Showing posts with label dragnime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dragnime. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Holy Smokes! Let's Recap July!

Whew! That... was a LOOOOONG week, huh?

What? What do you mean, "It's August"!? *checks calendar*

HOLY SMOKES, I COMPLETELY MISSED UPDATING IN JULY!!!! Well, in that case...

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July just kind of blipped by for me. Sorry about that, folks. Let's see, the last time we chatted I was visiting my mom and sister. The trip was far too short, but it was very nice. After being together for 18 years, I FINALLY managed to take my husband to the Rita's Italian Ice stand RIGHT ON MAIN STREET OF MY HOMETOWN. I must have told him nearly every summer that we need to take him, and yet we always forgot. WELL NO MORE!

If you're from an area where you have no clue what I'm talking about, Rita's is a big Italian ice (or... I guess... "water ice" if you're from Philly...) restaurant chain in Pennsylvania. It's so big that they sell their brand of Italian ice in most PA grocery stores - at least, eastern PA grocery stores - and I grew up just assuming they were a national chain. Then I left PA and quickly discovered that Rita's apparently isn't so well-known outside my home state.

They specialize in Italian ice (obviously) and frozen custards. I personally love their gelati (specifically with their mango ice), which is a parfait-like layering of custard and ice.

Oh man. I made myself hungry. I should move on before I start drooling.

After the visit with the family, we finally managed our first real big hang with our local Beardy Man Wolfhearted. Now that we're all fully vaccinated we couldn't wait to hang for a significant amount of time for the first time in over a year. We brought up a small box of residentially-safe fireworks to set off on his lakeside dock and had a mini barbeque. We proceeded to kidnap him for the night and spent some of Independence Day itself with him at our place before Hubby had to go to work and I brought Wolfhearted home. It was nice to go from "I've barely seen you in 15 months!" to "We've hung out for nearly 24hrs straight!"

Independence Day was my only day off that week as my manager took some vacation time to visit her daughter, son-in-law, and her newborn grandson. It had been barely two weeks since she first visited to meet the grandson, and she was already whining that it's been "too long." Guess it's a good thing that her daughter is now about a 2hr drive away from her, as opposed to still being about 10hrs away! I'm fully expecting my mom to be the same way if/when Hubby and I have our first.

So, I hosted the first game of Scum and Villainy the day after a 24hr hang-out with Wolfhearted, and then the following day continued an 8-day work stint as my manager took her vacation. I had completely forgotten about this vacation (and my subsequent work schedule) when I last posted, otherwise I would have warned you fine folks that I would be too busy to have worked on my post. Sorry about that.

My first day off since Independence Day happened to be the anniversary of Rozsavaria's sister's death, so Hubby and I spent most of the day hanging with her. We spent far too long playing the Pokémon board game Master Trainer that came out in 1999. It was a blast though. And check out all the pokémon friends I was able to collect!

Call me James, because most of those pokémon just joined my team of their own volition (also, because a lot of the pokémon I had throughout the game were James' at one point in the series). See, in the game there are these cards you could draw that allow you an advantage. Things like healing potions or extra battle points for when you're dueling with someone. There's also cards that tell you to just straight up pick up a pokémon that's unclaimed on the board. I got that one a LOT. I also, surprisingly enough, considering how much dice don't seem to like me, never lost a single match the whole game. I could have easily ended it about 15min into playing. Instead, I decided I wanted to collect ALL THE POKEMON! (That is the goal, is it not?) In the end - and about THREE HOURS LATER - Hubby beat the Elite Four and won the game. Still, in my heart I was the true winner since I had the most pokémon.

Before hanging with Roz, however, Hubby and I did something we've wanted to do for MOOOOONTHS. We were fully vaccinated. My mother had a chance to see my mid-back-length hair. Hubby and I had a day off together. We practically SPRINTED to the local hair salon and chopped all of our "quarantine hair" off! Both of us lost at least a foot of hair, but I think it was closer to 15 inches (38cm) for both of us!

Behold: the New Me!

Generated by Bitmoji

I'll be frank, my hair should look about 3x as full and fluffy as that Bitmoji (I have SO. MUCH. HAIR!), but that IS the closest to my hair style I was able to find. So... Hello! I'm going to go back to my LycoRogue persona now....

My second day off that week was spent playing catch-up on cleaning and errands. Also, some recovery from the hang-out with Roz the night before. Then it was right back into the grind for another 7 straight days. I had shifted my days off to bookend my birthday for my mom's trip up to see me, which meant I yet again didn't have my normal Tuesday off.

The last day I had before hitting 37 was spent with last-minute cleaning. All. Day.

On my birthday itself, Hubby made me breakfast, and we cuddled a bit and just relaxed. Then Mom arrived and we hung out for a bit. I opened presents and Hubby took us out to eat. There's still a lot of local restaurants we haven't hit up, so we started to remedy that on my birthday. It was a nice little restaurant/gift shop. We had fun going through the gift shop section while waiting for our food, then we brought it home to eat. We hung out a bit more, and then Hubby headed out for an event he had been excited about for months (and then felt guilty that it landed on my birthday, but I told him to go). Mom then gave me her true birthday gift: helping me destress by helping me organize yet again.

While Hubby was at his event, Mom and I hit up Walmart to get some supplies, and then we got to work. We have a closed-in back porch that we share with our landlady, and has the inside stairs to the upstairs apartments. We get a little corner of the porch to do with as we wish. If we really wanted, we could set up chairs back there and just hang. However, since it's not as private as our front porch, it's mostly used for storage. However, how we were storing things wasn't working for me, so Mom helped me start from scratch. The next day our pursuit continued as we moved to the garage to reorganize that as well. I'm shocked with how much we threw out and how much room we have now!

It was a LOT of hard work, and I was almost glad to go back to work the next day so I could relax, but it truly did help me start of my new year of life on the right foot. Took a lot of weight off and almost instantly improved my mental health a LOOOT. I'm not fully back to how I was a few years ago, but I'm definitely in a much better spot.

Unfortunately, the Sunday after my birthday I didn't get MUCH rest outside of work, as I had intended. I also couldn't "relax" much at work since I had to actually do my job the whole time! I know, right!?

But why couldn't I rest even OUTSIDE of work? Well, on the 25th Dragnime and his fiancé headed off on a 2-week roadtrip. Some time to bond, get out of their apartment, and take her back to her home state for the first time in nearly a year. They proceeded to pack her up so she could officially move in with him (instead of just staying put because of the pandemic worsening in her home state), and the two made it back home safe and sound about midnight on August 7th.

What does this have to do with me and my frantic July? Well. At the end of May they adopted this adorable little fuzzball.

he baybe

I was asked to feed and socialize this adorable hellion while Dragnime and his fiancé were out of town. It was a bit tricky at first to try to sort out how to feed a cat that was in a different home before going to work, and then finding time to feed said cat again post-work. Especially since we also spent at least an hour with him per feeding so he wouldn't get lonely. In the end, we ended up spending up to FIVE HOURS over at Dragnime's place just hanging out with his kitten post-dinner (we'd bring our own dinner over to his place to eat there).

But how can you say goodbye to this face!?

