Current Events

In which I discuss various forms of stuff that I am doing. Last week was a big loss due to a rather nasty bug I caught (along with most of my family). Since I really don't like posting "I'm not posting" posts, things got quiet here. Too quiet. I'm pretty well recovered now, just in time to get hit with more bitterly cold weather. Luckily I managed to get in a nice walk around the neighborhood yesterday, something that's all too rare an occurrence during the winter months here. So with the chit chat out of the way, here's a rundown on the current state of entertainment here.

Minecraft is still proving to be quite entertaining. My current projects include expanding on my plaza of temples, digging an ever expanding network of mining tunnels to feed the surface building, and trying to find a texture pack that works for me. The original textures are a bit too busy for me so I'm looking for something cleaner. Unfortunately most of the user-made texture packs are darker than the original, making life hard on my eyes, especially in the Nether. One of my friends, who also is one of my regular RPG players, picked up Minecraft and sent me a couple entertaining messages. The first one said "Picked up Minecraft. I've been playing about four hours now." Four or five hours later I got another message "Nights are too long, once you're safe and waiting."

Starlight, my PbP Traveller-esque game, is still moving forward, albeit a bit slowly. Several players have hit some time sinks at work, meaning turns have been moving forward a bit slowly. The group has just left New Paris, the old stomping grounds of two of the crew and arrived at Patera, where they managed to come out of warp space right in the middle of a naval training exercise. They managed to avoid getting shot at and have just landed at La Crosse, the main planetary space port, to deposit passengers and some cargo.

I'm still playing Eve Online, though I must admit I've been rather slack in this regard. I'm currently running my two accounts on PLEX, so I don't feel too bad about not playing though. My primary character has finished training up for Minmatar battleships, and my primary alt is just getting to freighter training. With Hulkaggedon IV coming soon, I've started some market speculation on minerals, and the freighter will come in handy for moving that stuff around. I'm also still playing around with the character creator, generating portraits for future use. I think the guy at right is a perfect military hard-ass.

Lastly I'm working on an RPG project called Class Free 2.0 (inspiring I know). What is it? About 10 years ago my gaming group and I got tired of the class structure of AD&D 2nd edition, our system of choice at the time. Being the usual GM for the group I decided to create a point-buy system loosely based on 2nd edition advancement, dubbed Class Free D&D. We've used this system off and on for many years now, but it's showing its age, which brings us to Class Free 2.0 (CF2.0). This is pretty much a complete rewrite of the original system, using D&D 3.5 / d20 as a basis. The initial version is about 75% done in rough draft form. Very rough draft.

I did some other stuff too, like watching a few movies, nothing memorable, and finishing off Berserk, an anime series that starts with an interesting story and ends in a completely violent, gory and unfitting way. I'm also slowly working my way through the final season of Lost, just to finish it. I more or less lost interest in the series in season three or four, but I believe in being complete.

So that's it, the wrap-up of current events. With the virus gone I hope to get back to a more regular writing schedule. We'll see how that works out.