Stronger

Sorry I'm slow to update lately but I've been driving so hard all I do when I reach a stopping point is pass out. I don't have much to say. I'm just going through my days and trying to live and figure out where to go from here.

That said, I'm now settled down in one of those sleazy rent by the week type places. I don't expect to be able to stay here long, but I'll enjoy the couple weeks I have, because I've come to a decision.

I don't have anyone to protect me anymore. I can't expect to be protected or sheltered or guarded ever again. I have to learn how to protect and take care of myself. In regards to the former, the city I'm in at the moment has free self defense classes going at the community center. I've already enrolled. I don't ever expect to be a fighter like some of you, but these days being able to fight back if I'm attacked is rather important.

The later I'm just having to figure out as I go.

The point is, I have a goal, I have a plan, I refuse to let this destroy me. For Damon and Penny and Brandon, I have to keep going.

Processing

I think... I think I'm still in shock, a little bit.
I don't... We didn't have a plan, really. We had no plans except to run. So I've not really known what to do? But we were headed up to see Miss, before... before all of this went down.
So, I decided to go ahead and go to her. She's... she's very kind and I don't really want to be alone after all of this.
Also admittedly I feel a lot safer with her, what with her being... whatever she is, exactly. I got to her early this afternoon, and she's every bit as kind in person. It feels nice to have someone to talk to again, and she doesn't mind hugging me while I cry.
Which happens quite often these days, unfortunately

I'm finally out of survival mode, now that I have time to sit and process... And I've been thinking. When I can.
I have to find something, I have to live. Damon told me, when he ordered me to run, that I had to keep living. It was... it was the last thing he ever told me. I don't know how. But I have to do it. For him. For them.

Somehow.

You Were Right, Jess

Hi, this is Penny. Jessie, I'm sorry for breaking into your account but you're not answering your phone and you left your password as the one we used for everything, so I hope this is okay. We needed to get in touch.

You were right, I'm so sorry, you were right and now we have a stalker in a business suit. Jessie, where are you love? We miss you and we want you back, now that there's no reason for us to stay apart. Please, please call us back?

That can be an order if you're willing to have us back. We love you, Jess, and we're both pretty fucking scared.

Things Change

Camp this weekend was dire. With Kaylee gone, my entire cabin was in a bad mood. Getting them to smile and laugh was quite a trick, one that I only partially achieved, because I was just as down as they were every time I looked at her empty bunk.

But we managed, and there's only one week left before the camp stops for the summer. It's... Normally I'm really sad when we end for the season, I fall in love with my kids and I hate to see them go, but after what happened last week I'm all nervous around the trees-and we have a lot of them. I hate that whatever happened has corrupted my haven like this. Hopefully by the winter I'll be able to enjoy it again.

In happier news, my game is tomorrow. It's looking like we're going to have a good turn-out, so that'll be fantastic. Damon and Penny and I are getting together this afternoon to do the last minute stuff we need to get done for tomorrow. Any of you reading this that are planning to show, you're in for something amazing.

I'll see you then!

Camp

I've been debating on whether to say anything about this here, because it's kind of private, but I don't have a whole lot of readers and most of the ones I do have will go away as soon as they figure out that this isn't a gaming post. I need to get this out SOMEWHERE.

I work at a weekends-only camp for kids with terminal diseases-cancer, mostly, but we have all types here. I love working with the kids, and if it is a little depressing thinking of how many of them aren't going to make it, I try and make up for that with remembering that I'm brightening their lives.

This is my third year working at the camp, and honestly it's the only reason I came back to Tampa this year instead of doing summer school like most of my friends.  The credit hours I get are nice, and as pediatric nursing is my chosen field I love the experience I get.

That's... that's not the problem part. The problem is with one of my campers. A little eight year old I'll call Kaylee. The first weekend I found her crying in her bunk and took her for a walk to cheer her up, and ever since, she's been my best friend among the kids. She has a heart defect, and before she got to camp she'd never really been allowed to run and play outside for fear of overexerting herself. She loves it, and she's always SO EXCITED to arrive Friday afternoon.