He got a touch bigger....

Excuse the blurriness of the photo, this fur-covered ball of energy wouldn't sit still long enough for pictures.

So, completely unexpectedly, the majority of my non-sleeping, not-working hours were spent at my friend's apartment, playing with his kitten. I would steal away some time to do a little bit on my laptop, but this little stinker wouldn't allow you to just sit still while he was around. He was constantly in the mood to play, and I was more than happy to oblige.

Clearly Hubby and I need a pet, but we also need a home that allows pets first....




My next day off - July 27th - Hubby and I did our normal errands during my usual work hours since the kitten would expect to be alone during those hours anyway. However, I DID make the mistake of trying to sort out our laundry while feeding the kitten breakfast. I forgot how much cats will not leave laundry alone.... Nothing was damaged, but it certainly took WAY longer than expected as Hubby kept pulling the cat back out of our laundry basket. The focus on the kitten did mean I didn't even THINK about my blog post that week, however.

Fast forward to Saturday and Sunday, where I had a random weekend off. Same deal as Tuesday: when I would normally be at work, I was away from kitten-sitting to do my own errands. One such errand was hanging out with Hubby and Roz on Saturday. We had been talking for MONTHS now about getting Hubby a focus stone to wear and help him realign his energies/aura. We finally managed the trip to do precisely that. The one he picked out is amazing! It's like he has the night sky trapped inside his stone! So pretty!

No filter. The image on the right just has a flash on it.

It's a blue goldstone. It's supposed to be a pendulum, but it just kept calling out to Hubby, and he's a large enough guy that the pendulum cut actually doesn't look too big on him as a necklace. We then hit up a craft store to get cording for his necklace. Hubby picked out the colors, I did the braiding, and Roz put it together as a necklace for him. She even put a lobster clasp on the stone's chain itself so he can then reattach it to the original pendulum chain if he ever wished to use it for the original purpose again. Also, if he ever wanted to switch out the necklace he wore it with, he can do so easily. I really love the idea of that clasp there for him. And he has seemed a bit happier ever since buying that stone for him. Even if it's not blessed yet to be that focus stone he needs, at least how pretty the stone is brings him joy.

So... uh... yeah! That was my July in a nutshell. The Tuesdays I'd normally publish were instead taken up by: work, errands and spending time with a grieving friend, work, and kitten-sitting/errand catch-up.

I didn't really do much of anything creative throughout July anyway. I was so stressed between work and cleaning for my mother's visit that I didn't really think of my blog. I didn't write anything. I didn't even host more than that first session of Scum and Villainy.

I loved the idea of recording our session and then transcribing the tape so we'd always have the actual events of the evening on record. A way to go back and refresh before a session, or a way to look back in future years to relive the game.

Problem is, the only time I had to transcribe anything - as you saw above - would have been at work. And work decided it didn't want to cooperate. Either insanity ensued, and there was no downtime at work to do anything. Or there was too little downtime for me to get anything accomplished. Then there was the third option: I felt awkward doing so.

Right around the start of July, our work radio called it quits. Technically, the receiver itself was fine, but it was too old and the internet radio provider the store owners use no longer supported that receiver. Cellphone carriers pull the same BS to force people to upgrade to a new phone even if the one they've had for 5+ years is still perfectly fine. How are these companies going to make money off of us if we hold on to old technology as long as it still works, and the darn things don't break like they're "supposed" to?!

So, anyway, we were without music at work while we were waiting for a new receiver to even be in stock! Yup! The provider had apparently sent out a warning in November that all of their older receivers would lose service by the end of June 2021, and yet the owners never alerted us (maybe didn't even read the notice), nor did they order a new receiver before ours became obsolete. Clearly they weren't the only ones, so the company was temporarily sold out. We FINALLY got our receiver yesterday, and it's awesome to have background music again! But that was a solid month of stone silence at work.

Personally, it didn't matter to me. I'm fine with silence as long as there's SOME ambient noise, such as the AC blowing or the printer or elevator resetting themselves. The sound of quiet typing on a keyboard also works. There's always something to keep my mind juuuuuuust occupied enough to not be bothered by silence. I also frequently play music in my head anyway.

My coworkers, on the other hand.... They couldn't really handle the quiet, and so if I just sat at my desk for hours on end typing away without interacting with them at all during our slow periods just felt.... awkward. So I usually filled the downtime chatting with them instead. It was nice, and I really enjoy chatting with my newest coworker; get to know her. However, it also means even less time to work on transcribing the SaV session, let alone prepare for the next one.

There was also the insidious 4th reason why transcriptions of the game didn't happen like I wanted. There were days where I worked with my manager, and she was with a customer while I had nothing else to do. I had downtime. I was alone in the office, so I didn't have to feel awkward about not talking with anyone. I just.... didn't have the mental energy. So instead I'd do some relatively mindless tasks.

One such task was finally starting up a Spotify account. I figured I could create a 10hr or so playlist of work-appropriate music that we could listen to while waiting for our new radio to come in. I spent DAYS putting this thing together, trying to find music I'd like, my coworkers would like, and the owners wouldn't mind playing in their store. In the end, I only managed about 9hrs of music before calling it good enough and waving the white flag. Only to then realize that none of the work computers were powerful enough to consistently play music off them all day, and if I played the music off my netbook loud enough that my coworkers could hear it in the office, it would practically blow out my eardrums. I had no way of broadcasting the playlist.... whoops.

While I was on Spotify anyway, I started transferring my music playlists from YouTube over to an actual site intended for music play. So that took up a lot of other mindless-task time. One such playlist, though, was the one I put together for Jolene back when I was still playing as her and then writing about her during NaNoWriMo.

Lately Taurus Pixie has been posting her story playlists to her blog. Lists of songs she listens to that help inspire her for that particular story. As I started to transfer over my Jolene playlist - and as I found more songs I wanted to add to it while listening to the radio in my car - I remembered Pixie's playlists. I was struck with a drive to refine Jolene's playlist. It was no longer just a collection of songs that inspire me while writing about her, it was now an organized story in playlist form. Kept me a few days, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

There's still some blank spots where I haven't found the perfect song yet, and there's about 5 Dua Lipa songs tagged on to the end of the playlist that I would like to use, but I'm not sure what part of Jolene's story they would relate to. Other than those two hiccups, I think this is pretty set.

You can find the Spotify playlist here: Jolene

To understand why I picked the songs I did, and how it relates to Jolene's overall story, I explained that in this Google Doc. It's a bulleted list of the 50+ songs I used and a short description of what part of Jolene's overall story that song covers. Jolene's Story in Playlist Form

Focusing on Jolene's playlist also sent me down a different rabbit hole: artist tracking. Up until a few years ago, I would regularly find images I liked on Google Images or Pinterest and save them to my computer without a care of noting who the artist was. It would be for my own private purposes, so it didn't seem to matter.

Then, a couple of years ago, I wanted to post images of Jolene to Tumblr, only to realize how scummy it was that I couldn't credit the artist of the original image I had doctored. It kept me until earlier this year - just this summer, actually - to track down who originally drew the woman I doctored for my main image of Jolene. Now that I was working on Jolene's story again - via building a playlist - I realized I needed to do the same thing with the images I chose for Jolene's paramours. I had all of these images saved, but no clue who the original artists were.

