Tag Archives: Twitch

RPGs

Revising Plans

4 Comments

I’ve gotten some unsettling news, on top of all the pandemic induced issues of the last several weeks. My last two annual physicals my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) has been elevated. Since it stayed elevated, my doctor advised I see a urologist. The urologist said if it was him, he’d have a biopsy instead of waiting.

Companion Blog Post Here.

My decision was to do the biopsy, so after a few weeks of worrying about it, I finally had the in office procedure on April 29th. While it wasn’t pleasant, it was far from as bad as I anticipated. My mindset was to not worry until I knew I had something to worry about. Just over a week later, I had a phone call from the urologist with the results. So this past Thursday, May 7th, I found out that eight of the 12 samples have cancer. They use a sliding scale with 6 the least bad and 10 the worst. Seven of the 8 samples that were positive had a score of 6, and the other a score of 7.

This means that I have a slow growing, non-aggressive form of cancer. It’s the best kind to have, as it is easily treatable. Since my prostate is basically full of cancer and is self contained, from what they can tell, it should be easily curable. The two best options are surgery for removal, or radiation. Both come with their own benefits and side effects.

Currently, I’m leaning towards the option for surgery. However, I have to have an in office visit to go into more detail on the two options so I have all the facts before making a decision. Plus, I have to wait and heal up from the biopsy first before they consider any form of treatment.

Fuck Cancer

So while I heal from the biopsy, I have time to think and plan.

My head was swimming a bit after getting the news, but I’m OK. Knowledge is power.

This is just the big bad and I found out about him and now I’m going to foil his plans and kill him. I have time to formulate an effective plan with the right team to do the job. Just like in RPGs.

Revising Plans and Looking Ahead

The reality of having a life threatening condition that will lead to a painful and shitty death if ignored definitely gets your attention. I plan to be around for a long time, but I need to wrap up loose ends so that no matter what happens, it’s less crap to worry about.

I can’t do all the bucket list things due to travel restrictions with COVID-19. I can’t go visit all my relatives and friends for the same reason. I’m thankful that my son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter live with me.

So I have to work with what I’ve got. My job is secure and paying the bills. Less going out and about and the bank account is in good shape. No telling how big a hit treatment will be, so that’s good. I hope to avoid having to ask for help, but I need to hold that thought until I know just what my share will be after insurance. So I have to reduce spending and backing Kickstarters, etc.

I have enough games I’ve never played, let alone read. So I don’t know how much time I’ll have for reading and playing new games. That’s all on my radar of things to consider.

My Patreon has gone to the back burner as the whole lockdown and Gary Con going virtual and I ran a couple games for Gary Con, so I didn’t finish my March PDF. I did something totally different for April, I shared my Caverns & Cave Bears rough setting PDF along with the Simple Generic RPG that I made for any setting. I have only shared it with my patrons. I will share it with anyone who gives feedback so I can make it better. I’ll eventually have them available on DriveThruRPG [Affiliate Link].

So my Patreon got derailed by how I reacted to the chaos of lock down. I just got done with the busy season at work and was so looking forward to getting out of the house to go to Gary Con. I got into Minecraft to get my mind on something else, and I built a mountain top temple from one location in my AD&D Roll20 campaign, The Broken Lands. I am also working on another location from the same campaign, an underground temple. You can catch these on my Twitch channel since I streamed them there.

Sorry for dragging this out about my Patreon. I need to revise it to fit whatever my plans end up being to help me wrap up things and streamline for the time I need to heal up after treatment. At the moment, I don’t know what that will be.

What About The Card Game?

My final round of play testing I expected to do at Gary Con did not happen. I think where the rules are will work. My plan is to get the card layout done and just put it on DriveThru Cards [Affiliate Link]. Kickstarters are not the thing to do right now, and they take a lot of work. I’ll put it together with the public domain and other art from my test decks. My artist is still producing art, but has a lot more pieces to finish before I can use that art. I can use the funds generated on DriveThru Cards [Affiliate Link] to help fund finishing the art, in case treatment eats up my savings. I should have enough in my business account to cover it, so I’m not worried about that. Once I have all the custom art pieces, I can think about a Kickstarter. But there is no way I have the time, energy, or the mental or emotional oomph to run a Kickstarter right now.

