It’s week Three of 52 Weeks of Done, and I’m hoping to use what I’ve been doing with the project in a new way, something I hadn’t exactly anticipated.

I started 52WoD in order to knock off a bunch of things I have in various states of completion. It was perhaps naive of me to think I wouldn’t come up with something new to do while I was working on all those projects. But I had an idea last week that I thought was a pretty good one. And rather than adding it to a queue and letting my brain think about it for a while, I’ve decided to attack it now. The idea is to determine, this week, if it’s a viable thing to pursue or not. If it’s a good idea, I’ll pull the trigger. If not, I’ll put it down for good. This might not seem like it’s all that ground breaking, but usually I chew on things more before doing something like this. So it’s a departure for me to jump out publicly with something at this stage.

Thing : Playground Supervisor Dispatches – Launch It or Kill It
Type : Writing / Collaboration
Size : Scattered and Smothered
Description : Playground Supervisor Dispatches is an idea I had for pulling together a compilation of writings on a specific subject from a number of different sources. I thought it was a neat idea, but I can’t say if it’s viable or not until I put it out there to see if it floats.
S.Q.U.I.D. Test : This Thing will not be Done until it is Launched or Killed:

To Launch It, I need to:

1. Write a post detailing the project and calling for statements of intent;
2. Receive 24 statements of intent from prospective contributors;
3. Provide details for how the project will be brought to fruition;

To Kill It, any one of the criteria will be sufficient:

1. Failure to receive 24 statements of intent;
2. Failure to setting on details for a project plan;
3. Determination that the project budget is unworkable;
4. Determination, after a week of discussion with no less than 5 advisors, that the project is ill-advised

I acknowledge that some of the above criteria do not meet the S.Q.U.I.D. test as I outlined it in last week’s wrapup post – specifically, some of these criteria have third-party dependencies. But this Thing cannot be Done without these third-party dependencies. So there it is.

I realize that this post is pretty scant on details and specifics for the project. Never fear – those details will come in a later post, after they’ve been fleshed out.

Earlier today I declared victory over Thing Two.  Here’s the wrapup.

Thing Two was finishing a first draft for my piece of Lunar Kitsch Missile, a game I’ve been working on with a couple collaborators since around April last year.  All told, I expected there to be about 5000 or so words involved, excluding emails and such.  The success criteria were:

1 – A full first draft for my contribution.  That’s all done, and it came in closer to 6000 words all told;
2 – Reconciliation of my contribution to those of the other contributors.  That’s done as well.  There are still some gaps to be filled, but those gaps have been identified now, and require a little discussion before they can be finished;
3 – Distribution of the text to the other collaborators.  I did this by writing the text in a wiki. It worked well for this piece in particular, as it involved a lot of linked text;
4 – Agreement by all interested parties on a timeline for the next deliverables.  I’m calling victory on this one, thought it is not in the can yet.  We’ve all communicated about it, but the other principles need to do a little more review before they can commit to the next date.  Perfectly understandable, and reasonable to call it Done when all that’s missing is a next date, which should come tomorrow-ish.

My big takeaway for this week is that I need to make sure that when I eastablish success criteria for the S.Q.U.I.D. test, they need to be criteria I can deliver without third-party dependencies.  Stick to what I can control, and I stand a better chance of getting the Thing Done.

I can’t talk yet about the specifics of the game, but this portion I am working on is an aspect of character generation that serves to add some fun to the process in what I think is a unique way, while serving as an example to prospective GMs for a way they can take the basic chargen task and make it more entertaining.

Details as soon as they can be shared.  But for now, Applause! Thing Two is Done.

It’s Week 2 of my 52 Weeks of Done. And it’s time to lay out some ground rules. I’ll sum them up at the end, for now I’ll demonstrate them in action.

