Aloe

Using this blog as a diary.  Here's a pic of my aloe as it was the end of last October, 2024:

And here is the same aloe today:

Crazy, huh?

Surgery

I'm okay.

Interruptions

Well, I'm afraid no wiki content today.  And for a little while, there's going to be no content at all.  Come Tuesday, I'm going in for surgery.  Not a big deal, it's a hernia in my belly button; seems a loop of my intestine has popped in there and has taken up residence these last three years.  It's not considered overly essential, but is still covered by healthcare... but essentially I've had to live with it for some time while waiting for a table.  I settled the date in late January, and now it's coming in four days.

It means a total anesthetic, so there's a 1 in 10,000 chance, or probably less, that I might have a bad reaction and if so, that's the ball game.  The doctors like to be very clear about that, though the chances are minimal.  The surgery itself, I'm told, isn't that serious; but I'll likely be laid up for a few days, mostly because I won't want to do anything.  Since its right in my belly button, sitting at a computer working is probably going to be low on my priorities.  I'll try to have someone drop a note that says I'm okay, for those who want to know.

Meanwhile, I'm just going to take it easy.  There's two projects I'd like to get up before I go under.  Mostly, though, I want to feel rested, strong, not stressed, not beholden in general, and positive.  Like a vacation.  For some time afterwards, I'll feel none of those things, so I want to enjoy myself while I can.

None of you get worried.  I'll be fine.

Spoons

About four times I've tried to write this post today, unable to... hm... get up the nerve.

Yesterday's gift truly threw me for a loop.  Starting in reading it has been, well, um, humbling.  And I've struggled to identify some benchmark I could turn to as a way to grasp this unusual, rather overwhelming kindness.  It's disrupted my thinking so that both yesterday and today, I've been at a loss to produce anything creative.  I've been working around the house, applying myself to physical labour, getting things that should have been put to rights months ago, because my head is in a whirl.

This morning a worthy connection came to mind; it's from the 1955 John Ford film, Mister Roberts.  If you don't know the film, it's difficult to explain exactly how this scene comes about.  Essentially, for decency rendered as an officer, for sacrifices given and for actions taken, specifically tossing a palm tree overboard, the crew decides on their own volition to demonstrate their gratitude to Mr. Roberts.  See the film, if you can.  It's a damn sight better than any other film except for Marty, which deservedly won best picture... and the two of them are close.

This is how the book that was given makes me feel.  If you want to see my face; or hear my voice; and know how hard it's hit me... watch the link.

I'll never watch this film the same way.

So, in lieu of something else, I'm going to take a moment to talk about spoon theory.  This is a metaphor proposed by Christine Miserandino, "describing the amount of physical or mental energy a person has available for daily activities and tasks.  Miserandino applies it to chronic illness and it's logically designed for that, but after a conversation yesterday with my daughter, who brought this to my attention, I think it accurately describes the reality of creative endeavours and our capacity to invent.  In my daughter's case, where I'll begin, it relates to the time she has, as she progresses through the creation of her family unit.  She is, at present, pregnant with her second child.

As she tells it, every day is limited by the needs of her husband, the disabled cousin that lives with them, her not-quite 4 y.o. son (birthday September 28th) and certain medical difficulties arising with the pregnancy.  She has become, in the last four years, increasingly tired of those younger, childless, marriage-less, free spirited persons of her own age who, as my daughter explains, are ready to "take her spoons" in the way of time and favours given, but they don't give very many spoons back, for reasons that obviously don't have to do with the time they have.  I think many of us here can relate to this.  It's not that we don't like our friends.  It's not that we don't want to be there for our friends... is that our friends, particularly those without sincere responsibilities, don't seem to understand that we only have a set number of spoons available to us each day.  And that, when we give a spoon to someone else, because they need us to come help them move, or because they haven't got their rent this month, our sacrificing a spoon means there's something we can't have now for ourselves.

Which is perfectly fine... if now and then, someone comes and helps us clean our house, or move our junk, or clean our carpets, or look after our children, surrendering their spoons so we can use ours for those things we usually don't have time for.

This, however, affects me less than her.  I am only looking after a grandson now and then, and we're grateful that he's collected just as we're running out of the spoons we need to watch him.  Most of the time, I have plenty of spoons when I wake up each morning.  I can spend them on my responsibilities and the things that I enjoy, most of the time.  My issue is a creative scarcity, not a physical one.

Quite a lot of the time, I wake up in the morning without a single creative spoon to my name.  I want creative spoons.  I just don't happen to have any.  I cleaned my carpets last Wednesday with my daughter and when Thursday came around, the one spoon I had was used for the blog post I wrote that day.  I felt it was a good use.  I would have needed two or three spoons to do any serious writing, I didn't have them.  In fact, I haven't had them all week, because realistically, I just don't have the body I had when I was 35.  When I was 35, I didn't have the brain I had now.

Which means, more or less, when I was 35, I had no spoons because I was stupid, and today I have no spoons because I'm tired.

But, I take a rest, I accumulate spoons, and I try to use them as best I can.

Yesterday, by surprise, Osterman, Maddox, Becker and Joslyn sent me a whole freaking bucket of spoons.  I am hip deep in spoons.  I'm just trying to process it.

So, when I feel down; when I have doubts; when I'm not motivated... I know exactly where to go to get myself the spoon I need.  Fellas... thank you.  You cannot guess what it has meant to me.

Uh...

My friends, my good people.  I am touched.

These four have sent me a book in support of work and myself.  I've had only time to read the forward; and that has been enough to put me on the verge of tears.  And let me say, after much pain in my life, it hurts to cry.  That never comes without having to climb over some very big hurdles.

It'll take me some time to read this... but bless you all.  Thank you.  You've really put your fingers on my heart.

Not in Harness

My 60th birthday is coming up next week, on the 15th September... and yes, I know, for months now I've been calling myself 60 years old, but that's only because I've been closer to 60 instead of 59, and somewhere along the time I was 12, I decided it was perfectly reasonable to round my age up, when it wasn't for school or some other legal purpose (or when talking to my parents, who were completely unreasonable about such obvious things).

It also happened on my 12th birthday, which I remember I didn't enjoy very much, that I had an epiphany that what I wanted to be was a writer.  Now, some here may recall that this is 3 years before I'd ever heard of D&D, the 45th anniversary of which was yesterday, for the record.  At the time, I thought this obviously meant my becoming a novelist, as I had read many novelists and thought how cool it would be to have that job.  In fact, that very night, I took out a sheet of paper and began writing my first novel, which I wrote all through grades 7, 8 and 9, until growing up before entering grade 10 and reconising that it was a garbage idea for a novel. 

[yes, I remember the intended plot and I won't recount it]

With the arrival of D&D, I did try to write fiction associated with the game, but the substance of such fiction was so terrible and my ability to write could not possibly lift it from that muck, so I turned my mind towards writing more esoteric, albeit, failed projects, though I did manage to write a performance scene that got me into a city-wide competition (I lost), I was published in three years of high school student-literature booklets (in-house end-of-year things) and I did enjoy the experience of having more than one teacher sit me down for a heart-to-heart in order to explain, for my own good, that I'd never be a writer, that I was wasting my time, and that if I would just realise where my real talents were, I'd be a much more successful person in life.

