eddyfate

Some people have been asking me how CCP is (and will) fare in the wake of the current Iceland economy crisis. I think this interview with our CEP, Hilmar Petursson, summarizes it, so I thought I would pass it on.

Edge Online: In the Eye of the Financial Storm

Work has been crazy, but a major log-jam of products just cleared up on my end, and they're all products I'm glad to see out there for a variety of reasons.

Bad Night at Blackmoon Farm is our first SAS offering for Hunter: The Vigil, written by the line's developer, the ENnie-award winning Chuck Wendig. It's a creepy tale about a group of hunters who try to retire from the Vigil. It's more location-based instead of event-based, and I'm curious how Hunter fans will end up using it.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jess Hartley makes her SAS debut with our second Changeling: The Lost offering, The Rose-Bride's Plight. This is actually a murder mystery set in the complex political world of the Lost, which makes it a lot more integrated, giving you tons of bits and pieces to play with. I admit that I was skeptical at how this would come out, but it's a great story about making choices between your needs and the needs of everyone around you. It's a buck more, but it's got 50% more meat than a typical SAS.

Finally, the latest installment of the Scion Companion just went live a few minutes ago. The Celestial Bureaucracy covers another new pantheon for Scion: the Chinese gods. Like the Tuatha, it has a ton of new gods, a new Pantheon Purview, two sample characters, details on the Underworld, Godrealm and Place of Power, some new Creatures, Relics, Followers and Guides, and a new Titan to be terrified by. I was able to get Scion and Exalted veteran Dean Shomshak to work on this piece, and he did a great job tackling a really tough mythology.

I still have (at current count) another eighteen projects currently in the works, so there will be more cool stuff coming down the pipe, but these are some great products by some amazing writers.

* Signed up for iSweat. It's reskinned Twitter (and even syncs with Twitter), but it's also an easy way for me to be more honest about my workout schedule, such as it is. The idea is to "break one sweat every day," but I'm not there yet. Now that we have a smith machine as well as the elliptical machine in the condo, I can eventually build up to alternating between weight training and cardio.

* Quick Media Whore bit: Avoid Fringe. People who liked Lost may like it (I didn't like Lost either), but it comes across as a slow-moving, refried X-Files. I mean, props to J.J. for juggling a ton of creative projects, but this looks like it could have used more work, or at least a better set-up. Usually I try to give new shows four episodes, but nothing about this show clicks for me.

* In the process of reading Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. In some respects, it's kind of a counter-argument to the relationship between RPGs and games posited in Rules of Play, so I'm intrigued by the philosophical tension (although SP seems to be aligning with my interpretation of RoP's view on RPGs anyhow). I may have to see if I can dig up First Person as well at some point, but I'm still only about a third of the way through SP.

* Slowly making some changes here at work, between physical office move and subtle changes to my workflow. Trying to move administrative stuff to Mondays and being more selective about how I spend my time at work, but I'm still spending about 40-60 hours a week working. One of the downsides of being in a part of the company that touches on a little bit of everything is that it's harder to juggle when "everything" keeps getting slowly bigger.

* Wedding this Saturday, and more Victorian Mage this Sunday. Hopefully things will get rolling now that we've seen the so-called "ghost."

So this week has been kind of insane.

Monday I got up, went to my car, found I was low on gas, then spent 20 minutes trying to find a gas station that actually had gas to sell. Upon failing this, I drove back home (so I would have enough gas to try again the next day) and worked from home. I then proceeded to work a ten hour day. There are three interesting things about that:

1) It seems that the AC went out in the office at about the same time, so I ended up avoiding another round of "sitting in my chair and quietly melting."

2) I barely noticed. When Michelle got home around 5ish, I was knee-deep in a project that "will only take a few more minutes." When I was done, I didn't even notice an hour had passed.

3) I was stupidly productive. I got five projects off my desk that had been lingering in some form of limbo, and I'm now very nearly out of the GenCon backlog-slash-clusterfuck.

