, which they eventually won. Later they found a compound with several sheds and an abandoned laboratory. In the notes, the author wrote about having run out of subjects to "convert" so further research would have to be conducted elsewhere. The prospect of contacting the alchemist, Ferok, in Saltmarsh was mentioned.

They decided to go to Saltmarsh... once they figured out how to get off the island.

Recent Events

In CY 579, the devil-worshipping Overking of Aerdy declared war on several of his kingdom's former vassal states in an attempt to reunify this Empire. This, combined with Rary's betrayal of the Circle of Eight, marked the beginning of the Darkfang Wars, a period which saw the destruction of Geoff by invading giants, the invasion of the Sea Princes, Idee, Onwal, and other territories by the Scarlet Brotherhood, and uprisings from the Pomarj, The Horned Society, and Iuz. The name of the war comes from the curved, obsidian-like knives that proliferated during the period, but utterly vanished afterwards.

The Great Kingdom is gone, its former capitol a fiend-haunted wasteland, but its successors are relatively stable. The Horned Society is no longer a nation, although the order remains a widespread cult. The Scarlet Brotherhood has not been heard from in years. Their former vassals are reforming, with the exception of the Sea Princes, which remains only a tenuous alliance of city-states. Geoff is still mostly wild land, even though the organized invasion of giants was driven off. It's CY 591 now,

Players So Far

Jinso Kuna - Halfling Monk
Jinsokuna Ashi Gosutodoragon was raised at a remote overseas monastery.  According to his masters, he was stranded at the monastery as an infant when he was the sole survivor of a shipwreck.  He was raised and trained -but not respected- by his masters because of his diminutive size.  Hence, his extreme dislike of being called small or tiny.  He left the monastery answering the call of wanderlust and in search of his own people to learn more about himself.  He struggles between his inherited chaotic Kender nature and the structured training of his masters.  He will often speak of the teachings of Master Furui.

Tuckras Grigorrin - Human Cleric/Warlock
An orphan in Ket, Tuckras was raised by priests of Istus, wandered for a while, then settled in the Bramblewood Forest to hang out with the spirit voices that constantly plague him. Then he wandered off again. He is very tall and lanky with fair, almost pale skin. His long, black hair is disheveled as is his long beard. His eyes are a piercing blue. The overall effect is one of wisdom beyond his years, but with, perhaps, a touch of madness. His presence, though, is compelling. He carries a staff that looks suspiciously like a tall bedpost. The globe at the top of the bedpost staff is intricately carved to represent Oerth, and it appears to have some bird's foot and tail feather tied to it.

Vyph - Lizardfolk Druid
Yep, he's a big ole lizard.

Greyhawk!

Even though I never had many people at my local Keep on the Borderlands sessions, I was really getting into the module and the World of Greyhawk development I was doing around it. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for geeky things to put on the wall of my new study, and I came across this old map. It's far too fragile to fold and unfold on a regular basis, but it's a great poster. 

Once it was up, I just sat there and stared at it for, like, two hours. Possibly the absinthe had something to do with that. Anyway, I kept revisiting all the places we'd been on that map, and I finally decided that, with the in-store game getting less appealing and my Icons campaign on hiatus, I might as well go for it.

I went with Hangouts because there were people I was hoping to play with who live a long ways away, and ended up with a significant portion of my old D&D group from way back. Started them out on the coast in Sea Princes territory for a quickie intro adventure. Next time we start Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.

Events Submitted for Gen Con

Title: Fane of the Froghemoth
Short Description: To raid the lost temple in the swamp and steal the riches of the faceless priests, you have to sneak past their god, a gigantic, tentacled frog creature. Then your troubles really begin.
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Dungeons & Dragons
Rules Edition: 5th (Basic)
Minimum Players: 3
Maximum Players: 6
Age Requirement: Teen
Experience Required: Some
Material Provided: Yes
Preferred date/time: Thursday 1pm
Event Duration: 4 hours

Title: The Nightmare Tree
Short Description: Nobody stays long on the Stillman property outside El Dorado, Arkansas. Some disappear. Others are tormented by ghosts, aliens, or the image of a sinister tree that haunts their dreams.
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Vortex System
Rules Edition: 1st
Minimum Players: 3
Maximum Players: 6
Age Requirement: Teen
Experience Required: None
Material Provided: Yes
Preferred date/time: Thursday 7pm
Event Duration: 4 hours

Title: Archer: Something Something Danger Zone
Short Description: Nobody’s sure what year it is, but the Cold War is still a thing, Ray is a cyborg, and Mallory Archer is in charge of a spy agency called… Well, they’re still working on that.
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Vortex System
Rules Edition: 1st
Minimum Players: 4
Maximum Players: 8
Age Requirement: Mature
Experience Required: None
Material Provided: Yes
Preferred date/time: Friday 1pm
Event Duration: 4 hours

