To this day I’m not sure whether I slept badly, or didn’t take my meds at the right time, or still suffer fatigue from the mononucleosis I caught at the end of 2006. It’s a fun guessing game the whole family can enjoy.
Anyway. Work is slow for various reasons, some of which are even legitimate. The fatigue, the death plague and its daily dose of existential horror as the government keeps telling us it’s about personal responsibility when they’re the ones packing total strangers into schools, colleges, Direct Provision internment camps and meat packing plants. They’re still clinging to some farcical notion that a highly contagious virus just… magically refuses to jump hosts as long as they’re all listening to a teacher, or that the millionaire owners of factories can be trusted to treat their workers safely instead of demanding more work for less time and ignoring any and all safety measures that get in the way of profits. Sooner or later socioeconomic groups the public actually gives a shit about are going to start dying, and I just want it on record that you were all fucking warned and the people who COULD have done something actively decided not to.
Existential horror notwithstanding, some things ARE happening work-wise. If all goes well I’ll be able to brag about it as early as next week. Suffice to say that freelance writing for TTRPG publishers is certainly less *regular* work than slaving in a lab from 8am-9pm every day including holidays for less than 18k a year, but by all the gods it’s a HELL of a lot more satisfying. And even if it is an incredibly niche geek hobby, orders of magnitude more people will still actually read the fucking thing. Impact factor only seems like a big deal to scientists because they’re fucking thrilled if the paper they spent 5 years writing gets read by a dozen other scientists.
Why yes, I *am* still angry, thank you for asking.
Gaelcon is just around the corner, and honestly I could get used to attending in an online capacity instead of the monumental hassle of finding affordable accommodation in Dublin on a bank holiday weekend with a literal marathon happening too.
I’ll be helping out the lovely folks of Cubicle 7, who are running a few Warhammer Fantasy tables to entice people to buy the 4th Ed. books (you should by the way, it’s very much like they took all the 2nd Ed. books and distilled one massive core book out of them. There’s loads of fluff and lore, the magic system is greatly expanded and very distinct from priests and their miraculous abilities, and it’s topped off with some REALLY good artwork).
I’m also writing an Alien scenario. I prefer running campaigns for Alien instead of one-shot sessions, it’s better for pacing the rise and fall of tension and players can manage their character’s Stress/panic better, but the “cinematic” scenario definitely has its place. Because I’m a very *lazy* writer, I’m taking the recently published multi-session “Destroyer of Worlds” scenario that I ran for some friends, and building an unofficial sequel off that. I already have the Kruger 60 system and the (now mostly destroyed) colony of Ariarcus mapped out on Roll20 as a result, so I’ve been able to focus on just writing some plot that wakes a hapless crew of space-truckers from hypersleep light years away from their destination because of a distress signal from what should be a lifeless icy rock after a major war with deadly chemical weapons happened on and above it.
Curious, that.
Right, I’ve just realised I wrote all this as procrastination; I should finish writing that Alien game. Bye.
