News and Stuff and Things!

More of a mash-up of stuff in this journal just to talk about a few things, namely a brief update on the Iron Rose, some events from Saturday and what the situation is between myself and Therix.

Updates for the Rose
I'll keep this brief - I have wire to make frames, putty to make models, bases to mount those models on, and Microsoft Word to write the codex. Of all of those things, Microsoft Word is the only thing I'm confident with but I don't want to start the codex until I start modelling.
This is going to take a little longer than I expected.
Does anyone have any idea how to model things with green stuff epoxy putty? It would be much appreciated for any help.


Exilicon
On Saturday I went to a very small convention called Exilicon, essentially a hobbyist and creative convention with various little things including storytelling, game mods, graphic novels and various experimental and classical tabletop games. These games ranged from Byzantine Circular Chess to Egyptian Senet and to Hetairos, an experimental adventure game exploring the Greek underworld. Games aside I've gotten to know another writer, and a writer/artist present here on dA.


Byzantine Circular Chess - A peculiar variation on chess using older rules on top of it, the board has just as many spaces as in regular chess, but is arranged around a central ground where no pieces can move. The setup is four pawns on each side with the rest of the pieces arranged in the middle using a fairly conventional setup. When two pawns from one player meet each other at the centre, effectively blocking each other, the opposing player just removes them.
Thing is, the game also uses a few older rules; firstly, queens are called Generals and can only move one space diagonally, like a watered-down king piece. Bishops are instead Elephants, and move two spaces diagonally non-negotiably. Yeah...queens and bishops were terrible until they updated stuff.
Also learned about how Castles as we know them, or Rooks, were actually derived from the Persian word Ruhk, which translates as Chariot, explaining why they work so well in straight lines.


Senet - A slightly smaller and more evil version of snakes and ladders, where you control five pieces and have to move them through three rows of squares, including combating enemy pieces to have all your pieces removed by the final board piece. We didn't really get a game of that in before we got invited to Hetairos, but that was the gist of it.


Hetairos - A map-based roguelike adventure game designed by JubalBarca and still in the experimental stages. It features a fairly simple and intuitive combat and movement system, only marred by our bad dice rolls meaning that almost all of our exploration meant we encountered rocks, Pits of Shades and Chimera. You got to pick from about ten available races, each with their own advantages, ranging from knowledge buffs to healing and then straight up damage bonuses. On top of that there were plenty of scenarios and possible item drops, and the gaming experience was really only marred by the small map due to space restrictions, the understandably-in-progress set of rules and our own naivete. I think that with slightly larger space to move our figures around and without the interruption of lunch we would have been altogether more successful with playing it.


The Ballad of Baillie - Another in a way comical part of JubalBarca 's performance as host of the convention was the side-room stories, where he related to us a couple of traditionally-themed tales. To add a more humorous note to his storytelling he was in some cases accompanied by a Jew's Harp (neither Jewish, nor a harp) and the spoons, a tune with which he played on his knee and then on the head of one of his friends.
"If you wish to save the world, do not give them plans or weapons, tell them stories."


ryuuza-art - What I will admit was one of the highlights of the convention was the Soul Snatchers booth, one of the two stands there that were being run by people making money rather than sole hobbyists. This stand did in the end occupy the final hour and half of the convention, both for the stimulating conversation and the work that had been put into it. Across the stall was a range of merchandise, ranging from postcards sporting characters from Team Fortress 2, to silver etchings of characters from Sailor Moon and Iron Man, sketches of Cloud, and her own unique artwork and storytelling in the form of Soul Snatchers.
After wandering over to the stall I picked up a crossover poster of Attack on Titan and Adventure time; neither series I've seen but the artwork was too good to mass up. Alongside it an A4 print of pretty much all the portal characters in one dynamic scene, and the first two editions of Soul Snatchers, a series that definitely has more to it than you first would expect.
While I wouldn't like to have a highlight to the convention as to avoid disrespect to any of the other areas, I would definitely say conversation with Guiseppa was immensely enjoyable.


Therix. Just...Therix.
This little piece tacked on at the end is just to reveal some interesting meta-information about Therix. Therix was, at his first inception, a character I unashamedly threw into All's End as a peculiar self-insert, and like everything else in the classic All's End, he was poorly-written at best. He was too powerful, too changeable, and had a relationship that seriously just...no. I don't even.
Since the reboot of All's End and its subsequent surpassing of its predecessor, he has become what I would call a far better character. With my original power-trip out of the way his powers and personality have calmed down significantly and settled into something I think suits him. Nowadays he still shares some qualities with me, but it also very much himself. Admittedly he is still more powerful than your average joe, but understandably as a key character, and with this comes a great deal of limits and social dysfunctions, including a self-generated fear of letting anyone else handle his problems. He gets to thinking that usually he's best suited to handle something, and won't let anyone else help because he doesn't want them to get killed. He's a skilled combatant and is meant to focus on evasion in his style, but with everything on his mind filling his head with politics, and his inability to listen to his own advice, he often forgets the best of his abilities and for that suffers.

The only part of him that really remains as an almost Gary-Stue-esque trait is his developing relationship with a pre-existing character, though thanks to some mind to how relationships work and picking the pair because it makes sense, my limited audience has thus met it with some cautious but positive responses.

Oh, and by the Way...
Guys, would it be too much to ask to leave comments on my writing when you read it? I enjoy replying to comments, but when the only trace of your passing is a little number in a slightly darker green than the background, it's a little depressing. I looked back at the journals about the Iron Rose I put up a couple of weeks ago, and it surprised me to see that the two had almost 400 views between them. Why did it surprise me? Both because that's more people than I have watchers, and also because they had nine comments between them. Nine comments, all of which were on one of the two and entirely consisted of a conversation between me and one of the people mentioned in the journal. Other than that, pretty much nothing.

Your account doesn't tell you a lot of people are properly reading your stuff; it only records it and that isn't accounting for all the misclicks and page refreshes.
Leave comments - it doesn't take up long unless you have something big to say, and it actually makes me feel like my work is being recieved by something other than the void.