Sunday
10/21
I’ve found myself a bit restless this morning. It has been enjoyable being able to spend my free time reading, and now I don’t have that. I need to find a good way to occupy my time. Any suggestions?
It’s been a while since I’ve done much in the way of SEO for the company site. Looking at analytics I see we definitely have more bots. It is irritating, but what can I do? I looked at Google Ads some too. Nothing too interesting there at the moment, some suggestions for keyword changes that I’m not bothering with.
I think I need to create myself some sort of daily schedule. It might be hard to actually make it work 100% of the time, but maybe doing that will help me stay organized and on task.
Pathfinder
I have spent a bit of time digging into Pathfinder stuff. I’ve downloaded a bunch of free PDFs from Paizo; modules, mini-dungeons, etc. I can see myself taking the pre-made free stuff and building a bit of an adventure for a few players. Obviously this is just a bit of early groundwork. Just getting an idea of what I’ve got available to me.
The biggest issue is that Pathfinder contains a whole world of places, and maps aren’t free. I don’t have a lot of background knowledge about the world either. If I really want to properly DM I would need to do a lot of reading about that sort of thing. Of course, I could always just make up bits too. Take existing ideas and build my own world around the free bits and pieces.
I think I’ve hit the jackpot. It seems that just about every Pathfinder pdf is available online at no cost. I’m sure it’s not exactly legal, but there’s a site that’s FULL of them, along with all kinds of other RPG files. Remuz RPG Archive is what it’s called. I’m not going to link it though being that it’s likely all pirated.
Monday
10/22
I’ve spent a good chunk of the morning reading. This time it isn’t fiction but instead RPG stuff. Specifically about running (and even creating) campaigns. I think there’s going to be a lot of reading before I actually run a campaign, although I think I’ve picked out what I might run first.
We had a meeting with the owners of one of our villas. It was good to meet them. We discussed some issues and concerns they had. We also spent a good bit of time shooting the shit. Eventually I left a bit early because it started to rain and I needed to bring our internet equipment at home back inside.
The rest of the afternoon was spent reading and thinking about creating an RPG adventure. I know I’m way ahead of myself here, but something like that could take a lot of time. I know I should start off slow (and I will) but I really feel like my creative juices are just bubbling and will hopefully start to boil over soon.
Tuesday
10/23
While reading more about how to build a megadungeon over at The Angry GM, it occurred to me that I’ve been doing some things wrong on this site. Something about the way that site was designed made it click. Luckily I can easily fix it, or just stop doing what I was doing wrong.
What exactly is it I’m talking about? Well, WordPress has Categories you can use to classify blog posts. Up until now I’ve been busy making Pages for things like game guides and creative writing. That’s all well and good, but really that’s not how it should be done. That way I have to manually create these index pages that link to all the sub-pages. Why do that when the category page itself does that for me? And not only that, but then they show up in the blog roll too.
So the question now becomes, what do I do with the shit I’ve done? I think at some point soon (like, when I’m ready to expand any of those areas) I’ll need to transfer all that I’ve put into those pages into actual blog posts instead. It really won’t be too much work to fix.
Projects
Wow, reading through these posts really give me some inspiration and ideas. I’ve had a lot of ideas in the past, lots of unfinished projects. Lots of notes and ideas scatter across so many different places. This site could be a great resource for that, a place to bring it all together. And not only that, but it could help bring a spark back into some of those things.
So, expect that in the near future you may see new Categories of posts as I start bring my old ideas here. Giving them a central “hub” where I can maybe pick one to start working on again. Obviously it’ll start small and broad as I design a framework of how I can do that. Then I’ll fill in stuff I’ve already done. Maybe that’ll spark my creativity. Maybe I’ll pick something to work on more and expand. Only time will tell.
For now, feel free to check out the newest addition to the site, Projects! I’m not exactly happy with the way the page displays. I’ll have to work on that. There is one plugin I use for this site that I like, Elementor. But I’m only using the free version. It can’t edit the category pages, but the pro version can. . . Maybe it’s time for an upgrade? It is only $50(ish). . .
Wednesday
10/24
Ugh, I did not sleep well last night. I tossed and turned all night and just couldn’t sleep. No matter what I did, it didn’t help. Usually I fall asleep watching some YouTube videos, so I did that but it didn’t help. I basically woke up at like 3am and watched YouTube all morning. . .
Got a new booking overnight that I had to enter into QuickBooks. I’m mostly getting the hang of this stuff so far, but I do still refer back to my notes on occasion. It would be nice if we got bookings more frequently though.
