The 4 Quests

Something that just seems to make D&D (and RPGs in general) better is having lots of options. I wont go into detail there because I believe most of you would agree with me. This is easy to accomplish when designing a dungeon by incorporating branching paths, moral dilemmas, and junctions where sides must be chosen – or abandoned. But what about a larger scope?

The scope I’m talking about is around the level of quests. But not just the contents of quests: the quests themselves. Simply put, there’s usually only one. Sometimes that’s appropriate, such as when things culminate in a climactic scenario, but for the bulk of our adventure, we should have options.

Large-scale RPGs like Elder Scrolls and Witcher tend to be okay in this area, but D&D campaigns often fall into a one-track story with only one plot going on at a time. A quest might have branching paths, but the PCs are still marching towards one goal, even if it is one of their choice. Having multiple quests or objectives opens up the options for PCs to change things up, or fulfill different parts of their character motivation. Depending on how they’re constructed, they can also offer different parts of the setting if the characters want to change things up.

The structure that I tend to look at for inspiration for my campaigns is the kind used by Guild Wars 2. In Guild Wars 2, I identify three types of quests. On the smallest scale, you have the quests given by NPCs; classic side quests like those seen in many games. Next you have the regional “quests”. These are usually ongoing tensions between NPC factions or environmental factors that PCs can assist in. These are intentionally infinitely looping in Guild Wars for replayability, but don’t have to be in D&D.

As we move up to bigger scales, you run into your character quest. This is the traditional “main quest”, where character-specific goals drive you to travel across the land (or across town, if that’s your D&D scale). Finally, the developers have a world-scale quest that spans multiple updates over around a year. These quests tend to be world-changing and leave permanent changes in how the setting functions.

This is an excellent blueprint for how you can have different kinds of quests going on simultaneously in D&D. The DMG already encourages player-driven objectives, and chances are your main campaign story can fit into one of the other three. If you round out your roster, you’ll have a multi-leveled quest structure that leaves your PCs with a lot of freedom to operate on different scales.

Quests given by NPCs might sound a little supertypical, but they’re game staples for a reason, and you as the DM have the freedom to dress them however you want. If you think they’re cheesy, think about how it would go down in real life. Realistically, people ask other people for help all the time. If you run through the scenario in your head, you might come up with a way someone might ask for help getting a rare item or exacting revenge that just feels right.

On all but the smallest scales, there’s room for some regional struggle. Try identifying who the local NPCs are, if any, and ask yourself what they want. Then, in classic story-building fashion, identify the challenges they could face. The trick to get the PCs invested is to have some sort of consequence of the region whether the PCs get involved or not. It doesn’t have to penalize the PCs, but it should be a visible change, or at least a visible threat of change.

World-scale quests can be tricky to pull off, especially for lower-level parties. If it isn’t the focus of your main storyline, you risk overshadowing your hard work designing the main event. The only real requirement for a world-scale event is that it spans either a large region or a large period of time – it doesn’t have to be particularly impactful. Instead of a dragon threatening to overthrow the kingdom, maybe there’s simply a new law and the PCs can get involved through protests or politicking – or just let it go entirely. As long as the quest doesn’t somehow force the PCs to address it, it should be safe to include without threatening the main quest.

That’s the basic idea anyway. I could probably give each type of quest a blog post (and maybe I will), so it’s a bit hard to cover them all and maintain a tight focus and constrained length. Hopefully, though, I got across the basic idea: having multiple kinds of quests increases player options, which is a good thing.

Whew! Some of these topics seem a little too big to squeeze into a tiny little post. Did I get the message across well, or was it too confusing? What kinds of quests do you like to run? How do you handle player choice in your games? Leave a comment below!

Reimagination #1: Removing Spell Components

Dungeons & Dragons lets you be pretty flexible with magic in your campaigns, especially in 5th Edition. You have the freedom to have magic on every street corner, or no magic at all. Your magic-users can look anything from mad scientists to old mystics to Harry Potter, and they’ll all cast spells about how you’d expect. Harry Potter is flicking around a wand while enunciating strange words, while others are tossing odds and ends that erupt into spells or chanting around stone circles.

