Updates and DnD stuff

Oh, let’s start with a barrage of follow-ups from yesterday;

Imagine Kinect; a tool you can hook into essentially any PC hardware with the applicable software to register it. Now couple it with windows 8 and as the user interface for a separate monitor – or even working in conjunction with your mouse and keyboard as a secondary means of input on your main monitor. Now imagine Microsoft decides to make the new colour for windows 8 a semi-see through blue. You are now effectively imagining yourself using one of the hands-free floating consoles from crappy sci-fi movies. Doable now, could be publicly available with windows 8. The future might now quite be now, but it’s definitely soon.

Gym stuff went swimmingly. Or it did insofar as it could to this point. They’re willing to give us a room to practice whatever martial arty thing we want, we just can’t bring official trainers in. It still remains to be seen whether they’re all going to have a collective heart attack when we start punching one another, but if I recall the room was fairly secluded, so maybe that problem won’t arise for a while yet.

My world is covered in snow still. It appears the melt-off hasn’t been as severe as I originally hoped, so there’s no chance of a war out in the bushes. I may still be able to get enough people together to run one tomorrow at a secondary location, but the temperature is still hanging well below the -10 C mark at night, so enthusiasm might be running a touch low. We’ll just have to see.

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Now I’d like to smash my face against a campaign I’m trying to set up for what’s effectively DnD in World of Warcraft. I’m literally trying to make this up as I type it, so expecting a distinct lack of coherency. Onwards!

The story is set in a medieval forest with a bit of werewolf problem. Despite how much that setting begs for the plot to revolve around some one becoming a werewolf, that isn’t the case here. Some one else actually ran a story that went somewhat along those lines a while ago, so I'm not keen to rehash stuff. Sufficient to say there’s a forest with a couple of towns inside of it, they’re sparsely populated by suspicious and worried people (as werewolves are often known to make you be).

The plot is going to revolve around a mage by the name Ramklin Lanter who happens to be trying to fix the werewolf issue. Theoretically he’s meant to fall into the well-intentioned extremist category, but we’ll see how much of his motivations the characters figure out before the almost inevitable fight breaks out. Ol’ Ramklin’s idea is to unearth an arcane ley-line, which is vague magical thing that blizzard introduced an expansion ago and promptly told us nothing more about. They functioned as big magical conduits where mages of sufficient strength could direct their flow of power into whatever mad scheme they have in mind.

The scheme in question is a highly dubious way of instilling magical talent in people who would otherwise be incompetent, followed up by trying to create the equivalent of a new Sunwell (read; magical power up place) to support whatever new breed of mage comes out of this. The bonus he’s hoping for on the side is to get the well to increase his power enormously and thus allow him to be the head honcho of the new coven of wizards. Even if the tests kill nine out of every ten, he’ll still have a significant group of suddenly powerful people who’ll listen to him – and if the Sunwell ploy works they should have enough oomph at their disposal to eradicate the werewolf threat at their leisure.

The connection the players have to all this comes from a second mage by the name of Vhanis. He’s fairly weak in terms of wrecking magical mayhem, but he was stationed in a nearby city when the head collection of mages – way off on the far side of the world in Dalaran – noticed all of the magical buggery going on. They told Vhanis to saunter into the horrible little forest and report back if anything was up and crazy-like. Since ‘saunter’ in this context means ‘get past dozens of werewolves to the tiny bastions of terrified citizens’ he opted to take a few bodyguards. This is our cast and crew. Vhanis won’t be having much success at uncovering anything on his own, primarily because he feels no major motivation to go outside the biggest of the towns in the forest to ask questions. Enter players.

I’ve whipped up several land marks that could work as areas the players should interact with and name dropped them in the least subtle way possible. They should act a little one-off runs about a couple hours a piece.

First is a nearby broken down guard tower. Inhabiting the tower is an old man who’s well into Alzheimer’s. He won’t provide much helpful information due to that, but his un-mauled presence in this forest might work as a hint that there’s something guarding the tower. There are enough alchemy bottles around the man to store a small ocean in and he’ll know how to make a variety of potions should the conversation ever steer that way. Inside the tower itself there’s burn marks all around, not much of the explosion variety, but more active fires. The bottom level of the tower will have several stones that aren’t set in the ground properly and removing them would reveal a basement level. In said basement would be several live but very weak worgen (name of the werewolves), who’ll promptly try and escape if our merry band of heroes uncover them. There will be a few broken wooden stocks in there and a bunch of bones – just animal, no human.