You know how I mentioned before that I would sometimes hop on my laptop while watching the kitten? Well, this was largely what I was doing. I still don't have all of the images tracked, but I did find a lot of the original artists.

ArtStation is a beautiful place.

I now make sure that if I like an image, even if I THINK I'm only going to keep it for my own enjoyment, I don't download the image unless I know the artist, and I credit said artist - and where the image was uploaded - in my titling of the image. That way I have all of the proper info to then slap on a watermark of the artist's name and a link back to their original art posting, should I ever repost somewhere. I know reposting at all isn't cool, even when crediting the artist like this. However, when I want to share something to this blog, for instance, I'd hate to not be able to properly explain myself simply because the artist might not even acknowledge my request to repost with credits. So, this is my backup plan. This also allows me the happy medium option of not actually reposting the image, but instead dropping a hotlink to the image on the artist's page.

For instance, here's the link to the image I had saved for Jolene's stalker Orick Kodgin.

I have to say, it is SOOOO annoying that it feels like at least 80% of all image searches land on uncredited reposts to Pinterest (most sites now have a "share to Pinterest" option so the artist is still credited!!!!), another 5% are Wattpad, and another 5% to 10% (depending on the image) direct you to AminoApps. Lord bless the artists who post to ArtStation, because I know if I find a link to that site I'll get proper artist crediting; that the artist themselves posted it there. Tumblr is usually good at either bringing me to the artist themselves or dropping a link to them. DeviantArt would also be good, but so few artists actually use it anymore. Twitter is hit-or-miss as to whether or not the poster is the actual artist, and so I usually have to do further research to confirm. Let me tell you how much fun THAT is when the posts aren't in English..... I hate being monolingual.

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That's what I spent the time watching the kitten doing, mostly: tracking down the artists of the images I already have saved to my computer. That, and putting Jolene's playlist together. The week leading up to my birthday was Playlist Week, as well as going back onto Picrew.me. I tried out a few new makers, and I went back to makers I had already used in order to start making Chayse and Ripley whenever possible, since I didn't think of building them originally.

I also spent two or three days gathering up all of the Picrew images I had built over the past few months, and putting them together in a single FB album, instead of just various threads on my page. That way it would be easier to find them and go back through them. Problem there is that I didn't have ALL of the images on one laptop. Some were on my netbook I take to work, and others were on my main laptop at home. As I put the album together I figured I'd use the other laptop at some point to put in the images I was missing. It wasn't until I finished putting an album of over 100 images together did I find out that Facebook no longer allows you to move images around inside an album after it's been published! I used to be able to do that! You can still rearrange the new images when you batch-upload them, but once they're officially published to the album, that's it. No rearranging. So I couldn't just insert the images I missed because they were on the other laptop.

Generated by Bitmoji

I didn't have the mental energy to keep going at that point. So now I'm slowly going back through the makers I previously used, make sure I have built every character I'd want to try building with that maker so I can upload all of them together, and then I'll eventually redo that Picrew album. I might also build the album on Flickr, or some sort of public album like that, so I can then share all of the images with you wonderful peeps.

HAHA. This is when I create a Pinterest just to post the Picrew images; credits fully included??? Lord, I hate that site, but that might actually be the best option. I'm open to suggestions of alternate sites in the comments here.

So, yeah, all of that was what I was doing instead of transcribing the recording I made of the first game. To be fair, I DID transcribe the RIP Racing portion we finished the session with (that was the side of the tape still in the recorder). It kept me the better part of a week (see earlier about not having much downtime at work), and that alone was so exhausting. Especially since I had screwed up where the players and NPCs were on the race track a couple of times, so what I canonically said in-game vs what should have happened if I had counted properly was a fun thing to try to juggle in my transcription notes.

Transcribing the SaV gameplay, however, should go smoother since it's a lot of broad description I can then sum up, and a bunch of out-of-character (OOC) discussion among the players as we all tried to get a feel for the game. Unfortunately, with how exhausting the RIP portion was, by the time I was ready to work on transcribing the SaV portion I was mentally burnt out and decided to focus on Picrew and Spotify instead.

I was also MAJORLY stressing. I had the one tape. I didn't want to buy more tapes or a digital recorder in case I was getting either of those for my birthday within the fortnight. I didn't finish transcribing, so my goal to keep recordings/transcriptions of the game was quickly vanishing in front of my eyes (either I would have to record over the 1st session or I wouldn't be able to record the 2nd). I was so focused on transcribing the old session that I didn't even THINK of coming up with game plot-points for the next session.

Thanks to an in-game, post-job entanglement (I'll explain those more in a future blog post when I actually talk about the SaV story thus far), I knew that the crew had a mandatory job from the Borniko Syndicate, but I had no clue what that job would be. I also knew the next job they had lined up was an escort mission for their informant Maggie's friend Ishi. Ishi needed off the night side of the tidal-locked planet of Sonhandra, then smuggled to the neighboring star system of Rin, and escorted into the astral cloud there in order to find haven with the Maelstrom Pirates within The Cove. I had all of that sorted out before session 1, but the crew ran out of time to get to that job before it got too late. We had dog-eared it to start the next session with, but I didn't think of anything new.

What would be their complications with getting to Ishi? What could I provide the players to help them overcome it? What complications would there be with getting Ishi off-planet? What about smuggling him out of the star system? What does crossing star systems even entail? The game says systems are linked via Jump Gates, but what does that mean? How do they work? Are there traffic check-points where authorities might check out ships trying to travel between systems? Would there be such a check-point specifically because they triggered something that would put the authorities on high alert? What kind of complications would there be for the crew as they try to navigate the astral cloud? The book says it's nigh impossible to navigate the cloud without specific equipment, which is why the pirates are able to seek sanctuary there; they were able to build the equipment needed. Could I hint at a way for the crew to get the equipment? Or a way for Hubby's character Quinton to build it himself? Or a way for the crew to pass Ishi off to the pirates outside of the cloud? I also put a bounty on Ishi's head. How hard should I come at the crew with bounty hunters? Is there a way they would know the crew has Ishi? What about tempting the crew to just turn him in for the bounty? How would Maggie react if the crew betrayed her friend like that? How would the pirates react to the crew handing Ishi to them for protection?

As you can see, there's a LOT that I wanted to figure out before we got to the next session (let alone, ya know, the mandatory Borniko job). On top of ALL of that, I also needed to come up with a hook for the next RIP race: how did things evolve within the League after the crew's first race? What objective would they be tasked with this time? Would they have an objective other than winning? Quarthix's didn't quite understand how valuable Volts would be in the game, and how many you would need to repair your RIP Machine post-race, so he wasn't able to FULLY fix his vehicle before we closed out the session. Do I find a way of providing him more Volts so it's easier for him to repair his Machine, and therefore encourage his gameplay of smashing as many things as possible?

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

Only one game session in, and being the Game Master quickly went from exciting to overwhelming. Especially since I'm still trash at improv, so coming up with these complications and answers on the fly just wasn't going to work for me.

