Category: Uncategorized

One of my problems is the breadth of my interests. The things that interest me have always pulled me in multiple directions. I focus on one interest for a while, then my love for something else pulls me in that direction.

Gaming has always been a passion. First lining up my old plastic Airfix soldiers and throwing pieces of plastic at them in crude IGOUGO contests, then slightly more sophisticated miniature gaming when I saw and was bought a copy of Wargamer’s Digest (May 1978 if I remember correctly). That lead to hex and counter games, and shortly after that the abstract world of Dungeons and Dragons and precise battles of Melee and Wizard.

These were all informed by my reading. World War 2 history and fantasy fiction being the prime interests here, with science fiction a close ally.

These have all remained lifelong passions for me.

Music is also a burning interest. Originally as a consumer, but I learned a little guitar and bass after college, and have been writing music ever since.

So it has always been hard for me to stay focused on a single topic. I love all of this, and more.

It will not get any easier from here on out. I am 57, and our time on this pale blue dot is limited. I have already experienced so much more life than the majority of humans. I am truly blessed to have the life I do.

But there is still a lot I want to accomplish, in fiction, gaming, and music.

The music will likely never be more than a corollary on this blog. Currently, I am making music that blends shoegaze and punk. I have made music with my best friend for nearly 30 years now, and hopefully that will continue.

I also want to do something with all of my Advanced Squad Leader materials. I am way behind on releases for the system. I want to get the Saint Mere Eglise and the Manila historical modules, and the last few Journals.

My project for ASL this year is going to be a solo campaign. Maybe one of the above modules, maybe break out Red Barricades and roll some dice in Stalingrad, maybe something else. There are still a few people around here who play the game, but not like 20 years ago when I was in the heart of a competitive group (the Tidewater ASL Gamers). Almost all of my gaming is solitaire now, so that is not a big deal, and the system is so cool, and I miss it. Maybe I will document that here, maybe not.

Regarding fantasy gaming, we will see. I have been in limbo with the Greywater Chronicles for a year and a half now, as the data on my dead hard drive lies fallow (and hopefully still able to be retrieved). Until I can afford to have it extracted, it will probably remain in limbo. I can still probably move forward, replaying issue 27 and creating the comic anew, and then use that as a jump off point. Maybe I should do that and try to bring the narrative to a conclusion.

Or I could go in a different direction. Create a new world and story line. This is very tempting. It would still be in a similar vein (i.e. lots of violence and a narrative that does not take itself too seriously). I’d hate to leave behind the characters I’ve created, but on the other hand I’ve always enjoyed creating new characters, for games or fiction.

One of these two paths will become clear in the next month – that is a self-imposed time limit. By the end of January, this bog will either have Greywater Chronicles #27, or X #1.

I also need to get back to my gaming company, Dark City Games. My partner has waited patiently for a couple of years now for me to produce something. We have a niche, programmed adventures. But honestly, I want to move beyond that now. Maybe we can innovate something similar for solitaire play. I recently acquired Five Leagues From the Borderland. The combat mechanics are not particularly impressive, but the narrative mechanics are. Maybe that can be a springboard to make something better.

As far as fiction, I have not written any sword and sorcery for quite a while. I have read very little recently. I think there are a few reasons for this, which I may or may not keep private. The problem with discussing anything in our polarized society is that it is all viewed through a political prism, no matter how innocuous. Suffice to say that while we are in a renaissance of sword and sorcery quantity-wise, I am not impressed with the quality. Maybe more later.

So as I stand on the ridge overlooking the approaching year, that is what I am bringing with me. A rather diverse assortment of interests. We’ll see what I can create with these tools.

May you all be blessed with the best year of your lives in 2024!

Bret

Long time no post, blah, blah, blah.

Hard to believe this blog is 5 and a half years old. It has seen a lot of posting at times, and very little at other times. I have tried very hard at various points to make it interesting, and a success. For various reasons I have never sustained notable momentum.

I appreciate everyone who has read and left comments.

Not the spammers, though. Since May of this year, I have moderated 12,000 comments – every one of them spam.

Last month Bluehost wanted me to lock in rates with unlimited storage space at $27 a month. I have no idea why my blog requires so much expense. Supposedly they are the best WordPress hosting site, but it is hard to communicate with them. It definitely is not raising any revenue for me. All my passive income schemes have failed.

I am not bagging this blog. I have another 6 months to revitalize it and establish a firm direction. Since I cannot afford to have the data extracted from my older, dead hard drive, the Greywater Chronicles is in Limbo. A shame as I really loved the characters and deadly silliness. I could proceed from this point, but I feel strange losing all the past issues. They are still on the site, but filled with typos. I really wanted to edit the issues, and maybe offer them as pdfs for a nominal charge (“Still only 25 cents!”).

Maybe I’ll start something else up, and make sure it is backed the hell up! We’ll see.

