"Playing Games Turns Me Into a Person Who Makes Sense"

This is a lovely Grauniad piece about autism and board games. These parts resonated in particular:

Growing up, board games were my refuge from a baffling, often hostile world.

and:

Games gave me quiet, structured time with family and friends. If I didn’t know what to say, the game filled the silence.

I've written about this before. I don't think I'm on the autism spectrum; I've done a number of tests -- which I know aren't definitive -- and have never scored enough to be classified as autistic. I am a bit odd, no doubt, but that's more social awkwardness and crippling anxiety, and games provide a sort of social focus that help me ignore and overcome those issues, for the most part.

Anyway, it's an interesting piece, and if you have any interest in games or neurodivergence, it's well worth a read.

An Overdue Apology

First of all, I am not being compelled or forced to do this, at least not by any external agent. This is all about acknowledging my mistake.

When the allegations about Mandy and Zak first arose, I very quickly jumped on Google+ and made a vague and non-committal statement along the lines of "I was fooled and I am sorry." I don't remember the exact words, but maybe it's been screenshotted somewhere. That's the gist of it, anyway.

When challenged to specify what I meant, I prevaricated and said something like "I said what I said", and left it at that.

Looking back, I was trying to have it both ways, to signal my expected outrage while avoiding taking a side, at least overtly. More, in truth it was never really about showing support for Mandy, but rather to be seen to be on the "right" side. It was bandwagon-jumping, and I expect better of myself than that.

It was cowardly and wrong.

I always try to be fair and kind in life, and this was neither. And for that, I am sorry.

Masterplan 2024

I would have posted this earlier but I noticed that I had 69 posts in 2023, and I am a child.

Well, 2023 was a bit of a crapper. Indulge me as I moan about why, or just click here to skip to the optimistic bit.

I have had a day job since February in which I don't know how to do anything, and there's no one to train me in how to do those things, which ends up being massively demoralising every day. So that's great for my mental health.

My creative work has also suffered this year. I did get some books out, and got noticed by wargamer.com and The New Bloody Yorker, but I felt my creative energies fail and flounder in 2023. I struggled to get anything written after Winnie-the-Shit; it has felt difficult to write anything and what I did write felt bad and shonky.

At the same time, while I've never held any illusions that I am a great artist, I've always felt at least competent, but in 2023 I became more dissatisfied with my art than ever before. I feel like I've got as far as I can with my current style and I don't know what to do about that. Is it too late for me to develop a new style? Is that something I can even do, or is the way I draw just the way I draw, no backsies?

I haven't done much gaming this year and I have missed it. I've played a few games with Stuart over the year but I haven't met with the rest of my so-called-regular group since around October 2022 (!). Again I seem to have lost confidence, which is a bit weird considering it's a hobby and doesn't require much effort, but there it is.

A loss of confidence is an apt description in general. I feel like a bit of a failure in all walks of life. Incapable or incompetent, surviving rather than thriving. A pointless existence. Heavy, man.

So, 2024 then. How do I turn this around?

Well, the intent is there, so that's something.

I have some long-delayed projects that I am going to try to finish off in January, to start the new year off with a clean(ish) slate.

After that, I have two adventures for Lamentations of the Flame Princess that I want to get out this year, plus another non-adventure book.

That's probably enough to be getting on with and if I get those three out I will consider 2024 a success, but I've also got plans for a non-LotFP adventure book, and also branching out to work with some new people. There are also some tentative discussions about a couple of comics projects, which should be a fun return to an area I've long missed.

I hope I'll get back to some more regular gaming too. I'd like to play more Stargrave, and I bought a copy of The Doomed -- or is it The DOOMED? -- and that looks like good fun. And of course I would love to get Legions Imperialis to the table at some point.

It would also be nice to get to play some of those unplayed games too.

So let's see what 2024 brings! I'm going into it in a more positive frame of mind than I ended 2023, which is a good start. Let's go!

In Due Time

I asked the Magic 8 Ball if 2023 was going to be a good year...