Oh, yeah, and our place was horribly neglected because of how much I had been working, AND my mother was visiting for my birthday, so I was stressed about that and scrambling to at least clean it enough for the poor woman to have somewhere to sleep when she stayed the night!

Hubby quickly pulled the plug and let the other two players know that we'd be cancelling our second July game; we'd try again in August. That was a huge load off. Plus, that means me missing my July blog posts didn't put you fine folks too far behind on the overall story going on with the game. I'll definitely have to dedicate a post to what's been going on.

All set to host game again the first Monday of August, I forgot I was watching this little attention-seeker still.

Generated by Bitmoji
Edited by LycoRogue

(Okay, he's not nearly this big yet, but he IS very long, so close enough!)

Dragnime and his fiancé thankfully allowed me and Hubby to host game night at their place so we could still kitten-sit without cancelling again. It was a fun experience, although the energy-ball-on-legs wasn't the biggest fan of there being four people in the apartment and NO ONE paying attention to HIM. So he frequently invaded the table to make sure he wasn't forgotten. Certainly made for an interesting night. Also, it meant getting through the Ishi escort mission took a bit longer than intended. The crew technically hasn't finished it, although they did close out another story arc, and they did get their mandatory job from the Borniko (I figured out what the job is! Yay!). So I'm actually pretty set for the next session on Monday since we didn't go through everything I had planned!

So, uh, thank you, kitten!

I ended up not getting a digital recorder or more micro-cassette tapes for my birthday, but Roz DID get me an Amazon gift card, so it's LIKE she bought those for me! Yes, I did end up buying both. That way, if the digital recorder glitches, I still have the analog version as back-up. That is, unless we're over 3hrs into the session before I realize I've forgotten to flip the tape when the one side ran out. Whoops....

I also tested it out, and the digital recorder is good enough to clearly pick up the audio from me playing back the tape recorder. So now the first game session has a digital copy, along with the 2nd session! I can just store these digital copies instead of worrying about transcriptions, and I can transcribe later if I wish! Another huge load off! I also have a dozen micro-cassettes now, so I can also have a bunch of analog back-ups to start us off.

So much good stuff the past two weeks!

All of that helping me keep the SaV game manageable. Plus a more organized storage at my home. And a slightly happier and healthier husband thanks to the new focus stone necklace. Also, my mom getting me one of those fitness watches, so I can start keeping better track of my own health. Add in that we have a functioning radio at work again, and we found an awesome station yesterday; probably the best option we've found since I started working there. It's upbeat music spanning 80s all the way up to today, but still "work appropriate." No more sleepy, depressing 70s and 80s "easy listening" music!

On top of all that, my hair had a month to grow out. I always love a freshly chopped off hair style the first week or so, but then it gets a bit unrulily as it grows out because it no longer has the weight of being long, and it just poofs out ridiculously. My favorite time is about a month after getting my hair cut because it's still short, but it's just weighed down enough to be manageable again.

I do have to admit, though, that my sister-in-law did just gift me curl-defining hair products to help with the freshly-cut poofiness. I have wavy/curly hair, but my loose curls are only well-defined when wet. Once my hair dries out it just becomes a rat's nest of poof and frizz, which is why I tend to just blow-dry my hair straight or go at it with a flat iron. That's also why I like my hair a bit longer so the natural weight of it pulls it straight. 

Well, between the new hair products, and my hair now being long enough that it's easier to pull it back into a ponytail again, I have somehow been blessed to avoid bad hair days just about every day since the cut. Yeah! This whole time! Even with the high humidity and near-constant rain.

The Delta variant of COVID is quite scary, and Hubby and I are back to wearing masks nearly every time we step foot outside, despite us both being fully vaccinated. Ignoring that terror in our lives, however, it seems like being 37 more-or-less suits me. Here's hoping this keep going.

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What I REALLY need, though, is for my Muse to return to me by means of my writing. While I've been creative a lot the past month, between the Picrew images, sorting out Jolene's story a bit more, and coming up with Scum and Villainy plots, I still haven't written anything in a little over 3 months.

What really REALLY sucks about that is the same thing that sucked back in November after THAT writing dry spell: this Friday is the 13th.

Yup. First Friday the 13th since November. First unofficial Plagg Appreciation Day since November. I have yet to miss a Friday the 13th since I started up this little tradition for myself. However, yet again my self-imposed deadline is crashing in on me, and I have no clue what I want to write.

If anyone has any prompt ideas for a Plagg-centric or otherwise Plagg Appreciation story, please PLEASE leave them in the comments section. Even if you read this post after August 13, 2021, please feel free to leave those ideas. Lord knows I'll always need them for future Plagg Appreciation Days.

Whew-boy, I still have so much left on my checklist of what I wanted to talk about after my unintentional hiatus, but this post is LOOOOOOOOOONG already, and it's already after 2:00pm! So I think I'll just have to continue all of this next week.

So... here's to hoping I can chip away at the upcoming post throughout the week so I can actually publish something next Tuesday. My manager is taking more of her massive amount of accumulated vacation time next week. Which means I'm working straight through from August 15th to August 23rd. Whoooo! Why do I seem to start off these long bouts of covering vacation time with SaV games?

Anyway, if working through my post day ends up too much, I'll try to at least play catch-up again on the 24th. Either way, I'll catch you beautiful people later! Take care, all, and stay safe!

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Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Creating a Rec List

 Oh, hey, guys. How's everyone doing?


Weird, right? Having a blog post up. It's... it's been a couple weeks, huh? I'm back to having a Tuesday off, hence me working on this blog again. Hooray!

Aaaand then I'm working next Tuesday so I can have the following weekend off for my wedding anniversary so.... See you guys again in October???

My coworker says her daughter's wedding was gorgeous and went wonderfully, so yay. Also, congrats to both newly wedded daughters to both of my coworkers. My other coworker's been grumbly about not getting to eat solid foods while recovering from her oral surgery, but she had a check-in yesterday, so hopefully everything healed properly and she's back to normal.

Which means, after next week, where, as I mentioned, I'm taking a few days off so Hubby and I can just have a day to snuggle for our anniversary, I should FINALLY be back to a normal schedule of having Tuesdays and a random second day off per week.

At least, until late November/early December where I may or may not be taking time off to at least see my mom and sister for Thanksgiving. If nothing else, I'll be taking time off for Hubby's birthday.

Plus, both the coworker whose daughter just got married this weekend and myself still have over 100hrs of PTO to chew through, so who knows if there will be more sprinklings of "just taking it for mental health reasons" days. We both feel guilty about ever taking the time off though, because that means the other two workers don't get days off that week. So, who knows?

I feel like I'll be sprinkling more random vacation time in next year though....

OH! And also I want to sneak in a quick congratulations to Dragnime who just got engaged this past week! So happy for you two.
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I think that's all the extra housecleaning I had to do this week. So let's get into some writing updates for this supposedly writing-centric blog, huh?

First and foremost: there is none.

I've been super tempted lately. I've had scenes and mini-plots bouncing in my head. I just haven't had the time or energy to get them OUT of my head.

But I was tempted.