Title: Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Roleplaying Game for Tables
Short Description: Take the roles of animated fast food products or one of their neighbors in this off-the-rails RPG based on the late night cartoon.
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Bean RPG
Rules Edition: Modified 2nd
Minimum Players: 4
Maximum Players: 8
Age Requirement: Mature
Experience Required: None
Material Provided: Yes
Preferred date/time: Friday 8pm
Event Duration: 2 hours

Demogorgon Girl

Apart from a few comments about how it's important to me, I don't really talk much about writing. Gaming and traveling always seem like much more interesting things to blog about. On top of that, I don't really like to talk about writing. The really interesting stuff is all in the inner workings of whatever I'm writing. It's stuff I don't feel comfortable putting out there. I'm probably too tight with that stuff, but I can't help it. And the superficial stuff is boring and pretentious. But this time, before I go on with the gaming talk, I've got some writing stuff to talk about. If it's still boring and pretentious, oh well; I tried.

This year, I decided that progress on the novel, while steady, was much slower than it should be. To accelerate, I committed to working at least an hour on Throne of Gorgudai every day (with exceptions for some weekends and stuff like conventions). At least five days a week, in any case. I'm only two weeks in, but I'm happy to say that it's working so far. I even kept up while I was smashed flat by the flu last week. The great thing is, if I worked on it even a little bit the day before, I'm already tuned in when I start working on it again. I don't have to take a lot of "where was I?" time to get started.

And where am I? The main characters, mostly allies of convenience so far, have started to come together more in this chapter. With sections from Seisha's perspective and the current one from Shao Tsang's, I've finally given everybody at least one chance to "talk." They've explored a new town, developed some new tricks, and detected an impostor. They even got to fight a giant shapeshifting eel. And, if you're paying attention, you might find out who killed Kasmordo. Of course, you're not paying attention because you can't, since I haven't let you read it, but anyway.

Elvismas 2017 was one of those not-writing weekends. Even though it was in Cleveland and we did all the gaming at Weird Realms, we still got rooms in a hotel alongside the out-of-towners for after-game hangouts.

Beckett ran the first event, Blaspheming Trials of the Goetic Dawn. We played novice magicians applying to become the next apprentice of a wizard. Beckett used his own rules and had lots of neat tricks with language cues and picture cards to let us experiment with spells. We caused all kinds of mayhem and destruction, and even ended up summoning an Old One at one point. Maybe two. I think it actually was two. And that went about as well as you'd expect. I think everybody survived, though. Sort of. Not many of us got out without being turned into demon goats or talking axes or something.

Saturday afternoon (and evening), I ran Demogorgon Girl. Tom had dubbed this "Satanic Saturday" and originally asked me to run something with Orcus. Because I answered, "I've always been more of a Demorgorgon girl," I was given that title to work with. It was his birthday, so I did my best to go along.

The game started abruptly in the middle of a fight with some perytons on the slopes of Mount Ngranek. The heroes only slowly discovered that they were in the Dreamlands and that they were really modern psychics trying to resolve a difficult possession by leading the demon into this sub-reality where it would only be one mad god among many. They were pursued by Demogorgonish monsters (and, at one point, the demon itself) to the Enchanted Wood, where they hoped to take the steps back to reality. They also got to negotiate with cats and zoogs and stuff. The forest had been webbed over by baby-headed giant spiders but they fought (and crept) their way through.

The steps didn't return them to the reality they expected, but they did find themselves back in their real world roles, without special powers and with only a few hit points. They did, however, have moon rubies, little tokens I had been giving out as rewards for good play during the rest of the adventure. Each ruby allowed them to use one special ability from their fantasy selves for one round. They needed these because the girl's sleeping spirit was guarded by her corrupted alter ego. The actual demon had been trapped in the Dreamlands, but they still had to free her from the part of herself that had been tempted. This being D&D, they did that by fighting it.

One of the characters was killed in the fight. Another, particularly enamored of her druidic powers, refused to finish climbing the steps and returned to live in the fantasy world. The rest woke up. Tom was going to GM a game too, but mine had run a little long and he was ready for the after-party, so that was...

Where Is It?

This year, I decided that progress on the novel, while steady, was much slower than it should be. If I had been hired to write this book by someone else, she probably would have fired me by now. To accelerate, I committed to writing for at least an hour every day (with exceptions for some weekends and stuff like conventions). At least five days a week, in any case. I’m only two weeks in, but I’m happy to say that it’s working so far. I even kept up while I was smashed flat by the flu last week. The great thing is, if I worked on it even a little bit the day before, I’m already tuned in when I start working on it again. I don’t have to take a lot of "where was I?" time to get started.

And where am I? The main characters, mostly allies of convenience so far, have started to come together more in this chapter. With sections from Seisha’s perspective and the current one from Shao Tsang’s, I’ve finally given everybody at least one chance to "talk." They’ve explored a new town, developed some new tricks, and detected an impostor. They even got to fight a giant shapeshifting eel. And, if you’re paying attention, you might find out who killed Kasmordo. Of course, you’re not paying attention because you can’t, since I haven’t let you read it, but anyway.

Now I just have to stick with it.