#Ley line exploration grants learning opportunities in many ways

[scarletooyoroi]

HC; Regimen

At this point in Thoma's adventures in this certain continuity. There's this interesting crossroads between 'enemies too grand' and 'training ends too small' considering life's current circumstances. In an era of somewhat peace there needs to be a middle ground that prompts his progression for the bigger threats.

This is where Ley Lines find themselves being an indisputable asset.

It works as a two way treat of upping the threshold of his limits, in tandem with getting to see the legends of old. Significant figures of great repute to the Nameless, all of them boasting either the genuine article of strength, or even more daunting, the perceived heights of another that led to those selected memories getting a considerable boost. The grand archives of Teyvat has a countless number of those pursuing a path of improvement. From the remnants of bygone gods, to fellow Vision wielders, a lot of it falls upon circumstance.

It certainly doesn't help that a good Ley Line Disorder would only further tamper that chaos. Through the use of this method, he's seen considerable improvements through the amplification of fire power, better refinement of his shieldcraft, to many more minute adjustments that are still seeing their share of fine turning. (Such as his 'backdraft' burst ability learned from the xenomorphic crabs.)

Devoting himself into these very efforts is what help keeps stagnancy being a concept he's devoid of. Given cases in his current story line (his father becoming an abomination of the Abyss itself), there's a distinct focus that keeps him well settled upon the line of ensuring his flames become the antithesis of their own.

Might make a listing at some point of some noteworthy adversaries he's found in the sea of memories.

[toddmichaelrogers]

Letter to You

Time continues to march toward nothing. I pass along with it, happy to see currents ripple and shift until I find my reflection marked by tell-tale signs of fear and what some expressionists (scientist who study faces) might call “pretty gay”--but I myself learned to accept as “mostly straight, don’t mind seeing a dick though” a long while ago.

(READ MORE)

The world is falling into the sort of post apocalyptic chaos our stories have been worried & also warning us about for several ages. I’m pretty excited for the 80s again (who knew far right fear tactics, dance music, cocaine and a cold war would ever come back in style?) If you’re reading this as a printout in some sort of home-fashioned bunker, the year is 2017, the American President is a reality star billionaire who was elected by people (both good and bad) in an effort to clear out the politicians in the country’s capital. 

One dear friend of mine referred to it as “burning down the house” which is all well and good, unless of course there are people living in that house you have attempted to burn down. 

We are three weeks into an uncertain world, run by a puppet of far worse men, a puppet who is obviously, quite clinically insane. I actually worried about typing that for an instant, here, in the “land of free speech”. That’s how bad it is. The people surrounding him are open racists / enemies of the LGBTQ community, and misinformed religious fear mongers. This week airports across the country were shut down by protesters after refugees and travelers from several foreign countries were banned from entering. I saw a picture of Muslim people praying in an airport while an American crowd cheered them on and it nearly moved me to tears. (And I eat a lot of salt, so if I cry it burns and I fuckin’ feel it). I will not leave this country. So what am I to do? Should I write politicians? Call them? Does this matter at all, or has it ever? I have lists of resources on Tumblr, saved between gifs of cartoons and porn searches. What am I to do? Also what gets the best results? “NSFW” or “Boobs very humungo gifs”?

I don’t know what to do. But I am grateful for the art and politicians this horrible world is about to create.

EFFORTS the band I am in was asked to play a show. This is nice as no one has heard our music. We have declined any other opportunities to perform, but a few weeks into this political fuckquake was the right time to ask, I guess. So tomorrow we have band practice, and then we’ll be playing our first show ever, later this month. I definitely want to puke but in like, a good way. Like prom nerves. Prom puking.Like a  Prom-Puke-Posal

We’ve been recording our first album since November 2015. Back then it was just me and Zach. Then a guy named Geoffrey heard our demos and asked to play bass for us. No one else was asking, so we eventually said yes. Nearly a year later Zach and I tracked most of the album (there are maybe 5 songs still missing) and Geoffrey had sent us his bass demos for each. It was October 2016 and the album has been taking so long that I started pulling demos together for some other sort of release. I was going to call it DAMNSEL & THE EUTH GROUP and Geoffrey said he would produce it, but a few songs in it became obvious we were just making another EFFORTS album and now Zach is involved as well.

xxxxx

New future efforts stuff @thisisgeoffrey and I fucked with last night.