Saturday night she was feeling rather down so I took her for another walk before lights out. I remember the two of us leaving and laughing as we strolled into the woods, and then I remember her being on the ground and frantically calling everyone to help as I tried to keep her heart going. I wish I could remember what happened to give her problems.

She's in the hospital now, and she's in bad shape, but she'll last a while longer. It got her bumped up the transplant list, which is good, if scary. I went to see her this morning, and she seemed terrified. Wouldn't talk about what happened, said she didn't want to go back to camp. It's probably nothing-odds are high she hallucinated when she went down due to a lack of oxygen to the brain. If it were something scary, it would explain everything.

But still. I worry. It just doesn't feel quite right, and I don't know why

Work, work, work

Been hard at work making props and plans and such for the Slenderverse LARP, which is why I haven't been around much. Damon and I have never hosted an event like this, and while we have the experience to make it amazing, we're still both nervous and determined to make it especially good, to prove ourselves.

Any of you silent readers who follow me while waiting for the game, know that we've got some amazing things planned for all of you.

And Damon, I know you're reading this. Stop being a lurker bastard. Comments would be appreciated.

Passing out Fliers

Spent all day yesterday sweating my ass off in a hoodie handing out fliers at the park. I had two friends helping me out, my Co-GM Damon and his girlfriend Penny. All of us were dressed in hoodies and old ratty clothes, doing our best to look homeless and stricken.

A few people thought we were begging, but mostly we did pretty well. We gave out ALL the fliers, which had the link to Seeking Truth, Dreams in Darkness, and of course to here-hello burst of traffic!-as well as a date, time, and location for the game.

Wednesday, August 3, 4PM, the old shed at the park I handed the fliers out in. They all have this blog, which has my email on it.

Hopefully I'll have some people getting in touch-I really want this to be a  good game.

Okay, So, I've Been Busy...

Sorry about last week. Things have been going a little nuts here. Getting ready to move back to school in a month, and as always, I forget how much there is to be done.

I'm thinking I'm going to leave the reviews as they stand. Maybe at some point I'll come back to it, but for now I'm just going to work on my newest project. One last hurrah before the  summer ends and I go back to finish my degree.

My new project is working on combining all of my recent interests. I've been working on making a Slenderverse LARP/tabletop system. Last week I spent largely pouring through the Call of Cthulhu larp system and Mind's Eye Theater (which is the World of Darkness larp variant) for ideas. As of now, I have a rough ruleset in mind for the LARP, at least. I'm having a hard time picturing this as a sit down game for now, it seems like something that should involve running about and investigating and getting chased through the woods or something.

To that end, with a tentative rulebook settled I'm working on putting together a basic plot. I'm hoping to get a group together to playtest it, see what needs changing. I don't really know a lot of LARPers, so I may have to open it to the public and take potluck. We'll see.

I'm an Idiot

Sorry to scare any of you watching this. Last week was a little test. I wanted to see if I could pull off writing a slenderblog. The answer is no, I'm thinking, so I'm going to go back to my normal reviews. Starting Wednesday.

Sorry for the insanity. I didn't mean to scare anyone.



Maybe if I tell them it's a lie I'll start to believe it.

The Rules

Right. Enough with the panicking. Apparently there's an eldrich horror on my tail that wants me to start doing... things for him. I have news for him. I'm not going. I don't hurt people and I don't help other people hurt them either. I'm not going.

In the spirit of that, I'm going to put up some rules of horror to remind myself and enlighten you all. Maybe taking some control of the situation will make the whispering GO AWAY.


First. Avoid basements, cornfields, small towns in the middle of nowhere that you've never been to before, creepy woods, and abandoned houses. If you MUST go to any of these places, make sure to bring friends, stay close together, and don't stay after dark for any reason. Particularly relevant to this is the small town and woods section of this. I don't want to run into any slendycults.

Second. While it is tempting to allow the situation to distance you from friends, family, and the rest of humanity, either make it a clean break and get the fuck out of there or stay close. Emotional distance without physical distance just puts them in more danger-because then you have the heartbreaking 'I never got to tell them I loved them' situation.