You’re given all the freedom in the world to use magic how you want, with one caveat: spells have components. Each spell able to be cast has one or more components, typically from verbal, material, or somatic. You must speak, gesticulate, or present some kind of object to cast a spell. While this works for the vast majority of magical settings, sometimes you don’t want that kind of magic. The problem is that the game uses these components as a sort of balancing factor, and as a way of making things such as stopping magic users from casting magic much easier to do. Luckily, it is possible to eliminate spellcasting components.

Now, the typical (and smart) practice of changing some core mechanics involves looking at what you’re taking away when you change a rule. Verbal components means that some spells can be stopped by gagging spellcasters, and pretty much drives the popular half of the silence spell. It also means spellcasting is potentially anti-stealth, depending on your interpretation. Somatic components act as armour restrictions in some editions, and “occupy” one hand, preventing spellcasters from doing things like dual-wielding or using a shield with their weapon (with a few exceptions). Somatic components also provide another way of restricting spellcasters. Material components serve primarily as a way of attaching cost and flavour to spellcasting, but also gives players the sense of possession and is yet another method of restricting spellcasters. Can we afford to take all that away?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is not without consequences. If we eliminate components, spellcasters become more potent in close combat, and much harder to stop. The lack of flavour is easily replaced by creative writing and description, and the sense of possession can be filled with some other trivial items, but the remaining issues aren’t completely negligible. We’ll address removing each component in it’s own paragraph to make it easier to understand, and to give you the option of removing only components that don’t fit with your concept of magic.

Verbal components are the easiest to remove. You may want to consider downgrading the silence spell a level or so if it can’t hinder spellcasters anymore, but that’s the heaviest change you’ll need to make. If you’re concerned about magic being too silent (obvious spells aside), you may want to have the magical process itself make an audible noise; a hum of energy, crack, sparkle, or mysterious echo. If that doesn’t sound appropriate, then maybe you should consider allowing stealthy spellcasting in exchange for the flavour you’re going for. I always think the logical answer is best in world creation, so if logic dictates that spellcasting is silent, then maybe that’s best.

The primary concern with removing somatic components are the martial capabilities of spellcasters. If you still want spellcasters to be penalized for using armour and weapons beyond the lack of proficiency, you’ll need to come up with another reason for it. For armour, you could argue that too much material around your body interferes with magical energy, or that too much weight causes too much of a distraction, though both these options could be triggered by more than just armour. To limit weapons, you need to be more creative; maybe magic emits from the hands or briefly cripples the user. Alternatively, you could argue for a “negative proficiency” if magic takes an extreme amount of dedication to learn. Then again, maybe you think spellcasters should be able to use armour and weapons well if they’re willing to spend a feat on it.

The absolute biggest concern with removing material components is the steep price tag on certain spells. A few gold pieces here or there for a component pouch or focus can be balanced out pretty easily, but the thousands of gold required to buy diamonds and silver mirrors each time you want to cast a high-level spell will likely require a replacement cost. One option is to go the route of 3rd edition and impose experience costs instead, but this option isn’t for everyone. You could have the spell cause some kind of fatigue or disadvantage on the caster that takes time, effort, or resources to cure, or simply prevents powerful spells from being cast for a period of time (akin to video game cooldowns). If you can’t settle on an alternative cost, consider only removing costless or minor cost materials and leaving expensive materials in.

Lastly, permeating the removal of each component is the ability to restrict magic users without needing an antimagic field. This ability is critical to prison scenarios, whether the PCs are the captives or the captors. It also removes some opportunities for creative combat involving spellcasters. For prisoners, consider creating some plant or material that is anathema to magic, certain kinds or as a whole. This could be as rare or common as you need it, and could prevent magic completely or just make it more difficult to use. Maybe you could invent lesser variants of antimagic field, replicating the lost effect of the silence spell. Again, if you can’t find a logical solution, maybe you should consider the fact that magic-users are extremely difficult to capture a story point and build your adventures around it. As for the combat opportunities, the same options can work as well (maybe fighters carry some antimagic material around and need to grapple their target to get it close enough), but if they don’t, consider inventing some ways to interrupt spellcasting in combat, or contrive some environmental circumstances spellcasters need in order to cast spells.

