Archive for the ‘Site-Meta’ Category

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Random Kindness Encounter Bundle!

575 People

$15,225

In 3 days, 10 hours, 2 minutes and 45 seconds

Damn. We did a thing here, gaming world. Thank you very much.

- Ryan

(Oh, and now my promo widget points to a man who would like to see a dream come true, a dream of ghost piracy. It’s not cancer-fighting, but it’s worthy of support.)

A personal video reaction to how amazing y’all have been:

Too Long; Didn’t Watch:

• We’re capping the donations at $15K, because woah.
• Holy crap, you’re awesome. wut i dont even
• I’ll talk more about Mythender later, because I have my hands full with managing this project. :)
• Holy crap, you’re awesome.
• I drink passable coffee.
• Apologies to David & Filamena for spacing — it’s been a long couple days.
• Incidentally, in the first 24 hours, 395 people raised $11,325. Again, holy crap, you’re awesome.
• My video comment about the amount is awesomely out of date.
• And for Will Hindmarch‘s Always/Never/Now:

- Ryan

I decided to put up a place where I can post useful, downloadable stuff I make!

The first thing I’m adding to it is an Unknown Armies 2/e fillable PDF, because I love running Unknown Armies for people and my handwriting sucks. :)

Note that there’s a weird bit with the Hardened & Failed text, because the fonts there in the original PDF are weird. Sorry about that! I also removed the lines under the notes section, to let the text flow as needed.

If you have any comments, let me know! Also, feel free to take this and make a better version, if you like. That’s always awesome.

Thanks to Jess Banks over at Atlas Games for giving me the green light to post it up!

- Ryan

Folks,

I’m gonna take a few days off from blogging. I want to hunker down and finish a project I’ve been working on, which I’ll share with y’all soon enough. And lately I haven’t been able to quite manage both a couple thousand words on projects and writing up a blog post. And I’m going to use that as a segue to talk about mental health.

This constant workload is one of those things that ends up biting me. Lately has been a lot of “burning the candle at both ends” sort of activity, to finish up some stuff for other people. Unfortunately because of that, some days I just can’t get the words together at all. This is partly do to dealing with a psychiatric condition that causes excruciating headaches in times of stress or heavy continual brain contact. With the anti-anxiety medication I take[1], working an eight-hour day is doable, but the eleven-hour ones eat up my spoons quickly.

Having to deal with being a creative and dealing with psychiatric conditions means gauging your ability to work, and not working like you see other people doing. I would love to have the output that, say, Matt Forbeck has. Especially with his 12-for-12 project, which I encourage you to check out. But I can’t do that; I’ve tried, and found my neurochemistry doesn’t support my desired output. Since I’ve come to terms with that, I’m pretty watchful for “wait, the extra hour of work I’m about to do tonight is going to kill my brain for the whole of tomorrow. Fuck.”

I want to finish this project without crashing myself. And I want to finish it soon, because that’ll make me happy. So I’m at that point where I look at the “this is what I want to do” pile and “this is what I have the bandwidth for” meter, and decide what has priority.

Anyway, I figured I could just say “Hey, taking a break! Working on something cool!” and folks would just nod. But I wanted to say a little more, because I know I’m not the only creative type out there who deals with mental health issues.[2] I’m rather resentful of this limitation, but that’s what I get to deal with.

In the meantime, you should check out Elizabeth Shoemaker-Sampat’s new blog. Her first post is pretty amazing.

See you in a bit!

- Ryan

[1] Which is why I’m so very damned loud about health care in this country. Because I pay for the medication out of my pocket, and my thought process each time I do is “Okay, I’ve bought another 100 days of sanity & ability to work. What can I do with it?”

[2] I’ve always been quiet about such things, because I’m genuinely afraid that it’ll cause me to not get hired by some people. But I think I’m done being quiet.

I’ve been told by a few people that I should submit my blog for this year’s ENnie Awards. So I’ve looked over their rules regarding e-submissions, and here’s where I’m stumped:

• Podcasts and Blogs: You must send a link to your site and specify one “must-hear” episode or one “must-read” article/issue.  The judges will select another “must-hear” episode or one “must-read” article/issue that they all listen to/read.  Each judge will then select another episode/article/issue.

