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Friday, August 14, 2020

So, what's up with this ARGUS reboot? & Other Stuff (including health references)

Current situation

I have a very talented artist producing colour faction iconics, but since he has a very serious real-life job, and I only have monthly funds from which to pay him, that front is steady, and not likely to outpace my sporadic writing and technical illustrations and layout and editing as I go -- routine.

There is a particular section, one which requires setting-specific character background tags, which stymies forward progress in finishing a particular step in char-gen, or building, or both/either.  Fortunately,I can skip past that and introduce other portions of the text, but I've been gnawing away at that and therefore not making progress in the writing.

Instead, I have been using a freeware CAD lite program to illustrate the primary faction military arms, which are essential to PCs, as this first product is explicitly from the PoV of this faction.  I'm likely to import these images into a raster programme to enhance the colours and fill areas which the CAD doesn't recognise as a shape, but rather, a collection of lines.

I generally get to run this once a week over Discord, and a wayward player may be rejoining us after a couple of months off.  They do much more setting-effery than mechanics testing, but that may simply be the thing that kids do these days, dunno.


Other stuff

Recovered a copy of my 'award winning novella' from a site that had been out of commission for years, and my mom is urging me to get back to that and expand it or simply publish it and get on with actually writing Urutsk' grand cycle.  Considering my age and general health, not a bad idea; it'd be kinda bittersweet to sign off thinking of my unpublished Magnum Opus I've talked about so much.  Here's to the hope for that I do get to it before too late.

I participated in a Harnworld seminar at GenCon 2020 online, and also played in a Morrow Project 4e game while suffering from disabling allergy symptoms.  I had also been playing Jessica Jones in an online ICONS game with reprobates from G+/MeWe, and I think I won the internet when I played Frank Castle in the finale and had him urge a ghostlike baddie to kill him so he could spend time with his dead family; still, playing Jessica was a lot of fun, and Mothmaiden the GM (not her handle) ran a fun campaign with decent RP moments.  Oh, yeah, imagine Jessica Jones paired up with Dazzler, it was priceless.

Let's see, I've recently received my HarnMaster Deluxe 3rd Edition books in print, and added them to my zipper binder.  I'm waiting on Fading Suns, Dark Matter, MetAlpha Warden, and a clay monster maker game from KS.  I found the Legendary Games' Forest Kingdom Compendium pdf and then purchased the hardback new: gorgeous and well worthy of mention.  It, as another poster wrote, and the 5e PHB are all that are necessary for a long campaign in that sort of setting.  It also pairs up thematically with my Harn and The Green Knight focus.

A24 movies, such as Midsommar, and, The Vvitch, have produced a beautifully boxed starter style FRPG with wonderful production value, and a very solid system -- but hobbled by the strict adherence to what I suppose will be the movie's narrative structure and philosophy.  I plan to spend some time liberating it from the hardwired railroad encounter system which penalises PCs for mandatory encounters and then hard-codes specific outcomes.  The end-state of three addressed outcomes of the boss fight do not permit future play with the same PCs, and there is no evidence they plan to support the game with future, freer scenarios or anything else, but this is 202, so, who knows?

If the Coof weren't screwing everything up, I could conceivably actually see a Dr. about this and other health issues, but this one is my daily antagonist); when I was smoking on a daily basis I don't think I was ever this bad off, but perhaps that is what led to the current situation.  Oh, I've been smoke-free for years now, btw, for anyone who knew me for a while.  Now I drink Kombucha 2x a day; crazy, I know.

OK, that's it for now, or is it? <eerie music>

4 comments:

  1. I love Jessica Jones and Dazzler both (at least the 1980s roller-skating version), but I have a hard time visualizing the two together in any way, shape, or form. My imagination may be getting rusty.

    Glad to hear you're okay despite the allergies (when I quit smoking I ended up with bronchitis once a year for the first decade or so...it cleared up); hope you stay okay. Your mom's probably right (as moms usually are): you should publish your novella. At least throw an e-version on Amazon so that interested individuals (*ahem*) could pick up a copy.

    And, yeah, of course the Urutsk' grand cycle.

    Read your review of the Green Knight the other day. I just think it's wild a film company is publishing their own FRPG (instead of licensing away the rights)...wonder if that will become a "thing" in the future. Maybe there's a career at Disney or something, writing RPGs for the studio based on their films. Wonder how one would go about doing a re-boot of That Darn Cat...
    ; )

    Anyway. Stay upright if possible (easier to breathe that way). Good to hear from you.

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    1. I played it that she just ignored Daz, but over the course of the campaign, Jess started to re-evaluate her own behaviour, and tried being nicer, which was hilarious, as it was so awkwardly stated, very haltingly and insincere-sounding, but genuine. Then, some villain would go and push her buttons (not hard to do), and she snapped back to normal. Eventually, Jess would just buy Daz those shiny, reflective, sparkle stickers: rainbows, unicorns, winged hearts, etc. to show her appreciation or somesuch.

      Writing fiction instead of game stuff, with so much game stuff still unpublished. Yeah, I know. Context for the game stuff would help it a lot.

      I'm not even sure if they put any copyright notice in the book, let alone any attempt to fence it off from 3rd party expansion. I'm planning on doing some expansion, and currently looking at articles re: TSR's Knights of Camelot.

      Thanks. What's the expression?: Any day above the sod is a good one.

      Best to you, too.

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    2. Hmm. Hate to presume, but if you *are* looking for help with your fiction, you might check out this person:

      https://www.jocelynlindsay.com/

      She is actually a VERY old friend of mine. I have never used her writing services, but I do trust both her integrity and craft.

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    3. Oh, hey; thanks.
      I'll have to check that out. Thanks, JB.

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