A video posted by Todd Michael Rogers (@d_a_m_n_s_e_l) on Jan 3, 2017 at 12:40pm PST

xxxxxx

The plan is to finish our first LP (I Bought You A Coffin) and then either license it to a record label, preferably in the UK (Plan A) or just do it the fuck ourselves (Plan B). Then when that’s all said and done we’ll have the next bit of music ready, which will be released as two EPs (2.1 Sorry Everyone Disappoints You) and EP2 which I have a name for but it’s not official or anything (2.2 Mean Songs to Hurt People). After we release the 2 EPs-- each holding 6 songs--we’ll smash them together for our second album (2.final form May The Eyes That Rise Upon You Never Know (Your True Heart). I even have album covers for all three but I ain’t showin’ em here yet. So far the first EP is missing 1 and a half songs, and the second is all in demo pieces.

A lot of these plans seem fanciful at best but it’s sort of how I always work on things, ‘shoot for the stars and hope you don’t put a bullet in your own boot’.  A lot of it came about one night when Zach and I stayed up drinking as we concocted a five year plan, should anyone ever ask us if we had one.

But it all start now, with finishing this album, making our facebook page (LINK), playing our first few shows, and releasing our first single (May You Absorb all Evil) But look, we even have a cover for it, granted to us by the artist Liam Barrett. We’ll release this baby sometime this Summer, along with a music video I have been meticulously planning for over a year.

*

I miss writing the novel. It’s been over a month since I touched it, but printing out my progress from the start of 2016 to the end was amazing.

I think the time away from it will be good, the fear, the worry, the feworry is leaving it for too long, allowing it to get lost in the current of the sea (see opening paragraph, this blog).

My plan is to look at what I’ve done (dangerous) do a quick edit job upon it (also dangerous, but hopeful/most/ly this is just a grammar bombing), and then see where the first 200 pages are at. I hope I’m doing the right thing, the bow of the ship needs to be set through some very particular territory, and even I know I’m telling a strange story in a weird way. I could smashed to bits upon the rocks of those who would never publish it.

But I miss it.

*

WHYLC is a comic book I started writing 10 years ago next month (Jesus Fucking Christ) and which I eventually self published online after taking it upon these keep-it-100 hands to illustrate. Issue 2 will take even more time, but for those of you who read it, the work shall continue. I reallllly like making comics and it was sort of the first thing I ever wanted to do writing wise. 

PS Issue 1 can always be found right here (LINK)

*

Spell Saga could destroy anyone, at any given time, if they saw the scope and horror of the project, stretching like ley lines backwards & forwards, away from my heart. I’ve spent the better half of a year working days and nights to pay for both a) my cool ideas and b) my dumb mistakes. This has resulted in many more cards being printed than initially anticipated, and most of my ‘money bucks’ being sent out as packages of said cards to patient wonderful truly unbelievable fans across the globe. 

(Meagen Crawford took dis pic)

Do you know how long it takes to package something? Or even double check and print the correct address? Let alone figure out a packaging solution after the US Postal Service gave you the WRONG information? It’s been a fucking nightmare--but a super neat problem to have. I can panic and smile, I do both all the time.

The next step of the process is sort of manifold:

First I have to finish sending packages to places like the UK, Singapore & Brazil. Then I have to wire the final amount to the manufacturer which was delayed by all the changes we made during initial production. THEN I have to finish re-designing DECK 2 (it’s just a new Photoshop HD makeover, no rules changes). THEN I have to get the packaging for deck 2 finalized (make sure everything is the right size, get UPC code etc.) THEN I have to wire the manufacturer to print this deck and ship everything out together from Hong Kong to any US coast and down to me in lil ole Tennessee.

