Thursday, July 27, 2023

Updates: Wasted Lands, Gen Con, AI, and more!

 Wow. What a month. I have been heads down playtesting The Wasted Lands all month. The Kickstarter was funded and was completed just about 2 hours ago. 

All the documents are ready. Now comes the layout and buying the last bits of art. It has been a wild ride, really. I can't wait to get my copies.

Wasted Lands core mock up
Wasted Lands core rules mock-up

Gen Con & AI

Sadly I am not headed to Gen Con this year despite being invited by a couple of publishers I have worked with in the past year.  Honestly, prep for the Fall term is kicking my ass and despite the volume of posts here, most have been pre-written days ahead.  In addition to my normal course load (ok, it is actually more this year) I am also part of the team that is working on finding ways to prevent students from using AI for plagiarism. I have never felt more akin to Sisyphus in my life, to be honest. But I do what the Gods command. So I have been eyeballs deep in all sorts of AI tools (and brushing up on my Python) since December just to keep up. I have all these cool AI tools to play with, but the goal is to figure out how to keep students from using them OR how they can use them in ethical ways. One thing though is abundantly clear, these tools are not going away.

So, no Gen Con for me this year. Looks like I'll be at Gary Con again in 2024. Not a bad place to be to celebrate 50 years of D&D.

Monster Mash II

I released Monster Mash II to only a little fanfare. I really need to talk about it more. I am rather happy with it and the art is AMAZING!

Looking Ahead to October

Again I'll be hosting the RPG Blog Carnival in October. My theme is "Gods and Monsters." I hope to talk more about Gods, demons, and monsters. It should be a lot of fun.

Since the beginning of the year, I have also been taking Spanish, so I am going to try my hand at watching nothing but Spanish-language horror movies. Part of my "continuous improvement" this year. I have lost 40 lbs, brought my A1C down to normal for six straight months, and will be off my high-blood pressure meds! Not too bad, really.

Sinéad O'Connor

I can't let the day pass without some mention of Sinéad O'Connor. I am planning a tribute post tomorrow. To say she had an impact on my life is a massive understatement. 


Ok. Have a course to finish up today and I promised a colleague that I would read over theirs before tomorrow.


1 comment:

Lydian Coda said...

Way to go on your healthy life improvements :) I shed about forty pounds some thirteen years ago and have kept it off. Not a trivial undertaking by any means, so good for you!

My gaming group has been attending GenCon every year for ... a long time. Last year was my best GenCon in years due to some great games, and to solving issues with profligate spending. But our VIG is out and without being able to obtain downtown housing it's just not happening. I'll be investigating smaller cons closer to home for the future.

Wasted Lands looks really interesting. But I have so many games in my want_to_try pile I just couldn't convince myself to make the $40 leap. Maybe I'm being stingy :(