Kheldar's Chronicles

One last post?

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:06:35 GMT

Ok, I think allyrapixie's wrath has died down by now, so it's probably safe to post. Yes, I wrote less than 2000 words for NaNoWriMo. Frankly, I'm pleased that two out of two of the people that signed up because I encouraged them to actually managed to finish. Can I pick them or what! :)

Anyway, so lately I've been working on some other projects, and I've got a question for you all.

I know that for those of you who are on livejournal it's awfully convenient to keep up with my blog because it just automatically shows up on your friend page.

Ok, so who here would stop reading my blog if it was on another (non-livejournal) site? It will of course have RSS feeds (if you are into such things). I ask, because it's looking likely that I'll be hosting a blogging setup for my entire family. It'll have permissions and such so that my family members can limit who is able to see the posts. The majority of my posts will remain visible to everyone, including those who are not logged in to the site, so that means that you'll all have access. It just won't be quite as convenient as reading your livejournal friends page (unless of course you are into RSS feeds like I am).

Since I'll have the encouragement of other family members posting there (and in fact, Mrs. Kheldar has already made two posts), I will likely be posting about twice a week.

Anyhow, so what do you say? Too much trouble to go to another site, or will you still be reading?

Oh, and in case you are interested, the address is http://www.batishko.net. User creation is turned on if you care to register.

Day 1 status

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:33:14 GMT

In order to stay caught up with where I need to be for NaNoWriMo I have to write 1667 words every day. Yesterday was one of my normal weekdays where I have something scheduled in the evening. So I was only about to write around 1000 words. Fortunately, I got up this morning and wrote another 600, so in my mind I'm where I'm supposed to be. This evening and weekend I should be able to do a little extra and get myself ahead of the curve. I probably could have made the full amount yesterday, but Guitar Hero III arrived and we had to... uh... make sure it was working properly.

It was.

Anyway, Mrs. Kheldar started into her story. She got about 1800 words done, and she's pretty enthusiastic about it. So that's good. It looks like allyrapixie is off to a good start too.

I'm finding that my scenes are taking a little less than half the expected number of words to write. That means I'm definitely going to be able to go for the longer version of my plot. ...and I'll still probably run out of stuff to write. Ah well, all part of the fun.

Plot synopsis:

In the very first scene, Solomon has apparently tracked down a murderer named Flint. He talks to him briefly from hiding, and then kills him as justice for the murder.

In the second scene, we get a flashback and see Flint trying to get back some money he'd loaned. He gets a bit drunk and runs into the guy and kills him with his shotgun in front of a large group of witnesses.

I just started the third scene, but I haven't finished that yet, so I'll talk about it later.

As I told Mrs. Kheldar this morning, "Two people have been shot dead so far in my story. What about your's?"

She's writing a fun story about an 8 year old intended for kids, so her response was... "I think I like my own fluffy bunny story."

Which reminds me, perhaps I should kill some fluffy bunnies off... Of course, it's ok, because it'll be for food, not just for pleasure... :)

Almost there...

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:16:52 GMT

Well, NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. I think I'm reasonably prepared. It looks like Mrs. Kheldar will be giving it a shot, as will gauntman, and another of my co-workers. So, it looks like I'll have plenty of people around to help me stay motivated. Of course it figures that now when this thing is about to start, I suddenly have all sorts of computer game related things vying for my attention. My Guitar Hero 3 preorder has shipped. A friend is picking up Hellgate: London, and based off my playing through of the demo, I'm seriously tempted as well. I have other games I'm playing and enjoying of the PS2 (Shadow of the Colossus serious rocks)... So many possibilities, so little time...

I think I'll update you guys every couple of days on my progress. I'll give you a summary of what new things I've written so that you can slowly "read" my story. After all, given the quantity over quality nature of this thing, I really doubt I'll be making it available to anyone anytime soon. So, to start things out, here's a little bit about my main character and setting...

His name is Solomon Price, and he makes a living as a Dawm Go'el (blood avenger). Essentially, he hunts down those who have murdered and kills them, collecting a bounty as a reward. He is good at what he does, and generally feels a strong sense of satisfaction over being able to bring a little bit of justice to the world.

The world is a post-apocalyptic setting. The common technology level is generally around the late 1800s. So, we're talking the American wild west. Steam trains, six-shooters, horses, etc. Most of the population lives in rural areas or small towns. There are a few larger cities in places. Banditry and lawlessness are somewhat common. Corruption in government is all too common, and might frequently makes right. The "fall" was a longer process precipitated by events that I won't go into at this time. For a period of time during the fall, Israel essentially was the world government. It is still common in this setting to see remnants of Jewish culture, particularly in the rural areas.

