You know - like Inktober, but with goblins!

(More as I do them, but I wanted to share the list since the clock has ticked over to the first.)

Long story short: Last week, I had my first positive response to my job hunt efforts from a company called Aircall. They're looking for a tech support guy.

Today at 2:30pm I had my first interview with them. I was pleased to find that instead of someone in HR, the (Zoom) interview was with the guy who would be my boss if all goes well.

We chatted. It went generally well. It became clear to me that the thing I could use the most improvement on is my (never finished) CCNA studies that I mentioned on my resume.

CCNA certification, for those who don't know, is costly in both time/effort and financially for the testing. So I told him that I wouldn't register for the course until we had things a little more solidified (I should hear back in ~1 week according to him) but that I would get on refreshing myself via YouTube and other resources. He seemed to really like that.

So that's what I'm doing now. I found this CCNA Full Course on YouTube and dove in.

Wow. It's amazing how much of this is coming back to me and how quickly. I'm now actually a little worried that I undersold my networking prowess in the interview.

Sure, I'm only a couple videos into the playlist, but everything he's covered so far brought back very specific memories from my I.T. past.

I have to say - that feels really damn good.

Oh, and the starting pay is better than I hoped, and the job is fully remote, so I could work from anywhere! Please keep your fingers crossed for me. :)

Think I'll do some live streaming as I draw tonight. Free and open to all. 
Details: 

Brad and I pulled all of our LL stuff from Patreon and started over.

I'm kinda glad we did. While we haven't started posting again yet, I feel MUCH happier about the finished products. They feel more professional. We have more of them. They're better refined.

They're just way more gooder-er.

We also wanted a way to talk about the Pages without just copying and pasting the same stupid links to all our social media, and I kinda like the plan we developed.

We created a collection of 'NPCs' and they're going to be interacting across our social media in a variety of ways.

Lexx Keenleaf

Lexx is the one writing in her Location Lexicon which seems to lose Pages on occasion. Adventurer, Explorer, and Scribe, she's gathering information for Covenant Arcanum. She's also mentor to Sylas Emberwood.

Sylas Emberwood

Sylas is apprentice to Lexx, and avidly wishes to follow in her footsteps - literally. Still, he remains at the Arcanum since she took off recently to head back out into the wilds without a word to him. He suspects that the Powers That Be within the Arcanum are trying to pull her back home for some reason and so he's doing everything in his power to run interference. He knows what she wants is to be out exploring, not within the confining walls of the Arcanum.

Rione Vyrethorn

Rione has always felt herself an outsider - even within the Arcanum, and despite her uncle being one of the Archons. She feels she has much to prove, and she would just as soon do that 'out in the world'. So when her uncle tasked her with tracking down Lexx? She jumped at the opportunity. She will not be disuaded from her task.

The Blade of Mar

Little is known about the Blade of Mar, and that's just how he likes it. A sentient being, a master of illusions, and a magic device which grows in power by...

...well, I guess you'll just have to follow along to find out, won't you? ;)

So what questions do you have?

I want to get back into the habit of recording random ideas / notes as I go down the road. I've fallen out of the habit, and it makes life far less fun.

Also, less creative.

Latest idea: produce a series of simple sketches that are 'base poses' of the RPG archetypes: Warriors, Rogues, and Spellslingers. (There are about a miiiiiillion subgroups, but the poses (I think) all would generally fall into those categories.)

Day before yesterday? (While I was still on break and talking to my brother) the idea was 'recreate the Sons of Anarchy back patch, but with School of Xavier and Cyclops as the 'wraith' in the center. I'm a nerd.

Do any of you recall my brief attempt at NaNo back in 2022? I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

Why? Well, it's because I'm being... condescending. Not my proudest moment, but if I can't be honest with you folks, who can I be honest with?!

Condescending how, you ask?

Well, I've been listening to a lot on Audible recently. (Yes, I know there are other, ostensibly better audio book storefronts out there. Yes, I should give them my business.) Like, A LOT of audio books. I stopped listening to podcasts altogether for a few months. That dumped a lot of listening time back into my schedule. On top of that, the hours for this 'new' job are... significantly longer.

If I'm doing the math right, I've listened to 42 books since starting the job in November. Some of these are pretty lengthy.

All but two of them are in the LitRPG genre.

I'm kinda fascinated by what I'm hearing. Partly because it fits that ooooold fantasy trope that I so enjoy - someone from 'the real world' going to a fantasy world. This trope is not the newest thing in the world (the Guardians of the Flame series was one of my favorites as a kid) but the LitRPG genre is at least new to me.

So I'm making a little 'study' of the genre. Trying to figure out the similarities and differences between the different authors. Figuring out what the audience of the genre expect.

From what I can piece together, the LitRPG genre is to fantasy novels as streaming is to video game playing. There's this sense of 'no real start or stop - just follow along with out hero on the adventure!'.

Some series even seem to eschew the whole 3 act format. More than once, I found myself surprised by the Audible Guy saying "Audible hopes you have enjoyed this program." Side note: if you see me in person? Ask for my imitation of that guy. I have heard so many audio books, I feel like I can actually nail his every nuance.

What's more, the writing is... not amazing. Some series are better than other, for certain. And the voice actors really help here. Still.

Seeing it yet?

