From the Desk of Mike

** I'm leaving this post up for posterity and record keeping, but I have been contacted by an artist that I am now working with. ** ** Further editing the post to remove all traces of the word [redacted] since it still appears to be triggering folks to contact me and I don't want them to spend valuable time chasing a dead end.]

I'm looking for a [redacted] to provide the cover for my next (short) role-playing game system to be published on Itch.io and DriveThruRPG. Even before going legally blind, I was not great at art (as you can see here), and I decline to use AI for this purpose. I could publish without cover art, but that feels sloppy and will significantly reduce the odds of anyone ever reading the game, much less playing it.

I can offer you a small, appropriate cash fee for the work or work in kind, such as shipped homemade croissants (my clay flowers do not ship well, and I'm not allowed to ship homemade wine or mead at all, so).

If interested, here are basics, we can discuss details privately:

Non-commercial piece; the game is being released for free, but you must be okay with a perpetual license for that purpose

You will be credited by name (and site or e-mail) in the game

Single piece, dimensions (not necessarily size) of 8.5" x 11" paper

No persons or creatures needed, only objects and environment

Any medium, though markers, watercolor or colored pencil would be especially appropriate

At the root of RPGs is the desire for players to tell stories (this is a fundamental change from their ancestors, wargames). And at the root of dice rolls, probability tables, and math in RPGs is a system designed to decide your stories for you. As players, we know, or like to think we know, what is best for the story. Why do I need the dice to tell me if I opened a chest successfully, or managed to dodge an arrow? At what point was it better to surrender the power of our narration to uninterested and uninvolved tools of fate?

It's true that some players, like some writers, have difficulty separating their desires from what is best for the story. But the answer to this should lie with helping those persons to balance their id wth that of the group, not instituting arbitrary manacles for the action of everyone else. I, personally, am tired of game systems telling me and my players what we cannot do (and I say that as someone who has designed games that use dice for success, so at times I have been part of the problem).

"Rule of Cool" is not an answer, either; it is an acknowledgement that we are sometimes confident enough in our choice being good enough for the story to ignore the determination of a system that has all the emotive and narrative flair of an AI chatbot. The "Rule of Cool" override should not be an exceptional occurrence, it should be the norm. Players should be replte with confidence in their decisions and the impacts for the story, with the "system" being available in the exceptional cases where there is uncertainty.

I've been surprisingly okay! After my brush with eye problems and a stay in the hospital I...went effectively blind in one eye. Which is challenging in all sorts of simple ways (you think pouring wine into a glass is easy, oh ho ho...), but I've still got one good eye, and that's all I need to wash dishes, wrestle with Midge, and review taxes. Speaking of which, though the tax season is every bit as busy as I expected, there's only about two and a half weeks left to endure.

TOP 8 REASONS TO CONTRACT SPONTANEOUS OPTIC NERVE STROKE

1. You have too much blood but there aren't any local vampires available to help relieve you of it.

2. You need to test to see if your family is poisoning you with heavy metals and the like but want to keep it on the down-low.

3. You're not allowed to change the difficulty level for your job mid-game, so you need to ramp it up by missing days of work (bonus points if you do this during "busy season")

4. You're too addicted to working out and simply cannot take a break unless put into an environment where it's impossible.

5. You really, really have to know if there is unknown metal anywhere in your body, but want a "valid" excuse to go through an MRI.

6. You're afraid of the dark but people make fun of you so you want a nightlight even with your eyes closed in pitch blackness.

7. You've always thought those horror movies where you can't trust your eyes about maybe seeing something move were pretty cool, but are afraid you'll chicken out unless it's irreversible.

8. You need a new pain based experience but just can't convince anyone to give you a lumbar puncture.

If these items sound good to you, and you have an amazing support structure from your family, friends and workplace like I do, then talk to your doctor about inducing Ischemic Stroke of the Optic Nerve today.

It was better and worse than the Digimon movie. It was like having tea and no tea at the same time. The Digimon movie was to me a near incomprehensible mishmash of ideas that was set in a bizarre and unusual setting that gave it some level of engagement even if its baffling take on the internet was kind of irritating; the non sequitur peppering of late 1990s music that did not seem to have a cogent connection to the story only heightened the surreality of the thing. It was a decent experience to laugh at not laugh with. The Naruto movie, on the other hand, was completely explicable. For all of the ninja-ey antics, its plot was almost trite in its humdrumitude(TM). I was able to follow along all the story beats, and most of them made some manner of sense, but the problem was that I didn't want to follow along. The Naruto film is mostly if not entirely absent of any protagonists I want to root for. (Nor villains for that matter; I kind of wanted nobody to win here.) There's not as much growth there as I would have expected given that it should be some time after the first episode. Also, they basically kidnap the princess and force her to go to the land of snow, which she really doesn't want to do. And sure, in the end everyone is happy except the villains but the journey along the way really kind of sucks in my opinion.