Last Thought of 2021

I hope everyone had a good Christmas.  That's all I've got for now.  Take care, everyone.  See you next year! 

Losers from Lakeville, MN.

I haven't done as much as gaming in my life as I would like.  I imagine that is true for most of us.  Life, work, responsibilities...  they all seem to get in the way of the hobby we love.  The one thing I've been thinking about lately are all the adventures that I could have had.  All the adventures I could have run or I could have played in.  

I don't know if it is fortunately or unfortunately that I missed out on playing with some kids who lived near me in Junior High or not...

I was one of those kids who was excluded from a table.  Just the one.  It stung back in the day but I like to think I'm over it now.  Then again, I don't know about that either and, as I am writing about it now, maybe I'm not.  

In 9th grade I brought my Star Frontiers "Starspawn of Volturnus" adventure to school with me one day so I could look at it on breaks or whatever.  It didn't last the day in my possession.  A kid, someone I thought was a friend borrowed it from me in 1st period Science.  I got it back the next day, that wasn't the issue.  I knew that it was probably getting photo-copied at some point upstairs by another kid, I thought was a friend too, whose mother ran the photocopy machine.  I figured they were playing games without me and I was just never cool enough for them.  Fuck those assholes.

I don't exclude anyone from my table.  You'd have to be a first class shit-bag of some kind for me to toss you out on your ear but I can't help but wonder about the fun that could have been had.  I'll never know and I'll just have to deal with it.

On the other hand I think about all of the adventures that I never ran.  All the campaigns I wanted to run but didn't for one reason or another...  wisps of their memory come back to haunt me from time to time and, I hope that one day, I'll be able to run some of them.

I miss gaming and I hope I can find some people near me that I can play with once this f**king pandemic ends.  I like sitting around a table with people, eating pizza or burgers or Chinese food, drinking sodas, and making memories.

That's what those f**kers in junior high lost out on.  The memories that we could have made together.  I'm an awesome f**king human.  ;)

Take care, everyone.

Radio Silence

I think I'm gonna take a break this week...  maybe next week too.  I learned that a friend of mine that I lost touch with and was trying to contact recently passed away from Covid.  He was 76.  R.I.P. Wayne.

Take care everyone...

Excavations Continue

 It feels like slow careful work...  like I'm on an archeological dig the way I'm hardly getting anything produced.  Oh well, it is what it is.

Plans and Schemes and Hopes and Dreams...

I suspect, although I do not know for certain as I have not heard a final report, that my friend was unsuccessful in her plans this weekend.  I hope that is not the case but it certainly looked bleak the last time I saw a communication from her.

I really need to get a wiggle on and clean this house and put my affairs in order...

Everything Falls Apart(?)

I'm still working on things...

But I'm watching a friend's life implode several states away and there is nothing I can do to help.

I am sad and tired and oh so tired of being so sad and tired.

Hope you all are faring better.

Almost Bought Donuts Today

I like to order from Grubhub and Doordash on occasion.  I received an offer from Grubhub for 50% off and I was really excited about it until I saw that I have to spend over $40 to take advantage of the discount.  I only wanted to order Dunkin' Donuts and that is way too many donuts and items for me to order to justify spending $40 to save 50%.  Oh well...

In other news I called in to my friend's YouTube livestream last night.  That was fun.  They're always fun and I hope that the game she is playing pays off and that she can get everything she wants to accomplish accomplished in Indianapolis this month.

In gaming news...  shame on me.  I haven't touched my Machinations of the Space Princess notebook for a while now.  I need to keep rolling up more planets and then I need to start fleshing some of them out more.  I should also figure out the grand galactic timeline that is floating, in pieces, in my head.  I would still like to play that out using various RPGs to cover various pieces of galactic eras.

Still formulating my DCC RPG/MCC RPG idea in my head.

And...