That should be enough to get started on.

Preparing for NaNoWriMo

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:49:37 GMT

Well, today I sat down and did a little bit of outlining for my NaNoWriMo story. I think I have a reasonable feel for what needs to be written in the first 3/4s of the story. I'm having some difficulty in figuring out exactly how to end things. I'll have to do a little more thinking and possibly rework some stuff tomorrow. I have to figure out how to provide a reasonable antagonist without expanding the scope of the story too much. The problem is that the "real" antagonist would require a huge scope, so I have to have a smaller antagonist who seems (for the purpose of this story) to be the real antagonist without shutting out the potential for a later story that expands the scope to the real antagonist. We'll see.

I really doubt I'll ever edit this into a shape where I'd actually try to publish it, but I'm planning on writing it as if that were my eventual goal. So, I've figured out a number of things about the setting including some history and ongoing events. Is anyone interested in me throwing out details here and there? Or should I just keep you updated as to my progress and not bother/spoil you with the rest?

anyone still there?

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:44:39 GMT

Ok, raise you're hand if you're reading this. I want to know who's out there, but I'm too cheap to offer swag like sareth...

I might try to get back in the habit of posting here again (I did so well for longer than I initially thought I'd last). The event that's triggering this is that I'm planning on participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Is anyone else out there going to give it a shot this year? If so, let me know so I can set you as a friend on that account. I suspect I'll need plenty of encouragement. Anyway, I'm planning on recording my progress here on my blog. Hopefully the public nature of it will help encourage me to stick with it.

I've been doing some amount of planning over the last month so that I have a decent idea of what I plan to write during the month. Over the next couple weeks as I continue to nail things down, I'll post here so you can follow along. For now, I'll just say that I'll be writing a story with the working title of "Dawm Go'el", which is the transliteration of the ancient Hebrew term that is translated "Blood Avenger". This will be a post-apocalyptic setting that gauntman and I came up with. It's partially inspired by David Gemmel's "Jerusalem Man" books (part of his Stones.of Power series).

Let's see, what else has been going on...

My Greek studies are continuing at a slow but steady pace.

My wife and I got sufficiently hooked on Guitar Hero (I borrowed it from a friend for a week while my folks were in town) that we ended up buying a PlayStation 2. Instead of buying GH2, we decided to preorder GH3 since it was so close to coming out. To pass the time until then, I picked up some other games that we've been playing and enjoying. Fortunately, I have a friend here at work with a number of PS2 games who has been willing to loan them to me so we can try them out. I'm really enjoying paying only $10-$35 for games instead of the usual $45-$55. I think I'll get more play time out of the PS2 than I did my old XBox...

Other than that, life has been... busy... but then everyone's life is busy, so I guess that's not really news. More posts to follow...

Where have you guys been?

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:50:36 GMT

Man it's been a long time since you've read anything here. You shouldn't be so lazy...

Well, last time we played our Monday RPG, we finished up the adventure. The group managed to escape out the window of the Houses of Parliament (into the Thames) and swam down the river to the area where their ship was docked. There was some difficulties with drowning, but pretty much everyone made it. Not a whole lot else happened, and the group managed to leave without much uproar, the ship loaded with a cargo bound for Hong Kong.

Then gauntman (the player of the Professor), took over as GM for the rest of the evening. He'll be running the next adventure in Hong Kong. By the end of the evening, the group (minus me, as my character wasn't introduced yet) got into Hong Kong, and left the ship to do a little shopping for the ship's cook. After an encounter with some pick-pocketing kids, and some inscrutable merchants we finished up for the week.

This week the group finished shopping and had another encounter with a group of kids (who were presumed pick-pockets as well). This time, Brooky caught one of the in the head with a bucket of oysters and knocked him out. The rest of the kids fled the scene. The girls (feeling sorry for the kid) made Brooky take him back to the ship, where Eva did what she could for him. Eva found Brooky's passport hidden on him along with some other papers (mostly in Chinese, although one was obviously a pawn-shop ticket).

Eventually the kid (my character) wakes up, and Eva invites him up to dinner. An entertaining scene ensues with the kid making disparaging remarks about the (French) food (leaving the (French) cook miffed), repeatedly demanding the return of the papers they took from him, and generally getting along very poorly with Brooky.

The evening ending with boarders in black coming over the sides of the ship. Brooky ran outside to deal with them, while the women spent some time trying to restrain the kid (who seemed frightened, and tried to escape). Finally they just let him go and headed for the wheelhouse.