Those are the basics of removing spellcasting components from D&D. You’ll either need to compensate for the costs, limits, and restrictions of spellcasting, or decide to live with the impact of removing them. Remember that sometimes you can sacrifice game balance if it makes for a good story. You can use a similar method if you want to add your own components as well: look at how your new components affect gameplay (both in- and out-of-combat), and decide whether you need to add something to balance it out.

I hope that was informative! If you have any more questions about making changes to spellcasting, ask in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to answer. What kinds of alternative magic settings do you find interesting? Have you made any special rules about magic for your own campaigns? Is there any other part of D&D that you’d like me to take a look at changing? Leave a comment below!

The Creative Mind

I consider myself to be a creative person. I’ve written short stories and poetry, designed video games and D&D adventures, and I’ve even made amateur pixel art and 30-minute image edits. I’m willing to bet more than a few of you consider yourselves creative, too. Most people can identify with that part of themselves; we all have creativity to some extent.

But what does that mean? What is creativity? How do we know if we’re actually creative? Am I creative just because I do the things I listed? I would argue not. “With this, therefore because of this” and all that Latin. Essentially, a creative person need not do those things, and those things can be done by practically anyone. No, creativity is a way the mind works, and to identify it requires looking at just that.

But let’s go back to that second question: “What is creativity?”. We need to first know what we’re looking for. Before I go there, I’d like to call out a common misconception. Many people think creativity is a measure of someone’s artistic potential, expressiveness, or general right-braniness (which, by the way, is an outdated model). Creativity in and of itself is not these things. Logic, critical thinking, and reasoning are just as important to creativity as visualization and intuition.

Anyway, as it turns out, there isn’t one universally accepted definition of creativity at this point. It’s defined differently depending on who you’re asking. Psychologists have a working theory called “Divergent Thinking”, a term used almost synonymously with creativity in the field. It defines creativity as generating multiple solutions to a problem, instead of focusing one’s energy on a single solution. If you ask someone in the field of business, you’ll find a great emphasis on innovation, novelty, and the actual production of, well, products. If you listen to a colourful artistic person, you’ll get a feely, flowy, “Don’t think; do.” description. Keep digging and you’ll see the spectrum split across around a dozen disciplines.

So how do we answer our question if nobody else has? Well, to do it on a “truth” level requires more than a blog post, but simply put, we look at the commonalities. Across all definitions we find that it generally involves one’s ability to generate something “new” (ugh, another tricky term) and abstractly valuable. Everyone seems to agree that it’s based in the mind – our thinking. Another, less obvious commonality is the idea that creativity is versatile, dynamic, and widely applicable. These universals give us the leverage we need to answer our second (well, third) question: “How do we know if we’re actually creative?”.

To find out if someone, yourself included, is creative, we can look at what allows our minds to think dynamically. Kind of like that divergent thinking model (go figure). If we look at some writing by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he writes, after interviewing 100 individuals, that creative people tend to be seemingly contradictory. He also describes creative people as “multitudes” instead of “individuals”, another hint at the divergent thinking entertaining multiple thoughts at (essentially) once. These points are summarized here.

Now, Mihaly is renowned as a “positive psycologist”. Sticking positivity onto anything always triggers my “drag it down to Earth” reflex, but he did get his PhD in 1965 and receive an award for academic contribution. More importantly, this particular writing makes sense. If creativity is a kind of thought that requires exploration in different directions, it would only make sense that people whose minds are structured to facilitate such a thing would exhibit dynamic, differing characteristics.

Back to the original problem, a “non-creative” person can occasionally produce creative works, and a creative person may rarely produce things recognized as creative. Perhaps, then, our identity as creative people, at least from an introspective standpoint, is better measured by how we think and act in our daily lives, rather than our specific accomplishments. Now, we are all creative to some extent. Creativity, like many things, is better thought of as a scale rather than a have or have-not quality. So, truly, most people can see themselves as being creative. Some are just more naturally creative. Those people exhibit versatility and dynamicism as a more integral part of themselves.