Anyway, just wanted to say that I appreciate everyone who has read a post on this blog and slightly more those who have left comments, critical or otherwise. Hope you’re here for a few more posts, whatever they may be.

Thanks!

I hope you are all well.

Bret

So this is not Sword and Sorcery. But B5 was a great television series in the 90’s. It was groundbreaking in having a defined story arc for its entire run, and the tightness of the continuity during that run. With very few exceptions, you can tell where any given episode falls in the timeline of its 5 year span, because the status quo on the show changed every few weeks.

That was why I loved it from the first season, when it was still rough but you could see that it was not just hinting, but building toward something epic. Ultimately, it all felt rushed toward the end of the fourth season, when it was not going to get renewed for its last year and the show’s creator, Joe Straczynski, moved events forward and compressed them so that the main storyline would be resolved, and the fans would not be left hanging.

The fifth season was ultimately renewed, on a different network, and a rather disappointing series of storylines rounded out the saga as it all felt like filler. But that might be fodder for another time.

There had been a few projects after the main series wrapped up, and some of them were OK, but none matched the granduer of that initial 4 season run.

Fast forward 30ish years. There were a few teases and hints there was something else in the pipeline, and a few weeks ago the trailer for a new animated movie dropped. I watched it on youtube, and saw a few reactions.

It is the easiest thing in the world to be negative. And I am about to do the easiest thing in the world.

The premise of the movie is that John Sheridan, the central character from the series, has become lost in space-time and must find his way back to his own reality through a series of alternate realities and what if scenarios.

This stinks.

The basis of the series was that every episode counts. It all happens, and it all affects the larger storyline. That was what made the show great.

This movie is going to be filled with meaningless scenarios with no impact on the greater story at all. We know what happens, we already saw the culmination in the last episode of the series (which had actually been filmed as the last episode of the fourth season, but got pushed to the end of the fifth upon the season’s renewal).

Sheridan lives.

There is absolutely no chance he will be lost in space time, and absolutely no chance any of these what if scenarios will matter to the B5 universe.

I get it, we get to hear his voice, and those of the surviving actors in their iconic roles again. And that is worth it to a lot of people.

But to me, this is a flaccid, meaningless coda to one of the greatest series that ever graced the small screen. It goes against everything that made the series what it was.

Just a brief update, as it’s been over a month since I spewed insight across the Web…

My friend could not recover my old hard drive, so it is going to have to go to a professional recovery service, and that means a thousand bucks or more. It will still be a few months before I have that kind of disposable green stuff.

So that begs the question of whether I want to restage or even refight the events of Issue 27 and get it finally done (for those catching up, that issue was lost on my hard drive crash), and get the Greywater Chronicles moving forward again.

Time is an issue here (as it is for most people). I was pretty happy with the way the issue was turning out, and the battle was pretty cool. So I am inclined to put that theoretical time to redo the issue into a different one, either featuring those figures I recently was gifted, or maybe even doing an adventure for the Rat Bastards. It would be kinda cool to do an “At last! In their own comic!” blurb on the cover.

Reading has slowed down. I got bogged down through an issue of Magician’s Skull – not that the stories were bad, just not grabbing me. I have since received another issue of the mag, so I have some reading to catch up on. And the To Be Read pile is still pretty sizeable. See the Time reference above.

My music is hopefully taking a better turn. My bandmate and I just cannot get our schedules to line up, so I recently got a program to work on my computer (Studio One from PreSonus). Now we should be able to record our parts and send them back and forth, though I greatly prefer us recording together, as we tend to push and bring out better performances in each other. The learning curve is going to be pretty steep. Scott has the same program, however, so maybe we can get together and get me on track in the next couple of weeks.

A recent comment to an old post on this blog reminded me that I did not adequately follow up on my quest in reconstituting Ral Partha paints that had dried. I’d like to post on that, and try it with a few more paint pots. My Ral Partha Flesh was restored, and I do use it often again.

If only I did not have a job, I could get stuff done.

OK, time to go to work. I’m going to try to get back to posting at least once a week, even if it is only a bit of navel-gazing (now that I have lost 40 pounds, I can actually see it).

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday (for those who observe Turkey Day – we actually had Shabu-shabu and kim chi), and that you are all happy and healthy!

Bret

One of my best friends, who has been laying low for the past several years due to family health issues, has recently gotten back in touch with me. He is a bit of a computer repair geek, and has built several computers.

When I described my black screen hard drive failure, he seemed pretty certain that he would be able to recover all of the data.

This is outstanding news (potentially, of course)! He will accept no payment, though I will take him and his wife out for a nice meal. We’ll be getting together tomorrow on my day off to catch up and evaluate the hard drive. I am so excited for multiple reasons!