Running & Playing Games

I just re-started my AD&D [Affiliate Link] campaign on Roll20. I plan to keep going and will only stop when treatment and recovery prevent me from running a session. I will have plenty of time to think and plan leading up to that point, and during recovery.

The Monday night B/X game [Affiliate Link] and Wednesday night Stars Without Number [Affiliate Link]game on Roll20 will get by without me for any time I am down. I intend to keep playing in both.

I may do a special weekend of running games I’d like to play, maybe for Memorial Day. Maybe I can get my brother to run a game online with the old gang. That would be a hoot.

Podcasting, YouTube, & Twitch

I will continue to podcast as I have topics I think are worth sharing. I will keep making YouTube videos about Roll20 and other things. I will keep streaming Minecraft and other things on Twitch.

I can make a quick update and post online following any treatment to give a heads up on making it through the treatment (surgery).

Other Plans

I’ve been trying to downsize all the stuff I have with the long term goal of my sons not being left with a bunch of stuff they don’t know what to do with it. Everyone should do that so their loved ones don’t have to. It’s been on my to do list for years, and it feels like I’ve only scratched the surface. I want to wrap up the things on my list of home projects, at least the ones involving organizing things, so I don’t have to look at them and be tempted to overdo it during recovery.

I also really need to do a will. Not to be morbid, but one never knows. I had a severe car accident 27 years ago, and that could have been it. I’ve got enough life insurance to pay off my mortgage, truck, and other debts with some left over. Plus my pension. It’s more than my parents were able to leave to my siblings and me.

I want to cover all the bases I can and do all that I realistically can to leave things as organized as possible to minimize my stress when stuck sitting or paying around for recovery. My brain will insist on thinking and worrying about stupid shit that doesn’t matter, so no matter how well I prepare, I’ll still have that to deal with. But maybe I can short circuit it a bit.

Thanks!

I want to thank everyone who has messaged me words of support and encouragement. Those mean more to me than you can ever know. I plan to beat this thing. Cancer is one of those things for which I had a fear. Mostly about it being too late to do anything about it, or being the kinds few survive. So I’m not as affected as I would otherwise be. I’m now worried about the side effects of whatever treatment I choose. There may be none. I know I’ve internalized some of my stress, as I’ve snapped a bit at family. So I know it will be a challenge to be the positive and encouraging person I try to be. I plan to be around a long time.

RPGs

A “Return” To Gaming

Leave a comment

Last night, I re-join the group I played with in a four year AD&D [Affiliate Link] campaign, Graveyard of Empires, Wednesdays on Roll20. We transitioned to Stars Without Number [Affiliate Link], in the campaign A Plague of Angels, after the conclusion of the AD&D [Affiliate Link] campaign. I had too many life things going on and stepped away last year. I will pick up with the same character I had. I guess some other players who came and went either played him or the party used him and he leveled up. He also has a clone running around that is a level higher and with different physical stats. I look forward to getting back into the swing of things. [Companion podcast episode here.]

Sunday I resume my AD&D [Affiliate Link] campaign on Roll20 that went on hiatus 2 year ago this past December. The players are the GM and other players from the Wednesday night game. It is set in my campaign world in an area called The Broken Lands. Coincidentally, I’ve been playing in a B/X game in the official Mystara based Broken Lands setting, The Orcs of Thar [Affiliate Link] , on Mondays. I had no idea that TSR had its own setting called Broken Lands.

I’ve spent the past few days organizing the notes I have in various text files into a Wiki on CampaignWiki.org. This has made things much more organized and I am refreshed on many things.

My biggest struggle with my campaign is verifying the in game date we left off. If I made a note of it, I’m not finding it.

