...If i came home from vacation and there *wasn't* a penguin in my freezer.

As of last night, we've returned from the far-off land of Arkansas. The vacation was good, but i'm glad to be back.

EDIT: Other pictures from the vacation have been posted. I recommend you at least check out these two.

~PS

Well, here I am in Arkansas. I've set sheri's folks up with the wireless router we brought for them - so they get a router and i get a net connection for the week. Win/win. I did spend a good part of wednesday attempting to fix their computer. I've run all the spyware-removal tools you can shake a stick at and installed avg-free on their system, but it's still quite sluggish. It probably needs a reinstall, but we're not in a position to do that atm.

The trip out here was long, but not too bad (as i haven't had a long drive since christmas) and actually about an hour and change shorter than the last time we made the trip.

Sarah's wedding on saturday went well, and her mom managed not to strangle her in the days leading up to it. That was good.

Sheri's parents are pretty much addicted to wii bowling - which is amusing to witness. I hit pro status on it a few days ago, but i'm probably going to lose that over the next few games. I did manage to get 4 strikes in a row last night though.

I haven't had quite as much downtime as i figured i might. Today is really the first time since last wednesday i've had to work on any personal stuff. I haven't made great progress on the aforementioned game development, but i've got a decent outline. It's a start anyway.

We'll be here for a couple more days - heading back to TN on wednesday.

~PS

Ok, so i really wanted a codename for this - something that would be cool and in some way symbolic, but not overly trite or pretentious. I wanted said codename for three basic reasons:

1. Because i'm just enough of a geek to think codenames are cool.
2. To have a short-hand way of referring to the project...
3. ...because i don't want to release the actual name just yet. I mean, if i come right out and say it's going to be called Perils in the Domain of Zombie Chicken, it won't be quite as cool when i actually want to 'publish' info for the Zombie Egg Player's Guide and the Monster Chicken Manual - don't you think?

Anyway, I haven't been able to think of anything that met the aforementioned criteria, so for now I guess i'll just refer to it as 'this thing i'm working on'.

I haven't talked really talked about it much on the blog, but some of you know that off-and-on for about the last 8 months, i've been working on a new gaming system and setting. (You know, because with creating/running 2-3 D&D games, pursuing my other hobbies, work, our house, hanging out with friends, etc has left me just so much free time
that i don't know what to do with...) It's been pretty sparse for the most part, and i probably don't have much more than 40 hours worth of work on it...but a lot of thought has gone into it.

Now, I really *do* like D&D (3rd edition, anyway) and have no intention of abandoning it, but I've always wanted to create my own gaming system since back before we started playing that one. We had some fun times with some of my early attempts at such things, but they were all very nebulous and I wouldn't go so far as to say they were coherent systems. So when i got this sort of interesting idea for a new setting a while back, I figured it would be cool to work it out and write a roleplaying system to go with it.

Since that time, my ideas for this project have morphed so much as to be almost unrecognizable from the original concept. The last couple of weeks have been very productive regarding this project - I managed to get a few key points of inspiration that have really helped to solidify some of the ideas i was kicking around. At this point, I think both the setting and the mechanics are about 80% set - which is to say I'm now planning on starting Phase 2, which will be starting to actually write this stuff up (and the ironing out of the remaining 20% of the details). We're about to go on a vacation during which I should have a fair bit of free time and I'm hoping to get a fair amount compiled then.

Finally, some notes/thoughts for posterity:

The setting I think will be very interesting and fun to play in/with, as it's a bit unusual. The one concern I have regarding it (that i'm trying to work out) is its scalability: i.e., how many different ways can the pc's interact with the setting. I don't think it will be greatly limiting, but I do think it will color a lot of the game - probably a good deal more than a setting ordinarily does.

The mechanics is where I think i might lose some people (esp. the d20 purists): basically it's something like a d&d-inspired, de-muddled white-wolf system. I chose this sort of thing for several reasons, but i won't go into all that here. It is meant to be very simple (at least on the surface) and I think the primary complaint i'll get is that the pc's will seem too similar at first glance. I don't really think that will actually be the case, but the differentiation between them will be more on the shoulders of the players in terms of backstory, character development, etc as opposed to having lots of mechanics make decisions for you by way of pc 'classes', etc. Also, another modified game/setting I've been running (Liimar - which was another, earlier fork of a similar thought process to the design of this game) has proven to me that roleplaying and story are far, far more important than whatever mechanical system is employed (or even what abilities the characters have) when it comes to an enjoyable campaign - and this system is being constructed with that specifically in mind.

~PS

Not too much has been going on this month. By leg is mostly better, and life has pretty much returned to normal - that is to say, pretty uneventful.

The coffeehouse started a week ago - that was fun. We've had a couple of really good gaming sessions in the last couple of weeks too. Ally had a vet appointment yesterday - her necessary stuff has been taken care of for a while. Still looking forward to jamming with Robb & co. again sometime.

We're about to begin our preparations for our trip out to Arkansas next week for Sheri's sister's wedding. That will be the first trip anywhere we've taken since christmas. Maybe I'll have something to talk about after that...

~PS