Monday, September 19, 2022

Monday Morning

Mmm.

Lot of distractions lately, and I'm not just talking about the putrid football coming out of the local team.

[make no mistake: the Seahawks are not good. And I was at that Monday Night Football game where they beat Denver. That victory was 85% crowd...I haven't heard the stadium that loud since the NFC championship game against Green Bay. Hell, I'll even give myself credit for starting the chants of "Geno! Geno!" but, at least in our section, we meant it in a sarcastic, raucous way in order to poke the eye of...and stick it to...Russell Wilson. If you rewatch the broadcast, you'll see that the chants started in the second half (when the offense was stinking up the joint and the ONLY thing Smith was  doing was running the ball like a poor man's RW). We weren't actually backing the QB; we were yelling nah-nah-nah at the Broncos and their $250M man. Longtime fans who remember the AFC West will remember how much we hate Denver]

No, the majority of distraction is all family-related. Good things to be sure...not financial issues or health issues or marital issues or anything like that. School, church, and a TON of sports activity. Yes, sports participation for the most part (two kids on four teams, one of which I'm coaching), but also 2-3 fantasy leagues (that I'm running, or helping to run, for extended family), a Blood Bowl season of 16 teams, and then the ongoing, must-follow fun of the NFL, Sounders team (struggling), Mariners team (ascending), and local college programs.

[let's not forget the Seattle Storm's playoff run...yeah, it ended a few weeks ago, but I didn't post much even in August, and the Storm was part of that. Much love and respect to Sue Bird

Fact is, Dungeons & Dragons has, in general, taken a backseat. Oh, I did get something written up for the second installment of Prince of Nothing's "No ArtPunk Contest"...a little high level one-off for AD&D that came out to some 17ish pages. This one actually got some play-testing from the kids (Diego, Sofia, Maceo, and Winston), and much fun was had.

[a couple quick notes about that (for interested parties): none of the players have "high level" characters, so they used pre-gens made specifically for the adventure (these were included with my submission adding another six pages for a total of 23). Second, on average a party of 10th to 14th level are looking for the same x.p. as a party of 16th, 18th, or 20th level so treasure scale for high level adventures aren't all that tough to write...the main thing is to create scenarios that take into account the higher level of resource attrition. I might talk about this in a future blog post]

But other than that, I haven't been doing anything as far as running/designing for D&D. I was playing in my son's AD&D campaign...absolutely destroying the Keep on the Borderlands (that's a future post, too), but even that's been put on (hopefully brief) hiatus as our focus and priorities have shifted.

And so we come to the "Blues" part of my Monday Morning: I know I've been lax in blogging, but there's two things that have delayed/prevented me from posting. I've kind of decided that I really, really want this blog to be about gaming, specifically D&D, AND I want it to be as positive and constructive as possible...which I've probably said a dozen times in the past but this time (yeah, sure) I really mean it.

I've got multiple posts sitting in draft form on Ye Old Blog because they just tend to go off into fairly negative rants (also, they're not all that good...you folks aren't missing much). And while it's easy to denigrate someone's play style or design work or gaming ignorance...or even The Company's failings...that's all a waste of my time. I mean, it's not like I haven't vented that a gazillion times already, right?

I want to be helpful. It IS useful to tear things down to build them back better and stronger, but I have to make sure that that's what I'm doing. Doing that takes focus...and the distractions get in the way of focus. Right now the majority of my focus has been on my family and (probably not surprisingly) the kids I'm coaching. I could certainly blog about the latter...but, then, that's not D&D, right?

[by the way, ripping on the Seahawks isn't exactly positive, but players and coaches in pro-sports are paid millions of dollars to entertain fans. I don't feel zero remorse about expressing negativity and disapproval to guys making that kind of money: that's the job, dudes]

So, a bit of a quandary. But I'll give it a shot, in the next few days, to get things going. I should have a little more time coming up (especially after next weekend). I'll try to put together a list of topics and see if I can't bang out a couple per week in the next few weeks.

6 comments:

  1. Calling that goal line pass from DJ Dallas deserves as much ridicule as you have to spare.

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    1. Orks be doing ork things. My prediction is that we see Drew Lock by week #4, if not by the 3rd quarter of the Atlanta game (to "provide a spark").

      Did you hear the Pete Carroll press conference this week? He said we need to throw the ball down the field more (as opposed to 'we need to run more')...Pete's basically saying "We need to let Geno cook." Okay, coach.

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  2. All I know is that my beloved St. Louis Cardinals are #1 in the National League Central.

    I get it about the negative rants. They are easy to do and (at least in my experience) get the hits. Myself I would rather find things I enjoy and share that enjoyment. It is fine (and sometimes good) to be very critical, but I am not about being critical for the sake of it; I want something out of it. And hopefully something positive.
    This all supposed to be fun.

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    1. Oh, I wasn't ranting for the sake of ranting. I think I was just a bit "mopey."

      It's more about wanting to be constructive than about NOT wanting to be negative. Sometimes it's hard to find ways to contribute.

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  3. I didn't watch the interview. I couldn't imagine he could say anything that would bolster my confidence and looks like I was right.

    Still I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to the Seahawks so I will never give up hope.

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    Replies
    1. I'm an eternal fan, so I'll root for them regardless. It just might be painful to do so.
      ; )

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