Things have been pretty crazy for the past month or so. Those of you who have followed my updates here know a bit of why and those of you who follow me on Twitter have a good idea. August, very quickly, got away from me. In fact, I am having trouble recognizing the fact that we are already halfway through September. While Summer is always pretty busy for me, the end of it really got crazy this year.
First off, I work IT at a high school and there is a lot of upgrades being done to the system. So, in addition to the prep for the start of the year, there was also a significant amount of extra work. The result was much shorter breaks for lunch and less time after the workday to get things done. Secondly, I work at an ice cream shop during the summer and this year we lost some employees, we had some less than awesome hires, and just generally were busier than last year. The main result of this was just longer, harder nights each weekend. Both of these jobs, with the school year approaching and the season nearing its end, only got crazier as September approached. Very suddenly it was September and even more suddenly we have reached today.
I made a decision in the beginning of the month though, and I have, obviously, been taking a break from making sure stuff get on here. Getting things outside of the blog to make myself more able and comfortable to get things done was a big part of this. Resting, cleaning, organizing. And a lot of thinking. Untamed Scribe and I have also talked about what's been going on and what will be going on here. To best relate to you our plans I am going to break things up a bit.
Notes of the Wandering Alchemist
In August I did attempt to expand on my Monday notes throwing up some of the items I had noticed or run into over the week. Announcements, new Kickstarters, releases, and other related things were all included. I want to continue this and will continue doing the news posts this way, with a couple tweaks. First off all I may do this twice a week depending on how much stuff I manage to come across. Secondly, I will be creating a separate post for updates to the Blog. In fact, I mean to be less strict on myself for posts like that in timing and more lenient on when they come out. I will not be sharing every single post to various sources, though links to each and every post will likely still journey through Twitter and Facebook.
Additionally I will continue to release Resources for Every GM again, once a week, though I may change the day. Tuesday and Thursday are still the two best days to get big posts out there, however, and it is likely to stay on Thursday. A minor change will be in increasing reviews. A big part of this is the large number of DMs Guild titles I have at this point. I want to begin getting reviews out for those and not use them as Resources replacements. Instead I will throw those up around once a week when I start getting to it. Probably on weekends.
What all this means is that I will be more focused on getting Resources articles out regularly, getting more reviews out, and sharing links to awesome stuff more. As this all becomes routine, I will continue to seek to improve it, but there are other projects to work on as well.
Untamed Dice
We haven't had a new episode in a number of weeks now, sadly. At first this was a simple lack of time to edit properly. Now it is a deliberate decision. We still have audio to get you and I am sorry for the delay to our Edge of the Empire game, but I think it'll be worth the wait. One of my players works with audio for a living and he is going to help get me some better software to work with and some tutorials on some basic editing techniques. This increased knowledge should allow Untamed Dice to become that much better.
Another reason we haven't been releasing anything is so that we have a plan in place for new stuff. That plan has begun to form and will hopefully take shape sooner than later. First it involves the very simple fact that a new episode of Brave New World will not be recorded (very likely) until almost November. It's a work schedule thing and unavoidable. Secondly, it involves that all those time issues that caused the lack of material coming out also caused us to play very few games. In fact, we have not played Strahd in almost 2 months, we have not managed to get Monster of the Week finished, we have not had time to try something else, and we have played maybe 2 games in general.
This means we have nothing aside the end of the Star Wars adventure. Well, almost. One of the nights we played was a small Luxarrahn game. Luxarrah has been on my mind quite a bit since prepping the last game of BNW. I have come up with a lot of stuff while putting computers together and stocking ice cream. The result is this new game and I am very excited to keep exploring Luxarrah through 5th Edition D&D. That game is also one we recorded. It is one we will continue to record. It is the easiest game group to get together and should become a very regular game. The only thing that will take as much precedent will be BNW. One shot games of other systems are pretty much on hold till things get brought under control again, but more on that down the road.
DMs Guild & Beyond
This is something I have really enjoyed doing and want to do more of. It is something I have been putting some work into whenever I can. Part of my time will continue to be more regulated towards those projects. I have a few things coming down the line and a hopeful schedule for these. Included among them are the (finally) 3rd Volume of Spells of Old, as well as a 4th. I am also working on some more patrons for Paths to Power Volume 2 to finally come out. Finally there is also the trinket supplement I have been working on.
In addition to DMs Guild products there are a couple of things being worked on, but these are more long-term. Soonest you should see a class a friend and I are working on. A test version at least. Then later on we will get that up as a full class. The other world I am working on with another friend is slow in taking shape, but as winter proceeds I hope to take some larger steps there. Finally in terms of getting some of my homebrew out there, I think Luxarrah will be foremost among my development. In what way this will show up, big supplements or small or both, I do not know yet. Nevertheless these are the things I am dedicating some of my time for.
Patreon
This has probably changed least over its existence, but changes fairly significantly each time. Untamed Scribe and I have decided we need to make some changes here and those are going to be fleshed out overt the coming weeks. Included will be changing goals from things we plan on doing anyway to milestones for which we can reward you folk, such as giveaways and more stuff like wristbands and stickers. We will also be changing the Patron rewards quite a bit. First of all we want to share the Untamed Rant with everyone. This will get more people the Rant and will make things easier on us. All of the Patrons will get it 2 weeks earlier than everyone else though, just like the Cracks in the Rift story. Other things we are talking about are giveaways for Patrons, newsletters, a mailbag addition to each Rant, and similar things. I will be sure to keep everyone apprised of what is up as we figure it out.
What This All Means
We are coming back. Effort as been focused on making work less daunting and more doable. Ideas and talks are to change things up so that what we do is better and easier on us, even if that means there is less for a while. We will not be overextending ourselves by trying to start this whole plan Monday. October is when we begin to make a big shift. By then a new routine will be in place. Lists for Resources, schedules for Untamed Dice, a reworked Patreon, and more will all be in place. The rest of September is to take all the information above and everything we have been talking about and building a foundation for future things. Extra time will be spent in prep work for this stuff and more fully recovering from August. To keep up with what I am thinking and working on be sure to follow me on Twitter. Do not be dismayed by a lack of posts for September. We look forward to making a good re-impression in October!
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