Do you identify as a creative person? Does this contradict your idea of creativity? What insights do you have about creativity and how it is used? Leave a comment below!

The Seven Characteristics: Introduction

Something that I carry with me, for use in a lot of different areas, are a little something known as the Seven Characteristics. What are the Seven Characteristics? Well, they originate from an article titled “Pandora’s Deckbox” on Tappedout.net. Originally intended to help players of Magic: The Gathering understand how to make better decks, I’ve taken these characteristics and adapted them to a variety of applications.

The Seven Characteristics are: Flexibility, Resilience, Sustainability, Consistency, Cohesiveness, Efficiency, and Effectiveness. If you want to know how these help in building decks for MTG or many other card games where you build your own deck, read the original series of articles. Today I’m going to introduce them in general and give an example of how they can be used to help us achieve our goals.

Flexibility is fairly straight forward. This is our active ability to react and adapt to changes. We use this word a lot, so it isn’t hard to imagine the value of flexibility in other areas. When we pursue our life goals, we want to be flexible enough to address issues that come up, just like in a card game.

Resilience is our ability to endure and take the impact of unfavourable events without suffering too much of a setback. This quality is what we use to continue moving forward when things don’t go as planned. When we pursue our goals, we can usually expect to run into issues, so we want to be resilient to ensure we don’t collapse under pressure.

Sustainability has to do with how we apply our effort (though perhaps energy might be a more appropriate word). If you pay any attention to economics, you’re probably familiar with the term. To be sustainable is to have the resources to continue doing what we’re doing. If we push ourselves too hard and aren’t sustainable, we’re eventually going to burn out. This is why we don’t sprint through a marathon. When we pursue our goals, we want to be sustainable so that we can continue with consistent momentum and don’t cause our own demise.

Consistency is all about patterns and predictability. When something is consistent it can be relied upon to do the thing that it does. Consistency is important because it makes it easier to make plans and reduces chaos (which humans intrinsically dislike). When we talk about ourselves being consistent, it means that we have certain thoughts or behaviours that can be expected of us by others. When we pursue our goals, it’s good to be consistent in that pursuit so we can expect to achieve it.

Cohesiveness is a measure of how well different elements unify together. When we have something that consists of a whole bunch of different components, we want those components to work together and play off each other so the something works well. That’s the basic idea. When we pursue our goals, it’s good to have cohesive methods and tools that strengthen each other, allowing us to focus on the goal instead of a bunch of smaller components, and making our job easier.

Efficiency is how good the return is on our investments. It’s simple math, and it’s something we’re probably all familiar with. We want to get the biggest bang for our buck – to get the best ratio of bad and good. When we pursue our goals, we don’t want to be taking a long, convoluted path that drains all our energy and resources. No, we want to be efficient.

Lastly, effectiveness is the general measure of how well something works. If something achieves the thing it set out to do – or as a philosopher might say, fulfills it’s purpose – to a desirable degree, then it’s effective. It works. The way effectiveness is a little more complex than either working or not is the way it’s a scale, not a switch. Something can be more effective than another, while both are effective. Needless to say, when we pursue our goals, we want to be effective so we actually achieve them.

And that’s it. Basically. All seven characteristics work together in different ways, and those ways change depending on what they’re applied to, but you can probably see some of them playing off each other. Cohering, as it were. I’ve kept this framework in mind when designing games, making D&D adventures and rules, working on professional projects, and just doing day-to-day activities. I find that there’s always a way to apply the basic concepts – or at least most of them.

So what do you think of the Seven Characteristics? Can you see yourself using at least some of them? What sorts of things do you think they could be used for? Do you think other characteristics should be added to the list? Leave a comment below. I read them all!

Creative Gamers

As I move towards university in the fall, many things go through my mind. Lifestyle, work, the end goal, that sort of thing. However, like any self-respecting young adult of my era, I also think about video games. Something that I’ve noticed in recent years is that games are branching out. For something a little more fun, we’re going to take a look at that.

