Victory from Defeat?

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Yesterday I played Imperator: Rome and Conquest of Elysium 5. Some interesting things happened, and in lieu of writing pages upon pages about both games, I’m going to try to write a summary here. We’ll see how that goes.

In Imperator: Rome you can control a kingdom, tribe, empire, or city-state in northern Africa, Europe, or Asia in the classical era, starting in 304 BC. Rather than get involved in the squabbling of the Diadochi over the empire conquered by Alexander the Great, or playing as Rome, Carthage, or any other major historical power, I decided to try playing as a minor tribe in northern Britain. To make a long story short, it didn’t go well. I tried attacking a tribe in northern Ireland, their allies joined the war, and while I was at war with them a neighboring tribe on my southern border declared war on me. I made the mistake of sending my mercenaries to assault the tribe’s capital fortress, rather than merely continuing the siege, so I lost too many men to maintain the siege. As a result I had to deal with the game telling me that there were 54 left in the garrison out of the original 500 and I had something like 1800 mercenaries left, but apparently you have to have 2000 men to besiege a fortress. Back in my own territory, my warriors were defeated by the enemy because they outnumbered me, and so I lost both wars and most of my lands. I haven’t decided yet whether I want to continue that game in spite of the additional challenge or simply start a new one. Regardless, I’m pleasantly surprised that Imperator: Rome, a game originally released in 2019, runs without too much trouble on my computer that has like 1 GB of graphics memory and, as far as I can remember, hasn’t had any major changes in several years.

In Conquest of Elysium 5, the goal is to conquer a fantasy world playing as various “classes”, most of which probably would be familiar to any fan of fantasy fiction. A few of these include the Senator (Roman-themed), the Illusionist, the Kobold King, the Druid, the High Priestess (which I’ve won the game as) and the Necromancer. In this particular game I was playing as a Voice of El, a leading servant of the god El. My original starting leader was killed in a battle, and as a result for several in-game years I feel like I’ve mostly been on the run- after losing my starting leader, I had sent my commanders to explore, and as a result converted several settlements to the worship of El and made various gains and losses, but after two of the four computer players were defeated the competition came down to me and the computer-controlled Necromancer player, who not only had large armies of undead but also had very powerful undead creatures, and groups of these powerful undead, taking my cities and otherwise bothering me. I had worried at one point that I had basically lost the game, but after opening at least one more seal, and probably taking other actions to get more powerful heavenly aid, I started getting more heavenly servants. Even if I don’t directly control the angelic hosts, the fact that they’re roaming around and taking cities for me is immensely helpful. As a result, it’s now almost 16 years into the game and I’ve overtaken the necromancer as having the most powerful army. I still haven’t found his starting fortress, and I don’t know where the necromancer went (my current theory is that he’s traveled to Hades or some other plane), but I seem to be on the path to victory and it’s currently a matter of either taking all of his citadels, so he can’t recruit any more units, or destroying all of his commanders in order to secure victory.

I was thinking at one point that it seems like I could take something away from these experiences, though the most succinct way I can think of is something like “when in doubt, keep running and pray for help.” That doesn’t seem like the best advice (for example, how is that going to help with my social life or lack of a girlfriend?), but asymmetric warfare certainly has its advantages even if the “meek” can’t literally call upon heavenly hosts to help them destroy their enemies.

A Star Wars game idea

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Recently I’ve been working different shifts at work- rather than working in the middle part of the day, like I usually do, and working in the late morning, afternoon, and evening, I’ve had to make donuts, which involves getting to work at 3 a.m. and going to bed accordingly. Thankfully it’s not a long commute, at least, but it’s been rough having to go to bed (or, more accurately, collapsing from exhaustion) in time so I can get up after 2 and be at work at 3. There have been at least a couple days lately where I was late, so that threw things off.

But none of that, of course, is germane to the topic of this post: A game idea!

I’ve been playing Star Wars: Empire at War again lately, which is a real-time strategy game that came out in 2006 where you can control either the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance. The Empire, of course, relies on industrial might and numerical superiority, while the Rebellion has to rely instead on quality over quantity and highly motivated freedom fighters.

The changes in canon and new material since 2006 aside (thinking here particularly of Andor, Rogue One, and Saw Gerrera and his Partisans), recently I’ve thought it would be interesting to have a game where you could play as either the Empire or the Rebels, and whatever side you picked would affect the playstyle. Of course, I guess to some degree this is true anyway in Empire at War (if you pick the Empire, in space you get powerful warships that carry their own fighter and bomber craft, versus playing as the Rebels whose hyperdrive-equipped starfighters make them capable of independent action and hit-and-run attacks), but it’d be interesting if the gameplay was more different.