The point of this area is meant to be where Ramklin conducted his various experiments on worgen. Primarily the effectiveness of the magical talent he’s trying to imbue in people. The upper levels would be his test subjects practicing against static objects before he, ah, threw them to the wolves, so to say. It’s also where he made certain that the imbuing process would kill worgen if the spell nicked one. The last thing he needs is a bunch of worgen wizards. Alliterate enemies are just the worst. This is the main reason all the worgen aim to escape instead of fight – they’re part of a group that tried many times with only one outcome.

Second place will be the smaller town in the region. It’s a town dedicated to the capture of worgen in an attempt to restore the individuals to sanity once again. Yeah, warcraft has sane worgen too. They’re even playable. It’s that group of people that taught Ramklin the tricks needed to net a few worgen, and they’ll fill our group in on all this if they bother to talk to anyone. Noteworthy amongst the details is that Ramklin never stayed and caught worgen with them, opting to go back to the eastern side of the forest on his own. On the way back to the main town they’ll see flashes of light in the distance – over the third objective. It’s a abandoned church and graveyard, and shortly following the flashes we’ll have a pack of worgen come running for our little troupe of people. A brief fight later and we’ll have a location to check out; or at least a direction.

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Anyways, this is more or less just the start I can think up now. I have a bunch of isolated ideas on what’s going to happen in the rest, but frankly I’m a bit tired to hammer it all out just now. I’ll try and cobble something together after Sunday.

Huzzah! Template changes!

I'm in a bizarre mood today, one that I'm blaming entirely on spring - hence our now green-ish background. I might actually look into changing that again sometime soon. The options aren't all that varied, but a lot of them beat plain old black. Besides, who says you need to keep a template for any real length of time? I've also added a picture slot to the blog. Partially because I have a small collection of cool or amusing photos I might swap through there, but mostly because the option for putting that there was labeled 'add gadget'. They've found my instant-attention word.

Now back to spring-related stuff. The temperature is slowly but inevitably creeping above the freezing line and that means I can finally get back to things like hiking or exploring without worry for being buried in a snow drift or attacked by roaming yetis. The only downside is how much snow we managed to collect in the latter half the season, it's made the melt-off enormous and turned most of the surrounding forests into practically swamp land. Still, I'm going to take a drive out to check out some of the surrounding areas later today and see if any of them are fit for our little wars.

With any luck it won't be as impossible to find dry ground as it initially may seem. We habitually pick flat(-ish) fields with rock outcropping, which are usually a bit raised up from the ground and surrounded by denser bush in the lower area. If you've never been on what geography somewhat pompously calls The Canadian Shield then just think of a low hill about a football field across with very little soil over bedrock that occasionally peeks through. Since there's very little soil and everything is raised up by perhaps a dozen feet in these areas all the water tends to have run off, leaving a dry is slightly damp playing field. Also one can't dismiss the usefulness of having a thick forest all around these events; nothing we're doing is illegal in any sense, but if we're shooting silly little tennis-ball covered arrows into the air the last thing we want is some oblivious passerby to catch it with their face. They tend to not be up for explanations are that point, notably not if it's from people carrying about swords.

After that I'm hoping to check out a couple local gyms I stumbled across last night after I made my post. It might very well be possible to go train in a nearby place for very little cost, no more than $6 a day. Going to run by the place and ask a few questions, see what exactly they're willing to let us do.


Oh, yes, by the way. A bunch of interesting new Kinect news has recently come out - ideas here, I mean. They haven't updated the hardware or anything, but people are coming up with increasingly bizarre and innovative ways to use it. Id' love to throw a post together about it all, but I have way too much that needs doing today, so I'll regulate that to the future, for now just go read what the guys at Penny Arcade are talking about.

...Fast as lightning....

