technonaturalist

Redcaps is a casual game that I suggested to satisfy the roleplaying habit when people are unable to make sessions or aren’t feeling it but everyone else wants to play (the initial proposal went along the lines of “maybe make some madcap redcaps for a casual game for when people are missing”). Not everyone has to be present for every session, and anyone who has an idea can GM. There will probably be story arcs at some point because that’s just how I roll but they’re otherwise essentially a bunch of mostly improv one shots or short runs. The older boys were initially resistant because “Changeling is cringe” until 13yo’s Redcap character in Mercenaries made them all want to play Redcaps.

I was intending on trying to get back into the swing of things in the first week of January (including my blogging schedule) with the intention of seeing what in the work schedule that I’d done up (and been vaguely reworking on the fly) needed changing up.

I didn’t end up doing the progblog and the work schedule really does need changing up.

Though most of what I suffer from is the complete inability to keep to anything resembling time, and the fact that I have to be interruptable because JJ is the one with the full time job with defined hours. So what I had was just stuff that needed to get done on what day, and just doing what I could when I could.

Yeh right like I ever take them.

I have seriously been moving like molasses and I really do need to actually change something, but because I’m me I’ll probably just burnout again, have to recover for a few days again during which I’ll relentlessly beat myself up over being an idiot again and that I really should have fixed it before it became this bad again, only to do exactly the same thing down the line again.

I don’t know what happened to October either, aside from the roleplaying games continued (I have this vague idea that I will write about how roleplaying games are good for maths, drama and general language development one day). I think we may have also started more hardcore development of my dice system. 12yo has been making suggestions and helping test mechanics. October may have also been the month where I found out that 16yo was doing more algebra, because apparently he thinks he needs algebra for the TAFE course he’s thinking of enrolling in. Not sure how much he’s done as I think he’s gotten himself a new Khan Academy account instead of resetting the password for his existing one so I’ll have to try to remember to check that up when I’m compiling the report for the moderator meeting.

The last major gymnastics event for the year is over, which took a lot of pressure off.

I finished the photobooks, more pressure off.

Then stuff happened with made things ramp up again, and it got so bad that I deliberately didn’t do some mental health stuff that would have helped the frame of mind I fell into because there is literally absolutely no point whatsoever, because I’m wrong and everyone else is right and that’s all there is to it no matter what.

When the kids expressed interest in playing Vampire, I told them that I hated the subsystem. Mechanically it’s not any different from Changeling, it’s the lore that I don’t like (there’s nothing wrong with it per se, just not my style), and while you can be combat heavy with it (which given the insane strength and speed vampires have can be quite entertaining and occasionally interesting to manage), it’s generally geared towards more political intrigue which I am absolutely terrible at because I’m lucky if I have Wits 1.

Stuff is ramping up.

I’ve been mostly working on photobooks trying to get them done in time for printing and shipping back to the island in the vain hopes it might not get there too late. I’ve also been working on my dice system (it has undergone two major overhauls in about as many days) and roleplaying notes (gained a bit of extra time as the kids didn’t feel like playing the weekend just gone, I brought the stuff over anyway just in case I actually needed it but got to just hang with my friend the entire time).

I should probably start going to bed earlier as I’m constantly tired and staying up late trying to cram more work in doesn’t seem to be working. But I keep doing it because I feel bad about not getting a lot done. It’s a vicious perpetual cycle.

I’m also feeling bad because it was my last day at work today, I’ve just found out someone else at the centre is dropping because of the vaccine mandate. I don’t know what’s going to happen with their program, they were the only one running it. There’s been interesting conversations and sometimes I’m wondering if the people claiming “I get it, I really do!” after I’ve explained my reasoning to them do actually “get it” (in fairness some really do even if they made a different decision, and others are really, really struggling with the fact that after considering essentially the same information, how other people could possibly have come to the “wrong” decision). Work is also now severely understaffed and my boss is stressing which is making me stress because I like my boss and there isn’t a right thing to do.

September was States month and it felt unusually close to Regionals because it was (we had the slightly awkward situation of that we needed to put people forward for states before we had the results from regionals to make sure they’d actually qualified, and to add chaos to the confusion, because it had been another unprecedented year, people were allowed to apply for states if they hadn’t done regionals (there were a number of people that missed out due to being sick or having to quarantine).

I’m apparently that good at not being too obvious about railroading (unless I make it obvious like when I want to end a session, like I did on the weekend and had my players playfully accusing me of railroading when after a while I was like “YOU’RE GOING BACK TO THE FREEHOLD.”) that I can’t even railroad myself when I need to.

Weekend was busy again with gym events so once more not a lot got done. I worked a bit more on the dice system, and some notes, yesterday I got started on Gundry.