I suppose what I have in mind is more like an RPG or small-unit tactics game, like XCOM (which I’ve never played). For example, if you’re in charge of a small Imperial unit, you might know the characters only or mainly by their individual designation, while the Rebel equivalent might allow you to know characters by a callsign or name, rather than whatever the Rebel equivalent to a “serial number” is. Of course, another glaring difference is that the Empire is human supremacist, and with few exceptions all or most of your Imperial troopers (or pilots or crew or whatever) would be humans, while the Rebellion is more diverse and you might have just about any conceivable species in a Rebel unit, whether they’re Mon Calamari, Twilek, Wookiee, Rodian, Bothan, or of course human.

A main problem with this idea would probably be the scope- if you’re the commander of a fighter squadron, that’s going to be a bit different than if you’re an infantry squad, the bridge crew of a light cruiser, or the crew of a vehicle. Something like this seems like it might work best as a special forces-type unit or a fighter squadron, though I welcome anyone who wants to try making a game about the rare Rebel armored brigade, haha.

Maybe it’s the contrarian or the masochist in me, or just enjoying counterfactuals, but I’ve long thought it would be interesting to have a tabletop role-playing game character who’s part of a Rebel starship crew or vehicle unit, when neither of those are among the Alliance’s strengths as a insurgency against the established galactic government. Sure, some Rebel armored units and capital ships existed (if nothing else, there’s the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi), but the Rebel Alliance didn’t have the industrial capacity, logistics, or personnel, mostly, to engage in conventional symmetric vehicle or space warfare. Any significant concentration of Rebel armor, if it wasn’t degraded by Imperial attacks on its supply chains and logistics, could probably expect to be greeted by Imperial air and armor superiority (TIE bombers, AT-ATs, heavy artillery, and turbolasers against whatever passes for Rebel heavy armor) even if your garden-variety Imperial stormtrooper or Army trooper doesn’t have much anti-vehicle capability. Realistically, there probably are heavy crew-served anti-vehicle weapons available somewhere within the Imperial military, whether it’s part of the Army or the Stormtrooper Corps.

Anyway, I think a game set during the Galactic Civil War (or really, just about any war, not just in Star Wars) based on these differences could be interesting. “You’re playing a commander with these traits, so your units have these reactions, and these messy interpersonal dramas are playing out, oh and then this happens” seems fun, but I do enjoy Rimworld, Crusader Kings, and similar games with RPG elements, so adding that into a Star Wars game seems fun. I don’t know how you’d do that for something like the Clone Wars, considering the Clone Wars featured the Republic’s Grand Army of clone troopers and Jedi versus the CIS’s Droid Army (and some organic auxiliaries), but you could also probably come up with a story where you get the choice on the Republic side of either a Jedi and clones or a Republic-aligned local defense force and the CIS option could be either the main Droid army (though with less interactions between droids) or a unit of Separatist-aligned organic soldiers (though they would probably all be from the same world, or at least the same species).

The Mystery Upstairs

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It seems I haven’t written anything here since the end of September 2022, which was about four months ago. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since until recently I don’t remember the last time I had thought about writing anything here, but for the most part my life has remained the same. I did get together with friends last weekend (after requesting a couple days off work), so it worked out for me to bring pizza to my current tabletop campaign group’s gaming night, which was something like the first time we’d got together in two months.

In other news, I was sick a few months ago (sore throat, possibly feverish, I think it was early November), which might have been COVID based on some of my coworkers being sick around the same time, but on the other hand I also never took a Covid test, and after a few days I got better, so I don’t know if it was actually COVID or something with similar symptoms. More recently, this week (since Monday, I think) I’ve had some respiratory symptoms in the shape of my nose running and some congestion, so I don’t know if it’s a sinus infection or a cold, or potentially something more ‘serious’. In any event, other than my nose running a little (and it hasn’t really done that for a couple days) I don’t think I’ve been very sick, so I’ve been trying to drink lots of fluids and get plenty of sleep.