It’s a Life blurb for today. Wanted to talk about the quasi-Kung Fu course I joined in on a couple months back. The official name is something like Kempo-Kung Fu Karate, and from the somewhat garbled explanation they gave on the first day apparently that’s actually an accurate name – rather than my assumption that some one in marketing was smashing as many martial arty-sounding names together in hopes that it’d attract more people.

I joined for a number of reasons, which start with getting my horrible self back in some semblance of shape. The laziness issue has been mentioned, yes? It follows through with working out. I’m not what anyone would call fat, but I’ve occasionally fallen into that category of skinny individuals who couldn’t run more than a mile without their lungs expiring. It’s actually more common than you’d think; those of us blessed with a quick metabolism seem to forget that being light doesn’t magically grace you with amazing cardio. The plan at the time was to find a way to rigorously force myself into shape by virtue of a couple factors:

1. I had paid money for the damn course, and not exactly pocket change either. It might not be the most noble of goals, but hammering yourself with money-guilt if you think about missing a class is surprisingly effective.
2. Entering a competitive environment. There’s dozens of people at the class I go to. Unsurprisingly many of them are much, much better at this than I am. I can be fiercely competitive in physical activity and was whole heartedly willing to abuse that to keep myself working out.
3. Since the first two would keep me in the class, I had better pick one that was going to all but outright murder me if I didn’t work out at other times as well. So I did. Now exercising in my free time is a survival trait.

It’s been working out (ha-ha!) so far and I see no reason why it’s liable to fail it the future. It only merits a posting now because I’ve noticed I passed a threshold of sorts. I think I’ve finally begun to learn enough of the techniques and methods of the class that I’d feel at least marginally confident using them should I find myself in a fight. This might not sound all that earth shattering, I know. Sure, learn how to punch better – use punch in fight; not very complicated. But trust me when I say there’s a distinction between techniques you’re willing to try out in a friendly spar and then working them into how you’d handle a particularly aggressive thief who decides taking a swing at your head is his best option.

I honestly suspect I would’ve gotten to this stage a lot earlier had I put more work into learning the various moves in something like a practical environment, but we can’t all just magically make sparring partners appear, now can we? Most of my friends don’t seem up for trying it out, really. They’re either not all that enthusiastic about learning a martial art in the first place or without the time and resources to get into it. Adding to that is the difficulty in finding a place where you can actual do said practice. Most gyms are rather adverse to the idea of letting a couple guys wail on one another in a corner somewhere and the course I’ve signed up for doesn’t have a designated sparring area we could use. It’s something I’m going to continue to look into, I’ll try to remember to mention it if I come across anything spectacular.

Oh, and a tease of an idea. My friends and I happen to be somewhat insane when the mood strikes us, so we’ve formulated an appropriately mad game. To get the crazy cards down quick; it requires four practice swords at least (wood or steel, just durable and blunt), and a couple of bows to complement them. We only have that much so far, and really that’s the bare minimum you’d need to make it interesting. At that point you divvy people up in two teams, a couple swords a bow to each. Buy a bunch of cheapo arrows and cut the heads off so you can stick tennis balls on them. At this point you could pretty much just take all your friends and equipment out to a field and wage a tiny war if you wanted, but we added a few rules and objectives:

1. Make a goal for each team. They can be anything – a jacket, a tree, a hat (if it isn’t windy), or a friend no one likes.
2. Include a center line that everyone is aware of between the two goals.
3. All you have to do is hit the other goal with your hand or weapon of choice (arrows included) to score a point for your team.
4. If some one scores both teams have to retreat back across to their side of the center like to begin again.
5. If you’re hit anywhere by either a tennis-arrow or a sword, regardless of strength of impact; you’re dead. You need to run back to your own goal, touch it, and wait five seconds to re-enter play.

Ta-dah! An incredibly simple and awesome game that’s liable to cover you in bruises where-ever you skimp on the protective gear. I tell you of this because I’m tempted to run a game of this soon, and even more tempted to collect enough people that I can have them play a match of it while I film it. Promise policy plays heavily here, but we’ll see what happens!

Pod-casts?

Pod-casts might be happening! Isn’t that exciting? I think so.

