OMG, an update!

No updates for August… oy have I been slacking. If there is anybody out there who still follows this, here’s the latest news from planet H.

I broke down at the beginning of August and bought myself a new computer. I have made the switch, and I am loving it. I had the faithful old Dell for almost as long as we’ve been living in our current home (about 6 years) and it was really showing its age.

RedBrick didn’t win the Ennie, which isn’t really a surprise, since the voting is fan-driven and we don’t have anywhere near the number of fans companies like White Wolf, Paizo, or Wizards of the Coast have.

One of the bigger announcements from RedBrick is the planned development and release of Age of Legend, a Barsaive-based campaign setting for D&D Fourth Edition. I’m consulting on some of the development for this.

Speaking of D&D4, I’ve been reading the core books and it looks like a pretty decent game — certainly more up my alley than what 3.x eventually became. I haven’t had much of a chance to play it at all… for that matter, I haven’t had much of a chance to play much of anything when it comes to traditional RPGs. Even my long-running ED campaign has been on a pseudo hiatus for the past few months. We manage to get together every three weeks or so, but because of the two toddlers we don’t end up getting much of anything done.

So, I’ve been getting my gaming fix by playing quite a bit of World of Warcraft. I play on the Sentinels realm, where I have three characters: Varulus, Mestoph, and Urthdawne (all Alliance side). I’m usually on in the evenings (Eastern time). Pop on over and say hi if you want.

As you can see from the new widget over on the right hand side of the page here, I’m giving Twitter a try. It’s a kind of mini-blog news update thing, and has really caught on in the podcasting community. One of the interesting things about it is that each update is limited to 140 characters. It really makes you get to the point.

I’ve also been itching to get back into writing. I’ve opened the files that have my stories-in-progress a couple times now, trying to get back into the writing groove. Overtime at work has started to fall off, so I’m thinking about taking some of that morning time I didn’t have before and get an hour or so of writing in. As numerous writers have talked about, you need to actually write regularly if you want to finish anything, and get better while you do it.

Of course, managing that with a 17-month old toddler and a wife who’s starting her final semester of school is tough. It’s not just a matter of setting priorities, it’s managing time as well. The job situation is starting to settle into a routine, though, so perhaps I’ll be able to keep more balls in the air at once. I had a vacation the first week of August (it was my first real vacation in a long time) and it helped recharge my batteries a bit.

That’s all for now, I guess. I know I say this every time, but I really do plan on keeping this thing up to date a little more often than I have been lately.

RedBrick nominated for an Ennie!

Hey all. I know, I know. More silence from me. But when I have something to say, it’s cool.

RedBrick Ltd has been nominated for an Ennie! The Ennies are an award given out at GenCon every year, and this year RedBrick Ltd has been nominated in the prestigious Publisher of the Year category, nominated by fans and (we hope) voted on by fans!

Want to vote for us? Head over to the Ennie Voting Booth and put RedBrick Limited in as your top pick for publisher of the year! (That particular category is the last on the page.)

Voting is restricted to one vote per IP address, so if you share a computer (or four) on a home network, you can only vote once. Still, we appreciate the support, and would like to make a good showing of it.

More posts coming in the future.

Whedony goodness! Limited time only!

You must check this out. Joss Whedon (co-)writes and directs, Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day star… in a 3-act musical focusing on a supervillain’s (the eponymous Dr. Horrible, played by Harris) efforts to join the Evil League of Evil, and win the girl of his dreams, Penny (Day).

Of course, like all good supervillains, Dr. Horrible has a nemesis: Captain Hammer (Fillion). When Hammer meets Penny, and they hit it off… well, to say hijinks ensue would be sufficient.

The episodes are available for free at www.drhorrible.com (or click the pic) — but only until July 20 (Episode 3 goes live on Saturday)! If you miss the free (streaming) versions, you can purchase them from iTunes, or wait for the DVD (which Joss promises will include extras).

Support this project and spread the word! It was an outgrowth of the writer’s strike at the end of last year, and I would like to see this sort of thing succeed, if only because it means we might see more of this kind of thing from such talented people.

Drying paint…

I know I said (nearly a month ago) to watch this space. For those of you that have, thank you. I apologize for not actually giving you anything to watch.

The big news, I suppose, is:

REDBRICK LICENSES D&D 4E UNDER GSL

(AUCKLAND, New Zealand) June 20, 2008—RedBrick Limited are pleased to announce they have successfully concluded the signing and acceptance of the first Game System License for Wizards of the Coast’s DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition Roleplaying Game.

