Mars has finally left retrograde this week and while Saturn and the outer planets are all still “revving their engines” waiting to go direct again, now with Mars exalted in Capricorn I felt like I really got to attacking some projects…
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And it also probably wasn’t a terrible time to be thinking about Hell… for that day I lit a third candle in offering as Aaron and I also recorded our third and final session of To Baator and Back with the Red Moon Roleplaying guys… as story about a group of men literally dragged to the Nine Hells of the D&D/Blackspire Universe…
All in all the session went great, everyone had a blast and it seemed like to a person they all were sad the story had to finally come to an end. Still, I did leave it with a very opened-ended sort of ending that we hung a huge question mark over… which hopefully whets everyone’s appetite for more. Ideally specifically for more Blackspire and Adventure Hook content, but who knows… if there’s enough demand we may need to revisit those characters one day for some more adventures…
Candle #3: “I and my comrades are worthy of infinite success”
Still… the content I created for this game should serve as interesting materials Aaron and I can offer for our Adventure Hook Patreons… specifically the Monster Summoning and X Marks the Spot awards. It’s also inspired me to consider writing a version of this story as an adventure using the same set of five characters and backstory, yet with the added twist that they’ve all been submerged into the waters of the River Styx and thus have forgotten all the memories of their former lives… and they have to piece together who they each are and what happened to them based on all the clues that are in their pockets…
I’d actually run a game with the same premise for my college gaming buddies many, many years ago, and it makes for an interesting story, especially when some of the characters figure out they at least used to be old adversaries. The cast of this To Baator and Back game could fit that mold very nicely.
Maybe one day…
For now I’m still slogging through the rather substantial editing process it has been for the part two of To Baator and Back. At this point I’m about three quarters of the way through, but really was hoping to have it done by tomorrow, so if I can plow through some more this evening I might be able to wrap it up and get it over to the RMR guys. Hopefully they’ll give it a listen to determine what extra stuff they might want to record that we can add in. We also ended up talking quite a bit both before and after the last game that I’m sorry we weren’t recording, as we had some interesting conversations… and more than one moment of synchronicity that will just have to remain elements of the ether…
Still, I am quite anxious to get through these initial clean up edits and get into the actual soundtrack stuff, for the RMR guys surprised us with some more awesome news. In addition new to having access to the dark ambient music of the Cryo Chamber label… like that wasn’t awesome enough…
Cryo Chamber – 24 bit Dark Ambient Label
But we also learned that Beamdog has given us permission to use the new enhanced soundtrack to Planescape: Torment for our finished episodes! This late 90’s video game has been called “interactive literature”… it”s been called “the greatest video game ever made”. I don’t know about that, but I seriously love that game… Torment became a huge influence on me when I played it around the time when it’d come out, and now that we have access to that music for out own story I am amazingly excited to be able to connect with that.
I mean… Baator even has it’s own little musical theme on the soundtrack. Sure it’s only about a minute and a half long (most of the tracks on this album are around that) but with the Cryo Chamber stuff to bridge it all I think we have the potential here to create something truly epic… and if the talk of a revamping of the Planescape universe truly is on the horizon, perhaps the iron is hot and the time of our strike will be apropos…
The Red Moon guys want to leave things simple with only the Planescape and Cryochamber stuff comprising their version of this recording, but I also fully intend to eventually create an even more pared down “radio drama” version without the mechanics talk, and more varied music and with the addition of sound effects and more… I may even consider approaching SyrinScape and BattleBards as well to see if maybe they’ll want to have their content a part of this “special edition” project as well… if not I still have my decent enough audio toolbox downloaded from ZapSplat.com and FreeSound.org.
Also, knowing so much extra editing is in my future, to say nothing of my looming engagement with the Theosophical Society, prompted me this week to also buckle down and plow through the rest of the edits for Blackspire – Season 1: Episode 10 which is now scheduled for release on the 24th of this month (or the 17th for Patreon supporters). This completes most of my editing responsibilities for the month, which is good because Episode 8 just released this week, so I’m ahead, but not by much and I have plenty left to do this month still…
However, Aaron and I still managed to record the next episode of Adventure Hook which turned out to be a pretty interesting one, as all throughout the recording synchronicity would continually rear its beautiful head. I don’t want to spoil anything about it just yet, other than we really got the opportunity to explain a nice chunk of our collaborative universe’s concepts… and I got to wax poetic a bit about the genius/madness of my grand magickal understanding of it all… as I attempted to illustrate here (over a year and a half ago I might add)…
Qabbalistically explaining the Blackspire/Dungeons & Dragon’s multiverse using H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos
Anyway… it was also nice to do a bit of gaming where 1) it didn’t need to be recorded and 2) I wasn’t responsible for running the game. So it was nice when the B.R.U.W. Crew also got together to play our Armastead campaign… and really just play. Of course, the gang is excited about the possibilities the podcast presents, and we’re even talking about the possibility of attending GenCon next year if
However, on a semi-related note, at the prompting of an old MICA buddy: local artist Matt Bovie (who I also used to game with back in college) recently I also got in touch with another fellow alumni Justin Sirois who is also a fixture of the Baltimore gaming scene… and ironically was dorm-mates with my old gaming friends Filip Sablik (Top Cow, BOOM! Studios) and Michael Montenat (Dead Squad, Glacier City) the same year we all gamed together (and was even where Aaron and I met and played together for the first time). It’s crazy to realize what a “vortex” of comics and gaming minds were in that room that year… especially since I knew Justin “off and on” for years and had no idea what he’d been into…
But now I learn that not only is he the person behind Severed Books and Dungeon Dealer… he’s also the main organizer of the RPG Baltimore Fest which takes place during Artscape…
It was great to be in touch again, and Justin’s even asked for my help with next year’s RPGB which sounds like it could be fun, and another great opportunity to expand the podcasts. I even suggested inviting the Laughfinder guys to do their gaming comedy tour there (seems like a no-brainer) and a player in Justin’s home game was even a guest on Laughfinder this week and name dropped him there, so again… synchronicity seems to be in the air…
And Jenny even got a huge piece of good news that had been a long time coming this week, which she chalked up to last week’s Abundance Renewal ritual…
Really all I can feel is the gratitude for the grace it feels like the Universe keeps extending me…
All is right with the world.
Sunday 9/2/18-
Sun: Virgo–
Moon: Gemini (50 % Waning)
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.