Jeremiah Donaldson's Blog: This and That, page 4

Character Profile 2: Regis

This is a second in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing. The second one takes a look at one of my oldest characters.

Regis started off as a character in a series of hand written fantasy stories I wrote as a teenager between 1991 and 1996 while in high school and immediately after. Those numbered about one dozen finished and unfinished. These stories were highly influenced by Fritz Leiber's Swords Series and were a weird fusion of sword and sorcery and SF in which magic exists but something crashes from the sky that has NASA on the side of it. Regis was, and has remained in all incarnations, an ex-king's guard.

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Character Profile 1: Lunatic Larry, aka, The Preacher

This is a first in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing and games. The first one takes a look at one of my favorite characters to mess with. He's also had the most versions over the years.

Lunatic Larry started off as a character in a text only, society simulation called Cantr II, way back in about 2003ish. The game is still up and running but I've not played since maybe 2005. The original version was a crazy hermit that lived in the mountains and toiled to dig stone to build his 'Church of the Insane'. He would shout craziness to travelers who had the misfortune of ending up in his mountain enclave and some would join. The Church of the Insane grew to nearly a dozen members and started kidnapping and killing travelers who were dragged into the maze that was the church. Eventually, a team sent by a nearby town caught Larry by surprise, killed him and many church members, and scattered the survivors.

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DTR2ed post 2-The World

Welcome to the second blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at the world of DTR2ed, which has seen many additions for the 2nd edition. The 1st edition contained only 8 locations with scant detail to build the world, but the 2nd edition contains 14 that are far more fleshed out and each location now has a general timeline of their history up until the United Earth Federation in Yellowknife takes over their respective location.

The 2nd edition also divides the ~200 years of the post-apocalyptic time period up into three time frames. The middle and longest period is the default with no modifiers, but starting a game earlier or later than that changes prices on stuff like weapons and food and a few other things. This takes into account for things being more wild at the beginning of the 200 year period and more civilized at the end of it when the UEF takes over.

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DTR2ed post 1-Overview

The countdown to the release of Disturbance Timeline RPG 2nd Edition has started.

'Welcome to the first blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This first post is only an overview of the project and some differences mentioned. Each of the other blog posts will touch on a different section of the rule book and go into more detail on the differences from the 1st edition that are relevant to that section.'

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Neverwinter Foundry meets FRUA

Neverwinter Foundry remakes.

New projects have been added to the Fall/Winter 2023 release schedule. These projects are remakes of some of my Neverwinter MMO Foundries in the Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures build set.

For those of you who don't know, the Neverwinter MMO Foundry was active from the release of the MMO in 2013 until it was shut down in 2019 due to Cryptic (the company running it) not having the people to maintain it anymore. A similar Foundry for their Star Trek game was shut down at the same time. There are other theories such as them not being able to monetize the Foundry to blame for the shutdown. Some people that you can find online are still hoping for a return of the Foundry. So would I. So I could go in and make a record of everything. However, that almost certainly won't happen and we are now right at the 4 year anniversary of the Foundry being shut down and at the 10 year mark since I created those stories.

Enter the Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures build set. This is a 30 year old SSI production and is their developmental tools that were released as a 'game' when they lost their D&D license. It has had an active community since 1993, or 30 years as of this year. There are a minimum of 600 adventures made for it that can be played, but an exhaustive list, no matter how complete, will almost certainly never be complete. The system is old, but solid, and it can be bought from Steam or GOG as part of the Gold Box collection. FRUA is the system I've choosen to rebuild some of my Foundries in.

The Foundries I'm rebuilding, and have mostly rebuilt already, are my Stopping Leland campaign and the BeoWolf stand alone. These are the most original stories I made in the Foundry and the ones that don't use any of my other characters that appear elsewhere such as Ott and Ren. They also each won a 'Screenshot of the Week' with the two shots below. The three part Stopping Leland is already built and undergoing debugging. BeoWolf has been started on but will be pushed forward until 2024 since so much stuff is already queued for 2023.

There will be more info on these projects later in the year.

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Jan 2023 update

Starting with the next post to my official blog on my website at www.jeremiahdonaldson.com, I'll be posting the feed here also. Not sure when that post will be, but won't be too long. This post is an update on the 2022 Fall/Winter releases and upcoming 2023 releases. These lists include writing and game releases since the two are intertwined.

