Down with the Sickness

I hate being sick.  I don't mind the phlegm, or the sneezing.  I can tolerate the sinus pain at anything short of icepick-in-the-ear levels.  What drives me crazy is the fuzzy-headed feeling that keeps you from thinking straight and getting stuff done.

After two weeks of wrestling with something I've been calling the "Sinus Whatever", I think I'm getting over it.  Probably would've been better off, y'know, taking time off work and sleeping properly, but hey.  The major downside has been the impact to my writing and creativity, sparse posting, plus having to cancel my Friday night Wampus Country game this week.  Sad panda.

Anyway, things are looking up, and I'm looking forward to getting back in the groove properly.  Here's what's up:

G+ GAME:  the Friday night online game continues apace.  I'm learning new things all the time - while Hangouts is an awesome medium for a game, it's definitely not the same as being around a table.  It's harder to parse things when people are talking over one another, I can't stomp around the table and DM standing up as is my custom, and myriad other little things which require getting used to.  That aside, though, I think everybody's having fun.  The big Hokum tournament experiment went okay, and kept the PCs in town for a NPC-chat-heavy session, and that's fine once in a while.  Now they're headed off to the ruined city of Crumbledown to headhunt (literally) the devil-fairies which are said to reside there.  Meanwhile, another pair of FLAILSNAILS PCs are trying to rob the winner of the tournament via some G+ PbP; that should be wrapped up soon.  I'm constantly wishing I had more free time, not only to run occasional pickup games outside of the Friday group, but also to play in other people's games regularly.

Play-by-Post: I got this bug up my rear to try a PbP as a parallel group.  On the recommendation of one of my online players, I put up an ad at rpol.net, which is all-PbP, all the time.  No responses.  Sure, I got some blog hits out of it as people checked out the setting, but then they didn't ping about playing.  Interesting.  Another friend - from the 3.5 group of work-buddies I've mentioned - suggested I start it up at Giant In The Playground, which is a possibility.  Although the forums there definitely read as 3.5-focused at first glance, I do get the impression there are PbP-friendly folks there that might be interested in giving LabLord a try (and with a strange setting, to boot).  I'll cogitate on this more and see about getting an ad up.  If you're interested in playing in a PbP, drop me a line via email or comment below.

WORKING ON:  Well, Crumbledown, first and foremost.  Gotta stay one step ahead of the players, right? I want to be prepped for a decent amount of the easily-accessible bits of this ruined city in case the PCs wander.  I have a couple d100 tables in various states of done-ness (I'd call it 50% and 30% at this point) which are requests from the Contest winners, and the prize boxes are just about done.  And I need to start putting the 'Rumpscullion's Summer Holiday' pdf together, which feels a little daunting...I need to wrap my brain around LibreOffice and what I can do with it. I MUST BEND IT TO MY WILL and all of that.  Once that's in the can, I'll reformat the Arcane Abecediary to demonstrate my (hopefully) newfound mastery of basic non-stupid layout using layman's digital tools.   aaaaand then I have other sort-of-started projects to work on.  I need to learn to replace dilettantism with discipline and stop bouncing around.

And, now that I'm aware of it, I'm sorely tempted to throw something together for the contest Chris is running over at The Secret DM.  10-20 rooms with a 'first edition feel'.  Which, in the scheme of things, isn't that much - it'll be doing it in an interesting and fulfilling way that's the trick.  Click on over to Chris' blog and read up on the details, it might be something you want to give a shot as well - especially now that he's extended the deadline til late September!

GOT A LOT GOING ON RIGHT NOW