Recently purchased another copy of TMNT & Other Strangeness RPG and it's making me want to run a mutant animal campaign.  Whether now-ish with superheroes ala Heroes Unlimited or just moving it into a cyberpunk future ala an old campaign I called "CLASSIFIED" remains to be seen.  I am leaning towards a cyberpunk game myself.

Up Too Late

I was up too late last night.  I was a surprise call-in guest again on my friend's livestream video last night.

Apologies for the lack of substantive content lately...

More to come!

Happy Halloween! (and Happy Birthday, Mom!)

Happy Halloween, everyone!  Happy Birthday to my Mom whose birthday is tomorrow.

Illness forces me to keep this entry short today.

Take care...

The End of Love

Not much to say today...

I leave you with this song and will continue working on gaming stuff.

Take care, everyone.

By the Crater's Glow...

So, while I am still working on a Machinations of the Space Princess campaign (slowly, slowly, ever so slowly) I've also been toying with the idea of putting together a DCC/MCC RPG campaign...

A world (inspired by the original "Mutant" game by Adventure Games (a Dave Arneson company located in St. Paul, MN.) that, sadly, never got to see the full light of day.  The cover was by Fastner & Larson and a copy of it can be located in the Gallery of the Fastner & Larson website. 

I own three copies of the box (I forget the exact reason they were made first) which detail the game premise.

Anyways, it (Mutant) is primarily a post-apoc setting without any magic elements whatsoever.  It is a source of inspiration and I look forward to using it as the foundation upon which the genre-blending campaign will be based.

More to come!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is my Dad's 70th birthday!

Have a good day, everyone.

You Can Find Inspiration Anywhere

 Eventually, someday, I will share my "Brain Scrapings" with you.  I'm still working on those.  And a small(ish) pancake galaxy for Machinations of the Space Princess.  And...  a buttload of other things it seems...

I'm beginning to think that I should just work out as much of these old adventure and campaign ideas as I can and share them here.

I was given the old Red Box D&D set by my grandmother back in 1985 when I was 12 years old.  It opened a world of adventure for me and I haven't stopped since.  Over those many years I have come up with many many ideas and sadly, I'll never get to explore them all fully.  

One of those ideas was for a GURPS campaign combining GURPS: Aliens and GURPS: Cyberpunk and was going to take place in Tokyo, Japan in the future about a century or two away.  I didn't have much worked out for it and then I finished watching the final episode of Space Precinct: 2040 yesterday.

If I add GURPS: Police, GURPS: Swat, and mix it with a hefty dose of GURPS: Transhuman Space I could have a space cops campaign.  The focus would still be on Tokyo, Japan and dealing with the humans and various aliens that call the city home.  Based on the cases the PCs have they may find themselves following up leads all over the solar system.  That could lead to all kinds of danger and intrigue.  I never really knew what the focus of the Aliens in Japan campaign was going to be but, thank you Gerry Anderson, now I know.

Space Cops on the beat.  I think that could be a lot of fun.  I just need to work out more details and come up with a name for the campaign.

Inspiration can be found anywhere.

PS:  Exciting things in the works!

Still Organizing

 I just don't know where the time is going and I really don't care for that.  Not at all.

Not that it matters I suppose.  No one is reading this blog and that's alright.  I'm not really advertising it yet as I don't have a lot of content to share with folks.  That's on me.

Hopefully, in time, I'll be able to (and I'm paraphrasing) "Get my shit together, get it all together and put it in a backpack, all my shit, so it's together.  And if I gotta take it somewhere, take it somewhere, you know, take it to the shit store and sell it, or put it in the shit museum.  I don't care what I do, I just gotta get it together.  Get my shit together."  Thank you Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland.

Getting Things Organized

 Hello everyone.

No real post today...

Organizing a variety of things around the home...

See you next week.

Where Did the Day Go?

 So tired today.  Completely and utterly wiped out.  I don't understand it.

Woke up around 9am and dragged my sorry ass around the house until about 1pm when I had to take a nap and then slept until about 3:30 or so.  Still feeling wiped out.

