After several years of the same look and feel, it was time for a visual overhaul of the site and removal of some pages, downloads, and such that were out-of-date or no longer relevant to the current direction I wanted the site to go. After being down for about a week for its overhaul, the site is back up with its new look and feel. Poke around and enjoy the sights!
I know I’ve gone quiet since my last post about leaving the Academy. Since then I’ve been giving some thought to a challenge I gave myself nearly a decade back, but hadn’t been able to fully realize … until now. The challenge revolved around the development of a rules system, the specifics I’ll share later. Over the past few months since leaving the Academy I’ve been working on that challenge. The prior attempts I’ve made in earlier years (somewhere around a half-a-dozen) have ended in me halting work and putting the system aside until I learned more, had an…
The 100 level class is half-way through and as I’d been reflecting on the class now that I’ve reached the mid-point, I made the decision to step away. The reason I shared with the lead instructor was the same issue I noted in my last post: Time needed to do drills at home and while doing okay now, I know I’m not going to be able to skate by on just a scattering of drill practices a week in the future. Between work and commute, particularly if I have a long day, I really don’t have time to do…
The miss was that there wasn’t a post week before last week and last week and that was because I was away from Seattle, traveling on business for the first and not feeling good for the second. Between the two off weeks, the hit, is that I was at class AND it was a continuation of what was covered the week before. As if there wasn’t enough drills with A and B, there is also Drill C that was learned. The class also started learning the first part of the first fight sequence during the first class I missed,…
If I had to sum up this week’s class in one word that word would be ‘drills.’ We went through two drills that we need to all do regularly, as in daily, to help us commit to muscle memory the different attacks and defenses that we learned the week before AND with that to improve and work on our footwork. When you watch the Knights perform, carefully watch their movement and you’ll see that it’s a dance of steel and sweat. Feet and weapon move in tandem. What may seem like chaos, isn’t. They know how to read their…
Class started on the evening of Monday, Sept. 16. Out of the nearly dozen who’d signed up/expressed an interest in joining the class there were only six of us who showed up, and the majority of us are women! Two others who have been through this before are also auditing the class. It’s rather cool for the class to be majority women (who says we don’t like to play with swords). We were given plastic wasters (training swords) to use for our 100 level class, which will last for the next two-and-a-half months or so. We won’t start using…
In late July 2019 I was reviewing the LARP List here on my site and one of the entries caught my attention. The entry was for the Seattle Knights and I remember years ago when I knew someone who had gone through their Academy and had been a Knight for a while. I remember thinking how cool that was and that I wanted that experience, but back then I didn’t have the time or money to do it. Fast forward until now and when I saw that entry the thoughts of that the question came back into my mind:…
It’s just after Labor Day, the last day of PAX West, and for me PAX is now over for 2019 and to some extent I think for good. For years I’ve either done the 4-Day pass or gotten passes for each day if I wasn’t a panelist and ended up with a speaker/special guest badge and gone out for each day. This year has been different. This year things have changed on both my side and PAX’s side, and they’re neither good nor bad, but just are, and yet I’m no longer as fond of PAX as I once…
I’ve been working on a project that deals with creating particular experiences (the details of the project I’m not yet ready to share), and as I was working on some of the documentation needed for it I had one of those epiphany moments; those kind where you realize something key about yourself or something that’s had an effect in your life. This particular realization has to do with GMing and role-playing and it’s that while I can GM and I am a decent GM, GMing for traditional table-top games (if table-top RPGs could even be called ‘traditional’) isn’t where…
One of the first things I did when I started at my current company was take an assessment that helped me understand my gaming style or type. I realized that I never really shared this out, and I find it very telling about myself and my RP/game style and key motivations. I’m an Immersed Storywriter: I like to hold my character’s actions and fate in my hands, allowing me to feel completely engrossed in the role-play experience. I like feeling a sense of control and freedom as well as an emotional connection to my characters. For me playing a…