Third. Don't tempt fate. Seriously. Don't be that guy. You know the one. Don't say 'surely we must be safe HERE' or 'We can hold out till morning' or anything similar. The shit hits the fan immediately afterward. And everyone hates that guy for starting it.

Fourth. Remember. This is an eldrich horror. Do not be the idiot who rushes it with a sword. That always ends badly-for the swordsman.There is no fighting, hiding is iffy at best, you have to run. And keep running. Slendy doesn't give up the hunt.


...I'm going to start getting stuff together to run. I'm glad I have some money put away from working all year.

Custom Systems

Today I'm going to talk to you about something a little bit special. No specific system is being reviewed today. Instead, we're going to deal with some of the high and low points of designing your own. It's a hobby of mine, and as it's currently what I'm completely preoccupied with, instead of missing a post I thought I'd share some thoughts.

People are generally kind of scared of making new systems-it seems like there's so much a system requires, making rules and figuring out if and what kinds of classes and skills and everything you're going to use. It gets complicated fast.

But it doesn't have to.

Figure out what the system needs. Figure out what you want it to do and move from there-you're not selling books you don't NEED several hundred pages of stuff. One of the best homebrew systems I've ever had the good fortune of seeing is Risus, which has a book that's less than fifty pages and that's ALL you'll EVER need to run the game(Though to make a profit and do a couple cool side things there is an extra book you can buy).

Don't get fancy unless your game needs it. Your players will thank you

Forum Games

For a slight change of pace, and also because I've almost missed my update again and I don't have time to make this a normal critique, I want to talk to you about forum roleplaying. The kind where there's no dice, just a bunch of people writing characters together on forums. I have a great love for this type of roleplaying, I've honestly been doing it for half my life and I love seeing a story come together.

Reading the blogs made me start thinking about it, as the blogs are a very similar type of thing in that you make a character and interact with others IC. It's just a bit bigger, with the blogging and the email and the commenting and sometimes even IMs and such.

But I'm not talking about the blogs here, that's not what I'm here to do at all, no matter how fun they are. I'm here to talk about Forum Roleplaying. Just a few things a tabletop roleplayer needs to know if they want to try it out.

First, fights. As a tabletop gamer, mostly combat is something you expect on a regular basis-though how often that is depends on a lot of things. Many a tabletop gamer has crossed to forum land and been thrown by the lack of combat. Forum RPing, unless otherwise stated, tends to avoid combat because it's messy to deal with via writing and honestly the majority of forum RPs are in settings where fighting would be rare anyway.
If you DO get into a fight, be courteous. Do not assume your strikes hit, and do not dodge everything they throw your way. Just because there's no dice being rolled does not make you an unstoppable god at combat. Unless you have a really good reason for completely trouncing someone, you probably won't, so take that into consideration.

Secondly, sex. Depending on the forum, there's a chance you can sleep with other characters. If this is a mature forum, you might even be able to play out an explicit sex scene. Don't be a dick who just goes around looking for sex. Seriously. Just like in the real world, if you just walk around wanting to bang, no one will want  to have anything to do with you.

Thirdly, interactions. I don't know your tabletop style, but what I do know is that there are a surprisingly large number of tabletop players that get by on glaring about and looking mysterious, occasionally offering threats or suggestions. DO NOT DO THIS ON A FORUM. You need a solid, three dimensional character. One that will interact with other players, and do so in a way that adds something to the story.

Fourth, and this would be first if I didn't have the vain hope that you would all already know this one, grammar. If you cannot write using the basics of good spelling and grammar, get the heck off of the internet and go back to third grade. Seriously, guys. My little cousin writes better than some of these idiots. And she's twelve.  If you need to, run it through a spell checker before you post. It's easy and makes a huge difference.

As a side note, and this is just me ranting, not part of the critique, but I'm getting kind of irritated with how jumpy I've gotten reading this Slenderman stuff. I'm going to start laying off, I think, see if it helps. I don't like losing sleep over this.

Back on Friday, with another, hopefully more normal update.