It turns out that with the revitalization of this place some of the will to do our various group projects has returned. We’re once again talking about making pod-casts and movie shorts; though I don’t think I can ever stress how poor of an idea it would be to make promises concerning them. That sort of stuff has always been an endless pet project that never comes to fruition for us. It falls into the same bin as all the other crap we’ve tried our hand at, like game and movie reviews, fan forums and creating a full on news site for gaming culture. Theoretically we could do any or all of that, we’re just lazy sods. I may have mentioned that at some point before.

We’re going to take another stab at it though, and I don’t have bundles and bundles of other shit going on in my life at the moment, so I’ve elected to talk about it here. Once again; no promises.

I’m hoping to make an interview to go through the basics of Josh’s little world as a second test run for my pod-casting equipment. You know; the shit I’ve owned for several months and used less than a dozen times. The first run ran into problems in structuring which was compounded by distractions and interruptions. We were trying to do a pod-cast about how we write the blog, but since we virtually never made those posts I’m not certain what we expected to happen. This was supposed to couple with what the post was actually about; the various cultures in Josh’s world. It took us about twenties minutes of pissing about while we were being recorded to finally realize we wouldn’t be able to fit all the information Josh had on his people in one post and keep it within any manageable size.

This isn’t an exaggeration; I’m pretty certain the man could talk about his world for about four days straight - assuming you kept the questions coming to remind him about all the little details he’s collected. That’s his specialty from what I can tell. He really likes the world-building process and thus has a frightening quantity of detail put into the society he wants to write a story in. He could spend entire evenings covering just one section of his people with all the quirks and history he’s cramming into them – and that’s not even getting into whatever ideas he’ll probably hammer out or come up with on the spot if you give him a chance to review his own creation.

The end result of this combination is we decided we’d have to tighten the scope of what we were talking about. We opted to focus purely on broad definitions of the people in his world. This also failed, mostly because his world is bloody crowded. The post I made on the 22^nd contained what I dredged out of that interview in written form, and it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. We may one day go back to that and write out the ‘peoples’ in the detail they deserve, but, well; review my promise policy. I’d like to sit down with Josh and have him narrate everything he’s created for each society while I try and cram it into type, but we’re talking about a page or two at least for each group here. It’s a lot of god damn work, and our time isn’t limitless.

Given that the first pod-cast went the way it did, I figured I’d actually put some effort in to the next one and see what I can do to stream-line the process. First and foremost is getting a question list entirely sorted out before hand. I already know the topic, or topics rather; the major building blocks of the world. Yeah, a bit vague, I know. What I mean is the larger over-reaching elements such as how the magic system works, what person he intends to write from (and why), and what scale of a story he’s hoping to build. Is he hoping to write a single series on a continuously flowing story line, or a number of different and entirely independent lines? I’d like to also dig into what writing style he thinks he will focus on or excel in, such as banter between characters, plot-lines or description. However, I suspect we’ll only find that out after he’s written considerably more of the actual stories, rather than reference material.

The written component of the post is going to be done entirely after the pod-cast so as to not confuse the two. Mind, I may still be typing madly away as he talks, but it’ll just be note taking – I hope it won’t interfere with how things roll. We had a nasty habit of long irritating pauses in the last attempt. If it proves too much of a distraction I’ll simply cut it in favour of regular conversation and we’ll have an entirely separate one for the post off-air. All in all, I’m hoping this one will turn out better than the last and may even make its way on to the internet if we can find a damn place to host them before the lethargy strikes. Or slouches I suppose.

New post and an old post.

A handful of things today. First and foremost is a parody I ran across called The Dragon with a Girl Tattoo. I've done a bit of research into the author to see what else he's written and decided to have a little fit of rage. I don't mind parodies exactly, but I do feel they should exist within certain limitations. Primarily I think it's a matter of how long you can get away with essentially telling a single joke over and over. Five minute sketches on youtube is probably the best thing you could do for material like this. After all, the majority of the jokes are basically just going to be referencing the source material in absurd ways and waggling your eyebrows until the laugh track rolls - we're not looking for highbrow crap here. I can even see some of these being good in a movie format, but only if they stick strictly to the hour and a half format. If you've gone past that mark and still haven't developed a shred of original material for your story I'm going to want to punch you.

