Time for one of my 'what I've been up to lately' posts. Since I'm not really posting very often lately. (Mostly, as one would suspect, due to RPoL distraction.)

Though before I go to the previous days I'll mention that I went out yesterday, probably for the first time in a couple weeks. :P It wasn't for long but it's something. Jon and I mostly ended up stopping by the bookstore... I got to snag the third Wicked Years book (A Lion Among Men) and the latest Recluce paperback (Natural Ordermage).

I also got another DS dungeon crawly game, Dungeon Explorers. It was only like $20 so why not? It's not the most spectacular of its genre (rather Gauntlet-like actually) but I am happy nonetheless. Dark Spire is the next dungeon crawler I'm *really* looking forward to for my handheld. :3

Anyway, on to summary part 1:

Wednesday

Most of this was RPoL updating, again. But the night went to Dark Heresy. Contrary to what some may believe I actually pay a great deal of attention during DH, I don't even think I managed writing a single post while it was running (not that I minded!) It's partly cause of the fast pace of the game, and because there are so many players. So I don't really want to be the weak link slowing people down.

Dark Heresy doesn't stress me out though. I actually find it an entertaining and easy to play game. I mean, there's dice hate and all, but it didn't bite me as hard as some of the others who were playing (a shame, too). The pace goes pretty quick for an OpenRPG game, but I have a pretty strong feel for Iria Escaliere in my head. It's not hard to write her at all.

That said, the session didn't leave me with any memorable quotes this time, mostly because Iria spent the entirety of the game chasing another assassin. It so happened that her skills were well suited for the situation and she was at the head of the chase. Hell, I would've been disappointed if she *wasn't* at the head!

I still have to spend XP before next session though, ack! I can't decide if I want Ballistic advance or to get more skills. :(

Thursday

This was actually mostly a bad day for me. I was having terrible jitters this day writing for Five Coils, mostly because I got HUGELY stuck with the "how do I explain the deaths in the mining settlement and the white piles there?" I was caught between purely magical and purely scientific explanation and all the weirdness in between that Exalted explains with handwavium (biomagitech, anyone?)

One of the biggest things that bogged ME down actually was the fact I'd made the piles white, then realized "hey wait... there should have been carbon in there, right?" Ha! Well now apparently I have one of my players thinking... actually, I'd better not say that here. I don't know how many of my players read this, after all!

Then I was trying to figure out how to explain how much Xurizu's 8 success roll actually told him about the cause of the mysterious incinerations. I hate to leave big rolls like that with little reward, but on the other hand I just plain couldn't think of how to explain to him what it was without giving him knowledge he just plain wouldn't have at the time. It isn't an issue of the character's smarts, just that he had little to no access to that sort of information. So I ended up giving a vague spread of possible causes, and kept being continually unsatisfied with the wording.

I finally stuck with something, but only after what was probably my second near-breakdown of the week (actually, the first one happened earlier, it was when I was writing the initial spread of posts starting the first week in Five Coils B25). I still don't know I like what I stuck with, either, mostly because the answer is more like "it's a little bit of everything mixed together!"

My stress about that nearly ruined my involvement in the Thursday game, too, because I have a harder time concentrating while playing it. I'm one of two players in that game and my character has a pretty big role, so I have to concentrate very intently to play it. And I've already ruined that game more than once due to bad timing and writing problems, so I get even more anxious about making sure I don't do it AGAIN (which leads me to take even longer to finish RPoL stuff, since I end up stalling more when I feel rushed.)

But I did end up enjoying it toward the end. That particular character is one I know quite well and have played many years -- no it's not Ryshy, but another of my longtime chars.

[continued when I'm not falling asleep in my char, Jon is teasing me! In fact, I have no idea if what I wrote above makes ANY sense at all... zzz...]