So… hi there.
Here in the northern hemisphere of the globe, Spring is about to… well, spring. The cold and clouds of a rainy winter have dissipated in Southern California in favor of that hateful ball of light in the sky this region is known for. Soon temperatures will climb enough that my Grumpy jacket will stay home instead of being worn in the morning and slung over an arm on the way home. I like my Grumpy jacket.
(Yeah, yeah. Enough preamble. Where the hell have you been?)
Before I decided to make a go of writing as a hobby, I liked to say that I’m not a writer, but I play one in November. (That’s National Novel Writing Month, for those who still may not know.) The main reason was that for a very long time I did not consider myself a writer. (At times I still don’t, but that’s not the point here.) Another, which plagues me to this day, was motivation.
I did not have the drive to do everything necessary to be a writer. Step 1: Write. Only in November for me. Step 2: Edit. [Someone please insert some laughter into the audio track.] Step 3: Other stuff. Like updating a regular blog or other web presence.
You see where I’m going with this? I hope so, because I’m not sure I do.
I guess the point of this spiel is simply that I know it’s been quite some time and that right on the heels of saying “once a month” I skipped a month. It’s what I seem to do: state something in public and quickly flake on it. This is why I am careful to call myself a hobbyist writer and not a professional. Hey, at least “writer” is in there somewhere these days.
Let’s break it down.
THE BOOK
Believe it or not, despite the above mention of motivation, there was actually some progress. Not a lot, but some. I started the initial read-through and changing of major spelling and continuity issues. Unlike most years, there were NO mid-stream name changes, because I had a chart ahead of time. I did, however, have to demote someone’s wife to girlfriend so the proposal made sense.
That’s about it thus far. It will get done eventually, but see motivation note above.
To that end, I have signed up for the April session of Camp NaNoWriMo. My project is Comedy of Terrors (Edits), and I have pledged to dedicate 30 hours toward getting it done. (That should be more than enough, all things considered.)
Remember: Hobbyist, not Professional.
THE GAMES
Holy cow, the games! So many games! LOVE the games! From January 1 through today, I have played no fewer than seven sessions of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, three of which were Organized Play with the Pathfinder Society at OrcCon.
Yes, it’s true. I attended OrcCon 2019 on President’s Day weekend. If you ever have a chance to go to a player-centric Board Game convention (like the ones Strategicon puts on in Los Angeles), do yourself a favor and go. Hundreds of people who are there to play games. With so many games represented, there will be someone willing to play your favorite, even if it’s not a Scythe or a Gloomhaven.
Like most of the cons I get to attend, I spent a lot of time in the Pathfinder Society room playing PACG. This season’s adventure path uses the Skull & Shackles box as its basis, and it’s an interesting storyline. It involves an interdimensional museum that is breaking down, and we members of the Pathfinder Society are trying to find out why and save as much of the museum as we can while the tapestry keeping it together unravels.
On the Sunday Morning session, I was even listed as the GM for the session. (Not sure how that happened, but I was down. I’m very familiar with the game.) Even better, I got to play that session with not only my friend who introduced me to Strategicon, but the con’s special guest from Paizo… Linda Zayas-Palmer! I had seen her the day before running the lottery game. (To play that module, players had to win a lottery draw — it wasn’t just open sign-up.) While my friend and I were getting the scenario for ACG set up, a woman behind me asked if there was room for one more. I looked up and immediately moved my chair over to make room. No WAY was I passing up a chance to play with someone from Paizo… and I didn’t even have to win a lottery to do it! She didn’t have a character deck ready, but I had my spare from the previous day, Oloch, who only went on the adventure so I could refresh myself on what Adowyn had already done. Together, the three of us kicked booty. Linda was so much fun to play with, and because she’s part of the Organized Play story team, she was able to fill in some of the gaps on how our adventure fit into the rest of the overall roleplay story.