They meant well.  For all I know, what they said might have been true; one nice thing about being this age is recognising that the really awful things that were said to us as children, however misdirected, were also probably true.  Still, I don't think I'd have been happy as anything but a writer.

Writing, which I've done for 48 years, represents a long string of failures for me, punctuated by just enough successes to make me fruitfully stubborn.  It so happens that I've been able to apply the skills and interest I have in the practice to D&D these last 16 years, since finding this blog, but I hurry to explain to the gentle reader, this blog and my internet presence are in fact a thin wedge of the life I lead away from this keyboard.  Just as what I say here hardly represents all that I have done with my life, all that I have been interested in, and all that I wish to achieve.

What it says on the back of my book, Pete's Garage, is 100% true.  I did participate in mosh pits, I did listen to industrial music, I did watch musicians of every kind play.  I did watch them argue, sitting in their little apartments and drinking their beer as they shouted at each other.  I followed them around to their gigs and schlepped their shit, often for no pay but for a seat in the van on its way to another city.  I did buy them dinners and let them sleep on my couch, and I did marry one.  She was the mother of my daughter, the daughter of a musician, and right now I have her piano with her music books and her notes in those music books in my apartment right now.

But how much time have I spent, here, talking about music?  How often have I debated the merits of arranging and preparing for a gig, of getting an album or a CD made, of selling them, of getting on spotify, of all the various aspects that it would take to put a band together and make them practice and find them a space to play?  How often have I spoken about the many hours that I have stood in front of a live audience at talent nights and sang, back when the writing wasn't going so well and thinking maybe the path for me might be a different one?

I know that it probably feels that I can't be talking about me, because I'm the D&D guy, I'm the one that makes all the maps and the game rules and ran all those thousands of hours of campaign-time.  There's just no way that I could have done all that and had any interest in being a musician.  After all, I didn't start singing in the church choir until I was 13 years old, and around campfires when I was a camp counsellor at 15, with a bunch of 8-year-old brats to look after.  I used to sing to myself nearly every time I had a chance to walk alone; I had a repertoire of a hundred songs I knew by heart, though I admit a lot of those are gone now.

But I'm the D&D guy.  I've found my niche, right?  My place.

But then, I was also an actor, wasn't I?  Wrote, produced and directed my own plays, performed at the Edmonton fringe festival.  I could go, right now, since I have the money in my bank account, and get my head shots and pay my fees and join ACTRA, start going out for auditions.  I still have some connections with people in the theatre scene, some of whom owe me a favour or two; I've got the energy to play a father or an old man.  I have a deep, rich voice and I can still hit the back tiers of a big auditorium... which would only get better if I applied the practice.  Might be a fun, social sort of activity.  When I was just 25, those performance companies were always rounded out by 60+ men and women, outgoing, friendly, none of whom expected to win an award but they were there for every rehearsal, doing it for the sheer pleasure of the activity.

Sounds all right to me.  I'm not going to get on Stephen Colbert with my next D&D-based book.  All the 5e players in the world aren't going to change their playing style because I turn out a group of essays on starting a trading town, tackling a dungeon like a military campaign or inventing a guide that tells all the things players can buy.  I've had my run at fame, and it ain't comin'... not for D&D, not for all the fiction novels I write, not for the music I've sung or the boards I've trod.

The only thing that's left, the only thing that really matters, is if I'm having fun or not.

Now, if the people supporting me on Patreon aren't happy because I'm not staying in my lane, I send my deepest apologies.  You know, there's a tale I tell about two hyper-rich businessfolk I saw at the symposium once, about ten years ago.

The first says, "I have to tell you, my business depends on creative people.  Without creative people, I don't have a business.  They are the heart, the soul, the substance of everything that I am able to produce and sell and make money from, which is why I treasure them.  I really respect them, and what they can do, because I know that I'm not like that and I can't do it myself."

And the second one says, "Exactly.  That's exactly right.  And that's why I say to entrepreneurs when they ask how to get started, get yourself some creative people.  The way to make a business work is to gather these people together, harness them to the cart of the business and let them take us where we want to go."

Whereupon the first adds, "Yes, I so agree.  The future begins with harnessing the talent that exists in the world, in order to ensure that our companies perform the best they can."

And so it goes.

Moody

So, here we are... some months out from having lost my campaign, wondering what D&D holds for me.  I have books in progress; no doubt, I'll imagine others.  I can't suppose that after this much of my life spent thinking about this game, I'm just going to stop.  But there's a transformation going on, certainly.

I've meant a couple of times to write about how conversation about D&D is, at least for me, dead.  I've never been the "let's talk about old modules" guy.  I'm not the warstory-teller either.  5e has effectively killed rule-based discussions.  For-or-against conversations have died on the vine, at least in my experience.  It's been at least a year since anyone in any post I've read has even mentioned "alignment."  I seem to have accumulated a number of people who want to tell me about their worlds or their campaigns... but to be honest, guys; how much about the actual gameplay of my own world have I talked about on this blog?  I have done it, but mostly because I was encouraged to do it.  But for myself, hearing about how other people are going to run other people... really, I wish you the best of luck.  I'll answer questions if I'm asked, I'll try to get you out of a corner you've painted yourself into.  I swear, I'll do so with the zeal of a neighbour lending you his garden hose if your garage starts on fire.

But just to shoot the shit about it?  

I always marvelled how it was possible for golfers to go knock 18 holes in four, five hours, and spend the entire time talking about golf.  And plainly in a way that showed this is all they ever talked about, despite playing twice, three times a week.  Particularly in that going back to the club, getting a couple of beers, they'd spend that time... still talking about golf.  I like golf.  I think it's a pretty good game.  I've had some very enjoyable summer afternoons playing it, talking about history, ethics, the development of art in Europe in the 18th century... but this obsession with talking about golf.  Eh.  But apparently golf provides enough to keep hundreds of thousands of grown adults talking about it every weekend, all day, for years.  Perhaps it's because no one, in the last 150 years, has felt the need to produce "2nd Edition" golf, as a way to build the market.

I picked the wrong hobby.  I should have gotten into gardening, running or filmmaking.  At least if you show up to watch birds, the birdwatchers you call to show up actually show up, because they actually LIKE birdwatching.  But half the time, what do I hear about D&D players?  They don't show.  They call, they agree to show, and then they don't.  They get colder feet than a first time sub for a prodomme appointment.

So I understand people throwing their hands in the air and saying, "I'm done."  I used to pat myself on the back for having such dedicated players, that they always showed up, that I could count on them... HAH!  I hope every person on this blog is raising a glass right now and saying, "Cheers, you old bastard."  If not, get your ass out to your kitchen and get a beer.  You are owed the privilege of drinking to my inevitable humbling.

And so.  Amidst this... mood I'm in.  Don't know if I'm going to DM again.  Don't know if I care.

I feel like I'm on the edge of something important.  Something life-changing.  I say that because its something I've felt before.  It's like climbing into a rocket that's going to blast off at some point, but we don't know when.  And we don't know where it's going, or even whose rocket it is.  Just a feeling.