Of course that's a nasty perspective to have when you're considering a book parody. It's hundreds of pages long and even the fastest reader is going to have to sit through several hours of what will quickly become the same old dreary shit. The only saving grace would be excellent delivery, but if he can tell a joke that makes us laugh regardless of how bad the source content is; why the hell is he doing parodies? He has to be creative enough to think up some sort of original story to frame his writing. It's not like we'd expect master-crafted plots or anything, just enough effort that you can official label it original. Ta-dah, some degree of respectability, hopefully making up for the fact that one of his older books (I'll let you guess what about) was named The Da Vinci Cod. Isn't that nice?

Anyways, I suppose I should hand out the obligatory huzzah for Josh returning to our posting cadre. To celebrate this fact I've decided to dredge up a post we made in collaboration a while back. It was never posted due to mutual laziness and the fact it was somewhat incomplete. It was meant to be a brief look into many of the cultures present in the fantasy world Josh is slowly compiling. It still is, just it's a bit briefer than we intended. Thus I'm now officially labeling it a preview of a brief overview; with added intro I wrote out eons ago. Enjoy.


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Hey, it's Andrew at the helm.


Today we're going to talk about world building in a more general sense, rather than purely in context of a game. In fact we're using an example made by one of our own, Josh. It's a fantasy world that's currently being created as a hobby, and I can almost say with a straight face that they'll be written in full someday. Nothing like novels have been composed, and while there's idea abound very little has actually been put to paper.


Our purpose today is to finally write out a great deal of the concepts that have been floating about and showcase one of the many ways a writer can put together a world. Also we're putting together a podcast of what went into the writing of this post, as a quasi-test to work out the kinks in some new equipment I just got a hold of. Technically that pod-casting set would warrant a post all of it's own, but that'll come later. We have enough to discuss.


The People


Nearan Civillization


Nearan is largely based off the Roman Culture - at in context of it's current status, that of an empire that has both been decaying through time and continuing to decay. As an empire it shared the Roman civilizations past by being one of if not the strongest empire of the world at it's peak. Its fall is also heralded by a increase in corruption throughout the years. In the presence of the story it's on its final legs and attempting to make last hurrah into the world in an attempt to reclaim glory past.


The people are primarily caste based. There are four basic castes, however, in side of those castes there are multiple different levels.


The Behemians are named after one of the four gods who created the universe. Their focus is typically earth oriented - tilling the soil and working the land. They happen to be some of the most common of the individuals. The peasants right through to the slaves. They are both the most basic, unlearned, and populous of the castes.


The Levitans the peasants in control of the fisheries. Their status in society is just slightly above that of the Behemians - though the difference is small. Their focus derived from the fact they were based around the lake that the city was founded around. The more regular source of income and access to trading along the lake front provides the slightly better life.


The Gurudans were the original guards and militant people of the city. At first they would be the sole source of all warriors of the city-state, working as career-soldiers and retiring if they survived. As time went on the military began to need more individuals to the point they were focused to recruit from the other castes. However, even as time progressed it was maintained that the upper crust should be Gurudan only. In matters of war however it's rarely a good idea to limit the number of people who can be promoted based off merit, so the other castes can get those promotions - but they must first be converted to being Gurudan. These individuals were often faced with hostility from the 'pure' Gurudans.


The Gurudan's role in the city eventually expanded to controlling the throne itself. They were meant to keep the peace and this role extended to making sure that the emperor himself was a good one. The political fall out of this was catastrophic as it elevated the importance and influence of the Gurudan people.


The Phenosians come from the name Phenonix, unsurprisingly. The Phenosians are something of an aberration in the Nearan culture due to their religious beliefs. The people of Near have two sets of gods. There were four old gods, who's names the castes were based on and are still held in high esteem by the majority of the population. The Phenosians however are more focused on the other set of gods courtesy of their wealth. Being the leading caste they found the older texts and became more learned than the majority of the people. In myth it's said that Nero himself declared that the Phenosians would rule the city, but that the Gurudans would be set to make sure they never became corrupted, or remove them if they did.