Good luck everyone!

Where It Is At

This is me a couple of weeks ago:

I was in accident and emergency, having been rushed there by the ambulance, after a mysterious seizure™. I had a previous mysterious seizure™ a couple of years ago and, after a barrage of tests, they couldn't say what it was or what caused it, but I was told if it happened again to call an ambulance.

So that's what happened.

Again, no idea what it was or why it happened. A repeated round of tests lies in my near future, so we'll see if something comes of those. I doubt there will be any answers.

It took about a week to recover, and then I was catching up with work missed during that week, so that's why blogging has slowed, and why we haven't done any February comics for Marvel 1991. Things are a bit more normal now -- I still have a bit of a fuzzy head and am occasionally confused by things that shouldn't confuse me -- so expect more content soon.

State of the Onion

Oh dear, I've done it again. It's been a while.

It's perhaps time for an update on what I've been doing the past few months and what better occasion than the fifteenth anniversary of the blog? That first post is not exactly premium, top-quality content -- I'm not sure anything on here is, to be fair -- but still, fifteen years!

My life has seen many, many changes over that time. I was living in the US when I started the blog, in part as a way to keep busy and sane while I was unemployed.

As of January this year, I was unemployed again. Sort of. After ten years of working in post-sixteen education, I was made redundant because of restructuring and, although I was given opportunities to stay on in a different role, I decided it was time to move on. I took the not unreasonable redundancy payment and for the past six months I have been trying to set myself up as self-employed, drawing and writing for a living.

It's a little mad and scary, but it's something I've wanted to do since I was a teenager, it's something other people have told me I could and should do, and I would never have had the courage to try if I hadn't been kicked out of my job. In a way, the redundancy was a good thing. Probably.

How's it going? Well, my second book for Lamentation of the Flame Princess did well and I am working on the next one, a project which would be challenging enough without Zak Sabbathmith popping up on social media previewing his next LotFP book and making mine look like Baby's First D&D Adventure. Damn you, Zak.

(I jest.)

(Do I though?)

(Yes.)

I've also got a few projects on the go for Mike Evans' DIY RPG Productions. I say "few" because Mike produces an insane amount of content and I lose track of where my stuff will turn up. The big project is the Forever Dungeon -- preview to the right -- which we both hope will be something new and exciting for virtual spelunkers. If all goes well it should be quite a swanky release, and I'll be able to buy a yacht pay the rent.

There's a small project on the go at Necrotic Gnome, and I have a few ideas of my own; what I've shown of Upon Deadly Sands has had a positive response so I'm going to see if that has legs, and I have what seems like a good idea for a D&D5 supplement, which will probably be finished just in time for D&D6.

I also have a couple of ideas for t-shirts and perhaps other bits of merchandise, but more on that when I've worked out the details.

On top of all that, I stumbled into a relationship, I now have a sort-of-stepdaughter, and we're all moving in together. I'll probably keep most of that side of things off the blog, but it's happening in the background so if -- when -- there's further blog disruption, that's probably why.

That's what's going on with me. I do have more time now and I suppose I have a brand -- eurgh -- to establish, so you should see more from the blog in future. Thanks for sticking around.

B2 or Not B2?

I have some friends up in That London. I have known them for years; we all met at university and we stayed quite close even after my life went wonky for about a decade. They are good friends and I always have a space on their floor when I visit.

They live in one of the trendy parts of the glittering capital, but they are also a bit geeky, and as geek culture has become a bit trendy in recent years, it was perhaps inevitable that they would get sucked into gaming somehow. It was board games that got them; of course they have Cards Against Humanity, but they also have Settlers of Catan and Small World, and the mighty King of Tokyo, because everyone should own a copy of King of Tokyo.

I've been to Draughts with them a couple of times and taken the opportunity to push other games on them; it's only a matter of time before one of them gets Lords of Waterdeep. I feel no shame; games are great.

Now and then they've asked about role-playing games, and the subject came up again the other day as we tried to play Dark Souls over Google Hangouts. Don't ask.

