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Sep. 17th, 2019 03:45 pmA lot's happened.
Between overwork, dieting, meltdowns over unfortunate media, further overwork, declining profits, illness, benefit stoppages and unemployment I've not had much energy to keep an online journal. I prefer to do my shrieking into the void on Twitter, where it disappears after a few weeks. The last few weeks have been especially hard as I've had next to no income and next to no work and have spent whole days playing Classic World of Warcraft. WoW and I have this Thing going on whereby playing WoW is a good sign that my life has gone to shit and I need something to occupy between eight and twelve hours of my day so that I don't break up too much from inactivity and social isolation. Also, my wrists are medically fucked, so if I spend too much time typing or gaming I Regret it hard and the next day is enforced inactivity which doesn't do my brain any favours - it's a vicious circle. And there's the underlying depression that comes with shutting down a business you've kept Just About Going for years (January 2011 to August 2019, RIP).
But I didn't log back into Dreamwidth just to complain. I logged back into Dreamwidth because I've done some things I'm proud of, while I've been away.
I've worked on three actual RPG books - all creator owned and profit shared, no already-minted IP holders or revoltingly abusive company directors make a dollar while the people who actually write the damn things make a dime. I edited two games for the first Short Games Digest by the San Jenaro Co-Op, of whomst more later, and wrote a short set of story hooks about the Russian Revolution for Halfling Caravan Games' Weird Tales of Europe zine. Both of these are going concerns in the medium term, on to their second volume by now, although I didn't write anything for those because I've been sick as a dog for weeks. I also wrote a chapter of The Roleplayer's Guide To Heists, again by the San Jenaro Co-Op. I'm so hype about this: it's the kind of RPG book I've always wanted to exist, a collection of forty-odd setting-neutral, system-neutral scenarios, of a kind that I really struggle to devise by myself. (My chapter isn't a heist: it's a story guide to weaving three heists together into a Guy Ritchie inspired mini-campaign.)
While all this has been going on I've also been plugging away on a whole, entire game. Its working title was After Dark, and it was originally a VtM/VtR heartbreaker designed to wean Poor Innocent Fans away from The Nasty IP Holding Companies. A spiteful piece of work which came from a bad place; wearing its baggage on its sleeve to an unacceptable extent. It nearly lost me some friends, and it's forever changed some friendships in a way I'm not happy about, but have to live with - I'm the one who was a self-righteous ass for weeks on end and that's just something that's happened, end of.
Its new title is Bloodspell, and it's a much more positive experience. It's designed for play by post games, on Tumblr or Dreamwidth or Discord, and for people who have OCs they don't know what to do with and struggle to plot interactions for. It's about vampires finding something that's worth living forever for. Heartwarming, fairly mourncore, funny if you want it to be: not gothic but goth. It's in the playtesting stages right now, and I want to put it out on itch.io by the end of the year. I'd like a Halloween release, but realistically that's not going to happen, especially since I'd quite like to write a novella alongside it (showing-not-telling how the game's world and stories should work) and that's going to be a NaNoWriMo job.
I'm also signed up to do a shorter game for the next issue of (all together now) the San Jenaro Co-Op's Short Games Digest (volume 3, if you're not keeping up). This one's called All Your Houses. It's a noble house story game based on poker and the funny bit at the start of Romeo and Juliet. I wrote the system in one sleepless night and so far it seems to have gone down well.
And last but not least, I'm paying attention to my PhD again. Slept on it through the summer, because summer was horrible in so many ways, but now that I'm officially a part time student and otherwise economically inactive (a polite way of saying "unemployed and broke") I have nothing else to do with my energy but study. So today I put together 2,700 words of methodology on media archaeology and lobbed them supervisorwards. I hope they're not rubbish. I need all the breaks I can get right now.
I'm going to talk about all these projects on here, in between times, because the urge to blog isn't quite out of my system even though I don't do it for a living any more. I'm gonna need a bunch of new icons for this.
But right now, I have a migraine coming on, and a meeting about a pantomime tonight.