So I went in Tuesday very pleased with myself, especially after having found the one pump that actually had gas nearby. And promptly ran smack-dab into a complicated office move. Just about everying in IPD&D and Operations is changing offices, but it's being done in a way that means we have to move one person at a time. Craig was moving in my office (which I will be vacating here shortly), so I worked in the library on some off-line projects for the afternoon. In the meantime, I got a swag package from Epic Games, so I got a chance to play Unreal Tournament III on my PS3, and once we get a new XBox 360 I can finally try out Gears of War.

Today I found out that I won't be moving until at least this afternoon, but Craig is largely moved in (if not unpacked), so I put my computer back together and I'm getting some work done. Of course, this is while contractors are here to continue to fix the AC as well as the gas leak from last week, as well as the separate team of contractors that are here to install our security gate. But, I'm running part two of my Wednesday lunch-time Hunter game today, and I have a meeting this afternoon, so hopefully things will fall into place enough that I can be in my new office by tomorrow morning. (I can't choose to work from home the rest of the week due to meetings.)

This happens to me a lot -- things falling into place without me realizing it. I'm going to be a bit behind in the end, most likely, but I got so much done on Monday that it should net out to what I anticipated getting done this week anyhow.

Friday was our company kickoff. Seems that the company traditionally has a big party and meeting looking at the year forward around September, because that's near the end of the Icelandic summer, and it's evolved into a regular time to get together and talk about our goals for the upcoming year.

The North American office went to Lake Lanier. After the chartered buses failed to provide enough seats and some of us had to wait for another one, we all got there about half an hour late. We had some company presentations, lunch, and then the afternoon was given to ourselves to enjoy the area. Ethan found a nice side room with a table, so he, Aileen, Aaron, Joe, Russell and I got together and had a one-shot D&D 4e game set in Hollowfaust in the Scarred Lands setting. I played a Dragonborn fighter that grew from a dragon's tooth that Aaron's character used when they were surrounded by ghouls. I've never played someone else's magic item before, but it was pretty cool. We got through three combat encounters and a little bit of roleplay in seven hours, so the 4e system is certainly faster (and probably would have been even faster if we knew the rules better). It was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to another opportunity to game with that crew in future.

Saturday, however, did not go as well. After discussion we decided to try to make it to the Auburn Camarilla Game of the Month. I had an idea for a new Requiem character that I want to try out (since Jack Spade is evolving back into a character that I play once in a while instead of one I play as my main character), and we decided to head down there and give it a test run. Then we noticed that most of the gas stations around us were closed and had no gas. We finally managed to find one that sold us gas for $4 a gallon. After heading back home to check our finances, we realized that going to the Auburn game would have cost us around $100, and we had two more cars we had to try to fill up over the course of the week. So, reluctantly, we decided to skip it. On the one hand, it gives me more time to flesh out the idea, but I was looking forward to getting a chance to LARP again after months of not being able to. I did get some reading for work done, however.

Today's kind of up in the air. I'm thinking I might try to get some more work done (whether reading or redlining I'm not sure yet), and then see where the day leads me.

Monday night was work. Tuesday night was... something. Installing iTunes 8 and posting my new avatar, I think. Tonight, I worked late and then hung out a bit to watch the first games of the Blood Bowl league.

All of them have had one thing in common: me being really and inexplicably tired when I get home.

I'm not sure why. I haven't had any real changes to my diet, and I haven't been working out (yet -- hopefully later this week). I think I've been sleeping well, or at least I have no memory of sleeping poorly. I just get home and don't have much energy to do anything, and sometimes I'll even be a little achy. It's probably just my body fighting off another cold or something.

Tomorrow is my first official Blood Bowl game, and Friday is an all-day work off-site meeting (including a one-shot Hollowfaust game I'm playing in using D&D 4e). Saturday is supposed to be a Cam Requiem game, which I'm pretty lackluster about (between local domain drama and just a general malaise about my PCs currently), and Sunday I need to get some work done to catch up some more.

Today was one of my rare clear days -- no meetings or any pending urgent projects, so I could (theoretically) get a lot of stuff done. Instead, while I did get a lot done, it was largely stuff that wasn't actually related to what I planned to get done. So it goes.

