Some Random Thoughts

I finished round three of chemotherapy yesterday, so that was something. I have three more rounds to go before we move into a 'maintenance' phase, and they're going to give me a rotation of radiation therapy directly on the tumor pressing against my spine for good measure in the interim, but I have a little time off. I was WIPED the last two days, but after a lot of sleep and figuring out how to manage my diet to rebound quicker, I'm feeling pretty spry today. I managed to update some links on the old blog here to make things a little more up-to-date and easy to access; a lot of my links were to previous iterations of Stalwart, and it made sense to at least have the first visit with the blog be with current stuff. I've got a FAQ, a dedicated post for S85, and a post about my other games that sort of summarizes all things in a bit of a handier fashion. At least I hope it is.

One thing I've been doing is organizing my Facebook feeds and following some things - I mean, there are some cool communities out there that I just had no idea about, and it's fun to reminisce about my favorite eras of professional wrestling and comics and gaming. One thing that jumped out at me was how much, in my wrestling fandom of the late 80s, I never really appreciated 'enhancement talent' (or 'jobbers'). It got me thinking that comics has its own tier of jobbers and enhancement talent, and that Stalwart '85 could use more of that. I have about 4 different illustrations I did when putting together Stalwart '85 that I never used because they ultimately came across as half-baked minor villains not worth the bother. A collection of several of these expert-level, one-trick villains might be a good first issue of "The Stalwart Phile" if I can get around to getting that going. I've got lots of ideas for it, so there's no good reason not to do it, and to keep pumping out content for Stalwart '85. I mean, I could do 20 or so of those and then collect them into a complete volume. Not a bad way to think about adding to the game over time.

I'm so happy to see the positive reception Stalwart '85 is getting as people get their hands on the print books. I was super happy with how they came out, and I'm glad to see that people generally share my enthusiasm. Every time I see a tag that someone posted a pic of their book, it gives me warm fuzzies.

I go back and forth (and back... and forth) about how I want to build the Halls of Moridis megadungeon for both Hack'D and TSR. Ultimately, it's a product for both, so I can build it simultaneously for both. I had planned to start it over with a new group of heroes (and I rolled them up), but then I thought maybe I'd take the characters I'd already been using for Hack'D and just come up with their comparable stats in TSR and keep going where I was. That seems like the better option - I liked those characters (they were based on the inside front cover of the Basic '81 rules - my favorite D+D image ever), so I could just keep going with them. Seems like I have some old notes to dig through and find...

My LEGO room is in full bloom. I've been able to track down a few sets I wanted, I've had many given as gifts (thanks to those who have sent those my way - much appreciated), and I've even gone through and pulled out some of my 10+ year old instruction books and cobbled together sets from way back in the day (I did the AT-ST from 2007 last week). It's a great room to just hang out in. I have all sorts of my old comics bagged and boarded on the walls, and I'm surrounded by nerd stuff. It's a glorious space in my basement.

For a guy who is battling 'terminal cancer', I'm actually doing quite well. I never know what tomorrow may bring, but I'm hopeful that I can still put this mother f-er into remission at some point, and squeeze another few years out of this body that kind of wants to quit on me.

Thanks for all of the support and good vibes. It's all been deeply appreciated.

Stalwart '85 FAQ

Some Questions People Have Pondered...

Q: How does stun work?

A: Stun means that you cannot act at all for the duration of stun, which may be in actions, rounds, or even longer periods of time. All actions against you are successful unless a 1 is rolled.

Q: Could you clarify action management?

A: It is generally an either/or proposition. As a character at tier D10, you can either take 2 actions at full strength, or 5 actions at a -1 downshift of dice. You can be at your best for a few actions, or water yourself down and spread yourself a little thin. It really comes down to the strategy of one foe where you want to concentrate attacks, or a number of lesser foes (or a time when you need to add some movement to your action management that round).

Q: If my character is attacking someone who's taken an Actively Defending action, my guy takes a -1 die shift - and that includes the Tier die?

A: Yes. This defaults to the same rules as listed under 2.4 on page 9.

Q: Can I stack impervious and invulnerable?

A: No. other defensive gifts (like resist) will stack, but I always saw impervious/invulnerable as either/or.

House Rules: Here are some rules I've been using to keep things keeping on...

Any 'super hero' (however you choose to define that - I'm going with expert tier or better) is able to deal, minimally, 1 point of damage with any successful attack. While you are still bulletproof against mooks firing their D6 pistols, the young archer apprentice with the D8 bow still has a chance of piercing your defenses every attack. I'm limiting this that any side or secondary effects requiring you to deal damage are not triggered unless you actually roll 1 or more points; this freebie point does not bring any automatic benefits with it, and is just an attaboy to keep at it. A superhero who hits another superhero in combat does something, even if it's quite minimal. 