Thing : Lunar Kitsch Missile – Text Contribution, Review & Punt
Type : Game Design / Writing
Size : Scattered, Smothered and Covered
Description : Lunar Kitsch Missile is a game I’ve been working on with two other contributors, off and on, for several months. I have some text contributions of my own that need to be completed, and some of my existing text needs to be revised. I also need to reconcile some of what’s been written by one other contributor to what I have, and then punt the revised text to the contributors for comment and additional revision.
S.Q.U.I.D. Test : This Thing will not be Done until the following tasks are complete

1. A finished first draft of my text contributions
2. Reconciliation of my own contributions to those of the other contributors
3. Distribution of the reconciled text to the other contributors for review
4. Agreement between interested parties on a timeline for the next deliverable

Lunar Kitsch Missile is one of those projects that’s gotten pushed aside a few too many times over the past few months. It’s floated to the top of the stack for several reasons : There are other people involved that are interested in seeing some progress, there’s a convention coming up this year where I want to demo the game, I need to free up the mental space this is taking up so I can work on other things, and it’s just a really cool, fun project that I enjoy working on (when I work on it). Plus, I think that it’s an easy win for 52WoD – It has well defined success criteria, that are suitably sized for the time in which I have to work on it (it meets the Limit that I’ve defined), and it’s a project that’s half-completed already, so it clearly has some direction behind it. I think it’s important to me to get a good success in early for 52 Weeks, to help me build momentum.

Now, let’s talk just a bit about those ground rules I set up. They pertain specifically to the Kick Off Post that will begin each Week.

1 – Weeks run from Monday to Sunday. It fits my own rhythm better to wrap up on Sunday and start new work on Monday.
2 – The Kick Off Post describes the Thing being done, the Type of the Thing, the Size of the Thing (expressed in Waffle House Hash Brown Units (Imperial), or WHHBUIs), a brief Description of the Thing, and most importantly, the S.Q.U.I.D. Test.
3 – The S.Q.U.I.D. Test is important enough to warrant more than one rule.
4 – The S.Q.U.I.D. Test refers to the success criteria for the Thing – ways to determine if the Thing has been Done. Criteria for the S.Q.U.I.D. Test must be Specific, Quantifiable, Understandable, Intelligent and Deliverable.

That will have to do for now. I’ve hit the Limit for this Post.

Well, it’s the end of the first week of 52 Weeks of Done.  Time to talk about what got Done this week.

My task was to create a Space in which I could get things done.  I had left this conceptually undefined, but had initial visions of heavy rearrangement of furniture, building walls, setting up a tumblr, a youtube channel, and more.

Then I got the plague, and got discouraged, and finally eeked out a kickoff post on Thursday, in which I declared that I would, in fact, Do Something.

In this case, something amounted to some purging, organizing and desk clearing.  And earlier this evening, I declared victory.  I have made a Space.  It is Done.

Did I take before and after pictures? No. I should have. Maybe some of it was being vain, but in truth I was halfway done before I remembered, and now I am in bed and I’m not going down there just for that.  But, suffice to say, where once there was an enormous jumble of gaming supplies, unopened bills, half-soldered projects and stuff I didn’t really need anyway, now there are a few scant but precious square feet of open desk space – enough to hold a laptop, a notebook, a cup of tea and a totem. Everything I need to start the next week.

It’s not pretty, but it is Something.  And that’s a damn sight better that whining about how I was too sick to build walls.

Morning, and Week 2, comes early.  Night then.

I was excited as the new year rolled in. Subdued, but still looking forward to a year of getting things Done. I saw the calendar reset whileshowing Short Round the original Tron and dozing off on the couch. It’s like I am an old guy or something.

I woke up January First with a head full of wrong, like the mucus gnomes snuck in and filled my sinuses with 32 ounces of liquid nails. I took Short Round to the airport, went home, and slept for something like five days.

Has it really been five days? Wow.

In my brief waking interludes, I reflected on 52 Weeks Of Done, and that all important S in SPLAT : Space.

I cannot get things Done without a Space. A Space for getting things Done will be made. Making this Space will be the first thing that is Done.

I spent days in the run up to the new year purging my place of things long stored. Records for a friend who fled the bay for LA. Comics for a friend who fled his space for a slightly smaller space. And a whole multitude of things held on to for too long because they might be useful someday. But I had more purging to do, and more work to do, if I was going to create the Space I intended.

Then five days happened, with the liquid nails and the sinuses, and I’m staring down the end of the first week, and not only don’t I have a chicken in the pot, I haven’t even build the hen-house. In layman’s terms, I’m five days behind schedule already, and I’m only five days in.

So, folks, we find ourselves at a very early cross-roads with 52 Weeks of Done. And I may as well use this as a chance to talk about What To Do When Things Ain’t Going Right. The way I see it, you’ve only got so many options.

Option 1 – Do Something.

Option 2 – Do Nothing.