One of my friends grew up reading Dragonlance novels but had never played Dungeons and Dragons; another -- her husband -- loves Baldur's Gate and Dark Souls and knows that these games are based on a common source; the third -- his childhood best friend -- has been playing Fiasco with another group of friends, but I don't think they are aware of the larger family tree of which that game is a branch.

They are all three primed and ready, even if they don't know it. Dragonlance Friend even has a copy of Labyrinth Lord that I bought for her a few years ago alongside Dragons of Despair; in hindsight not one of my better gift ideas.

One day soon, then, I will run a role-playing game for them. It will probably be some form of D&D, because it seems appropriate to start at the beginning -- although a big part of me wants to run Call of Cthulhu and "The Haunting" -- and if so, it will probably be Lamentations of the Flame Princess, because it's my favourite simple version of the game.

Ah, but what do I run for them? I do love LotFP, but I think I should start them with something more traditional, rather than Kult in the seventeenth century. You can't get more traditional than Keep on the Borderlands, but I'm after something that can be played to a decent conclusion in one afternoon or evening. I also know that lots of player-character deaths is traditional, but I'm also after something that they have a reasonable chance of completing without getting disgruntled. I want them to come back for more!

This is where my own experience isn't useful. I started with Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu, and played almost everything other than D&D -- and Vampire; to this day I have not played any proper White Wolf games -- so I don't have the background to know what's a good adventure for beginners.

It's over to you, internet. Is there a good starting D&Dish adventure out there, one I can unleash on absolute beginners, albeit beginners with some familiarity with the general idea of role-playing games?

Broken

Everything is broken. Everything is wrong. Except it isn't, and I know it isn't, but cold logic doesn't mean much when whatever this is, is happening. I feel a bit silly, because I know it's just chemicals, or worry, or something like that, and it shouldn't knock me down the way it has, but it has knocked me down, so I sort of have to accept it.

Is that defeatist? I don't know. It feels like it is, but at the same time, I know I'm at the mercy of forces beyond my immediate control.

I am rambling. I don't know what to say, but I needed to get some of this out of my head, and it's what blogs are for, after all. I don't like to write these personal posts, because it feels like self-promotion -- and how absurd is that feeling? -- and I'm so terrified of appearing arrogant or conceited that I always try to avoid talking about myself, but I do think that talking -- or at least writing, or typing, or whatever -- will help.

I'm not fishing for sympathy, and I am sincere when I say that I am sorry if what I'm writing here makes you uncomfortable, or isn't what you expect or want to see from me; as soon as this thing passes, then you'll see more of the content you're used to, I promise.

This will pass. It always does. Sometimes it goes away on its own, and sometimes I have to give it a kick and a shove, but it will pass.

Last Night a d10 Saved My Life

I went to a birthday party a few days ago and it was awful. Well, to be fair, the party was fine but I went as a Plus One -- which is not to say that it was a Google-themed costume party -- and I didn't know anyone there. Some people are fine in that sort of situation, some people even thrive, but for me it was difficult, painful even.

I was a quiet child and while I had friends and I did spend time with them, I often preferred my own company, reading and drawing and using my toys to enact epic stories -- more often than not ripped off from Simon Furman's Transformers comics -- in which members of Action Force or the Rebel Alliance were recast as characters of my own making.

It will come as no surprise that I was bullied. Nothing too horrific but enough that it made an awkward and quiet child even more awkward and quiet, happier to stay in with a Fighting Fantasy gamebook rather than going out to play.

Things got better as I got older but it's fair to say that I have never quite overcome my social discomfort, as I showed at the aforementioned birthday party; even if I know you -- even if I know you well -- it's not uncommon for me to fumble and splutter through a conversation, like Hugh Grant with a head injury. Sometimes I just go quiet; I am not being unfriendly, I am just so scared of messing up that I mess up.