Ronoxym and ChibiSunnie had their birthdays this weekend - Happy Belated to both of you - and I figured "now's the time to break out of my funk! Write stories for them so you can still gift them something without physically delivering or mailing it."

Buuut then I remembered that my story gift for Ron kept me a MONTH to figure out last year, and I had no clue what to do for this one. Try to continue the story? Start from scratch with a completely different concept? Try to find something fanfic wise that he'd appreciate? I was at a loss.

Chibi, however, I had just talked about some fun headcanons with regards to Fruits Basket. Mostly, it was images I hoped the creator Natsuki Takaya would eventually do, or fanart people would make. Things like  

Anyway, as I mentioned, these were just scenes. I could do something quick though, right? Even a little drabble would be a surprise to Chibi, and I know she'd cherish it because I gifted something specifically for her, but also because it would be the first bit of narrative writing I've done since the pandemic hit. Considering how much support and encouragement she's given me over the years, but specifically through this one, and considering how much time and effort she puts into ALWAYS making me a Christmas and birthday card each year, I thought it would be a fitting honor to FINALLY get out of my writing funk by creating a story for her birthday.

Alas. It was not meant to be. The week FLEW by (but also dragged on?) and before I knew it, her birthday had arrived and I had nothing to show for it. I debated writing something anyway and still posting it during the weekend of her birthday, but I still ran dry. All of those scenes I stated in that spoiler box above? Like I said, they would be great artwork; freezeframes of these sweet moments. Pictures that didn't need words or even actions to fully capture the essence of the scene.

That, and, while I enjoy the stories, and mangas in general are a fairly quick re-read, I still haven't really read either Fruits Basket or Fruits Basket Another more than once - aside from a couple of Furuba books - so I don't feel confident that I know the characters of Komaki or Hajime well enough to properly keep in-character and get the scenes right. Not without research - i.e. rereads - and not only did I not have the time for it, but also my mangas are kind of buried in the back of a cluttered room right now. So I REALLY don't have the free time to get any of those stories done in a reasonable amount of time.

However, as I mentioned, it DID keep me a month to gift Ron his story for his 30th, so there MIIIIIGHT be hope for me to still become inspired and get something written for Chibi. Plus, there's always the original fandom that brought us together. I just haven't touched anything "Hey, Arnold!" related in so long. I KNOW I'm rusty in their characterizations....

Instead of getting ahead of the game and doing the research I needed to write gifts for my friends, I spent the week on a completely different project that I've been meaning to do for over a month now.

WAAAAAAAAAY back during the week of August 17, the Miraculous Ladybug fandom decided to host a Positivity Week: a week for the fandom to shut down all of the salt and hate and venom flowing through the fandom, and get back to the uplifting positivity it originally had. During this week, people posted what they liked and appreciated about the show. They shared posts explaining the good qualities different characters had. They supported the creators. They supported fandom creators as well by sharing fics, artwork, gif-sets, videos, etc. Most importantly, there were fanfic and fic writer recommendation lists.

I was actually on one of those lists!
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One of the big reasons I kept falling into my writing funks after joining Tumblr was because I'd CONSTANTLY see fic recommendation lists, and I was NEVER on any of them. And it wasn't like I was simply seeing the same stories over and over again. Sure, there's some stories that just about the whole fandom seems to know about and would suggest, but more often than not the lists were all different. A large variety of stories were getting love and recognition.

But I would never be included.

Until August 22.


I was... I was dumbfounded. This time period was probably one of my deepest bouts with imposter syndrome and there it was: my name on a rec list. Not only that, on a FAVORITE STORY list! Right above one of the fandom's favorite stories: Under Lock and Key.

I feel so guilty that I haven't acknowledged this honor anywhere yet. And for the dumbest reason too, although, I also feel the most justified with this reason???

So, along with the writing funk, I have been staying off Tumblr because I just don't have the free time or mental energy to go through my active dash. Also, as already stated, Tumblr does, on occasion, hurt my mental health because it is one of my main sources of imposter syndrome. That's mostly due to the aforementioned lack of ever appearing in anyone's recommendations or lack of likes/reblogs on my story shares. Also, because my dash would be flooded with new stories, and I would feel worse about not writing anything myself.

This is why, for months on end, I would only log onto Tumblr long enough to check my notifications, see if I had any messages or asks, and then hop back off without ever really looking at my dash. When chicoriii mentioned me in her rec list, I was still at that point of avoiding Tumblr to make sure it didn't spiral me further. So it was especially surprising and emotional for me to see that I had actually made someone's recommended fic list!

But to get to my reason about not instantly acknowledging how honored and humbled I felt. See, since I was avoiding Tumblr, I only knew of Positivity Week within the fandom in vague passing - usually something stated in the top post of my dash when I first log in - and so I hadn't participated in it. I felt guilty jumping in on the last day of it simply to gush at how honored I felt to have been included.

I mean, that was the point of the fan event, right? To lift up the creators and fellow fandom members while also bringing back a positive view of the show itself? So, to gush about how happy it made me to have been on her list would have been a pretty perfect way of closing out the week. At the time, though? Nope. I NEEDED to add to Positive Week if I were to acknowledge the honor of being on chicoriii's list.

So I decided I would thank chi while also lifting up other works of fiction. Then I quickly realized how many stories I loved, and that either the list would be a bit massive or I'd leave out some gemstones. That was when I decided my new project: write up a Tumblr post of my ML fanfic recs, and then link to it when I acknowledge chi's list.

This was a mistake.

Sure, there were the big ones that I could think of right away - usually involving EdenDaphne in some shape or form - but that list was largely stories I know are already fairly big in the fandom because they have some of the highest hit/kudos/comment counts. Not that any of that means I SHOULDN'T recommend them, because I 100% am going to still. No, instead, and especially because of how I was feeling, I wanted to make sure to also promote stories I feel aren't getting nearly enough love. To make sure I didn't miss any, I started going through my bookmarked and favorited stories on AO3 and FFN. 

I... forgot how much ML fanfiction I've actually read over the years. I did not read nearly as much HA fanfiction....

I have 42 bookmarked ML fics on AO3 alone, and I was trash at actually writing anything in my bookmark notes, so I knew I enjoyed the stories enough to want to save them, but I couldn't really remember what each of them were about per se, or why I enjoyed them specifically.

Sooooo that's what I wanted to do next: re-read, or at least skim, these saved fics to remind myself why I enjoyed them so I could better recommend them to others. Buuuut, I also had work pretty much non-stop for over a month, so I just didn't have the energy.

This week I finally did. All of my main work at my job was taken care of, and all I really had left was optional busy work. On a particularly slow day I decided it was time to finally start up this project. I figured I could get it done in the one shift.

I was wrong.

It's been over a week now, and I STILL have stories to read back through. I've been updating my bookmarks as I go so that next time I know exactly why I loved that particular story and what I felt was unique about it. I've also started writing recaps of what happened in the last chapter of on-going works, because I always seem to forget by the time they're updated. Sure, it means re-reading the previous chapter first to remind myself what happened, and I'm sure the authors appreciate the extra reads, but it also means I have to calculate reading TWO chapters whenever ONE updates, which usually results in a delay before finding time to read. This way, hopefully I can read the updates a lot sooner.

