lilfluff

So, some years back I came up with a character and a little bit of world building but not any stories that went anywhere. Recently I listened to a podcast that had James D'Amato as a guest who has written some rpg books, and with the major topic being an oracle deck that went along with an (expensive!) game. They didn't merely discuss that one game but the use of oracle decks in role playing games in general and James mentioned creating a few custom decks specific to game worlds. Some people in the solo rpg community also decided that this September should be Solo September, though more in a do solo rpg stuff than a curated list of prompts or activities. These three things collided in my brain and I thought, "Hey, what if I took the werefox foster kid in high school and tried solo gaming it, and came up wroth a custom oracle deck for it?" And now it's the 19th (er, fine, past midnight so the 20th) and I haven't actually written anything down.

Part of the process is looking for categories of themes that would show up and then look for examples, so areas that have come to mind:
* Bureaucracy (the school system, the group home and government)
* High school life beyond simply the bureaucracy in charge. Good, bad, and just the things that seem so important then.
* Were related things, it's a setting where the existence of shifters is not a secret.

And one of the nice things pointed out about creating a custom deck is if you really don't want to include something in your game, don't. But things you want to see showing up or influencing things, including them in the deck means there's always the chance that that card will turn up and effect things. If there was a bully card, flipping it over could mean one shows up, or something one did earlier has an effect in the present, maybe not bullying per se but someone just trying to insist on things being their way, etc.

Also not sure what game system to use. Other than leaning less number crunchy. Possibly a combination of Fate & Mythic.

But it's late and I really ought to be sleeping. Posted this now to put it out in public and remind myself to work on it.

Currently being bitten by the computer industry's inability to actually pick or stick with standards. Especially annoying as I'm at a satellite location a three quarter hour drive from the office, so I can't just go back and spend fifteen minutes digging through drawers and then come back. At least not and come back today. Please, all I ask for is five, maybe ten minutes alone with a handful of industry CEOs and an illegally powerful electric cattle prod. Or to just get to send the whole senior management teams of most of the tech companies on a one way trip to Mars. Fluff can exile a dozen or so tech leaders, as a treat?

Something I brought up a little while back over on the fediverse:

Hey, remember the fad a while back for these things called pocketmods? If you don't remember the name, you might remember them as those things you would print on a sheet of paper, fold in half along the long axis and into four sections the other way, then make a careful slice down the middle... and if you did it all correctly you had a little pocket sized, eight page booklet with advice on some subject or with small forms on which you could note down how you were spending money to aid in keeping up with your finances, or small RPG booklets. If you remember these (or never forgot them) you may also remember that you only printed to one side of the paper because when you folded it all up each page of the booklet was one side of a folded double thickness section. When I ran across pocketmods again recently this bothered me. You literally, as in really truly literally as well as emphasis literally, lose 50% of the available page surface when you make a pocketmod.

(Assume that I spent the next five minutes not-quite-ranting grumbling about this and just move on to the next paragraph)

What if I told you there was a better way to get small pocket sized booklet that still used a single sheet of paper? All you need to add to the process is either a needle and thread or a stapler. Let me introduce you to a little thing called an octavo. If you check the illustration on the linked page it's the third one down. You make three folds which divide the sheet up into eight sections (thus the name octavo). After you third fold you have something in the form of a little booklet. Now, after the three folds you need to either use the needle and thread to do a 3-hole pamphlet stitch to hold it together or grab the nearest stapler and use one or two staples to hold it together. Now you just need to make a couple of cuts. There are two visible folds on the bottom edge and two on one half of the sheets on the side opposite the spine. You can either use a straight edge or blade to carefully slice right along the folds to separate the pages, trim those two sides with a pair of scissors, or you can do what I did and place a metal straight edge down about two millimeters in from the edge and use a blade to trim off a little strip. Do the last on the three non-spine edges and you'll have nice neat pages with corners that meet cleanly.

