Ratcheting Up to Catching Up

So… quite a lot has happened since I last made a blog entry. Let’s get into it, shall we..?

For my disclosure on this or any of my posts or pages… please visit my Disclosure page.

Here we go…

Jim Meyer and the Laughfinder crew continue every week to show Blackspire Studios some love on their Podcast. It’s even gotten to the point where I’ve basically become one of their “sponsors” and typically get mentioned along with their others.

I’d done miniatures for all the PC characters for their past two seasons, but I’d realized that GMs rarely ever get to see their own NPC characters come to life in the same way, so I decided to give a gift to Dorian Gray (their GM) as well. I painted up figures for two recurring characters on the show, a mantis-man mercenary, and an undead science officer and gave them to Jim at a recent Blackspire recording to deliver.

You can hear them “unveiling” these figures on this week’s episode:

Season 3 Episode 23 Hakuna Matata

 

Naturally, Blackspire has been a major focus of mine over this time. I’ve done a lot of prep work for the adventures prior to us recording, and even went so far as to write a few pages of “flavor text” to open our third recording session. While our first attempt was a bust and needed to be rescheduled, over the past two months we still managed to meet and record two different gaming sessions, which resulted in six+ more hours (meaning six more episodes worth…) of material.

I’d also painted a number of new miniatures for these sessions, but most notably was a new Asian-inspired dragon (for one of my PCs) and an oni-type character who would serve as a main antagonist to the story. I also really made a nice set up for this session using my now (mostly) all-painted Dwarven Forge city and dungeon pieces, which really helped make the scene come alive…

Also, related but at a slight change of pace, we also recorded another side-session with Jenny to start to flesh out the new PC she’ll be playing that I plan to eventually introduce into the Blackspire game. It needs some additional scenes recorded to be and dropped in, and we have a lot more recording ground to cover until we’ll be ready to actually introduce the character into the game, but it’s a good start so far.

I also managed to finish up the edits for the first Window Hook Row recording (Episode 8) and I’ve got the rough recordings enough to make five more. I’ve had other things on my plate lately as well, so we won’t actually be recording another Blackspire session until late March, but that will give me time to try to wrap up those edits, as well as ideally record and edit the material for the Blackspire Season Zero intro episodes I want to do… which now that I have this blog back, I actually have access to the Pre-Series History write-up and can actually do that now… I learned my lesson and have saved a back-up of that info as well… just in case…

I’m a bit intimidated to try and tackle that stuff, since it’ll only me and my voice for those first few episodes, but at least I’ll have time to try and get it all wrapped up soon, as well as tackling a few other things I’ve got going on as well…

Last month while Aaron and I were discussing my machinations for my next Blackspire session, he suggested that the two of us also start our own podcast about more or less what we were already doing, discussing adventure creation. Aaron was getting quite enthusiastic, and after some a few back and forths we settled on the structure/conceit of the show, and even settled on the name.

Adventure Hook

Welcome to Adventure Hook, a podcast with a couple of comic book pros who also happen to be dungeon masters. Every episode we attempt to take a simple idea for a role-playing game, like Dungeons and Dragons, and turn it into something playable as a scenario, a one-shot adventure, or even the foundation for an entire campaign. We chose the Adventure Hooks at random from a list of twenty different ideas, and after one gets used we replace it with a new one chosen from our listener submitted suggestions.

Aaron even engaged the talents of a local Albuquerque designer he knew to help create some options for the show’s logo based on Aaron’s original design, and we’re both pretty pleased with the final results.

 

The deal is that I will handle the lion’s share of the show’s editing responsibilities (which is nothing compared to what it takes to create an episode of Blackspire), while Aaron will handle the outreach, social media, and all that other stuff that I really suck at. Aaron’s also designing stuff like the more detailed banner art we’ll use for the show’s site, and the like.

So, follow us on Twitter: @adventure_hook

I gotta say, I love his initial mock up, and we discussed a bit more about what other cool little adventure hooks could populate this scene…

 

 

Thus far, Aaron and I have recorded a total of four episodes, plus a “bonus” one we could use one day as a Patreon reward. We’ve still got some rough spots to buff out, and some stuff we want to re-record, but we’re off to a pretty surprisingly good start.

My plan is to structure things so that both Adventure Hook and Blackspire end up as bi-weekly podcasts releasing on opposite weeks to one another, which sounds like a good plan to me.

But, being so game heavy doesn’t mean I’ve completely forgotten about spiritual pursuits. In fact, my Reliquum YouTube subscribers continue to increase and I’ve been getting requests for more lecture material. This prompted my to finally re-watch my recording of my Magick 201 lecture I gave at the Theosophical Society in Maryland back in April of last year… I’d dreaded doing this because (once again) my technical limitations meant I failed to successfully record the end of the lecture… or the ritual performance that followed.

I’d been so disheartened by this, believing my recording to be unusable that I’d shelved it, but this prompting, as well as the representative from TS asking me to give some more talks in 2018 lit the fire I needed to edit together what ended up being two pretty simple 30 minute videos of that talk I called:

Magick 201 – Spellwork

Now, I’d become fairly distressed about releasing them, since these videos explicitly mention this blog, which of course had been down at the time for well over a month now, and I feared posting these new videos that could potentially direct people back to a dead URL would only make me look foolish. But, I needed to remember I don’t do these for me, they’re supposed to be a form of service, and as such I decided I needed to get my ego out of the way, and just get this (now long overdue) info out there… and so that’s I did.

Three days later, I had word the issues with the hosting company would be rectified. One week to the day from uploading to YouTube and I was back online. And my subscribers have had a sharp rise since then (I might crack 80 before the end of the month) and Jenny’s been encouraging me to do more videos as well, so this seems to be something I need to place more of a focus on.

I’d also been talking with fellow magician friend Frater Superabo (also doing his own magick YouTube videos) who I’d given a mention to in the Magick 201 talk, and we may be working together on some stuff in the future. Last year I’d also agreed to do more classes at the Theosophical Society, and I’ve promised to do a viewer suggested video for every 100 subscribers I get, so one way or another I should be producing more instructional videos like this in the coming year.

 

Also, with the recent New Moon, the time has come to actually begin work on the painting project for the cover of The Friend’s mysterious new book. She’s been quite involved in the process, from the initial sketch phase, to giving both visual and spiritual advice as the process progresses, but I’ve promised not to reveal any details about this project before its completion. Just know I consider this project a spiritual labor, and has thus far proven itself to be one fraught with many mysterious obstacles, and many bizarre elements of synchronicity.

Man, I wish I could talk more about this one, or show the work in progress… one day I will…

 

There’s more, but I feel that’s enough for now. Jenny says 2018 is the “Year of Yes” where we seize on all the interesting opportunities that present themselves to us. She’s got her own ambitions this year to secure certification for her Reiki practice, and I’ve got plenty more to say “yes” to myself before I’ll be done with 2018…

Bring it on!

 

Friday 2/23/18-

Sun: Pisces–

Moon: Gemini (Waxing 50%)

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.