Got in a good almost hour and a half conversation with one of my oldest friends.  😀

We got caught up on recent events in our lives and chatted about future projects (to an extent) that we'd like to work on.  Hopefully, we'll be able to entertain you good folks in time.

On the gaming front I haven't gotten any work done except up in my head...  need to get this stuff out on paper or into an electronic file or something...

Wanting to run a variety of SF games in the same galaxy that I am slowly creating for Machinations of the Space Princess.  I've also been thinking about throwing The Bone Age, Star Adventurer, Alpha Blue, Star Dogs, and Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells into the mix as well.  Each (except for Alpha Blue which I feel like I could just roll into Machinations of the Space Princess) would or could represent various stages of galactic history.  We'll see what happens...

Holding Steady at 21% or so... and Happy Birthday, Freddie Mercury!

 I know I missed last week but I just didn't have the energy for it.  Sad, but true.

Still holding steady at about 21% on the first 1K cubic LY for my Machinations of the Space Princess (and other games) galaxy.  I haven't worked on it for a bit and it bums me out a little.  I'll get there in the end and as I have no regular group to game with it's really a non-issue of sorts.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of Farrokh Bulsara (later to become, as we know, Freddie Mercury).  Happy Birthday, Mr. Mercury.  You are sorely missed.

Here's a bunch of videos by a bunch of talented folks in tribute...

21%

The work continues on my Machinations of the Space Princess galaxy sector I am working on.

AKA 58-84.4/13.0/12.3

Only 21% of the way through but that is ok.  Today I've been cleaning my house and trying to get various affairs in order.  Not as productive a day (on any front) that I wanted but certainly more productive than usual.

Goodness me...

At the moment I currently have a variety of projects going on in my head that I really ought to be putting to paper or word file or whatever...

1.  There's the podcast I would like to do.

2.  The new YouTube channel I would like to start.  My first YouTube channel, UncieThulhu, is, surprisingly, still up and the only video left there can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrykE3SFdTI

I warn you, it is not worth watching.  If I still had access to the email account I used when I set it up I would completely shut it down.  It hasn't served any point for many many years.

3.  The game company I am thinking of starting.

Anyways, here's a far more entertaining video that I would like to share with you.  I give you Puddles Pity Party and "Wicked Game."

Have a great rest of the day, everyone!

Another Day, Another Star System

 Hello everyone.

I know I haven't provided much content but considering what I'm being paid for it I think it works out ok.  😉

I kid people, I kid.

Anyways, besides working I'm still slowly plugging away on my Machinations of the Space Princess campaign area.  I think the next thing I may do is create a spreadsheet to help me keep track of star types, planet types, government types, who supports who in the Urlanth princesses' struggle for domination, etc., etc.  It could be a useful tool for me.

Once I start to get more of this campaign information down and assess the other systems and supplements that I'm dumping into this celestial cauldron I may start providing more details for those who are interested.

Have a good rest of your day.

16%

 Well, as of today, I believe I am 16% of the way through my efforts to map a chunk of cubic galactic space for Machinations of the Space Princess...

I've also been looking for music I can use for future vlogging and podcasting.

My friend keeps getting hit with copyright infringement on her YouTube videos.  It's been over 13 years or so since I made any videos for YouTube myself and I don't remember the rules any more...  Things were different then too.  I guess it's now being referred to as the Golden Age of YouTube or something?  Couldn't tell you.

Anyways, things progess slowly, but they progress.

Hope to find some players here locally someday...

Anyways, hope you're all having a good Sunday.

Space is Big

 “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Preach it Brother Adams!

My goodness, he wasn't kidding.

I am 12% of the way through making rolls for 1,000 cubic LY of space.  I'm using the rules as given in Machinations of the Space Princess by James Desborough but I'm going to be tweaking things along the way with a variety of PDFs I have purchased at DriveThruRPG.com. 

