Bleh.
Feeling very uninspired atm. I woke up today at nineish at first and saw that there was some bright light shining through the shades. "Yes", I thought, "If it's bright I can finally take some new pictures and get those wigs on sale." Then I curled up under my blanket and fell asleep again. And when I woke, the sun was setting in that clear sky that indeed would have allowed me to take photos. :(
So no photos today. Everyone seems busy with their winter holidays, so there isn't any activity in my corner of the webs. I thought of perhaps writing something, I want to finish my Binary Knight manuscript soon. I also need to finish my nano project since I found out I have until next May to order five free paperback copies of it. I wrote a whole sentence of the Knight until I just gave up. I have no idea what to do with it. Well no, I have an idea, I just don't now how to make it interesting. I need to give that project a proper bookish storyarc, I need to give Nigel a proper goal for the story, a proper enemy and proper obstacles... I have none. I'd also need to streamline the introduction to the whole setting. All the character introductions and the stuff about the Knights are scattered to different chapters as they were all written as short stories first. But now that I want to introduce i.e. Matt sooner in the story, it'll mess up the introduction that I have in store for him later. Bleh :P I just don't want to tackle that right now.
Also I have no RPG in sight. All the campaigns I'm currently playing in are on a winter holiday break. Which I actually don't mind as much now, since I'm feeling very antisocial right now.
I also don't have any inspiration to do any RPG myself (as a GM). Had a chat yesterday with Valentine about what I'm like as a GM and I noticed how every single one of the campaigns I have done (or which I was planning to do) are very player-stricting. We were talking earlier with Valentine and Darling about how there are two kinds of GMing: letting your players roam free and make their own decisions, or making them play through a strict story. I have always preferred the former myself, which is one of the reasons I really liked the first fantasy-set games I've played in. But Valentine pointed out to me that I actually perform as the latter as a GM.
In all three of my campaigns (City Guard, the Guild and DeathGrip: NBH) I have set the players to be part of some kind of an institution that gives them orders (missions/quests) as an authority. This in effect prevents the players from free-roaming as everyone is somewhat committed to follow the orders from that authority. I thought my main problem was that I always tend to escalate the campaigns to Save-the-World scenarios, but now I realise that the issue might also be because I have too much of a control of the direction the characters have to take (thus leading them to save the world). Free-roaming characters might say "screw this!" and just walk away. And it might be just as fun. Aaand this makes me very uninspired to continue developing my DG: The Pawn campaign... Since I really wanted that campaign to be a set of premade quests that the players just, well, play through. I wanted the quests to be fully developed pre-game so that I would know exactly where the campaign was going (thus avoiding further escalation), but that if anything would make the game very stricting.
So I don't currently want to develop any RPG-stuff. Then I thought that I could maybe develop my doll plans some more. That always makes me happy, right? No. Currently I'm thinking of getting dolls from only two companies: Soom and Little Monica. Soom is a possible provider of my tan doll (if they release a SO bronze Teenie, Hati or Beyla), but I don't want to go there since I want to avoid looking at their SG Saiph (to avoid buying it) or the order status of my Nigel (since I'd just be disappointed, that doll isn't going to ship until late January). Anyways, they're not going to release more SO dolls this year, there are too many dolls on sale there atm. And it's frustrating to go to LM, since the dealer I place my LM orders through is currently catching up with their orders and I have no idea how long (might take months) it'll take for them to be back in business.
I'm currently wanting three dolls from LM:
Demetri with a girl body to be Fyrd. This is easy, already decided. I'm now done fretting about whether he can pull off a face-up I want for him. Now I just have to get as good as Poppy in face-upping, since she has done the right eyebrows for Demetri in one of the Artist face-ups :D Poppy's style for eyebrows and eyes, the default for the mouth. Then it's just a matter of doing it over and over again until I get it right.
Harmony boy Dyuke. This is really bugging me, since LM now has their -15% deal on full dolls. So I'm really tempted to just get him now. But! Considering the taxes, it'll still be cheaper to get him through the dealer. Now if the dealer would come back and offer that same discount... Then I'd be in a real trouble. Since I really want to get Fyrd next, not Mycroft! :( Poor Fyrd, he's always being pushed down...