2022 Fall/Winter releases
Games
Post-apocalyptic Escapades
Post-apocalyptic Escapades: The Lurker Expansion
Dis the Rhyme

Writings
Post-apocalyptic Escapades of Heroes & Scrubs: The Night Time is the Right Time
Post-apocalyptic Escapades of Heroes & Scrubs: The Creature
Two Vampires and a Government Agency Part 1: Spirit Night
Two Vampires and a Government Agency Part 2: The Pendant
Two Vampires and a Government Agency Part 3: The Hunt

Two Vampires and a Government Agency is a series that reboots some older titles in a more coherent storyline so it can be continued rather than continuing The Hunt as a series as was planned.

Projected 2023 releases
Games
Post-apocalyptic Escapades: General Cyanide Expansion

Writings
Post-apocalyptic Escapades of Heroes & Scrubs: Cannon Fodder
Post-apocalyptic Adventures of Ott & Ren: Q the Madman

Here's to a good 2023. Peace out.

Post-apocalyptic Escapades and Fall releases

A series of posts detailing info and history of the game starts here: https://deathderby.com/blog/post/1744.... The 10th and last of these posts will drop before long in preparation for my Fall releases starting to drop in November.

Post-apocalyptic Escapades is an 18+ story generator that will be available on The Game Crafter, DriveThruCards, Tabletopia, and Amazon on November 1st, 2022.

Post-apocalyptic Escapades Beta test cards

Examples of the final beta test cards for my story generator card game for age 18+ players, Post-apocalyptic Escapades. Release date is TBD, but looks like it will be Summer or Fall of 2022.

PC Card
Enemy CardWeapon Item CardSituation CardArea Map Card

Highlelujah

Three stoners witness the Second Coming of Jesus, smoke with him, and convince him the world should be flooded again.

Free on Smashwords and DriveThruFiction. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... https://www.drivethrufiction.com/prod... Support at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ephiroll

New World Disorder

“The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.” ― Krishnamurti

Catalonia.Bolivia. Hong Kong. Chili. The United States. And many others.What do they have in common? Unrest. And this was before the pandemicgot into full swing. Now, it’s the United States, yet again, withFrance, the UK, Germany, Russia, Iran, and too many others to list. Agood portion of this unrest is due to the pandemic restrictions, butmuch of it is not, especially like in Catalonia, Brazil, and Russia,not to mention recent events in the United States, are entirelypolitical, and sometimes terrorist, in nature.

Whatis happening with all this? A few things, unfortunately, and theyboil down to what we’ve known for a while but have paid littleattention to or brushed off as absurdity, dimwittedness, or somerandom excuse was given, of which there are hundreds.

Onething that have been drummed for a while now is the influence ofsocial media on peoples’ behavior, of which I’ve touched on beforemyself. Like others, I end up going back to social media, but unlikeothers, I do change my behavior and focus on what I’m working on andresearching. Social media is a tool to present ideas to others justlike an essay is. Sometimes tools can get out of hand, but we aspeople are used to taking control of dangerous tools and I don’t seeany reason we can’t on this. The issue with fixing the problem withsocial media seems to revolve around confusion over what free speechis. Free speech is free speech until someone calls for someone’s heador gives out advice that can get people killed and then it’ssomething else. Of course, there’s always some excuse, and everyone’sfavorite is ‘I was joking’ and then they want to cry because they getpushed to the sidelines after a few bad ones like that. Best to stayaway from those jokes. Which sorta comes back to why thismisinformation and hate speech is so prevalent on social media:people talk different when the person they’re talking to isn’t infront of them and social media platforms feed that difference. Any ofus who have done customer service has encountered the customer thattalks loud on the phone and is all ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ inperson, and that applies to the majority of people. You’re forced toprocess that you’re dealing with a real person when face to face andyou also don’t have an army of trolls backing up whatever irrelevantpoint you have with a flood of nonsensical memes. But instead, theecho chambers created on FB and other social media sites (you knowwho does it, they’re who deletes everyone that doesn’t agree withthem) fuels the online extremists and gives them the fuel to act onwhat they say because what they’re saying to each other becomesnormalized. This particular problem seems to be related to people nothaving any respect for the rules they’ve agreed to follow, becauseeveryone agrees to not engage in hate speech on those sites via theEnd User Agreement, regardless of who it’s against (and I wonder ifthat’s why some BLM and Antifa pages were silently pulled last yearin the midst of the far-right pages being pulled). At the end of theday, your ideology is irrelevant and all that is relevant is whetheror not you threaten people that don’t agree with you, because as I’vesaid before and will continue saying: The political spectrum is acircle and there’s no difference between Far Left and Far Rightexcept details in their ideology because they both want to huntdown/lockup/kill/cancel those that don’t agree with them. This makesthe far-wings the same in essence even if not in detail.

