Tod's cat Vincent, stealing my pencils!

Today I’m participating in a 24-hour* art creation marathon to raise funds for my friend Tod’s roommate Milo, who is getting a service dog. I’ve infested their apartment with my art supplies and my unshowered, unteethbrushed, unruly self. I’ve rubbed their cats in my armpits and tamed their leopard geckos with chairs. And when Tod was in the bathroom, I sat on his chair and farted because THAT’S HOW I ROLL.

This post will be updated with art as the day progresses but you should check out the stream for live art (and chatting!) here. Tod has a page with the guidelines for requests/donations here. You can find the Chip In account here.

* -ish

Originally published at Calamity Cove. You can comment here or there.

http://playthisthing.com/party-one-bb-series

The Party of One series is a third party supplement for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box (Beginner's Box). All three gamebooks are mini solo adventures designed to teach the basic Pathfinder RPG system, introducing players new to paper RPGs. Since the Beginner's Box only includes a six-page, 23 section, solo adventure, the Party of One series fill the need of a full Pathfinder RPG tutorial.

The Party of One series comprises:

• BB1: Kalgor Bloodhammer and the Ghouls through the Breach –- The undead break into the dwarven halls. It's up to you and your warhammer to repel the intruders and find the cause of the breach.
• BB2: Elgar Fletch and the Dark Army –- You must be stealthy, cunning, and sometimes forceful as you travel secretly to warn the capital of an incoming invasion. Can you save your love and the capital?
• BB3: Alosar Emanli and the Creatures from the Fallen Star –- A falling star brings strange creatures into the forest. This is no game but a true rite of passage as a young druid.

All three are short, having around 75 sections plus detailed character sheets if one wants to continue the characters into a custom Pathfinder campaign. Being around 10 pages, there is little room to work on the background and you start in the middle of the action. Matthew J. Hanson, the designer of all three gamebooks, is well versed in gamebook system design as well as writing. The Party of One series has systems for time, inventory, and point-to-point movement, a similar innovative system used in the Night of the Nazgul.

Since describing the story further gives spoilers, I want to highlight some innovative design features. In BB1 you can travel freely between a location (point) to another (point) to investigate the breach--a point-to-point movement system commonly used in board wargames. In BB2 you are given interesting options in dealing with a miniboss: stealth, negotiation, or combat. Finally both previous gambooks are based on warrior classes; in BB3 you play a spellcaster.

In short, the Party of One BB gamebooks are packed with good design and tense narrative, and provide paper RPG sessions with zero prep time. If I had to choose between the three gamebooks, BB1 has the best game system and an interesting plot twist. However, at $2.99 per book and around 20 minutes of play time, I recommend all three. The three gamebooks are available as PDFs from the Kobold Quarterly Store and RPGNow/DriveThruRPG.

• Tue, 12:27: RT @isaiah: Yahoo got their CEO from eBay? And he wasn't quite what he said he was in his description? No irony there. Nope. None.
• Tue, 19:26: Go Go Gadget Scooter! http://t.co/jT43MJxH
• Tue, 20:41: Dwarven thoughts on trouble http://t.co/4jEXxpdD #Kindle
• Wed, 05:40: has someone already told @DiezelRaccoon that his account has been compromised?
• Wed, 06:15: #XKCD tackles Mac OS X's naming scheme: http://t.co/aPFrIE7e

We went looking for the great horned owl that lives at the marina. Every time I bring my camera, it’s conspicuously absent, but when I’m unprepared and have only a cell phone, then the stupid featherbucket hangs around all photogenically on the yardarms of sail boats.

The above photo was taken a couple months ago, with my phone. That black dot near the tallest mast is an owl. Just trust me. Anyway, it wasn’t there this time, but there was something else that flies resting on one of the boats…

…Seriously, does your yacht really need a helicopter? I mean, you might think you’re not a redneck just because you own a yacht, but I have news for you: stacking recreational equipment is the redneckiest thing you can do short of putting on your least stained Caterpillar t-shirt and packing your lip with a wad of chew before taking your fourteen-year-old cousin on a date.

