Speak Out 2: You Got Spoked

I am the Warden!!

Apparently, Speak Out With Your Geek Out is a week-long blogasm or it's taking everyone a whole damn week to get through all our geeky love and we're just getting more and more inspired as we continue reading. Fair enough, let's add to that gargantuan list, shall we?

Monday's entry into the postarama expressed my mistrust of acceptance as a geek. Mistrust may be a bit of a strong word as it implies I'm waiting for people to lure me into a basement lit by only a single lightbulb hanging from a chain and forcing me to watch hours of baseball until I turn; let's call it uncertainty. It's given me pause for thought and implies either I have extremely serious social issues (which is definitely on the table) or there's another underlying reason for this response. Being the introvert I am coupled with months of therapy, I wanted to explore this further.

Cue the meditation cloud.

Coming Up Next

I am the Warden!!

One peaceful night's sleep and it's time to start pumping out OS goodness again. Yesterday was an incredibly productive day on five fronts. A proud moment, to be sure, but keeping that kind of momentum running for two days in a row has always been a challenge. I'm feeling confident about it this time, having spent training points on bumping up my Concentration and Typing skills to give me 3 uses of +2d6 trained dice.

(Oooh, I've been waiting for the day when I could finally making an Optional reference.)

Yesterday's upload of Optional: Playtest weighs in at 79 pages, only 9 pages less than what's on the actual Word file. It won't be long now before everything still in working phases will be ready enough to make it to the next step: PDF. That brings me to today's topic, an overview of everything listed as "In Progress" for Optional: Playtest.

The Sweat From My Brow: Version 0.5 Playtest Is Ready

I am the Warden!!

Finally, the last of numerous changes have been made and the Optional: Playtest PDF (Version 0.5) has been uploaded and added to the Optional Library on your left. It stands at 79 pages, so there's a good chance I'm going to keep these particular updates down to once a month. I may not have a life, but I have to expect the rest of you do before plopping another 80+ pages every month to start over from.

'Cause we ain't done yet...

Speak Out: The Good and the Bad

I am the Warden and I am a Geek!!

I've never been comfortable with all of this recent "tolerance" towards geeks. I grew up in the 90s where D&D remained a satanic ritual performed by scrawny weaklings were too much of a puss to shoot up their school like normal kids (their words, not mine). That's what I'm used to and honestly, I miss those days. When you did let it out that you played D&D, the look was a mixture of "Oh, you poor bastard" and "Jesus, get the fuck away from this guy." Now shows like The Big Bang Theory have made us... um, popular? See, I can't even say it without falling into disbelief. Just last month, I had a firefighter - a man who grew up on the high school football team - play his first RPG and loved it. My head still shakes over that.

Since I'm going to turn 40 in a couple of years, I'm going to start early on saying this. You kids don't know how lucky you have it now.

Speak Out With Your Geek Out! is a day to encourage those feeling excluded or misunderstood for their hobbies by society at large by regaling them with stories of triumph and understanding. To let you all know you are not alone and, while we may still operate on the fringes of society, we are many. Don't let our weight problems fool you, we can also be a highly active, motivated people. I'm posted this today because I was also a shy, geeky kid who's grown up to be a quiet, nerdy adult with a drawer for roleplaying shirts in his dresser.

I have two stories today, one spotlighting the tribulations of growing up with D&D and another highlighting the strengths of roleplaying. As any motivational speaker would, I'll start with the bad story.

Rise, Fellow Geeks!!

I am the Warden and I am a geek!!

Monday the 12th has become the first Speak Out With Your Geek Out blogfest where all us geeks rebel against our jock overlords and proclaim our... well, geekiness. And I don't just mean buying Season 4 of Big Bang, no, no. Anyone in their 30s who knows all about d4s grew up under the stigma of not going out and getting drunk on a nightly basis. You can find out more at the Speak Out site.

A Thing of Beauty (AKA The Tracker)

A quick screen cap of the Thing, or the Tracker.

I am the Warden!!

Phew. It has been some time since this much work has been poured into... well, any project. There will be a significant update to Optional: Playtest on Monday and I'll be spending the weekend getting the Version 0.5 PDF ready along with prepping a post for Speak Out With Your Geek Out on Monday.

But today is a special post. The unveiling of the very first Thing, or the Tracker. Behold its glory to the right and click here to download your own copy (including a full-colour and greyscale version) when you're ready to try out your own Optional System game. Each grid is large enough to handle your common poker chips and we are working on making our own chips for the Tracker.

While the Tracker hasn't been officially playtested, we have been working off a crude version  for a few weeks now using poker chips to keep track of each Team's options. Combining this with the edge (in red) and marking which Team declares a readied or defensive option (in blue), I'm hoping this tool will allow for some dynamic fight scenes in future playtesting.

Racial Creeds

I am the Warden!!

(And if you didn't know that by now.)

An incredibly productive day yesterday with all the revisions to the Optional System plugged in and ready for more playtesting. But that's neither here nor there, because my only reason for telling you that is to start moving on to new material. And since I'm in a crazy creed-building mode, I'm gonna stick with that theme.

As the majority of my playtesting at home consists of fantasy campaigns, race plays a factor in our stories. Our monthly Friday night game doesn't really stretch the boundaries of the imagination: two humans and a tiefling from D&D. Yet no fantasy game seems complete without a wide variety of races, both classical and modern, to demonstrate the depth and scope of your world. As a human fan, it's rare for me to branch out into something else other than the adaptable human, but there's no denying the love for dwarves (aye, with a thick Scottish accent ta boot!), elves (though I feel their immortality or longevity has been poorly overlooked in nearly 95% of all settings), halflings, and for most others, gnomes. (I can't stand them myself. Long story.) Therefore, the time has come to start looking at how creeds can bring these races to life.