The other day I talked to a psychiatrist (a new one because the previous one moved to Oregon), both to renew my Lexapro prescription (I’ve experienced the withdrawal symptoms once before, and I really don’t want to go through that again) and to discuss my more recent executive function/focus issues. He decided that for the time being it’s best to not change my meds, and instead told me to try just getting out more. Everyone has been having a rough go of it with the pandemic, and I’ve ...
2021-09-04 16:28:46 +0000 UTC
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Since the comments on my last post were so encouraging about my isekai novel project, here's the current draft of the prologue and Chapter 1. I have a bunch of bits and pieces of later chapters in various stages of completion, but this part is more or less how I want it to be. For a while I was conceiving of it as a trilogy, but right now I'm leaning towards more of a light novel style format, with several volumes each in the 50,000 word range. We'll see how it goes!
I started on a long...
2021-08-03 01:16:30 +0000 UTC
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I decided it’s time to put my Patreon on pause until I can get caught up on things. I’ve been having what I suspect are executive function issues, where it’s been really hard to motivate myself to do things. Right now no one’s mental health is in top shape, and I want to think of this as being responsible to myself and to you all rather than pure laziness or giving up.
Although the majority of my friends and family are vaccinated, it’s still been really hard to get ba...
2021-07-25 19:29:22 +0000 UTC
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There was a time when anime was new to us in the US, when it was opening up new vistas, showing us that animation could be all these other things that the likes of Disney would never dream of. We got giant robots, magical girls, martial artists with ki blasts and Jusenkyo curses, and a window into another culture. In hindsight there was a lot that was problematic, but it had stories of love and loss, tales that challenged our notions of gender, and in some cases sex and gore that was largely ...
2021-07-06 01:31:23 +0000 UTC
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I keep thinking "This must be the dumbest table I've ever done," and then proving myself wrong. Anyway, here's a table of physical tables that I own. Kind of a lot of them are from Ikea.
2021-07-06 00:31:39 +0000 UTC
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As I obsess over 3D printing (now that I got a new and so far much less finnicky printer, a Monoprice Voxel) and try to overcome what I suspect are executive function issues, I'm sloooowly working on catching up on tables. This belated table pack is a follow-up to the previous "Glyphs" pack, and once again it has four tables that let you pick one of 36 icons/images, in the hopes that they can help jog creativity and such, sorta like story cubes and other inspiration tools. Hope you enjoy!
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2021-07-06 00:28:38 +0000 UTC
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In case you’re not familiar, Adam Curtis is a British documentarian who’s done several films that explore the ideas that underpin the world we live in. The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom for example delves into the simplistic view of “freedom” we’ve arrived at, while The Century of the Self gets into the development of modern individualistic consumerism. It’s one of tho...
2021-06-01 22:05:55 +0000 UTC
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Inspired by the weirdness of the Aesthetics Wiki (as featured on The F Plus), here's a table for generating your very own new microgenres!
2021-05-11 17:55:00 +0000 UTC
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Taking inspiration from my collaborator Julian K., I decided to try doing regular blog posts here. We’ll see if it actually turns into something!
A while ago a had a serious case of l'esprit d'escalier (also known as afterwit, the thing where you think of the perfect thing to say after the fact) when in a job interview, they asked me what they’d learn about me after wor...
2021-05-10 16:56:44 +0000 UTC
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Still behind apparently, but I did at least get something done, namely a table pack based on conspiracy theory nonsense!
2021-05-07 14:52:50 +0000 UTC
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The U.S. now has a Space Force as a new branch of the military, which means that people are having to get into the very serious business of putting together its uniforms, insignias, and so on. They also needed to decide what to call members, and for that purpose they took suggestions. They settled on "guardians," but of course there were some really amazing ideas in there, so of course I went and made a table.
2021-03-04 23:06:11 +0000 UTC
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Anime oracles are really fun, but also really hard to write, so I guess I'm going to go back to doing table packs at least part of the time. This time around I'm being a little self-indulgent because I did a set of tables for generating mechanical keyboard stuff. Enjoy!
2021-03-04 23:01:07 +0000 UTC
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Doing one of these about maids was going to happen sooner or later, and after using Maid RPG for some inspiration I have a somewhat late new entry into the Anime Oracles, with Maids and Master!
2021-02-17 01:32:19 +0000 UTC
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It's finally done! Back to the Rifter is here, and as a patron you get the PDF for free!