Anotherthing causing disorder is that literally no one has a plan or anyidea of what they’re doing. From the Hong Kong protesters, to thePortland protesters, to the DC protesters and all the others wavingsome stupid banner over the last year, none of them have a clue ofwhat comes after A. It’s like the Area 51 people over and over. Yeah,you could do X, but what are you going to do after that? Crickets,that’s what, mill about while listening to crickets. Because withouta plan to move past step A, all you do is listen to crickets andargue with people that say you don’t have a plan. Like that womanthat thought she was going sell Pelosi’s laptop. Did she really havea plan to make it far enough to hand that thing over and accept moneywhile apparently telling everyone around her about it? Of course not.The Portland protesters? What was their plan other than to burn stuffand push silly excuses over how someone losing a house over notpaying their bills was some sort of moral crime? None. What was themilitia people going to do if they’d actually kidnapped a governor?besides getting hunted down like dogs. I don’t know and neither dothey. Same with the people involved in the January 6thincident. No plan, no thought, just mob mentality that landed a bunchwith Federal charges. Same thing with Trump. He could have graciouslyaccepted the loss and made a very strong run in 2024, but that isn’tgoing to happen now due to his general lack of planning and longview. Same thing with the Democrats pursuing the current impeachmentagainst a disgraced and finished ex-President, like they did for fouryears before, instead of focusing on the somewhat large problem wehave called the Covid-19 Pandemic (our response to which is thewalking, talking definition of ‘no plan anywhere’ and no, Biden isn’tspontaneously changing that). No plan, just flailing like a fish outof water. People think we’re close to a civil war now. What a joke.Just wait until people like AOC and Ted Cruz are in charge of thingsif you think our politics are a monkey farm now. The only discernibleskill some of these people have is to grab a snowflake and call it awaterfall while bathing in the cheers of people that agree with them.

Thedisorder is also being manufactured. This stuff is bought and paidfor. Buses don’t magically appear out of the air to take protestersto ‘events’. Donors don’t give money to groups like that withoutknowing who it’s going to. People don’t answer shady political adsoffering work without having a good idea of what they’re being paidto do or put up with. It’s the same reason you see the nonsensepolitical posts being pushed out onto social media with info fromnews that literally just happened: trolls on both sides are beingpaid to produce it. Whenever you share a meme with Trump, Biden, orany other politician on it with some fart joke level quote, you’resharing some troll’s work and making them proud. ‘Don’t feed thetrolls’ includes not taking their offered food either. This stuff isdesigned to create divisions through high emotions because that’swhat in turn feeds the spread of this stuff. The by product is thatpeople, being people, buy into it if they’re not careful. It’s theold adage of ‘never believe your own bullshit’. But some people areforgetting that and thinking the bullshit they repeat is actuallythem and then it turns into a ‘their bullshit vs. my bullshit’argument. They buy into the identity politics part of our politics,essentially, rather than into the identity of being citizens of thesame country to rise above that. If your ideology tells you thatanother citizen of this country is an enemy just because of theirdifferences, then you have a pretty serious issue with your ideologywhich leads into something I’ve already mentioned: both far-wingswant to lock up/hunt down/kill/cancel anyone that doesn’t agree withthem. We’re in for a world of hurt if either far-wing gains fullcontrol since both are what they claim the other is since thepolitical circle ends at some form of totalitarianism if you go toofar left or right. I’m not the only person to notice the tendency ofextremists to have similar characteristics even if differentideologies. In politics and most things in life, moderation is key.