Arden


The Arden are the oldest of the people. They aren't human. They may resemble something of a larger than life person with animal features. The features don't stop with purely looks, but intelligence as well. More bestial in nature they have skills unsurpassed in tracking and wilderness but they simply don't understand many of the new concepts coming into the world by the younger races.


The race is prone to recruitment in mercenary wars due to their size and fondness of the wealth that they can gain through the continuous battles of the world. Furthermore the combination of sending large tracks of your population away to war and keep vast amounts of health at home means the Arden have found themselves constant victims of raids. Because of this they're a dying race.


North Barbarians


The Eastons were originally a barbarian tribe that, unsurprisingly, stemmed out of the east. As time wore on the curt name stuck and eventually become a source of pride of them from the direction of the rising sun. A fiercely independent people, they're a frequent source of mercenaries for the area. While not wide spread, their name carries weight in the surrounding lands. The subsets of their clan typically adopted an animal to represent them, and works as an idol to rally to.

Endless Self-consolement and Endless Bitching

I fear after having seen The Kings Speech for a second time that I feel, at the moment as though I am King George VI I have my own voice and I want it to be heard, but the outrageous stumbling of word choice and faulty starts embarrass and confound me. Also, like King George VI this is something I’ve always dealt with I do have a condition that in essence says I have a hard time making the things in my brain become words – especially by hand (strangely, I think significantly FASTER when I’m writing pen and paper maybe those two things are connected).

With practice and desire I have circumvented this do a degree, but it feels like something in the back of my mind at all times when I write this nagging sensation that I’m not saying what I want. I know having difficulty putting word to paper is something that I am sure everyone can empathize with – so I am not being exclusionary in anyway nor am I saying that I am special for overcoming this affliction. It is simply that I have this annoying part of my memory that tells me that I am unable to say what I want and when this turns out to be true (i.e. arguing my points in a paper to a Prof. because of my wording) it really hurts and makes me not want to write.
I suppose that is part of my unwillingness to write. Of course it is also just lethargy which compounds the problem when I don’t feel like editing. Also the notion that I could be doing something else, something less taxing than write, but those wounds really pile up and hurt.

It isn’t something I talk about often, mostly because it doesn’t often come up and also that the diagnosis was only a probably we need to run more test kind of thing so I don’t It doesn’t help when the soapbox of your choosing (THIS PLACE) is shared by someone much more eloquent, the damned rotten bastard, which is even worse when it is agreed upon that the rotten bastard can barely write for shit anyway. This is the point I add a smiley face to smooth things over between us :)

Now what was all that bitching for? Where did this lead us? Nowhere, that’s where. I really have little to say today except that the last few posts and a verbal smack in form of the guttural utterance “POST!” have once again ignited the something in me that makes complete paragraphs and not half drawn maps, incomplete names with lines and numbers (which may or may not be dates) between them. I really do love to write and this was supposed to be a place where we can say anything, critiquing shit has gone out the window but hopefully that is only for now – critiquing is something I do about once a minute so I should really be able to commit it to a word doc.

Like my colleague, no promises will be made but hopefully you will hear more from me (that isn’t complete bitching) soon. I warn there will be bitching though, from both of us, probably about writing and each other. Maybe about other stuff, I’ve been thinking about my personal beliefs a lot recently and working them out in blog-form seems okay to me, although it really makes me wanna play Xenosaga or MGS1 and read The Lord of the Rings or Eyeshield 21 again they are my comfort escapes. Or maybe I’ll finally be able to introduce you to some of the projects I've started.

One of them was particularly for this site, but obviously hypothetical reader there wasn’t anything given to you.

Life and stuff

Life post today, folks. You’ll have to excuse me; I’m typing this as an exercise in putting down the myriad of thoughts bumbling about my head right now. It’s not liable to be well organized or have a proper flow (‘cause don’t all of my posts have that just down pat). It’s a bit of a dual problem here, but we’ll see how long it goes on for.

