June Pugsteady News!
The latest in Eddy's life and work
Hey all! I’m planning to do these monthly, but this one got a little away from me because there’s a lot going on!
Gloomy Rainy Days
As I write this, it’s raining here in Atlanta, and it’s expected to keep raining for most of the week. There was a time when I loved rainy days, but now it just means I can’t go out for my walks, either my early morning exercise walks or walks with Darby. (She absolutely will not poop in the rain, no exceptions human.) So sometimes I get a little down.
Full disclosure: In 2020 my anxiety was so bad I sought out therapy for the first time in my life. I’m really glad I did it, and she helped me get through a particularly rough time, but it also means I’m much more aware of my anxiety. It’s great that I have tools to manage it now, but it also means that sometimes a particularly gloomy day combined with work stress can really cause me to start thinking everything is awful and I’m a failure and and and. I end up having to set some time aside to get myself out of that mindset.
Many Worlds, One Con
One of the things that gets me out of that mindset is to write down all the things I’ve accomplished or am accomplishing, which means it’s a good time to talk about the news!
First, Onyx Path Con is this weekend! You can sign up for games, or watch all our panels on Twitch. I’m also running the first public playtest of Trinity Continuum: Anima. I’m nervous about it, because it’s a brand-new game and it’s different from the kinds of things I’ve worked on over the past few years, but I’m sure once things are moving it’ll be a lot of fun!
Next, I’m working on the upcoming dark fantasy game Blackbirds! Honestly, I’m coming in to help out with the final push on the design, but I’m getting to work not only with some old friends from my days at CCP, but also some new-to-me folks that are very cool and excellent at their jobs!
In case you missed it, a couple weeks ago I started a new show with the folks at OneBookShelf called History Check. It’s a dive into a variety of 20th century RPGs that maybe don’t get as much cultural attention, and maybe see if we can learn something from them. We started with Bunnies & Burrows from 1976, which is a weird, fun little game.
Speaking of videos, I’ve been doing some work with the Extra Credits gang again. Most recently I did a video on RPGs and Cinematic Entertainment, talking about the rise of actual play shows. Another episode should be coming out this week as well!
My Media
As always, I’m consuming a lot of media. Most recently, I’ve subscribed to a book club! MX Publishing, the company that publishes my book Watson is Not an Idiot and is the largest Sherlock Holmes publisher in the world, has a program where they send you an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories every month. And they’re pretty good! The series has, at last count, 24 volumes, so I have a while to get them all, but it’s been nice to get a steady drip of solid Sherlock Holmes pastiches in my mailbox.
I’ve also recently paid for a yearly subscription to Realm, which is a serialized audiobook studio that does some really great work. Currently I’m binging my way through a series called Bookburners, about a team of investigators that work for a secret Vatican taskforce to find demon-possessed books. It’s definitely a story in that vein of “investigations into the weird,” but it also has a lot of great character development and humor.
As for comics, I took a risk and picked up a bunch of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comics from Boom! Comics. I’m a bit too old to have nostalgia for MMPR, but I have been developing a fondness for tokusatsu shows over the past few years, and I do like superhero comics, so I figured it would be a fun, mindless read. And it’s actually pretty interesting! Go Go Power Rangers in particular digs into the emotional impact that being teenage superheroes can have, a nice balance of high school drama and superhero nonsense.
Anyhow, that’s it for me. I’ll catch up with y’all in July!