I haven’t posted one these updates in a while and I have a lot going on.
RPG Ramblings Podcast and Gary’s Appendix III
I made my third appearance on the RPG Ramblings podcast with Jeff Jones a few weeks ago. I always enjoy talking to Jeff. We talk about North Texas RPG Con, running high level OSR games, the vagaries of Sword & Wizardry spell descriptions, why certain game systems are not a good match for the setting designers apply them to, and speculate about the future of the gaming business.
Jeff’s publishing an essay I wrote about undead monsters found in the Icelandic Sagas in the next issue of Gary’s Appendix. I believe the Kickstarter for that will be opening up soon.
Appendix LP Podcast
I am honored to be the first guest on a new podcast by Matt Thompson of the Critical Hit Parader zine and substack newsletter. We had a fantastic conversation centering around the friendships that come from the common ground of table top fantasy role-playing games, heavy metal music, and swords-and-sorcery fiction.
https://criticalhitparader.substack.com/p/travis-miller-grumpy-wizard-interview#details
I’ll be appearing on the Immortals Inc. YouTube channel over the next few weeks. I’m going to the shop this afternoon to shoot some spots with them. I’ll share those links on my social media, on my subscriber channel on YouTube and elsewhere when they are posted.
My YouTube Channel
Several generous publishers, writers, and artists in attendance at North Texas RPG con were kind enough to let me do a short interview with them for my YouTube channel. These were interesting and enlightening.
Inexperienced creators think that good ideas are special and rare. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that good ideas are common and they have almost zero value until they are manifested.
Time, energy, effort, and money for materials is limited. Deciding which idea is worthy of those resources is one of many characteristics that differentiates one creator from another.
I asked my interviewees the same basic question, “How do you decide an idea is worth pursuing?”
Conventions
I wrote about my great experience at North Texas RPG Convention a few weeks back. I’ve already bought my badge for the 2024 convention and plan on running a lot of games there next year.
I have five game sessions scheduled and approved for Game Hole Con 2023 on October 19-22 The event registration starts on July 15th. I have no idea how fast the seats for my games will fill up but I expect that they will. I intend to bring my camera to make some content at the convention. I’m still brainstorming what I want to do with that. It will probably be another series of short interviews lasting five or ten minutes. Those were fun to do and I was able to meet a lot of different people that way.
Lessons Learned and Things in Progress
I had a lot of grand plans at the beginning of this year. The contact points between plans and obstacles has been a good teacher.
I’ve learned that I’m one human with limited time and energy. You’d think I’d have learned that already as I am getting close to 50. Apparently not.
In January, I thought the following things to be reality by July.
My sandbox campaign setting, Hogwater; would out in the world for sale.
A multi-part series of YouTube videos on how to make and run a sandbox game would be posted.
A short Amber Diceless Role-Playing campaign played through.
Next major project underway.
Outline and several chapters of a book on how I run fantasy adventure games in progress.
None of that has happened.
Depression and anxiety kicked my ass in January and February.
COVID kicked my ass in March.
Catching up, getting my mind right and myself back on the path took me the spring.
I’ve got myself together again. I feel good. I’m focused. I’m getting shit done.
Progress: 1<0
I have made significant progress on Hogwater. The vast bulk of the writing is done. NPCs, unique magice items, reputation mechanics, monster lairs, micro-adventures, background, and “How to use this book” writing is complete.
I will finish reference sheets, lists, and random tables this week. First drafts of the maps will begin next week. I’ll need to do another hard editing pass after that. Formatting and layout? Maybe in August. We’ll see. I’ve been hard at it. The manuscript is over 35,000 words and needs trimming.
Amber…
I want to run a game. It will be instructive. This got put on the back burner. It’s going to sit there until I get Hogwater over the finish line.
I have learned that I enjoy making YouTube videos.
I’ve thought about some video formats that I can produce quickly, with little editing, and get them out into the world. Livestreaming is something I am thinking about. It seems like a low effort, high value thing I can do in the evening after I’ve done the day’s writing work.
YouTube is something I’ll be working on more as I am able. YouTube is seductively interesting. I am convinced it is a much better platform for finding the others than any of the social media apps. It is excellent for distributing useful information in an immersive format. From a business perspective, YouTube is the best platform to market and sell your thing no matter what that might be. That said, it isn’t my focus right now and my efforts will be on the low end until I get Hogwater completed. It is necessary, from my point of view, to make the release of Hogwater a success so I can’t ignore it completely.
The Main Effort
The blog has always been and will remain for the indefinite future my primary method of getting ideas into the world.
I want to make sure that I’m delivering some of my best ideas to newsletter subscribers before they are released into the wild. I’ve been underperforming in that intention this year. Time to do better.
Hogwater, this blog, and the newsletter will be my main effort for the rest of the year. My YouTube channel will see more activity than last year. I’m still figuring out how to do that effectively and efficiently.
I have no interest in farting into the maelstrom of undifferentiated “content” polluting our culture.
My intent is to always contribute something worth spending your time on.
Grumpy Wizard 