There will be 3 new players bringing the total players up to 7. One of the new players will have a monk, so I’m making some notes to fit him into the setting. Another has a ranger, and the third is playing a magic user subclass for which I’ve only got the basic outline and a few spells, the Vexillologist that I first posted about on my blog nearly four years ago. This will force me to finish it and refine it in play. I hope to share it.

I’ve also organized the player notes and GM notes in Roll20 with a Player’s TOC and GM TOC that I’ll discuss in my Friday Twitch stream on Roll20 For Beginners. [It’s related to my YouTube series, Roll20 For The Absolute Beginner.]

I recommend planning the TOCs to easily build them as you grow so you can make them look neat and organize information in a logical fashion to find it when you need it. My goal is to be able to play with minimal reference to physical notes & books.

One of my players wants me to stream my AD&D game to Twitch. If all the players agree, it is relatively easy to do. We use Discord for audio and I’d sign into the game as a player, or make a second acccount to sign that into and show the map, etc. I’m not sure how interesting it would be. I had planned on recording things for my own use, as I like to use it to improve my GMing.

Tonight was fun and now to wait and see what Sunday’s session brings.

I’m hoping to have something to talk about on the podcast more regularly. My time spent with a change of pace and backing off some things has been good.

I also need to get back on track with my monthly PDFs, as March’s didn’t get done, and April hasn’t been started. I foresee some changes to my Patreon when I get back on track with it.

The card game got interrupted big time with the pandemic situation. I wasn’t able to playtest the current test deck to ensure it works, as Gary Con went from live to virtual. Also I can’t get fulfillment of printing as some printers of cards are shut down due to lockdowns. I think I’ll just put it on DriveThru Cards with the free art and get the word out that way, and will do a Kickstarter for the version with the art I’m having made. I’ll revisit this and settle it once things return to a more “normal” state of commerce, etc.

RPGs

Helping Others Game Online

Leave a comment

I am starting a regular Twitch stream on how to do things in Roll20. I will be making things that I can later add to my Roll20 Series, Roll20 for the Absolute Beginner. The first session will be tonight, Friday, April 3, 2020 at 7:00 PM EDT (-4 UTC). So come watch and learn and ask questions. I will make a note of any questions I don’t get to for future episodes. If there is no interaction, I will work on recording information for the next few episodes of my series. Here is the companion podcast episode. [EDIT: 5 April, 2020 – New YouTube video announcing Friday night Twitch stream How to Roll20.]

I plan to do other things close to the topic of RPGs but not directly RPG related on Twitch. I encourage you to follow me on Twitch and interact.

I had wanted to start a new campaign, but I’m still not in the right head space to run a new campaign. I am geared to help others, and while running a game for others will help, I need something that is more flexible and open to doing as I have the desire. Hopefully, it helps me as much as it helps others.

Prior Efforts.

A couple of weeks ago I attempted to write a post of what I could do for this time of isolation. It was long and involved and just too much.

I enjoyed Virtual Gary Con where I played in one game, ran two games, enjoyed some seminars, and helped a few people get their games going in Roll20.

I then went into a funk that did no one any good. I have worked from home for 4 or 5 years and just finished the busy time of year at the day job. I was so looking forward to going to Gary Con and a change of environment. Not getting that much needed break didn’t help my outlook. I had to do something different.

Part of what I did was stream on Twitch the reading of Frozen Hell, a short story by John W. Campbel, Jr. It is the short story that inspired the novella Who Goes There? Filmed as The Thing From Another World in 1951 & 1982s The Thing by John Carpenter.

I read it over 3 different sessions. Sadly, the last session, for some reason, I put on my work headset, so there is no sound. I will have to re-do the last two chapters.

I also got into Minecraft. The mindless simplicity of playing in creative mode where I can make what I want when I want and not have to avoid monsters is what I needed. My initial project was making a dwarven fortress. It is far from complete. I had intended to make locations from my various RPGs and finally did that the other night. I shared pictures of the mountaintop temple location of my original map and what I made in Minecraft.

What can you do?

In my prior post that died in draft, I encouraged others to make a list of what they can do to help others. I encourage all of you to do the same.

