A Miscellany of Projects - Gaming, SCA Combat, Arts & Sciences, and Travel

I suspect most people I know in the RPG business, either as writers or hobbyists, have the same problem I do: More ideas than time, and more time than productive writing time.  As an example, I'm writing this in the hopes that it'll kickstart the process for Torg writing.  In my case, it's paired up with an increasing sense that story matters a lot more than statistics, which means that writing statistics becomes a chore, so once the story's all written, then the last 10% of the work feels like it takes 90% of the motivation.  There are, of course, ways out of that particular bind - I wind up doing a lot of copy-paste and adaptation, rather than a deep dive - but it's a thing I've noticed. For instance, the Savage Star Wars ruleset I worked up, which I've had several opportunities to play and works just fine, for any scene, setting the scene and then writing up the mechanics, despite the scene being about 75% of the word count, the mechanics too...

Apologies for long delays between posts; recent events have kept me distracted and busy.  Perhaps most significant of those is that I signed a contract as a contributor to Ulisses Spiele 's Torg Eternity line.  I'm not going to get into details on that, but it turns out that an eclectic skillset, and knowing someone interested, turns you into an RPG author.  That has been occupying much of the runtime that this blog had been. The other significant-to-me development is that there's an aikido group on the north side of Austin that includes, among its other activities, Yagyū shinkage-ryū lessons (and, since the Yagyū family's involvement in the school, never mind the school's existence, predates 1600, that makes this an A&S post!).  The irony of this is that the park where most of those lessons take place is the same park where Austin's SCA group, the Barony of Bryn Gwlad, does most of their combat practices, and it is theoretically possible, if BG ever holds ...

Mother Neff State Park is a small-to-medium park located between Waco and Gatesville in central Texas.  Like much of the modern Texas State Park system, it owes its existence to Civilian Conservation Corps labor in the 1930s, and many of the CCC structures are still on site, including as a rental cabin which we did not use but could be useful as a getaway. We went there as part of our continuing program to acclimate the kids to hiking.  The hiking trails at Mother Neff range from extremely easy mowed trails across level grassland to short periods of moderate-difficulty trails across rocky ground.  The overall difficulty, and trail length, for taking the largest and most-difficult currently open trail loop, is easy, about four miles, with plenty of opportunities to stop and look around, so it is an excellent entry-level hike for children, dogs, et cetera, and in March-April it is generally temperate and cool enough not to become a grueling exercise in self-flagellation....

A series of recent observations has led me to consider the relatively modern concept of privilege through the lens of a dueling culture.  I don't know a single person who really wants a return to dueling culture, but there are important lessons in it for modern society.  Consider, for instance, the truism that an armed society is a polite society and dig a little deeper.  An armed society is a polite society - to those who may be armed .  Whether that's Norse, Japanese, or Old West, in that "armed society," it is dangerous to provoke a fight, so extreme measures are built into society to avoid a confrontation in the first place, and to de-escalate it if that happens.  Consider for the moment Romeo and Juliet , and the "do you bite your thumb" scene - both sides are clearly looking for a fight, but only if it is a fight they can not only win, but sustain their victory in the long run.  Equally, consider the number of opportunities available during the Burr-...

TORG (short for That Other Role-Playing Game) is a kitchen-sink RPG developed by West End Games in the early '90s, famous for a high concept and a terrible execution.  It was picked up a few years ago by Ulisses Spiele and re-released as TORG Eternity , a vast improvement on the ruleset - as in, it was actually playable and doesn't require a slide rule or abacus.  Because I don't generally deal in negative examples, I won't spend a lot of time on my problems with old TORG, but please believe me when I say that Eternity is a massive improvement that makes the Possibility Wars actually possible.  Because TORG is not a household name, I think it needs some background description before I get into why this is on my mind. The Possibility Wars are a central conceit of TORG - the idea that there are an infinite number of possible worlds, and that the force of those possibilities power reality.  There are Sinister Forces (tm) who wish to siphon that possibility energy for t...