Theother big motivating factors in this anger, frustration, anxiety, anddespair over the lockdown rules. People don’t like being told what todo or to say inside with limited activity for long periods of time.At heart, we’re all three and just want our ice cream. It take selfdiscipline and personal control to successfully navigate the pitfallsof a world wide pandemic. Many people aren’t doing so. The ones thathave gone out and bought into the protests that ended with peoplekilled and charges filed have failed at navigating these pitfalls. Sohave the people that messed up in some way by relying on unemploymentthey didn’t get or by not having taxes taken out of unemployment theydid get (along with other issues associated with the stimulus andunemployment payments). This is a major event that is constantlychanging. We’re trying to up the flow of the vaccines while we havemultiple variants appearing, some of which are mutating around thevaccines (which makes me wonder if we’re actually feeding the viruswith these vaccines like antibiotics create resistant bacteria, butthat’s a subject for another time) and we don’t even actually know ifthe vaccines already developed will have an impact on things or howmuch of an impact since the antibody load drops considerably afteronly four months. Meanwhile, the whole lockdown situation is atravesty of common sense on every level. ‘Almost’ only works withhorseshoes and hand grenades, everything else should be pulled offthe fence and made concrete: either charge forward like it’s war andwe’re going to lose people or go on complete lock down to root theviolator out, but don’t do half of each. This seems to be a feedbacksystem and the more this is mishandled, the worse it’s getting. Thevirus issue has been secondary to the economic issue for a while now,but throwing a bit of money at it won’t change anything, and thepandemic is quickly becoming secondary to the extremist situationalso. Meanwhile, people continue to suffer more and more from thenegative effects of the pandemic and the rules surrounding it whichin turn feed the disorder.

There’s no easy fix to this. Biden nor Trump nor anyone else can wave a magic wand to make this go away and everything be okay. The ‘fix’ to this is as unromantic as staying realistic and hopeful while not buying into the magic fixes that cause bubbles of hope to pop and shower you with negative emotions. Yeah, we could get another stimulus, but don’t bet on it. Yeah, the vaccine could magically fix everything, but don’t bet on it. Yeah, some politician could pull off the deal of the century in Congress, but don’t bet on it. Yeah, all this restriction and mask stuff could be over in six months, but don’t bet on it. What we can bet on working is to keep our heads straight, watching our backs, don’t entertain or spread extremist talk that involves targeting citizens, keep working a job, wear our masks, wash our hands, and limit contact (for extremist reasons as well as viral reasons, because a lot more people are going to die and lose it before this is over) until this passes, because whether this situation takes you out by sickness, or getting shot/stabbed/crushed at a protest, or starved to death because you can’t find a job or get a handout, or shot by a random conspiracy extremist, it’s still the situation and new world disorder that got you.

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Further reading:

A world on fire: Here are all the majorprotests happening around the globe right now:https://www.businessinsider.com/all-t...

Mapping coronavirus anti-lockdownprotests around the world:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2...

Russia: Protests erupt over Navalnyprison sentencing:https://www.dw.com/en/russia-protests...

2021storming of the United States Capitol:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_st...

Extremism, fake news and hate: effectsof social media in the post-truth era:https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/245/

Red House stalemate: Neighbors complainof guns, explosions:https://www.koin.com/news/portland/re...

The Social Dilemma: Social Media andYour Mental Health:https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essent...

The Toxic Mix of Extremism and SocialMedia: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article...

Facebook’s Ban on Far-Left Pages Isan Extension of Trump Propaganda:https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/f...

Jan. 6 Rally Funded by Top Trump Donor,Helped by Alex Jones, Organizers Say:https://www.wsj.com/articles/jan-6-ra...

Paid protesters? They’re real — anda Beverly Hills firm that hires them stands accused of extortion in alawsuit:https://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...

Yes, George Soros Sent Money to Fundthe Riots—and So Did Taxpayers:https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics...

How Similar Are the Far-Left and theFar-Right:https://www.theperspective.com/debate...

Covid:Lockdown had ‘major impact’ on mental health:https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54616688

Understanding the Effects of SocialIsolation on Mental Health:https://publichealth.tulane.edu/blog/...

Workers overpaid in pandemicunemployment may no longer have to return the money:https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/22/worke...

Emerging evidence suggests newcoronavirus variant could be problematic for vaccines:https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/21/health...

COVID-19 Vaccine: Will It ProtectAgainst New Variants And Do You Need A 2nd Dose?:https://www.npr.org/sections/health-s...

For months,he helped his son keep suicidal thoughts at bay. Then came thepandemic.:https://www.washingtonpost.com/health...

Lockdown Suicide Data RevealPredictable Tragedy:https://www.aier.org/article/lockdown...

COVID Shortened U.S. Life Expectancy byOver a Year:https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210...

US economy adds 49,000 jobs in January— a grim sign for the jobs recovery:https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/05/econom...

Illinois state’s attorney identifies 3killed in bowling alley shooting:https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/28/us/ill...