It's All Downhill From Here...

Okay, with a little bit of thinking, I have managed to come up with description/blurbs for three of my four propsed events for Winter War. I actually have something written up for the fourth event, but I'm not likeing how it is looking currently, so it's bouncing around in my skull undergoing revision. System-wise, I am going to use the core rules for my Tai'eres game, with a bunch of revision to update some sections and make it more "generic". Looking at the overall project, it actually won't take me all that long to make everything work in the grand scheme of things. Yay!

We were supposed to have to a Magic: the Gathering peseant event earlier today, but we only had five players show up, so it did not "officially" happen. It's okay, though. The players played games with each other for a few hours, and then left. It was all kind of low-key and I can get behind low-key every now and then.

Tonight is Shady's Terracide game, thus it's time to play my Asian racist bast**d, Xia Ling-Jien. As time goes on, Ling is becoming less racist, mostly due to having to use every resource (regardless of race) available to him to save his and everyone else's bacon. Ling was never envisoned by me to be leadership material, and the fact that he's kept everyone alive this long is more due to luck and quick-thinking than it is to brilliant planning. His transformation is a work in progress.

-- GopherDave

Avalanches Start Small...

Okay, with a plan in place, things are actually shaping up in my head in terms of games. I do want to run another superhero game as a campaign, but that might take a slight back burner until I lay a few more details out for the convention in January.

I want to run about three or four games within a variety of genres, and I think I have them scoped out already in my mind...

Western
Modern-Day Conspiracy
Post-Apocalyptic Low Fantasy
Sci-Fi/Space Opera

Just looking at the list of genres already has the ideas flowing wildly. This... this could be good... =)

-- GopherDave

Changing Targets...

As it goes, I have done a lot of thinking and consulting with the Loquacious one, and a plan and consensus has been reached.

I am going to GenCon, but I am *NOT* going to do the ten-week challenge. We both agree that it would turn me into a wound-up mess. I do miss running games in a convention environment, though, so we came up with a sort of compromise.

Instead of the ten-week challenge, I'm going to do the 34-Week challenge and run games once again at our local convention, Winter War. I plan on running at least three-games, and it will probably be four. I am still debating of if I will use an all-new game engine, or if I will dust off one of my others and refine it.

So, at GenCon, I plan to purely be a player, with a side of store owner, and potentially a touch of co-GM if a friend of mine needs helps with a couple of his events. At Winter War, I will be game designer, store owner, convention booth warm body, and, if the pattern holds to form, probably MtG: Pre-Release coordinator as well.

Tired won't even begin to describe how I will feel at the end of it all, but at least this way I'll get to sleep in my own bed each night... =)

-- GopherDave

New Frontiers...

Okay, first things first. I have not swung the hammer yet, so I have not committed to a really bad idea that only becomes worse the longer I wait. Still thinking about it, though.

Next, last night I participated in a beta-test/start-up of a D&D4E campaign that is being run with a combination of MapTools and Ventrilo voice-chat software. The GM and I are in the same town, but two of the other players are in New York, and another player is in Missouri. I will say that I found the experience very disconcerting. Yes, we were playing a table-top game, but none of us were really being social. I was admittedly being very quiet as this style of gaming is incredibly new to me, but I also felt somewhat disconnected.

Don't get me wrong, I love gaming and this is a chance to once again game with a friend who has been in another time zone for the last decade plus, so I'm going to give this another shot or two. Who knows... mayhaps everything will click with me and I'll come to enjoy it. On some level, though, it feels very foreign.

When I meet new people (especially gamers), I want to shake their hands and look them in the eyes. I want to see their reactions as I make a joke, or as we exchange ideas and philosophies about our hobby. In short, I want to connect with them, and doing things via voice-chat and chat boxes doesn't feel like connecting to me. Perhaps I am just a Luddite... who knows...

-- GopherDave

The Dam Is Breaking, But At What Price..?

Okay... The creative dam is breaking. To be honest, if I swing the provebial hammer and commit to what amounts to being a "really bad idea", the creativity is going to flood my life. Probably to the point where I pull away from EVRYTHING that is not job-related.

Basically, due a REALLY understanding wife and the desire to help out a friend who was going to get stuck with a bad deal, I am going to GenCon this year. For those of you who do not know what GenCon is, suffice it to say that it is a four-day celebration of all things table-top gaming. It averages around 30,000 attendees each year, and is gaming overload. Typically, at the end of GenCon, I hate dice...

However, in true maniacal fashion, I have come up with a personal challenge only I would be stupid enough to try. It is roughly ten weeks to GenCon, currently. I am thinking...