I’m classy, so if I had a yacht it would have a jacuzzi and a ball pit and a chocolate fountain with a gayly attired attendant, like this:

But mine won’t have a pantsless black market arms dealer. Speaking of no pants, many of the people at the marina were prancing about in floofy dresses, because apparently Saturday night was prom. One girl had a very distinctive birthday cake of a dress which I admired as she petted Briar, and later we discovered a shred of it had fallen on the walkway, so I tied it onto Hanzo. Here he poses majestically with his new cravat:

Because he’s in way more photos, it probably looks like Hanzo is the favorite. I promise I also love Briar, but she is more wiggly, so most photos of her are blurry. But here’s one from the other day, after the Great Crab Rescue of May 2012:

Originally published at Calamity Cove. You can comment here or there.

In early April, I went to talk to the doctor about depression, and walked out with a prescription for Zoloft.

It’s been an interesting month. One of the things that surprised me was how many people talked to me about their own experiences with depression, both on my blog post and in person. When I went to Penguicon, the depression post came up in conversation almost as frequently as my cover poses. Depression is far more common than I realized … which reinforced that I had made the right decision to blog about it.

Almost immediately after I left the doctor’s office last month, I started feeling a little better. Since it takes time for the meds to build up in your system, I ascribed that initial improvement to the fact that I was doing something about the problem instead of feeling stuck and hopeless.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from the pills. I wasn’t convinced the meds would help — I wasn’t even entirely convinced that I was really depressed as opposed to just feeling stressed out — and even if it was, I wasn’t sure the dosage I was on would be enough. But damn if I haven’t noticed an improvement. I’ve been able to take things in stride that would have been far more upsetting a month ago, from the suicidal raccoon that busted up my headlight to schedule snafus with my wife and kids to the Great Flea Invasion at home to assorted work stuff.

It’s not all happiness and rainbow-farting unicorns yet. The other day, something knocked me back into that ugly/hopeless/fugitall morass, and it took about two days to pull myself out. But overall, I’m doing better.

I feel more like me.

This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this. Back in 1998 when my pancreas took early retirement, the diabetes seriously messed me up before I got diagnosed and brought my blood sugar under control. I was, to put it bluntly, a cranky, miserable asshole. And it had snuck up on me over weeks or months, so slowly I hadn’t even noticed. When I finally got on insulin, I was amazed at how much better I felt, how much I had missed me, if that makes sense.

It happened when I lived in Nevada, too. Elko did not agree with me, and looking back, I was seriously depressed by the end of it, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. I quit my job and moved back to where I had friends and family, and just like in ’98, I found me again.

I missed me. And I’m a little disturbed that I seem to make a habit of losing myself…

I’ve kept an almost paranoid eye out for side effects. I noticed a little bit of dry mouth early on, but that might have been psychosomatic. I’ve heard people talk about antidepressants making them mentally fuzzy, which was probably my biggest fear. I don’t think that’s happened, but I’m not completely sure. I’m struggling with the sequel to Libriomancer, but I was struggling before I started the meds too. I think it’s just a pain-in-the-ass first draft, not a consequence of extra mental sluggishness on my part.

The current plan is to stay on the Zoloft for six months to a year, then reevaluate where I’m at. I’ve also got a list of possible referrals for counseling that I’m planning to follow up on. (I’ve been procrastinating, partly due to lack of time, and partly due to the lingering shame of needing help.)

I really dislike the idea of being dependent on pharmaceuticals for my happiness and mental/emotional well-being. Insulin for a messed-up pancreas? No problem. Medication for a messed-up brain? That’s harder to accept. But I’m even more scared about the idea of going off the pills and sliding back into the space I was in earlier this year. I’m hoping the counseling will help with this and give me some longer-term solutions.

For the moment though, things are pretty good. I’ve been able to enjoy more of my life than I was before. The good parts actually feel good, and the bad parts, while still present — damn fleas! — aren’t as overwhelming.

Score one for the happy pills.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.