A while ago, I said that I was a bit burned out on blogging and on D&D. As it turns out, neither is really completely true. I’m super enthused to get to return to Encounters (my new work schedule had prevented me before), and I’d even be open to the idea of running more D&D in the near future. I still want to play.

Similarly, I frequently have ideas for blog posts, and want to write. Here’s the catch, though: most of the ideas I have don’t fall within the rather narrow bounds I’ve set for myself on this blog. This blog is, ostensibly, about games and gaming advice, and more often than not is about D&D. That was great for a while, but there’s only so much you can say on the subject, and there are lots of blogs out there that post more frequently than I do and have more readers than I do that write about the same thing. So what to do?

Simple. I’m going to, gradually, start changing the focus of this blog. I’d like the freedom to be able to blog about whatever I want to blog about. More often than not, this is likely to be game- or geek-related. Sometimes, though, it won’t be. Sometimes it’ll be about things happening in my life, or a movie I saw, or something happening in the world, or whatever strikes my fancy.

I’d still like this to be a collaborative blog, so my contributors are still welcome to write about whatever they want to write about, and I’m open to new people contributing. Now, though, you’ll be able to write about more stuff.

A couple of necessary changes are going to happen over the next month or two in order to accommodate all of this. The first thing to change is going to be the general slant of the content. Starting with my next blog post, I’m going to be getting rid of the self-imposed limits I’ve placed on myself here. This is probably going to necessitate some restructuring of things, notably tags and categories; right now they’re all game-related for the most part, and that’s going to have to change somewhat.

The most visible change, though, is that I’m going to be changing the name of this blog. That’ll probably come with a facelift, and will also come with a change of URL. I’ll give you guys plenty of warning as far as this goes, and if the RSS feed is going to change, I’ll let you know about that, too.

I don’t know about you, but I feel better already.

Well, I guess you’ve all noticed that I’ve been away for a while. There are two reasons for this:

1. I’ve been a little bit burned out on blogging lately. I was getting to the point where I didn’t have as much free time as I was used to, and it was competing with other things that I wanted to do more. I can’t promise that that has changed, but I’ve been feeling the itch again lately, so here I am.
2. I’ve become a little bit burned out on running D&D, which has dulled some of my enthusiasm for the game. I’m not completely off D&D; I’ll be participating in the upcoming season of Encounters, which I’m pretty excited about. But my current D&D game is on hiaitus for the moment. Too much time was spent away from it for various reasons, which kind of killed momentum. We may go back to it in the future, but for now I feel like some time away from DMing might be good for me.

Which is not to say that I’m going to stop running games. I’m very much a GM at heart, and I generally feel more comfortable running the game than playing in it (though I do enjoy the latter quite a bit). And that brings me to the second reason for this blog.

I’m starting up a game of The Dresden Files, which I’m pretty stoked about. This is intended to be the first of many different games that I and my group will try; I think of it as something akin to Dice of Doom’s great experiment, though somewhat less regimented and not nearly so grandiose. I’d like to try a few different games with my group, primarily as a sort of palette-cleanser/injection of variety, but also to get the people in my group to branch out a bit, experiment with different styles of play, and generally improve all of our roleplaying chops a bit.

Anyways, back to Dresden. We’ve had one session (which not everyone could make it to), and it was the city creation session of the game. I wasn’t sure what to expect, quite honestly. The game dedicates an entire session to just making characters and fleshing out the city you’ll be playing in, and while it sounded cool on paper, I honestly wasn’t sure it would be all that much fun.

It was freaking awesome. Everyone got really into it and we came up with some fantastic stuff. So much stuff, in fact, that we didn’t have enough room on the city sheet to track it all. We’re setting the game in Philadelphia, largely because it’s geographically close to us and somewhat familiar to most of the group. We’ve decided that Philly is a gathering point for a lot of minor practitioners who come to make use of the city’s role as a crossroads for mystical information. The White Council, on the other hand, has only a token presence here, probably because of the current mayor’s role as a Freeholding Lord, and the city’s (largely unenforceable) role as Accorded Neutral Ground.

