Exiled for the Good of the Realm

Well, I blinked again and it’s been two years since my last post. WTF!?!? Where did the time go. Oh I know. Covid. Stupid bastard plague!

Well, It has taken nearly two years but our defenses finally failed and Omicron invaded our house this past week. My Wife and eldest were both laid low by it and have spent the week alternately sleeping it off or lounging on the couch playing on the playstation.

Thankfully, both myself and the youngest tested negative (or were asymptomatic) and could function like semi-normal humans. However due to an overabundance of caution my work told me to take the week off and isolate so I’ve been catering to the whims of two sick people all week and avoiding all human contact.

Since my loving wife and daughter are hogging the PS5 pretty much 24/7 these days, I’ve been left to my own devices and with nothing much else to do, I have been dreaming dark dreams of creativity.

Since I haven’t seen my friends together in one place in over two years I haven’t had many creative outlets. Our Star Wars game ground to a halt for a number of reasons. (1. We couldn’t satisfactorily get it working online with everyone’s computer setup, 2. Fantasy Flight Games/Asmodee shifted the license to Edge Studios and there hasn’t been any books in 2 years, 3. Campaign/Theme fatigue. We need a change.)

With the government continually teasing that they’ll ease lockdown restrictions we’re ever hopeful that we can finish off the last adventure. None of us want to leave it hanging where we left it but we’re already looking for other ideas and games. Since none of my friends wants to be the GM, I’m stuck with it and after messing around with various options of different campaigns, I think we’ve decided to go back to D&D in the 5e setting.

Rather than just dive into one of the pre-built existing settings in D&D, I have to be unique and to that end I’ve decided to go back to my homebrew fantasy campaign, The Realm of Tarsere, and update it to the 5e system. I’ve revamped this system so many times that one would think that I’m sick of it but quite the opposite. The world building is my favourite part!

With this quarantine, when I haven’t been tending the plague-ridden, I’ve been digging through old files, cringing at bad (or weak) world-building decisions, and revamping what I can. I’m a bit of an ADHD squirrel at times because there is so much that I have already written and stored deep in the recesses of my brain that I almost don’t know where to start (Do I redo the map? Do I rebuild the races first? Ooooh! what about the Gods? etc.) but then I settle on something and my hyperfocus kicks in and blammo! Six hours later I have something tangible.

Now I know this is silly as it’s not even something that isn’t going to come to fruition for months yet but right now, with all the shit that’s going on in the world right now, I need it to stay focused and sane.

If you’re bored and want to see my progress of stuff that I will eventually post. Swing over to http://tarsere.shadowmyth.net/. At some point I’ll update the website properly and tweak the theme.

For now. Stay safe out there fellow humans.

Thread Necromancy!

Well hello there world. It’s been a long time and here I am back again with yet another attempt to focus the swirling thoughts inside my head. I still don’t have enough time in the day to really give this site the attention that I want but I’m going to try a more minimalist approach and see where it takes me.

I still have a lot of great plans for the site, but the lack of updates, and backlog of things I wanted to do or had planned on trying was a monkey on my back for so long that it just became almost insurmountable. Even my attempt at a theme change last year sat there untouched because it was just too much.

So with that in mind, I’ve stripped back the theme to something more basic (but still somewhat palatable) and  I’m going to narrow the focus of the blog to three things and keep it simple.

First up. My friends and I are playing an Edge of the Empire Star wars campaign. While I’m going to keep the bulk of the campaign information contained over on it’s page on Obsidian Portal, I may reference it here from time to time.

I also have my standard fantasy campaign world, ‘The Realm of Tarsere’, but as it’s currently on hiatus the only thing that I plan on doing is to use the source material to build a series of stories I’ve been writing. I may even share them here.

Lastly, thanks in part to my daughters, I’ve rediscovered the joy of painting miniatures and am now trying to recover my painting skills to at least a shadow of their former glory. Progress is slow but I’m having fun, which is all that matters. While I doubt I’ll ever do a stream of me painting, I will probably post a few pics of works in progress and finished works.

I’m sure I’ve removed some functionality when I switched the theme but at this point I’m okay with it. I’ll address the broken links if and when I need them. In the meantime. Enjoy your stay.

Minor Gaming Update

For those of you who’ve been wondering what all I’ve been doing with regards to my little game world I have two very minor updates for you. The rest of you can probably just go ahead and skip this post… or better yet, just get bent. 😛

First up, I’ve updated the temporary world map in the section to the right. It’s still just a photo of the map rather than a proper scan but through the miracle of photoshop, I was able to overlay and roughly label some of the landmarks, countries and notable features which will hopefully flesh it out somewhat until such time as I can get a proper scan done.

As I’ve commented on before, I’ve had a living bitch of a time getting the individual sheets scanned and ported properly due to the previously mentioned scanner limitations, so much so that I’ve essentially given up on the project and will get them professionally scanned only when I finish the map itself.

The second item is somewhat impressive. I’ve been writing up the history of the world, from the mythical birth of the universe through to modern day, briefly touching on all the notable points in between. Now when I say writing, I do mean the handwritten, ink on paper deal. I’ve written about 30 pages to date and I’m still not quite done. I have a short laundry list containing the last thousand years or so to flesh out and then I’ll be “done”. Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to type it all up yet so those of you who’re interested in it will have to wait just a little while longer. I’m only about a quarter of the way through that part yet and my “editor” still needs to sign off on it (he really only claims this title because it gives him first dibs at reading stuff) but it should be up within the week but because I love putting the cart before the horse, you will shortly find the page framework already laid out in the right hand menu.

Enjoy