I'll keep this basic for now. I think I've dropped every attempt to document my life after like two logs, so it would be a bit ridiculous to pour too much energy into dressing this up too early. There must be a better way to do it than manually adding line breaks every line, hah.
I'm not in a great place, but I have seen worse, I guess. Just struggling to find any work at my current location and it's going to be a real pain if I don't make it, as my girlfriend has a very good gig here. I, on the other hand, can't do basic labour because I don't speak the language they want (it's not English), and there aren't that many positions for my degree.
Should just work on my portfolio and keep sending stuff out. Can't allow stress to get to me. That's when I truly become useless—when I get super anxious. Okay, let's talk about something nice.
We finished Widow's Bay. I've enjoyed the first part of the season more. As usual with those mystery shows, the build-up feels way more satisfying than the reveal and post-reveal. I think the biggest drag happens when there is a director switch for episodes 4–8, but I also can't say episode 9 is something crazy either, so I don't know. Maybe I just saw the credits change and kind of forced myself into that conclusion. The overall show is still pretty fun, though. It kind of gives a more crude take on Remedy's paranormal fiction.
We ran the seventh (I wasn't keeping track, but I think that's correct) session of our Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign. I do like the system, but I must say not having any campaign tools does worry me a bit. I did feel some natural ease when running a one-shot of Necessary Evil recently because that one came with a nice campaign overview discussing all the possible locations, factions, NPCs, and relationships. I'm on the fence about the actual gameplay for Necessary Evil, but I did like the campaign format.
You've been sort of dropped into the middle of the plot here if you're reading this. So, regarding TTRPGs: I've started a Discord server called "non-DnD TTRPGs X", where X is my current location. It's been going for more than a year now, and last week we ran a big meetup with around 30 people. Usually GMs just organise individual tables themselves, so we wanted to try a different format.
The thing is, this club really helped me get into TTRPGs properly. Before that I'd played some occasional D&D and Vampire, but those weren't really my games. When I decided to start the club, I knew I'd have to run games and do it in English, which isn't my native language. Pause for your big shock. Yeah, before that I was really worried about "doing it right," and I also think the systems I was using weren't the perfect match for me.
I've recently counted and I've played around 25 systems now, although a lot of those were one-shots, to be fair. I definitely lean towards OSR as a GM. Games like Mothership and Mythic Bastionland really speak to me in terms of how I want to run things.
As a player, I still dream about grand narratives, but to be fair I haven't seen many GMs capable of pulling that off long-term. Four to six sessions? Sure, maybe. A proper narrative that goes for 12+ sessions? I haven't seen it, and I've played with quite a few people by now. Once you get a GM who's obsessed with "plot", they usually spend an insane amount of time prepping every session and eventually either they burn out or the players drift away.
As much as I can't exactly praise the grand narrative aspect of my current DCC campaign—I'm trying, but it's nothing to write home about—I do feel relatively confident that I can actually run this every two weeks until it reaches a proper conclusion. Right now I'm aiming for around 13 or 14 sessions. I think people should be a bit more realistic and more open to shorter campaigns. This constant dream of multi-year epics that I see from time to time feels a bit unreasonable with how most people are these days.
Or maybe I'm just fucking old. Hah.
This whole week was very hot. Don't feel like doing much even on a weekend when you're supposed to be doing FUN stuff. I've tried to finish "Mouse P.I." Just so i can stop thinking about it but damn that game is longer than you'd expect. I get this desire with games from times to times to just be done with it. It's not like i'm not enjoying myself but i had my fun and i just want to pack it in a box and put a tie on it, you know. P.I. for sure is pushing it. I think the last 2 hours feel excessive considering the new guns are meh and you don't really get new enemies aside from some cute reskins.
Also started "Replaced" yesterday and i heard a lot of good things. I must say i'm not particularly impressed so far. It is gorgeous visually and there are some nice pieces of lore so far but the gameplay... I just don't get how "Mixtape" gets dragged through the dirt but "Replaced" recieves zero questions. Sure there is MORE gameplay but is anybody really excited about 2d batman arkham combat these days? I've really enjoyed "Mixtape" although yeah it's basically an interactive movie. Maybe i'm just being forgiving as in my opinion games overall are bad at... Down to earth human emotions.
We've started "I kissed a girl" reality show per gf's request. It's alright. I've enjoyed a couple of dating reality shows we've watched so far but at some point it all feels kinda samey. But she can say the same about sitcom bs i'm watching from time to time.
The temperature is getting to me. Can't write much. I'm trying to push some cozy flick to watch today before bed but so far i hadn't had much success. I must say picking cozy movies for when you just want to ooze is way easier when you're single. It's not a big deal but I'm just saying.
So i did make 2 entries into this thing and then dissapeared for 2 weeks. I do have my patterns. It's funny, you know. You can make your random social posts while sitting on a toilet at any point but the moment you have to write a paragraph or two it immedieately turns into something that requires dedication. I mean it totally makes sense as you are reading a proper piece of writing effort right now. You MAY THINK that the quality of this is basically the same as meme posts with cats chasing dogs that get posted in one of your various feeds but you'd be A FOOL!!! No but really i should just write this.
Also should try to avoid turning this into i've watched / played / read. Would be nice to at least try to include some personal stuff. But to be fair does anybody really want to read about it these days? I remember reading one of the Wil Wheaton's books where he included his old blog entries with some extra commentary and even then he was... Well skewing the truth trying to make it more *remember to include a happy gif here*.
I'm in Belgium right now and trying to get a job. Not gonna go in details but let's say although belgians do speak perfect english at least in my region they also do love dutch and really don't love to hire people who don't speak it. So i'm studying dutch. It's actually kinda fun. Every day for 3 hours. For so long i was working on my degree and it was tough. It's nice to do something productive which also doesn't push you to the brink as an individual. It's A1 though proper pain will come with tenses i assume. But until then ik heet Lev. Aangenaam! For some reason i especially love figuring out counting. I think my old math tendencies are still there. Tweeentwintig is twenty two. Let me check. Yep, correct. I do need the "e" with dots after the "twee" but i don't know how to do that with my keyboard tbh.
I really want to make a section on this site just about TTRPG stuff. I keep running "Dungeon Crawl Classics" and it would be fun to just write about it and other games from time to time. Currently i'm going through the "The Griffon's Saddlebag" book to pick out ideas for magic items. The ones in the book are often very 5e oriented as they must be but there is a lot of fun ideas that can be adjusted for OSR purposes. I know that you can also find a lot of things in blogs but it feels way easier to scroll through a book with consistent styling. I can do it on a tram while on the way to class every morning. I'm trying to figure out how to make my own content from scratch. I feel comfortable enough running prewritten modules now and adjusting them on the go but writing stuff from nothing just feels so... Amorphic? Is that a word? I don't know where to start (don't get me wrong i have ideas but which one is the one and when is it good enough for you to say "yep that's the start that's worth the effort") and i don't know where to finish. Probably need to read more blogs and just do it. That's one thing that i got with TTRPGs. Eventually you just gotta do it.