Still Here, Somehow

I recognize it's been a while since I've posted anything aside from the occasional comment here and there, and figured I should at least let folks know I'm still breathing.

First off, I've gotten a bunch of new followers on BlueSky in the last couple months, and on the unlikely chance any of them have clicked through to this post, lemme say 'hi.' Hi. This is my blog. It's mostly write-ups about my Exalted gaming sessions and occasional venting about my writing issues. Things have been quiet lately mostly because I've been struggling with a rough patch, with some other stuff contributing. But feel free to settle in while I try to get this back on track, maybe peruse my write-ups with the help of the index linked in the sidebar. If you've got any questions or comments, I'm all ears.

I don't have any real progress to report writing-wise, largely because at best I've been treading water mentally and emotionally. I'm not gonna go into too many specifics because everyone's got it at least a little rough right now and any energy or sympathy you've got should go to their problems before mine. But yeah, the situation's not great, I'm trying to dig out from under it with a therapist's help, and as of this writing I've just gotten my psychiatrist to adjust my meds.

And speaking of other people having it rough, I want to boost something for someone very close to me, and I don't want to bury it at the end. The details are, to put it mildly, an absolute bummer, but my good friend Rhari is raising money to take her daughter on a very special journey. More on the GFM page.

As for me, a big chunk of what's kept me busy in terms of writing stuff has been a freelance gig. I never got around to announcing it at the time (before now), and to be honest I'm not entirely sure why aside from just dealing with depression and other distractions and actually, y'know, working on it. But I've been writing a chunk of the new Infernals book for Exalted, Third Edition. I'm primarily working on setting material, and quite frankly some of what the devs and writers have lined up for this is a doozy in a good way. (You gotta specify that, as 2nd edition's Infernals book was a doozy in a different way, with all due respect to everyone who worked on it.)

I'll be honest, working on it's been rough going due to the aforementioned mental health issues. Which has made the writing process more stressful than usual, and that stress has been exacerbating the mental health issues. If anything, it was worse than a similar problem I had with Alchemicals last year, and there's a part of me that's legitimately terrified that between my own screwed-up brain chemistry and the stresses of the world, my brain might be too fucked to keep freelancing. I'd honestly forgotten it was that bad until I went back looking through old posts to reference something and found a thing I wrote about it at the time.

But even before that, I'd gotten caught up with a story and setting idea that I've been fleshing out in notes and stuff. I don't know what form it's going to take, if any, because I don't know if it's an idea with legs or if it's just the excitement of toying around with something new. Regardless, it's taken up enough space in my brain it's been hard to shake it for other projects.

That said, I should point out I'm in a better place regarding my Conversion stuff, mentally (though I'm still thinking of renaming the setting). I haven't done much with it because of other projects taking priority (see the freelance gig above and other stuff below), as well as me wanting to take a step back and see how things are shaking out with regards to the current state of artificial intelligence. Not that AI is meant to be a major element in the setting, but it factors into at least one story and possibly more in the future as part of the setting's recent-ish history. (But then, there's stuff I initially planned for the setting I drifted away from and other stuff I drifted into, so that's another kettle of fish.) I'd rather take a bit of time to handle it to my satisfaction instead of having to dance around it later like Star Trek had to with the Eugenics Wars.

Anyhow...

I honestly can't think of anything else to get into here that I haven't pointed out in other posts -- like the lack of regular Exalted posting has been due to a combination of the depression and the fact that my group's been playtesting some upcoming material -- which, if I'd been a little more on the ball, I'd have linked the crowdfunding campaign for it, but I think you can pre-order the Exalted Essence Player's Guide over on Backerkit. I've got a bunch of posts to get caught up on, and in all those I'll try to get in write-ups for those playtesting sessions since that's probably fine to share now.

Okay, so that's probably it for the moment. Thanks for reading this far if you have, and I'll try to bring a little more life to this blog in the future. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments feel free to share them either here or wherever you found the link to this post. Later!

The Road Between Light and Dark: The Dust Settles (Exalted)

Holy heck, it's been a while. Sorry about that, just been juggling a lot of mental health stuff, and there've been a number of little things that escaped my attention and had to be corralled.

Wow, that was a sloppy metaphor. See, this is why I have imposter syndrome, because I write shit like that and someone still occasionally pays me to write things.

Friggin' heck. Still, it could be worse. My group's been playtesting some material that I'm not gonna put up on the blog just yet because, well, playtesting. It's still secret. But that means it's not like I'm getting further and further behind on The Road Between Light and Dark.

Speaking of which...

New Year, Same Me

This is sort of a general update post. Intellectually, I don't think anything here is going to be any surprise or revelation to anyone, but I feel like sometimes I need to send out a "proof of life" broadcast.

So, first off, I've been struggling with a lot of major personal stuff for a while. I've mentioned this on and off in passing, and I'd go into more detail if it was appropriate to do so here. It bugs me that I can't talk about it, because before it all started I was trying to be more open about stuff bothering me and not bottle up so much. Part of the problem is that as much as I'd like to find a comfortable medium of being open about what I can while keeping the things I can't close to the chest, I'm not sure what I'd have to say. "I'm miserable and I'm having trouble writing." I mean, that'd mostly be it, albeit in a variety of different phrasings and levels of self-deprecation.

Because, y'know, I'm miserable and I'm having trouble writing. 

And there are multiple factors that feed into those difficulties, some of them out of my control. And I have trouble keeping the stuff I can control in check. But the biggest barrier, outside my ADHD, is the distinct impression that I'm the only one that cares about my fiction writing, except the handful of times I've written it under contract. I find it difficult to remain emotionally-invested in my characters or stories when clearly they aren't especially compelling to anyone else, either.

