As the few major things that require planning in advance fast approach, I spent this week getting what I could ready. I really want to make things as special as I can make them… exceeding people’s expectations wherever I can is my goal…
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But first, my brother-in-law was in town all week for a training conference for his new job, and so over the weekend my sister brought the baby up from DC to visit, and Jenny and I spent the day with her bumming around Fells Point for an afternoon.
Yáhzí’s favorite part though, seemed to be flying after pigeons on the pier (with a little help from his uncle). Jenny’s impulse to buy popcorn just a few minutes earlier proved to be a great pigeon drawer, and a few intrepid birds even hopped up on our knees. One bird in particular even hovered up to perch on Jenny’s hand, Snow White style… and boy did little Yáhzí’ love that…
Super-Yáhzí
We picked out a new toy for him at the local educationally-friendly toy store Amuse down on Thames St, grabbed lunch at Brick Oven Pizza, and after the conference all met up for drinks at the Wharf Rat. A very fun, very Baltimore-y kinda day…
It looks like Frater Superabo at least will be joining Brother Enlil, Jenny and myself for our little dinner party. It’s been my general observation that of late, many of the so-called “magickal persuasion” have been hunkering down and/or charging up over the past year (I think the sun’s odd activity has something to do with it, but what do I know..?). But now it feels like that period is passing, and the hermits are coming out of their caves (myself included) to congregate once more. Jenny and I have both missed our hang-out sessions with him, and now that he’s blogging and making videos again, I think we’re both in the mind to do some collaboration… and Jenny has some ideas as well. Ideas for gaming/magick classes I could potentially give at CCBC… ideas for us all doing a magick talk show of sorts together… magick it seems, is just in the air…
But while magick is never far from my mind, of late my approach has been somewhat different, as I’m more focused on putting magickal principles (and some predictive programming perhaps…) into the framework of the role-playing game, and then giving it an accessible format…
That’s what all this is about after all… and Blackspire is only the current incarnation of where I can ultimately go with all this…
The most pressing game I’m next running is scheduled for November 4th, and while I feel fairly prepared for the actual game there are some minis I’ve been wanting to finish up for it that would be cool to have in game, but not actually essential, so I’ve put them off in lieu of working on something different (but that’s for a different gaming session, so more on that later).
I dove back into Audacity with a vengeance and got some work done on the revisions to Episode 1 (though my focus was on cleaning up my actual file, so I could actually do some real edits down the line… I’m learning though…). I’ve also got a better “ear” for sound levels now, so my revisions were mostly focused on evening out the soundtracks and sound effects to create a more pleasant listening experience.
I still need to record a few more “sound bites” from my players before I can really wrap that Episode up, but the nuts and bolts are in good shape now. So, I also dove into the same sort of work for the Episode 2, which I hadn’t quite finished up, but now I’ve gone and revised all I’ve done so far, and began edits on what’s still left to do. I think it sounds pretty good so far, and I’m close to the end at this point, so hopefully I can finish it up this weekend and give the B.R.U.W. crew time that week to listen to it before we play again on Saturday.
I also ordered a pack of Condition Cards that I think will be pretty handy quick resources for Blackspire gameplay.
GameMastery Condition Cards for the Pathfinder RPG system
Additionally I think they’ll be super useful for Brother Enlil, who’s never played the game before, but who I want to get the “full experience” of… heh, heh…
And on that note..
I did decide that Brother Enlil needed a truly epic miniature for his first character, and while I took many liberties with his final character build, his basic concept (a drow urban ranger) carries through… though I decided that he’ll also have a giant scorpion for an animal companion, and got to work. Sometimes it’s just nice to “turn my brain off” a bit and just focus on something technical and detail oriented… and in truth I really ended up knocking this one out pretty quickly, all things concerned…
I chose two figures from Reaper’s Bones series I had, and gave the elf a shield and scorpion tail whip to match his companion
The character had spent some time in Jade Town, so I wanted him to have a weapon commemorating that (a nine-ring broadsword). Using chainmail making techniques I snipped off a few rings to attach to his sword
The problem was… somewhere along the way I’d lost one of the sets of the scorpion’s legs, so ended up sculpting a new pair out of “green stuff“.
Once it’s painted, it’s hard to tell which legs were “fake”.
Now we’re getting somewhere…
The completed figures with bases resembling a spreading swamp (ties into another bit of the character’s background)
And of course… since I can’t help myself… (surprise) I put magnets in the figure bases so like some kind of dark-elf Legolas channeling Simon Belmont he can ride his dire scorpion into war on the battle.mat..
I’ll take better pics of this figure eventually, as well as try to get a shot revealing what may be the coolest twist yet… the figures were “treated” with some glow-in-the-dark paint, and look uber-cool under blacklight…
I think Brother Enlil will be pleasantly surprised…
But that done.. so now I can worry about the actual adventure I’m gonna put him and Jenny through…
And, once again my strange painting of The Dunwich Horror has brought me luck.
The Dunwich Horror (prints available on RedBubble)
I was recently contacted by (of all things) by an RPG Podcast called How We Roll that actually play a number of games that interest me, but they specifically play Call of Cthulhu (and even have the game’s creators on as guests, which is awesome). And as such they wanted my permission to use the Dunwich piece (which I can only assume they found on RedBubble… ) in conjunction with their show, which I was only too glad to agree to. I’ve had the Great Old Ones secretly on the brain quite a bit lately (especially from game talk with Aaron that same day) so it’s all oddly fitting of course…
But tonight, some friends have invited Jenny and I over to watch some of the newest season of Stranger Things. I was a huge fan of the first series (especially the gaming ideas it helped articulate) and so we have high hopes. And it’s always cool just to hang out and do “normal” stuff for a while too…
By this time next week it’ll be the full moon, and the second recording session of the Blackspire RPG Campaign will be underway!
Game on!
Friday 10/27/17-
Sun: Scorpio –
Moon: Aquarius (50% Waxing)
For my disclosure on this or any of my posts or pages… please visit my Disclosure page.