All posts by Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.

Write, you fool! [Arcade Games] [Bagman]

A couple years ago, I gave myself this challenge to post something new to my blog every day in the month of December. I liked the alliteration of Daily December and I needed to practice the discipline of creating and posting something new every day.

At the time, I hoped it would sort of revitalize my blog, which had taken a back seat (in a vehicle that was parked in a garage across town) to social media and the like. I hoped I would be inspired to keep writing in the new year, maybe get that vehicle out of storage and drive it around town.

But I felt like all the effort was for nothing. I wasn’t creating to satisfy myself; I was posting to create content. Eww. Gross. And the numbers on my blog didn’t move at all. Hardly anyone commented, I didn’t see an influx of returning or new readers, and when January rolled around, I remember thinking, “well, thank god that humiliating waste of time is over.”

Until just recently, I didn’t see any value in the exercise. Like I said, the goal was to generate interest by posting new content every day. And I didn’t hit that goal, because generic content isn’t what people came to my blog to read (and it isn’t what I like to write). I wasn’t all that interested in what I posted (though I love the Blades of Steel post I did, and still laugh when I think of calling my team “The Los Angeles Los Angeleses” as they played the “Vancouver Vancouvers”) and the old adage “When you are interested, you are interesting,” has an equal and opposite adage “When you aren’t interested, you’re labored, or trying too hard.”

You can see — I can see, rather — the very meaningful difference between the two. And with the benefit of hindsight and experience, I get why I didn’t achieve what I wanted. I went about it in a way that was unlikely to deliver what I was looking for. Lesson learned.

Yesterday, I saw that my friend John gave himself a Daily December last month, where he wrote about a different comfort movie every day. He said it was to get that daily writing muscle stretched out and warmed up, because he has two novels due this year.

I don’t have anything due, at least not right now, but I do have some things I want to finish and release this year, and the muscles and discipline I need to use them have been neglected while I’ve been focused on mental health therapy and complex trauma recovery for much of the last year.

I’m not ready to commit to daily posts. I’m going to do daily writing (I’ve written this over the last six days), but I don’t know for sure that I’ll have something to publish every day. I’m not going to pressure myself with expectations. I’m going to start out with weekly posts from a list of topics that interest me, in the hopes that I will be interesting when I write about them, as well as looking forward to the creative process involved.

Inspired by a lifetime of RPGs, I made a table featuring all the different topics that are interesting to me. I’m going to roll on the table, and use the result as my prompt.

Today, my rolls landed on Classic Arcade Games: Bagman.

Okay, here we go.

Continue reading… →

my biggest rpg surprise of 2023

Someone on Reddit in r/rpg asked what the biggest surprise of 2023 was for us.

This is the kind of thing I enjoy talking about, so I thought I’d share it here.

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The biggest surprise for me this year was finding my way back into the depths of my library.

My first RPG was D&D Basic in 1983, and I’ve played ever since, tons of systems. I love it. It’s even part of my job.

But somewhere along the line, I lost the ability to pick up a module, some rules, a sourcebook, whatever, and just read it for the sake of reading it, to enjoy the prose, the box text, the illustrations, the fiction, unless I was going to play the game.

So I have entire shelves in my library that are filled with RPGs I haven’t read, but “want to play someday.”

This year, I read an AMA here from Stu Horvath, and someone asked if it was normal to just read RPG materials for fun, with no intention of playing them. He observed that there was nothing stopping anyone from doing just that, and for some reason, that’s what I, a 51 year-old Ur-Gamer from the Old Times needed to hear.

It was late in the year, but since then, I’ve gone through maybe a dozen of my books, some of them various flavors of D&D, most of them indie RPGs, all of them games I don’t think I’ll ever play, but *intensely* enjoyed reading.

The pandemic delivered a metaphorical (and practical) TPK to my group, and I don’t know how quickly or easily I’ll be able to assemble a new one, but when I do, it’s going to be one hell of a game, because I have all these new ideas and inspirations in my head, from reading systems and adventures I’ll probably never play.

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When I was in my teens, I read every GURPS sourcebook I could, cover to cover, losing myself in the imaginary worlds they represented. I loved those things as much as I loved any novel. I read all the FASA Star Trek RPG sourcebooks, because I wanted to know everything I could about the imaginary world I lived and worked in. Also: blueprints. So many wonderful blueprints.

I’ve recently read The Skeletons (the players are the undead who guard a tomb that is defiled by adventurers), Maschinezeit (what if dead spaceships were possessed by Lovecraftian cosmic horrors and you went to one, anyway?), Mothership (in space, no one can survive), and about half of The Lost Mine of Phandelver (5e starter box) because I hope to run it in the new year for a small group of friends.

I have shelf after shelf of books from popular systems, indie systems, out of print systems, loved and hated systems, and 2023 was the year I stumbled into permission to read them on my terms, rather than reading them to prep for a test.

Maybe 2024 will be the year I played more RPGs than I have in a long time.

a simple expression of love for each other

While I was cooking the cranberries, Ryan and his wife were behind me, preparing our turkey. Anne and Nolan were in the living room, reviewing the short list of “things Wil forgot we needed” which was only 2 items this year, a new family record.

