October Mornings

Journal 70 3- 9 October 2022

I love the autumn and October has always been the true beginning of the season for me.

I love it so much that I had a character whose presence was like a “cold October morning with the hint of possible rain and the smell just turning leaves” left in his wake.

Though if I’m being honest, I was more describing a late Nov. or early Dec. morning, but I love October so much I had to use the term. Also, it was an allusion to his backstory in that he came from the land of Autumn but was corrupted by Winter, hence the chill and the rotting leaves being stronger.

Anyway, I digress. Welcome to this week’s journal.

Still Slow Going…

I’m still being pulled in too many directions with the car repairs, renovations, and picking up a third weekly game (yes, I know LAST week I said I was managing my time better and that an extra game was not problem, and that planning my return to running was also not a problem).

Only managed a single day of writing. At least on the novel. I did start writing an adventure for my turn at the round robin game. More on that later.

Started Chapter 21, a return to the A-story. I feel like it had a weak start but was rolling when I had to end my session. I mapped out the rest of the chapter, in a quick outline and I have some interesting thing to write to. That should help with keeping me enthused and also putting the action forward.

Words

Single session, on my busiest errands day. I managed 1594 words before I had to go grocery shopping and everything else living related. The manuscript is now sitting at 111,396 total words and by planned chapters is NOT the halfway point.

I’m disappointed in my output, though I do intend to use NaNoWriMo to charge myself up. Last year, I used the platform to write the last third of my novel and it was an easy job. I hope to do that again.

At the least I’m lying to myself that my low counts for this month will be avenged by the 50k I write next month.

Other Writing

In my defense I did get other writing done last week.

The previous blog was nearly 3000 words, and I’ve been working on games and stories in my notebooks. I have a 15-handwritten-page adventure written out.

Which brings me to writing for games.

I must confess in my youth that my games—at least the individual sessions—were 80% improv and 20% planning. My key to fame was basically only working on the world so much that I felt I really knew it, and having a few goals to game toward.

In other words; I planned the shit out of the beginning adventures, worked on the world details and history so that I had a wealth of material to pull improv from, and had two or three future stories/villains I wanted to work toward. I just made up a lot of shit while getting to those future ideas.

Last year I tried to map out a Sandbox Call of Cthulhu game. And it was the same thing. I wrote a very overly detailed first adventure, with improv moments. But I have maps, family trees, the backgrounds of five different enemies and stories that are all going on. I then created a calendar of the next year, and placed events in each month that are future stories. After that, I took the five villains and mapped out their goals, what they would do if left wholly alone, and then mapped out their destinies over the next months.

It was a ton of work that will mostly go unused as the players will only latch on to one or two of those villain stories, but theoretically they might encounter those storylines at a later date.

Which brings us to the D&D game I need to run in the next few weeks.

A Quick Scenario

First, I never run scenarios and dislike every time I’ve tried to run a module. I just like to run my own thing. And yes, I know that you’re supposed to make the module your own thing and use it only as a guide. But I have a habit of thinking I need to constantly reference the module and follow it. And I hate that.

So, back to my own scenario.

I have already mentioned numerous times my retirement from running D&D, you can look back at the previous blog and several others and I repeat myself a LOT. Suffice, it has been a long time since I’ve run and I’ve never run in this edition of the game.

Planning

I wrote the idea down a single small sheet of paper while at work.

A simple A to B to C to D, retrieve another character if they are still alive. Simple.

I don’t do simple. I still have the sandbox idea in my head and I don’t want to use rails. It would be so simple to just say that this is a One-Shot, so just put it on rails and make the characters run through a bunch of fights and be done with it.

But I want to make sure that my One-Shot takes two or more sessions. Giving the next DM time to write their adventure. Since we’re going “round robin” and two of us (possibly 3) have never DMed before. I want to give them time, and I also want to spend a few weeks running again.

So, at each of my letters, A, B, and C, I had to write options. I had to allow total freedom for players to go in any direction. Which meant I had to plan for those moves. So, my two-page outline turned into over 15 hand written pages, complete mini maps, encounters, and descriptions of key characters/scenes.

I still have to go back and do treasure, possible secondary encounters, and backgrounds on some of the lesser choices/options they have. I left plenty of room for improv, but damn if this is not the most overthought “simple” scenario I’ve done in a long time (by my reckoning 15-16 years since I last ran D&D).

Reporting

I don’t get run for another few weeks though. Probably around the end of the month. But I will report back here how it goes, maybe even do a play by play run down of each session.

Speaking of “reporting.” Let’s do some quick movie/tv reviews.

Werewolf by Night.

Lovely. Just lovely. It departs from the comics quite a bit but I don’t care. The black and white and call back to Universal monster movies is amazing. The inclusion of one of my new favorite characters, and an appearance by a character I thought I would never see on screen were excellent. Even the music was perfect to feel and atmosphere of the piece. My only complaint would be no after credit scene and it was only an hour long.

Hellraiser 2022.

This was really good. The makeup and effects, top notch. The look of the cenobites and the different mythology I liked a lot (though I kind of miss the leather of the original. Everything is flesh here which is really cool, but still the black leather ascetic was nicer. Also, all of the characters having push pins incorporated made a uniformity that I didn’t like). In the original movie I hated Frank and Julia, which is why I’m one of those people who prefers Hellraiser 2 as the superior film. Julia is less in it and Kirsty has her shit a little more together.

Which brings us to our main character in the new movie. Riley. It’s a personal thing for me but she’s a total F*** Up and an addict, and both of those together makes me not care/ root for her all that much. I kind of only care for the secondary characters, as they’re innocent and “better people.” Also, they are only getting killed because of the changing of the mythology (a change that I don’t quite like).

Spoiler: In the old movies (only the first 4 count) desire draws the cenobites. When the doctor uses his patient to open the puzzlebox the cenobites come for the doctor, not the patient. In this new movie, the puzzle box opens and a blade springs out and anyone stabbed by the blade is marked for death.

Meh.

It’s a small change but it does have an effect on the overall story.

X

I have a crush on Mia Goth. The movie was excellent fun and I really want to see both Pearl and Maxine now.

Hobby, TV, Gaming

The rest of my TV time was spent on watching the 101 Scariest moments in Horror Films on Shudder. That is ongoing so I haven’t finished yet. And otherwise, I’ve been watching romantic Korean Dramas. So, yeah.

I have a massive painting project; I’ve been commissioned to finish 184 figures in about 3 weeks. So, my writing time has been going exclusively to getting that job done. The only time I have to write is pretty much when I do this blog and when I’m at work I have a little time where I can put pen to paper. This is normal.

Gaming wise. Three games a week still, though this week only had 2. Both are going well. My Tuesday game had its second session and we all worked well together battling demons and goblins in an old gold mine. We have to finish the final chamber, though we already defeated the “big boss” of the place.

Thursday game saw a newbie DM finish his first ever scenario, we ran the second half of his adventure which was primarily a long skill challenge/naval battle where we ran a cargo ship through a blockade of pirates, storms, shallows, and strange islands. It was pretty cool, though short. Next week we have a veteran DM taking over again, but one I have never played under. Actually, thinking about it… all three DMs are people I have never played under before. And the rest as well.

Anyway, I have waxed on long enough. Thank you again for reading and hopefully next week I will have finished another chapter.