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| ("Death Dealer" by Frank Frazetta, 1973) |
Ok, fuuuuuuuuuck... I have so much shit I need to get done. Let's make a list!
Seriously, I was getting a bit overwhelmed a year ago when my work began opening up again that sorting things, listing, setting priorities really helped. Ha, I would prefer not to exit life with a bunch of half-finished contributions to the hobby I love.
First, say it, I waste way too much time reading posts in Twitter and arguing with right-wingers on Facebook. STOP IT! Pick one day per week, like Thursday night, take 4 hours to riff through the thoughts of others. (This worked for me in law school.)
Second, gotta allocate time for work, non-profit orgs, and family. 4 hours each day during the week is the minimum I need to plan for my practice, I spends something like 6 hours each week hoping to contribute to the greater good, 14 hours per week spending time with my son and special needs grandson and maybe another 6 hours every other week visiting with other fam.
Thirdsies, Sleeeeeep... Dude, you need at least 6 hours every day (my psydoc back in the day had me set an alarm for midnight each day so I would get to bed by 1am).
Fourth, meals and grooooomong. What, an hour a day unless I'm going out to eat.
Fifth, music. I orta practice an hour each day if'n I wants to get better on the drums. (Just kidding, still bassey.)
Ok so how many hours per week is that??? 4+20+6+14+3+42+7+7=103 out of 168 hours per week. 103-168=65 hours left over, say 9 hours each day. Obviously me and me spouse need our time, and there's gonna be time shopping for groceries, doing bills, cleaning, laundry, minor car repairs, etc. Given all that I should be able to set aside 2 hours five days a week to work on gaming stuff contributin' to our craft.
So what is in the pipeline for the past many months (years)...
- Video on City State of the Invincible Overlord (Several folks have done overviews, but I don't think by anyone who gamed the City State. And we gamed it hard.)
- Advanced Labyrinth Lord version of Underport (Just that new level nine needs some imaginatory time.)
- Video on the underworld of Arduin (Continuations of my series of "brief" Arduin setting videos.)
- Hard to be an Aorit-Q (My Qanon and last scenario for Troika!)
- Metropolis of Chaos (The abyss under Underport, a lot of ideas on this.)
- A weekly 2-hour online game (Hmmm, I am leaning toward LotFP. Our regular group runs every other month and I only Ref as part of a rotation. I get some satisfaction refing an ongoing campaign solo.)
Wow, man. Never visited your site before today. Found it through the YouTube link you posted at Noisms' blog (Monsters&Manuals). That is some good shit: it's what Critical Role *should* look like, i.e. REAL Dungeons & Dragons.
ReplyDelete[okay, I kid...I've never watched more than two minutes of CR, so I don't ACTUALLY know what it looks like. Point is, I hope to binge all the Blipping vids when I have the chance. Maybe this week]
In all seriousness, thank you for taking the time to edit and post this. It IS a historical...and amusing...look at Old School D&D. I quit playing the game for about two decades circa '88 (before I could grow a beard as fine as your DM), but the scene is much the same as it would have been, had we been fighting orcs and trolls instead of pretending to be vampires.
I've run into many youngsters the last couple years (well, before COVID) who don't really grasp what the game's like, and who look to YT podcasts, and staged games like CR as a model for how they're SUPPOSED to play. Your window into the past gives a much clearer view of how the game was played BEFORE the time of social media, especially among young adults (as kids, there was less weed and beer, but the music and set-up was about the same, and we were hopped up on soda and hormones).
Great stuff; will definitely recommend. Thanks again.
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Thank you very much. Ha, actually it occurred to me that our tapes were in some fashion "historical" because I looks for videos of I guess "classic play" and the results were very minimal and didn't match my experience. We ran AD&D for 20 years in our own little world really cut off from the greater hobby. My parents gifted me a VHS camera after our first child was born and of course I then recorded hours and hours of D&D games (we ran probably once every month or two). As to the editing, har, I made an editorial decision to only use game play and not the much more voluminous extraneous material. Some of the players are now credentialed in the education field and worried about the rampant drug and alcohol use and related insanities...
ReplyDeleteHa! I don't doubt it (though would they even be recognizable?). Still, it's great stuff. Was just watching episode 1.8 and the LOOK that you've captured of (what appears to be) a typical college "crashpad" circa 1990 is vintage gold. I'm from Seattle where we have long been beer snobs, so our fridges were full of Henry Weinhardt's even then. But man...that is some classic "role-playing" action!
DeleteHope you don't mind me promoting it on my own blog.
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Indeed there were lots of small 1 and 2-bedroom apartments among us after high school. Ha, we also drank "Henry's" (remember collecting the bottling numbers?), Budweiser was our standard because you could always get it on sale. BTW I also edited out the rules arguments...
ReplyDeleteLOL. I remember nights like that.
DeleteIt's funny how, with every decade that passes we (I) look back on ourselves thinking how grown up and mature we are, when there's always another tier to reach. I watch two young men arguing over how much damage such-and-such weapon should do, and consider that these days (to me) this would be much the same as watching an 8-year old saying he should get to roll an extra die in Monopoly because he's using the car instead of the hat and it should TOTALLY be faster.
Noisms post (which brought you to my attention) was a thoughtful one, but more than just class distinction, I think the connecting thread is one of the lack of parenting that came about in the first real generation where it was acceptable for both parents to work (or where it was acceptable to be a single parent, and thus forced to work). We were left to our own devices and allowed to parent ourselves. The maturing process (I feel) was longer and harder for that, in addition to the normal hurdle of learning the new rules of a world changed to something different from that of our parents.
My thinking is that a pure creative process lasted longer. My maturing process was stunted (ha, or so I was told when I entered out-patient chemical dependency recovery in 2004) by pickling my brain chemistry. So the weird thing is that in the intervening almost 17 sober years I still practice and enjoy pretty much the same things (D&D, politics, music). Am I more mature? I guess emotionally I am. I became a lawyer back in 2014 which gives me some adult street cred, and I run my own solo firm which means I don't really answer to anybody. Life is weird.
DeleteTrue that!
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