What I’m going to start with is the two categories of games that stand out from the main group in a significant way. These games have been successful, but not for the same reasons as games in the past, where content and graphics won the day. These games have piqued our interest for different reasons.

The first group of games includes games like The Stanley Parable or the more recent Undertale. These games aren’t exceptionally similar in terms of genre, but they both stand out in that they’re self-aware. We’re seeing more and more games come up that break the fourth wall and either poke fun at or utilize their typical mechanics and structure. Gaming culture has become mainstream and familiar enough that these kinds of games can now be made and expect people to get them. Some of these games not only know their own quirks, but also the quirks of the typical gamer. Undertale is so successful in part because it seems to know you. It knows what you want and why you want it. At least, it does for many of us.

The second group consists of games like The Beginner’s Guide or the very recent That Dragon, Cancer. The majority of Telltale Games’ recent releases are also among this lot. These games stand out because they use the medium differently, something like a combination of a game and a movie. These “interactive stories” aren’t fun in the same way, relying on the quality of the story rather than interesting challenges and mechanics. Because the player is experiencing the story mostly in the first person, and sometimes making choices themselves, these games are often very good at connecting with their audience in a way that traditional film just can’t, leading to the saturation of heavily emotional games in this category (and not that’s not necessarily a bad thing).

These two trends are a sign that video games are evolving. I mean, they always have been, but they’re evolving in a new way. I believe there’s a sort of renaissance happening in the industry, brought on, at least in part, by a generation of gamers making games and an introspection resulting from the mass monetization that came along with the mobile boom. In the circles I ran in, people were largely unhappy with that monetization. Now those people are old enough to make games of their own. The people releasing some of these games are my age.

I myself, see a lot of potential for growth in the video game industry. I want to be clear here: These games themselves are not the key to success. I imagine we’re going to see more and more games crop up that try to copy the surface of what these games are just to sell it. No, the key to success is the thinking behind these games. These games were made by people who had a vision, a critical mind, and the determination to make them.

Now, I’m going to stop here because this is getting very personal, and I’m going to start saying things that won’t make sense without a big explanation. Suffice it to say that that is the kind of creative person I strive to be, and as such, I could say a lot about it.

So, are you a gamer? If so, what kinds of innovative or enjoyable things have you seen lately? If not, do you understand what I’m saying? The basic idea can be applied to more than just video games. Also, let me know if you’d like to read more from the perspective of my creative visionary side. I’m usually pretty reserved in that department, so unless you want to hear it, I’ll probably keep it somewhat quiet.

If you were interested in this, you may want to take a look at my What Can We Learn From Games series. This could have been written as a revival of the series.

The Day Before Post

Alright, so right now, it’s 4:43 AM. I need a blog post by 8:00 to keep up with my decision to make this happen. Off to a great start. But then again, we’ve all pulled this off before. I’m looking at you, education.

The thing that pushed me to this point is that my best friend (honorary brother, really) came down this week. When that happens, my lifestyle changes. Action movies, going out, and watching a completely different brand of humour. I enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the sort of thing that lends itself well to the promise of philosophy and design. So please forgive me if this is one of my weaker weeks.

This post will probably be about a number of things, a few of which concern the blog itself. The first thing is I want to remind people that 4:43 AM is a completely normal time for me to be awake. I’m not sleep deprived, here. Now, onto more important things:

Something I want to stress is that the blog is in a state of growth. This isn’t (yet) a place where you can find reliable, well-tuned posts. It’s just been revived, and and still young nonetheless. Now, I’m not just shooting myself in the foot here. What I want to stress is that your feedback is important. I shouldn’t have to explain the benefits of constructive criticism, but more importantly, it helps me understand what kinds of things, you, the reader, want to read. A blog is based on a community, and communities interact. I’m not trying to tell you what to do or when to post, I’m just trying to get my viewpoint across.

In other news, despite the fact I recently said I wouldn’t write about D&D, my satellite campaign group has finally, erm, started. I’m still trying to figure out how to write about it without spoiling it for the players, but I do hope to write about D&D in the future, counter to my previous statement. I know this isn’t necessarily helping my reliability and trust, but things happen sometimes, and I know at least some of you will be happy to hear it.

