A Window, A Light...

I know I've been pretty quiet this month. Everything's fine. Probably better than normal, actually. I haven't been writing here because I've been writing in the paper journal and while I make it a point to write daily, I usually only take the time to write in one of the two places.There might be something in the paper edition you'd find interesting, but probably not.

The holiday season is always busy for me. I like Halloween (but didn't do anything, sadly) and Thanksgiving isn't too bad, but Black Friday is an abomination and I don't like the Christmas season at all. I don't go to stores much and I really haven't even had the scratch to go out very often. Even though the latter bit's changing since our finances have improved, except for the harsher work conditions and thankfully longer hours, I don't see too much of Christmas. Others tell me the stores are already be-decked with tinsel and candy canes.

What I like: house parties, winter and fall drinks, popular winter and fall foods, coffee and tea always being appropriate. What I don't like: social obligations, capitalism, snow. So, now you know.

So, stuff I've done.

I failed to improve on the taste of Frank's Bourbon Furnace. I made a syrup of brown sugar and steeped cinnamon sticks, and it's too sweet. The cinnamon doesn't seep through enough. I shouldn't have used brown sugar, even though the taste is pretty good. White or natural sugar probably would have been the better bet, and adding more cinnamon sticks should have done it. I don't know if I mentioned it here, but it's really just a mix of bourbon and apple cider, with cinnamon and maybe nutmeg. The problem I'm trying to dodge is the issue of sediment on glasses. After a few, you really don't care, but it's frustrating the morning after.

I could also just buy cinnamon syrup, but that's not any fun. We had guests over recently and they brought over a Penzy's sugar and cinnamon mix that was delicious, and it was nice to bring out a bottle of syrup I made. Plus, making simple syrup is pretty much the easiest thing there is. It's anywhere from 1 to 2 parts of a sugar you want per 1 part water, brought to a boil until sugar is totally dissolved, allowed to cool enough, than bottle. Don't buy simple syrup, for gods sake. It's literally just sugar water.

There was some fiction I wrote for Katie that won't ever see the light of day. I mean, I'll still edit it in a week, it was just written especially for Katie, so. I don't really trust my fiction writing skills anymore, but it's November and that's when all of the super lame kids are writing their super lame fiction. Don't mind me, I'm just jealous since I've never finished a NaNo. There's no question that NaNo generates a large amount of really awful prose, though. I've never been good at writing like that, either, though. For me, I'm just taking November aside to write as much as I can. Katie asked me to write two things way back when and I agreed - probably because I was drinking. One was anything about Cowboy Bebop and the other was something from Scott Pilgrim. I did the Pilgrim thing. I feel okay about writing something about Cowboy Bebop. I don't really write fan fiction. It's not really my bag. But I mean, what the hell. If you can't do it for our spouse, who will you agree to write for, right?

I've had some trouble getting my shit together for running Exalted and Pathfinder. I want to run both, but Exalted is really questionable right now, just because the group is having a really hard time getting together. Times are very busy for Jenna, who's doing the grad student thing and Brent's wife is really, unfortunately ill. We're all generically adult busy, too. Shit is postponed. We're not doing Burning Wheel or the planned podcast, either. Not yet, anyhow.

We're in the middle of painting a side room, which will match the bathroom. Hopefully, we'll get to the hallway and bedroom, then the living room and kitchen. We don't have a lot of money for redoing the house, but since things are improving and paint is cheap, it's a big morale boost. 

I feel like I've been talking too much, recently, and crowding everyone else out on LiveJournal - I don't know how talkative the rest of your friends are, though. But, well, I've been brainstorming for future games and working towards the one that I've got going now. The one I'm running I keep putting off, but it's on the to-do list and I can't actually start anything new that's fun without knocking that thing down for good, so it's inevitable.

The project names are obviously just me screwing around before I come up with real campaign names. I've wanted to run games for a group for a while, partially because the pressure from multiple people is cumulative and gets me off my ass and partially because I miss multiple person collaboration at a table (real or virtual). Deep Thought is the city-wide D&D game, and the deal with that is simply that the idea is too much fun for me not to try to tackle at all. Uneasy Sunrise is my hopeful plans for an Exalted game, which may end up being run over Skype.

I got an email from the Kickstarter for the Exalted 3e project that, even though the schedule shows Exalted being released in October, it's not likely to actually happen because the Charms still need work. I'm willing to wait for a good book. The problem with Exalted is that I have only the meanest idea of where I'm going on that. I have some Infernals in the works, and that's going to be iffy because there isn't going to be an Infernals book and I'm going to need to see how much legwork I'll need to do with the support offered to me right out of the box. I have some Wyld Hunt ideas, some ronin Dragon-Blooded, and some home-brew stuff that I've never seen support for in earlier editions that I've already mentioned. (I had e-mailed the Exalted team about that just before and just after the news about 3rd Ed and new Exalt types, and none of them are what I had proposed either, which means that I may or may not get an e-mail in the far future. But probably not.) My project notes for Exalted is literally just a list of things that could be in a game. I could always run 2.5...

Deep Thought is a lot of work. I have no idea at all when something like that is going to be ready for prime time. I don't think I've said much about it here - I haven't talked about my love and hard work with D&D from 2nd Ed. on up until now for quite a long time. If anything, surely I just dropped it out here as a vague idea and went on my way, but plenty of my friends have heard all about it in person. The idea that someone has stumbled onto a mega-dungeon is not a new one, but I've never been much for simple dungeons-for-dungeons sake.

I had, for a long time, been interested in this idea of a D&D game that held to the rules really scrupulously. Like, on how to find new spells or research them, use of downtime, encumberance and movement rates, spell components, stuff like that. I don't think I've ever played a game - even a one shot - where we used all those rules. Back in the past, they always seemed like a headache. My friends don't even particularly care for rules in a general sort of way and D&D has always been at the root of that. But I found them interesting; how much does the play experience change when you're using this stuff? What if there's an actual dungeon-like thing, or you're in the field for an extended amount of time?

So I wondered, what if, instead of a normal dungeon, the characters are raiding a ruined, now-mostly-underground arcology? The prizes dredged up aren't just gold and gems (which would still weigh plenty) but trinkets and items long forgotten. Ancient bottles of intact wine, books and journals - not items of power but items of scholarly worth, art objects and old pottery, children's toys and weapons both mundane and bearing unusual enchantments? How much do you keep for yourself and how much do you try to sell and find a buyer for? Which of this stuff is actually priceless and which of it is just old junk? Instead of traps, there are environmental issues that are trap-like (and also, sometimes, still traps) - weak ground, rock falls, dangerous walls, unseen pits that go stories.

The PCs would come from different parts of the kingdom - the little town on the edge of the empire becomes a boom town, like if there were a gold rush. The PCs get in early and rent rooms, but gradually come to be almost like minor nobility. Crime comes to the town. Claim jumpers wait outside the entrance for exhausted arcology raiders to come up for air. People from home send aid or ask for money. There's a civil war brewing in the capitol. The game would be patterned around four different seasons, as they plan their expedition - planning and laying in supplies, actual raiding, finding buyers and determining worth (dealing with the town's issues), and dealing with circumstances from home.

I'll probably be moving to Pathfinder to run that one, though, providing I can get it off the ground.