January 2025
Hi Friends!
Oh December was a Month. It was dark, awfully dark. There were Holidays, food, getting coughed at by a Toddler, which then made me sick, causing me to miss another child’s fifth Birthday. A lot of thinking about RPG systems happened. Questions such as “what is the purpose of a JRPG battle” were asked and potential answers were found. It was a Month where I felt really fulfilled on a creative level, while also feeling less optimistic about everything else than I had in years.
Either way, I can’t wait for the days to get longer, I don’t get along with the dark.
Gamedev-News
Nothing with Virtue’s Heaven happened in December, because I took a break from it and it was a pretty good idea that I did. Instead I spend most of the Month working on an RPG system for potential future projects and it made me so painfully aware what a mess Virtue’s Heaven is as a project and as an idea in general.
It took me a few days with this side project to actually see how a full game of it might look like, which was never the case with Virtue’s Heaven.
Anyway, the goal was to have a small playable example project done by the end of December, but unfortunately the holidays and getting sick towards the end of them slowed me down just enough to make that impossible.
I’m going to keep plugging away at this project during the weekends though, while I spend the rest of the week getting Virtue’s Heaven done. Which, despite all my negative emotions towards it, is still going to happen.
Blogpost-Shares
I wrote a fairly honest, and pretty negative post about how 2024 went for me:
https://mokkograd.net/posts/2024-12-31-Living-in-hell
Technically this was posted in January, but I also wrote a summary of my attempts to build that RPG system I’ve been talking about at the beginning of the newsletter:
Interesting things I played/watched/read
There’s actually quite a lot to talk about.
I started playing Dungeon Encounters, and though it’s a bit sterile sometimes, I do enjoy my time with it. It’s a mean game at times (there’s an enemy that can steal so much money from you that you get into crippling debt), but it’s mostly mean in that it punishes hubris?
I got a bunch of books over the holidays to read. I haven’t really read much fiction over the past decade, and it was nice to just read some stories for a change. I still got two non-fiction books for Christmas, because some reading has to feel like work I suppose, but most of my book pile right now isn’t directly about politics.
One problem I have though is that I forgot how fast I can read, when the thing I’m reading doesn’t require me to think at the same time. I’m currently getting through one book per week, which is about four times as fast than I thought I would go.
Anyway, some short thoughts about the stuff I’ve read so far:
The Dreamblood Duology:
I liked the first book and the first half of the second book. Unfortunately the latter one does a bit of an unfortunate “redeem the awful monarch who lost his throne” turn towards the end, which I’m just not here for anymore.
A Memory called Empire:
Now that’s a good book. It made me realize that I enjoy Science Fiction stories that are mostly about people talking and doing political manoeuvres. Don’t get me wrong: Lasers are cool and all, but I’m perfectly fine if they are just in the background while the real drama is happening when people in meeting rooms talk.
I also started the second book of that series and though I haven’t finished it yet, I like how it plays around with switching between different characters, often within the same chapter and sometimes even in the same scene.
The Potato section
From the journal of Russet Wrinkle, Owner of the Upper Hills Potato Farm in the country of golden Hills. Very Late Spring, Year 492 of the Age of Hairs.
Horrible day. Was on my way back from the bakers when I saw Neighbour Lamplight talking to someone tall, slim and dressed in a blindingly white cloak, gesturing towards my farm.
The Slim person then proceeded to approach my farm and knock on my door for reasons I’m not interested in finding out. Made my way to Lamplight’s shed instead, first to hide until the unwanted visitor went on their way and then to take some of his potatoes as payment for bringing this trouble to me.
The tall one seemed to have left a message at my door. Talking about “looking for a fellow friend of the Sun” and what looked like information where to find them.
Used the note to light up my stove in the evening. It produced a blue flame and made my evening stew taste like Forest.
Stats:
Destiny: 2
Potatoes: 3
Moon: 0
(I changed “Orcs” to “Moon”, because I don’t like Orcs as a descriptor for a general threat.)