I know I'm a broken record about this, but I'll say it again: about 99% of the encouragement I get regarding my writing comes from people who don't read it. Seriously, while I do appreciate the thought and I don't want to come across like I'm giving anyone crap for it, it's frustrating beyond my ability to articulate that my complaints about nobody reading my fiction get more attention and feedback than the actual work itself. (Even with the gaming fiction for books that sell hundreds or maybe thousands of copies, I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard or read any reaction to my gaming fiction from people who weren't the developer I was writing it for.) While it's not conscious on my part, it's probably not an accident that I have an easier time complaining than working. It's all dragging me down to the point where it's affecting my enthusiasm/ability to work on other stuff, too.

This shouldn't be news, if you've known me for more than five minutes. This is something I've complained about, before. None of that has changed, and I don't know how to do anything about it. Under the pretense of a "New Year's fresh start" thing, I'm considering putting up a self-promotional post in a few spots, see if I can get some eyes on my work while I poke at the WIP stuff I've got, but it really feels like actively tracking down Lucy specifically to hand her the football and hold it for me to kick.

Either way, this is a long, whiny way of saying that my writing progress hasn't really advanced beyond the state it was in when I posted about it back in September.

I'm not sure what else to add to this, so I'll just say for anyone who has paid attention thus far, thanks for reading, and I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment and waste of time.

(And if anyone is reading this and thinking 'if you can psych yourself up to write this post, you should be able to psych yourself up to write other things,' you can go fuck yourself because if it was that fucking easy I'd be fucking doing it.)

The Road Between Light and Dark: What Did or Didn't Happen (Exalted)

Hey there, folks, apologies for how quiet it's been here. Juggling things here, etc. Also, I didn't get around to getting those core system Alchemical builds up while the crowdfunding campaign was up, but I will get to them. But I'm still behind on my session write-ups, so I wanted to knock out another of these first. I could probably go into much less detail than I do on them, but especially on the chattier sessions, I have trouble finding a middle ground between 'excruciating amounts of detail' and 'summarize the entire session in half a dozen paragraphs.' But between a brief holiday hiatus and the fact that I'm playtesting something with the group (which won't go on the blog right away), I should have a little time to get caught up.

(Speaking of which, this is another talking-heavy session, so there might be details I get wrong or put things in the wrong order. If any of my players see this and would like to offer a correction, let me know.)

So here we go. Oh, and before I forget, I hope everyone reading this is having a happy and safe holiday season.

The Road Between Light and Dark: Battle at the Summit (Exalted)

Okay, still trying to get caught up, so on and so forth, usual blah blah blah. I still need to get my Alchemical write-ups finished (I've got the ExEss write-ups, now I need to do the core system versions), but I don't want to get too far behind on this.

I'm gonna tell you now, it might be a little long, because this post features a fight that took multiple sessions to resolve (and gets a little graphic in places, be warned), but it was a ton of fun -- hopefully I can make it fun to read.

Before we get into it, just a couple of reminders: First, the Alchemicals splatbook (which, in case it needs repeating, I worked on) is still funding on Backerkit; come pledge and check out the previews! Second, the Trinity Continuum Player's Guide (which I also worked on) is up on DriveThruRPG in PDF and PoD. I'm always proud of the work I do on the books, and the TCPG was a delightful challenge because of the material I was covering.

And now, on with the show!

Building a Character: Exalted Essence (Another Alchemical!)

Hey there, back again with another magical robot Exalt for the blog. In case you missed it, the Alchemicals Backerkit is running and going into its last week. Here's a second Essence Alchemical character, and as soon as I can swing it I'll post a core system version using the crowdfunding manuscript preview material.

In case you missed it, I've already posted an Adamant Caste Alchemical based in Creation, and you can follow that link for the basic gist of what the Alchemical Exalted are and where they come from. (Also, there's a bunch of fluff from that write-up that's relevant to this one but for the sake of brevity I'll just refer back to it rather than repeat myself more than necessary.) But now I'm going to do an Alchemical based in Autochthonia itself -- a Jade Caste, this time.

So let's get into it.

An overdue announcement and a reminder

I mentioned this in my recent session write-up, but I felt it deserved its own post here.

The Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God crowdfunding campaign is about half-over as I post this, and a bunch of the previews are available to backers -- some of which includes material I've written, with more on the way! The book is, in a nutshell, about sweet magical robot-people who (for the most part) live inside a giant magical robot-god, and the robot-god world in which they live. The previews are available for backers only, though I'm pretty sure you can back the campaign, download the preview, and then cancel it, if you really want to. I can't stop ya.

(Also, as a side-note, while this is a 3e core system book, the setting material is also useful for the Exalted Essence rules, especially with the updates to the Adamant Caste.)

If you'd like to know more, episode 338 of the Onyx Pathcast has a basic explainer of Alchemicals. And past episodes include interviews with the developers and a couple of the writers.

There's also a slightly-outdated pair of episodes from the Systematic Understanding of Everything podcast, talking about the Alchemicals themselves and the magical machine-world in which they live. These two refer primarily to the 2e books, but there's a lot of broad strokes stuff that still holds up as those books naturally fed into the new one, and all of the podcast's hosts wound up working on it.

Or, if you'd rather skip the podcasts, I can answer questions if people have any.

In semi-related news, here's a reminder that another book I recently worked on, the Trinity Continuum Player's Guide is available over on DriveThruRPG in PDF and print on demand. It's a supplement for the Trinity Continuum 'core' line, though the material in there is useful in any of the various timelines of the Continuum.

Anyhow, I hope everyone's holiday season is off to a solid start. Take care, and hopefully I'll be able to check in again soon!