Can't remember when I had this before.  Or what happened when it did.

Here's a little advice: life is too short to waste your time.  So don't.  If you want to do something, do it.  Don't hedge, don't equivocate, don't measure, don't weigh.  The more you plan, the more time you spend figuring out the best way to get started, the more certain it is that you actually don't want to do it at all, and that you're just wasting your time pretending you're going to do something, because in your head you're thinking, "I've got to do something."

Don't just do "something."  That is absolutely the worst thing you can do.

The Halfling and the Knight

Time I addressed this point from a recent post; hands up, anyone who knew what I was talking about:

"Much of the time, I believe, people have little understanding of what purpose in the game a rule serves, or how that purpose is compromised, leading to a less robust system, when that rule is casually tossed aside. For me personally, whatever a DM may feel about the presence of experience or encumbrance, and the "inconveniences" they bring, casting those things aside does not improve the game. The game is worse without them.

"Yet this is hardly understood, and even less appreciated. Of course we can still play D&D without those things. Of course the players can still move from place to place, they can still fight, they can yet role-play and even accumulate status and influence upon the game world. But these things — and this is almost impossible to explain to the average player — ARE NOT THE GAME. They certainly seem to be; and most would argue with me on this point ... vehemently. But they'd be wrong."

We don't need to count runs to play baseball.  We don't need teams.  We can still pitch, bat and run the bases without these things, if that's what we want.  We don't need a king to play chess.  We can move the pieces around on the field, attacking one another, deciding the game ends when there are no pieces left to kill, or the opposing player's move assures that a kill can't happen.  We can choose not to race sprinters against one another, having them run without a clock while five judges hold up cards to decide how the sprinter did, like figure skating.  We can play scrabble letters without numbers, ignoring any "score," on a blank lined board, until the board is filled.  We can throw out the property cards of monopoly and just roll dice to move our pieces around the board.

With children, we teach chess in a manner that a modern gamer recognises as save scumming.  Make the wrong move, see the consequences, take it back.  Thinking back 28 years, my daughter moves her rook, I take it with the queen ... then I put the rook and queen back to let her try again.  I let her put her finger on the bishop, deciding if she's going to move it, but I don't make her move it, because she's seven and I don't care if she wants to move the knight instead.  We learn games like this.  We see the consequences of our actions.

Then, as we grow more serious about the game (my daughter didn't, but I did), we don't want those breaks.  We want to win for real ... because we grow to see that it's a measure of the standards against which we hold ourselves.  We put ourselves in situations that aren't comfortable, specifically because the rewards are greater.

There's nothing in my life right now that says I have to walk onto a stage and risk public embarrassment ... but if I had the chance to do it again, to play Uncle Vanya or Dr. Stockmann, I would.  There's no money in it for me.  I have no urge to take up acting as a career (though, admittedly, because no opportunity to do so has presented itself).  But I would do it because I've done it before, because I've challenged myself in that way, I've put my soul and my commitment on the line in a theatre before paying customers ... and received good reviews.  There are no take backs; there's no way to save scum a few seconds before delivering a seven-minute monologue.

I know that the way the vast majority of people play D&D is "entertaining."  Enjoyable.  It must feel good for many to save scum, with getting rewards without risk, to talk their way out of difficulty, to get experience for showing up ... to shirk combat or, to always win, without that much trouble.  Always knowing that the character I have at the start of tonight's session will still be mine at the end.  Never feeling that raw, brutal panic of a die that has to go the right way ... or the plunge of heart that strikes when it doesn't.

But —

I don't want to take my knight back.  And I definitely do not want to play with those who insist on having it that way.  I'm not playing with children.  No, let me put that another way, because it could be misunderstood.  I have no interest in having adults who want to be children play with me.  If you want your knight back, when you lose your knight due to your inability to play, this says more about you than you realise.

Yes, I said inability to play.  D&D is a game with random elements, that a good player knows are there, accounting for them ... expecting them ... so there's no reason to whine or have a fit when they don't go our way.  That is the game's play.  When the player shirks from that, trying to reconstruct the game so as to avoid those consequences, instead of taking them on the chin like an adult ...

The collapse of my game centered on one player who did not like that her 5th level 60-lb. halfling druid wasn't a "fighter."  She chose to be a druid.  She chose to be a halfling.  She chose her spells.  She liked the sound of being a druid.  She liked to make the cute little jokes about being so light that many of the bigger characters could carry her without an encumbrance penalty.  She liked the pretty-sounding spell names, with words like faerie, shillelagh, goodberry ...

But every time a fight came up, she didn't like having to put her trust in that 20-sided die.  She knew there was plenty of power in the party to manage the monsters, to protect her little child-like body, but she didn't like knowing they were going to kick ass and she wasn't.  She didn't like depending on them.  She'd had plenty of opportunities to put out a good spell and help turn the tide of a battle, but that wasn't good enough.  She didn't want to be a team player.  She didn't want to take a bow at the end with the team.  She wanted to shine.  And she didn't have the class, the spells, the hitting power or the experience level that would let her do that ... and she was getting tired of waiting.  Every time she'd miss with that d20, the feeling of failure gnawed just a little deeper.  She didn't need to actually die as a character.  She didn't need that much to push her over the edge.  What she wanted, and what she hadn't earned, was to make the game ... not a game.  To make it into something that would serve her will.  That would obey her.  And when that didn't come out of the things her character could do, she decided it would come out of her inventiveness with the spells, reinterpreting them as she needed them to work.

When I countered that, she tried harder.  She invented more desperately.  She insisted more emotionally.  When it was her turn to throw that d20, she stalled, staring at her spells, sure that they'd be some way to weave them into an action that would get the result she wanted.

And when I put my foot down, one of the other players, a shining white knight, came to her rescue. He chose that moment to tell me how to act.  And what tone of voice to use.  In no uncertain terms.  In my game.  In my house.  And I rose to the occasion, because I don't let people talk to me that way.

The desire not to play a game, but to make the game suit the player's moods and wants, is the insidious poison at the heart of 5th edition and all that the company has done to D&D these last 20 years.  I love the game of D&D.  I do not love the shambling, mawkish doppleganger that is called D&D by nearly everyone ... and I have no idea what's going to become of the game I love.  The game I love.  I expect it to die along with the undead ghoul that it's spawned.

With four weeks gone, I remain uncertain about the future.  The majority of the crowd walked in support of the halfling and the knight, but I think that's an oversimplification.  There is a whiff that remains in my thoughts that the game itself had ceased to satisfy the needs of the party; and as I read the accounts of others lately, I'm detecting that same whiff in their games.

My head feels clearer.  There's a measure of anger.  Of betrayal.  Of the cheapening of this thing I love, which darkly bites at the memory of myself discovering this game as a boy, and thinking of it as a brutal, consequence-ridden thing, like the chess I played, being the greatest game in the world.

Which it isn't.

Anymore.

What do you do with a Dungeon Master?

Let's catch up.

