demons worry when the wizard is near

Still tired, and the pollen plus wind minus humidity has given me a headache that refuses to go away … but I’m better than I was.

If you’re one of the hundreds of people who reached out and offered a bit of kindness, thank you.

I wrote a story. It isn’t done, and it may never be published, but for the first time in ages, I felt like I needed to write it and get it out, so I could get my mind around what I have to write, so I can finally get back to what I want to write.

And actually doing that, instead of sitting around and actively not doing that … well, it was kind of a big and important thing for me to accomplish.

Saturday, I didn’t feel like doing anything, but I had plans to play Pandemic Legacy with my friends, so I made myself go over to my friend’s house, and we played two games. We were looking good and then got WRECKED in two turns in the first half of March, and then we completed our objectives in the second half of March.

It was looking bad for us.

I mean, really bad.

But we rallied.

My friend’s son, who is 14 (which isn’t possible because he was just born like, not that long ago), joined us for Pandemic. It was the first time he’d ever played, and we didn’t want to run the game for him, so we let him watch the first game, asking as many questions as he wanted, explaining everything that we did and why. By the time he was playing in his first game (our second), he had a surprisingly deep understanding of the game, and was making really clever and insightful decisions.

When people ask me why I do Tabletop, and when power gamers are shitty to be about Tabletop, I remind anyone who cares to listen that the whole point of the show is to make more Gamers. A world with more Tabletop Gamers in it is a better world, and it was pretty awesome that I got to be a very small part of helping my friend’s mission to share the joy of gaming with his son.

After Pandemic, we played Terra Mystica.

It’s a damn fun game that’s really complex, and I had this surprisingly joyful moment when I saw, a few turns too late, how the game worked and how I’d made bad strategic choices. The part of my brain that has Depression in the driver’s seat right now wanted to make sure I knew how stupid I was, but the rational part of my brain was too busy enjoying my time with my friends, and reminding me that figuring out how to play a game is part of the fun of playing a new game.

And then when I got home, I did that writing I mentioned at the beginning. Here’s a tiny piece of it:

The Magician sat alone in his study, and practiced his magic. He conjured small creatures who existed briefly before vanishing in a burst of fragrant smoke. He extinguished the torches with the wave of one hand, then drove the darkness away with the other. His magic was passable, and he was quite good at it, but the Magician wanted to be a true Wizard, and to become a true Wizard, he needed an apprentice to train.

It’s not that long, only about 2000 words, but it’s been far too long since I finished something that I started, even if it was only the puke draft. Now I’m sitting on it for a few days before I decide if I’ll rewrite and edit, or if I’m going to move on to the next thing on the white board.

I have an idea for a short film that, unlike every other short film idea I’ve had recently, doesn’t take place on a spaceship or another planet, and can easily be filmed with my DSLR and a crew of three people. So I’m going to writing it, and maybe even shoot it.

Never talking

Just keeps walking

Spreading his magic