Blog stuff out of the way, it’s time for something else. I’ll try to keep it short so this post isn’t super long, and fair warning: I haven’t had time to research this.

During this week of good company, I’ve been feeling great. This week rests in a series of months where I’ve been feeling rather not great. A relief to be sure, but whenever I witness or experience disparity, especially between emotions and other psychology-related things, it gets my gears turning. I want to understand it. In this case, I want to explore how someone could use a particularly positive experience to counteract a long-running negative trend.

Here’s what I know: long-running psycho-emotional trends are hard to break. Depression is the prime example of this. You’ve heard it before: depressed people can’t just become happy without a lot of work. Also, these relatively extreme positive experiences are often eventually overshadowed by routine processes and emotions. A week to a month seems to be how long a memory typically lasts before losing it’s potential to impose an emotional state. The last bullet point in my head is that the disparity itself, that extreme jump from positive to negative (or vice-versa), adds a lot of “momentum”, so to speak. Because of the preceding contrast, a positive or negative feeling will feel even more so.

If this was a full post’s worth, I’d also touch upon the idea I seeded earlier with the whole lifestyle change and relate back to the psycho-emotional thing… Can you tell I’m still working this out?

Honestly, though, I think what I want to do here is leave this open for discussion. It’ll be good for getting you guys involved, and I’m not going to come to any particularly useful or valuable solution without spending a lot of thought and time in study. I simply don’t have time for that before this goes out. I also kinda don’t want to put my foot in my mouth by talking about things I don’t understand.

So, do you think I’m on to something with this positive-negative juggling that some of us do? Or am I desperately grasping at straws to hit my deadline? Is there anything you’d like to say about the expected D&D posts or blog community? How about any experience you’d like to share, by either meaning? Leave a comment below!

How You Can’t Fail This Year

Alright, it’s a new year, and time to kick off this blog for something good. I thought about how I want to do this, and I’m going to try for weekly posts. That’s around 52 posts this year; approximately 26,000 words if I stick to my guns. I imagine I can do that.

For the first post of the year, I am, of course, going to continue the tradition of beating new year’s resolutions to death with the amount we talk about them. However, I hope to accomplish something different than you might expect.

If we break down what a new year’s resolution typically is, we have someone choosing one thing they want to do to improve themselves in the coming year. For most people, this is a regular activity or way of looking at things, though this by no means covers all possibilities. Then, we have the phenomenon preemptively and prophetically covered by the media every year: the eventual “failure” of the resolution.

Working under the assumption that the media gets it from somewhere and at least some demographic regularly “fails” their new year’s resolutions, how can we address it?

The first thing I would propose, that you may have already picked up on by my use of quotations, is that we change the way we talk about them. Something that has been demonstrated time and again is the power of language and mentality. If we’re bombarded by celebrities and anchors telling us that our resolutions are bound for failure or not realistic enough, they’re (probably unwittingly) poking at insecurities, anxieties, and fears that people may have. After all, we’re trying to make ourselves better people with these resolutions. How would you feel if someone told you you can’t be any better?

That said, there is a practicality to proposing alternatives, and some people do have unrealistic resolutions. The point is that less than a week in we’re already being told that a significant number of us are going to fail. Some of us haven’t even had a chance to start.

To get away from this negative idea of failure in a practical way (I’m not a fan of countering negativity with mindless positivity. I actually have a blog post sitting unfinished in draft about this topic), I think we need to look at what we’re trying to do in a broader, less specific way. This is actually a trick I’ve learned from being a perfectionist: If you’re too focused on a specific detail that doesn’t work, step back and look at what you’re trying to accomplish. In this case, I’m going with the idea that we’re trying to become better people in the coming year. You might have a different idea, and I encourage you to work with whatever that is.

Now that we’ve defined what our core goal is, we can be a little more flexible when faced with challenges. One of my resolutions is to be more active and involved in my communities. If for some reason that doesn’t work for me, I know that I’m doing that to build relationships and share my gifts with the world, and I could, say, stick to a more behind-the-scenes contribution or personal relationship-building. Maybe I just take it a little more slowly. To use something more familiar: the work-out regimen. Maybe you have a very good reason why you can’t make it to the gym. Maybe it just doesn’t jive with you. In that case, maybe there’s a different form of exercise that doesn’t require the gym. Maybe you eat differently, work harder, walk more. Don’t berate yourself just because the gym doesn’t work out.