James Flowers, RedBrick’s Managing Director, said “This is an exciting opportunity for us. We have been looking forward to working with Wizards of the Coast for some time. Now that Wizards have accepted RedBrick’s application for a Game System License, we can move forward with our plans for publishing DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition compatible products. Once details of our forthcoming product releases have been finalized, we will make a separate announcement.”

RedBrick Limited are headquartered in New Zealand, and also publish the popular Earthdawn®, Fading Suns™, and Blue Planet™ roleplaying games under license from FASA Corporation, Holistic Design Inc., and Biohazard Games, respectively. RedBrick’s company web site is http://www.redbrick.co.nz. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast in the U.S.A. and other countries.

I think this is pretty cool. Not really sure exactly where we’re going to run with this (and at this stage I can’t talk about it even if I did), but what I’ve seen of D&D4 has intrigued me, and I can’t wait to actually get my hands on the books so I can get into it in a bit more depth.

I’ve been remiss

So, it has been a long time since I posted anything to this blog. There has been a lot of stuff going on in my life the last couple of months, and this site has suffered because of it.

Something that a number of notable podcasters and bloggers have been doing lately is a “post a day” challenge — where they try to post or update something on their blog/feed/website every day.

I don’t know that I’ll be doing that, exactly, but I do want to try and post a bit more often than I have been. Please, watch this space for further developments.

It’s been a while, I know…

So it’s been a couple of weeks since I posted… what’s been up with me?

Well, I’ve been in training at my new job for a couple of weeks now, and it’s going well — if a little piecemeal, for reasons I will get into later. I’ve been having intermittent computer troubles — surely a sign that I need to start putting money away for a new one.

(Mary’s already taken the plunge, and we have a beautiful new iMac sitting on her desk… it’s made me set my eyes on a MacBook or — funds willing — a MacBook Pro. I have to go with a laptop of some stripe or other.)

More details will be coming out in the near future, but I wanted to share a strange little idea that came to me. At work this morning, some of my co-trainees were having a discussion about the various theme parks in and around Orlando, Florida (you know, Disney World and the like).

I’ve been to Disney World — it was years ago (back when I was in high school), but here’s the thought I had…

One of the sections of the Magic Kingdom is TomorrowLand, which is a kind of 1950s, idealized view of the “future”, which is to say a bunch of pipe-dream fantasies that bear little to no resemblance to what has actually happened in the intervening 40 or 50 years.

What if (my brain said), they redesigned TomorrowLand to be more in line with… more recent science-fiction sensibilities.

The juxtaposition of that kind of image — the garish, neon-splashed landscape of Blade Runner, for instance — in the middle of the happy-family Mickey Mouse stereotype gave my brain a happy tickle, and I had to share.

Talk to you all soon (I promise)!

Time management

I totally suck at managing my time. I have three or four projects going, and rather than spend time working on any of them, I futz around on message boards, play video games, post to my blog (*grin*) and generally waste time.

Part of this, no doubt, has to do with being tired much of the time. I work until 9pm or so, get home closer to 9:30, and then only have a couple of hours before I go to bed… or at least, that would be the plan.

I don’t tend to get to sleep until 1:30 or 2:00, and then Ty tends to wake up at the crack of dawn (6:30 or 7:00), and I need to feed her and take her downstairs. She’ll play in her playpen, and I can generally get another couple hours of sleep, but I’m not getting a full, uninterrupted night.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s a price I’m willing to pay, because Ty is such an adorable little munchkin (getting bigger every day). Still, there are times that I feel like I’m not accomplishing anything… aside from bringing in the money necessary to keep us all clothed, housed and fed (which is worthwhile, but not terribly fulfilling, creatively speaking).

Maybe once the new job starts in a couple of weeks, and I’m on more of a daytime schedule, I’ll be able to manage my time a little better, and actually get stuff done…

Yeah, right.

End in sight?

According to the latest post from United Hollywood, there are information meetings planned for the guilds this upcoming weekend. When coupled with the rumors that a deal is close, are we looking at an upcoming end to the WGA strike?

It would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath. There is a lot at stake here, and while I would like to see some shows return (or at least, know that we’d have new episodes coming up this fall), I’m willing to trade that to see the right kind of deal offered to the writers.

Still… here’s hoping!