So far, pretty entertaining stuff. Gauntman has some nice ideas about style and story presentation that I'll definitely have to steal when it comes my turn to GM again. For now though, I'm definitely enjoying playing a character (something I haven't done for something like 10 years).

Not quite a campaign update

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 02:50:09 GMT

Well, the fact that I missed posting last week doesn't actually mean that you missed out on a campaign update. No, it's been two weeks without playing our WWII supers campaign. Oops, wait... make that three weeks now. Tonight Brooky's player was out, and since his character was kind of central to the action, we decided to do something else instead.

So... we played Capes! This is a wonderful game that is kind of like a super-hero themed cross between a roleplaying game and a board game. This was totally a blast, and I highly recommend it. Go to the web site and pick up a free copy of their Lite rules and try it out next time you're wondering what to do with a couple friends.

In other news, I finally switched my schedule around so that I'm waking up later in the morning (going in to work later) and getting to sleep later in the evening. I was forced to do this because the only way I could start exercising regularly was to fit it in before I left for work, and I sure wasn't setting my alarm for earlier than the 5:00am it was already set at. So, now I'm up at 7:00am instead. I'm adjusting to the new schedule, and it's actually working out fairly well (other than the soreness that comes from getting into running again).

This month's project

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:48:22 GMT

Happy 4th (to those of you who actually live in the U.S. (although I'm pretty sure that's all of my vast readership (but still, as I've already read once so far, non-Americans can get pretty tired of "people" assuming that everyone on the internet lives in the U.S.))).

Guess what? It's a new month. That means a new project! Actually, I hate to say this, but last month I got tired of doing last month's project, so I started this month's project early. It turns out that I was interested in doing the layout for the Fangor book, but not as interested in doing the actual writing. Ah well. At least now I'm "legal" on my project. Anyway, I've already put in an estimated 26 hours on this project. Pretty good for *cough* only having worked a few days on it.

So, this month I'm doing a programming project. I'm working at making a tool/game for GURPS Traveller. For those of you who keep up, one of the two role playing games I'm running is a Traveller game. This would provide some assistance with planning/running that game, and will also fully implement the trade rules from GURPS Traveller: Far Trader as a playable "game".

Things are coming along very nicely, thanks in part to some work I'd done on creating a generic application framework last time I was doing some programming, and in part to the rather nice cross-platform library called Qt (which happens to be available under the Open Source license in addition to having a commercial license). This is the main library I use at work, and I'm very fond of its power and flexibility.

Anyway, expect some screenshots later in the month, and perhaps I'll manage to get far enough along to consider a release at some point...

11 years

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:19:49 GMT

On Friday, Mrs. Kheldar and I celebrated our 11th anniversary. As you can see from the image, we went to Outback to get some steaks. I ordered a drink called "Wallaby Darned". I thought I should share the receipt with all of you. Either I'm weird, or it's funny. :)

Anyway, 11 years! Wow! The time sure goes by fast. I am so lucky to be married to Mrs. Kheldar. Sometimes I stop and think of where I might be if I hadn't gotten married right out of college. Ugh... It's a horrid thought. My wife brings out the best in me. She loves me, and she takes wonderful care of me. We make a great team. She is my best friend. I'm looking forward to many, many more years together with her.

We have no idea where we might be in 11 more years, but God willing we know that we'll be with each other.

The glass man cometh

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:29:54 GMT

Well, we played on Monday. The session was pretty much taken up by a fight. The Glass Man (from waaaaay back near the beginning) apparently found out they were around and attack while they were busy digging through papers looking for the stuff the Resistance wanted. Fortunately, Brooky was standing guard, and with Eva's ability to see through walls they were able to set up a nice ambush that threw the attacking soldiers back out of the room (props to Natasha for setting up a ring of illusionary soldiers right around the doorway to sow fear and confusion).

After the first wave of Nazis left the room, Brooky went charging out after them, gunned down one, then realized that the Glass Man was standing there. He went sprinting back in the room, warning everyone. General panic broke out (after all, they only beat him the first time because Brooky managed to use the jeep-mounted machine gun on him), and everyone started making for the windows that looked out over the Thames.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, they realized that Len Springett had been watching all this, somewhat bewildered (having never known about their powers).

Anyway, the professor started using his hysterical strength tap to unblock the boarded windows while Natasha kept the Glass Man surrounded by darkness. Brooky (in his excitement) suddenly discovered that he could grow to 9 feet tall, and launched himself at the darkness-shrouded Glass Man, taking him to the floor.