I rounded out the day with a half game of Blood Bowl with the matt, in which his halfling team managed to score a point on my orc team (the Orcland Goffs). This proves that a) I still can't roll for shit, b) I'm really rusty on BB orc strategy (which is really a very nuanced version of "hit it until it falls down, and then hit it again"), c) orcs can have a passing game, in the right circumstances, and d) I need to buy more rerolls. We're actually going to start an office league next week, so it's a great reason to play a game I've loved for years, as well as maybe painting (or, more likely, getting someone else to paint) some of my miniatures. I found an orc rock band packed with my team (which I now think are 40k miniatures, although previously I thought they were a variation of the orc cheerleaders). I'm hoping to start using them as my cheerleaders -- specifically, as the half-time band. I also have an orc apothecary and two assistant coaches I need to get painted.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get some more redlining done, and then we're all going to see Carlos Mencia live in concert. Sunday is the first session of oakthorne's Victorian Age Mage: The Awakening game, Divine Thread. That's some good nerding, right there.

I haven't been posting as much on here in the past year about my personal life, aside from some piped Twitter updates. Part of that is because much of my life is my job nowadays, and I'm not always comfortable talking about work details in a public forum (and while I use filters now and then, I've found that when I have to start locking things down, I just end up talking to people directly). Another part is that I don't often boot up my laptop at home anymore, when I have free time. However, talking to some podcasters at Dragon*Con about airing their personal lives (George Hran, Soccergirl, JC Hutchins and Evo Terra, specifically), I decided that I do want to get back in the habit of writing about my life. It's a stress relief that I enjoy, and it helps me to look back on my life and have some perspective. I've had this LJ for five-is years, and I still find it has utility.

One of the things that this blog has caused is a sense of quasi-celebrity that has only increased since I started work at WW. I've never quite gotten used to people coming up to me who now who I am and what I do without me knowing them at all. However, I realized that I am becoming more used to it: it's something I can anticipate and roll with easier than I could a year ago. I think my retreat from my LJ was a response to my initial disquiet, but it's time to get back on the horse.

Just something bouncing around in my head today as I sit at he sick today, playing with my iPhone and feeling disappointed and frustrated with people.

So much weird and fucked-up shit has crossed me and Merry's desk today that I actually taped up a sheet of paper, wrote "WHAT?!" across the top and started keeping track of it. From 2pm until now, the count's already at six, and I'm sure if I had started this morning it would have been double that.

So I've confirmed that I will be at Dragon*Con for one day (this coming Sunday) to work on two panels:

"How To Get A Job In The Gaming Industry" (1pm, Sunday, Salon B Hilton) with Mike Capps (Epic Games) and Cari Begle (Stardock Entertainment)

"Horror in Gaming" (7pm, Sunday, Salon B Hilton) with Mike Capps and Rucht Lilavivat

So I'll probably be wandering around all that day. I may be by the CCP/White Wolf booth, but I also have plans to hook up with sailormur for lunch or a drink to talk about podcasting and just catch up (since I only saw her briefly at Origins). Also, to pick up a copy of Playing for Keeps

I'm also going to ICC as planned, as well as to the Gamer Adventures LARP Cruise in late October.

Currently I'm not going to EVE FanFest in Iceland in November, but the company may decide they have a business need to send me.

After that, I don't have any significant travel plans until WrestleMania next year in Houston. (At least, not yet.)

There is too much -- let me sum up.

* Went to see the ECW live show/Smackdown tapings last night. A lot of fun -- more intimate than most WWE live shows I've seen, but still bigger than, say, HWA.

* Stupidly busy at work, between a bajillion projects and trying to prep for GenCon. My schedule for GenCon is hella packed, so my feeble plans to possibly get a game together for fun fell apart.

* Tomorrow is the last day of our Primetime Adventures game, Verona. Our Producer has started an Actual Play thread with a ton of commentary from the group.

* My friends are far more creative than I. While oakthorne is working on one of his novels and emprint is working on a new game design, any free time I get seems to be spent reading stuff for work or zoning out to the television. I've been kicking around resurrecting one of my fiction projects, but just when I think I have an hour a week to work on it, that hour goes to something else. I am an envy burrito.

* I got a 3G iPhone a couple of weeks ago, and I'm totally in love with it. Somehow I became a Mac cultist when I wasn't looking. I think it was the free cookies and juice.

To the Flame finished uploading, so back to work.

I wanted to wait a few days for the initial glut of voting to die down.