Some people in media have attached to a similar idea. I suppose I’m just saying it with my own personal touch.

One other thing you may have noticed is that I said I have more than one resolution. As I said, I’m a perfectionist (and I don’t see why we’d just limit ourselves to one thing a year), but it also serves a purpose. If I come up with more than one way I can improve and commit to it, I still have something to fall back on if one of my resolutions fail.

This is really just an extension of the point I already made, taking a very large, meta-step back, but it’s the same principle of being flexible and having contingency plans. If there’s absolutely no way I can resolve my community resolution, I can just as well find equal meaning somewhere else.

In closing, you shouldn’t just give up on your resolutions when things don’t work out right away, either. Flexibility is one thing, resilience is another. If you really want to do something, keep trying until you figure it’s just not going to work.

So, what’s your new years resolution? Do you even have one? Nobody said you had to! What do you think you’re really trying to accomplish with the goals you’ve set for yourself?

Redefining the Blogger

Hello! First thing’s first: Merry Christmas! If that’s not your thing, then I wish you well regardless.

I know it has been a long time time since I’ve shown any activity on the blog, and there are a number of reasons for that. Before I go into anything else, I want to talk about some of the reasons why I’ve been gone so long when I was essentially just getting started; In part because I want to get it off my chest, and in part because I want a certain degree of transparency here. I want to build trust and understanding, and that’s much harder to do if I keep my operation hidden.

The first thing that saw me having trouble continuing the blog was that I started feeling restrained in my writing. Before I started, I did a lot of reading on the ins and outs of blog-writing. Everything from how to make a successful blog to how to make a blog that’s meaningful to you. While I may have learned some things from that endeavor, it also created a defined standard. I found myself trying to be something that, put simply, I wasn’t. That was the first problem.

The second problem was that I knew my audience. This blog is small. Most of the readers are people I know personally. While it’s great that people close to me are interested in what I have to say, I wasn’t ready to handle people’s reactions that close to home – literally in my home in some cases. I want to be able to speak publicly, but I still need to get used to the way it becomes relevant in your daily life. When part of my motivation was escapism, it quickly became an issue.

The third problem, related to the second, is one that, to be honest, I really don’t want to talk about. But I will anyway, in part to overcome it. Right now, I’m living with someone who is depressed. We all know that we need to be sensitive and considerate to such people. That said, when you live with such a person – when you’re exposed to depression daily, unable to help, under a moral obligation not to express your frustration, it drives you a little crazy. If you were wondering why escapism was a motivation, there’s a little insight.

What does that have to do with the blog? They read it. Every single post. Even this one (Hello!). I have the ability to make them happy, and while that’s a wonderful and honourable thing, it means I’m sort of like a drug. My posts drew them in. Drew depression closer when I wanted to recharge with positive feedback about my interests and opinions. The same thing was happening over social media. Eventually, I had to stop for my own well-being.

So, where does that leave me? Why am I posting now? What changed? To solve the first problem, I’m attempting to be true to myself. I used to think that I could hold myself to something externally motivated and still be myself. Now, I’ve come to a fuller realization of what that statement means. The second problem is similarly solved. I’m no longer motivated (as much) by what someone else thinks or feels, instead finding satisfaction internally. That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about other people’s opinions and feelings, but it does mean that I’m not beholden to them.

As for the third problem, it helps that I’ve changed my motivation, but I’ll admit that it’s ongoing. This post will probably trigger something, but to be honest, I can’t say what. Depression doesn’t often result in logical behaviours. I’ll just have to be resilient whatever happens.

In the future, you should be able to expect hearing from me more. I won’t be holding to a regular schedule at this point, but that is something I would like to start at some point; it builds trust, but I need to figure out what works first. You probably won’t hear a whole lot of talk about D&D in the near future simply because a lot of it hasn’t really gone anywhere in recent months. Maybe you’ll see more personal posts – I don’t yet know what my comfort limits are, and I don’t want to dilute the main feature of games and thoughtful writing.