We left off with Brooky frantically getting off the Glass Man (who'd just started trying to encase him in some of the glass which he'd been using as a 4 inch thick full body "power suit"), Natasha preparing to blast him with a fire extinguisher, and the Professor and Eva preparing to follow Len out the window...

Traveller

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 18:02:23 GMT

Our Friday night game went well. The party got the married couple to one of the nearby systems without too much difficulty (other than a short fist-fight that broke out between Gabby and a crew member of the ship they were on. Apparently Gabby can be a little... "snooty" over her status as Dame, and ended up provoking someone into taking a swing at her. She happens to be a pretty good brawler, but Melvin J. broke up the fight before it went too far.

Anyway, after dropping the couple off on a nearby system, the group convinced the pilot of the to let them take a working passage to a destination a couple systems down the line. He agreed, and next week (we'll be playing Wednesday instead of Friday due to scheduling problems) they'll make the trip and likely run into more adventures.

We capped the evening off by taking a field trip out to the back porch where we watched the International Space Station pass by. I don't think I've ever seen a satellite so bright. It was still fairly light (only one or two stars were showing), and the station went by almost directly overhead. We watched it until it disappeared into the earth's shadow. It was a fun way to cap off an evening of sci-fi roleplaying. Special thanks to saganist for alerting me to the opportunity!

Roleplaying?

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:14:00 GMT

Nope, not this week. Two players couldn't make it, so we didn't play. Instead I ended up playing Dominions III (see the link of the day) until way later than I should have. That's why I didn't post last night. Too tired.

However, there is some interesting news about the WWII campaign. It looks like after I wrap up this adventure (as I said, likely just another couple sessions), one of the other players (gauntman, the player of Prof. Hayes) has agreed to run the group through an adventure. It'll be part of the same campaign, but I'll create a new character, and Hayes will temporarily be unavailable. Gauntman has never GM'd before, but he's got a good grasp (in my opinion) on the genre and on storytelling skills. I'll be able to help him out with any rules/technical issues.

Anyway, so for the first time in probably 9 years (or more?) I'll actually be playing a character instead of GMing. Woo! It'll only be for one adventure (not sure yet how long that'll be), but it will be a nice break, and might spark some ideas on how to get the feel of the game right for the genre.

I decided to go ahead and try a concept that I thought up years ago but never had a chance to actually play. My character is a 14 year old boy from Hong Kong who seems to have amazing luck. Besides that, he really doesn't have any impressive attributes, skills, or abilities. To put it in perspective, it's a 200 point character, and 130 of those points are dedicated towards improving his luck in one way or another. The end result is that once per hour of play time I can dictate one roll of the dice, and once per game session I can declare some plausible event of serendipity to occur (for example, "Gee, I wish we had a rope... Oh, hey, look! There's a rope on the shelf over there!").

It should be an interesting character to play, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what gauntman comes up with.

Link of the day: This is a fantasy-themed turn based strategy game with enormous depth and wonderful gameplay. The graphics are nothing impressive, but if you like the genre, this is a game worth checking out. There is a very good demo at the linked site (which includes a walkthrough pdf that I HIGHLY suggest you play through). It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Check it out, and let me know if you want to get in on a game (even if only using the demo) with gauntman and I.

What's this project thing?

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:32:32 GMT

As I mentioned earlier, I'm making an attempt to pick a single project each month and focus on that project. This serves two benefits. First, it forces me to actually pick a single one of my many projects and make significant progress on it. This is good for helping me learn how to make progress towards completing my projects and how to stick with something even when something else catches my imagination. Second, it gives me a chance to actually switch to other projects periodically. Really, a month isn't that long to wait to get to do something else that sounds interesting.

The nice thing is that I'm not giving myself the expectation of actually finishing a project in a month. Instead, at the end of the month it'll just go back in the big bucket o' projects, and I'll move on to something else. Some month down the road I'll get back to the project and do some more work on it.

Anyway, during the month of June, I've been working on putting together a PDF of The Players Guide to Fangor. Fangor is my personal fantasy roleplaying setting which has usually been my default setting over the years. This will be modeled after a GURPS supplement, using their style of presentation and their rules system. When I'm done (if I finish), the "book" should be a guide to all of the details that a player would want to know about creating a character and playing in the Fangor setting. It will include details about the history, geography, races, politics, religions, and magic of the setting. It will kind of compile a lot of what has been developed (by me and my players) over the years, some of which is stuck up in my head, having never come into play.

