The Pausing Will Continue Until Productivity Improves

I’ve now had this Patreon on pause for like 4 months in a row, and it’s fun because Patreon only lets you pause for one month at a time, so if you forget (which I’ve somehow managed to avoid) it goes ahead and charges patrons.

I’m still kicking, and ever so slowly getting back into properly working on various creative endeavors. Life has been stressful, and that doesn’t seem likely to let up any time soon. My mother has had Alzheimer’s for a few years now, and more recently she had a serious stroke, so she’s now in hospice care. After losing her by degrees over many years I’m not as emotionally wrecked as you might think (unlike my father, who is a wreck right now), but that may change when the hammer finally drops. I’ve been alive long enough to grow weary of how the world just keeps taking.

I also got a promotion at work, but one that I honestly didn’t really want. It comes with a modest raise and it’s a position my team needs filled, but overall it’s been a source of stress as I try to get a handle on new responsibilities and more challenging tasks. This is also happening while the company is, like a lot of companies, irrationally forcing employees back to working in an office. Executives have cited all kinds of reasons, but between the costs of commercial real estate (and other perks they’re trying to bribe people with) and the empirical evidence that working from home results in a small productivity boost, the justifications for shoving people back into offices while the pandemic isn’t actually over are looking exceedingly thin these days. That’s doubly true at my workplace, where two years of WFH went by without incident. For multiple reasons I’m hoping that I can get a medical exemption and keep working from home, but we’ll see.

On the keyboard front, I discovered and got a little obsessed with Everglide Aqua King switches, which have just absurdly smooth movement. I got a whole keyboard to put them in, and it makes me want to type stuff just to experience that smoothness. It’s weird. This weekend I’m also building an open-source design called the Humla, and since it uses Choc style switches (and thus those Aqua Kings won’t fit) I tried lubing switches for the first time. I don’t know how much difference it’ll really make, but a lot of hardcore mechanical keyboard folks swear by it. Since key switches have springs in them, there’s the issue that you get bits of switches flying across the room.

On the creative end of things, I finally finished and published a final version of My Life With Maid RPG, a 24-page zine about the game and the role it played in my life. I took the opportunity to commission art of my OC in a maid costume, and cleaned and trimmed the writing. Then the Etsy strike began, and since I ain’t no scab my shop is in vacation mode until Tuesday. I have another zine (“More Things I’ve Seen Contracting at Tech Companies”) just about done, so I’ll try to launch that soon.

I’ve done a little writing and a lot of thinking on Memes of the Prophets. It touches on a lot of issues that are important to me, and I’ve managed to come up with a core cast that I genuinely like. I decided to commission art of them, starting with Alyssa. She’s the half-elf summoner, and she’s outwardly stressed, grouchy, and sarcastic, but underneath a fiercely caring person. She parted ways with her mentor primarily because they disagreed over Alyssa’s insistence on treating those she summons with basic respect.

I ended up talking about food a lot in the course of worldbuilding for MotP, to the point where the first book is likely to have an appendix with some recipes. Over the course of the story Erica introduces the world to pasta, which eventually leads to elven chefs developing an elven pasta dish called “cadasta,” which makes use of fragrant herbs. I’ve actually devised a recipe (based on a real Italian pasta condimiento no less), though I want to see if I can work in some kind of edible flowers.

I also randomly got inspired to work on Dragon World. The game has been sitting idle for a while now, and I think it’s been long enough to give me the fresh perspective I need to be impartial about what parts of the rules might changing or elimination. One of the big things I want to work on is the rules for Guts points. I’m thinking of reducing how many PCs have (3 max instead of 6), and making them more flavorful in terms of how they influence the course of the story.

I sat down and reread the Dragon Half manga. You have to enjoy or at least be willing to forgive a lot of fanservice to enjoy it (it apparently takes place in a world where the laws of physics make it impossible for women to wear pants), but it’s also energetic and unrelentingly absurd. One major thing in it—which is actually a little too frequent for how I see Dragon World working—is that it constantly undercuts conflicts. A lot of the time Mink’s massive strength is more than enough to deal with anyone who gets in her way, but fights routinely get interrupted because of characters being stupid. Mig is a very powerful demon, but he’s not able to fight in the aftermath of Mink accidentally revealing that he wears cute bear undies.

Another thing is that I have a move in the game called “Act Sensibly Despite Temptation,” and I’ve since learned that Vincent Baker generally advises designers not to have moves that simply serve to resist stuff. ASDT adds onto that burdening the DM (Dragon Master) with a need to know each PC’s Temptations and shove them into the game. Right now, I’m contemplating a move called “Do Something Stupid” that lets players volunteer to act on their PCs’ foibles to get Guts points.

Anyway, that’s about where I’m at right now. I’m going to try to get back on track with this Patreon, and I’m thinking of mailing some goodies out to higher-tier patrons.