The mayor wants to maintain this status quo, while a network of minor practitioners (colloquially referred to as “Fatesbook”) want to depose him and put one of their own in power. There’s also the White Court night club owner who controls the flesh trade, the mobster with a little bit of supernatural power and a big opinion of himself, the Voodoo priest who will give anyone information for a price (he collects favors, not money), the ectomancer who runs the ghost tours and lives in a haunted ship, the biker gang, a number of shapeshifting animals associated with Edgar Allen Poe’s residence in the city, and the Summer Court’s presence in the botanical gardens. Oh, and did I mention that there’s a scourge of Black Court vampires in town, who want to repair the Liberty Bell because doing so will plunge the world into eternal darkness? Add to this the Coalition for Family Moral Order, and you’ve got yourself a party.

I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

This will be my first ever contest on this blog, to my recollection.

I’ve been given a download code for BioWare’s Mass Effect 2 (an excellent game if ever there was one), and though this would normally overjoy me, since I’ve already purchased, played, and finished the game, the code does me little good.

That’s where you come in, good reader. I’m going to be giving this code away to one lucky reader tomorrow, Wednesday the 6th, at 7:30pm, Eastern Standard Time.

If you want the download code, here’s what you have to do:

1. Comment on this post.
2. Include a song lyric that you think is particularly appropriate to this contest and the game being given away.
3. Remember to credit the artist!
4. Do so before 7:30 pm on Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 (Eastern Standard Time).
5. If you’re feeling generous, and you haven’t already, subscribe to the blog!
6. Whichever song lyric strikes me as the funniest, most poignant, most apropos, or whatever other arcane criteria I decide to use, will win.

If you win, I’ll ask for your email address, if I don’t already have it. Once you give it to me, I’ll email you the code.

Disclaimer
It’s entirely possible that this code won’t work for you. As far as I know, it will; however, it might be somehow tied to my EA account, and non-transferable. If that’s the case, you’ll get a public apology on this blog, but not much else. Sorry. I suspect that it will work just fine, though.

Let the competition begin!

Apologies for the week of silence. Some of you may already know that I’ve just recently (this past Monday) started a new job; those of you who did not know, now you do. Because of my work schedule and my long commute, I’m getting home later than I’m used to, and I’m still adjusting to the schedule. Once things settle down a bit, you’ll probably see my posting become more regular again.

In any case, I do have some posts planned, so I’ll tell you about some of the things that I’ve got in the queue.

• D&D Lite: I posted about this a little while ago; I’m trying to figure out how to cross-breed D&D and Gamma World in order to create a leaner, quicker, easier version of D&D, ideal for pick-up games and teaching the game to beginners. That project is still on, I just need to find the time to do some design. It’ll likely become a semi-regular column on this site, and I’m hoping to have something usable and fairly complete by the time I’m done. I wouldn’t mind this becoming a group project, so if anyone wants to help me develop it, reply to this comment or drop me a line at engard at gmail dot com.
• The Dresden Files RPG: I’m in the process of reading this one, and I like it quite a bit. It’s a great read, and the mechanics really hit close to the mark. When I’m done, I’d like to post some more thorough thoughts on it; I’d also like to see about getting a game going at some point.
• Solos that vomit minions, which turn into terrain: This came from a Twitter conversation started by Sly Flourish, and it grabbed my imagination. I’m going to, at some point, come up with stats for such a creature, and possibly an entire encounter based around it.
• Anabasis and Doppelganger: I’m still in the process of designing these games with a friend of mine. The going is a little slow (see my excuse, up under the D&D Lite heading and above that), but it’s still going, and it’s still a project (or projects, really) that I’m interested in pursuing. As the games develop, I’ll probably post more about them.

I haven’t exactly made this a secret, but I also haven’t explicitly stated it on my blog, and I feel that I would be remiss if I did not: I am looking for a job. I would prefer a full-time, permanent position, but I am also open to freelance projects, if you would like me to write for you.