So far (I started into this monthly project thing a little late), using Adobe InDesign, I've set up pretty much all the document styles (in such a way as to mostly duplicate the GURPS books), and started doing a little outlining in order to make sure that the book has a reasonable structure. I've started gathering together some of various things I've already written here and there about the setting. This means that my next task is to start doing a lot of writing.

We'll see how that goes.

Starting the Traveller game

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 18:28:15 GMT

Last night's roleplaying went well. We created characters and started a short introductory adventure. Everyone had fun, and everyone is looking forward to next week.

One of the things that I really like about Classic Traveller is that the system (not the setting, but system itself) has a major theme of making sense out of random data. As sareth hinted at in his comment to my last post, it is actually possible for your character to die during character creation. This works, because character creation involves stepping your character though some number of years of their life in order to see what happened to them and what skills they acquired prior to the start of the adventure. You start with some stats, decide if you want to try and get into college, and then move on into a career of some kind (usually tied to the military or interstellar merchants). At some point, you may lose your job, or decide that it's time to retire, and at that point is where your character begins play. It's a system that makes character creation fun, and gives a very interesting framework upon which you can build a character story.

My friend from church is playing a character named Melvin J Montegue Seamour Thudpucker III. No, really, he is. Call him Melvin J or Mel for short. And no, he doesn't know what the J stands for. He ended up serving four years as an engineer in the Imperial Navy before being discharged as a result of his drinking (initially sparked after all his buddies died in a fire fight). He started the game with no money (I was kind and gave him 50 credits of pocket change), few skills, at the age of 23, with a future that looked rather bleak.

Mrs. Kheldar is playing a character named Maggie Johansen. She grew up on a technologically backward planet (they've been stuck back in the early gunpowder age), graduated from college and enlisted in the medical branch of the Navy with high hopes for the future. Unfortunately, she too served for only 4 years before being discharged at the age of 27. She did end up with a decent sized bundle of cash, and a few useful skills.

My friend's daughter (the 14 year old) apparently had the magic dice for the evening. She is playing a character named Dame Gabreila Adria Wisman. That's right, she was knighted when she was young for saving the life of a local noble. After a failed attempt at college, she left her planet to see the galaxy, joining the crew of a Free Trader (small, privately owned merchant ship). She served there for 12 years before deciding to move on to other things. She starts the game at 31 years of age. She has a number of useful skills, and a nice bundle of cash to her into the future.

A couple of interesting things happened during character creation. First, the youngest player in the group (by a very significant margin, I might add) is playing the oldest character. Heh. She also had an interesting career. Her first year working as a merchant allowed her to pick up some skill with Law. This was immediately followed by spending her second year smuggling. :)

I rolled randomly on a chart I put together (weighted based off the log of the planetary populations) to determine where the group would start the game. Humorously enough I hit the 0.1% chance of them starting on a radioactive mining planet with a population of 84. I had them decide why they were there and take some time to introduce themselves. I liked Maggie's explanation that when she took the job of delivering and installing some medical equipment, she neglected to read the brochure on the planet, and ended up stuck there looking for another job.

Anyway, after some amount of introductions in the "burger joint" on the space station, a couple walked in and explained that they were looking for some off-worlders to help them get off planet. Apparently their families hated each other, and they fear that violence would break out if they didn't leave. They offered cash (including some up front), which got Mel's acceptance right way. That's pretty much where we left things. Next week they'll find a ship, pick a destination, and deal with any complications that might arise.

Well, enough for now. Perhaps tomorrow I'll let you guys know about my project for this month.

Link of the day (I may or may not keep doing these): Dwarf Fortress. This is a game about managing a group of dwarves as they delve into a mountain, build a fortress, and just generally try to stay alive. Really sucky graphics, but absolutely amazing game play. If you have questions, check the wiki, or just ask me.

Just how crazy am I?

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So, here I've been complaining about my crazily busy schedule, and how I'm trying to find room in my life to do all that I want to do... Well, let me just provide a small example of why fixing my schedule is probably a hopeless task.

I'm writing this up at this moment because I happen to have a half hour or so until I start a new roleplaying group. That's right, as of tonight I'll be GMing two different gaming groups at the same time (well, not exactly the same time, since one group meets on Monday and the other meets on Friday, but you know what I mean).

How did this happen? Well, I happened to start talking with a friend of mine from church about roleplaying. He'd played D&D when he was young, and he expressed some interest. Next thing you know, he was explaining how he though his 14(ish) year old daughter should play in order to help her develop her creativity. Then all of a sudden he was asking if I wanted to run a game. How could I say no?

