084 - Hurt

"Why do you feel the need to make everything public?"

I hurt somebody with one of my older posts, and the question was asked. Why *do* I feel the need to make everything public?

Making things public is how I cope. It's how I process my feelings and emotions. Happy, sad, funny, introspective, whatever - in my head, all these thoughts run around in a frantic, jumbled mess. Typing them out give me a chance to put the thoughts in order and make them coherent. I can see them, I can read them, I can check if they make sense.

If I write them down and they look good and they make sense, I post them to the world.

As long as the world doesn't come back and say "Dude, that's messed up and makes no sense", then I know I did something wrong and I need to rethink those thoughts.

I *live* publicly. I have no secrets. Secrets cause stress and ulcers. I try to live as genuinely as possible so no one has to guess if I'm sincere or not. If I say "Oh man I wish I could come to your thing but I have plans", you should KNOW that I'm not coming to your thing because I have plans and NOT that I'm not coming to your thing because I secretly don't like you but need to be nice to you.

Consequently, if I am at your thing I am there because I actually want to be there and not because it is an obligation.

This has helped me in real life, too. Instead of making up excuses to not go places, I tell people my actual reasons. Maybe i have diarrhea, maybe I know there will be booze there, maybe I don't feel up to it - HONESTY WORKS!

So why do I feel the need to make everything public? It's all selfish reasons. It's all about me.

Still, I've hurt someone. So my lesson learned here is that when I *am* making everything public, I need to remember that other people involved may still wish to remain private. I need to stop using people's names - I can do that.

The person who i hurt with the original post is very angry and hurt and i can't find a way to make it better. I can't go back in time to undo this, and I'm not going to stop writing about my life in the future because this *is* my selfish blog, but this person means a lot to me and is one of the bestest people in my life so... I don't know. Any suggestions?

085 - Hurt Follow-Up

It has been suggested that instead of posting my feelings publicly, I should address people directly. Yeaaaaaaaah... but I'd have to put pants on for that. NO THANKS.

086 - Has It Been Done?

I got an idea for a Role Playing Game product, and I need to know (1) Has It Been Done, and (2) Is It A Good Idea?

So here's the idea: A deck of cards that contains a complete Dungeon & Dragons Adventure worth of generic encounters. Designed to be either a stand-alone adventure OR as a filler for those times that you KNOW your player's aren't going to get anything accomplished during this session. A standard deck of 52 poker-sized playing cards, each one with a different spur-of-the-moment scenario that should take no more than 15 minutes or so for the adventurers to complete, each one ending with a door being revealed which leads to the unknown. Two of the cards are "Final Battle" cards which could end the game.

Each card begins with "You find yourselves in a room with..."

EXAMPLE: "You find yourselves in a room with a large, ornate statue of a Frog in the center, facing you. Measuring approximately 8 feet tall by 14 feet wide, the statue takes up over half of this 20-foot-by-20-foot cavernous room. It's hard not to notice that the eyes of the idol seem to gleam in the torchlight of the room, almost as if they were... giant gemstones? Other than the door you came in, you see doors to the North and the West. (The eyes are indeed gemstones - Giant rubies to be exact. Attempting to remove them will set off a ribbiting alarm sound which attracts 1d6 Frogmen, wee page XX of Monster Manual).
There would be an overall theme to the deck, an "Admiral Darkstar" figure who owns the dungeon and must be destroyed, Soul Gems that need to be gathered, villagers that need to be rescued, so on and so forth.
Price point would be about six bucks. What do you think?

ADDED: The 52 scenarios (some 13 hours of game play I think?) is just per deck, the 52 encounters tied to that particular "Boss" or "Theme". Mix and match, combine, use as much or as little as you like... the main reason I would make something like this would be for those FRUSTRATING times when I have a railroad bit of the adventure set up and the party decides to go off on a tangent. My mind is focused on telling the story of why this town needs saving and that the quest for the mystic sword is so important (for example), but they just want to find out more about that goat I mentioned in the flavor text leading up to the town.

"Fine. You guys IGNORE the inviting warmth of The Plot Device Inn and instead go to investigate the goat you saw on the way in to town. shuffleshuffle Yu find the goat and he leads you... he leads you to a large, Oaken door in the side of a nearby bluff. He seems to be pleading with you to open the door..."

Keeps me, as a Dungeon Master, from yelling "IGNORE THE GOAT DAMMIT AND GO INTO THE INN WHERE THE MYSTERIOUS OLD MAN IS WAITING TO GIVE YOU A MAP AND A SWORD, DAMMIT!"

Designed as a supplement, but can be played as a stand-alone game :)