The spray of orange oil as I zested the peel into the sauce was bracing and wonderful. I looked up and just took in, for a few seconds, the love and the joy all around me.

And I didn’t want to, but I remembered, all at once, 40 years of holiday meals with my parents where I was the scapegoat, my brother was the golden child, and my father was the racist uncle. (About two years ago, I was talking to my sister and one of us said something about how weird it was that we didn’t seem to have that racist uncle. Both of my uncles are awesome. And that’s when I realized that, just like if you don’t know who the sucker is at the poker table it’s you, who our dad was at every gathering of extended family.

And then I was as grateful and thankful and overwhelmed with happysadness as I’ve been in a long, long time. After a lifetime of being an unwilling but fundamental part of my mother’s Happy and Perfect Family lie, which included the demand and expectation that, at all family gatherings, I would make myself as small as possible, that I would absorb all of my father’s humiliation, mockery, and bullying, in front of generations of family, that I would be a thing to show off as evidence of how successful she was, how they were all wrong about her, I noticed something profound today.

Today, when I had those memories, I didn’t get angry. I didn’t get depressed. I didn’t get triggered or disregulated. I felt sad for the loss I always feel for the childhood I never had, acknowledged the grief that comes with it … and then I noticed that the hard work I’m doing with my therapist to heal and recover from my CPTSD and pain has created space I never had before to feel all of the joy and love and being part of a sincerely and genuinely happy family that doesn’t need to be perfect, because we are all enough, just as we are. I realized that I used to dread holidays, but I’ve been excited for weeks to be with my family today.

And I am so thankful for that love we share. I’m thankful for it every single day, but I’m thankful for it today, especially, because I can still feel what it was like, and how much it hurt, before.

The cranberry sauce bubbled as it thickened. I turned down the heat and grabbed a handful of herbs to chop up for the rub. Rosemary, thyme, oregano, and fresh black pepper mingled with the orange oil. The faint aroma of boiling sweet potatoes was just behind it, growing stronger by the minute. A cranberry snapped, releasing a tiny burst of steam.

We got the turkey into the oven, and quickly cleaned up as much of the kitchen as we could, in consideration of our future selves who we expect to be very fat and happy in a few hours, and probably won’t want to clean up a messy kitchen.

We did it all together, a simple expression of love for each other.

When we were done, my sons and daughter in-law went out to my game room to play video games. I came into my office to get this dust out of my eyes, and write it all down, because I’m a writer and that’s what we do, even on holidays, when something special happens that we don’t want to forget.

I am so thankful for that love we share. I’m thankful for it every single day, but I’m thankful for it today, especially, because I can still feel what it was like, and how much it hurt, before.

Mind your business, and don’t be a dick.

Someone asked me why Anne and I wear masks to hockey games, and because they weren’t a dick about it, I answered them.

I’m pasting it here, so I have something to refer to going forward.

Covid is very much still A Thing, and so is the flu, the common cold, and other respiratory illnesses. I started masking during the pandemic, because I didn’t want to get sick and die. I have kept masking when I’m in close proximity to other people, large crowds, or small indoor spaces because I haven’t had the flu or a cold or, gods forbid, Covid, since I made that choice. It’s such a tiny, simple, thing and it makes a huge difference for me. It’s too bad that so many people have decided to make another personal health choice that is none of their business, that doesn’t affect them at all, just another part of their culture war. And it tells you everything you need to know about a person when they are a dick about it.

From a practical standpoint: the guy next to me was coughing and sneezing his face off the whole game, and he couldn’t be bothered to wear a mask to protect the people around him from whatever he had. Whether it was a cold, or something more serious, I know I didn’t pick it up from him. That’s basically why I wear a mask whenever I’m in a crowd, and why I wish it wasn’t such a big stupid deal (pro or against).

I see a lot of thank yous for wearing masks in our photos. I appreciate the kindness, but we aren’t making a statement. We aren’t modeling behavior. We are doing what is best for us, period. This isn’t a statement, it’s just a personal health choice. If it helps normalize the entire thing, I’m happy for that passive bonus, but it’s not something I’m spending an action or even a bonus action on.

I haven’t heard someone complain that I wear shoes into a restaurant, and I haven’t ever had someone thank me for wearing shoes in a restaurant. I hope it will be the same with masks, sooner than later. It’s nobody’s business, and the only people who are dicks about it are dicks about everything else, anyway.

I’m just tired of this being not just A Thing, but A Big Stupid Fucking Culture War Thing.

So. Mind your business, do what’s best for your health and in consideration of the health of those around you, and don’t be a dick.

Thanks for listening.

the shady bunch

Here’s the story of a dork named Donnie
And every single thing he touches dies
Like the steaks the Taj Mahal and the election
He lost in court sixty times.

Here’s the story of a crazy lady
Who told a lot of crazy crazy lies
And she got together with some looney lawyers
To steal some votes they tried.

Then the loser set his mob upon the Congress
And Giulani’s hair dye ran right down his face
And the crazy lady said the vote was stolen
By Jewish lasers shot from satellites in space.

And when they all got caught for doing some light treason
Chesebro flipped and Kraken lady, too
And Donnie you’re in real big fuckin’ trouble
Because Fanni Willis is coming for you

And the Treason Bunch
The Treason Bunch
A criminal conspiracy called
Treason bunch