So, now I'll be running a Classic Traveller game for a friend, his teenaged daughter, and Mrs. Kheldar. My friend hasn't played in... years and years. His daughter has never played, and Mrs. Kheldar is still pretty new to the whole roleplaying thing. So, it looks like not only am I running two groups at once, but I'm running two groups of relative "newbies" at once! Hey, you can't say I'm not doing my part to expand the hobby!

Anyway, tonight we'll make characters, and (if we have time) run through a short introductory adventure.

As a humorous side note, I just have to laugh at Mrs. Kheldar who finds herself dismayed to realize that she is a gamer geek. :) She caught herself thinking today about what kind of character she'd like to play. Heh... You hear that? I'm married to a gamer!

Lucky me.

Catching up on the game

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:51:53 GMT

Well, it's time to update you on the last two weeks of play (we didn't play the two weeks before that, as Mrs. Kheldar was visiting family and friends out of town. This will be a short summary, but at least it'll get you caught up again.

Last time they decided to put the blind friend they found on the base in contact with the London resistance group they'd met with. They had a meeting scheduled with a resistance contact, and that went pretty well. They got a hold of a couple pistols (since weaponry was kind of tough to smuggle out of the port area), and got some information about where the records were archived that they were looking for (it turns out that the Reich had turned the Houses of Parliament into a records archive for temporary storage while waiting to get it all sorted and processed for useful content).

So, they snuck into the restricted area around the Houses of Parliament using the abandoned and sealed off underground, and then proceeded to bluff their way past the guards at the front of the building using Natasha's illusions to create the appearance of a cart full of paperwork, and Eva's smooth talking, native German, generally all around friendly and convincing ways.

Once inside the building they managed to track down the location of their medical records from the base, in the process running into Len Springett (remember him from the ship to Cairo?). He was apparently also undercover looking for some kind of records (some associated with a small shipping company). At any rate, he helped them find what they were looking for, so they group should be just about ready to clear out.

At any rate, last session went pretty smoothly, and we should be able to wrap this adventure up in another two or three sessions.

Link of the day: Little starwars miniatures that you make by printing an image, cutting out the shapes, and then folding and gluing them together. These are really intricate things, and I think the big-headed storm troopers and bounty hunters are actually kind of cute!

Trying to get my life back in order

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 02:43:43 GMT

I suppose you probably noticed that I haven't posted in a while. Life has been pretty full lately, and I haven't found myself with the energy to blog. Fortunately (for those who like to read my blog), I've backed off pretty significantly on my computer game playing, and have started a monthly project (since I have so many interests, I'm going to try seeing if I can stay focused on just one each month and kind of rotate through them). This gives me a little better sense of organization in my life.

Of course, I've been kind of going through computer game withdrawal, so I have to finish that adjustment first before things completely settle down.

Anyway, I do owe you guys RPG campaign log updates from the last two weeks (we didn't play the two weeks before that). Also I'll have to let you know about this month's project. And I have plenty of other things to update you all on. But... that will wait until another day. Better to keep these short to encourage myself to post more often.

Link of the day: This might interest those of you who are into role playing (or writing I suppose). This site has a program that generates extremely nice looking city maps. It'll do anything from low tech villages to modern urban sprawls. I'm very impressed.

Whatever happened to London?

Tue, 15 May 2007 02:49:14 GMT

You've seen pictures of some of the bombing damage in European cities after WWII? Tone that down just a little bit. You've seen pictures of people during the Great Depression in the US? Now combine those pictures. In particular, keep the dirt and the grey. Add some fog, since it's London.

There you have the setting of tonight's session. The players are in Reich controlled England (London specifically), posing as independent tramp freighter operators. They're trying to track down records from their past to keep the Germans from learning to much about them. It's now 1947, the war was unofficially over a year ago, and things are now in somewhat of a cold war state (although technically peace was never declared). The Reich controls all of Europe (as well as other places).

Anyway, a fairly interesting alternate timeline. The players are checking out the base where they used to be stationed. They've found a guy they know who used to work there on the base. He's blind, and living on the streets (well, living on the abandoned base). They've discovered that the records were taken by the Germans after the invasion, and are likely being stored in what are now the archives in the Houses of Parliament (picture Big Ben with a giant Nazi flag hanging under the clock).

Our experiment in playing this cinematic/gritty comic book style is going fairly well so far. I still wish I had about 4 hours a week more to put into doing preparations. Still, I feel like things are moving along fairly smoothly, I just need to work on adding some more detail in places. I was rather pleased that my wife (who was born in England and has been back to visit) and the other female in the group (who spent some time living in London) were actually horrified at what the Reich had done to the place. :) I warned my wife that she wouldn't like "my" London...