Everything else is a variant on one of these two options. Allow me to demonstrate.

“I want to do this right, so I’m going to do this later.” That’s Do Nothing.

“I want to do this right, so I’m going to push the date back and keep working on it.” That’s Do Something.

“I’m upset that this isn’t turning out and I’m only getting started.” That’s Do Nothing.

“I don’t have time left to do what I wanted, so I’m doing this instead.” That’s Do Something.

“I need to think about this some more.” That’s Do Nothing.

And so on.

The end result is, I’m only just feeling a little human, I’m 5 days behind, and I don’t yet have a Space in which to get things Done. So, what do I do?

I’m going to Do Something. I may not have the Space I wanted when I’m Done, but I will have a Space. Even if that’s just re-clearing my desk and not moving the desk into a walled off niche with the amontillado. Some part of Space was also intended to be the creation of a format for the posts that follow : The kick off post, the update, the wrap up. There are other senses of Space which are still undefined, but in my head. There will still be a wrap-up post on the week, but for now, this will have to do for the kick off.

Should this experience be an omen of the 52 Weeks To Come, then I hope a favorable interpretation of the omen will prevail.

Remember Secret Project Update Club?

Yeah, I know, it’s been months since I provided an update. Five of them in fact. But, it’s relevant. Because I had something on there for a while called Codename : Pandoran Apothecary Chest – and it was on the list since October 2009

The deal is, I had someone who was going to develop the idea for me. And then they got busy. Really busy. So it kept getting pushed off due to them doing silly little things like earning a living, and I set the idea way on the back-burner because I had Other Things To Do.

But about a month ago, I got kicked in the head by the proverbial muse, so I did some design work and sent the prototype off to get cut. The pieces came back in last week, and I spent the weekend assembling it. It’s still a prototype, but I’m ready to show it off a little. Because I freaking love it.

Codename : Pandoran Apothecary Chest (Now that it’s no longer under wraps, I need to give it a name.)

Looks neat, huh? Cold be anything in there. But let’s take a look at it when it’s open.

So this all started with a portable desk I bought on eBay a long time back. I thought it was a great piece (some of you saw it at Steamcon), and it made a great side-table piece for running games, but it was too tall to use as a GM screen, and the bays and slots weren’t done with RPG stuff in mind. What I wanted, was a box that I could open up, set on the table, and have everything I needed to run a game right in front of me. One box – not a bag that I unpacked and set up, not a box and a couple books. I wanted to be able to open it up, and go. And when I was done, I wanted to be able to close it up, and walk away.

In the middle, there is a large bay and a small bay. The left one holds anything up to a file folder in size, which includes most gaming books. It’s deep enough to hold about 3 of those. On the right side, standard digest books, or half folds – like 2010 ENnie Nominee Shambles!

Each wing consists of an accessory bay, and a set of 6 slots to hold 3×5 cards. The slots also work good as holders if you fold a card in half, to indicate status, leave notes, and so on. There’s a little room under the 3×5 slots to hold a few things.

Each wing includes a cover that slots into place, to keep things from getting jumbled around. The covers are engraved with maps – one hex, one square. In addition, I got a bunch of hex tokens cut. In the picture above, I’ve used them to mark a fireball , some gold, a pool, and a little rise up to a tree.

Here is the square map, with the tiny wizard squaring off against a couple of orcs, near a forest, next to a river and a shed. I marked it up as I needed it. Marked it up with what?

Wet erase markers. The whole thing, inside and out, including the tokens, is dry/wet erase. I can write in the stats and charts I WANT, rather than needing all-purpose charts and lists.

Here you can see one of the mini-maps being slotted in as a cover on the left wing. The mini-maps are blank on the backside – which is also dry-erase.

Here’s a shot with both min-maps docked. The squares map makes a great grid for keeping track of things like character statuses, and so on.

Looking down from the top, you can see some character names and statuses. I marked them along the top according to seating arrangement. An especially useful thing when running convention games with new players – something I do a lot.

Here’s the whole thing from the Player’s side. It’s a beautiful white canvas, ready for marking up or stickering. I could also engrave this side, but I left it blank for now as it is just prototype.

I still have some kinks to work out of the thing. Assembly wasn’t as smooth as I’d like it to be, and there are design improvements to be had. But I’m really very excited about this. I’ve always wanted something like this, and to see it take shape is very satisfying. They dry-erase thing was a late change. Originally it was done in wood with a dry erase panel, but I like being able to write all over the thing in non-permanent ways.