This doesn't happen with a game. I can sit around a dinner or pub table with a group and I will probably embarrass myself, but sit the same people around a board or role-playing game and something changes. That's not to say that a handful of dice is like Dumbo's magic feather and all of a sudden I'm sliding around the room gladhanding and hobnobbing, and it also doesn't mean that conversation is limited to the game, but the game becomes a sort of focus and that takes some of the pressure away; I don't have to entertain anyone or maintain their interest, because the game will carry that burden.

(And yes, I know there's no obligation to entertain anyone, but there's nothing rational about fear.)

When there's a game involved, the clumsiness and anxiety you would expect to see in me dissipate and I become more open and talkative; so much so that I have made good friends at the gaming table, and I even served as the best man at the wedding of one of them.

Perhaps it's a crutch. Perhaps I should try harder to deal with the anxiety because I can't lug a copy of Call of Cthulhu or Blood Bowl with me to every social gathering -- or can I? -- but perhaps it doesn't matter.

I don't know; I just wanted to get this out there. It's what blogs are for, after all.

Gods, Thieves and Dwimmermount

I wasn't going to discuss the Dwimmermount imbroglio. I didn't contribute much to the Kickstarter and it doesn't seem like my place to comment on James Maliszewski's morals or personal circumstances. That said, there have been a couple of developments of late that have caused me to reconsider.

The first is that I have my own crowdfunded project that is running very late. Horror Among Thieves is far from dead, but I find myself unable to devote as much time to its completion as I'd like. It will be finished, and those who supported the project will be getting something extra to -- I hope -- take some edge off the interminable wait. People have called for James to hand Dwimmermount -- a near-complete manuscript exists, it seems -- over to someone else to manage and publish since he cannot do so himself; I see the wisdom in that suggestion, and it made me look at what I was trying to achieve with Horror Among Thieves and see if I should do something similar. I am confident that completing the adventure is within my abilities, but when that will happen I don't know, though I hope it will be soon. My own lack of productivity on the, er, product annoys me no end; James had a whole megadungeon to publish but I only have a small adventure to write and I can't even get that out the door on time. I feel terrible that Horror Among Thieves is the first project of my own that I can call professional, and yet I've been less than professional in its production; I don't want to be known for lateness and unreliability, and so my hope is that at least the final product will be a good one. Even if not, I have learned some valuable lessons.

James was working on another project alongside but unrelated to Dwimmermount, a collection of minor deities called Petty Gods, and that too has languished in development heck, until now. Greg Gorgonmilk has decided to resurrect the project in James' absence and has put out a call for the contributing writers and artists to get in touch. I'm pleased to see the book's potential return, in part because I'd contributed three drawings to it -- such as Fluxalle, the god of rusted cookware, above -- but also because I like the idea of making use of the inventiveness of the gaming community to produce something fun and free for everyone.

Greg hasn't yet tracked down all of the original artists and writers, so if you are or know one of them, then get in touch with him here. I believe he's also looking for new contributions, if you'd like to get involved.

Two Minutes of Terror

My presentation is tomorrow and I am more than a little nervous. I know that there's no sense to being frightened, because I have to do it, frightened or not, and it's only a two minute piece, but this fear does not back down in the face of cold logic. It's weird -- and if I weren't in said state I'd find it fascinating -- because in general I'm not frightened by things, but the idea of public performance fills me with a cold, dark terror.

I've come up with a bit of blather about an aspect of technology -- I chose The Gimp as it's something about which I know at least a little -- and after some practice I've got it to fit into two minutes with a little wiggle room if I need it. It starts with a joke -- oh dear -- and ends with some blatant tubthumping for the open source movement, and with any luck I will never be asked to speak in public again.

It's only two minutes; what a sissy I am.

Yup

Petting the Black Dog

You've seen the movie. It probably had Paul Rudd and Drew Barrymore in it, or if you were really unlucky, Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston. You've got the two friends who are more than just friends but haven't done anything about it, then something bad happens to one of them in the third act, so the other tries to comfort them, as friends do, they get closer and BOOM! There's a kiss, the music swells, the gay best friend cheers, and the credits roll as some inspirational pop classic plays. Well, that was more or less my Tuesday in a week that was -- for lack of a better word -- nuts.