In other other news, the title of this post refers to my new neighbor. The previous tenant of the apartment above me didn’t seem to spend much time here, and while I had seen or heard him around a few times in the last year or so, I had heard indirectly that he may have been mainly living with a girlfriend and renting the apartment as a place to stay when the weather was bad or other occasions so he wouldn’t have to drive an hour (or whatever his normal commute would have been). He did get married this past fall, and from what I’d heard it was possible that he might keep the apartment through the winter. Since moving to the second floor last summer, I hadn’t really noticed any changes- I’d heard him come in a few times, but then he usually left after a few minutes and I don’t think he ever spent the night.

I was surprised, then, when I got a text from one of my landlords in early January of this year that someone was going to be moving into the upstairs apartment. I was further confused when there were no signs of activity on that front for a couple days, until I heard activity in the hallway outside my apartment and upstairs a couple days later, and then a few days later over the weekend I heard activity that actually sounded like maybe someone was moving in and had some help, but I never met anyone or actually saw anyone moving in. Eventually, I’ve noticed a purple Honda that I’ve decided must be the car that the new upstairs neighbor drives.

This week, I’ve thought it slightly funny that there’s now been at least twice that I’ve almost met my new neighbor. A couple days ago, this past Tuesday, I was scheduled to work at 12:15 PM, and since it’s only a drive of a few blocks I usually don’t leave until about 5 minutes until I’m supposed to be at work. About noon I heard movement and decided it sounded like the neighbor had come in, and when I stepped out into the hallway to leave for work I noticed the door to the upstairs apartment was open and it sounded like someone was in the laundry room. As I walked by I glanced in and saw a pink coat, but I didn’t notice anything else, so I don’t know if she saw my face or not.

The next day, I had Wednesday off work and had planned to go to the grocery store for vinegar and a few other things. About 2:30 PM, I was backing up and getting ready to pull into the alley to get to the street and take my usual route to the grocery store (and work and almost anywhere else) when I saw the neighbor’s purple Honda pulling in to the alley, so with some quick thinking I backed up and turned around to go the other direction out the other end of the alley. After about 20 minutes at the grocery store, I returned and noticed the neighbor was gone.

Since there’s a fire alarm that’s been beeping for over a month, and based on what I’ve noticed about them not being here as often as I am, the last few days I’ve begun to wonder if this new neighbor is a similar situation where they’re renting the apartment as a place to stay on nights they have to work late, or something like that. There’s been a few times recently where I’m sitting in my apartment and I hear them go to the upstairs apartment at like 11:30 PM or around midnight, but it’s never happened on the recent nights I have been closing at work (which have lately been Sundays and a couple Tuesdays), or else we might be meeting outside by our cars or something, and to the admittedly limited degree that I pay attention, it seems like they only spend maybe one or two nights a week here, if that.

I, by contrast, do almost nothing other than work or sit in my apartment, so usually I’m spending more like 7 nights a week in my apartment. I’m not sure what the exact average is lately, since I haven’t been to my parents’ for a few weeks, but spending the night at a friends’ last weekend sort of brings down my average of spending 7 nights a week here (compared to my neighbor’s 1 night a week or whatever it’s been).

I didn’t almost run into them today (I was scheduled to also have today off work, but I agreed to work for a couple hours and then it turned out I wasn’t needed after all), but the way our near-meetings have gone the last couple days I feel like it’s an inevitability that our paths will cross sooner than later and, much like the older couple that moved in downstairs last fall, maybe I’ll have a chance to meet them and introduce myself properly (rather than these weird near misses).

Scattershot thoughts

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The Disney movie Hocus Pocus 2 came out today, which I haven’t yet seen. Aside from one of my coworkers who apparently likes the first movie and plans I’d heard about for her to host a Hocus Pocus party today, I’m mainly reminded of how my ex liked Hocus Pocus, and in the fall of 2017 when we were dating, we went to a video rental store several times and rented different movies before we finally found Hocus Pocus and watched it. The aforementioned party, if I remember correctly, was also going to include my store manager, but since she got sick earlier this week presumably she’s not attending.

I’ve had yesterday and today off work, which has mainly been nice and relaxing. Yesterday I went to get my Covid bivalent booster shot and flu shot, which I turned into a grocery trip and bought, among other things, pumpkin ale, pumpkin pie cream liqueur, various snacks, kimchi, a gyro making kit, and the frozen pizza that I made for dinner yesterday. As far as what I’ve actually accomplished the last couple days, aside from watching YouTube and playing Rimworld I’ve also hand-washed some dishes. Suddenly it seems like I’ve done more than that, but I don’t remember if I actually put away the dishes that were in the dishwasher yesterday, or if that was perhaps the day before. Not that it matters- doing some dishes and getting groceries, which had been on my to-do list, is accomplishment enough. I can’t currently think of anything specific that I feel like I need to do before, say, going back to work tomorrow, but it’s not as if taking out the garbage or putting away laundry is truly that daunting.

