Of Steves and Reeves
October is almost over. I'm about to exhale a sigh of relief that I have been holding in for something like eight years. And then the circus mustic starts again.
Flapjack ran away. My grandma died. The basement sucks... but at least there's free laundry.
I hate to advertise on this venue, but I'm leaving Avendale Staff after the November 3rd through 5th event. I'd really like all of you to come, even if you haven't been to NERO before. It's my last (and perhaps best?) event, after seven years of doing this thing, so you'll get a chance to see me go out on a high note. As a teaser, The Avendale Monster Shop has a monster costume that's well over ten feet tall. I don't want to give away what it is, but I'm rather pleased with it. And you should be too. I'll miss Avendale.. but it's time to move on and direct new things. I grew up in Avendale, I really did. I wish I could make everyone see that imaginary kingdom through my eyes.
On another note, I'm going to give another crack at National Novel Writing Month. I think I'll probably write a story about my D&D campaign, just 'cause its something I could probably digress about and describe endlessly. The point isn't to write something of high quality, just to produce 50,000 words. It's like 1,600 words a day, which is Easy. The tough part is doing it Every Day.
Meanwhile, the first draft of the Guide to Tyrra is approaching completion. It's been nice to get participation from various chapters, though at the same time it boggles my mind how /little/ information and story is actually out there. But there's some good stuff... It's just that most if it will be missed or ignored, the rest will be poorly received. It's just the state of the nation. And will I actually get paid for this? Well if not, I'm not going to publish it. But if I don't publish it, then the nearly constant work I've done on this beast since August is totally wasted. Being a writer is stupid!
There is a disproprotionate ratio of teaspoons to tablespoons in this house.
I've been reading these Norse LARP journals. They study LARP academically over there (Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc), and have developed quite a science about it. It's totally different from how we do things, and though I don't think they've mastered the format any more than we have, they've thought about it with a lot more depth and formality than many American view points. Over here we tend to focus on producing rulebooks with cool character options and elegant power curves, but spend little time thinking about What Actually Makes A Game Fun. Eh, the jury's out.
At the CAMPING PARTY I ran the playtest of my Super Villain Dinner Party game, which in its ultimate form will be a dinner / costume party / trading card game. It's something I've been working on for a while now, so I was excited to get a solid "playtest" run. It ran very well, but some people quit early. Because it's a trading card game, and you only win when you get all the cards you need, quitting caused several /other/ people to lose. I can't help but feel that they quit because one non-player was just sitting by the sidelines expounding on how uncool he thought the whole shtick was. It really wrecked the vibe for a lot of people who otherwise would have had fun. *helpless shrug* Silly old bear.
A lot of my doubt is finally giving way to some silver lining. It's almost time to get out of this place.
Desperately scrawled on a crumpled piece of paper:
Ignite yourself! While there's still time!
Flapjack ran away. My grandma died. The basement sucks... but at least there's free laundry.
I hate to advertise on this venue, but I'm leaving Avendale Staff after the November 3rd through 5th event. I'd really like all of you to come, even if you haven't been to NERO before. It's my last (and perhaps best?) event, after seven years of doing this thing, so you'll get a chance to see me go out on a high note. As a teaser, The Avendale Monster Shop has a monster costume that's well over ten feet tall. I don't want to give away what it is, but I'm rather pleased with it. And you should be too. I'll miss Avendale.. but it's time to move on and direct new things. I grew up in Avendale, I really did. I wish I could make everyone see that imaginary kingdom through my eyes.
On another note, I'm going to give another crack at National Novel Writing Month. I think I'll probably write a story about my D&D campaign, just 'cause its something I could probably digress about and describe endlessly. The point isn't to write something of high quality, just to produce 50,000 words. It's like 1,600 words a day, which is Easy. The tough part is doing it Every Day.
Meanwhile, the first draft of the Guide to Tyrra is approaching completion. It's been nice to get participation from various chapters, though at the same time it boggles my mind how /little/ information and story is actually out there. But there's some good stuff... It's just that most if it will be missed or ignored, the rest will be poorly received. It's just the state of the nation. And will I actually get paid for this? Well if not, I'm not going to publish it. But if I don't publish it, then the nearly constant work I've done on this beast since August is totally wasted. Being a writer is stupid!
There is a disproprotionate ratio of teaspoons to tablespoons in this house.
I've been reading these Norse LARP journals. They study LARP academically over there (Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc), and have developed quite a science about it. It's totally different from how we do things, and though I don't think they've mastered the format any more than we have, they've thought about it with a lot more depth and formality than many American view points. Over here we tend to focus on producing rulebooks with cool character options and elegant power curves, but spend little time thinking about What Actually Makes A Game Fun. Eh, the jury's out.
At the CAMPING PARTY I ran the playtest of my Super Villain Dinner Party game, which in its ultimate form will be a dinner / costume party / trading card game. It's something I've been working on for a while now, so I was excited to get a solid "playtest" run. It ran very well, but some people quit early. Because it's a trading card game, and you only win when you get all the cards you need, quitting caused several /other/ people to lose. I can't help but feel that they quit because one non-player was just sitting by the sidelines expounding on how uncool he thought the whole shtick was. It really wrecked the vibe for a lot of people who otherwise would have had fun. *helpless shrug* Silly old bear.
A lot of my doubt is finally giving way to some silver lining. It's almost time to get out of this place.
Desperately scrawled on a crumpled piece of paper:
Ignite yourself! While there's still time!