To be clear, there was no you-know-what, not even a kiss, but the unspoken was spoken, let's put it that way. It was good, it felt right, but afterwards I was mortified and felt that I'd betrayed my friend's trust. I saw that friend every day that week, and we went out again on the Thursday -- to the same place, no less -- and I have not been so confused in a long time. I feel like a teenager, and as everyone knows, teenagers are idiots.

Then on Friday I couldn't get out of bed. I know what you're thinking, you filthy deviants, but I was alone; save your high-fives. I've had cases of depression -- or what seems very much like it -- before, but I've just sort of got on with things; this time I was unable to move and made myself two hours late for work. Again, mortified. I don't think it was related to the romantic entanglements of the days before, rather it was something that had been coming for a while. It had passed by the afternoon, but the depth of the funk is still quite a shock, even in hindsight.

So that's where I am right now. I've been keeping myself busy and diving into some outstanding work, as that seems the best way to take my mind off things; having everything go a bit bonkers seems to do wonders for one's productivity.

Oops, I Did It Again

Or in the words of John McClane, how can the same sh*t happen to the same guy twice?

In an unwelcome echo of previous events, I seem to have lost another friend, again through my own inept blundering. It is a wonder at this point that I have any friends left at all; I may have to ban myself from ever interacting with human beings, before I alienate anyone else.

I've got a couple of posts on the way this week, neither of which will be about my social blunders, you'll be pleased to know. I may have some new art to show off too.

Lying to Oneself

Well, that didn't last long. The thing I mentioned in the last post, the shocking-but-good thing I was being so coy about, I discovered to be nothing at all in the end. In a way I'm glad, because if it did happen it was going to be a lot of pressure, but it does also mean that I'm not going to say what it was. Sorry.

On an unrelated note, I didn't do much blogging in 2012, as you can tell from the archive over there on the right. I thought I should try to explain why.

2012 was difficult for me. I've lost contact with friends before, and I've met plenty of people who never liked me much in the first place, but I've never had a friend take active steps to cut me out of their life, as happened earlier in the year. I'm not blameless in what happened; I let my insecurity get the better of me and tricked myself into thinking my friend had lied to me over a minor, petty thing. Then I confronted them about it.

Oops.

So I can see why they decided they'd had enough of me. I can see it now, at least, but back then it came as a huge surprise. Not only was the rejection a shock, but it also dragged some other stuff out into the light, stuff that with hindsight I realise I'd told myself I'd resolved but in fact I'd just hidden away.

It's a long story that I may well tell another time, involving my then wife and my stepmother, but the key point for our current purposes is that my father disowned me in 2000. I acted as if I'd accepted this and had moved on, that it was his loss, not mine, and perhaps that was true to a certain extent. Then again, I was married and we'd been through it together, so it was easier to accept or, as I discovered much later, hide.

Then in 2010, my wife left me. There had been trouble before then, but I'd made promises to be a better husband, to make things right, all the time ignoring the actual issue, which was that it was over and Meg just wanted a clean break. It was difficult -- I don't think a separation and eventual divorce can be anything but -- but it was necessary for both of us and we remain good friends. Once again, I thought that I had everything under control.

What I couldn't see was that it was all just being pushed to one side and stacked up, like when someone in a cartoon tidies up and stuffs everything into a cupboard, the door develops an ominous bulge and you just know it's going to burst open in the final act.

So it came to pass.

My friend dumped me, and everything came tumbling out of the cupboard. Things got bad then, but they would have been worse had it not been for an ironic twist. A couple of weeks before I blundered in and ruined everything, the same friend who would want nothing more to do with me suggested that I sign up for some free counselling sessions; I did, and ended up starting the sessions not long after I lost that friend.