While Pathfinder is a major deal for me at these cons, there was so much more to do. Unless you somehow clone yourself and can experience everything those clones do, it is a literal impossibility to do it all. Hell, I can’t usually even do half of what I would like to, because many games I would like to try are scheduled for times I’m playing something else. First Player Problems. Heh.
Some highlights: Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune After Dark. There is a company in the Los Angeles area that specializes in putting on live game shows for people using sound files and video projection. There is a four-person team putting on each show, with one acting as host and three doing the tech stuff. When necessary, one of the tech people also acts as an announcer (describing the prizes for Price is Right, for example). It’s pretty amazing. While you don’t necessarily feel like you’re on the show, it’s a lot more immersive than playing these games on a Super Nintendo.
(What…. did you forget I’m old?)
There were also the Party Games. I enjoy the more offensive ones, of course, like Cards Against Humanity and Joking Hazard. (Neither of those was represented, alas, though one person at Wheel Of Fortune mentioned that some people in her group often got a CAH game together. Did not happen.) Did you know there is more to a party game than being foul-mouthed and borderline pornographic?
Enter: Punderdome, Schmoovie, Time’s Up, and News@11.
Punderdome is based on (and named after) an actual monthly event that takes place in New York. The concept is simple. The execution? Not so much. Take two random and unrelated words and create a pun around them. Each round, a judge, who is also encouraged to create a pun, decides whose is the best. Obviously the judge cannot pick their own.
Schmovie has a similar concept, where two thematic cards are selected, a genre is rolled, and players come up with an appropriate title. The judge picks the one they like best, and the player whose title is chosen wins a cardboard award. First to a certain number of awards wins the game.
Time’s Up is a team-based game where everyone is working off of the same answers for the entire game. (We may have played Time’s Up Party. I’m not sure.) Round 1: Describe the movie, book, TV show, song… whatever… on your card. For each one your teammates guess, you get a point. Then after all of the cards are guessed, they are all read aloud to remind everyone what is in the deck. Round 2: Same cards, but now you can only use one word clues. Round 3: Same cards, but now you can only gesture, a la Charades. And, it seems, the game can last as many rounds as people can think of to get people to get these cards.
Then there’s News @ 11… which is exactly what it sound like. This is a game with no points. No winners and losers. Just a bunch of people who are using cue cards to put on a morning news show, an afternoon report, and of course, the News at 11. When I was researching a little to refresh my receding memory, I even stumbled across the gameplay demo the game company put together for their original Kickstarter page.
And all of that was just at OrcCon! There was also my weekly gaming group at the comic shop in Irvine, as well as my monthly Game Day with my friends from work. (Those would be the remaining Pathfinder Adventure Card Game sessions.) I won’t go into detail about all of the games, but they included:
Blood Bound, Crypt, KeyForge, We Didn’t Playtest This At All, Space Base, Epic Spell Wars: Rumble at Castle Tentakill, Modern Art, J’Accuse, Marvel Legendary, Potion Explosion, Star Fluxx, Clank! In! Space!, and Unlock! Night of the Boogeymen.
You can search for the respective pages on Board Game Geek in case you want to check any of those out.
THE OTHER STUFF
Another round of sickness struck right after OrcCon. I did not miss any work from this one,but it struck home that my immune system, which used to be pretty danged amazing, just isn’t what it once was. I have gotten sick at least three times in the last five months, and that never used to happen. Thankfully, the illnesses I have suffered have not been anything major or life-threatening. It’s just an annoying aspect of getting older.
I have started the latest in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I am not a fast reader, so I usually shoot for reading at least a book a month, knowing I won’t read much (if at all) in November because of NaNoWriMo. As it is now the end of March, I am two books ahead of the curve. I am currently reading the fourth book in the Z-Burbia series by Jake Bible. Gory stuff. I don’t normally get excited about zombie anything, but for some reason I can’t stop reading these.
That’s pretty much it, to be honest. I don’t do much outside of gaming. Most weekends I spend staring at walls or computer screens. The exceptions being as described in the gaming section earlier.
Did I mention I love games?