My Other Games

My Other RPG Projects

	Hack’D & Slash'D $1 PDF Fantasy RPG using D12   Resources: * The H&S Living Companion * Halls of Moridis Living Megadungeon
Tales of the Splintered Realm $.2.95 PDF Fantasy RPG using the OGL Resources: * The Halls of Moridis - a Living Megadungeon * New Delvers of Daggerford Actual Play Report
	Shards of Tomorrow $2.95 PDF   Sci-fi RPG using the OGL
The Stalwart Age $2.95 PDF Superhero RPG using the OGL Resources: The Stalwart Age Blog is a semi-retired resource including background and character stat blocks.
	Cupcake Scouts the RPG (2E) $2.95 PDF An RPG of Friendship, Baking, and Monster Staking
Michael T. Desing’s Army Ants '81 PWYW PDF A simple military RPG… with bugs Resources: * Comic Book Volume 1 PWYW * Comic Book Volume 2 PWYW

Ye Olde Fantasy Itch

I've been watching Lord of the Rings, built the LEGO Rivendell set, started on the LEGO Medieval Village set (all fun), and have been doing a lot of cancer-treatment related stuff (generally less fun). I ended up in the ER for something of a false alarm over the last two days, but better safe than sorry and all of that. I'm feeling pretty well considering I'm two rounds into chemotherapy - although I am well aware it is likely to get more challenging the further I go.

I also got the vast majority of the Stalwart '85 books sent out (I am missing maybe three addresses still), and have the KS somewhere around 90% fulfilled. I still need to finish the adventure I am writing, the comic pages I am putting together, the web site, and (ideally) some online support. Those are all relatively significant things, but the physical books being out in the wild was the BIG thing (and what people were paying for). The stretch goals I feel okay if they take a little longer to get done. I'll get there, and they'll be better if I wait for inspiration to drive them forward. I tried working on them after shipping lots of books, and it felt like work. That's never good. So, back burner for the moment, but on simmer.

However, I took out the rules for Hack'D and Slash'D, but felt like playing something a little meatier and more 'classic D+D' - which is fortunate, because I have one of THOSE games, too. I started to think about a dungeon crawl campaign for Tales of the Splintered Realm, and decided I wanted to create a classic cleric class for that game (which will be easy enough to do), and then put together a team to explore Moridis Halls, which I am placing beneath Stalwart Keep to unify things a bit. I managed to figure out how the existing map fits under the keep, and it's going to require some revisions of existing concepts, but it's all pretty doable. Here's the Stalwart Keep map with the overlay of the Halls. It's not very pretty (the blue dungeon overlay is a bit awakward), but it gives a sense of how the two fit together... and provides a scale for the upper keep in reference.

I can see a few ways into it... 

• There is going to be a secret door connected to the western well.
• The northern well descends directly into a pool. This will be blocked from the rest of the dungeon by a heavy portcullis.
• There is a stairway down into the dark temple from an unnumbered building towards the east (north of building 4) that is going to be a secret society of dark friars that worship Moridis.
• The northern exit will go outside of the keep, to a secret entrance used by goblins (I think) that is further down the side of the hill. Moridis has been calling the goblins to her.
• The northern section also has an entrance used by a dwarven clan of brewers who use the mushroom halls to get the mushrooms used in their strange but potent ales. Their connection to the earth has also allowed them to hear the whisperings of Moridis from the deep. They would have motivation to get some adventurers to go down there and figure out what's going on.

I have quite a bit of free time on my hands, so starting a long-term fantasy solo campaign is not a bad way to use that time. If I end up with some publishable content out of it, all the better. 

Happy New Year and Some Silliness

Happy New Year! Hope that you and yours have a wonderful 2025.

This morning, I was looking at bills that have to get paid in the next few weeks, and I decided that ‘water bill’ would be sort a ridiculous name for a character. And then I got silly. Blame my meds.

It’s a team of guys all named William with elemental powers, so they name themselves… 

• Electric Bill
• Water Bill
• Heating Bill
• Property Tax Bill (best I could come up with for earth-based powers... I mean, Dirt Bill? Clean Fill Bill? Pavement Bill? Stone Bill? Suggestions welcomed)

They had a fifth member, Income Tax Bill (his immense wealth makes him Luthor-like), but he went rogue and is now their arch enemy. Other enemies include School Tax Bill (a super genius – or maybe just a really strong brutish bully who always wants to meet you at the flagpole at 3 o’clock), Phone Bill (telepath – but he has to hold his hand up in the ‘phone gesture’ for his powers to work), and Insurance Bill (sort of like the State Farm chaos guy who goes around bringing destruction in his wake).

You know this is entirely idiotic, but you also know you would at least play a one-shot of this game. I was thinking that there could be a female somewhere named "Rent-To-Own Rhonda", but then realized immediately that the implications of this name are very... yeah. So maybe don't include her. 