Sorry, getting off topic. Point is, I've been re-reading a LOT of fics lately, and it's giving me lots of feels. It's been really uplifting and reminding me a lot about why I love this show and the friendly bits of this fandom community. Also, while I'm still not quite ready to write anything myself yet, it HAS been helping grease those mental gears so I'm good to go once I'm back to a more normal work and social schedule.

Also also... I know how I'm going to be spending my next day off on Friday:
Official promo poster

Frozen starts at 6:10
Miraculous Ladybug starts at 8:00

The creator of Miraculous Ladybug Thomas Astruc had stated in past interviews that he initially had a whole expanded world planned with more miraculous bearers and other superheroes. He teased that back in season 1 when Alya gushed about her favorite comic book hero Majestia that Majestia was a real American superhero. Then, there was a comic book run where Ladybug and Chat Noir went to the United States and met Majestia.

This New York special seems to have been inspired by that comic run. Or that both this special and the comic books were both inspired off of Astruc's original world builds for the Miraculous universe.

Either way, I'm excited.

Also also also, to lead up to this hour-long special, Disney Channel will be having a season 3 marathon. True, I can watch them all I want on Netflix, and the airing order on the channel isn't any better than the scrambled mess Netflix has, but still....

I'm hoping re-watching this past season after such a long hiatus, as well as getting some new content to tide the fandom over until the next season arrives in 2021, will help respark my desire to write.

Because I miss it, you guys. I HURT not being able to write for so long! Especially this year when March feels like a decade ago.
Tanuki
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by Yanare Ku

Here's to hoping I can get back into the swing of things finally. Here's to Chibi and Ron and their birthdays. Here's to my coworkers' daughters and their new marriages. Here's to chi and her ability to make me cry simply by enjoying my work and wanting to share it with others. Finally, here's to you, dear reader, for staying by me when I've had virtually nothing to say this whole year.
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(minor edits by me)

Catch everyone in October!

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Ironically Studying Blades

Nothing yet with regards to new fiction to share with you fine folks. However, that doesn't mean the gears haven't been whirling this past week!

Last Tuesday Hubby and I hosted our first Blades in the Dark session. As I mentioned in my previous post, Quarthix came by to create his character as well. He's a Leech - a tinkerer, alchemist, and saboteur - named Kristov. One of Hubby's friends and coworkers still wants in, but will be busy until mid-August, so it will be at least two weeks - today and next week - before he can be free for our sessions. He may also bring his girlfriend along, which will bring our over-all crew up to six people; five playing at a time since either Hubby or I will sit out our characters as we GM.

But otherwise, our crew is built. There's Ashlyn "Nev" Kindaith - the nickname "Nev" is short for "Nevermore" - who is a Lurk. Basically the Thief among all of us thieves. Lurks are the "stealthy infiltrators." Next up is Mara "Jackal" Basran, a Hound; sharpshooter and tracker. The third crew member is Syra "Silver Song" Vale, a Whisper. She is our arcane adept; our spellcaster in this game, if you will. Rounding us off is Kristov "Hammer" Keel.

We... um... we forgot to get anyone that could be good at hand-to-hand. Whoops! That's fine, with the mechanic the game has in play, anyone can still do anything with enough real-world dice-rolling luck. I'll touch upon that again in a moment.

Also, fun factoid: most of us chose either "Iruvian" or "Dagger Isles" as our heritage, which means Hubby's character Ashlyn, who is "Skovian", is the only traditionally "white" character in our crew with a more Scandinavian look. Mara appears more Northern African/Middle Eastern/Indian (haven't decided on which quite yet), and both Syra and Kristov appear more Polynesian.

Anyway, together, Ashlyn, Mara, Syra, and Kristov make up the Void Serpents, a daring up-and-coming Shadow crew specializing in burglary, robbery, espionage, and sabotage.

So, naturally, we assassinate someone in our first session.

Okay, here's the breakdown. First of all, we had to build up our Crew as if it were its own character. It actually kinda-sorta is, in truth. This way we can retire our current characters, bring in new ones, have the game go on for years - generations within the game, if we wanted - and that Crew will still be there; evolving with each game.

Anyway, as we were building our Crew, we had to pick a place to be our "hunting grounds;" a place where we did most of our shady business. We wanted to focus on espionage, so we picked the district of Charterhall, "the city's civic offices and the hub for shops, artisans, and commerce." In doing so, we had to pick a random faction whose turf we were invading and suffer some negative reputation among that crew. After flipping through the options, Hubby randomly selected a group called The Lampblacks. Not entirely sure why he picked them since they're described in the book as "akin to folk-heroes among the working class, who see them as 'lovable rogues' standing up to the powers-that-be." I personally would have thought they would be good allies, but I wasn't really paying attention when the faction was picked, so I didn't voice my objections then. Also, the Lampblacks are currently at war with the rival crew the Red Sashes, which is made up of Iruvian sword masters. Seeing as how my character is 3/4 Iruvian, I guess Hubby figured I'd want us allied with them????

No matter. The decision was made, and we took a few blocks from the Lampblacks' hunting grounds, causing an uneasy rivalry between us, and helping us ally with the Red Sashes more. There were other bits of our Crew build that caused other Crews to either befriend us or start up their own rivalry with us as well, but those aren't important right now.

Fast forward to our first session. The game suggests using the starting situation printed in the rulebook if you haven't played before. That way your GM won't have to struggle to figure out a good starting hook. Hubby, without reading the situation, decides that's probably best, and we all agree to just dive in using that scenario.

Then Hubby reads this:
You're in the cramped office of the Lampblack's leader, Bazso Baz, overlooking the coal warehouse floor below. Several of his thugs hang about, armed for war, sizing you up. Bazso wants your answer. Are you with them, or against them? What do you say? Will you side with the Lampblacks? Will you just pretend to? (Good luck, Bazso is very sharp.) Will you tell him to [censored] off?
See, the opening world scenario for the game is that the former leader of the gang The Crows died mysteriously, and his second in command Lyssa took control. Problem is, the original Crows leader had brokered a treaty between the warring factions of the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes. Without his influence, the two have again crashed into a turf war.

How did we end up in Baz's office of all places when we were already at odds with the Lampblacks and mildly allied with the Red Sashes? Don't know. The situation doesn't specify. We know we're screwed from the word "go" because we had just stolen some blocks from this guy's hunting grounds. Plus, were we ready to flip on our ally right out of the gate? It wouldn't have been disastrous, really, it's not like we were firm allies with the Red Sashes yet.

The trick here, though, is two-fold. First: Hubby neglected to read off some key info about the factions we were allied with and the ones we were at odds with. He just read off their names and the key description of them.

So, for instance, for the Lampblacks, we were told, "Lampblacks: the former lamp-lighter guild, turned to crime when their services were replaced by electric lights." We were then told, "The Red Sashes: originally a school of ancient Iruvian sword arts, since expanded into criminal endeavors." We were also told the two factions are rivals/enemies. Based on those descriptions? Of course we'd want to side with the far cooler-sounding Red Sashes. Again, especially since Mara's mostly of Iruvian heritage.