My offline campaign exploded two weeks ago and the fallout has been absolute.  I have no more offline campaign.   Before that had happened, I was planning on going on a vacation at the end of May, and then that didn't seem to be working out ... and then I made an arrangement with my work and I've been slaving at that since, oh, Thursday last week, and now I can breathe and I'm going on a six-day break.

I wrote a couple of posts last week that caught my feelings for then, which I thought I'd continue but now there's nothing left to say except that I disagree with some who say that the being in the present can only prepare you for the past.  I don't think that's true.  We can't know what's going to happen in the future, but the present, and the past, helps up build a better seat-belt for it.

The last time I had a game blow up on me, I was 29.  Less than half the age I am now.  That seems incomprehensible to me ... that all the chaos and confusion of those first years of D&D, between 1979 and 1993, represent less than a quarter of my lifetime.  It's easy, when you're 29, to assume that when your players walk out (they had a meeting among themselves and then I was informed), that obviously you're going to keep playing the game, obviously you're going to find another party, obviously it's no big deal, because as people age into their 30s, they often think they should stop doing the things they did when they were kids.

But here I am, not quite actually 60, and it really isn't so obvious that there's going to be another game party in my future, or even that I want one.  This is a sobering thought.  I have thoughts of the game, which I love, and the concept of the wiki, which I love, and the maps, which I love ... and the cold, stark, inflexible reality that for the present, for this moment, I have no immediate application for any of these things.

So.  I'm thinking.

I came to a conclusion last Christmas that it would be stupid to stop writing this blog, so I'm not going to do that.  The Streetvendor's Guide is a brilliant book, which has to be written, so I am going to continue writing that.  The wiki is the conduit of the experience I've accumulated through years of living and playing D&D, so that's not going away and deserves my attention.  Making the maps just feels good, in a way I've tried to explain, but which I know many cannot understand.  Nonetheless, I've found an outlet in that direction for a consciousness I like owning, so I'll continue to make maps.

But for the present, I'm in limbo.  What do you do with a dungeon master when he stops being a dungeon master; what can you do with a dungeon master who retires?  Who's got a game for a dungeon master, when he stops being a dungeon master ... 

There are always ways to keep busy, of course, and I'll follow them.  Patreon has invented a chat room, which I've pitched here before.  There are just four or five of us altogether, from the much larger number that support me to the tune of $3 a month.  It would be a better format for running an online game than either a blog or a wiki, but I can't say I'm interested.  Somehow, the online process has left me cold.  I assume that presently, after some time has gone by, that I'll get itchy for a game ... but there's always some public club, if I want to let a bunch of 5e players boss me around.  Gawd, I'll have to be pretty hard up before I jones that hard.

Sorry.  "Jonesing."  To have a strong desire or craving for something.  I'm very old.

And so are you, if you didn't need the definition.

Still, I'm here for the weekend.  I figure I've written some 28,000 words in the last 6 days, and edited about 40,000 more.  I may take a couple of days and do a jigsaw puzzle or something.

Doings

The Streetvendor's Guide has been keeping me busy, so that as I've waded through the various wooden articles used to make tools and crafts, up to but not including musical instruments, I haven't had any time to map make or much else ... beyond the day job, naturally.  Not even for writing blog posts here.  But, it's been a good day, written a full page, edited nearly two full pages, worked some on the book's table of contents, worked some on the book's index, and even found time to continue my piano practicing today.

I haven't been able to take any video or audio of my learning piano, because I haven't any kind of stand and merely posing the phone on the edge of a table or on the piano itself gives very poor coverage.  For anyone who might wonder, I've learned from the internet how to do scales with both hands, with my eyes closed, and how to play Twinkle Twinkle little star, again with my eyes closed.  I practiced today to play the harmony with my left hand while playing the melody with my right, but while I get the concept, and can hear the positive effect pressing the right keys delivers, I can't do that at speed yet.  I can work my way through the song a few times to try to impress the pattern, but it's still patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time.  I'm in no rush.  I've had the piano just three weeks.  I do practice for a few minutes every day, longer if I get intrigued.  Did about half an hour today, struggling with Twinkle Twinkle and also trying my hand at Wenceslas.

I keep an eye on Patreon's chat window multiple times a day as well, which isn't difficult and which, for the most part, is empty of residents anyway.  Thinking about those erstwhile days a hundred years ago when I met Tamara in a chatroom, I used to dominate those conversations by typing quickly, forming my thoughts quickly, having way too much to say and basically drowning out those who might try to disagree.  I haven't written this yet, but Tamara got interested in me when she watched me disassemble a fellow online that was browbeating her; I didn't know her, but I rushed in, took the argument on and buried the chatter ... and she and I had a long talk afterwards, that day and every day, until we agreed to meet.  It's been 22 years now, since those events I wrote about here.

I'm saying I'm probably not much fun to talk to.  I must thank those people who contributed to the raising of my mood after my writing the last post.  I have a D&D running tomorrow night, I intend to record it, and hopefully do better in a few ways.  For one thing, the child is being given away to the other grandparents for the evening, so any conversation is going to be neglected by his personal take on things.  There should be more players there as well, and possibly some combat if things go as I expect.  The last running actually ended with the players arriving in Tomis and debating whether or not to shop there.  I imagine we'll start with a purchasing sequence tomorrow night.

Little has been said about the mapmaking feature in the background of the audio posts I've made.  My original recording actually goes right up to the completion of the area around Przemesyl, I just haven't obtained enough audio to reach the end of that work.  I'm rather surprised that it takes me so long to sketch these things out, since the time just flashes by while I'm engaged.  Anyway, I noticed with this video that I failed to put a village in a type-4 hex, and looking at it now, it's evident that I didn't do so in the as-yet-not-posted part of the video.  One of those things to be fixed in post, I guess.

Beyond these things, there's not much to say.  If any of my supporters wants to know what I'm doing, or why I'm not posting, it's the easiest thing in the world to go find me on patreon's "community": https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3015466.  Frankly, I'm surprised that some enemy doesn't pay $3 just to have the privilege of telling me to go fuck myself to my face.  Maybe I've run out of enemies.  If so, this is a good time to increase my youtube footprint.

Soon

For some time, I've progressed away from a format of dungeon mastering tutorials towards the more sustainable desire to just show off my work.  For many of my viewers, this hasn't been a positive development.  As such, those who cared about how to deal with troublesome players, or how to describe a dungeon, or how to encourage role-playing or whatever, have simply drifted away.  Those who remain of that kind know the tutorials are all still here, floating in the enormous backlog of my posts over these last 15 years (if they can be found).

For myself, I got tired of producing these sorts of posts ... less because I began repeating myself and moreso because they received, on the whole, either resistance or passive agreement.  Once upon a time, back when angry birds roamed the earth, these posts garnered a lot of attention and produced excellent discussions that ran for thirty or forty comments; but those days, along with the "blog" I suppose, are gone.

We're in a place now where discussion has lost it's verve.  And for the record, "what can you show me" is a better path.  It removes the casual blatherer from the fore, putting the worker, the operator, "creator" in front.  Of course, there are still performers and hustlers, but steadily in this experiment we're calling the internet, ephermeral things are on the decline.  They'll be with us forever, no doubt.  But there are only so many cat videos we can care about; so many kids dancing well in their living rooms we have time for; and so many people spewing out yet one more diatribe on why the right way to play D&D is ...