Turns out I did have a few issues of the earliest Greywater Chronicles on a thumb drive, so the last week I have gone back and edited those issues. Not changing anything substantial, just correcting some spelling and grammar, and rearranging a few pictures and speech balloons to make the story flow clearer. Also added a cover to issue 1, and adding the “sunsunderdistantsuns comics group” branding to the covers.

With any luck, by tomorrow night I will have all of my back issues of Greywater, as well as the almost complete #27 back in my possession. Then I’ll look at creating some PDFs, maybe for sale on Amazon for a few bucks, or maybe try putting them on some writing platforms and gain a few patrons. I hate to be crass and monetize things, but if someone wants to pay me the .25 cover price of a Greywater issue, that would certainly help out, and enable me to pursue things further! And finally start my empire of words! Or something.

Lo, yon blog has lain fallow for many moons!

Many things have contributed to my lamented (or celebrated) absence from the web in general and this blog specifically for a while.The primary culprits are my job and a total hard drive crash back in July.

My job is a late shift but the time off before I go in is not like time off after work. I cannot relax and focus on cool projects, as was possible when coming home after work with 6 hours or so until bedtime.

Yeah, yeah, first world problems.

The hard drive crash had a more seriously impact on posting, of course, as it rendered doing so impossible. I lost a tremendous amount of data, and have still not decided how I am going to recover it. All of the companies that perform data recovery are incredibly expensive. I understand why, but it doesn’t make it any more doable at the moment.

Beyond the personal stuff lost was most of the Greywater Chronicles data. I do have the raw data from the first 10 issues, but 11-26 and 27 (which was just about done after a long break from gaming) was lost. Backing up data is essential, and I failed to do it.

I have thought about redoing issue 27, but there was a great (and heart-breaking) battle, and it would be tough to re-play or re-stage it. Some good scenes were lost, too.

So I need to recover the data. The most likely company, SalvageData, gave an initial quote of between 700 and 2000 dollars. They’ll give an exact quote when I mail the hard drive to them. It will be a while before I have that extra money, so it will likely be some time until Greywater resumes.

Also, much of the fiction I have read lately has been uninspiring, or good but marred by other things, and i just haven’t felt like writing about it. I won’t go into it right now. I just recently got my copy of the most recent Tales From The Magician’s Skull, and it has some good stuff. I’ll do a review in another week or so.

As far as writing fiction, I have a pretty strong idea for a novel in a unique setting, but am dealing with some lethargy and lack of time. I am working on my music, as well, and that takes up a chunk of my essence. There just isn’t enough time, so you have to make do with what you have.

That will include a return to semi-regular posting. I did receive a pretty cool bounty recently in the form of a stash of a couple of hundred figures from some dude who had been gaming in the mid-2000’s. His mother was cleaning out the house and gave them to a friend of mine, who passed them onto me. Most are sci fi figs, with a scattering of fantasy, and they are mostly 32mm rather than my 25mm scale, but maybe I’ll start a Sword & Blaster comic with them. Something to stretch my creative juices in story-telling again.

I’ve rambled long enough without a true point. This post is just to say that I am coming back to more regular (and hopefully more coherent) posting.

I hope you’ve all been well! Talk to you soon.

I am fortunate to live in America. Our nation isn’t perfect, and we can do so much better. But I believe, warts and all, naively or not, that we have been and continue to be the best hope for humanity.

The reason we exist is that so many have stepped up to defend our democracy and way of life in dark times.

My thanks to all who have served in any capacity; particularly those who never made it home, or came home wounded and with profound challenges most do not care to see.

I, and we as a nation, owe you so much.

It’s been too long since I posted on my blog, for various reasons, which I’ll talk about in the coming days. I hate that it is the passing of someone that brings out a post from me now, but here it is.

I never met Scott Bennie, but I admired all of his work that I’m aware of. The first thing I read by him was the write up of a Bounty Hunter NPC class, one of three that appeared in an issue of Dragon Magazine; issue 51 or 52, I think. He had couple of other D&D articles I remember in the Dragon, like an article on Rakshasa, that were well-written and engaging.

But it was his Champions work that I remember best. His love for that superheroes game shone in the various books he wrote or collaborated on for it. I think he was he first to attach a quote to his character write-ups, giving each a unique voice in the time-honored tradition of superhero comics, that became the standard in all of Hero Games’ books going forward. His sourcebooks were among the best in writing and layout, particularly his VIPER sourcebook, which was never equaled.

From the early 1990s on he worked in the computer gaming industry, occasionally returning to tabletop RPGs in the 2000s. He was involved in the popular game Fallout, which I know nothing about, but it seems everyone has heard of it.

He died a few days ago, at age 61, evidently from pneumonia. By all accounts he was a very nice man, well-loved by all that knew him. I didn’t know him personally, but I was always struck by his distinct voice in his products, and appreciated his storytelling ability.

My best to all of his family and friends.