September is a Go...

August is done and now September is here.  I'm going to jot down a few thoughts about moving forward. 

I completed reading Night Shift by Stephen King.  Overall, I found this short story to be pretty excellent. Reading it made me realize I don't read enough short fiction.  I think it works really well and is an underappreciated writing form in this day with 1,000 plus page epic fantasy tomes.  Ironically, I've started reading The Magic of Recluce by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. during this holiday weekend. I say ironic because there are over 20 books in the series, but I've always intended to give it a shot. After finding the first three books in excellent condition at the local used bookstore it seemed like the obvious next selection. 

My son and I watched ALIEN: Romulus at the local theater.  We both enjoyed it and thought it was great. We're big ALIEN fans in this house.  I have 5 volumes of the omnibus collections of the ALIENS novels, the ALIEN RPG, play several of the video games, and own all of the movies on DVD.  Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the chance to play the role-playing game but I'm going to remedy that soon. 

It's great to see that Venger has decided to stick around and go into the print on demand format for several of his existing products.  After reading two of his latest blog posts, End of and Aeon and Do You Believe in Unlikelihoods?, that explained his original decision and then the reversal has nudged me to buckle down.  First, I have some things I've been working on - slowly but surely - and I need to finish them.  Even if they wind up as print on demand there is nothing wrong with that at all.  I just need to get them out there.  Second, I need to finish reading and do some blog posts on the Cha'alt hardcovers.  

Happy gaming!  I'm off to do some more reading...

 

2024 is Going Fast...

Between work and other life demands, this year is going by so quickly.  I aimed for a weekly posting this year, but I haven't been able to maintain that with any regularity so far. In fact, I completely missed the month of July so consider this post a bit of catch up around here. 

I finished reading The Forgetting Moon by Brian Lee Durfee yesterday. I really enjoyed this epic fantasy novel.  I took a chance on this previously unread author just from his YouTube videos.  I'm ordering the next two books in the series and will continue reading. This brings my total reading for 2024 up to five out of a goal of eight, so I still have plenty of time to reach my goal. 

I started reading Night Shift by Stephen King.  It wasn't on my planned reading list for this year, but I bought it when I saw at the bookstore.  There were two main reasons for purchasing and reading this book now. First, 'Salem's Lot if probably my favorite King tale and this book has two stories related to it - one being a prequel and one being a sequel.  Second, this book is a collection of short stories, and I believe it is an underappreciated storytelling form.

I still owe several posts about the Cha'alt trilogy from the kickstarter.  I went all in, and I've found the books interesting and entertaining.  I just need to make time to post about them.  I also picked up the Dragonbane boxed set, Bestiary, and some accessories. I really dig this game, and it has served as inspiration on some of my own stuff. 

I have a few creative projects underway as well.  I've assembled some guidelines for alternate layout system for detailing characters and monsters in many of the old school style games.  It's not really hard rules but just some statistics and guidelines for use in a generic sort of way rather than tied to a specific game system. Yes, it's been done by others several - many? - times before but it's just something I wanted to experiment with and see what developed.  I'm also assembling all of my house rules and world information into my own old school style supplement.  Of course, there is no hard and fast timeline for this, but it will show up sometime.