Monthly Archives: September 2015
Playing Catch-Up
I’ve been playing catch-up the past couple of weekends. Last week, I took a trip out of town last Saturday (the 19th) for my birthday. This weekend, I spent my time trying to redownload a D&D podcast I listen to because my iTunes corrupted them the first time.
My birthday weekend included a trip to the Winchester Mystery House, a landmark on the National Registry. For those who might not know, the heir to the Winchester firearm fortune was told in the late 1800s that she was haunted, and the only way to keep the spirits of those killed by the Winchester firearms was to build a home and never finish it. As a sufferer of Rheumatoid Arthritis (treated with opiate painkillers), Mrs. Winchester developed some strange ideas, so the house takes some weird turns. Some of the rooms are quite beautiful, even after 100 years, and so are just downright strange.
Surrounding that, Dad, the Kids and I went to a variety of gaming stores. We all picked up odds and ends of goodies as we did. Each shop was within about three miles of the others, and each had a different focus or specialty. It was pretty wild to see, as we don’t have enough gamers here in Fresno to support so many stores that they can focus so much (although we do have a number of MTG stores).
We all had a good time, doing a little exploring and having an adventure. Now, what do we do next year?
This weekend, as I said, I’ve been fighting a podcast. Once I got my iPad, I started listening to my backlog of podcasts. So far, all have been fine. But one, The Tome Show, a D&D podcast, was fine until just after GenCon 2012. After that, the downloads I have are corrupted.
This was likely caused by the crappy Internet connection we’ve had around here combined with a bit of weirdness from iTunes. Basically, the podcast episodes I captured often restart some number of minutes in, then end abruptly. It seems like iTunes didn’t verify its downloads beyond confirming that the length of the file was correct.
As Apple only hosts the most recent 100 episodes, and the Tome Show posted about that many episodes in the first eight months of the year, I had to go back to the Show‘s website and download individual episodes. I did that wrong, so I had to repeat my actions with corrections, verify which episodes I had and which I needed, etc., etc. Wasn’t technology supposed to make our lives easier?
Something I’d forgotten to mention in the last posting was having bought a couple of novels at the Book Nook recently.
I picked up The Crystal Shard, R. A. Salvatore’s novel that is the first appearance of his best known character, Drizzt Do-Urden, the dark elf ranger. I’ve listened to interviews with the author, and I’ve heard differing reviews of his work, and I decided I wanted to read some of his work first hand.
I’ve also picked up City of Towers: The Dreaming Dark, Book 1 by Keith Baker. The book is set in Eberron, a D&D world that I also count an inspiration for the StarSea, as there is a certain admixture of technology and magic I really like. I wanted Baker’s work as the creator of the setting to get his vision of the world.
I’ve set the Moorcock Mars books aside for now. I couldn’t get into them again as they seem so juvenile. Kane is an ubermensch of a character, and upon arriving on Mars, he immediately meets a beautiful woman, every bit his equal, and immediately develops feelings for her. This is a common trope for the fiction Moorcock’s imitating, but I’m painfully aware of the trope’s presence and it’s pulling me out of the reading. So, I’ve set those books aside for the moment.
I’ve really been interested in reading fiction right now. I’m slogging through the Cypher System core rulebook, as the typical dry rulebook reading. However, I’m seeing ways to do what I want for character creation for the StarSea, so I’m continuing reading when I can. But the fiction is calling my name…
Anyway, outside of getting some more of the typing done, I really don’t have anything more to report on the StarSea. I’ve been working a lot the last few weeks, which is good because I have a couple of pretty major bills (or at least they are vis-a-vis my wages) that come due in the next couple of weeks. I’ve had some random thoughts about various facets of the StarSea, but they’re just mental tinkering. Nothing is really solid or sticking in my mind.
So, that said, I need to call it a night. I need to be up in the morning to take my car to get it a smog check.
Later.
Another week, another blog post
(I wonder how many times I’ve used that title…)
Again, not much to report, which means I’ll be writing more than I think. It always seem to work out like that.
I watched the Habitica videos, but I still haven’t pulled the trigger on using it. I like the way it works, but I’d like to have more folks in my party that I actually know rather than the random people you meet on the Internet. Sorry, random folks who follow my blog.
I’ve taken to retyping my old notepads on Friday nights at my friends’ place, after their kids go to bed while we watch whatever’s on the tube (usually Bill Maher and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). Seems to work pretty well for me, as I can jump back and forth from the two activities pretty well. I was thinking I might do some retyping tonight, but as you might expect, I got distracted.
I’ve had a bit of a backache the past couple of weeks. A rib is not aligned correctly. I’ve had this problem before, so I know the feeling. I took some Tylenol PM last night in the hopes that I could relax my body enough to shift the rib back into place. I slept for 12 hours, with a couple of awakenings to go to the bathroom. It’s 10PM, and I feel like I’m ready for bed again. Blech. The Tylenol really wipes me out; I seem very susceptible to it. I remember the first times I took it at work. That was an accident, and not good. Once I figured it out, I never took it at work again, and it part of the reason I only take it when I’m not working.