White Wolf is nominated for a few products this year. There is, of course, a lot of Changeling love to go around (and a surprising lack of Ventrue clanbook love). There's nothing I worked on that's actually up for voting (Scion Companion: Tuatha de Dannan got Honorable Mention for Best Electronic Book, which brings my list of almost-awards to six), but please consider voting for The Fear-Maker's Promise for Best Electronic Book. It was written by the incomparable Chuck Wendig, and it would be a great support of the Storytelling Adventure System line.

http://www.ennieawards.com/voting.html

Today I go to my (new and correct) skull base specialist. Even though I haven't had my ears looked at in about nine months, they're still clear, healthy and intact. I'm going back in six months for a checkup. Also, my hearing is a little better in my left ear and a little worse in my right, so it's evening out.

Then, I got back to my office, and as I tried to migrate my Mac mini away from my BlackBerry so I can ditch it for the new iPhone, I caused my calendar to be completely wiped out (which my iPhone dutifully copied). I had to drive back home and get my BlackBerry to get my calendar, and then the BlackBerry copied it over before it wiped itself. I managed to pull the plug before it wiped the calendar on the Exchange server, but it's caused a lingering problem with my Entourage calendar. At the end of the day I got it all mostly working, but I had to do some weird judo to get my 280 tasks out of the BlackBerry and into a form that could replicate to my iPhone, my Mac and on the internet (Toodledo.com plus the iPhone app Todo, if you're interested).

As I came home from work, Michelle was pretty freaked out. Turns out she found a spent bullet shell about six feet from our bedroom window when she was walking Puck. It was in the middle of the sidewalk, and she picked it up to look at it before she realized what it was.



We talked to the management, and got a "well, the manager isn't here, but she'll call you tomorrow." Seems that shootings aren't worth a call at 6pm. Wouldn't want to upset the manager after work hours, would we?

I went back to the apartment and started the lengthy process of transferring my tasks into my iPhone, when the power went out in the apartment complex. By that point, I had pretty much had it, so I went to have Mexican while carefully typing the tasks into my tiny iPhone keyboard.

That day sucked. I'm ready for the next one now.

A neat SAS just went up: Ruins of Ur is a different kind of story for the World of Darkness, focusing on a military unit's exploration of an ancient tomb. It's written by Ben Counter, who has written a lot of Warhammer novels, and based on some material and ideas by Will Hindmarch. I think it's a fun story, and I'm glad it's finally able to see the light of day.

Also, part two of the Scion Companion is up. The Companion is a huge project that I'm continually happy to be a part of, and although this part has run into a stunning array of roadblocks, I hope the wait is well worth it. It's written by veteran White Wolf writer Jesse Heinig, and he did a great job pulling this rules-dense chapter together. I've learned a lot about the serial PDF/subscription format (and have a ton of ideas on how I would have done it differently), but the book is shaping up to be really awesome.

Finally, John Chambers and I were interviewed by Pulp Gamer at Origins, and the interview just hit the web. As usual, I'm talking a mile a minute at the start of the interview, but I really enjoyed the interview and would gladly do another one for Pulp Gamer again. We got to talk about more than just what's coming out in the next few months, going a little bit into our history, game theory and other interesting aspects of our jobs.

It's always weird when a lot of stuff falls into place in the course of a few hours.

Ken Hite told me while I was drunk at Origins that I'm a "B- talent." He amended that he grades fairly.

Note: I'm pretty sure this was a joke. Obviously I'm closer to B+. ;)

Greg Stafford gives his thumbs-up for the print-on-demand versions of Pendragon 5th and The Great Pendragon Campaign.

The Exalted forumites are creating legends around my comments regarding Dreams of the First Age on PDF.

More as I continue to dig my way out.

I don't often gush about myself on here, but Matt McElroy (matt_m_mcelroy) recently posted a really nice article about the Alternative Product line I'm responsible for.

White Wolf’s Alternative Publishing Efforts

It's a really good summary of what's been happening with AP over the past few months, and Matt's been very proactive in promoting our efforts -- not because he's required to, but because he's sincerely a fan. It really helps me to see someone who not only completely gets the vision we have for AP, but also has been a fan of my work since MET: Awakening. And he's a really cool guy.