In the grander scheme of things I'm also thinking of using this setting, this galaxy, for a variety of sci-fi games.  Some will be mashed together in one way or another and others will take place during different time periods of the galaxy, if not different corners of it.

We'll see how it goes...

Further Machinations

 Still plugging along...  working on 1,000 cubic LY of adventure possibilities.  More later.

Galactic Tribulations

 On the Machinations of the Space Princess front:

Well, the decision to have a galaxy 400K LY across has now been shaved down a bit.  I decided to go with a galaxy closer in size to our own and I made it a flattened galaxy not unlike one that NASA has found.

I went with a pancake-like galaxy (and a smaller one) to make it easier on me to map it.  I can now map my galaxy, sector by sector, in a 2D'd 3D way.  The galaxy is only 100K LY across but that will still leave me plenty of space to play with.

I call it the [REDACTED] galaxy.

More to come...

Update - 7/11/2021

 Hello everyone.

Recently I acquired a copy of "Machinations of the Space Princess" by James "Grim" Desborough and I think I have fallen in love.

I love the ideas he's using for alien creation and I'm thinking I'm going to be playing around with creating alien races for a while.

The galaxy that I am planning on using is not going to be the Milky Way.  I'm currently researching information about galaxies and am thinking of going with a large spiral galaxy around 400K or 500K light years across.  This will give me plenty of space to put stars in and plenty of room for other things as well.

I'm also thinking that this galaxy may be the home for my "The Bone Age" OSR game taking place in the distant past.  By the time that this MotSP campaign kicks off the Eure and the Aeskari (from The Bone Age) will be ancient races that may, or may not, exist.  We'll see what happens.

Independence Day

 Hello everyone!

Still don't have as much content for you as I would like but seeing that it is July and I said I'd try to start blogging again I'll blog about something that's been on my mind.

It seems to me that Hollywood is working on turning just about every comic property they can into a movie or television series and that is all fine and good.  I don't mind it at all.  I'm here today to vent about a POS named "Gus" that was part of not just one, but two partnerships involved in creating comics.

I had big dreams and aspirations for us and at one point, under the second partnership, we even had "B" working as our producer of sorts who was really excited about the three of us working together and bringing things to life.  I remember that "B" wanted us to be able to make it to the Chicago Comic Con and that would have been tremendous.

The problem lied in the fact that I hitched my wagon to a horse that wouldn't pull.  Well, wouldn't pull the wagon...  this asshat had no problem pulling himself off (and when "Gus" was my roommate I caught that wanker masturbating three times).  You'd have thought the moron would have learned how to close a door.

Anyways, while that seems like a digression that is actually the heart of the problem.  "Gus" spent more time playing with himself than playing with his pencil.  (Although I am sure folks could make jokes about that too.)

And while it may seem that I am bitter I am really just saddened that "Gus" never took anything we were working on seriously.  While it is true that I had some really crazy ideas and could, and still can write anything (apart from regular blog posts it seems - 😉) I really do believe that now, after what could have been nearly 30 years of working together we could have, maybe had, at least one property that could have been, at the very least, turned into an online animated web comic via YouTube or something.

I'm not worried about making Hollywood money.  Granted, who doesn't want their share of boats and hoes? - I kid people, I kid.  No, what upset me at the time and for a while after was that a guy who I thought was a good friend and who had my back just turned out to be another useless wanker.  How could you go to art school for four years and not be able to draw women?!?  That, my friends, and the whole sorted story is a story for another day.

Maybe I'll dust off some of these old ideas and do something with them yet...  if I do I may just share the whole story.  It can't be slander if it's the truth you are telling.

So, this Independence Day I take comfort in still being creative, still trying to make art, and not giving up and running away like "Gus" the wanker.  I also take comfort in being free of "Gus."  I haven't spoken to him for more than a decade now and it feels really good.

If there is a moral to all of this I guess it would be - Don't give up on your dreams and never let the bastards get you down.  

Take care, everyone!