2021-02-15 14:38:22 +0000 UTC
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Another first draft! Zero Breakers is an attempt at an RPG inspired by fighty shounen anime and manga (Mikagura School Suite was the major inspiration for the setting), and kind of a proof of concept for handling fights more as a shared narration thing rather than mechanically determining who wins. Enjoy!
2021-01-25 14:31:06 +0000 UTC
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Good morning! While watching SSSS.Gridman I had the idea to do a table of weird, mostly western-ish names from anime, so here you go!
2021-01-24 16:42:48 +0000 UTC
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More silliness, this time with names of wizards!
2021-01-18 15:41:32 +0000 UTC
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This time around I'm going back to my game design roots a bit, with an oracle based on fighting game and martial arts stuff.
2021-01-18 15:32:20 +0000 UTC
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I started trying to write about my thoughts and feelings, to bring you all up to speed with where I am, and both the world at large and my own mood have shifted considerably since then. There was an event that people have apparently settled into calling the “Capitol Riot,” and while the U.S.A. isn’t a failed state just yet, our state GPA isn’t great so to speak. The world isn’t quite as much on fire as it seemed on January 6th, but the future is still uncertain. Personally, although...
2021-01-14 19:36:50 +0000 UTC
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I've been in a bit of a funk for the past few weeks, and I'm now in the process of picking myself up and getting back on track. (Tables are coming, I assure you.) I got inspired to get back to working on Podcast From Another World, that improv RPG thing inspired by Hello From the Magic Tavern, and I now at least have a first draft done, so enjoy!
2021-01-14 18:31:23 +0000 UTC
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Another kind of dumb table, this time based on how Joe Biden comes up with some truly weird insults sometimes.
2020-12-01 02:42:51 +0000 UTC
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Doing one of these for isekai seems all but inevitable, but it was also pretty fun to write. Hope you enjoy it!
2020-12-01 02:40:15 +0000 UTC
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This month's Secret Bonus Table is "Resolutions," inspired by the resolution cards in Itras By and Archipelago, providing outcomes to things with a bit more nuance than a binary pass/fail. It's a little short, but hopefully it'll be something useful for writing, collaborative storytelling, and so on.
2020-10-31 23:37:10 +0000 UTC
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We're on the cusp of November, so I should really get October's stuff out, huh? This month's anime oracle is "Zero Hour," named for the Persona-inspired RPG (and maybe novel) I want to do some day (with a few bits straight out of Twin Peaks), though you could also use it for e.g. Voidheart Symphony. Hope you like it!
<...
2020-10-31 23:03:38 +0000 UTC
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Here's another preview of what I'm tentatively calling "Back to the Rifter," the book where I read through the original 1990 Rifts core book. I'm getting close to finishing a first draft, though the gear section is a bit of a slog. This time around I'm showing off what I have so far of the classes (or O.C.C.s and R.C.C.s in Siembieda-ese), which are quite a thing.
I also decided to run with the unnamed mascot thing from the book, who I have named Lord Glitterskull and am writin...
2020-10-01 00:59:51 +0000 UTC
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Are you ready for a Halloween that will most likely be indoors? Well, just in time for the spooky month, I have a table for movie titles that would be at home on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or RiffTrax). Enjoy!
2020-10-01 00:46:02 +0000 UTC
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Since I've been getting a little burned out on doing tables, I decided to start something a little different that I've been thinking about for a while. "Oracles" are a thing from D. Vincent Baker's lesser-known sword and sorcery game In a Wicked Age that let you quickly generate evocative setting elements that serve as a springboard for stories. I've been wanting to do a collection of anime-inspired oracles for a while, so I decided to start doing them as part of my monthly Patreon o...
2020-09-22 16:18:58 +0000 UTC
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This month's Secret Bonus Table is for generating names of D&D spells in the vein of Melf's Acid Arrow, Bigby's Grasping Hand, and others that came about because Gygax let wizard players make up new spells sometimes.
2020-08-31 15:34:08 +0000 UTC
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On time (barely), this month's table pack is a set of tables emphasizing names of male anime characters!
2020-08-31 15:32:20 +0000 UTC
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FINALLY finished the July table pack, and hopefully I won't make a habit of letting them run late. It's about American Christianity, and lets you generate various kinds of names related to that. This one was a bit more hassle just because I really wanted to do a table for names of televangelist TV shows, and for whatever reason I couldn't find any good lists of them, so I was sifting through Wikipedia articles about individual televangelists, and you'd think some of them were trying to keep t...
2020-08-11 02:53:53 +0000 UTC
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