Crates.
My world revolves around plastic crates.
This is a lie. My world revolves
around bookcases. Twice, I was almost trapped in my own library. Okay, once I
was trapped in my own library as I moved bookcases. Tetris, with consequences.
Recently, I was semi-nearly almost
kinda-sorta maybe not quite trapped, but…trapped-adjacent.
That’s twice, now. Third time’s the charm. If you never hear from me again, I’m
behind a bookcase that’s in a jaunty diagonal position.
You’ll hear the crunch of chocolate and the
slurp of coffee. I’ll be okay.
Bookcases. The world of books.
Meanwhile, the world of the boardgame and
the roleplaying game also revolves around bookcases packed with books. And
there are crates, too. Plastic crates. See-through plastic crates. These
contain props I use in videos about gaming.
There’s a crate full of gloves. Of course
there is. I wear gloves in these videos to hide massive continuity errors. As
much as I can, I record video footage all in one day. On occasion, I must
return to the field of battle and film additional shots later in the week.
These snippets end up scattered throughout
the main body of the work. If I didn’t wear gloves, you’d see an unmarked hand
in the first scene, a bruised hand in the second, and the same unmarked hand in
the third sequence – all scattered across twenty seconds of footage.
And that’s distracting. Nail-length, cuts,
scrapes, bruises, daubs of paint, and smears of chocolate. Not to mention the
blood from killing, er, yes, smears of chocolate. These are all covered by
gloves. Gloves wear out. If you are making videos, make sure you have spares
for just about everything.
Yes, I have a box of gloves. I don’t have a
glove of boxes. Sounds like a magic item you’d pick up in Dungeons & Dragons.
The Glove of Boxes at first appears to be an
ordinary boxing glove. On further inspection the glove is neither right- nor
left-handed, having two thumbs. The wearer instantly develops a second thumb on
donning the mandritic mitten.
And so on.
If you must invent magic items for D&D, remember your description has to
feature two components. The least vital ingredient is the game stuff:
statistics that plug into the rules. And the more important addition is the
flavour, written in the ancient script known as High Gygaxian.
That language is a cross between deep levels
of Tolkienry and a tax spreadsheet providing arcane description and words torn
from invented dictionaries. Yes, you only realise the boxing glove has two
thumbs on further inspection.
I’ve decided to release my written blog post
as a video on the same day. Normally, I deliver a blog post within the first
week of the month, but I’ve been eyebrow-deep in preparations for a return to
video production.
Delays
are often delayed by delays, leading to further delays.
When I started the video channel, I resolved
to make a video a week. And I managed that, on average, month by month and year
by year. Then Covid came, and I had other priorities. I always have other
priorities, but those were squeezed flat by Covid and its world-altering
supervillainous powers.
So I took a break from publishing videos.
When things settled down, I returned to putting out videos. But a lot changed.
Away from the grind of editing, I worked on the video studio itself. I made the
place safer, for a start. Cables snaked into the foreground for the most part.
Safer now.
I eliminated or repositioned overhead
lighting, and moved tripod-mounted lights out to the fringes where I wouldn’t, couldn’t,
stumble over anything. There was the small matter of shifting the entire studio
from one wall to another, for convenience.
Been there, done that, and worn out the
T-shirt.
And then.
I had
a rethink about making and editing videos. After two breaks, it’s time to
return. I still made a bunch of videos on my second break, but pressure of time
didn’t leave any room for editing. Sometimes the best thing to do is realise
that you should walk away. And then walk away.
There were modest collaborations on the
channel. But so much stood in the way of a collaboration I’d announced back
when the dinosaurs ruled the earth…
Finally, I’m in a position to collaborate
with idranktheseawater
on projects about boardgaming with Tourette Syndrome. This may be the start of
a series on boardgaming with neurodiversity in general. We shall see.
What else changed? I accidentally helped
found yet another roleplaying group. This one is online and risk-free when it
comes to disease. If the players want to give me Covid, well, they don’t want
to give me Covid.
They are self-described soft eggs and great noodles.
They’d only give me Covid if they named a pet dragon Covid, pronounced Cov-id.
If the players want to give me Cov-id the pet dragon, they have to travel the
wilds of Scotland, bypass the unicorn herd guarding my castle, and wrestle a sixteen-point
haggis into submission. Then they’d feel awful if they allowed midgies to swarm
in through the portcullis.
I’m surprised that midgies aren’t major
monsters in D&D. Maybe they are, but…toned
down so they don’t upset players.
Our time is never our own, it is true.