A tan girl. It's a race against LM and Soom, really. I'll only get one, and LM can throw Giselle, Sophia or Chloe at me and I'll probably just get whichever comes first :D To be SD!Alistair. If the tan girl is a Chloe, it'll be a different kind of Alistair, but I'm sticking with the name for now. Luckily I don't think I need to fret about this too much now. If they release it, then good, but I'm not holding my breath that they'd be releasing it soon. Which is great, because it would tip the amount of dolls to double-digits (if I get Mycroft), which is something I want to avoid. Although until they do release the tan girl, I don't really have anyone to wear that lollipop wig which is right now sitting at the post...
But yeah, until I know which dolls are even coming, I can't really start planning for them :( And I've spent too much on dolls as it is. I should just concentrate on Nigel and Fyrd, but the other isn't going to come for a while and I don't know when I'll be able to even order the other. And I'm feeling more and more bummed, since I originally was going to order Fyrd as soon as I finished my nano 50.000 mark and if I had done that, the order would already have been forwarded to LM and I would have gotten him by the end of January. But I decided to wait it out until I knew about the LM winter event, only to now be in the situation that I'll be unable to exploit that event and unable to even order the damn doll! :(
Well, writing up this post has at least taken up some of my time :D Now I just need to burn about two hours until we go and see Hobbit, and then I can go to sleep, hopefully to wake up sooner to take doll photos tomorrow (although Valentine would also need to get up sooner, which is the tought part here since he's getting more and more sick)...
Edi. Valentine got really sick so Hobbit is cancelled... Well, maybe start planning for that Mycroft anyways?
Oh dear, just when I was writing about roleplay ideas... And there's like 3 updates after my last visit, where the hell have I've been, I've missed so many blog posts! xDDD
VastaaPoistaI was left to wonder: what exactly about the idea that you "lead differently than you like to play" is so uninspiring? Because the way you put it in this sounds a bit same kind of issue than I got with drawing. Thing is, I like to draw. But to get better at drawing, you have to draw a lot. Before you get to certain level with your skills, you are pretty much stuck with you own "handwriting", certain habits and shapes which come naturally to you. More you train, easier it's get rid of them, but they don't go away over night. Joke is, that my handwriting, which affects the style how I draw things, is naturally almost exact opposite of how I want to draw, and what kind of drawing I really enjoy. When I stop thinking about that, I usually get very inspired, and for couple of weeks I produce lots of stuff, getting better slowly but steady. How ever, at somepoint it really starts to bug me and I stop drawing for months. Which doesn't help me to reach my goal, of course, but it always goes there.
Point being, creating organizations seems to be kind of your thing. And you can't change that over night. Best way to learn new is to have something old in the background, to give you a foothold, so you can keep learning things you aren't so sure of. And when you get more secure abput them, you can use that info as support, and let go something else.
Not to meantion that Just because you like to roam free, doesn't mean you will like to lead roam free game. And not to meantion, it's not the style of the game which makes it awesome. It's execution. I love turned based strategy games, and realtime ones usually creep a crap out of me. Still, I consider Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 very high on my fav strategygame list. Even when I hate almost all the others. Beause they where made the way I like.
I hope you get Fyrd home asap. ;w; All that dolly mess sounds depressing. But it will get better, I promise! :3
It's not that I'm bummed about the campaigns that I've done previously, I've had a good time with them and think of them as successfull campaigns. The talk I mentioned just really got me thinking of the direction I want to take as a GM. And about how I got here in the first place.
VastaaPoistaAs I said, as a player I have started out with a free-roaming 'campaign', where the main goal of RPG was to have fun, eat pizza with friends and pass time. The first other game I participated in, was a strict-type campaign led by Darling and ... let's call her Madam, hm? I found it very refreshing, liked the structure and the drama-development. I wanted to incorporate something alike to the first campaign I led - City Guard. The problem was, I think I was copying Darling a bit too much, and lost what I originally so loved about RPG. And then this was (not directly) pointed out to me. And the next RPG thing that I was planning, was even more structured, even more in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go.
I noticed that actually my two totally free-form games (Progeny of Loki 1+2) were more like what I actually want to play. Sure, they gave the players a starting setting, but in these games more so than in my campaigns, the players could choose whatever they wanted to do from there. So now I need to get inspired to do something similar, but yet different enough :D
So I'm uninspired to continue developing the RPG ideas I've had in mind, since they would be very player-stricting, and I want to try something new. But can't find the energy, or the start-up, to plan that something new. There's the rug :(