Thankfully, a nice chunk of this week was spent in the company of family overt the Thanksgiving holiday, and the Universe had conspired in out favor to free up the time for us to do that.
For my disclosure on this or any of my posts or pages… please visit my Disclosure page.
Otherwise, I’ve busied myself this week in preparation for the next two Blackspire games I’ll be running/recording in the next few days. One scenario will use a custom game mechanic I’ve been playing around with to “render” and populate random city streets with obstacles and undead baddies…
I plan to take a sort of “Final Fantasy” approach, where successful skill challenges will allow them to move about block to block on the larger map, but after their third failed roll we then “zoom in” to battle-mat size and they’ll have to play out the actual traversing of that particular road.
And so to that end I’ve mocked up a hex map of the larger area of the city where that whole adventure will take place. I think this will end up being a fairly handy resource as a backbone, but this week I’ve also been customizing various NPCs in HeroLab (both adversarial and advantageous), creating cardboard battle-mats and “dice trays” to make the encounter scenes easier to lay out… as well as being more strategic (and therefore hopefully more “radio friendly”).
Should be interesting… or at least different…
This gaming session is definitely geared more towards the combat-heavy inclinations of the White Hydra Mercenaries, but my other gaming session will be run for Jen and Jenny, and should prove to be much more cerebral. While there will certainly be an investigative element to the story, in preparation I’ve also been doing a bit more research into fey-like concepts… particularly ones related to the much more esoteric forms of commerce the fairly folk like to engage in (like trading a year off the end of your life, or a letter from your name, that kind of thing). I’ve got a whole big list I’ve been working on to source for ideas from anytime I need some obscure inspiration (or I need something “appropriate” in a fit of gaming improvisation) for something in this ballpark… I have no idea how any of these games might end up going, but I want to be thinking ahead in case… or if/when we get there.
Also, the newest Blackspire teaser is out this week, and even though this one technically has some “spoilers” in it, I included them to hopefully whet the listener’s whistle for even more intrigue that you can only get via the full Patreon episodes.
And it may be too early to say, but some news crossed my inbox this week which might actually breath new hope into that Yule Lads project I’d finished up recently… the production of which seemed to have hit a brick wall. At the risk of jinxing it I’ll say no more… it just goes to show how manifestation can’t really happen until you’ve completely forgotten about it… and knowing my typical luck, perhaps the only way it was ever getting published is when I’d completely resigned myself to the opposite…
We’ll see, but that’d make for one hell of a nice Yule gift for me, that’s for sure.
Still, even if nothing more comes of it, I still have an abundance of so much else I feel quite lucky regardless. Lots to be thankful for, and Jenny and I have lots of big plans to make our Christmas week with the family a truly memorable one…
Let’s see if I actually remember to take any good pictures this time.
I am so clearly not a natural when it comes to blogging…
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Wednesday 12/4/19-
Sun: Sagittarius–
Moon: Pisces (50% Waxing)
If you’d like to start from the “beginning” of all this… you can read from my first blog post.
For my disclosure on this or any of my posts or pages… please visit my Disclosure page.