I'm rather comfortable shucking off that shirt and dropping it on the floor, where it can be laundered should I want to put it on again.  I have little left to say.  Steadily, I move further and further from the world of game modules, D&D online social events, even the desire to visibly see other people play the game.  I just don't relate.

Recently, JB posted a series of posts detailing numerous modules that were part of some contest.  I couldn't bring myself to read past the first sentence of each post.  In retrospect, I've been running a single "module" for 15 years now, taking place on Earth, where the various boundaries and choices within the module steadily drift from location to location, occasionally upon a specific theme and occasionally just to fill a few runnings with whatever the players are interested in at that moment.  If I need something to happen, I invent it out of my own head.  I don't steal it from other creators because what they're creating is ... of absolutely no use to me.

The trouble, naturally, is that when I'm in a state of creation, I post on multiple platforms and there's new material every day.  And when I'm not in that state, as with the moment ... there's really nothing to say.  I talk about myself.  I talk about my discontinuity with everyone else.

My houseguests have departed as of Sunday.  There are less interruptions, there's no 3-year-boy laughing and running back and forth, back and forth, in what I could only describe as the desirable manner.  I'm finding myself able to think again.  I'm just sort of kicking ideas around.  Working at the job and thinking about getting started on serious stuff.  But for now, just enjoying the quiet.  At my age, quiet is a wonderful thing.

For those waiting, I apologise.  Soon.  That's all I can say right now.  Soon.

These Simple Days

Again, I've had a long, difficult, unsatisfying week, where my own intentions and plans have been repeatedly put on a shelf.  This week worse than most, it seems.  No maps, no posts, no book writing, with five of us living here the house looks a disaster, and as of right now, I haven't any questions or answers for tomorrow's Q&A.

In self-defense, Tamara and I took a drive around eastern Alberta, visiting the badlands by Drumheller, the dinosaur capital of Canada, and then tooling through the pot and drumlin country between there and Stettler to the north.

Took this picture of Tamara yesterday; she's the smaller one at the bottom, just in front of the world's largest dinosaur's left foot.  For the record, 86 ft. high.  Tamara wasn't impressed; but she did love the appearance of the landscape, of which I'll post elsewhere sometime soon.

It was just a day trip, nothing very special, except that we enjoy each other's company a lot and we don't have any trouble talking continuously for 10 hours, even after all this time together.  I've been working on a story about her and I from way back in 2002, as the next post for Shifting Sands.

I've been enjoying that experiment, and there's evidence of it catching on.  I need a little practice writing non-argument, non-thematic content, but that'll come.  My biggest concern is that a lot of the stories I have to tell make me sound either irrational, like a fool, or contains too much of what my daughter calls my "assholicity."  It's a pity that in retrospect, so many of the moments when I stood up for myself, or went to war to die on a some hill or other, ends up after so many years with my thinking, jeebs, what the hell did I think I was accomplishing.

It may be different for other people, or maybe not.  Of course, other people quietly put those stories in a mental closet for permanent storage, in the hopes that the key to that closet might be lost as soon as possible.  I can't say exactly why I'm not doing that; or why I want to roll stuff like that out.  It won't be to make myself look good, I can tell you.  In fact, I'm very conscious of that.  All the stories I've told so far are fairly neutral, being things that happened to me, as they might happen to anyone.  I'm telling these in the hopes of building some credence for when I write a story about some moronic thing I did, or when I caused hurt to someone, or in fact failed as a human being.  I figure I'm bound to tell a certain number of those stories, before I tell even one story that puts me in a good light.  The last thing I want to accomplish here is my own self-aggrandisement.

Yesterday, travelling along country roads and highways in those parts, I talked to Tamara about hunting partridge and pheasants with my father, and the canoe trip I took down the Red Deer river, which we  crossed on our journey yesterday four times.  Tamara's not from around here; she spent her youngest years in a place called Hickman, Kentucky, on the Mississippi river, in the 1960s.  So everything we saw yesterday, especially the badlands, was new to her.  Most people can throw a rock across the Red Deer.  It's not the Mississippi.

But ... just now ... not in the headspace to write any story tonight.  I'm finding this post a trial, as I fuzzily await the end of this weekend.  My daughter and son have keys to their new place, and so begins the removal of furniture and other things from our environs to theirs.  They have a far harder weekend ahead of them than Tamara and I; we're given an exemption from these things as the "kids" have plenty of help from their friends, and don't need us old people.  Our job is to manage the grandson, whose in a state of confusion and panic because he hasn't had a proper home in more than a month, as this is the first time he's been old enough to understand what moving actually means.  I didn't encounter what Julian's encountering now until after I'd finished high school.

No, I'm writing this post in support of the fiction that I haven't died, and that I'm still in possession of my faculties and self-will ... neither of which seems, at the moment, remotely believable. There will be no Q&A tomorrow.  I trust I can get my wits together to return to work on my book, so that for the first time in four weeks, come the 22nd, I'll have a preview to post on Patreon.  And maps to post.  And blog posts.  And my sanity.

It's, um, Not What You Think

My apologies for not writing here for days.  For those interested, I've produced content for the map blog, and for a recent project called shifting sands, and for patreon, but not here ... and of course, here is the only place that really counts.

My daughter, her husband and their son had to vacate their former place of residence at the end of February; they can't take possession of their next residence until the 16th of March, so for the present they're bivouaked with Tamara and me.  We're all friendly and pleasant, though our place is just 750 sq.ft., so naturally there are hurdles.  One benefit is that my daughter and I were able to record a video for her let's play site on Monday, which is always fun; she's been in the middle of a long and difficult move and hasn't been able to post anything, so she's glad to have something to put there.  Please have a look if you're willing, give her a like and let it run a bit, since that helps her stats.  It's me explaining how I play Oxygen Not Included, which might reveal something of my general character with regards to D&D.  It is, after all, a design-based logistical game.

I wasn't able to put a preview up of the Streetvendor's Guide last Friday, and the way it looks I won't this Friday either.  There's lots going on, I'm struggling to find quiet time to do my job (which for whatever reason needs doing) and frankly I haven't even been able to open the document since last Thursday.  Lately, the time I've found for myself has been spent making maps because it's comparatively relaxing compared to producing serious content.  It doesn't help that I've run into a block regarding the layout of the wood section early parts ... as that's what I've started putting together.  Things are sure to settle down after a week or so, when I can return to my weekly pattern of equanimity.

Did have a useful conversation about the production of content, motivated by yet another one of thos many youtube videos in which some person talks about all the people who are quitting youtube and how hard it is to make money on the platform, and what's it all for anyway, and besides the real hard part is finding something meaningful to make content about.  You know the type.  Here's an example from a mature, adult woman whose able to express herself competently without having to posture like either a testosterone-driven jackass or an estrogen-possessed flake.

I trust that's an equally balanced insult of people of both sexes.  I don't want to play favourites.