I discovered a lot about myself during those sessions. I was convinced of my own complete lack of worth and it took a homework exercise -- in which I had to ask my friends to tell me what they liked and disliked about me -- to get me to realise that I wasn't worthless after all. The biggest shock came when my counsellor told me that I was talking in suicidal terms; I hadn't realised it, but I couldn't deny the truth of it. It was that realisation more than anything that made me step back and decide to make a change; I don't think I could ever kill myself, but the fact that I'd got to a point where I seemed to others that I could was enough of a scare.

Things turned around then. I was more positive about myself and tried harder to engage with the people around me. I even went on a couple of dates; no romance resulted, but I made new friends. I got involved in more art and writing projects, and somehow convinced a couple of hundred people to pay me to produce a book. My father turned up out of the blue and more or less apologised, or as close as he's ever going to get. It was all going so well, and I thought I was on the mend; I'm not so naïve to think that all that damage could be fixed in a couple of months of counselling, but I really did think that I was getting better.

Now I'm told I've had wobbles these past few weeks, and I admit that I'm disappointed, but I'm going to be positive and learn from that discovery. It was a lack of awareness that led to all the harmful baggage building up in the first place, so I have to take this as a warning to be more vigilant.

Seven Years

Crikey. That went fast.

Renegade Master

Again, it's been a while. Oops.

Things have been fairly eventful, which makes a change, as usually I struggle to find interesting things to talk about here. The biggest thing is that we've moved house. We were feeling a bit cramped in our flat, despite the sea view, and so we've been looking at moving up to a house; Meg had been searching for a while, and we didn't think we were going to even start the process of moving until the spring, but she chanced upon a small cottage a bit further out of town than where we were (no sea view). We went to see it, loved it, and decided to go for it. We had to take it pretty much then and there, so we moved in a rush about a week before Christmas. And because the flat was part-furnished, we didn't have any furniture.

And we still don't. Our sofa and bed aren't arriving until February, so we spent Chrimble sitting in fishing chairs and sleeping on inflatable mattresses. A full third of our presents seemed to be among the two million lost by a beleaguered Royal Mail, and Meg burnt or sliced most of her fingers preparing the Chrimble dinner. Still, even with all that, and the requisite Christmas Colds, we had a pretty good time of it in our new place. It will be nice when we have real furniture, although I secretly quite like these funky fishing chairs.

I should probably also mention that my story "More Than You Can Chew" was recently printed in the third issue of vaguely-horror-themed anthology comic Paragon. It's not my best work by any means, as it's more of an illustration of a concept than a real story, but nonetheless it's great to see it in print. The rest of the issue is a really good read, including a fun mystical superhero thingie called Battle Ganesh, which plays like a Hindu Dragon Ball Z, and should turn out to be the star strip of the comic, Paragon's version of Judge Dredd or Dan Dare. Should you want to pick up a copy, you can find ordering details on the ComicSpace page.

Alas, the funky comics project I was hoping to kick off, um, today isn't ready, and I'm still behind on a strip I'm drawing for a friend, so my New Year's resolutions are to get the latter done by the end of January, and to at least get started on the former by Easter.

Oh, and the Silver Bullet Comic Books Year In Review for 2007 is up. Go and see what I was grumpy about last year, and what my more level-headed colleagues actually liked. Also at SBC, a review of Amazing Spider-Man #545. I'd dropped ASM a while ago, on the grounds of it being rubbish, and I wish I'd stuck to my boycott.

It's back to work for me tomorrow. Given how I forget how to do everything after only a weekend, having almost two weeks off will completely throw me, most likely.

Actual Conversation

(Names withheld to protect the innocent)

A: You know, football can be a bit dull. They should replace the players with glamour models and fill the playing area with jelly. Perhaps strawberry jelly.

B: Or even better, instead of twenty-two models, have forty-four!

A: That's just silly.

B: Why?

A: If you double the number of models, you'd have to double the amount of jelly, but then you'd have too much jelly and the models would drown. And then you'd have forty-four dead models suspended in jelly, and who wants that?

Marathon Man

Apparently, I am some natural anomaly, an abomination, an abberation. It seems that it's impossible to anaesthetise me. Ouch.