Now they've got to figure out what to do with this blind guy they know (can't leave him on his own in the abandoned base). They have to make contact with someone in the resistance, and they have to find and recover or destroy their records. We'll see how things go.

Link of the day: This is a site with information about the GURPS Transhuman Space setting (a fascinating sci-fi setting). It also has details about a program the author calls Orbits. This is a tool that allows you to calculate travel times for navigating around our solar system. A neat little tool that could be useful if anyone is running a near future sci-fi game.

Is this thing on?

Mon, 14 May 2007 00:50:33 GMT

Hmm... I'm sure I've posted dozens of times lately. They... uh... must have gotten... um... lost in the system.

Right. Happy Mother's Day (Mothers' Day?) to everyone out there who's a mother.

We decided to stop by the theater to take advantage of the fact that most people wouldn't take their Mom out to see Spiderman 3 on Mothers' Day. Heh... Guess what? Either there are a lot of Moms into comic books, or there are some Dads that have funny ideas about how to celebrate with their wife. It wasn't jam packed, but I'm certainly glad that we got there early. There were a lot of younger kids there too.

Anyway, not a bad movie. Mrs. Kheldar and I enjoyed it. I think they've very much improved on the computer animation for Spiderman since the first one. Yeah, there were some weak points, but eh... I'm easy to please. I was entertained.

Interesting previews included the next Harry Potter and the third Pirates movie. I've got to say that this Harry Potter preview has me more excited than any of the other movies (except perhaps the first).

Enough for now. Let's see if I can ease myself back into blogging without burning myself out.

Link of the day: 3D sugar fabricator

Huh?

Sat, 05 May 2007 20:06:12 GMT

Blog? What blog? I don't have a blog.

Oh. uh... err... *cough* Uh... I'll be right back.

Roleplaying night

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:57:43 GMT

Tonight we made some lists of potential plot ideas for upcoming adventures and set-piece location and events that could happen during those plots. This is part of a kind of interesting idea that we're experimenting with. The idea is that I need help running a cinematic/low-powered-supers campaign, and my players need some help playing in such a campaign. So, we're going to together determine an overall plot for the next adventure, and then together pick a couple set-piece location or event that will happen during that plot (I will also pick another couple set-piece items that the players won't know about). This will help me run a game that fits nicely into the genre, and allows the players to have a sense of where things are going so that they can help the story flow smoothly.

For example, a plot might be... one of the NPCs that is a crew member of the ship that is the group's home base gets kidnapped, and the group has to rescue him. Some set-pieces might be escaping from a death trap, dealing with a pesky monkey, and having a fist fight on the wing of a parked airplane. So, the set-piece items are kind of scenes events that could happen.

The intent of this is to help develop some of the "stereotypical" plots and events that should occur in a story of this genre. It'll be an interesting experiment, but I think it'll actually work out really well. I've got a list now of about 10 plots and 24 set-pieces, and all my players know to give me more as they come up with them.

We also worked some on reworking characters to account for the 5 years that has passed since their last adventure. This gives everyone the opportunity to alter their characters so that they all mesh together a little better, and all have a better role when it comes to something like combat (for everyone except Brooky), and non-combat situations (for Brooky).

Anyway, it's all good stuff. We'll probably finish up characters next week, and then we'll be ready to jump back into a new adventure. I'm pretty excited, and I think everyone else is too.

Greek group

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 14:45:48 GMT

Thursday we had our first meeting for the Greek small group that I'm leading. 6 other people showed up. There are three others (one a 10 year old boy) that couldn't make it this week, one other who will start in a couple weeks, and one other who might start coming next week. That's a pretty good sized batch of people. Anyway, it looks like a pretty fun group to work with.

This week we're working on the alphabet. This is a review for me, but it does give me a chance to go back and learn the uppercase letters (which I'd skipped my last time through, since they were considered optional). I actually need to also work on the next chapter so that I can try and stay a chapter ahead of everyone (the better to be able to answer questions and help people out as we get further into things).

Anyway, it's pretty exciting stuff. I'm definitely looking forward to this, as it'll be nice to have others around to help keep me motivated and excited about the project.

α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω
Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω

Roleplaying night

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:33:48 GMT

I meant to post this last night, but ironically enough, I was busy preparing for next week's role playing session...

Monday we finished up the adventure with a couple quick dice rolls and some plot summarization. Most of the bombs on the base were found. Loss of life was minimal due to advanced warning. The moles on the base (at least the known ones) were killed or captured.