Creating something new is hard.  Therefore, it's obviously easier to create something that's, um, derivative.  Something derivative may receive a lot of views and likes, but at the same time it's not exactly soul-sustaining.  If we make something derivative, it feels like it's derivative, so any actual praise we get for it feels, um, empty.

If later we then create something actually original, we can't help noticing that it gets precisely the same praise as something derivative.  Often, it gets less praise.  This is discouraging.  In fact, it's discouraging in the same way that praise for derivative stuff feels empty.  This is true even if the channel is making money.

All in all, this result undermines one's motivation to produce ... anything.  In fact, it's rather crippling.  Fortunately for me, I experienced this spiral in roughly the 1980s, when my audience consisted of no more than 60 persons at the best of times, and more usually a circle of about 6 friends.  Eventually I settled into a groove of comfortably creating content regardless of anyone ever seeing it.  I had no idea the internet would eventually happen.

Now that it has, I try occasionally to take some advantage of it ... only to be usually disappointed.  But I've been better trained to handle that then most people who are turning to the internet as, um, an alternative to working a real job.  Only to find, all too often, that creating stuff is a lot like a real job that fails to provide the purpose of a job: income.

Lets see ... I ought to provide some sort of advice here.  If you're going to make a youtube channel, film yourself doing something you're already doing every day.  If you like to sail, and you would be doing that anyway, learn how to post four well-secured cameras in the right places around your vessel and then film yourself until the power on these cameras runs out.  Then teach yourself how to voice over, so you can explain where you are, what you're doing, why you're doing it and so on.  The end product of cutting all four camera feeds may turn out to be utter garbage ... but at least you got to do what you would have done anyway.  And you've gained some knowledge of how cameras, editing and overdubbing works.  Win-win.

I write.  If the world were empty of all people, if I were the last man left alive, I would still write down things today because four years from now, I'd enjoy reading what I wrote four years ago.  This is the sort of madness you'll need if you're going to do something for a living, without a boss that pays you money just for showing up.

DON'T decide to do something you've never done before and film that.  Don't.  You won't like the thing ... and if your channel somehow does well, you'll learn to really, really, really hate the thing.  Eventually, you'll hate your fans for liking that you do something that you hate.  You'll hate them.  And that'll come out.  And you'll regret it.  Not just because your channel isn't popular any more, but because it once was, it stopped being, and you're going to utterly hate yourself for letting it fail.  It's a lose-lose.  Don't do this.

DON'T base your channel or anything else you're doing on someone else's work.  You may have a mission to teach people the wonders of history, but if all you're doing with your history channel is repeating information that exists in books, or hundreds of other history channels, in the end you're going to feel like you're on a hamster wheel.  You may have a wonderful plan for your next presentation, you may put hundreds of hours into making your presentation pretty, or witty, but if you're on a hamster wheel and that's not where you really want to be, in a few years you'll realise that this is all getting you nowhere.  Even if it makes money for you.  In the end, you'll realise you're not making any kind of difference at all, any more than all the other copies of your work do.  You'll realise you're not special, and you're never going to be.  You won't like that.  And worst of all, it's not going to be an alternative to doing a "real job."  It will be a real job.  One you might be able, someday, to get numb to, but not one that's going to fill you with joy.

Truth be told, most of us don't do something every day that's worth pointing a camera at.  Sorry.  Just how it is.  Most of the time, these people who sigh and show regret for the internet not being what they hoped for are just too, um, ordinary to be watched.  Again, sorry.  Just how it is.  Performance is for performers.  It's a type.  Not everyone is a class clown.  And most of the time, being a class clown isn't all that rewarding anyhow.

It's great that youtube and the general internet gives everyone a shot at being a class clown, or some other kind of performer ... but realistically, a "shot" isn't much.  It's not fame.  It's mostly not rewarding.  It's mostly a wasted afternoon getting ready for the audition.

Feelin' Rough

I've been sick this past week, which has been a serious undermining of my physical exercise routine, one I'd managed to keep going for three weeks.  I've still gotten in 200 minutes of walking — and let me tell you, exercising while sick is really the worst — and I think that my physical response to this cold has been unusually strong, which I attest to the exercise.  My body fat has dropped about 6%, and though I haven't lost any weight I've toughened up all over.

But no one is here to hear about this.  Between dragging myself through my day job, the exercise and simply crashing for naps, I've only written a little more than 2 pages on the Streetvendor's Guide.  As such, I'm not going to post two pages on my patreon today, kicking that can down the road.  It just is what it is.  I feel better today, feel like I can write, and I've got no assignments due until Tuesday.  I plan on getting some floor stretching in and more walking.  The cold clearly resulted from my going to the pool last weekend, so I'm not going there for a bit.

I trust the Ternketh content has been suitably interesting.  I have one more section of that to post, which I'll do after tomorrow's Q&A.  This is all the news I have.  I should be in normal shape, and productivity, by Monday.

My Health and My Partner's

I'd mentioned at least once on here that I was planning to donate a kidney to my partner, the operation to take place at some time this year, probably between September and November.  I received a call Friday morning from the clinic tasked with the matter, telling me that my height to weight index makes me unqualified for donating.  This after I've been told already that my health is fine, as I have no affecting issues and it's perfectly likely that my one kidney is very unlikely to experience issues related to diabetes or any such difficulty.

Essentially, the clinic feels I would be a good candidate ... if I could bring my weight down to 195 lbs.  I'm at 245 now, so that's a total of one fifth my present weight.  Moreover, I haven't been below 200 lbs. since I was 22 or 23, and just now I'm nearly 60.  In September of 2020, during Covid, I managed to bring my weight down to 228, through stretching and walking.  After my 19-day vacation last year, I found myself at 238, following the moving around of luggage and the walking I did.  These give me reason to expect that if I bear down, it's possible to reach the number the clinic wants.

Not going to be easy, and I don't expect to do it with stretching.  Tamara and I bought a treadmill last year, so that's one thing going for me.  It's already seen lots of use, but right off it's obvious that I need to double the time I spend on it, and then some.  I usually walk around 2.7 mph for half an hour; I'm already at it, though it's just been three days ... slowing down the speed and walking for twice as long, with a bit of incline.

Beyond that, I need to scare up a trainer for tips on how to proceed.  I'm sure swimming should be involved, though I haven't swum laps since about 2010.  I can still swim, obviously, but it'll take time to build up the wherewithal to do that for even fifteen minutes.  So long as I tighten up elsewhere, however, I'm sure I can build up those muscles I need to pull strokes.

My healthcare gives me access to a nutritionist as well, which I'll take advantage of.  Tamara has been on a salt-free, low-sugar diet due to her combined diabetes II and kidney problems for about 18 months now, which has also brought down my sugar and salt intake as well.  To keep up her strength, she's encouraged to increase her fat intake (though not over much), while watching her sugar numbers and maintaining her blood pressure.  All these things have become part of my own habits, but I see that I'm going to have to cut down on my own fat and make a lot of her foods without partaking myself.  I'm used to that.  I worked as a cook for many years, making food for other people that I didn't eat myself.

