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Personal Update and My New Life Schedule
After my extended bout of unemployment, where I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it or not, I am back to working and have a stable schedule again. It was really hard to do when my life was turned upside and I didn’t know how I was going to make it to the next month. It took about a month before the job and schedule seemed to solidify, but now that it has I feel like I am ready to start creating and working on my games again.
In addition to my personal schedule being so up in the air for so long, it seemed that most of my gaming group (The Travelers of Karn) also was in a state of flux due to changes in several members lives. One starting a new business. One going back to school. One just graduating college and getting out into the “real” world. And so on. Nothing was certain with most of them or me, but everything seems to be calming down into set schedules for most of them.
The biggest change for our groups is that for the first time in over ten years we are going to change the night we meet on. It has been a Saturday thing since I was in college, but that is changing. All the rescheduling seems to have the new night set to be Wednesday evening. This doesn’t currently seem to clash with anyone’s schedules, but we will see how it works.
In addition to these changes I am finding that I will be having weekends free again to write and work on games. It’s so hard to get motivated after work, especially with the hour drive, but two free days to work on things seems to allow me to get a lot done on those days. I am looking forward to seeing what comes of it.
Work on the Whispering Bluff game is in the forefront of these projects to work on, which seems to coming along nicely. I just hope the playtesting goes as smooth. I do still need artwork for the game, as I can’t really rely on either of my close artist friends to finish anything, but that isn’t a main concern until publication comes closer. Writing it takes more work for me than other game I have done, as I have never written this kind of game before.
Work on the National Wrestling Game seems to be easier to get through, but then there isn’t as much meat to write on that one. Most of it is just playing with number balances and mechanical elements (which are far more easy for me to do, for some reason). The matches seems to play well, although I am trying to see what I can do to make them faster paced without losing too many of the variations and options.
There is also the much delayed expansion for Lootin’ Wizards, called Quick Change. It is completely written and seems to be balanced (but some playtesting should still be done). All that is really left to complete is the artwork for it. After the crash I had during the back-up procedure last year, that corrupted both the original art and the back-up at the same time, it was really hard for me to get back into working on it. Everything I did felt sub-par compared to what I had before. But now it is nearly complete again and with this new free time on the weekends I hope to have it done soon.
There are also several other card, board, and role-playing games on the back burner that I want to work on but won’t let myself do so until I finish one of the ones in the front. Ideas are not my problem. Actually completing them is. I love to create and always want to work on something new when an idea hits me, but that pushes aside the things currently being worked on, so I have to prevent myself from doing that. Write the ideas down and put them aside for now, planning to pick them up again in the future.
Well that’s an update on where things are sitting with me right now. I would also love to do other things (write more blogs, get into podcasting, play video games, etc.), but I can’t allow myself to get too thinly spread if I am going to be serious about being a published game designer. I am doing it all myself, so there is only so much extra time in my life.
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