If you follow this blog, you likely know what I’m good at already, at least in terms of the scope of this job. I should also mention that I have been a teacher for the last several years, which means that I am comfortable speaking in front of groups of people, and I am comfortable imparting knowledge to others. If you haven’t already, you can see my list of publications. If you’d like to see my resume, or a list of references, you can feel free to contact me either by commenting on this post, or by emailing me at engard at gmail dot com.

Thank you for your time.

Brian

I’ve solved my Feedburner issues, it seems. The short version is that my feed went too far back into my blogging history, so the size of the feed exceeded what Feedburner was willing to handle. I’ve fixed that, so we should be in business again.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m having some issues with my feed updating. Feedburner as seriously dropped the ball as far as I’m concerned, and I’m looking into an alternative. I’ll let you know if anything changes as far as the feed goes, assuming those of you subscribed to the feed are even able to read this post.

Today I made the pilgrimage to Weta Cave, the mini-museum set up in Wellington. I really wanted to visit Weta Workshop itself but, sadly, due to confidentiality issues, Weta doesn’t allow tours of their facilities. That’s what the Cave is for. The Cave does have a lot of cool things to see, though; props from Lord of the Rings, District 9, King Kong, and various other productions. At any rate, here are some photos:

About to be eaten by an Uruk-Hai.

Me, the wife, and Smeagol.

Steampunk Rayguns.

Balrog miniature (bigger than Orcus).

Cave Trol miniature (also bigger than Orcus).

A gentle warning.

I don’t have a cohesive theme for this post; it’s mostly just random news that I felt like sharing.

First off, you can now find me on 4EBlogs.com. Hopefully that means that this humble blog will reach a somewhat larger audience. We’ll see, I guess.

Second, I just got done recording an episode of The Tome Show with Jeff Greiner. Jeff was an awesome host, and it was a truly surreal experience to have the guy that I listen to in my car talking back at me when I say things, responding to what I say. At any rate, we talked about campaign building, specifically starting a new campaign. I don’t want to steal the show’s thunder, so I’ll likely revisit this topic after the show has aired and people have had a chance to listen to it. I’ll let you know when it’s up.

Third, some of you may know (but most of you don’t) that I’m going to New Zealand on October 19th. I’ll be there for roughly two weeks, taking in the sights and visiting various Jacksonian locations. I’m very excited, and I expect to come back charged with some imagery-inspired ideas. I will likely blog my travels again, like I did when I visited New Orleans and the South.

Finally, I have fully digested the wonder that is Mouse Guard, though I have yet to play it. I expect to talk about it a bit at some point.

That is all.

Apologies for the dry spell. I’ve got a D&D game upcoming, and I feel that I always blog less coming up on a D&D game because my energies are focused on it. Speaking of which, I also realize that it’s been a while since I’ve posted a session report; this is because it’s been a while since we’ve gotten to play the campaign. Real life has interfered with the (clearly more important) gaming lives of a couple of my players, and I don’t like playing the campaign with two or more players absent. When the campaign resumes, I’ll continue posting session reports.

That actually brings me to another bit of news. I mentioned that I’m prepping for a D&D game this weekend; you may have surmised that this is not a game in the normal campaign. You would be correct. See, there will only be three players present (one of them Skyping in from California), rather than the customary five, so I’m not going to run the normal campaign. Instead, I’m going to start up an “off game” for situations just like this one, where we want to play D&D but don’t have enough of the regulars to do so. I’ve been fashioning up some pregens (though I’ll allow my players to make their own characters, should they choose), and I plan on running the Tomb of Horrors as my off game. There will likely only be three players on any given session of this, so it’ll likely be a bit on the difficult side. PC mortality may be high. For this reason, I’m actually going to start the PCs at level 11 instead of level 10 (where the adventure would normally start); I think that, given the difficulty of the adventure and the small group of PCs, it’ll still be difficult and deadly enough to live up to its name. I will post a session report on the wiki, probably in a separate section specifically for the off game.

Finally, I’m hoping to get my copy of the Red Box tomorrow. I’ll likely run the adventure within it at some point. I’d like to try it out solo, and I may run it for a group, as well. I’ll probably use the off game sessions for that. Again, expect a report of some type.