Between overwork, dieting, meltdowns over unfortunate media, further overwork, declining profits, illness, benefit stoppages and unemployment I've not had much energy to keep an online journal. I prefer to do my shrieking into the void on Twitter, where it disappears after a few weeks. The last few weeks have been especially hard as I've had next to no income and next to no work and have spent whole days playing Classic World of Warcraft. WoW and I have this Thing going on whereby playing WoW is a good sign that my life has gone to shit and I need something to occupy between eight and twelve hours of my day so that I don't break up too much from inactivity and social isolation. Also, my wrists are medically fucked, so if I spend too much time typing or gaming I Regret it hard and the next day is enforced inactivity which doesn't do my brain any favours - it's a vicious circle. And there's the underlying depression that comes with shutting down a business you've kept Just About Going for years (January 2011 to August 2019, RIP).
But I didn't log back into Dreamwidth just to complain. I logged back into Dreamwidth because I've done some things I'm proud of, while I've been away.
I've worked on three actual RPG books - all creator owned and profit shared, no already-minted IP holders or revoltingly abusive company directors make a dollar while the people who actually write the damn things make a dime. I edited two games for the first Short Games Digest by the San Jenaro Co-Op, of whomst more later, and wrote a short set of story hooks about the Russian Revolution for Halfling Caravan Games' Weird Tales of Europe zine. Both of these are going concerns in the medium term, on to their second volume by now, although I didn't write anything for those because I've been sick as a dog for weeks. I also wrote a chapter of The Roleplayer's Guide To Heists, again by the San Jenaro Co-Op. I'm so hype about this: it's the kind of RPG book I've always wanted to exist, a collection of forty-odd setting-neutral, system-neutral scenarios, of a kind that I really struggle to devise by myself. (My chapter isn't a heist: it's a story guide to weaving three heists together into a Guy Ritchie inspired mini-campaign.)
While all this has been going on I've also been plugging away on a whole, entire game. Its working title was After Dark, and it was originally a VtM/VtR heartbreaker designed to wean Poor Innocent Fans away from The Nasty IP Holding Companies. A spiteful piece of work which came from a bad place; wearing its baggage on its sleeve to an unacceptable extent. It nearly lost me some friends, and it's forever changed some friendships in a way I'm not happy about, but have to live with - I'm the one who was a self-righteous ass for weeks on end and that's just something that's happened, end of.
Its new title is Bloodspell, and it's a much more positive experience. It's designed for play by post games, on Tumblr or Dreamwidth or Discord, and for people who have OCs they don't know what to do with and struggle to plot interactions for. It's about vampires finding something that's worth living forever for. Heartwarming, fairly mourncore, funny if you want it to be: not gothic but goth. It's in the playtesting stages right now, and I want to put it out on itch.io by the end of the year. I'd like a Halloween release, but realistically that's not going to happen, especially since I'd quite like to write a novella alongside it (showing-not-telling how the game's world and stories should work) and that's going to be a NaNoWriMo job.
I'm also signed up to do a shorter game for the next issue of (all together now) the San Jenaro Co-Op's Short Games Digest (volume 3, if you're not keeping up). This one's called All Your Houses. It's a noble house story game based on poker and the funny bit at the start of Romeo and Juliet. I wrote the system in one sleepless night and so far it seems to have gone down well.
And last but not least, I'm paying attention to my PhD again. Slept on it through the summer, because summer was horrible in so many ways, but now that I'm officially a part time student and otherwise economically inactive (a polite way of saying "unemployed and broke") I have nothing else to do with my energy but study. So today I put together 2,700 words of methodology on media archaeology and lobbed them supervisorwards. I hope they're not rubbish. I need all the breaks I can get right now.
I'm going to talk about all these projects on here, in between times, because the urge to blog isn't quite out of my system even though I don't do it for a living any more. I'm gonna need a bunch of new icons for this.
But right now, I have a migraine coming on, and a meeting about a pantomime tonight.
