Moving the Needle
October's Pugsteady Update
Wow, is it October already? I guess it’s time for my monthly Pugsteady update!
Out and About
I’ve been thinking about travel a lot lately, for a couple of big reasons. The first is one I’ve talked about before: conventions. In case you’re new to the newsletter, before the pandemic convention travel was a noteworthy part of my business. I certainly wasn’t jetsetting all over the world every day of the week or anything, but typically I’d travel at least six times a year for work-related reasons, and it wouldn’t be unusual for at least one of those trips to be significant (either across the country or international travel). I barely did any travel at all in 2020 and 2021, but this year I’ve gone to two conventions for work and went to visit my parents once. This weekend I’m taking the next step: going to a convention where I have more than one planned appearance, and I’m meeting up with colleagues.
I won’t say “it’s a step closer to normal,” because that implies things will somehow go back to the way they were in 2019, and that’s increasingly unlikely. But it is a step closer to how I used to work, and that’s both exciting and terrifying. On the one hand, it’s exciting to have something new to look forward to after nearly three years, but it’s also scary because I don’t know how it’s all going to work. Will I get sick? Will I still be a decent speaker? Will I be incredibly socially awkward? Will I, in effect, remember how to people? Most likely everything will be fine, but what used to be something I was extremely comfortable with is now a stressful unknown.
It doesn’t help that I have the other reason I’m considering travel lately: I’m moving. Right now my family and I are in the thick of planning an international move. Thankfully this isn’t the first time — back in 2017 we moved to Ireland and then back to the US later that year — so we have a reasonable idea of what to expect. Of course, one of those things to expect is “get rid of most of your stuff.” And there are a few reasons for this.
The first is just weight and volume. You can’t load up a truck and drive your stuff anywhere. It has to be shipped by boat, which means several months without said stuff. The more you move, naturally, the more it costs, but in recent years shipping has skyrocketed, and it wasn’t exactly cheap to move previously. On top of that, most electronics just won’t work correctly; laptops and portable devices are an exception, but even then you have to be careful what cords and power supplies you get. There’s just no point in hauling your TVs, stereos, 3d printers, and the like across the ocean. Finally, there’s cultural incompatibility. Sure, I could haul my pots and pans with me, but what good is a gallon pot going to do me in a country that uses metric? All my files are on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper, which won’t work in a place that uses A4 paper.
So, yeah, more stressful unknowns.
I like travel. I always have. And I’m excited to start the next chapter of my life abroad. But it’s a stressful time with a lot of unknowns in front of me.
News Roundup!
Luckily, some things remain the same, such as listing a few updates for you fine people!
First, as I mentioned obliquely at the start, I’ll be at a convention this weekend! In particular, I’ll be at Save Against Fear in York, PA. This is one of my favorite conventions, as it’s all about both gaming and therapy, as well as therapeutic uses of gaming. I’ve been attending in person and virtually for five years now, and I can’t wait to see folks in person again.
Second, a project I’m particularly excited about is seeing the light of day. I had the privilege of working on the first ever official Transformers tabletop RPG, and it’s now available for pre-order! I primarily worked on the setting material and acted as the canon consultant for the project, but I also worked quite a bit with the Essence20 team on the system and generally pitched in all over the book. I can’t wait for people to get their hands on this!
Finally, the website What Do I Know? posted a great review of Pugmire: Squeaks in the Deep! It’s shipping out to backers, and it’s available in print-on-demand now. If you want to know if this is the right book for you, here’s a great quote from the review:
I love that each installment of the Realms of Pugmire books have provided a different point of view. No one society is absolutely correct in their view of the world, and all of them have positive and negative aspects to their worldview. In many cases, this worldview is centered on the inherent rightness of the society in question, which is, in turn, questioned by another society in the setting. This means that, on a broad scale, the setting is much less about finding out who is right, rather than finding out what is true.
If you want to know how profoundly this hit me, in my Pugmire game, I was happy with the theme of the Cult of Labor Tor causing problems between Dogs and Cats, and using the Cult as the force that was agitating tension between the societies. Now that I’ve read this book, I feel guilty for not introducing a rodent point of view that wasn’t entirely the Cult of Labor Tor, given how often both cultures reduce all rodents to potential members of the cult. I respect anything that causes that kind of retrospection.
My Media
As I prepare for my move, I’ve largely been moving much of my library to digital to get rid of books and comics I have. However, one area I’ve actually bought more of physically has been DVDs, which I can rip to digital files so I always have copies of my favorite shows and movies. And, tying into the release of the Transformers RPG, I’ve been rekindling my love of Transformers Animated. For those that don’t know, this is a reboot cartoon from 2007 that came out at the same time as the first live-action movie (the title “Transformers Animated” was meant to distinguish it from the movie, just called “Transformers”).
When it first came out I wasn’t a fan, because it didn’t look like the Transformers I knew, and its reboot premise making Optimus Prime a brash rookie really grated on me. But it turned into one of my favorite versions of the show. It’s such a love letter to all iterations of Transformers. They bring back voice actors from the original cartoon (like Susan Blu) to reprise their characters, and introduced surprising additions like Al Yankovic and Lance Henriksen. There were fan-favorite characters like Waspinator and Blackarachnia, as well as brand-new characters that went on to become staples of the franchise like Bulkhead and Lockdown. It’s not perfect — no Transformers show is — but it has been really nice to check back in with an old friend like this.
It’s time I head back to work. If I don’t see you this weekend, I’ll be back next month with another update!
