Friday Excitement 2016-05-13

With this post I’m bringing back an old positivity exercise I used to practice, with the hope of using it as an ongoing tool for inspiration. So let’s talk about some things that I’m currently excited about!

First off, I’ll be spending this weekend at the third annual occurrence of the PDXAGE (Portland Analog Gaming Event) convention. PDXAGE is the newest convention-style event here in the Portland metro area, and is growing every year. While it’s mostly board-and-card game focused, there’s a growing RPG section and I’m happy to be a part of it. I’ll have a few of our CelStyle games with me to demo, as well as a fresh printed copy of Beyond the Wall for anyone interested in a pickup game. I’m really excited to see more gaming cons taking root in this city, so come check it out this weekend!

Speaking of CelStyle, the old website for our anime-inspired design collective either got hacked or got swiped, I’m not entirely sure of the details. I’m not excited about that at all, but I am pretty excited about taking the old site and starting something new. Look forward to a new site, a new domain, and a renewed stream of content in the coming weeks and more.

This has been a good week for me, inspiration-wise. I’ve finally managed to pull myself out of a lengthy creative funk. This was largely made possible by a rather difficult decision to uninstall¹ all the video games from my main computer, and sealed by a new project to re-approach my entire design process from the ground up (which itself will be the topic of a later, longer post). Wiping those games from my drive was hard, man. Along with the uninstallation of each one came a feeling of immediate regret, a desire to quickly hit that “cancel” button and hold back in my safe zone. And yet once they were all gone, suddenly it didn’t feel so bad anymore. I could look at my machine with more hopefuly thoughts of designing and fewer distractions of blinking lights and “one more turn” temptations. I must say, if you ever choose to go this route, Gamesave Manager will be your best friend in the world.

While I may have uninstalled (almost) all of the video games, I finally picked up the Fantasy Grounds digital tabletop gaming platform after it got promoted via a current Steam sale. I’ve been holding off on this one, because quite frankly the normal prices are just too much for my budget. But given my recent longer-term re-commitment to the Savage Worlds system (I’ll talk on that more in the near future), I finally took the opportunity to jump in and start learning the toolset. And I must say, it’s got one steep learning curve, but so far the effort invested is turning out to be quite rewarding. I still can’t fully recommend it unless you get it on a sale, but so far I’m digging its interface and nifty little tricks.

And as for Savage Worlds, of course I’m thrilled for the amazing support that the Savage Rifts Kickstarter has received. Seeing the fan love that has been pouring into this project has really thrilled me more than I can accurately describe. Rifts is a setting I’ve loved since my very first gaming days, and I am excited to see it now engaged with one of my favorite gaming systems written to date. And look how that project has grown! So many awesome additions, there’s an incredible amount of value there and just under a week left to get in on it.

Finally, one huge thing I’m pretty stoked about is the release of the new Voltron series on Netflix this coming June 10th. This just happens to coincide wonderfully with my ongoing development of the Gattaibushido:FUSION! RPG (which I’ve been talking about a whole lot on my G+ feed). In fact, I’m so excited about this that I’m making a personal pledge to myself to try and get a first-ever working playtest draft of the game released in time series’ launch date. Truth be told most all of the pieces are already in my scattered notes, but I really need to take the time and put them together in a legible format for public consumption and critique. Seeing how Gattaibuthiso is my personal RPG love letter to Voltron and Gunbuster, I hope I can get that test draft out in time to coincide with everyone’s renewed imagination boosts from the new Netflix series.