Again, it's the meds. This is why I can't teach right now. I'd just start saying whatever crossed my mind, and weird stuff crosses my mind, and then I'd be sitting in a superintendent conference trying to figure out what exactly I said and why.

The Secret Ingredient (and thoughts on my dotorate)... or doing the Gritty

If you backed the Kickstarter, you've likely seen (or maybe will now) that you can download the expanded rulebook with the Public Domain characters. That book clocks in at 200 pages, so it's a pretty hefty book (about 150 drawings and almost 49,000 words)... and people are saying the nicest things about it there. I just engaged in a conversation where Aldo mentioned the enthusiasm he felt in the pages, and I started thinking about that idea... I joked about how the secret ingredient is love, but I wasn't really joking. I loved working on it.

And that got me to thinking about the research I did for my doctorate. I did a really deep study of the concept of grit - how we leverage passion and persistence in the pursuit of long-term goals. I found a number of things that were (to me) interesting, but the one salient to this conversation is the idea that we default to passion, but then we have persistence in place as the backup generator for when we run out of passion. We sometimes really want to work on that project, and sometimes we just do it because we know we should, and stuff has gotta get done. A gritty person is able to use both, and tends to finish what they start. People with less grit tend to run out of enthusiasm, and then cannot really find the motivation to follow through. 

But it hit me that for this project, I only ever worked on it when I was passionate to do so. I knew that the persistence was there, and I could always draw on it if I needed to, because I was determined to get this project done, but I knew (at least on a subconscious level) that I didn't want that mindset filtering into the work. Because I think I've realized something new about grit - you do your best work, your most creative and sincere, when you are leaning on the passion side of the equation. As soon as it's about a gut check to make your way through it, you're not as genuinely and deeply invested anymore. If you approach your work with any level of professionalism, it will still be of a certain quality, and you'll still be able to be proud of what you've accomplished, but it won't be quite as inspired. 

This is not the same as 'phoning it in'. That process leaves you feeling like you need to justify why it is markedly below your usual standard - I have had classes that I taught that were strong (most days, in my estimation), mediocre or worse (those phone it in days - not a lot, but enough that they count), and a handful of inspired days, where I wanted to keep teaching after the bell rang, and where some of the students maybe even wanted to keep going with the lesson. I'm ineffective or modestly effective on those phone it in days, highly effective most of the time, and highly effective +1 on those inspired days.

With teaching, I don't have the luxury of just not working on it for a few weeks if I don't feel all that enthused, but with Stalwart '85 I did - and I took it. There were days (and even weeks this summer), where I was brimming with inspiration; I woke up excited to work on it, and kept tinkering with it long after I was tired and should probably get to bed. This fall, several things got in the way of that - getting back to teaching, then the fall play, and then my diagnosis - that meant I went for weeks at a time without feeling genuinely inspired. So, I waited. I had Christmas break on my mind... if I got to Christmas break without the game finished, then I would start leaning on persistence and wrap it up. Luckily, it never came to that. I had a day of inspiration last week, and a few hours on a few days last week, and then a burst of inspiration this week that got me across the finish line. 

I am working on the commissions with the same philosophy. I have started every commission - if you haven't received yours yet, it is because I started to work on it, wasn't feeling it for whatever reason, and I set it aside. If I got yours done, it's because there was some synergy of time and space and a visual in my head and the need to get this done right now that all came together.

  

The Update I've Avoided

I have been putting this off for a bit, but I've reached a point where I have to start talking about this. I went into the hospital at the beginning of November for what I thought was a gall bladder attack, but unfortunately it has turned out to be a recurrence of cancer that has metasticized to my skeletal system. Unfortunately, this is the worst kind of cancer to get in the worst place I could get it, so my doctors have told me my prognosis is 'grim' and to 'get my affairs in order', which are never good things to hear from your doctor.

I post this not because I want more sympathy (I'm getting more of that than I can manage, to be honest), and not because I want to make any excuses. I have every intention of finishing my Kickstarter - in fact, finishing the Kickstarter is very important for me in terms of having a measurable goal to work towards. I just am not working at the pace I'd like, and I've had trouble the last few weeks being able to focus on it with everything else going on. I've got a lot of clarity now on what the next while looks like, and I'm looking forward to getting through some of the final steps here. 

I'm trying to figure out how to have the game live on well beyond me. It's going to be my final creative statement, so I want to finish strong. 

Also, my good friend Mike asked if he could create a GoFundMe, which was kind of him to do. I don't expect anyone to contribute - if you backed my KS, you've already made a significant financial contribution to me. However, I'm putting it here just in case you wanted to share it or you wanted to contribute. I have so many people asking me what they can do, and helping to make sure my wife and daughter have as much financial security as I can possibly provide them is about the best thing anyone could do for me right now.

Here's the link:

https://gofund.me/cbbdd6a8

Thanks, and I'll be back to posting game stuff soon.