I will, however, continue the obligatory three questions at the end of the post (What? Never noticed? Those don’t count.). Can you relate to anything above in your own blogging experience? Do you have any encouragement or advice? Since we’re spiritually starting over, is there anything you would like to see from this blog? And of course, have a merry season!

Inspiration

It’s time to start writing again. To kick it off again, I’m going to write about inspiration. It’s something that people talk about a lot, especially creative people. However, inspiration isn’t only important to artists and thespians. Inspiration, I think, is important for everyone. Inspiration is what drives us. It gives us the urge and excitement to do something and to be better than we already are. It may not be the only thing, but it is certainly something.

One of the places I get inspiration is watching certain people on Youtube. That probably sounds strange to some of you, but let it be an example that inspiration can be found from many different sources. There is a gamer, Markiplier, who is one such person. In one of his videos, he mentions how he loves to be around like-minded people who inspire him. And that, ironically, is what inspired this post.

Mark’s video got me thinking about myself and the people close to me, and about what inspires us. Immediately, I noticed Markiplier’s idea becoming a trend: The people who were more inspired tended to spend more time around like-minded people. In fact, when we look at history, we see like-minded people getting together everywhere and doing great things. I said inspiration comes from many sources, but there seems to be some significance to inspiration that comes from other people. I personally haven’t spent much time interacting with these people lately, and I can tell the difference from when I did. It’s part of the reason I haven’t written in a while.

Now, I’m sure everyone has encountered, at least once in their lives, an uninspired person. We are not always inspired, nor should we be, but we shouldn’t be always uninspired either. The problem we can run into is when we’re left uninspired for too long. Some people don’t have this problem, but if that does happen, what should we do?

Well, chances are, if you’re uninspired, you won’t want to do much of anything. I’ve said I’m familiar with depression, and this is something that frequently occurs at the same time as, or as part of, depression, so I know a little bit of what I’m talking about. Something I’ve experienced is an attempt to force inspiration. Like forcing happiness, this is not something you should do. Inspiration is something that should occur naturally, in time with your personality.

If you’re having trouble finding inspiration, my suggestion would be to try interacting with new things, and new people particularly. Simply put, if inspiration isn’t where you are, look somewhere else. Stagnation isn’t ideal. You also don’t need to look for things that are similar to you or your interests. While there’s a good chance you’ll find something there, there’s nothing stopping you from finding inspiration somewhere different. I don’t play video games or make videos for a living, but those people on Youtube still inspire me.

What do you think about inspiration? Have you plenty? Have you little? What have you noticed about what inspires you? Do you disagree with anything I said? Let me know in the comments below!

A Change of Pace

Hello, everybody. I want to apologize for the lack of a post yesterday. However, today I’m going to be explaining something: Why I will no longer continue daily posting. While daily posting is something I would like to do, It is becoming increasingly evident to me that it isn’t sustainable when I have a number of other projects to attend to.

I already do a lot of writing, and writing a blog every day compounds the lack of time doing other things. While it is possible for me to get a blog post out every day, I don’t think that would be best. To continue this effort, I find myself forcing the time to write a blog post, and that is hurting the quality and authenticity of the posts.

If I give myself more time to write blog posts, I should be able to create higher quality blog posts. As it stands right now, I don’t have the time to complete thorough research, or enough time to revise my work before I post it. I feel like my posts lately have started to fall short of the quality I want, and that I’ve been forced into writing about things that don’t require a lot of research.

And to be honest, I wasn’t completely committed to daily posting. It was more of a trial run to see if it was something that would work and that I could do. After almost three weeks, I think I can say that while it is usually possible, it isn’t what would work best.

I haven’t decided yet exactly how often is ideal, so my posting may be a little sporadic until I settle into something that I can manage and that produces quality content. I hope you understand.

Please let me know what you would like to see as a regular reader. How have you found the daily posts overall? If you have a blog of your own, let me know how you settled into your posting routine. The comments are open.