I thought I might be done with this series.

Turns out it seems to be good psychologically for me to vent every once in a while, so here we are again. My home life is stable as ever. Yes, we still miss some of the extra income, but we’re doing okay these days. Or least as well as we can without having to scrounge and pinch pennies to death.

I don’t miss going to work every day. My therapist has to remind me regularly that I don’t need a job to be a person. I miss the income, but I don’t miss the stress on my mind and body. My kids can be stressful enough without adding more onto it. Y’all single childless folk, or double income no kids, have it better than you know.

What do I do all day?

I once saw a teenager ask our manager at the candy store this once. It did not end well. It was true that the older we get, the more we rely on younger people to help out. That’s not intended as some kind of ageist comment, it’s just honesty.

I need to lean on my kids quite a bit. I can’t lift nearly what I used to. Carrying a full basket of laundry down the stairs is kind of a dangerous affair for me. I get worn out folding clothes or doing a huge load of dishes. I’m so grateful I have kids to help out with chores. I still get a few things done in terms of chores.

I am able to work on some creative endeavors. I’m okay as long as there’s no hint of collaboration or having to deal with the public directs, it’s all good. I can interact with humanity, but I prefer to keep it minimal if I can. Luckily writing is a good outlet for a lot of things and it’s mostly one way communication.

Once morning meditation is completed, some chores, maybe a nap, and some writing- it’s time to go pick the youngins up from school. Regular chaos starts at about 2:45pm and doesn’t settle down until after 10:30pm. Then, after what is affectionately referred to as “the childing hour” between about 10:00pm and 11:00pm finally ends, I finally get around to finishing an article and posting to my blog here. Last, some Heroes of the Storm, ASMR and unconsciousness for at least six or seven hours.

Squeezing in some side hustle.

Since I don’t have a full time job, you’d think my house would be perfect, my kids well-groomed, my yard tightly maintained, and I’d have three novels written by now. Right? Alas, tis not the case. No excuses, but we’re a family of six. I gave up on a clean house ages ago.

The other stuff also falls behind when we’re constantly running from one kid event to another. Somebody gets the flu and then everything derails while the plague rampages through the house. We’ve got frequent flyers club miles at the doctor’s office. CVS barely asks my name any more and pink bubblegum flavored Amoxicillin is pretty much a family beverage. Time flies when three family members are quarantined; I’m on my third round of bathroom cleanings; and my next round of laundry has to go in.

This is why my YouTube channel is… well, I made the channel intro. (Nervous grin.) I might even manage to make a video this year. I find it a lot easier to write about what’s on my mind even if it’s not as visually appealing as Tik Tok.

Writing projects are another story, though. I was so thrilled to be working on The Crawler’s Armory that I want to do another Shadowdark sourcebook/supplement as soon as I reasonably can. I want to do a considerably longer work and really put some time (and art) into it. I’m still wrestling with the what and how much to do with the project.

Meanwhile, my adorable neurodivergent brain has cooked up three more projects.

One of the fun things about ADHD is that there’s always a new idea. There’s always something else I could be doing. The trick is to write whatever the idea was down and move back to the original task. I have entire notebooks full of neat TTRPG ideas for campaigns, ancestries, monsters, and adventures for dozens of different games.

ICONS alone is a massive stack of small notebooks. I could probably run for years. Superhero games are kinda my jam ICONS has a framework that is very easy to build characters and adventures on.

I could also go for days on sci-fi, Star Wars (space opera,) mecha, and horror games. Admittedly, I like having kind of an anime tilt in TTRPGs, but I’m in Iowa and most of my players are not down for that. Yeah, I’m still itching to mess around with Fabula Ultima.

And that’s kinda my other issue. (*Squirrel!) I have probably twenty or thirty games within arm’s reach right now that I would love to just dive into and go nuts on. Both for fun and to write material to possibly sell. I would dive deep into any game on my shelf for days doing nothing but solo play, module creation, setting creation, and making characters by the ream. The problem is always settling on just one or two, maybe a handful? It rapidly devolves into a dozen. Where do I draw the line?

Currently I’ve hitched my horse to the Shadowdark wagon.

I hype this game to friends and followers online often. The irony here is that the book hasn’t even landed on my shelf yet. My goal at the moment is to make enough money selling supplement(s) to fund further purchases of more Shadowdark books.

For those who might not know yet, Shadowdark RPG is a fairly rules-lite Old School rendition of Dungeons & Dragons 5E from the Arcane Library. A short gamer description would be that it’s everything we wanted in 5E streamlined to be easy to work with for the GM and fast to learn/play for the players. It’s 5E stripped down to run at conventions all the way through long campaigns. It can be used in any fantasy setting with a little modification. It probably takes less time to teach the Shadowdark rules to new players than any iteration of D&D ever made, including Basic. It’s 5E without all the bloat of D&D.

I want to do more with Shadowdark because I was really digging Old School Essentials prior. I’d pretty much had my fill of D&D 5E and Wizards of the Coast. I wanted a solid fantasy framework that wasn’t going to cost a pile of money and be easy to work with. I still treasure my OSE books. Shadowdark is easier to design things in terms of system.

Last year and even before I was blogging it, I was monkeying around with Dungeon Crawl Classics. Goodman games is a wonderful company, but like so many others, DCC exists to make money for and not so much indie developers. I’m still buying DCC stuff here and there but converting it to other games.  I’d still love to run a 3rd or 4th level dungeon at a convention sometime. The system is a lot of fun.

I can talk about TTRPGs on here until my hands go numb.

One of the beautiful things about blogging TTRPGs is getting to talk about and play around with dozens if not hundreds of different games. I can seriously sit around all night talking about games. Luckily my wife and loving children keep me around the house at night. Otherwise, I’d be haunting a game shop somewhere if not working in one again.

I loved the game store in Kansas City that had a pub/small restaurant attached. If we had one here in Des Moines, they’d have to put an apron on me and tell me to lock it up after I’m done sweeping the floor at night. I think a coffee shop would be better for me, but I wouldn’t complain regardless. I can’t just jump online at night without waking someone up around here or I’d do that. During the regular day things can even be pretty erratic as far as having a conversation.

That’s just kinda the state of things around here. Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate you. More on gaming tomorrow. I think we’re just going to chill with some random stuff leading into Promptober.