Am I overly-excited? Is it as cool to you as it is to me? If you signed up for a convention game, and the GM came in with that, would you know you were in for a good time? Got a great name for this thing?

Tell me what you think. Sound off below.

Like many of you, I have a lot of projects in various states of Done. Some are nebulous ideas, some are half written, some are well formed thoughts that haven’t been Done.

I have scads of gaming related projects in various states. Supplements. Adventures. Website improvements. Tools. Props. Scripts. And none of them are getting Done. Some are getting worked on. Many are being ignored.

I’ve been thinking about Done, off and on, for a while now, ever since I first stumbled on that whole Cult of Done thing. And while I can’t get behind everything in their manifesto, one thing stands out among all the others as being, at the very least in my case, unquestionably true:

Done Is The Engine Of More

I have a lot of things I want to work on, and I can’t work on them because there are other things that aren’t finished (or in some cases, started). And I want to do More.

So, next year, at the start of each week, I am going to pick one thing. And at the end of the week, that thing will be Done. That might mean completed, or it might mean abandoned. But at the end of the week, it will no longer be a thing I’m not doing, or a thing I’m working on. It’ll be a thing that is Done.

Conceptually, this is more of a new years kind of post. But I’m trying to avoid thinking of it in terms of ‘resolutions’ – because we all know those never work. And this isn’t really the same thing as Secret Project Update Club – I may still post those updates, though the SPUC is more or less down to me holding meetings in the living room with some beer and the cat.

I’m putting out an open call, for anyone else out there who is in the same sort of boat. If you’ve got a lot of things that you’re “working on” that aren’t getting Done, and if you want to do More, then join with me next year for 52 Weeks Of Done. If you’re serious about it, you’ll want the next couple weeks to prepare – clearing some space, booking some regular time, etc. You may also want to lay out some principles that will help you get things Done. I have opted for 5 Principles, because they will fit in one hand. Yours may be different. These are mine:

1. I cannot get things Done without a Space. A Space for getting things Done will be made. Making this Space will be the first thing that is Done.
2. I will Post at the beginning of the week, to say what will be Done at the end of that week, and again at the end of the week, to demonstrate that something was Done.
3. I will Limit what is being Done to what could sensibly be Done in the time I have allowed.
4. I will Applaud when something is Done, regardless of the outcome. Mourning does not get anything Done.
5. I cannot get things Done without Time. I will set aside an inviolate block of Time, daily, in which to get things Done.

Space, Post, Limit, Applaud, Time. SPLAT. This is by design.

I will be blogging about this here. If there are relevant updates for Twitter, I will use the tag #52WoD

If other people do this too, we will all get a lot of things Done. And we can encourage each other to stay the course. If you don’t have that much to get Done, I hope you’ll rally us on.

This post is Done.

It’s been a while since the Terrible Character Portraits Kickstarter closed, and while Jeff or I have posted irregular updates over at Kickstarter, I wanted give you all a glimpse of something I just got in the mail.

These aren’t finals, but they are inked, and scanned. Jeff is going to pretty them up a bit before we full on release them into the wild. Please consider these a work in progress.

And – Enjoy!

[Edit] Worth noting, these images aren’t released with any particular license – we’ll release the finals with appropriate license information when they’re Done.

I don’t do many reviews here. So if I take the time to review a product, it means something – either that the product is particularly good, or there was something about the product I needed to rant about. In any case, if I review it, it’s stood out to me pretty significantly. In this case, I am reviewing something that I believe is exceptional in several ways.

The book is called Noise. You can check out the promo site Salvage Country and learn all about author Darin Bradley (Twitter )

Here’s the short synopsis (spoiler free, as is the rest of the review) : the book follows a small group of characters as they navigate societal collapse in modern America. And when I say societal collapse, we’re talking about events that trigger violence, rioting and looting on a scale that destabilize the nation entirely – a complete breakdown of social order that necessitates violent acts to ensure ones own survival. The characters in the book are right in the thick of it, and you’re right in the thick of the characters as they deal with their own survival, as everything is in the act of coming completely unglued. The events in the book cover only a few days at most.

That all may or may not be your cup of tea. But you should read this book anyway, for several reasons. Here are a few.