I have a friend, a good friend, who happens to be in a bit of a slump right now. It’s…confusing to see happen. The friend is going through a very great deal of stress at the moment and sufficient to say they have a slightly complicated past to make matters just that much more convoluted. They’re fond of using diversions and distractions to keep from dealing the overburdening pressure of stress – sort of a miniature vacation for the mind so to say. They’re a writer too and that being something we have in common it’s habitually been the method I’ve interacted with them to attempt to help out.

 Hammer sees nail. Hammer always sees nail. Hammer smash.

I’m not very good at this stuff, I know. I’ve tried talking; that was naturally the first course of action and not one that’s stopped along the way, but it’s eventually gotten to the point that I’m not certain I’m having any affect. They had up until recently (the past few months) done quite well handling the stress, all things considered. I won’t go into personal detail here for a variety of reasons, but the matters were very serious and very real. I can’t advocate fighting mountains of stress with distractions, but given the options available to the individual involved, it seemed like the best course at the time. Money and location provided impassable walls to finding more professional help or better ways to alleviate the issues at hand.

So I committed myself to helping the best I could in the way they found most appropriate – helping with distractions and the like. This wasn’t entirely without reason. The situation did look to be of the sort that might grow better with time. At that point it’s simply a matter of making the intervening time pass as painlessly as possible. The common interest in mind this took the form of creating stories. Explaining the process would be largely irrelevant but you could say we worked back and forth on the project to mutual entertainment. It worked for a while – a year or two long line up of nasty surprises that would whole heartedly warrant the need for better help than mine. But it’s begun to falter and fail.

They’re finding it impossible to get into the mentality required to write again, and from all I can see on my end of the spectrum they’ve falling into just passing the time with repetitive mindless tasks. Busy work for your entire day, every day. It started maybe four months ago, perhaps a bit further. Initiative was one of the first things to go, followed closely by confidence. Dedication and any shot at persisting when things look glum followed in the later months. I found myself trying more and more to keep things going on my own – but I’m frankly not that good. I like to fancy the idea of being a writer but in the face of the depression they’re handling I’ve found I’m losing my focus as well. I can’t address any of the work I have with them without feeling lethargic myself.

I hadn’t noticed how far matters had gotten until I started writing here again last week. It felt like a breath of fresh air to simply be putting words to type again that I was at first shocked. It’s only now I’m realizing that all the creativity was still there, just being hampered by the worry and irritation that came up every time I put my mind to helping the situation. They’ve recently admitted that in the last couple weeks they’ve lost all will to write – or rather, I should say ability. Or so it seems to them anyways, the will is apparently still present, but it’s as if all the ideas that previously came so easily have slipped away. Staring at a blank page with an equally blank mind hasn’t proven to be the equal of the distractions from before.

It’s here that I find myself in a similar rut with different reasons. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to bring back even the unenviable time when we fought stress with distractions. The more I try to work out a solution the more it begins to affect my moods and work habits. I can see the months and years left before things are likely to become stable and happy again on their end of the world and I’m left wondering if I can ever hope to fill up all that time all on my own. I’ve always had so many ideas, so many little mad plans I’d like to bring to fruition – and of course so many failures for the majority of them. I’ve always been able to handle those in stride because others would so quickly replace them. I have a room full of random shit that stand as testimony to whatever my passion happened to be for that week or that month. But after just a handful of utter failures in the mood that comes whenever I try to help my friend, I’ve lost it. There’s nothing more coming to me. No back up plan, no follow up.

I’ve been told in the past that it’s unhealthy to dedicate yourself to making some one else’s happiness for them. That unless they find a way to build up their own mental support you can’t succeed; it’s building on quicksand. I could spend too much time pointlessly toiling away for nothing. Not even no personal gain, no gain at all. That doing so can drag you down to a similar level and just leave two people trapped. These arguments aren’t without evidence, certainly not without countless examples.

But I’ve faced this before. I’ve seen people in depression surpassing anything I’ve ever felt. But by not going away, not giving into excuses I may have helped in some way to bring them back. I can’t empathize – I haven’t felt the same way, I don’t know precisely what it’s like, but that doesn’t mean my brain shuts off. That doesn’t mean I can’t help in every way I know how and any new ones I think up along the way. It can be done; the world isn’t without success stories. I can proudly say I’m either too stupid or stubborn to recognize when things become a lost cause.