So, walking, stretching, swimming, what the trainer tells me, what the nutritionist tells me ... and any other general exercise I can build myself up to doing.  I'm not under a heavy time constraint.  Tamara's next move is onto dialysis, which we'd hoped to avoid entirely, because it hasn't come to that.  She's just hanging onto this side of maintaining her kidney function, which she hopes to go on doing.  Her doctor hasn't stated any specific time for when that will happen.  So I have a number of months ahead of me to find my stride and train for the operation, which hopefully could still take place this year.  If I can convince the clinic that I'm on my way, given six months or so of working out, then we're going to be fine.

It's not actually a problem to be solved.  It's a matter of doing it, which I'm able to do.  I realise that this post would have been better written in two months, after I'd made considerable steps towards getting there; and I realise that a lot of people make promises to themselves that they don't keep.  But they're not me.  I know how to take up a task and do it day in and day out until it's done.  I'm just beyond page 100 of the Streetvendor's Guide, which has been one year less 13 days since I started it on February 3rd last year.  Exercising takes a lot less thinking.  Yes, it's dull, but there are ways around that — and it took me just five minutes of pondering and reviewing my love for Tamara to decide there is no other option.  If not my kidney, she's going to wait for 3-5 years for one; and I can't bear the thought of her sitting in a chair waiting while a machine cleans her blood.  The pain of that in my thoughts is too awful to bear.  I'd rather be bored, and sore, and perhaps unable to sleep at night.

The clinic told me that it has to be a lifestyle change.  It's not just losing weight, it's doing that well.  I agree.  Which is why I'm organising myself to do it over a period of six to ten months, not over night.  As you come to the end of this post, remember that I am a fairly healthy person.  I started by saying that in general, everyone but the kidney clinic considers my health to be fairly remarkable for a man my age.  I can easily walk a distance of 4 miles if I just get up and do it.  But I have to be more than "fairly" healty for this.  I have to be early 20s healthy.

So I will be.  I don't need luck, but please wish me well.

The Ghosts of Christmases Past & Present

11 p.m. on Friday and my first dinner for Christmas is done, put on for friends.  We had a large stuffed chicken and honeyed carrots, with nog, wine, 12-year-old rye and very little conversation about politics.  Mostly, talked about music and writing, philosophy and here and there, family and stories from the past.  Good times.

I haven't much energy left but I felt compelled to write a moment about this strange series I'm writing.  I understand perfectly the absurdity of it all — and I certainly appreciate how much opportunity it gives me to talk about myself, my early life, my troubles and strife, and all the good things that make for a good old-fashioned inflated ego.  I can only say that it's what's on my mind at present.  I hope that it rings clear that these are not times I'd ever want to relive, nor are they things I feel nostalgic about.  I'd enjoy seeing Mr. Leavitt or Mr. Mullen again, certainly; but given the premise, it would be impossible to relate to, or be friends with, any of those friends I had at that time.  I cannot, as some writers imagine is possible, believe that I could simply forget every lesson I've received over the last fifty years so I could "play" with a bunch of children that, at best, I have few memories about.

Though perhaps that's an element in this investigation that spoils the reader's pleasure ... that I refuse to play blind man when describing with my parents were like, or the rest of my teachers, or the world at large.  For the record, my parents weren't monsters.  Later, my father would knock me around with his fists once he'd lost all ability to intimidate me with his voice, and my mother would retreat into her shell whenever faced with a moment of stress ... but they did not drink, or gamble, or fail to pay the rent or set out to maliciously humiliate myself or my siblings.  Their version of "love" was fully based on the principle that their responsibility towards their children was to ensure they had a good life ... and therefore my parents pounded the drum of school and church and work for work's sake, all-fired certain that the best way to drive children towards a university, a professional career, a house and a family was to give no other options to that plan, and to ground us, intimidate us, and restate their position hundreds of times until our growing old enough to understand how much of it was really bullshit that had been taught to them, which they had failed to recognise as such.  Or maybe they always knew, but hoped and prayed they were wrong.

Much they tried to teach me stuck — but nearly always in ways they didn't intend.  My father repeated constantly that I "needed to take responsibility" for things, but he meant school and my grades and the respect I had for teachers.  I interpreted it as taking responsibility for what I believed, for helping others who could not help themselves, that I was responsible to the truth about the cruelties and misery in the world ... these being all sorts of esoteric things my father didn't give a damn about.  I'm not nostalgic about my father; I'm not in love with my father as a man, or as my progenitor; because after all this time I still think he was wrong.  I think that, in the end, he was a very selfish man, someone who worked hard and got his, and had very little time to spare for others unless that sparing in some way helped himself.

They had a very comfortable and contented life.  They never lost their home, they were never broke, they never lacked for the money to do the things they wanted ... and despite heart troubles in my mother, who did suffer on account of that, after being given 3 years to live in 1977 she went ahead and lived 35 years instead.  As much trouble as she had, medical science kept pace and kept her alive year after year.  She saw her children grow up and marry, and she was given six grandchildren.  Her house was full every Christmas; her children lived in the same city with her and neither she nor my father ever had to live out the lyrics of Cat's in the Cradle.  They'd been married for 54 years when she died; as far as I know, neither ever had an affair on the other; and though they quarrelled, they were there for each other, through good times and bad.

It is a sin for many people not to speak of one's parents with reverent tones.  It's a sin not to want to return to the foolhardy dimwittedness of childhood, when we were mesmerised by shiny objects and remarkably simple things.  It's a sin not to pay lip service to the glories of some past decade in which we were children, as if any decade in human history — ever — has been worth speaking about in glowing terms.  Nostagia is bunk.  For those readers out there who had great and wonderful parents, who have their backs up reading this for the sin I've committed in no longer loving mine, wake up please and realise that there are untold hundreds of millions of children in the world who have terrible parents.  I was not treated well, kindly, generously, patiently or lovingly by mine, for all their abundance.

I have no desire to be as ignorant as a child again; I don't yearn for the shallowness of childhood games and dreams.  I like being educated and aware.  I am enormously grateful for the wisdom I've acquired.  I hold dear every soul who's taken the trouble to teach me, help me, be gracious onto me and give me reason to believe in the goodness in the world — a goodness I can experience and enjoy, right now, without the need for blinders nor wistful fantasies about a time that never actually existed.  I don't need or want the memory of friends long gone away ... I can walk ten paces from where I sit at this moment and seize hold of my Tamara, squeezing her with love and asking if there's anything she wants or needs, which I am pleased and honored to provide, if she's ready to name something.  It is in this now that I'm happy; and it's with that happiness in hand, that I've built over the course of my life stone by stone and hug by hug, that I can comfortably stab and maim a past I have no special love for.

To me, it's a problem to solve.  If it were such-and-such a time, and this were my goal, these would be my obstacles and these would be my assets.  I am deconstructing.  And because I am, I am happy.

Forgive me, dear reader.  Let me finish, since I don't know if I'll write again before the 25th, by wishing you all a Merry Christmas.  May you all spend it as you wish, with people you love, who love you, and may this year be memorable for you in all the years hence that you have to spend.

