This is just a mental dump of what's on my mind at the moment. I don't expect anyone to read this, but if you do I thank you in advance. I literally have no idea where this post will lead.
I've been thinking a lot lately about game design and what I want to do with game design outside of the Pepper&Carrot RPG I'm designing. I've been really happy that Pelgrane Press have released a lot of their rules under a Creative Commons By Attribution license, so I've been thinking what games I'd like to design under those rules. I've also been drawn back into Fudge, which is the rules that spawned the Fate RPG. I love how systems like Fudge can be extended to different ideas (e.g.: modeling an entity like a corporation or a ship use similar rules as a character). I've had a few ideas about a game for modeling the computer revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and while I'm thinking that might be more a board game I still wonder if it could be modeled with a RPG.
I keep being drawn to the writings of Chris Crawford and his ideas about Interactive Storytelling. I think it's interesting that the systems for storytelling that I'm most interested in (RPGs) have some overlap with Chris' work, and I wish there was a way to get both of those worlds to work together. I think the main problem is that the game moderator (GM or DM) is a person in the RPG, and the other players are people as well. Systematizing the interactions between players and GMs using a language like English is quite challenging, as we found out with the text adventures in interactive fiction. I still feel like there's some work to be done there, but not sure what.
I'm finding myself also wanting to look more into low level programming with C. I feel I've forgotten a lot of programming over the years. In the Modern C it had a challenge to write a merge sort or a quick sort in the early chapters. I stopped cold and got angry. How dare this author expect me within a few pages of this book to whip out a merge sort. Hell, I couldn't even do that on a good day. Then I started thinking about why that was. I program for a living, but most of my programming relies on libraries and other folks doing the heavy lifting. Hmm. Wonder if I should take some of my time to learn more. Perhaps a retreat of some form?
I've started culling some of the things that I'm working on and decluttering them. I've thought about restarting my Open Metalcast podcast but the will really isn't there. I'm finding my focus wanting to do other things. Also I've been exploring other musical genres. It's not that I'm tired of metal, but my musical tastes are branching out into more electronic music. Perhaps it's because I'm looking for something simple that can help me focus better on the task at hand.
I think I should blog more, but that's an evergreen topic. How many blogs have a post that states "It's been a while since I last blogged."? How many of them have said that over 6 years ago?
I read an article about Donald Knuth and how he can't stop telling stories. One thing that struck me in this article was how he handles his todo list. "No, my scheduling principle is to do the thing I hate most on my to-do list. By week's end, I'm very happy." He continues: "A person's success in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. If you can do something really well but there are other things at which you're failing, the latter will hold you back. But if almost everything you do is up there, then you've got a good life. And so I try to learn how to get through things that others find unpleasant." That really struck me. I think I need to internalize this more in my life; not only getting the most important things done, but also the things that I keep seeing on my list that I haven't done because I don't want to.
If you have, thank you for reading this far. :)