However, all that said I’m still stuck in this rut. I want to help but I’m just not. I feel like there should be something here, a new idea that I could get everyone involved in to get things rolling again, but I don’t know how to look for them. I never had to, really. They were just continuously added to an internal list of shit that needed checking out. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen the end of that list. I even tried to get them to blog too; hoping that giving them a new outlet to drive the mind forward would help them just like it did for me. The idea was shot down. I’d like to say due to logical reasons that can be understood, but honestly it seemed more like apathy than anything else. Lethargic depression killing a chance before it even started. I’m only a man of ideas and thoughts at his very best; what can I do to fight something like that?

We have some pretty cool shit.

Here’s a fun question; if we could teleport back in time and nick a random science fiction author from the past and drag them back to our time, what would be the most amazing technological advance we could show them? In other words; what’s the most mind blowing thing we’ve made in the last, oh, hundred years.

The question was bouncing around my vent (Uh, multi-person phone. Voice chat room. Something like that, Google it if you must.) last night and the range of answers was surprisingly diverse. Oh, of course we had our wide range of handhelds with everyone making the obligatory connection to Star Trek and its little devices. Other people brought up the internet itself and some of the most astounding creations that have come along, either citing them alone or all together as the most mind blowing achievement.

I have to admit, they had my vote for a while. It’s commonplace enough now that we usually take it for granted, but sitting back and giving serious thought to Google maps and street view can leave you a bit daunted by the amount of work that went into it. That’s not even mentioning the vast sprawling social tools like Twitter and Facebook; connecting millions and millions of people with up to the second updates on their lives – all from the previously mentioned tiny handheld devices.

What could be even more impressive is the Wikipedia collection. Between the main site covering nearly every topic imaginable and a veritable host of fan sites dedicated to enthusiasts of specific topics; the sheer quantity of information out there is both awe inducing and surprisingly well maintained and accurate. All of the sites are tended to by moderators with nigh religious fervor after all, and only attract those who delight in the topic searched at hand. The internet could certainly have floored people who came before its creation. You have to remember, we now live in what they’re dubbing the Information Age, a huge part of which can be attributed to the development of the ‘net.

However I was finally swayed to games – which really shouldn’t be surprising, if there’s anything I’ve pondered the ramifications of more than the internet it’d be gaming culture and where it’s headed. Now of course I don’t mean something like Modern Warfare or the Halo games. It’s a very nice display of technology and would be quite impressive as a showcase to keep some one’s interest, but as far as core ideas go, they’re rather bland. It’s a shooting gallery in a box, really. The same route applies to RPG’s and their ilk; they’re basically really slow books with poorly written combat scenes (yes, I know, you could find them fun, but that doesn’t mean taking turns to throw punches in a fist fight makes any sort of sense). In this regard – conceptually – there’s one type that stands above them all; the MMO. Massively Multiplayer Online game.

The idea itself has been floating its way around sci-fi for a while. Virtual realities we could create and live in independently were a natural pull for writers hoping to find a simple way around the suspension of disbelief. It’s not without reason when you consider them, frankly. We’ve built entire worlds utterly separate from our own inside these games – worlds that are persistent, some of the best have day cycles, weather, mountain ranges, fields, forests, and cities. We have quite literally built entire societies inside there. Places where I can hook into a game from the comfort of my own home and activate an avatar of my own creation that only I can control, and walk around along side another avatar from a friend who lives thousands of miles away.

It’s that which I think would get the biggest impact. After all, you need to realize; it’s a concept almost beyond the imagination of some one a hundred years ago. The idea that they could have a world made entirely to our own design that’s readily accessible to millions of people. The biggest MMO out there currently has over twelve million active users. That’s more people than some nations! If you tried explaining this to a writer from way back when, they’d probably ask things like how many decades it took everyone working to build this one amazing virtual reality. At which point of course you’d have to say:

“One? Man, there’s thousands of them. All running at the same time. With a combined growing population they don’t even attempt to calculate anymore.”

At that point I think we would have achieved mind explosion.

Heh, screw the whole ‘I want my flying car’ mentality; look what we have made.