If you would like to see the result you can click on the link to see my post over on part of the fediverse a few days back that includes a picture (and a link to a different octavo fold explanation on a site that includes sample pdfs of Shakespeare that you can print and fold). That one in the picture took only a few minutes, including the time spent searching for and reopening the link to the web site with the octavo example to double check that I was remembering the folds right. Fold, fold, fold, staple, staple, slice, slice, slice and I had myself a 16 page pocket notebook for something I'd need to take notes on over the next week or so. It is unlikely to be the last one I make, as they are just handy little things. As noted over on mastodon these little booklets fit quite nicely into a little pouch I have on hand that is intended to be used as a cell phone holder. But it could likely easily hold a half dozen or more little booklets like this. Oh, and nothing is stopping you from folding two sheets of paper, nestling one inside the other and then sewing or stapling and then instead of a 16 page booklet you have a 32 page booklet.

And I'll likely make some bigger booklets. I have a long reach stapler which means if I do a folio (they fancy way of saying just folding a single sheet once dividing it into four pages) signature I wouldn't have any trouble reaching in the 5.5 inches to staple the spine if I don't feel like sewing (and unlike most smaller staplers it has an adjustable paper stop and measuring guide to help you staple at the exact distance you want). About a decade ago I did a project I called at the time Character A Day (but have since referred to as the Seven Days, Seven Characters world-building project). For seven days I came up with a character, wrote a bit about them, wrote up RPG stats using the FATE Accelerated system, and included a setting aspect. At the end of the seven days I had seven characters as well as a setting for them. I've been considering for a while now grabbing those posts, doing a cleaner rewrite, maybe including a little more, and putting it together as a small pdf. 4.25" x 5.5" is not an uncommon page size for indie RPG pdfs. As long as the revised version stayed under or not much over 48 pages at that page size then it would be easy to do up a single signature from a stack of pages (I believe the manufacturer says the long reach stapler I have should be able to do up to twenty pages, but a dozen is probably much easier to staple through and twelve sheets would be forty-eight pages).

So easy back in the 90s or 00s there was a webcomic set at either an ISP or software company where one plot line involved the growing awareness of blogs and one of the employees managing to sign some sort of agreement with some corporate lawyers as, "the representative of the blogosphere." Explaining, when the other characters were shocked the corporate lawyers would buy that claim, that it worked because, "I had a business card saying that in (font name) which is the most trustworthy font. People will believe anything if you put it in that font."

And now I'm sitting here stuck because I don't remember which font it was. Maybe Copperplate Gothic Bold, but that's a guess. This question, which font it is, is going to be stuck in my head for days.

As there was interest in solo rpgs, noticed that Bundle of Holding is doing a bundle of books by Peter Rudin-Burgesswho publishes under Parts Per Million. Included are guidebooks for solo play with a few different rules sets like 13th Age or Dungeon Crawl Classics (these books combine some game specific advice along with a mostly common set of tools and advice); as well a few general advice books Easier Solo Play, Easier Game Journals, and Easier Solo Mystery Play; and a set of cut up books where he's taken a public domain work used a tool to snip it into short segments of a few words, and build a random tables of of that. The idea with the cut ups being to pick one made from a book of a similar flavor to your game whether that is Dracula or Triplanetary Lensman or The Virginian and use the snippet four to five word snippet as a prompt. Currently $7.95 for a seven book starter set and $20.23 for the starter seven and twentieth-five more.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/PartsPerMillion

Well, 2024 went by quickly. I am half expecting to wake up tomorrow and find out it's sometime in the 2040s. So, hey there Dreamwidth, how are you doing?

Anyway, in no particular order some goals for 2025:
* At least 120 writing days this year (signed up for GYWO with this goal)
* Draw! Start on Draw A Box
* Pick up guitar again. For one reason or another I stopped playing guitar in the midst of the eternal spring 2020. Late last year I took my Traveler electric travel guitar and upgraded the tuners to locking tuners so I no longer have the excuse of the highly annoying stock tuners on it.
* Be more active here and blog on my own domain.
* Prepare more of my own food. Largely this means preparing more lunches and breakfasts as we have already drastically cut back on eating out for dinner.
* Do some solo RPGing. I may very well do some posts relating to this. I have a few sets of rules, including the Captains Log solo Star Trek RPG put out by the current Trek RPG license holder and have half completed the process of creating captain, main crew, and ship (A Caitian captain, with an early Miranda class that Starfleet has loaned to the Caitian government's scientific research arm with a mission to explore and study places within Federation territory that haven't been directly studied yet).

