Look at These Album Covers. Also, Teasing Glimpses of Posts to Come.

Working on a few entries in the draft pile, including but not limited to:

- A Broad Overview of Religion on Galbaruc

- Classes on Galbaruc: Cleric - How I'm handling Clerics in my home campaign, once I get it off the ground.  I'm putting in Atheist clerics, which might be a stupid idea, but which made sense to me the other day, and fits with the way I'm envisioning the class in this setting.

- The Space-Race on Galbaruc, and what people there think about the Moon.

- The Supreme Monstrosity: The winged, 9-eyed Dinosaur Satan who is rumored to lair in a cave somewhere on Oriax, and which I stole from TOPPS' Dinosaurs Attack! bubble gum cards from the late '80's.

- The Brazen Head of Criswell, an artifact of dubious, reality-warping prophetic power

- By the way, Oriax has been relocated.  It's no longer a planet in its own right, but is a continent on a shared world setting co-owned by me, Evan Elkins, and Robert Parker.  We just figured, hey, we're each doing weird space-fantasy desert planets, planets are huge, so why not have it be the same planet.

- An Actual Play report of the Hill Cantons game the other day, according to the Colonel, whose reputation for veracity is matched only by his fearlessness in battle.

But for now, I just want to show you the cover art for this two-part album from Earth, because I think it's absolutely gorgeous.

Well, So Much For the Whole "Frequent Updates" Thing...

Two weeks already.  I'd meant to be more diligent about updating this thing, but time seems to have slipped away from me.  Anyway, a few updates:

1.  Oriax is not dead, but it has changed shape and location.  More on that shortly.

2.  I've started showing my artwork at the ZaPow gallery here in downtown Asheville.  We're having a party/opening on Feb. 11th, and I'll have a few pieces up for the occasion.  There will be live music, free beer, and free ice cream.  Anyone who doesn't like at least one of those things is very possibly a Reptoid, or one of the aliens from They Live.  They probably also hate laughter, oral sex, monster movies, pretty sunsets, and all mammals.  Defy them and attend, at least in spirit.  Read more about the event here.

3. Hugo le Bâtard, my character in Jeff Rients' Caves of Myrddin game, has, in collaboration with Darf the Dwarf, opened up a new den of vice and iniquity on the grounds of Hugo's manor house in Cornwall.

Le Lapin Bleu is open for business, and now sports its very own blog.  Featuring an expanded set of results for Jeff's famous Carousing Table (as well as an expanded wine list and floor show entertainment), make The Blue Rabbit your FLAILSNAILS PC's #1 destination for spending your ill-gotten loot in style (and away from those busybodies at the Abbey guesthouse).  

Brief End-of-the-Year Omphaloskepsis

So I started this thing back in July with this :

I'm starting this blog as a spur for creativity and production, and as an attempt to get past my habits of procrastination, chronic laziness, crippling self-doubt and perfectionism to actually produce something and put it out there for people to see. Time will tell.

It's ostensibly a gaming blog focusing on material for tabletop RPGs, but I'm expecting to veer off into other subjects with some frequency-- movies, comic books, fantasy, horror, science fiction, reviews and essays, and any random things I get interested in or obsessed with. Possibly some fiction as well, though that'll probably be quarantined in its own section.

Let's look at that in some more detail:

"I'm starting this because blah blah crippling self doubt I never get anything done blah blah."

- If that's my stated purpose for doing the blog, I think it's helping me achieve it. I've gone from producing practically nothing to coming out with a good handful of gameable tools, occasional articles, actual play reports, and miscellaneous bullshit -- and it's all been generally well-received. 51 people are publicly following the blog, which is far more than I had imagined going in. So far, the few extended conversations in the comments have been interesting and civil. This positive response has fueled my desire to produce more stuff, which people seem to be using, which makes me happy, and want to produce more, etc. etc.

The other part hasn't quite played out as I'd planned. No real reviews, not a whole lot in the way of essays, and very little on movies, books, and other media. On the other hand, I don't mention artwork at all, and I've done a lot more of that in the past few months than I have in years. I've got a bunch of pieces in Secret Santicore, and another that I hope to see in a published supplement sometime in the new year. In the mean time, I'm gearing up for some collaborative work with my pal Nathan Ballingrud, and I'm working on scraping the rust off my skills and developing them further.

I'm always terrible about keeping New Year's resolutions, so I'm not going to list any here. I'll leave it at this: Personally and creatively, I'm in a better place now than I was at the end of 2010, and I think 2012's going to be even better.

Have a happy New Year, everyone!