Home

Tamara and I have completed our trip across Canada and parts of America, and are now safe at home.  The last day and a half, from Winnipeg to Calgary, went ordinarily, though we were quite tired and ready to be done.

My take on the trip is varied, apart from things I've said.  I'm certainly glad we went, despite not finding what we sought.  But after 19 days of continuous travelling, it's difficult at this time to be objective.  Mostly, it's just the old saw of home being the best place of all.  This is especially true in our case, since we're home four days ahead of our original plans, simply because we'd had enough vacationing and wanted to stop.

As I haven't delved into anything serious in nearly three weeks, I feel like an overcharged battery, ready to let loose on a long list of things.  I don't know precisely what I'm going to do next, though the Streetvendor's Guide will take priority.  Then it's certainly getting myself prepped for video podcasts, as I see this being a necessary step forward in drawing attention to my work.  Following that, some flotsam and jetsam here and there.  Last night, in a hotel room in Swift Current, I did some test work applying ChatGPT as a search engine for the Authentic wiki, and found it somewhat useful in suggesting possible sage studies and abilities.  It's really in how the system is used.

But for now, rest.  Just rest.

Banter

Well, there's this.  A group of wits decided to do a 51 minute podcast about this blog.

And honestly, it's flattering.  We don't rise to this level of smarm without having achieved ... something.

Please support my patreon.

Good News!

A few small things, as I'm finding it difficult to type.  Better today than yesterday.

On the subject of maladies, it's a credible argument that something bad might happen to a character at any time, regardless of the character's carefulness or the player's game play.  For example, Wednesday morning I was doing the dishes when the bottom of the glass I was washing fell off, causing the exposed glass edge to do this:

Because that's how it goes.  Was nice though; with our new car, we were able to pop over to my doctor right away and get it stitched up within the hour.  Today it's come a long way, so that typing this is less of a strain, though the progressive key strokes are moderately unpleasant micro-pangs.

Somehow, I feel encouraged by yesterday's announcement of "One D&D", once again expressing the company's wish-fulfillment regarding its naming of things.  As a product-maker of old style D&D, for a while now I've been made uncomfortable by the success of 5e and it's propagandistic, soulless destruction of actual D&D game play, by insidiously teaching young children that it doesn't exist.  Much as I hate to admit it, 5e came in with a depressingly good marketing strategy.  Pretend that "real" game players designed the game, then pump it full of hot garbage spewed by gaming "journalists" ... and cementing the whole with game-store policed adventure clubs.  The combination of these has made a shitty version of a great game extremely popular.

It's enough to make me slash my hands ... er, wrists.

However, with the inevitable sorry release of the WOTC's most recent splatbook, Tasha's Cauldron of the Same Old Crap, the company has decided to piss on it's own marketing by announcing that yes, they really are going forward with dndnext, announcing that they're "dropping editions" and moving forward with the badly named 6th edition ... which makes the game's rules even MORE player friendly.

One nice thing about being a games "journalist" is the happy willingness of merely repeating the company's talking points as "reporting," while I assume getting paid for doing so.  Although the company are a bunch of lying liars, and games are "only games," it's perfectly safe to pretend that the new rules are variously awesome, amazing, terrific, a bold step forward and additional boilerplate-type rhetoric that makes sure the writer keeps his or her job while the online magazine retains it's adbuy from the company being reviewed.  It's all quite incestuous.

"6th" edition will succeed in bursting the bubble of approximately 8 million 5e game players ... which for me, is good news.  By continuously undermining its credibility, the company usefully spreads discontent and yes, anger, with company products, since a new ruleset is always a part of every change.  Such poorly considered amateurish marketing desperation is a sure sign that at least 5-10% of 5e players will be pushed towards adopting earlier game versions, which don't change.  As of today, I have potentially four to eight hundred thousand new customers.

Awesome.

Happy

I feel that I wrote a good post about story today.  I made the argument that the word story is an enticement, a gimmick that writers and business people use to fool listeners into thinking they're getting something good ... when in fact they're getting a moral of little value.  The post argues that we rush towards stories nonetheless, because we're biologically programmed to think we're going to find something when we search for it.  Even when we come up empty.

I love to write.  It's what I wanted to do for a living ... and now I do.  Whereas many times in the last seven years I've been in earnest where money was concerned, things seem to have sorted themselves out.  I have steady work, I'm appreciated, I'm ribbed almost daily for having the luck to go to Montreal in just 61 days ... and my partner Tamara and I have been able to enjoy our emergence from Covid (if that's what this is) with more comfort than we could have hoped.

Throughout the changes we've experienced, Patreon has been an important part.  Supporters made it possible for me to get a new computer when my old one failed.  Supporters made it possible for Tamara, an American citizen, to achieve permanent status in Canada.  We've filled out a form to become married in the next month, without a ceremony (as she wants) on a day that's yet unspecified ... though it'll be prior to Montreal.  On two occasions, Patreon stood between us and the street.

I want those who have decided, or had to abandon my Patreon, to know that I understand completely and wish you the very best.  Inflation is rampant, there are many reasons not to continue funding an old D&D horse like myself ... and self-care must be first and foremost.  I don't know for a fact why you've chosen to go.  I may be repeating myself and you've become bored.  You may be on your last financial legs.  Possibly, you believe that since I'm no longer down and out in Calgary, I don't need your support.  I almost never learn the real reason.  It doesn't matter.  You've given what you can, or would, and I thank you.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Once upon a time, if I spoke of Patreon, it was to tell what dire straits I was in.  No longer, thank everything.  There are, today, only two reasons to give to my Patreon.  The first is that you feel I've earned it.  That I've written something that you would have paid some amount of money to buy, if it were stuffed in a book published by the WOTC, that you found on your gamestore bookshelf.  Something you read and thought, "Wow, that was really worth the money."  If I've written something on those lines, and you were moved by the value, then it makes sense to pay me.

The other reason is that you have enough money that you can indulge in frivolities like "making the world a better place."  And that you feel, perhaps delusionally, that I'm the right pitbull for you to back.  That you feel my work here, and on my wiki, and in the books I've written (and pretend to write), are the right place for your money.  If you believe that there is a better D&D culture and community that might exist out there, and you feel that my scribblings are helping make that possible, then it makes sense for you to contribute to my Patreon.

But if you're still giving me money to support me, to help me pay my rent, to ensure that I'm not so broke that I'll stop writing because I've been thrown out of my residence, then you're free at last.  It's a full year since I hit on my present writing job; if it lasts just five years, Tamara and I will be set for life.  I've had two other offers connected to the work I'm doing, so I have other places to go.  I'm comfortable.  I'm happy.  If you like, pat yourself on the back and know that you kept an artist from going down for the count.  YOU did it.  YOU supported me until I got here.  You've done your job.  Thank you.  Please feel free to withdraw your support now, and help some other poor down and out writer.  There are lots of us.

Felt I had to write this.  I don't want any of my supporters going away unhappy, or unappreciated, or feeling like I don't care.  I do care.  A lot.  I want all of you to be happy and I want to keep on writing, here and elsewhere, whether I'm paid or not.

It's all I ever wanted.