None of us heard the bit about the Lampblacks being sort of the "scoundrels of the people." I don't know if Hubby even read that far into the faction description before we dove in. Whoops.

The second issue with the starting scenario is that it concluded with this lovely suggestion: "Are you actually here to kill [Bazso Baz] for the Red Sashes? (If so, do a flashback and pick a plan for the assassination.)"

Oh, Quarthix grabbed INSTANTLY onto that one. Sure, we're a crew that specializes in standard spying and thievery, but that doesn't mean we can't take on other styles of job, and Quarthix leaned HARD into that mindset.

Baz is the leader of a faction we don't like, and he's warring with a faction we do like. We could get more Brownie Points from the Red Sashes, potentially, if we off their greatest opposition at the time. Plus, the guy has us cornered, what else would we do? Flip on our ally and align with HIM?

I did offer that we agree to side with the Lampblacks and then just stay neutral in the turf war; ignoring the bit in the situation description that says, "Good luck, Bazso is very sharp." Quarthix held firm though that he wanted to assassinate this guy. No one managing to talk him out of it, we stumbled for a bit to try to come up with a plan. Getting into the new mechanics of Blades was really rough after playing D&D for years, but eventually Hubby and I just kind of threw the other two into the game - by me having Mara straight up intimidate Bazso to leave us out of his turf war with the Red Sashes; we will remain neutral and not side with either of them - and went from there.

I actually did surprisingly well for my roll - I was getting the highest roll possible nearly all night; I was shook! - and Baz let us leave. Kristov had planned on assassinating this guy, however, and dang it, he was going to follow through. So, he used the opportunity of Baz being shaken by my intimidation to attack him.

Chaos thus ensued.

Remember at the top when I mentioned none of us were built for melee combat? Yeah.... Luckily, as I also mentioned, if you roll well enough, your character can accomplish virtually anything. I more-or-less took the lead to just bash and shoot our way back out of the building; clearing paths for my crewmates to slip through.

Syra and Kristov took some damage each, but nothing terribly too major. Mara just TANKED most of the damage and barely made it out alive, but made it we all did. On the other hand, Mara killed two Lampblacks, Kristov pulled an audible and decided to kidnap Baz instead of kill him after Syra incapacitated the Lampblack leader, and, while trying to deliver Baz to the Red Sashes, we were stopped by a Bluecoat; a city cop, basically.

Luck wasn't on my side then, and apparently Mara and this Bluecoat knew each other from when she was still on the force. And he did NOT like her one bit. I tried to have Mara schmooze the Bluecoat, but the dice rolls were no longer in my favor. Finally, Quarthix got a good enough roll to convince the Bluecoat - whom I had named James on a whim since Hubby never named or described the Bluecoat - to let us go with a warning. How'd he manage that? He reminded James that the sooner he let us leave the sooner he could get rid of Mara and not have to deal with her crap.

Meh. It worked.
Hacker Girl
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by Birdman, Inc.
After delivering Bazso Baz to the Red Sashes, we were quickly reprimanded by the faction's leader Mylera who had asked for Baz's head, not him as a hostage to ransom back to the Lampblacks. We were told that we would only get our pay if we completed the original job, and now we had to make sure it was loud and public so the heat wouldn't be on the Red Sashes.

So we did. In one of the busiest bits of the city - the center of the Crow's Foot district - Kristov executed Baz with one of Mara's pistols. Ashlyn, who was our getaway driver so his character was still involved even if Hubby wasn't playing him at the time, refused to stop for the execution, and so it was very much a public drop-and-go. Boom. Shot in the head, and dumped onto the streets without us even slowing down.

Needless to say, our crew got our first Wanted rating after that fiasco. Although, to be fair, we would have been "fine" except we got extra heat - which tipped us over into a Wanted level - as consequence for me failing miserably to convince Bluecoat James to look the other way as we smuggled the abducted Baz.

At the end of every score - the "missions" the characters go on; the detailed action roleplay - the group gets their payoff and reputation, discovers the amount of heat the crew has on them, determine if they have increased a Wanted level, discover entanglements and other complications that the Crew suffers due to the actions of the score, and then the individual characters can have some downtime to work on independent character-building things and/or heal.

Well, the entanglement we got was that the Bluecoats brought one of our allies in for questioning. Basically, we deduced that James saw how banged up I was, figured I'd go to my doctor friend to get patched up, and so he sent the Bluecoats - or maybe went himself - to collect my ally. I dropped some coin to bribe the Bluecoats, and we all moved on. My ally is safe, the Bluecoats don't know anything else about our organization, and I'm back to being broke....

Mara did manage to de-stress, but she didn't heal at all, and basically one more hit would have killed her. So it's probably best that I'm GMing tonight. Gives Mara more downtime to get properly patched up. Her injuries are even a great excuse as to why she's not going on this next score. Although, everyone getting so banged up DID convince Quarthix that maybe we should aim for a non-combat score this time.... so... yay!

To further drive home the chaos of this first score - probably mostly due to the fact that we are all green and don't quite know the game mechanics yet - one of the pages offered in the player's kits is a way to track the scores the crew has been on and any key elements that might be important story beats for future gameplay. This is what a blank sheet looks like.
Fairly simple. The categories to fill in include: Score Type, Target, Location, Payoff: Coin/Rep, Heat, Entanglements and/or Faction status changes, and finally Notes, Events, and Clocks Advanced.

Well, er... it was ME who decided to fill this out for that first session and.... You guys know me. I'm not very concise. For me, a lot of details could prove important down the road, so if they feel even remotely significant I want to include them.

So it actually kept me three attempts before I managed to keep that first score confined to just the allotted third of a page....
First attempt on the bottom (upper left), then the 2nd attempt in the middle, and the final attempt on top (right side)
To sate my desire to capture as much of the game as possible, I instead turned to the single-subject notebook Hubby initially purchased for his game of Sigils in the Dark before buying his leather-bound one instead. This way we have a record of our games, which is something I've wanted to do with EVERY RPG I've played, but never managed to follow through except for Jolene's game, and that was largely because the gameplay was all text-based anyway. I like being able to look though records of the games and remember the fun we had playing. Plus, for situations like what we've been through with D&D being on hiatus due to COVID-19, it's a way for us to remember what happened last time, especially after long game droughts between sessions. We can also use it as reference points to make sure we keep continuity with regards to the overall campaign. For instance, if we come across a Bluecoat in Crow's Foot again, maybe it's James once more, but this time we DON'T get a warning because we've just irritated him enough.

Trying to get as much narrative detail as I could remember down on paper kept me HOURS on Friday, and five full notebook pages. My hand hurt so much when I was done....

I wasn't quite done yet, though, because we're now up to what I mostly did with my week. Namely, study this dang game!

I knew bits and pieces from Hubby reading passages off to me as he read through the book, plus he had to explain the base rules to the other players, so we all had enough to go off of to play, but was it enough for me to RUN a session?

