The State of Chatty: Fall Edition

I’ll try real hard not to make this post into yet another tortured artist Emo crap.  I seem to do one every three months or so… please bear with me, it’s quite therapeutic.

As I mentioned earlier this year, I’m one of those blessed creatively hyperactive personalities.  The downside of which is that I often get my enthusiasm for the latest nerd project to completely derail me from my current path of geek bliss.

I’m also, like many of you, subjected to seasonal depression.  While I can see February’s blues from a few weeks away and slow down before I get affected too badly, fall hits me hard every year and I never  see it coming.

The main effect that seasonal depression has on me is to erode my brazen self-confidence and cockiness, letting my very own inner demons finally get to me.

I also have slight bipolar tendencies, like any longtime reader can surmise from the cycle of frenetic high quality post followed by less numerous, not so stellar posts.  I have learned to live with them up to a point.  While I’ve stopped taking life-altering decisions when I’m in a down period, I have yet to stop myself from embracing new projects I don’t have time for when I’m in my high energy cycle.

I am the tortured artist type… I’m learning to live with that! 🙂

So yes, I’m currently in ‘swamped with projects’ mode.  Here’s the current list.

This Blog:

…is my love and what brought me the most satisfaction.  I want to focus more on it but, being my oldest online Nerd project, I find that I tend to neglect it for other shinier ones.

I am currently not satisfied with the current ‘programming’ of this blog.  Apart from my Gaming with Kids series, I find my recent posts somewhat stale and lacking in the spark that I know I can infuse in my writing.

And it shows as growth has stalled ever since I came back from Gen Con.

That’s why I’d like to bring the blog back up to its former position in my list of priorities.

Along those lines, I have a few new features I want to start writing about and I also want to revisit old favorites I have neglected for too long.

My D&D 4e game

…is very promising, and I want to focus my efforts in keeping it cool for both my friends and myself.  That’s why I’ll re-start doing my adventure prep posts where I share some of my game prep secrets before I play.  Thus I can apply my free time on both the blog and my game at once.

That’s also why posting on game weeks will be scarcer. So I can actually prep.

The RPG Bloggers network

You may not know this but I am one of the founders and people behind this very cool project.  Things are going along fine (we now have close if not more than 100 members along) but this project still needs a few hours per month to manage.  While most of it is done by my good friend Dave: The Game, I also want to do my part.

Chatty Studios

That’s where I post my work on the Kobold Love project. A project that I love dearly although it turns out to be a lot harder than I initially thought.

In the last few weeks, I came to the realization that I didn’t have to race to finish this project.  I don’t need to let it become a stress inducer.

So while I will see it through, I will keep my involvement in it to about once a week post (give or take, according to my inspiration of the moment).  I therefore won’t predict when it will be completed, just that it will be.

After Kobold Love, I’ll decide what I do with the Studios.  I’m not yet sure I want to start churning adventures and get into a ransom/patron model if that means adding more stress (which my day job provides plenty of) on things I consider my main hobby and source of fun.

One of the reason why I’d like to make money with my RPG work is that I want to pay for the Conventions I will attend.  We’ll see what other ideas I come up with.

By the way, I started posting about playtesting it at a gaming con.  Have a look.

Writing RPG adventures for publishers

This is where I’m asking myself the most questions about.  While I’m waiting for news from the places where I submitted ideas, I’m currently challenging myself about my true desire to do this.

Anyway, this also is a wait and see.  Should I go forward with one or both contracts, I will need to reorganize my time spent on all previous projects and maybe shelve a few of them while I work through all this.

Online D&D game

…is something exciting that came up in the last few weeks. It is the latest shiny project I latched on to. I approached a group of bloggers and a Wizards of the Coast employee with a proposition to DM an online game of D&D 4e using the currently available tools.

This will therfore become a new series on the blog, injecting fresh content into it.  It does mean spending time prepping for it, but since I’ll blog about it, the synergy will be welcome.

The idea behind the project, apart from nerding out, is that when Wizard’s game tool become accessible to the larger public, we’ll be able to compare them to the currently available ones and comment on them.

This, I look forward to.

The Suburban Overlord

…is the little webcomic I started a month ago.  That one is shelved until further notice. I may post a comic here and there when I need an outlet for that particular type of creation, but I consider this nerd project complete. While it was a low impact use of my time, each hour spent on it is one less I spend gaming or blogging.

Reviews

I have recently been approached to start making RPG reviews for a yet to be named website.  While I must say the idea intrigued me, and would give me more free stuff, I’m going to turn it down.

Chatty, yes… but what kind?

I am a foremost a Chatty DM, not a Chatty Designer, nor a Chatty Reviewer.  I’m a writer, true, but I shine when I’m highly enthusiastic about something.  My strengths lie in making and telling stories about things I live in the now.

I also excel at building communities and encourage people to do crazy cool things. I also love to DMing a mean game, be it for my close friends or new ones I make at Cons .

That’s what I want to focus on. That’s what I will focus on.

Thanks for being there!