Hello, Internet!
Honestly, I don’t have a lot to report this week. I’m easily distracted, and was distracted by game stuff this week. I’ve been playing in a RuneQuest game now for about a year, year and a half, but I haven’t run a tabletop in some time. A few friends have been looking for a group, so I’ve been re-reading and re-learning the rules to the Mistborn Adventure Game.
My friends are letting me dig games out of my “not-Dungeons-and-Dragons-variants” shelf. They love me so much.
Still, reading a game book takes a lot of time and mental processing power, and I’ve chosen to prioritize it over my other reading this week. I’m not a particularly social creature and I ought to interact with other humans when I can.
Reading
As might have been implied from my rambly intro, I did not get to The Dragonbone Chair this week. Like, at all. I’m a little disappointed – because I didn’t meet my goal – but not deeply disappointed. Sometimes life gives you opportunities and it becomes worth changing priorities around.
I’m going to set aside Chair. It’s a good book, a well-known book, one written in a style I want to fiddle with, but (speaking of priorities) I want to make sure I get through The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance before Oathbringer comes out. Even though I’m re-reading it’s still a ton of pages, enough that I can’t really cram it into a week before Oathbringer drops.
If you’re into tabletop RPGs, I think the Mistborn one is worth checking out. It’s really heavily focused on narrative-heavy, rules-lite gameplay, more about building an exciting story than about simulation of a fantasy world.
(This wide spread of varieties of tabletop games is a big part of why I love them.)
The system is just based on d6s (your standard six-sided die), and the general mechanics are pretty simple. My biggest critique thus far is that the game has required a lot from me as the Narrator (their term for Game Master) to explain the setting, since none of my players have read a Mistborn book.
Writing
I’ve done the barest amount of writing for me this week. I finished the first course of my MFA program and spent most of my writing time on the final paper. Not unpleasant, but hardly anything of note, either.
Going forward, I think I’ve got a pretty clear summary of writing priorities and goals:
- Classwork. Of course. My current class is on creative nonfiction, and in a few weeks I’ll be required to submit something to our student workshop. I have no clue what, exactly, but odds are I’ll be flexing my history or philosophy muscles again. Probably history, since while I love philosophy I’m not sure I’ll be able to avoid making it academic & dry. I’ve got a few ideas stewing, regarding the Late Bronze Age systems collapse around 1170BCE, the Hittites, or the story of Alcibiades during the Peloponnesian War.
- Write up an adventure for Mistborn. I’ve got some pretty well-formed ideas in mind, but just need to hash them out and scribble notes, maps, characters and so on down on actual paper. I don’t know if Mistborn has an OGL, but if it does I can see myself trying to refine & publish any adventures I write. I’ve had a passing interest in writing for game design & module design for some time now.
- Figure out my NaNoWriMo 2017 project. I’ve got a grab-bag of ideas at the moment for a story I’m currently calling The Wizard Did It, although that’s more just a bad D&D reference than a good title. Basically, the general idea is science wizards in the 23rd century, although I’m feeling something more thriller or James Bond-ish for a plot. There’s a LOT of details to be worked out here.
In Review
Last Week: Schoolwork, and read The Dragonbone Chair. Half-and-half complete; schoolwork was completed as required, but I chose to set aside Chair for other priorities. Hopefully I’ll be able to/I’ll remember to return to it after Oathbringer.
This Week: Prepare an adventure for Mistborn (I’d like to get a couple weeks’ worth of material pounded out all at once if possible) and be reading The Way of Kings. Oh, and schoolwork. Duh.
Akhelas 