Running an RPG group through assorted misadventures took time I invested in
willingly. And I realised the grind of editing had to go. To put out videos, or
any content, there must be passion.
The weekly editing grind wasn’t passionate.
It rapidly became desperate. Just as rapidly, it ceased. Do things differently
if you need to. And so, here I am, returning to the channel to say that I won’t
be returning on a weekly basis, grinding pepper into my nostrils for shits and
giggles. Thanks, but no thanks.
Instead, I’ve been lucky enough to connect
with Melissa: don’t drink the seawater, kids. She drank it so that you don’t
have to. For legal reasons, I feel I must point out that Melissa didn’t drink
any seawater. I am still a fugitive, though. It has taken so long just to set
up the possibility of a video. And yet, here we are, a million years later,
almost nearly maybe ready to go.
So I
am returning to the channel, whenever I feel like it – with content I enjoy
putting out after editing that doesn’t feel like washing my face with sandpaper.
If the videos don’t come out weekly, so
what. And if the videos are longer, so what. As long as I enjoy making the
content, that’s the main thing. Covid pressure affects the whole world. And
possibly the back end of the moon.
What to expect, then? I have something of a
backlog to deal with. And it isn’t a great backlog. I saved space on my
boardgaming shelves. It is cheaper by far to create your own boardgame
organisers than it is to buy in dedicated equipment. But adding a compartmented
plastic box to each game on the shelf really packs those shelves out in no
time.
Through gritted teeth, and paying
eye-watering postage, you purchase a game organiser that fits snugly inside the
box. Congratulations. You just saved space, and liberated a compartmented box
for recycling as a storage container for even more D&D figures.
I bought game organisers in different
materials. They are 3D printed or laser-cut from wood. I even have that
mock-polystyrene stuff. Oh, and there’s a wooden crate. And there are videos.
Videos unassembled.
They still need editing. And they also
require a narrative. I found it difficult to say anything interesting about the
assembly of wooden organisers after assembling loads of wooden organisers. Mind
the glue as you wedge these bits together. Don’t build that part the wrong way
around, as I did. Watch your fingers.
I’ll find some way to say something –
preferably brief, witty, and entertaining – about the problem of organising
game bits and pieces in reasonable order inside boxes. You’d think I wouldn’t
bother at all, given the obvious thing.
This video channel is set up for gaming
online. Any players who rock up to the table do so digitally. Game organisers
make it easier to set up a game and put it away again. Are game organisers
better?
Quicker. More seductive.
But here’s the obvious thing. I am not
setting up a game for visitors who walk in through the door bringing Covid with
them. It doesn’t matter if I spend an age to set a game up. I also take camera
layouts and props into consideration. Everything takes more time by video.
At the other end of the deal, I leave the
game on the table once it is done. After filming a session, I might have to go
back in and do those pick-up shots. Gloves and all. There’s no crushing need to
put a game away quickly. The table is set aside so that a game on it can be
left in mid-turn if necessary, and returned to later in the week, after all.
Still, I hope to play games in person again.
One day. Organisers are a handy reminder of memories of old, in the beforedom
of where we are now. Where we are now feels as though this is where we will
always be.
One day this, too, shall pass. And if you
pass early, you go first next turn. Some games are like that.
*
In the video version, noise reduction clipped the start off my opening. For that reason, a few half-words were brutally edited from the audio track. Otherwise, the text is the same.
*
List of magic items from the video…
Cordial of Nitrous Ignition.
Ogres of Giant Boots. Phylactery of Periapts. Bigby’s Ignominious Finger of
Middlery. Periapt of Phylacteries. Dwoemer of Dreams.
Revelatory Typesetting of .draWmiJ
Johnny Tolkien’s Axe of the Walking Talking Tree-People, renamed for copyright reasons. Wand-of-Hyphenation. Hobbit Stewpot – Hobbit not included: Comes with an Out-of-Court Settlement Scroll and The Tome of Non-Disclosure Agreement.
Gax of Gy.
Contact Lenses of Fire. Ring of Protection from Rings of Protection. Gadriel’s Typo of Copyright-Dispute-Avoidance. Google’s Enchanted Map. Digby’s Rigby of Bigby. Bunny of Bugs. Tenser’s Miracle Window Polish™.
Ring of 500 Wishes: used – one careless owner. Statue of Non-Arse. Ring of Wand of Cloak of Boots of Backpacking. Girdle of Hair-Colour-Change. Sword of Stabbing, Slashing, and Cutting Enemies. Batteries required.
Gold-Producing Purse of Economic Destabilisation.
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