So, since this is my space, I'm saying this as a person and not as a representative of the company: go check out FlamesRising.com. Read reviews. Buy stuff from the store. Check out the latest news. It's a good site, and it totally deserves your support.

So, this will only be funny for people who know me and Michelle, but I still post it because I find it awesomely hysterical.

For those who don't know, my wife Michelle (greebotrill) was recently appointed the Master Storyteller of the Camarilla. Regardless of what you think of that decision, the point is that my wife now is the head Storyteller for the White Wolf official fan club. I, of course, work for White Wolf, although my job has very little to do with the Camarilla at all (and has nothing to do with overt oversight or authority in the organization -- in essence, I'm just another member that can't draw the line between where my work ends and my hobby begins).

Anyhow, apparently there's a rumor circulating around now that if I say "no" to anything in the Camarilla, Michelle has to listen. To this I respond thus:

[ahem]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

I want to live in that fantasy world where Michelle does whatever I say without questioning me. Seriously.

I'm way behind on pictures, so I uploaded a lot to Flickr to get caught up:

Morocco pics

Wrestlemania pics

Holiday party pics

Retreat pics

Fanfest pics

Time to catch up on the life thing. Life is actually pretty sweet right now.

Work has settled back into a good rhythm (New York + Morocco + bronchitis really threw off my work flow for a while), and I'm making good headway on the development of the Scion Companion, which is turning out to be a very fun book. I'm also deep in research for a new book I'm developing with the help of Russell and Joe which also promises to be really cool. This is the third book I've developed from the beginning, but it's the first that's completely my idea and vision; Mind's Eye Theatre: The Awakening I was given a lot of leeway on, but I chose to be faithful to Awakening and Mind's Eye Theatre, and the Scion Companion was developed with a lot of insight and input from John and Rich. It's been exciting and nerve-wrecking to stretch some creative muscles that haven't seen use since Midway City.

One thing that combining my main hobby with my work has done is given me more time to invest in other interests (when I'm not working 50-hour weeks, that is). I've been playing Grand Theft Auto IV a fair bit, although I'm currently stuck on a couple of difficult missions. I've also been playing a lot of Rock Band, and with the new drum pads we got so we don't annoy the neighbors, I'm developing a solo career on drums to complement my career on guitar. I've also been catching up on some graphic novels that Kelley loaned me (as well as a stack I got at New York Comic Con), and I'm actually back to reading for my own enjoyment. I finally caught up on Torchwood Season Two, and I'm a few episodes into Doctor Who Season Four. I'm caught up on House (curse you, season ending cliffhanger!). I've been watching Raw every week, ECW most weeks, and Smackdown once in a while. I watch movies in the theater as well as at home. I had forgotten how much I gave up juggling a job and a freelance career.

Also, my social life in and out of work is far, far better than it was in St. Louis. Easily three times a week we're going out and doing something, whether it's dinner with friends, a movie with a group or just the three of us, or a party with my co-workers. Last Friday Michelle came to work for a BBQ at the office, and we expected to stay for only an hour or so, but ended up staying until midnight talking with some of the Icelanders before they headed back. This Saturday we're going to the Ren Faire with the company, and then there's a birthday party that evening. We've also been going to see live shows like Jon Stewart and Jeff Dunham (who will be in town next weekend). I've been playing in the local Camarilla LARPs, I'm in a Mage tabletop game that Joe's running for a few of us at the office (at least, in theory) and once again I've gotten that bug of kicking around a tabletop game of my own.

---

See, here's an example of how cool things are right now. Russell just came into my office to talk about a project idea he had, and we spent ten minutes just talking about ideas for it, intermixed with just bullshitting about old Choose Your Own Adventure style game books (not the actual CYOA books, but the slew of knockoffs that had you rolling dice or characters fighting each other and the like) and the original Vampire: the Masquerade -- Bloodlines video game.

... bronchitis. Doc gave me scrips for an inhaler, some pills and a nasal spray. After the all-hands meeting this afternoon, I'm going to go home, get gloriously doped up on prescription meds, and play GTAIV before I start work again tomorrow.

Although the way this day has been going, I was starting to wonder if it wasn't an allergy to stupidity on the internet.