I’m stumped because I live in my head and I just vomit forth whatever I’m thinking about. I’m sure some posts have resonated with folks more than others. So, your mission, should you choose to accept it: Which of these posts from last year (starting May 1, 2011) is my most “must-read” post? Why?

If you help me pick my post, I’ll likely by you a drink at a con, whether I actually get nominated for an ENnie or not. Because this sort of thing is drink-worthy.

My posts from the last 12 months:

• May 2010
  • Marketing and Emotional Manipulation
  • Rolling What You Risk
  • I would like to spend money…
  • Happy Birthday, Robot!
  • By way of crow: the ICONS Contest
  • The Past Two Years of my Life: Mythender
  • The Bones and Gamer Joy
• July 2010
  • Two rules I live by, or ‘No on No’
  • This Just In…From Gen Con!
  • The result of the ICONS contest
  • Adventure Games & Story Games
  • Reward Systems and Paying Attention
  • Say Things Badly
  • Emotional Resonance
• August 2010
  • Podcasts, Podcasts, Podcasts…
  • Now I mourn the passing of another Gen Con…
  • Podcasts and Seasons
  • Overthinking is Toxic
• September 2010
  • Thoughts on Mental Bandwidth
  • Stockholm Syndrome in Game Design
  • The Twin Masters of Con GMing
  • The Seven Layers of a Convention Game
  • RinCon 10
• October 2010
  • Horror & Hope
  • Incentivizing Hope
  • Thoughts on Action Horror
  • Emerging Threats Unit – a Fate Horror game skeleton
• November 2010
  • Research Aspects
  • Folks I Admire: E. Foley
  • My NeonCon Panels
  • Battle and Story
  • Typed Aspects & Free Tagging
  • NC Podcasts: NeonCon & Narrative Control
• December 2010
  • Adventure Games and the Myth of Arcs
  • Folks I Admire: Jennifer Brozek
  • The Ending of Finis
  • Flowchart: “You’re Wrong”
  • The Walmsley Principle
  • Your Mind is Late-War Germany
  • Audience Participation: Con GM Problems
  • Letter-Writing as Draft-Writing
  • Notes on the Seven Layer Convention Burrito
• January 2011
  • Goals for 2011
  • Making Sympathetic Antagonists
  • Mutant Healing Aspect
  • Thoughts on Opportunities
  • Happy Changes with RPGPodcasts.com
  • On Luck and Wisdom
  • GMs Seminar at Endgame, March 19th 2011
  • Internal vs World Compels
  • Don’t Define with the Negative
  • Panels at DunDraCon 2011!
  • A Tool for Leverage Masterminds
  • How Our Covers Look In Stores
  • You Don’t Own Your Message
• February 2011
  • Interview on Creating An Internet Presence
  • Doing What You Love
  • Why Critique Has No Home On The Internet
  • My Next Attempt at Organization
  • How to Lose Impulse Sales, e23
  • Critique: Anti-Recommendations
  • Eating Lunch
  • Sometimes Your Game Will Be Meh
  • “Hey, Rewrite This”
• March 2011
  • Audience Participation: Your Convention Kit
  • Critique: “Be” Advice
  • How to Crap on Your Readers with Smartphones
  • How to Better Utilize Facebook as a Blogger
  • Ways To Afford An Editor
  • Audience Participation: How Have Editors Helped You?
  • I’m a Game Advocate!
  • #HappinessIs Leverage-on-Leverage Action
  • The Fallacy of Punk
  • Play-Review: Microscope
  • Thoughts on The Long Game
  • Interview about Drifting Games
  • Folks I Admire: Chris Hanrahan
  • A Strange, New Realization
  • Concept to Shelf Episode 2
  • Advice for New Bloggers
• April 2011 (so far)
  • The Lasting Effects of April Fools’ Day
  • Finding Your Break-Even Point
  • Mythender Quick Peek: Warrior & Crusader
  • Valley of the Shadow of Overcommitment
  • Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Awesome
  • Thoughts on Implied Setting vs Stated Setting
  • Origins Award 2011 Nominations
  • Reminders I Need
  • Folks I Admire: Will Hindmarch
  • What Doesn’t Kill You…

Again, a huge thank-you in advance to everyone who helps me out here!

- Ryan