A Room for Gen Con (Edit: Taken!)

If anyone needs a place to sleep come Gen Con, drop me a line (n-dot-d-dot-paoletta-at-gmail-dot-com). I’ve some changes to my situation, and I’m leaving an open slot in an Embassy Suites room. I’ll get you in touch with the guy who’s organizing the room, but no promises (he’s looking for people as well).

Edit: And it’s taken. Good times!

And So It Goes

The intertron has become a place of fear for me. I’m tired of filtering everything I write through the lens of “how could someone possibly misinterpret this”.

My friends, I will see you at the table.

(and/or email and AIM. My contact info is everywhere)

On My Plate

(cuz if I don’t do this, I’ll forget everything)

(so not in order of importance)

Write up a Mountain Witch AP thread at the Forge.

Write up an outline for Kevin & I’s Push 2 article DONE!

Send in corrections for carry so it can be back in print. DONE!

Read and review all of the BibliOdyssey entries. DONE!

Update website with links to carry AP threads.

A couple of IPR-related tasks.

A followup blog entry about the culture of Awesome.

AND THEN I CAN WRITE GAMES AGAIN!

i hate everything

My life has taken a drastic turn for the busy for the next week. And I’m getting really unhappy about this one project that NEVER ENDS.

Which is to say, I prolly won’t be talkin’ to any of ya’s for a week or so.

Wow, Taxes

So, income from my independent publishing was a quarter of my total income for 2006.

Wow.

(To be clear, this is a testament to how little I make in my “real life”, not how much I make selling games).

Bullets

Gaming is good right now. Getting my medium-term itch scratched with a great Mountain Witch game. Storygames Boston continues apace. I’m kind of planning to arrange my entire summer around gaming, if I can, which is a very exciting prospect.

I go through three distinct phases with reference to the internet, I’ve noticed. One of them is total apathy, shading into “oh my god what is wrong with everyone.” One of them is hardcore participation, when I get my fingers into every pie on every forum and blog that I frequent. And one of them is one I’m deep in right now, which is sitting back, trying to deal with real life and actually playing and doing design work formost, keeping tabs on the Forge and Story-Games, but not really posting much.

This phase tends to coincide with a general feeling that people are way too involved with things other people say on the internet, and people should do more thinking and less typing.

In other news, I think that there’s a sustainable market for independently published, short print run, actual play-focused games. Expanding that market is something I’m not interested in (yet), but trying to serve it to the best of my ability is within my power.

I think that the key to being a producer for that market is for you to view your production as a hobby, and not your job.  If it’s your job, you’d probably be better served aiming for a different market.

But, it can be a serious hobby, with metrics of improvement and a long-term plan for growth and sustainability.

Just because you don’t make your living at it doesn’t mean it’s not serious. Just because it’s not serious doesn’t mean you can’t make some profit off of it.

Oh, and profit can be measured in things other than money.

—

All for now.

Bah. Humbug.

Gah. I need to take a break.

Talk to y’all in the new year. Feel free to drop me a line through email or AIM if need be.

Any Mac Wizards?

So I dropped my Powerbook G4 the other day and I thought it wasn’t broken but I think it is.

Disc repair says that my volume has an Invalid Volume Header AND an Invalid Key Length and it can’t repair it. It won’t mount my hard disk to boot - I can boot from the install CD and from my Mac Mini (via Firewire), but I can’t get to any of the stuff on my hard disk either of those ways (unless there’s a trick I don’t know).

I mean, I’ll just wipe and reinstall, except that 85% of my game stuff is on that computer, including all of the graphics and layout files for my published games, and all of my notes for Imp.

All I need is to pull off some files, if I can. So, if anyone has some guidance, I’m all ears.

Gettin’ Shifty

Blah. Haven’t had time to play anything since JiffyCon, pretty much. Maybe I’ll get a session of Burning Wheel in before christmas, but thats about it.

By the same token, having a hard time putting pen to paper for Imp Of The Perverse. I need to find some time and concentration to dedicate to it. Maybe I’ll go into the city one of these afternoons and find a coffeeshop and just write for a few hours.

Also, thinking more and more about production and less and less about procedures of play. This balance needs to tip back before too much longer, or I’m going to be trapped in this restless phase where I want it to be done but don’t want to do the work. Which is a totally lame place to be in.

Part of it is that I’m getting intimidated by the scope of the project, especially now that I generally have less free time than I have over the last couple of years. It’s going to take a huge amount of work to get it where I want it, and I have almost nothing done - it’s like staring at a mountain and realizing that you haven’t even put your shoes on yet.

The intarwebs are taking a lot of my attention, also. I feel like I need to shut myself up in a cave with a pen and some animal skins and just scratch out some product for days. Maybe the holidays will help with this - I’m pretty productive when I travel, and the change of scene will probably be good as well.

Too bad I’m not taking a train. I get a lot done on trains.

Grumble.

Ventastic

So I don’t really do personal stuff on here, in general, but I’m having a really shitty couple of weeks, and this is my sandbox so if I want to get some shit out, this is where it’s happening.

I’m extremely frustrated with an industry where everyone expects you to give 100% when they’re only paying you 20%. Where you can’t affort to work at only one place at a time, but when the inevitable conflicts come up, it’s your fault that you have to cut time out of each so you can get everything done. Where no matter what, it’s the freelancers fault, basically.

And it’s ’specially bad because then I get to feeling all guilty and shit, like I really should be doing more (ignore the string of 14-hour days, I should be getting more DONE, dammit). Where every two-bit fucking outfit thinks that it’s gods gift to theatre, and that the production is going to be the only thing thats important in your life, but then you start thinking that you’re not giving enough.

I have this sick feeling in my stomach and I don’t know if it’s because I decided to take the morning to get my shit together (and thus not putting in some more hours on deck), or general fatigue, or disgust that I’m getting so fucking strung out that I can’t just accept that sometimes, shit doesn’t get done. Or maybe just that I’ve done so much physical labor that my digestive system is revolting and trying to rip itself out of my stomach.

I’m sick of not being able to work on games. I’m sick of only seeing my girlfriend for two nights a week. I’m fucking sick of getting flak for not getting more done when there’s a serious crew shortage and the place isn’t willing to spend more money and I’ve already put in so many hours that I wouldn’t be able to legally work anymore at union gigs. I’m sick of figuring out that my pay is working out to about 10 cents an hour.

Well, time to do some more shopping. But I do know one thing….I’ve never letting this fucking happen again.

I can’t wait for Thursday. Happy thanksgiving, everyone.