My Solo RPG Journey: Status Update #6

Another pit stop on the journey, another breather, and a look back and ahead.

Hey there imaginary readers, gentle subscribers, and powerful gremlins!

Its time for yet another Status Update, looking at how things are going with my project (I am just going to call this a project now) and where I am heading. So lets dive right in!

Where the hell have I been?!

So, I had someone point out a few days ago that I had been writing less, and I realized that I had in fact been quiet for like…a week and change at the time. And the fact is I am still dealing with real life burn out. The burn out is completely due to my job, my schedule, and the kind of shit I deal with on a daily basis and NOT THIS PROJECT.

For those unaware, I work as a Quality Analyst in health care. I spend my time looking over processes, contacts, and other things and verifying things were done properly and nothing was missed. It’s basically reviewing other people’s work. Ya know, like I kind of do here! It’s a fulfilling job but it’s mentally taxing at the best of times, and borderline fries my brain at the worst.

And to top it off, my work schedule from July till now (And going forward) has been 6-day work weeks. 2 days where I work 4 hours, and 4 days where I work 8 hours. Sometimes, the weeks overlap and I end up doing shit like 10-12 days in a row. In fact, I did 13 days in a row recently (6 of them 4 hours, and 7 of them 8). I have no vacation time remaining either until the new year.

You can imagine I am fried. And that, coupled with some personal hangups that I have gotten past are what slowed me down.

But I have pushed past the hang ups and now I am getting back into the groove. I am still burned out, sure, and some days are better than others, but I am taking things slow and not pushing myself too hard. And speaking of what that hangup WAS…

The Hangup

This is entirely a me problem but here it is: I was focused on doing the games I had received review copies of in order, and because of this I was running into a brick wall called Morkin.

Despite the creator telling me that I did not have to even cover the game, I have always maintained a person view that if I accept a review copy of something I NEED to at least talk about it in a professional capacity. The issue here is this: he sent me a physical copy of the Black Edition.

And I can’t fucking read it.

My eyes cannot handle the white text on black paper at all. I have tried a few times, and I get stuck trying, my eyes hurt, and it just drives me mad. I actually emailed him as I wrote this and asked if I could get a PDF copy of it so I can at least do an Overview, as I have little interest right now in playing that style of game, but I want to at least cover the rules.

But right now? I can’t. And my brain being the asshole that it is was stuck on this. “Don’t cover a game until you cover Morkin.” However, I realized that was going to fuck me over. So while talking to Alex T, I realized I should just cover SOMETHING, a small game if nothing else.

That ended up being RILLEM. And the block was pushed past! I feel free now. I still want to do an overview on Morkin, obviously, but I am not going to let that hold me up from other games, simple as that.

Speaking of the future…

The Riftbreakers 2nd Ed AP

This is all because I kept seeing people in the Blackoath Games discord talking about Riftbreakers 2nd Ed, and me going “I wanna play that”. Seriously, that is what started this entire idea.

The idea to bring Tella from RHBF though? That was something I had been pondering for a while. I wanted to continue Tella’s story somehow. My first idea was actually taking them into Under Ashen Skies, which is basically a solo Silent Hill themed RPG. But I was not sure how to really make that make sense.

So, when I was thinking about Riftbreakers 2nd Ed, it hit me: what if Tella was reborn here, in Kaethor? What would that look like? It made sense, the entire concept for characters in Riftbreakers is they spawn in with no idea who they are, where they are from, or how they got there.

My first idea to this was that the Ruthless Heavens somehow own Kaethor and use it as a “second chance” but I had a better idea.

Kaethor is alive. And its fighting against the Rifts. And it needs heroes. So what better thing for it to do but to hijack the souls of deceased heroes and bring them over. It’s not perfect at doing this, things get lost along the way, but that is what it seems to be doing.

I think that idea, and Tella working their way through this new world and rediscovering who they were and how they got there, and learning to be someone new, is a fun idea.

I am going to play this Long Term honestly, with a post hopefully once a week on it. I think I can manage short to medium length AP sessions each week.

I know I wanna play more right now haha!

Spoiler Alert: I am in fact playing more…right now.

Moving Forward

So other than the Riftbreakers AP I am going to be keeping up with, what are my plans?

Well, waiting to see about the Morkin PDF, and playing / covering some more of the smaller games I have rather then the big deep ones like Ker Nethalas at least right now.

I also now have to find time to cover League of Dungeoneers which I did not expect to be as…massive as it was. Seriously. I am in awe, and bewildered, and honored to have received that monstrous package. If I can take a moment to just say I honestly did not expect that generosity for someone like me. I think when I sent my email asking about a review copy I had maybe 230 subscribers, and in the video game world that would make me a joke, basically, for anything that expensive. Yet here I am with 40lbs of gaming in my office just watching me going “You did this. NOW DEAL WITH IT NERD.”

And here at the end I did in fact get a Morkin PDF so yea, that might actually be next just to get it off my plate. At least the Overview. I most likely won’t do an AP for it. Riftbreakers, my beloved!

Oh, and one question: any of yall wanna see me do RILLEM again, one of the other 2 Prisoner types? Let me know in the comments.