I want to actually run some games/events there...

Okay... no problem... I've pulled events off with less time than this before...

 

I want to do it using a homebrew system of my own concoction...

Again, no problem. I have about a half-dozen original systems on the hard drives already just waiting to be used...

 

I want to do it using an all-new game engine...

 ... ... ...Ummmm... ... ...Houston, we might have an issue up here in the Ego section. Just sayin'...


Yep, for some odd reason, the challenge of putting together around three or four events in differing genres, plus the game engine needed to power them all in roughly ten weeks time appeals to me. It appeals to me a great deal. I'm not entirely sure why... ...probably due to the "bigger, better, faster, more"-mentality I have in regard to gaming.

I have not decided either way (yes or no) to swinging the hammer, but my mind has the thing in its proverbial hand, ready to break down the wall...

-- GopherDave

The Wall Is Still There, But A Crack Has Been Spotted...

Well... the creative blockade is still deeply entrenched in my head. I know what I can do to get it going, but that is something I'm hesitant to do. Reading over some of the replies from before, I think the nail got hit on the head in that I have to cross the line between "thinking about doing something" and "doing something". Alcohol destroys that line on regular basis, but now that I have an idea of what needs to be done. I do believe I can do it without "outside assistance". I just need a closed room, some music, and time not to be disturbed.

Eventually, I'll make that happen. It needs to... or I'm probably going to go out of my mind. =P

On a more basic note, tonight is the next session of Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords game that I am in. I am looking forward to gaming (pretty much always do), but now that I have a potential solution to my writer's block going on, I kind of want to go do that instead...

I'll let you know how that turns out...

-- GopherDave

Beating a Muse Into Submission...

It's late once again... I almost forgot to blog. As it goes, while tonight at the store was busier than expected, Monday looks to be even more hectic as I have four orders to place and two checks to drop off on what is supposed to be my day off. Ehhnn... What can you do? It's part and parcel of running your own business.

On a sour note, while I wanted to get some gaming groundwork done, the muse... she did notta come... I stared at a blank screen for the better part of two hours and got nothing. I hate when this happens, but I should of expected it. As I've gotten older, the ideas have turned more slippery and elusive in coming. There is one surefire way to unlock said muse, but I am loathe to rely on it, and have come to hate that it is becoming my only avenue to creativity. What is this mystical way of foo-fraw you might ask? It's simple.

Alcohol.

Get me drunk and the ideas pour out of me... Big, bold, and most importantly, *COHERENT* ideas come splashing on the written page in easily legible handwriting. Yes, my handwriting gets better the drunker I get. I cannot explain it. I only know it to be true. I have several witnesses who can back me up on this somewhat cockamamie claim.

If it's so easy, why don't I just get blitzed and write what I feel needs to be written? Again, from my vantage point, simple...

I have an extreme fear of being an alcoholic.

My father is an alcoholic. His father was an alcoholic. I am genetically and environmentally pre-disposed to becoming an alcoholic. Back during my first stint in college, when I wasn't gaming or actually studying, I was getting completely tanked off my a**. The amount of alcohol I was consuming would scare most Marines. One of my best friends at that time was from a very-well-to-do Catholic family from the northern suburbs of Chicago. This person also came from an alcoholic background, and I can honestly say, they were a professional. This individual could drink ENTIRE FRATERNITIES under the table and still be able to make their way home without help. I hung out with this person a fair amount and tried to keep up with their alcohol consumption when I did. I have more than a few blackout stories in my past.

One of them involves a night planning for a Champions game happening two days later . I was a little wound up from something that had happened earlier that day, so I figured a drink to relax would help me out a bit. One drink eventually became about a bottle and a half of Absolut over the course of the night. When I came to the next day, there were game notes strewn about me throughout the room. Once collected, these notes made up one of the best story arcs I had ever come up with. Everything had been laid out in terms of plot, villain motivation, and world events to clue the heroes in that something was wrong and in what direction they might want to look. Major NPCs had their personalities sketched out, and many of them (over a dozen) had been fully constructed... ...in HERO SYSTEM... BY HAND. It was an amazing bit of output from me, and one that I haven't been able to duplicate since then. I've come close at times, but I was drunk at those times as well.

That was great when I young, stupid, and single. Now, I'm married with two high school age children. My wife and I run a successful small business. I am older, wiser, more responsible, and I have ZERO desire to be a drunken fool in front of my kids. They deserve better than that. My wife deserves better than that.

So where does that leave me?

I'm still working on that... beating my head against the proverbial wall...

-- GopherDave