Most of the session was actually spent in some deep discussions about where we want to go with this campaign. We talked about a variety of ideas on making improvements to the game and adjustments to the characters. We're all pretty excited about what lies ahead.

The basics are as follows: We're going to move the world timeline ahead by about 5 years. The war is still (sort of ongoing). Japan has been taken out by the U.S., but the British Isles, all of Europe, western Asia, and the industrialized part of Russia have all been taken by the Germans. The war was never declared over, but things have moved into a little bit of a cold war. The Middle East, South Africa, and South America are more or less neutral hot spots. North Africa and SE Asia are control by British interests, while the Japanese islands are controlled by the U.S. and allied china.

The group is now going to be essentially independent. They own and operate a small tramp freighter, and are working to defeat Axis the forces that are using super human capabilities. They also do occasional odd tasks for various allied governments.

Next week we'll continue to work out the details and start work on revising characters. When we're finished, we should have a group that works much better together and provides for a much smoother adventure. We're also working on some rather interesting tricks that should help me adjust to running the gritty-cinematic type of campaign that we're shooting for. More details on that some other time.

Where does my time go?

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 02:52:45 GMT

Sorry for the long post. I couldn't find a good place to cut this one...

Let's take a look at my normal weekdays. I usually wake up at 5:00am. This gives me time to get ready to leave the house, have a sit-down breakfast with my wife, take an hour to study the Bible, read whatever devotional material I'm currently going through, and pray. Then I'm out of here by just a little after 6:30am. Between commuting and work, I usually get home anywhere between 3:30pm and 5:00pm (usually between 4:00pm and 4:30pm though). Given the fact that I get up at 5:00am, I usually get to bed around 9:00pm. So, that leaves 4 to 5.5 hours in the evening that is "free" time. Knock about a half hour off that for various e-mail and website checks that seem to eat up my daily time. That leaves 3.5 to 5 hours.

But, there are some exceptions. Monday nights is roleplaying night. That means I stay at work until we play, and I usually get home around 8:00pm to 9:00pm. That means I usually end up just reading a little before going to bed. Sometimes I'll check my e-mail first. Tuesday nights I have some church ministry stuff I do, followed by a men's prayer meeting. That has me leaving the house around 6:15pm and will usually see me home around 8:30pm to 9:00pm. That leaves me an average of 1.5 hours of "free" time on Tuesdays (after my half hour of email and website reading). The remainder of the week is free of scheduled items, although starting this week I'll be starting up the Greek small group I've mentioned. That'll probably eat up 1.5 hours.

So, all that leaves me with a total of 10.5 hours of free time during the week.

Usually my weekends are fairly free. I get up early on Saturday mornings and play a computer game online with my dad, Optiker. Then I usually have various tasks to take care of (mowing or other things), but other than that I'm usually free for most of the day, other than perhaps once every month or two when I run into an all-day project. So, we'll say an average of 9 hours free on Saturday. Sunday is also fairly free, although I'll usually watch football or NASCAR in season (or watch/nap). Plus it's not uncommon for us to invite people over on Sundays for lunch and games. I usually stay up an hour later on Sundays, since I carpool in later on Mondays so that my wife can meet me for roleplaying. I'll say Sunday has an average of 7 hours free.

This gives a grand total of 26.5 hours of free time. Subtract off 1.5 hours for various inefficiencies, leaving 25 hours.

I'd estimate that lately I'm reading an average of 4 hours a week. Usually my wife and I will watch a couple episodes of one of some TV show we're collecting. That's 1.5 hours. I spend a shockingly low average of maybe 2 hours a week talking or what have you with my wife. That all leaves 17.5 hours.

...which sounds about right for how much time I spend playing computer games. Ouch! Now I feel like not posting this!

For a while I was making a habit of not playing games on the computer for more than 10 hours a week. This definitely freed up my time for other projects. Maybe I need to start doing that again... or maybe I should enjoy it while I can before a child comes along and completely screws up my schedule! :)

Well, there you go. Now you all know how I spend my time. It's actually an interesting and eye opening exercise. I recommend it to all of you. Really. Then you all can make me feel less bad about how I abuse my free time. :)

Let me try something else

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:59:41 GMT

The problem here is that I get busy with stuff, so I don't feel like taking the time to blog. Then when I do have time to write, I feel like I have a big bucket of stuff that I need to blog. So, that just delays things more.

New idea.

No more rambles when I'm behind. Instead, I'm going to try and post shorter blogs about just a single topic. That should help me post more often, and may lead to be staying more current with things.

Now I just need some kind of list to keep track of the things I want to blog about...

Topic for next time: Where does my time go?