So, on that note, I think I’ll make that all I write tonight. I just don’t have the focus to put more into this blog tonight. So…
Later.
Back so soon?
Yeah, I’m posting again, even though I’ve had little time for anything.
I haven’t had much time to do any research about how Habitica works, but I’m going to watch their tutorial videos tonight before bed, after I finish this post. I need to pitch this to my friends again to see if I can get them on board with trying this. The Habitica site does mention this game being used at schools, so maybe that will help get the kids interested.
Outside of that, I got a couple of world building ideas the other night. One was for how the different orders increase their numbers. This came out of a discussion on how the SCA “knights” go through their knighting process, as well as the items that designate them knights (spurs, belt and chain/necklace). I think the process described was very European, but I think it’s a workable place to start.
The other idea was how the engines of StarSea ships function. My older ideas were for a rudder-like set of “exhaust ports”/thrusters, like this ship had:
(not that you can see them in this image, but this is the best I could find. And both characters get more realistic clothes in later issues.)
but this just wasn’t working for me. This image is how I was viewing travel through the StarSea:
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The mistiness around the boat in particular, but also the rocks in the background, are what I like in the image.
One idea I used in my 4e game for a ship that plowed through the Astral Sea (4e’s version of the Astral Plane, depicted above), had a sort of propeller, and I’d seen this image from Monte Cook Games’ new Numenera Kickstarter for an outer space book:
so repeating this sort of propulsion system wasn’t appealing to me, no matter how cool it might look. But I’ve also had the idea of a warp bubble kicking around in my head, with the Star Trek idea that warp drives need to be paired to create a bubble around the ship. These ideas mixed in my head, as I was envisioning a StarSea ship sailing along, creating a bow wave, and I thought, “Why not have the engine set around the hull, creating the misty, wavy look?” I need to sit and do some sketches of how the internals of the ship would be laid out, but I think I have an idea I like and that is different than others I’ve seen.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for this week. Considering it’s only been a couple of days, I think this is more than enough.
Later.
Will I ever get back to a regular schedule?
I swore to myself that I’d get this post done today, and by The Powers That Be, I will get something up. Every other time I’ve sat down with the laptop, I’ve gotten drowsy and crashed out within a few minutes. Hopefully, that won’t happen in the middle of the day, but I have been out doing yard work, and I’m kinda tired. But I’ll have something posted before I leave for my Thursday Night Game! I so swear!
While listening to my podcasts a few days back, I learned of Habitica, an online motivation RPG. The idea is to game-ify your life, earning in game rewards for accomplishing goals and changing bad habits. I think I need something like this. I’ve mentioned it to the Family, as I’d like to have others join me. I need something to help me focus on getting things done, and other things I’ve tried haven’t worked. The discussion in the podcast gave me the impression that this app is fun, rather than the tedium of the to-do apps I’ve tried. Hopefully, that will keep me focused.
A couple of weeks ago, out in social networking land (Google+, I think) someone posted up a link to a discussion on a gaming forum about using RADAR images of storms as templates for gaming maps. I took the idea and found some hurricane images that would work for a galaxy. Some of them even would provide me with political divisions.
On the other hand, I’ve wanted to have an ancient feel to maps and symbols. This is the interplanetary map that Monte Cook Games is doing for the new expansions for Numenera they’ve kickstarting right now:
I’ve thought about something like this as well. I just have no ideas for such a map. I’ve thought about using the Tree of Life, but I think the Tree of Life is a little limited, and doesn’t suggest politics or other geographical divisions. So, it’s still percolating through my mind what I’ll be doing for this map. And this mapping technique will also work for the worlds on the StarSea themselves.
I’ve recently be trying to rereading Michael Moorcock’s Mars/Michael Kane books. I’m not especially interested in rereading the Elric series (especially as it’s been expanded on since I read them so long ago), but I wanted to reread the Michael Kane series. I’m finding them nowhere near as good as I did so many years ago. I forgot how far they drift from the Burroughs John Carter books, while being obviously derived from them. Burroughs’ Mars is a desert world, in keeping with what we’ve observed of it from Earth. Moorcock’s Mars is in the distant past, one of the martians commenting that the Third World is only inhabited by giant reptiles. That’s fine (there’s supposed to be some time difference between Earth and Barsoom, too). However, Moorcock’s Mars is verdant and green… and blue and purple and so on. He quickly descends into his usually fantasy tropes, but I’m just not feeling it for these stories. It doesn’t jibe, for whatever reasons. I’ve been more entertained by the new fluff for the new version of the Warhammer Fantasy world(s). I’m finding that much more entertaining.
Last weekend, I borrowed a different keyboard for use with my iPad (which I really shouldn’t have done, as that unpaired it from the tablet it was supposed to be paired to, which had been a fight. I was bad, and I apologized). In doing so, I used it to start retyping notebooks again. It was good to make some progress on that front, as I want to get that completed and start using those books as a basis for the bible I’m creating for the StarSea. Another item to be added into the goals for Habitica.
So, I need to get some food in my belly before I head out for D&D tonight. I have successfully posted! Ha!
Later.
Doc Ryder's Wyrd Science 