State of the Patrick

[patrickjw]

In no particular order (other than rolling of my brain):

My car is (mostly) fixed.  My parents and in-laws came through and helped us tremendously.  I was able to get the car running again (A/C, brakes, and a few other minor things), inspected (which took a new tire and a replaced turn signal bulb) , and had the tags renewed.  Plus: new plates with the new 7 digit plates.  My wife got hers at the same time, so our plate numbers are now one digit away from each other.  Getting my car fixed has done immense work at removing the stress of being "trapped" at the house my wife was feeling.  Seems to have peeled a big layer of depression off her.

I attended a local board gaming convention (Lone Star VI) here in town over the New Year's weekend.  My thoughts on the games I played can be found here.  Oddly, it has been my most popular posting on what is essentially a RPG blog.  Go figure.

I am involved in the following campaigns:

• Southern Reaches - as DM: a sandbox-style game using the Pathfinder RPG rules.  Plays every week on Friday with whoever shows up to play.  Has a fairly stable group of players.
• Naze Valley Rangers - as DM: a more traditional plot-driven campaign using the Pathfinder RPG rules.  Plays once a month on the fourth Saturday (with some variation due to player availability).  Regular group of players with almost complete overlap with the Southern Reaches game.
• Traveller Hero - as a DM: This is a campaign that I am just starting to put together as an experiment.  I want to try a West Marches-style game in a science fiction setting.  I think it will work and this is my attempt to verify that.  We'll be using the Traveller rules adapted to the Hero System rules (assuming I can find the ultra-rare Traveller Hero rule books that went out of print two years ago).  This campaign will run Fridays, temporarily replacing the Southern Reaches campaign while I update and reset that campaign (some time June-ish).
• Dyson's Delve - as a player: a location-based game based on the dungeon of the same name (found here) using the Pathfinder RPG rules.  Most of the group is new to table-top RPGs as of this campaign and there is a 50-50 split, male-female.  There is one player who overlaps with my other two Pathfinder games.
• Rise of Aester LARP - as a player: just starting out, this is a steampunk LARP using the Rise of Aester LARP rules.  This is an invitation only game with folks I LARPed with back in the day.  The goal of "invite only" is to avoid trolls and griefers, which are abundant in public access LARPs.  We are still making characters and I'm not certain we have achieved critical mass for players yet, but we'll see.

I'm also doing some writing, in addition to running two campaigns.  I'm doing some collaborative work with an online friend in Florida, but most of that is in development right now.  I'll post more when it gets closer to play test/production, whichever seems more reasonable at the time.  I also have a goal to finish my Over the Edge novelette I was writing as part of NaNoWriMo.  I want to follow the Writer's Paeon: Finish what you start.  I have about 20,000 words written so far.  I expect to triple that before I finish, but finish I will!

The DayJob is chugging along.  The project I'm on has extended to the end of this year (a nine month extension) and there will be a side project they want me to handle as well, so things are solid there.  I like working with this guys at this client, so I'm pleased with the situation as a whole.  I'm also hoping for a raise this year, but we'll have to see how that pans out - my yearly review looked good and was strong.

That's it for right now.  I'm hoping I beat writerspry to his update.  (Zing, ponyboy!)

Later!