Let’s start with the easiest : It’s good. It’s really good. It’s well written, takes chances, and has a lot of little touches that really stand out. There are moments in the book where the author does more with a single well chosen word than could be done with paragraphs of narrative. I suspect these instances reflect places where the author took great care in choosing his words, because it’s too difficult to believe he lucked into them repeatedly.

That’s enough of a reason by itself to read Noise. Are you looking for a good book to read? This one was exceptional. But there’s more.

The author has tapped into something here that is worth looking at, and he’s done so very well. For the last few years, there has been an increasing din in the background within certain (perhaps all) circles of American culture. I’d like to say the din is about self-sufficiency in the face of chaos, but it’s probably more accurate to say it’s Fear Of Collapse. This is not a new topic, by any stretch. People were putting bomb shelters in their backyards in the 50s and 60s, afraid of collapse caused by The Bomb. In the 80s we were convinced that the Russians were just around the corner, and that collapse would be imminent. In the 90s, compounds were all the rage. And let’s not get started with what’s been going on the last 9 years or so. Fear of Collapse is something that comes back in vogue every few years. But what’s been captured in Noise is something that runs deeper, and I’m having trouble putting my finger on it.

We’ve become increasingly interested in being more self-sufficient, both at the national level and individually. Growing our own food. Raising our own chickens. Micro-manufacturing and the Maker movement. The amount of thought people put in to their Zombie Apocalypse plans. All of these things I believe tap into a pulse, the general worry in our culture that we have become too dependent on the infrastructure around us, and less able to take care of our selves. Noise taps into this same pulse, and expresses itself in that context in ways for which I was unprepared, even knowing what I knew about the book going in.

There is also a lot to get from the book as a game designer or game enthusiast. It’s impossible to miss how playing RPGs affected the author’s voice when writing Noise. There are a number of overt DnD references that anyone who has played RPGs will understand. But there’s more than just a couple inside references to be taken from Noise. There is an overall grittiness and tone to the book that I think would be tremendously useful to any GM if they read the book and take certain lessons to heart. Primary amongst these lessons is that violence and violent acts have an effect on everyday people. Too often in our games, both as players and as GMs, people get away with unspeakably violent acts with minimal blowback to their person. And that’s just not realistic. Sure, our games are a place of fantasy, a place where we sometimes go with the intention of escaping harsh realities. The characters in Noise suffer. Less, certainly, than would a normal person in the same circumstances. But more than characters typically do, in books or in games. But the suffering of the characters adds a great deal of depth to Noise that would otherwise be absent. Without the suffering, the story would ring terribly hollow. By embracing this same suffering during the creation and evolution of characters, NPCs and scenarios, I believe GMs and players alike could add depth and tone to their stories that would otherwise be absent.

I could go on at length about Noise, but it would be difficult to go much further without adding spoilers – spoilers that you don’t need. Nobody reads books because they know if the heroes live or die or because they know it has a happy or a sad ending. We read books because someone says, in one way or another, “This is a good book. You should read it.”

Noise is a good book. You should read it.

I’ve been mulling this idea over for a while. After wrestling with the particulars for too long, I’ve decided I’m just going to jump in. Here Goes.

I am looking for some Terrible Ambassadors.

As a Terrible Ambassador, you will take Shambles to your local convention or game store, and run a game. You’ll get an Terribly Official Ambassador’s Kit, which will include some cool things to help you in your duties, any promotional support I can provide, a profile here on the website, and some money.

Yes, money. It’s not a bucket of money, but enough to cover a convention meal or a couple drinks. And you’ll get it each time you run a game that fits some parameters that I haven’t fully hashed out yet (official convention games or open games in a game store, where I know about it in advance and can say ‘yes, I can afford this’, and where you get people at the table. something like that, anyway). This would be a great way to get a little extra money for that game you were going to run at the convention anyway.

This is a pretty experimental thing for me. I’ve got a rough idea for where I want this to go, but if I wait until I hash out all the details I’ll never get it off the ground. So I’m looking for just a few people for this initial program. You’ll need to be flexible and willing to hash this out with me, enthusiastic about Shambles, and able to run 2-3 games a year at least, with the strong preference being games outside the SF Bay Area (where I’m already covering most of the local cons).

If you’re interested, a hundred words or so about yourself and why you want to do this. If you have additional questions or comments, fire away below.