 As discussed way back when I started this blog , we laid down eight gallons of mead in January, and another two gallons in a small batch in February.  We taste-tested all three batches of mead, and the results are as follows: Orange blossom honey, no additives - Semi-dry, still minor fermentation occurring, flavor profile well-balanced.  Sweet comes through.  Plan is to save several bottles in dry state, for people who prefer their meads dry, and to back-sweeten, probably a quart of honey to the remaining three gallons of mead. Orange blossom honey, ginger and orange - Dry, but an exceptionally good flavor.  So far this is the best batch that we have done.  Fermentation reaction is complete, no remaining fizz.  Plan is to pull the remaining solids off the top, save several bottles in dry state, and back-sweeten remaining three gallons at same proportions as listed above. Bochet - Sweet, almost but not quite on the point of Neil Gaiman's "sweet pickle...

Given how much of my free time winds up being devoted to martial-arts-related pursuits - between the SCA and other activities, I wind up doing it more than any other hobby at this point - I think it's important to discuss why I consider it worth doing.  There are obvious advantages, such as it gets me exercise, but there are other, more direct ways of achieving that same objective.  However, there are considerations that martial arts address that nothing else I've found quite addresses. At this point in my life, I think it'd be safe to call me an intellectual - I tend to approach problems by picking them apart in my brain first, and letting the actual execution come second, if at all.  This is a terrible approach in martial arts, but it's a great approach to the philosophy behind it.  It also means I internalized the process of "literature review, hypothesis, experiment, results, publish" pretty early, so let's look at the literature review side of this. ...

    I have a confession to make: I've had this book on my bookshelf for almost three years at this point thanks to a friend who knew my love of Sam Grant, and only just now finished it.  This was not due to a lack of interest, or a lack of quality, but because my reading hours have been spent elsewhere and this was my bedtime book.  It goes in the same category of books as The Gulag Archipelago and Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson as a book that I had to force myself to put down as I read it, so perhaps it was not ideal pre-bed reading. It begins and ends with the riveting story of Grant's final months, as he races his own death to finish his Memoirs .  I was broadly familiar with the story, and the circumstances of Grant's unexpected penury that forced the legendarily reticent general to start writing, but Chernow's description of Grant's condition, and his determination in the face of his own suffering and mortality, gave the story something of a p...

Yesterday, I ran the Week 1 drill for the first time with an audience not my immediate family.  Participants were myself and a local who has done pell work but not actual combat.  He is left-handed and has focus and attention problems, which introduce complications, and my own focus was not perfect and introduced further complications. Plan Drill is four-count and is supposed to be: 1. Attacker flat-snap to defender head. 2. Defender punch-block. 3. Attacker rolls hand and targets offside head. 4. Defender parries with sword. What Happened Drill What I ran, instead, was: 1. Attacker offside snap to defender head. 2. Defender punch block. 3. Defender flat snap to attacker head. 4. Attacker punch-block. 5. Attacker offside snap to defender head. 6. Defender parry. 7. Defender flat snap to attacker head. 8. Attacker parry. This drill was run from "learn choreography" to roughly 50% speeds. Corrective Actions We identified the following problems in partner mechanics: 1. Shield dr...

One of the least-considered parts of travel, for most people, is the quality of water supplies wherever one visits.  This is a common consideration for me, because I inherited a condition where my kidneys don't process water efficiently, so I wind up closely acquainted with the water supply wherever I am. For the most part, municipal domestic water supplies in the United States are safe to drink, and it is mostly a matter of taste.  There are, obviously, exceptions, most notoriously Flint, Michigan, but it is generally a safe assumption that municipal water won't kill you outright.  The differences are mostly in flavor and mouthfeel, rather than anything else.  Collected in sufficient volume, it's often easy to tell when, for instance, there's a higher sulfur content than comfort strictly allows - the entire southern half of Louisiana seems prone to this, for instance, but the Atchafalaya Bridge rest area used to be one of the worst offenders in this regard.  I ...

 This final block, from Weeks 9 to 13, is meant to be a "broadening" period - if drills of Weeks 5-8 are sustainment drills to teach people new skills, then drills of Weeks 9-13 are meant to expose fighters to other aspects of heavy fighting than single sword-and-shield sparring, such as great weapons, how tournaments work, and melee work. General Material Command and Control Unless someone is helping with a lesson, and has been recognized and designated as such ahead of class and introduced to the class as such, despite all temptation, they need to stay out of the way and not overrun the class. Corrections Corrections need to be made as close to the moment the need is detected as possible, need to be physical rather than verbal, and need to be brief (adjust the arm into the right place, don't tell them where, and don't describe endlessly, just do it ). Equipment Unlike previous lesson blocks, this block may require additional equipment.  This will be specified...