Golden Anvil

So, here I've been complaining about my crazily busy schedule, and how I'm trying to find room in my life to do all that I want to do... Well, let me just provide a small example of why fixing my schedule is probably a hopeless task.

I'm writing this up at this moment because I happen to have a half hour or so until I start a new roleplaying group. That's right, as of tonight I'll be GMing two different gaming groups at the same time (well, not exactly the same time, since one group meets on Monday and the other meets on Friday, but you know what I mean).

How did this happen? Well, I happened to start talking with a friend of mine from church about roleplaying. He'd played D&D when he was young, and he expressed some interest. Next thing you know, he was explaining how he though his 14(ish) year old daughter should play in order to help her develop her creativity. Then all of a sudden he was asking if I wanted to run a game. How could I say no?

Well, it's time to update you on the last two weeks of play (we didn't play the two weeks before that, as Mrs. Kheldar was visiting family and friends out of town. This will be a short summary, but at least it'll get you caught up again.

Last time they decided to put the blind friend they found on the base in contact with the London resistance group they'd met with. They had a meeting scheduled with a resistance contact, and that went pretty well. They got a hold of a couple pistols (since weaponry was kind of tough to smuggle out of the port area), and got some information about where the records were archived that they were looking for (it turns out that the Reich had turned the Houses of Parliament into a records archive for temporary storage while waiting to get it all sorted and processed for useful content).

I suppose you probably noticed that I haven't posted in a while. Life has been pretty full lately, and I haven't found myself with the energy to blog. Fortunately (for those who like to read my blog), I've backed off pretty significantly on my computer game playing, and have started a monthly project (since I have so many interests, I'm going to try seeing if I can stay focused on just one each month and kind of rotate through them). This gives me a little better sense of organization in my life.

Of course, I've been kind of going through computer game withdrawal, so I have to finish that adjustment first before things completely settle down.

You've seen pictures of some of the bombing damage in European cities after WWII? Tone that down just a little bit. You've seen pictures of people during the Great Depression in the US? Now combine those pictures. In particular, keep the dirt and the grey. Add some fog, since it's London.

There you have the setting of tonight's session. The players are in Reich controlled England (London specifically), posing as independent tramp freighter operators. They're trying to track down records from their past to keep the Germans from learning to much about them. It's now 1947, the war was unofficially over a year ago, and things are now in somewhat of a cold war state (although technically peace was never declared). The Reich controls all of Europe (as well as other places).

Hmm... I'm sure I've posted dozens of times lately. They... uh... must have gotten... um... lost in the system.

Right. Happy Mother's Day (Mothers' Day?) to everyone out there who's a mother.

We decided to stop by the theater to take advantage of the fact that most people wouldn't take their Mom out to see Spiderman 3 on Mothers' Day. Heh... Guess what? Either there are a lot of Moms into comic books, or there are some Dads that have funny ideas about how to celebrate with their wife. It wasn't jam packed, but I'm certainly glad that we got there early. There were a lot of younger kids there too.

Anyway, not a bad movie. Mrs. Kheldar and I enjoyed it. I think they've very much improved on the computer animation for Spiderman since the first one. Yeah, there were some weak points, but eh... I'm easy to please. I was entertained.

Tonight we made some lists of potential plot ideas for upcoming adventures and set-piece location and events that could happen during those plots. This is part of a kind of interesting idea that we're experimenting with. The idea is that I need help running a cinematic/low-powered-supers campaign, and my players need some help playing in such a campaign. So, we're going to together determine an overall plot for the next adventure, and then together pick a couple set-piece location or event that will happen during that plot (I will also pick another couple set-piece items that the players won't know about). This will help me run a game that fits nicely into the genre, and allows the players to have a sense of where things are going so that they can help the story flow smoothly.

Thursday we had our first meeting for the Greek small group that I'm leading. 6 other people showed up. There are three others (one a 10 year old boy) that couldn't make it this week, one other who will start in a couple weeks, and one other who might start coming next week. That's a pretty good sized batch of people. Anyway, it looks like a pretty fun group to work with.

This week we're working on the alphabet. This is a review for me, but it does give me a chance to go back and learn the uppercase letters (which I'd skipped my last time through, since they were considered optional). I actually need to also work on the next chapter so that I can try and stay a chapter ahead of everyone (the better to be able to answer questions and help people out as we get further into things).

Anyway, it's pretty exciting stuff. I'm definitely looking forward to this, as it'll be nice to have others around to help keep me motivated and excited about the project.

I meant to post this last night, but ironically enough, I was busy preparing for next week's role playing session...

Monday we finished up the adventure with a couple quick dice rolls and some plot summarization. Most of the bombs on the base were found. Loss of life was minimal due to advanced warning. The moles on the base (at least the known ones) were killed or captured.

Most of the session was actually spent in some deep discussions about where we want to go with this campaign. We talked about a variety of ideas on making improvements to the game and adjustments to the characters. We're all pretty excited about what lies ahead.

Sorry for the long post. I couldn't find a good place to cut this one...

Let's take a look at my normal weekdays. I usually wake up at 5:00am. This gives me time to get ready to leave the house, have a sit-down breakfast with my wife, take an hour to study the Bible, read whatever devotional material I'm currently going through, and pray. Then I'm out of here by just a little after 6:30am. Between commuting and work, I usually get home anywhere between 3:30pm and 5:00pm (usually between 4:00pm and 4:30pm though). Given the fact that I get up at 5:00am, I usually get to bed around 9:00pm. So, that leaves 4 to 5.5 hours in the evening that is "free" time. Knock about a half hour off that for various e-mail and website checks that seem to eat up my daily time. That leaves 3.5 to 5 hours.

The problem here is that I get busy with stuff, so I don't feel like taking the time to blog. Then when I do have time to write, I feel like I have a big bucket of stuff that I need to blog. So, that just delays things more.

New idea.

No more rambles when I'm behind. Instead, I'm going to try and post shorter blogs about just a single topic. That should help me post more often, and may lead to be staying more current with things.

Now I just need some kind of list to keep track of the things I want to blog about...

Topic for next time: Where does my time go?