Keep playing, keep dreaming, keep making art.

Wes

Happy Father's Day!

 Have a great day, everyone.

Where is the Time Going?

 I find that another week has passed me by and I have nothing prepared for this blog.  If any of you are reading this I apologize for being a disappointment...  Please know that I am also disappointing myself.

I have decided to pull a page from Jeff Rient's wonderful blog and have purchased a copy of Tunnels & Trolls and a few solo adventures from DriveThruRPG.com and will be taking my character(s) through some solo excursions and will detail those here.

I think, for now, I will hold off on any more posts until, let's say July...  Hopefully, I will have more for you by then.

Catch you all on the flippity-flip.

Another Sunday, Another "Post"

 Well, it's Sunday again and I've had it in my head to try to put up a new post on this blog every Sunday if I can...

I wanted to offer up some Brain Scrapings but, alas, I don't feel like I have enough to share which would make it worth your time, or mine, to post.  In time I will.  For now I will just have to get back to their source materials and continue to make notes as I have been doing.

So, writing goals...

1.  Get enough material together to try to make this blog more interesting.

2.  Scrape up enough dough to sign up for Master Classes by Autumn.

If you have been, thanks for reading.

Keep playing, keep dreaming, keep making art.

Wes

Multiversal Cosmology

One of the gaming things that has been rattling around in my brain for a while is the idea of a "Multiversal Cosmology" that, somehow, will tie the various planes of existence together (ala AD&D) with all the other role-playing games that I own.

Yeah, not quite sure where to start...

I know that at the very least, the Primal Order (by WOTC) is going to play a large part in how things are laid out.  I also know that I would like to incorporate The Book of Immortals (by Mongoose Games) into the mix as well.  How much of Planescape (by TSR for 2nd Ed. AD&D) remains to be seen.

I believe, if memory serves, that the plane of Nirvana was changed to the steampunk-ish plane of Mechanus and I could see that being a possibility if I ascribe that to the Moorcockian view of Law VS. Chaos in which case I could see Nirvana's transformation into Mechanus being the result of a loss by Chaos on that plane to the side of Law.  Chaos (as evil and as terrible as it is) is, generally, more organic and life-affirming than Law which leads to science, sterility, coldness, etc.  The birth of the universe is in Chaos.  Its inevitable heat death is the final triumph of Law.

Working in Old Ones, Elder Gods, and whatnot should be interesting.

Happy Mother's Day!

 Happy Mother's Day!

See you next week...

Under the Weather

 Sorry folks.  I was hoping to have something more interesting than this for you today but, alas, that was not meant to be...  I haven't been feeling so well for a while now and I'm hoping that, with warmer weather, that will change.  I'd like to be able to open my windows and get more fresh air in here but it's been too damn cold.

Anyways, one thing I will be sharing from time to time are "Brain Scrapings."  That's what I am calling the very very basic ideas or idea kernels I get from the various sources of material that I am reading or have read.  I'd like to provide photos of the items in question so if you choose to you could go back to said source material and see what you can draw from it.

Take care, everyone.

Keep playing, keep dreaming, keep making art.

Wes

A Long Absence

 Hello again, everyone.

It's been a while I know.  I can't believe how easy it has been to let blogging slip by me now for almost five years.  I've been writing in various journals and reading a variety of things and now, that I finally have a regular internet connection on an actual PC and not just on a smartphone, I can (try) to keep this blog updated on a more regular basis and, it is my hope, reach the people who need it most.

When I say need it most I mean, you never know who could gain inspiration or hope or a laugh from what you put out into the world so here I am putting it out in the world again...

I have too many ideas.  I think that is a problem for a lot of creatives but I'm going to do my best to share my ideas with you as time goes by.  I'm hoping too, that in time, I'll find another group of folks I can play role playing games with and I'll be able to document our (mis)adventures here too.

That's all I have for now.  Stay safe everyone.  Keep playing, keep dreaming, keep making art.