Try to change focus from the difficulties of your particular situation to how you can help others.

If your situation is such that you can’t do much to help others, then focus on things that lift you up. Movies and shows, books & comics, art, etc. Whatever it is you do for fun and entertainment.

If you need time to immerse yourself in something to distract from your own thoughts, take it, but don’t get lost.

For me, the sun finally coming out yesterday was a major boost. So much rain and clouds felt oppressive. I hope you all get the sunshine you need.

Conclusion

I hope you are safe, sheltered, fed, and your time occupied. If you need a positive activity, come check out my Twitch streams. I’ll be glad for positive interaction with others.

RPGs

How To Stream With OBS

Leave a comment

I mentioned online that I finally figured out how to stream and that it isn’t difficult, there’s just a lot of moving parts. I had one person ask me to share what I know. You can see the companion YouTube video here.

First, let me be clear that I am not an expert and have only live streamed on Twitch a half dozen times at most, and never for more than a few minutes until today, when I streamed for an hour. I recorded three new episodes for my YouTube series, Roll20 For The Absolute Beginner.

It was not the best looking stream, nor the best sounding. Proper lighting and audio are two entirely different topics for which I am not the best example. I figured out how to make it work, I didn’t say I do it well. As with anything, practice and familiarity, plus an effort to improve will yield results.

In my experience, you want to use OBS, Open Broadcaster Software. It is open source freeware that is quite sophisticated and can handle both recording your screen, or your webcam, or both, plus the webcams of others.

I have long wanted to record games I run online. Mostly for playback to analyze my GMing or to record how I explained something because I really liked how I said it, but can’t recall the specific words from memory. But getting the audio from other players to record at a volume one can easily hear always seemed always to be missing a step.

Between a combination of a few different videos and my own trial and error, I finally hit on the right formula to record the audio of another person from an online meeting software. This also allowed me to make sense of how to get the right hardware settings on my PC and get the right results for recording a small overlay with my webcam displayed over my web browser displaying Roll20 or other browser window.

I recorded about a half dozen short videos and played them back until I got the sound right. For me, I found that using the headset speakers and microphone prevented the microphone from picking up the sound from external speakers and causing an echo. There is probably a way to do sound so that it doesn’t cause an issue between all the pieces, but this was a solo operating for me to do streaming.

The same settings that allow me to stream a browser tab will also let me stream a video game. Again, none of this is hard, it is just a matter of figuring out the right combination of hardware settings and settings in OBS to get the results you want. Once you get it working, improving the lighting and sound is the next natural progression. There is a lot of information online about those topics which are beyond the current scope.

The hardware settings are going to vary by Operating System. Windows 7 is now outdated and no longer updated by Microsoft. Windows 10 is different in how you get at the hardware than Win7. Linux may vary on the GUI controls that are available with different window managers, or the command line. MAC OS, since it is a UNIX variant, should have both a GUI and command line option for configuring sound and microphones.

Once you have the hardware defaults set correctly, you can use the settings in OBS. OBS can rely on the default speakers and microphone, or you can specify the exact one of each you wish to use.

One can live stream a game or other activity to Twitch, YouTube, or other streaming service.

One can also use it to simultaneously record for editing and uploading to YouTube or other VOD (Video On Demand) service.

Obviously, this means that one can also either stream and not record it, or record it and not live stream it.

If you want to live stream an RPG, I recommend the three videos that Jacob Noorman of the Mini Terrain Domain YouTube channel put together.

Zoom is an online conferencing service that has a free option that is unlimited for 2 people and limited to 40 minutes for 3 to 100 people. There are two tiers of paid service that allow hours of use. Only one person, the host, needs a paid account. One could just as easily use Skype or other similar service.

How to Stream D&D and Other RPGs using OBS & Zoom
https://youtu.be/AvmdQaToSZw

How to Make Overlays and Stream Assets (Part 1)
https://youtu.be/3EAKW1lfucE

How to Make Overlays and Stream Assets (Part 2)
https://youtu.be/xN6YDCsfDTU