Wednesday Weekly Oneshots #3: Hassocks & Malfoy Ride Again

Setting 
The denizens of our house all grew up reading the Harry Potter books. I suppose they defined our generation; being exciting stories, nicely written, which brought us together in a communal narrative. Ten year-olds would wait for their Hogwarts letters, it became fashionable to wave sticks at each other, and sort yourselves into houses with colour-coded outfits. This world defined so much of our early creativity. So this his is probably why, when we discovered our love of roleplay, we loved the idea of playing a game in this wizarding world. Fresh faced, cherubic young Hogwarts students, keen to learn, full of japes or fripperies… OR we could generate and play two of the most evil men we’ve ever played.

Camp NaNoWriMo 2014

Gorgeous art by Hillary DePiano Every year since I started University I swore to complete NaNoWriMo. For those of you not in the know, that stands for National Novel Writing Month. Usually held in November, it gives writers 30 days to write 50,000 words. The main event is characterised by its access to universal forums, and a sense of dogged, winter grimness. Ploughing on with your word count with a busted radiator while the nights draw in. On the other hand, Camp NaNoWriMo runs twice a year in April and July, with a less rigid word count and no restriction on whether you actually write a ‘novel’ or not.

Wednesday Weekly Oneshots 1&2: Strange Gods and Strange Lands

Wednesday has always been roleplay day. At the University where I met my good friends and regular roleplay team, Wednesday afternoons were free from lectures and seminars. I can only imagine this was so the numerous (and probably award-winning) sports teams could converge and train while it was still light. The delightful outcome of that was a tabletop gaming society that could run games from 2pm - 7pm every week.

This was a unique experience, being involved in a capsule game that ran for the length of a semester every week. It meant that we got to experience different systems, plots, GMs; I would whole-heartedly support anyone attending a University with a roleplay society taking part and trying all the games you can. It will form the way you look at games.

Anyway, what is all this preamble in aid of? Recently a long running Star Trek game came to it's end-of-season break, and we were left with our Wednesday evenings again. And it occurred to me: Why can't we reclaim our Wednesdays for exploring our game experiences?

"Like the falling of small stones": Tabletop RPGs as the Ultimate Procedurally Generated Game

Tabletop beats video gaming. A bold statement perhaps, but some of my most immerse and emotive gaming moments have been around the gaming table. The ability of a GM to adapt to a given situation is what makes tabletop gaming the ultimate interactive storytelling tool far beyond the limitations of video gaming.

This topic was sparked by the events of our monthly game of Vampire the Masquerade (V20) which is a system that prides itself on the importance of telling a good story. Veronica, the childe of the Sheriff of Birmingham was snooping around the outside of a very well protected house. It was supposed to be a simple night of observation and information gathering. The rest of us were already crossing out our night's blood point and readied our actions for the next night. Unfortunately player action stood in the way. What followed was a string of actions and reactions between PC and Storyteller that took us completely off track:

HabitRPG: Roleplaying as Myself

An adventurer approaches...

I could live my life by gamification. I have always struggled to build up positive habits, or complete difficult tasks. Procrastination is the bane of all my days and without strong incentivisation, I wouldn't get much done. I've tried it all: to do lists, phone alarms, buddy systems, and reward schemes. Nothing really worked. For some reason I can just never stick to anything for any length of time, it is why I've found maintaining the blog so difficult. My notebooks are full of half-completed post drafts, but I can never seem to remember to maintain habits. 

Top 10 Etsy Finds - Summer 2012

• Another round-up? Come on Praxis Descends, give us a review, a tutorial, some lovely pictures?

• No! I've been meaning to do a round-up of my favourite Etsy pieces for ages. Last night I was updating my favourites list and realised I had ten things that were just crying out to be features in my I want list.

By the time you read this post, some of these things might have sold out or been taken off Etsy all together. If this is the case, please check out their shop for other things. These people put their time into making amazing and beautiful things, and they should be supported for it.

Crafting Roundup: July/August

So I spent a brief fortnight out of my busy life house-sitting my boyfriend’s parents in sunny Norfolk. During this period I took the opportunity to remember how to ride a bike, watch every episode of Jonathan Creek and do a lot of crafting. I thought it would be the perfect time to open myself up for commission work on the UKofEquestria forums. Alas nopony seems to be biting and I am still working on personal and to-sell projects.

[Once I have more pieces made up I intend to create an Etsy shop to sell from, and maybe that will bring in the revenue I need to pay the rent].

So in an effort to be more open about my WIPs I am going to dedicate this post to my process and half-finished works.