Pathfinder
I got to scratch my roleplaying itch a little today. See, before I moved I was in this long running campaign, Rise of the Runelords. It was fun and games for quite a while, but then I moved and internet here is crap. So I bowed out of the game.
The GM has been keeping me abreast of the gameplay a bit, allowing me to put some input for my old character. So today I was presented with their recent adventures, and asked for my thoughts on my character’s path going forward.
It was good to stretch my creative legs again. Let me tell you about Ameerah, “Avatar” of Pharasma. She is an Aasimar cleric who was raised by adoptive parents into believing she was the living embodiment of her god. Ameerah was all sorts of fun to play. She even had a couple callbacks to a character from the previous campaign we ran.
So the gist of the situation is the part got split up and in the end Ameerah was captured and drained by vampires. DM gave me a couple thoughts on what to do with the character and asked what I wanted. So I rolled with what I thought about her. . .
Being drained and dead could kind of warp an already warped mind, right? And being undead goes against Pharasma. . . but she thinks she is Pharasma’s living embodiment. . . So what does she do? She goes further down the rabbit hole, becomes an antagonist of the party. Her ego, mental health, and even some party member’s behaviors turn her into something more.
She warps Pharasma’s ideals to fit her own vision that’s been corrupted by her recent experience. Wether she’s a vampire, or if she’s brought back to life doesn’t matter really. What matters is that her world view has changed in such a way as to still allow her to be what she was, while becoming something else entirely.
The Projects Project
Well I did more work on The Projects Project, as you have probably already seen. It’s a start but there’s still more to do as you’ll probably have already seen too. As I’m sure I’ve said before, this site will always be a work in progress.
Working Vacation?
Tomorrow night my roommates boyfriend is coming to visit her for about a week. During that time I’ll be relegated to another nearby empty villa. It’ll sort of be a vacation, a working vacation maybe? I’m trying to plan for it, I built a grocery list of things I’ll need to buy to have while I’m there.
I really can’t think of much in the way of groceries though. So far it’s just simple things like water and some food items. There’s some groceries we already have that I’ll be bringing with me too. I should probably make a list of stuff to bring with me beyond that.
Stardew Valley
Well, I’ve found another game to play now, Stardew Valley. Not sure how much I’ll actually play, but for now it’s sucking me back in. Luckily, I still have access to my last save. I didn’t really get very far previously, just a few days into the first summer. Since picking it back up I’ve really only played a few more days.
Thursday
10/25
At some point later today I will be making the transition to another nearby villa for nearly a week. Right now though, I’m just drinking my coffee. The real issue I have is that they’ll likely be doing work over at that villa while I’m there. Hopefully it won’t be too annoying.
Doctor Who?
A friend and I just got into a debate about whether The Doctor from Doctor Who is or isn’t a superhero. Personally, I don’t believe s/he is a superhero. My friend states otherwise. We came to an impasse so I decided to take it up on social media! First real Facebook post and tweet by Munchmo in a VERY long time. What do you think? Agree or disagree? Let me know.
Blog Changes
So I’m starting to feel like this format for the blog is still not what I want. It feels too disjointed to only post a blog post once a week. Combining that with other things I have planned for the site will mean I might talk about something in a blog post that happened nearly a week earlier. Kinda like what happened with some changes relating to Projects.
I think after this week I’m going to go back to near-daily blog posts. Obviously, some days might get combined if there just isn’t any cool or fun stuff going on. Although, to do that I’ll have to start taking more photographs. I still like having a new and unique photo for every blog post but sometimes it’s just hard to find a good subject that isn’t a cloud, lol.
Social Media
After the recent poll posting, I realized I really need to social medialize better. I read three books in three days (basically) and I should have shared that to social media. After I spent nearly a week reading The Angry GM, I should have shared some of that one social media too. I really need to get back into the practice of sharing the things I do on social media. Once I do that, I’m sure I’ll feel more comfortable sharing this site there too.
Creative Writing
I’ve gone ahead and redone the Creative Writing portion of the site in the new style I’m trying to implement. Unfortunately, doing so kind of ended up spamming my blog feed. But that’s okay because no one’s reading! Hopefully this new approach (and the ability to use Series) will help a bit.
Yay, I figured it out! No more spammy crap from those writing prompts. I don’t know what I was thinking doing what I did. Just leave them as drafts. No one needs to see writing prompts I’m interested in that I haven’t done anything with. Then when I actually do write something I can publish them.
Speaking of which, I originally said I should try to write something creative every day. That’s just too much pressure and too high expectations out the gate. Sure, it would help if I wrote even a single creative paragraph a day, but I don’t know that I’ll do that. So I think for now I’ll try maybe for one a week? We’ll see how that goes.