My NaNo thing was fun for me in part because I used a randomizer to create a kind of prompt for that day's writing. That, in turn, made the whole thing a bit like a solo TTRPG for me.

And I think that the audience for the genre is so hungry for MOAR they don't care that it's not as polished. Call it the YouTube-ification of novel writing.

I say all of this to simply say that I write moderately well during my first draft of most creative writing.

In other words "I could do that. Maybe better than that."

A novel series (especially in an audio format) is obviously a looong way out. If I was to get a three book series completed, it would arguably be the biggest accomplishment of my life.

But I'm looking at NaNo 2022 and thinking...

Did you read my efforts in 2022? Would you like to see Morgan make a return?

ETA: Looks like I never posted the words I did for Day 4. I'll see about doing that asap.

It's the new year, and it's time for new things.

After working on this concept for over a year, Brad and I have started the production season for IonQuest Games' Location Lexicon.

Anyone who has ever been a Dungeon Master has had the experience of trying to get something ready for their players in the Nth hour. Scrambling to getting something ready for them to play for the next game session and the (perhaps inevitable) writer's block that will go with such efforts.

It's stressful, it's frustrating, and it sours a lot of folks on the idea of being a DM in general.

That's okay, though. We got you.

The Location Lexicon is a series that we will be running for quite a while. We'll release one Location every week on the IonQuest Games Patreon page. One location every month will be free and public.

The Locations will have everything you need to cover a game session on a single page pdf. Each will have a challenge for the characters and everything the DM needs to run the session.

Simple, effective, and waiting to make the effort painless.

Oh, and my art to help bring each Location to life.

The teaser above just hints at everything in the full page pdf.

Right now we're only charging $3/month. We want to make it effortless for those who want to support us from the getgo. We will be upping those prices in the very near future (maybe even February 1st), but those who get in at the beginning will get to keep the lower rate. Kinda sending the love back and forth as it were.

Anyway. If you're into ttrpgs, and / or want to support Brad and myself doing this sort of thing, check out the Patreon page. Sign up for free even if you don't have the resources to pay - you'll still get one free location every month!

Any questions? Ask away!

1. Dragonbones.net was down for a while.
2. Contacting my web hosting provider for support pretty much always results in "To fix that problem, I would recommend paying $5 more per month so that you get upgraded service on..." and that makes me supremely angry.
3. So I did a bunch of Googling and some FTPing and then finally, some code editing.
4. Dragonbones.net is back online!

Not going to lie - it's been a long since I've done something that felt so outside my wheelhouse. Feels pretty damn good.

Summary

Some people have a shoe addiction.

I'm addicted to tools. Software. Stuff I can use.

I will spend many hours browsing through options and learning about the capabilities and faults of various tools or programs.

Then, finding the 'right' one, I get super jazzed. I'll proclaim "I'm going to use this for ALL THE THINGS!" and I will believe it. Every time.

Then, after one hot minute genuinely using whatever it is, I'm moving on to the next one. Because I feel like I've done the 80/20, and now it's boring drudgery like everything else.

Yeah. ADHD. Le sigh.

Past

One example of this is Tiddlywiki by Jeremy Ruston. And to be fair to myself, I used this one pretty extensively.

I mean, it really is awesome. A single HTML file that functions as an entire wiki. While I was at BCUS as a tech guy, I filled one with problems and solutions for my team and it got used pretty heavily as a time saver. Someone even caught wind of its usefulness and started one for the Telephony team.

It lost its functionality for a while because of some aspect of more modern browsers, but checking the website, I just saw that someone created a plugin for your browser to use Tiddlywikis in Google Drive! May just have to dust this one off and get using it again…

Now

I was looking for something a bit like a wiki, honestly, and found myself checking out Obsidian and now, recently, Logseq.

I don't foresee myself being a power user of either, but the base elements of Logseq got my attention and I've downloaded it to check it out. It's certainly an impressive app and more so when it's for free.

Mainly, I like that everything is about outlining. It's an 'outliner'. As a side note, that's a term I'd never heard before - didn't realize there's a whole category. I would have just sounded ignorant saying something like "A program which helps you outline." 😏

Future

Point being - I would like to do more writing online. Specifically, on my various websites, Patreon, and... who knows - maybe even do some guest writing spots in exchange for others? Whatever.

If I do that though, I'll need to get better at structure. Pushing myself into outlining seems a good way to do that.

What's more, it's a skill that will help in a snowball / avalanche sense. Some of that increased writing is meant to eventually lead to a book I'm working on for folks to learn to draw. Specifically How to Draw Fantastic Humans. If things go as planned? Eventually followed by How to Draw Fantastic Elves. And Dwarves. And... yadda yadda.

And all of that will require better structure in my writing.

Me use gooder words, but me structure so un good.

The Dismount

I suppose there are far worse addictions. Especially since my tastes tend towards freeware and physical tools. I can't keep many physical tools with me, so that side of things is fairly self limiting.

I've managed to avoid becoming a Linux guy so freeware doesn't generally pile up for me. Mostly.

How about you? What do you spend entirely too much mental, emotional, or financial resources on?

Today is my friend Thomas Boutell 's birthday. 

It's quite possible, even probable, that no one I know has done more good for more people on the planet. 

As if that weren't enough, he's a good, fun, interesting dude. 

So if you have a minute, please consider wishing him a kind word or three.