Then I get my shit together. Spell Saga has been bruised and hidden away while the manufacturing continued. Having Decks 0, 1, and 2 printed and at my fucking door (taking up most of my living room) will give me the privilege and honor of sending everyone another deck for free (thanks for waiting) along with sending out marketing packages to game reviewers across the Earth. It will coincide with the continued but stalled development of the Spell Saga library (a web page of game resources formerly known as the wikiFAQ).

Getting the game back up to good standing is a very real priority for this lonely designer. When I have all that cooking at the right degree I can finally finish the main game by Designing DECK 3 and the Ending with Cousin Lauren. (Then I’ll have to pay for that one to get printed too. That’s 10 grand. Right there.)

PS Cousin Lauren has a page for her art now. Check it out (LINK)

In the INTERIM. The Meantime. IN the age of Meanness: I’ve been designing a new SPell Saga deck, called 1.5 The Under Sky. It’s a sort of bridge between decks 1 and 2, that also acts like a warp into deck 3 if it’s played right. The Look, Feel, Story, and emotional journey of this Deck matches the others--it’s still the story of The Last Minstrel--but while decks 1,2, and 3 were created with the emotions of a bad marriage and a young man afraid of what his life might have become, this DECK is sort of based on how it’s felt to publish the game and everything that’s happened to me in my own journey. Making things is hard. It’s so hard. It’s super terrible and impossible. But getting to the end is the whole point of a journey, and this deck celebrate that.

In The Under Sky, you play as The Last Minstrel, but you’ve sort of lost your way to The Forest, as well as your friends. It’s the idea of knowing exactly what you want, until a sort of early 20s suburban existentialism hits like a storm to blow you so off course you aren’t even sure who you are anymore, much less where you’re going. During the game you’ll explore the insides of living keeps called Castle Crashers, making friends with mirages and using a creature called the dark pixie to pull magical items out of ordinary places. There’s also a river of blood that’s spilling out from a talking disembodied head of a fallen god. It’s pretty cool.

If I’m nervous about anything it’s that the mechanics are advanced to say the least. It’s still the same old Spell Saga but there’s new ideas there too. Like, imagine five cards that are in a circle. The hero token (representing your character) can move left or right on the circle visiting each card (each representing a different place to visit) if you’ve played Spell Saga before, the idea should seem familiar, it’s the main and most basic mechanic of the game. But now, imagine each card in the circle is a stack 5 cards deep, and when you move from one stack to the next the cards in each stack are shuffled, the order they rest in dependant upon how you enter or leave the stack with your token. That’s some scary shit to try and “make a rulebook out of” but I think it’s going to work. I want every Spell Saga deck to kind of have it’s own vibe going on, each playing off the mechanics you may have learned in the previous deck.

There’s other Spell Saga news too:

If anyone is reading this Realmwalker ~ Science//Armor//Romance will be republished with typographical errors removed and a new box sometime near March. This was a game I released a year ago (Judas Iscariot Priest!) on The Gamecrafter, and then removed until i had time to fix it.

The next Realmwalker ~ The Discordant Shore is half designed and really a very exciting game. I think it should be done by June, and that one will also be on The Gamecrafter. The Reason this one took so long is half the cards are also copies of special handmade cards I’ll be sending out to people who spent dat ca$h on the Kickstarter, y’know, back in 2014 (Satan’s Red Mouth!).

Are you still here? Are you still reading this?

French Toast Gaming Co.’s next game, something I first worked on twenty years ago, and then spent the better part of a decade worrying about is about to be released this year. EPIOCH was supposed to come out last August, but many delays pushed it away. Now my good friend Weshoyot has nearly finished the art, and all the game needs is more playtesting and a rulebook before it pops up on The Gamecrafter. Here’s an art peek, and you should check out her instagram. (LINK).

That’s everything I needed to type out to stay sane. Thanks for following along all three of you. I appreciate it. There’s been other things too of course, lost jobs, another concussion, dreams where I tell my secrets to people who look disappointed. But you don’t need to know any of that. Not really. It will all come out in the artwork anyway.

OR THE patron page PODCAST, I GUESS.

-mE.