Here's hoping for new posts in less than 12 months.

I'm not going to post a huge year in review post. There's darn little to brag about for 2023. As I put it over on the fediverse 2023 was, "Not as horrid as 2020 or 2021, an adequate year. Financially it was another painful year after 2021's car troubles and left me treading the monetary waters. But, I survived it." I'm going to hope for 2024 to be a better year. There's no expensive medical tests scheduled (okay, for the US $1500 in patient costs after insurance is not exactly extreme for something that goes beyond getting an x-ray, but it was the first time I myself had such a bill) nor anything else pre-planned that should be expensive. So 2024, you've got a chance to be a better year than this year.

I've signed up for Get Your Words Out, with a habit goal of 120 writing days in 2024. In addition to that I plan to continue my DuoLingo streak, and as I completed all the lessons for Esperanto and it's now in the Daily Refresh stage I'm going to start a new language in January. Probably Spanish. I recently started a Javascript course and I intend to finish that early in the year. Other than that I'll take 2024 as it comes.

However your 2023 went I wish you an excellent 2024.

So once again the answer is I was impatient. For Humble Bundle has now dropped their NaNoWriMo bundle (because who would want more than a week to consider whether to pick up a bundle to help prepare for a 50K writing challenge). Now that I think of it I rolled my eyes are Humble last year for the exact same reason.

Anyway, here is what they're offering for $18:( List of 32 items behind cut to preserve your screen... )

If someone hasn't picked up any writing books and they're looking for a writing book bundle, this has covers multiple categories of writing books plus the Plottr/Novlr teaser subs (and coupon for Plottr that will basically pay for a year's multi-device subscription Or a year and a bit of a one-device subscription). I haven't ever used Plottr myself but if you've been considering it then this bundle might be worth it just for that. But if you aren't looking for a Plotr/Novlr discount and you already have a few books on grammar/plotting/etc then even at only $18 this bundle is likely a pass.

My view on whether to get this one or the Storybundle bundle: If you have been considering Plotr but were hesitant to spend $39 (or $49 for multi-device or $99 for Plotr Pro), this bundle is less than half the price of the single device software + 1 year of updates subscription (I'd hope at $99 that Plotr Pro still leaves you with a license to use the software locally at the end of a year, just no more updates or cloud features, but the pricing page doesn't make it clear one way or the other). If you're not interested in Plotr and have basic craft books covered I can't really recommend the bundle from Humble but you might still see something in Storybundle's bundle which has some pre-release books and a couple beyond-the-basic-craft-guides books that might interest you (Pros and Cons, a book of advice on getting the most out of convention attendence; Military Strategy for Authors, which could be subtitled, "So, do your characters have any more of a plan for their rebellion than just blowing up Death Stars?"; Beyond Prince Charming: One Guy's Guide to Writing Men in Romance (and beyond)).

Also, Humble Bundle, why do you release your NaNoWriMo bundle so late in October‽ This just boggles me. Even if you have contacts that will let you stick something amazing into the bundle the audience for such a bundle will already have been courted by Storybundle for a good two weeks.

For Indigenous Peoples Day (today, 10/9) the AU RPG Coyote and Crow is available free (or Pay What You Want) over at their web site (https://shop.coyoteandcrow.net/products/coyote-crow-core-rulebook-pdf), the page shows the usual $25 price for the PDF edition, but put it in the cart and it should show a $25 discount. (This news found via James "Famous English Chasing Other Languages Into Alleys Quote" Nicoll's DW blog, if you're following me and not him I suspect you would find his posts interesting.