I brought the roughly 300pg rulebook to work with me this past week, and whenever I had downtime I read. I read this book like it was a school textbook that I needed to study. I copied pages I wanted to make notes on or highlight passages. I jotted things down in a notebook to keep in mind. Most importantly, I tabbed the HECK out of this book so it would be easier for us to quickly flip to whatever rules we needed to figure out in the heat of the game so we didn't bog down the gameplay too much.
While reading though and studying the rulebook I reflected back on the session Hubby ran. He was new to the game as well, and one of the first pages of the rulebook stated that you shouldn't be expected to understand the rules your first go. There's certainly a learning curve with this game, but it's worth it. That said, I did use my knowledge of how the game DID play out versus how it probably SHOULD have played out, based on the rules, so there's some housecleaning we need to do before we officially start playing tonight.

But that's good. We're learning, and I can now help Hubby when he's unsure about a rule, and vice versa. I definitely have a much better understanding of the game and the rules I need to know specifically as a GM. I'm still a bit nervous about running the game tonight since I SUUUUCK at improv, but I feel a lot more confident with Blades than I ever was with D&D. Mostly because a means for me to answer player questions is right at my fingertips within the book, plus the players certainly have more storytelling and storycrafting control with Blades than in D&D, so it's less load on me.

I actually came up with a handful of scores the players can choose from tonight, that way they even feel like they have more control on the situational hook they follow, instead of being strong-armed like we did with the first session.

I have the score Hubby teased the group with at the end of the last game; utilizing our Crew's contact Fitz. I also have a Staking a Claim score, which is another key element of the game as a means to upgrading the Crew. Quarthix and Dragnime both figured last time that we should probably wait before staking a claim on anything, but I have the option available for tonight in case they change their minds. Another option I will literally have on the table is a potential way for the Crew to get rid of our Wanted level; something that doesn't happen until SOMEONE goes to jail for the crimes associated with our crew. Finally, I narrowed the 18-option list of potential Shadow score opportunities down to a list of 6. If they choose "random opportunity" they can then decide to either pick one of the six, or have me roll for one.

On top of all of THAT, I also started thinking about the world-build of the game itself. Another key thing of this game is that the city of Doskvol and the world of the Shattered Islands is supposed to be ALIVE in the background. The world doesn't revolve around our crew, and the environment surrounding each game session should reflect that. I won't get into the mechanics of how the game suggests doing this, but the long and short is that each faction has its own goals, rivals, and allies. As the player characters do things on their scores, during downtime, and while free-playing, they are going to somehow affect the delicate but unsteady balance within Doskvol.

For instance: murdering Bazso Baz.

Baz was the leader of a well-loved criminal faction; champions of the People, as they were. The citizens will NOT be happy about Baz's death. Also, Hubby had headcanoned that Baz's second in command Pickett was out with the majority of the Lampblacks, fighting their war against the Red Sashes, but could there be rumors that Pickett staged a coup? Did the 2nd strategically set up the meeting between the Void Serpents and Baz at the same time the warehouse and Baz would be mostly unguarded, wanting the faction leader to be killed? Would this cause unrest in the gang and a potential power vacuum? Or would Pickett step in as leader seamlessly? Would members start in-fighting as some begin to distrust Pickett? Would they be torn as to who to go after for Baz's death? Because there are other candidates as well. Such as the Red Sashes. They clearly would have the most to win from Baz's death, and there were rumors that he was taken to their HQ before his execution. Does this mean the Lampblacks push harder against the Red Sashes, winning advantage in the turf war? Or is it the Red Sashes that now have advantage since the Lampblacks are trying to recover from the assassination of their leader? What about the new leader of The Crows, Lyssa? The turf war started because she took over for Roric, and a lot believe she actually killed Roric so she COULD lead. She's known to be both connected and brash along with the suspicion of being a killer. Would she purposefully start up a turf war to try to weaken both the Lampblacks and Red Sashes - factions who are fighting over Crow's Foot which the Crows also obviously have turf within - in an effort to eliminate them? The Void Serpents are this daring upstart crew that is barely worth paying any mind, and yet they were somehow both smart enough to execute a faction boss and dumb enough to cause such a ruckus doing so? There's also that rumor about the Void Serpents taking Baz to the Red Sashes, only to execute him themselves. Was this all a ploy to try to convince the citizens to riot against the Red Sashes and weaken them as well? How deep does this rabbit hole go?

And that's just one district of this city! There are 12 districts in total, and 48 factions! Let alone other starting crews like ours - Hubby and I could come up with a rival starting crew of NPCs if we wanted - or anything going on outside of Doskvol. There's six countries that create the Shattered Isles which makes up the game world. There's also 20 other named cities in the world. At any point, Hubby and I could have something happen in any of those locations, or the ink-black Void Sea, or the vastly uninhabited Deathlands. I also didn't touch upon the Bluecoats and how things may have shifted for them as well due to the turf war and knowing Mara's potential involvement. Or the Spirit Wardens who had to clean up three scattered corpses from just one scuffle, before the spirits could emerge from the bodies and add to the already overwhelming ghost/haunting infestation within Doskvol.

There is a LOT to manage in the backgrounds, is what I'm saying. And that was largely what I was doing this week: studying this game, trying to understand the world already fleshed out in the game, and trying to figure out how our characters already affected the world, all while also trying to figure out score options for the players tonight.

It was a HUGE undertaking for me - Hubby says I put in TOO much thought when most of the world-build answers are at my fingertips via the rulebook, and he's probably right, but... meh? - but it was fun, and it did get the creative storytelling portion of my brain moving again. Shake off that dust! The true irony mentioned in this blog post's title is that Blades is a game designed to AVOID extensive planning. The point of the game is to just dive in with only the vaguest of plans - you're actually not allowed to plan via the rules - and then plan backwards by way of the Flashback mechanic. So much of the world and a TON of NPCs are already psuedo-fleshed out in the rulebook. All I'd need to do is flip to a page and read it for the group. The Score that Hubby teased the group was based on the "goals" section of one of the Faction descriptions. Again, this should be easy. It's all more-or-less already built.

I dunno. I guess it's easier for me to dive in with regards to fanfiction because I could immerse more into the worlds of "Hey, Arnold!" or Miraculous Ladybug or Legend of Zelda. I just need to be patient and spend more time with the last chapter of the book that explains the world itself; not the game and game mechanics. I'm hoping I'll get there.

In the meantime, let's see how well the game goes tonight. Hubby will GM next week, so I'll be able to take a bit of a breather and can go back to focusing on reading fanfics and maybe start thinking of my own fanfics.

Plus, I now have an original short story to beta read! A college friend we lovingly nicknamed Chewy - as in Chewbacca, but we spelled it with a -y instead of the -ie - asked me this weekend to look through a story he's been working on for pretty much all of 2020. Or, maybe it was a side-project he was working on whenever he needed a break from the main 2020 story that has already filled 2 journals? Either way, I'm excited to see what he came up with. Reading his story is on my To Do list for tomorrow.
Hacker Boy
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by Birdman, Inc.
What about all of you fine folks? Aside from bots, I haven't had any comments in a while. I'm curious as to what you've been up to. Any writing on your end? Any good stories you've been reading? Any fun games you've played? Have YOU tried Blades in the Dark or other Forged in the Dark games? Let me know below!
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