Winter Cleaning

Just a little heads-up – I did some resorting of my website, hopefully to make it parse a little easier at first blush.

Also, I finally put up a fun little project that I’ve had sitting around for a while. They originally came out of some of my early casting experiments for my thesis work, and I ended up finding them charming in their own right. I present to you: Nubs. Little things, just for fun! Check out more ways to use them at my site, or if you want some of your own, I have sets available at my store for only $5!

Hard white Nubs, as miniature elements.

Thus, I strike against February malaise.

Brownout

I’m taking an internet vacation.

I feel like I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time reading what other people have to say about things. Which is the point of social media, right, but I’ve turned some mental corner and it’s working against me. I’m simultaneously over- and under-stimulated, clicking through to divers articles, blog posts and photo galleries, only reading the first paragraph, getting alternately jealous, annoyed, saddened and angered by what other people have to say about…whatever.

So! Internet vacation. Not from the whole internet (that would be madness incarnate), but from the most pernicious stew of my current malaise – forums, twitter, tumblr, facebook, &tc. I’m still reading Google+, because the volume is low, I personally know most of the people in my circles, and I like to make my weekly wrestling posts. I’m of course always available via email.

If I come up with anything cool while I’m on vacation this will be where I show off.

Fingers crossed!

Current State of Play

Now that the holidays (and related travel &tc) are safely behind us, I feel like I’m finally settling in to some regular gameplay. It’s been over two years since I played regularly, and it’s definitely stretching out some old muscles and getting settled back into the mental and scheduling-related patterns necessary (for me, anyway).

I’m playing in two biweekly games with largely-overlapping-but-not-entirely-the-same groups of people, thanks entirely to local indie-games-lover Joe. One wednesday is a gritty urban Burning Wheel game, and then the next is an arboreal Apocalypse World game. I’ve run BW before for a short game, but this is my first experience playing either of these modern classics.

It’s a little early to really analyze either game, but right now I’m struggling in the same way with each of them, so I think the problem is mine. I’m having a lot of trouble coming up with character motivations that involve other characters – like, my characters are pretty cool based on the moment in time that I made them, but whenever the spotlight comes back to me I don’t really have a strong idea of what they’re up too, or why they would be involved with other action that’s going on (in a way that doesn’t feel arbitrary to me).

I imagine I just need to shake out the rust and invest more in the characters, but it’s a weird feeling. I do like playing again, though, and certainly hope it will continue!