Recently I seem to have once again exhausted the possibilities of Bumble and Tinder. I think I remember running into this problem before the pandemic, which I think may have led to my uninstalling those particular apps from my phone. Either way, I’ve never really used OKCupid, and I’ve long thought that’s a possibility (if only to serve as another venue to be frustrated in), but mostly I’m reluctant to try it. My current search criteria, if I remember correctly, are something like looking for women between the ages of 22 and 33 within 50 miles, and in this rural area, there don’t seem to be a lot of choices (particularly if you “left swipe” on all the choices).

This exhaustion of possibilities combined with my enjoying brief stargazing on the early morning of the 27th of this month, when I stepped outside about 12:51 AM and was able to see Jupiter, Mars, and the Pleiades (which I only knew due to the Stellarium and Sky Map apps on my phone). Since I enjoyed stargazing, it made me think, in the most self-deprecatory sense, “who needs a social life when you can stargaze?” The stars are easy to find if you look up, while people have things like “schedules” and “work” and “preferences” that tend to interfere with social lives and planning. Earlier this week I had messaged my current gaming group about having Thursday and Friday off this week, since it’s been nearly a month since our last meeting and I had thought people might be able to play on Friday night, but instead one person was leaving for a trip, so they were busy or had been busy, and someone else wasn’t able to meet on Thursdays, so that not working was a little disappointing.

I don’t really know what to do about feeling socially unfulfilled. The apps can only go so far (particularly if, you know, you actually express interest in people instead of denying everyone), and it would probably be even easier to meet people if I ever did anything other than work or hang out in my apartment or with family.

Thar Be Gigs In Them Economies

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It’s time to #workpost! Is that a thing? It is now!

Jokes aside, there have, naturally, been some changes at work. It’s a new month! This is retail! We have to constantly be changing things because reasons!

September means that it’s fall, so we have pumpkin coffee, cappuccino, and donuts at the store I work at. It’s apparently the 21st anniversary of the company serving breakfast pizza, so we have a new, different breakfast pizza with beer cheese sauce (instead of the normal cheddar or sausage gravy). As far as other new breakfast developments, we have a new bacon biscuit sandwich, which I didn’t know about until the day of.

Read more: Thar Be Gigs In Them Economies

It has been frustrating recently (well, maybe the last year or so at least) that sometimes the company isn’t great about communication. I don’t know if it’s the fault of a specific person (like Joe Blow, the Prepared Food Category Manager, or maybe his assistant or some secretary or something), or if it’s an entire team of people dropping the ball, but there have been several occasions I can think of in the last year or so where people at the corporate HQ are bad about communicating with the stores. For example, this new bacon and cheese biscuit sandwich, rather than sending an email about it 2 weeks in advance like they did for the pizza, I’m not sure they sent any emails about it until the day of. For the new pizza varieties, they’re usually good about putting the word out with sufficient time that they can ship the necessary ingredients, and we can have a couple weeks for training before we start officially selling the new pizza (most recently, BBQ brisket or the aforementioned beer cheese ultimate breakfast pizza). By contrast, when they changed the donut case guidelines at the beginning of August they didn’t seem to communicate it very well, and there’s been at least once where I’ve seen that they sent out further explanation. Now I don’t remember what the further explanation was, or what my problem with the initial explanation was, but I felt like they should have been clearer to begin with.

I also think it’s funny that for the new bacon biscuit breakfast sandwich, the message about it said something about how it was a gap in our menu that our competitors had, so it was felt that we needed to fill that gap and offer our guests more choice, which seemed funny because yes, biscuits and bacon are things that we have, but why did they not send out any information about this new sandwich until the day of? Why did they decide to introduce a new sandwich, not tell anyone about it, and then decide it’s acceptable to not have labels? Sure, we’ve been having trouble getting labels, for whatever reason (manufacturing issues, supply issues, who knows), but usually when we get a new item we have labels to stick on the appropriate packaging, not being told that we’ll get labels when they’re available.

I don’t work at the corporate HQ, but if it were me, it might not be a bad idea to check in with, rather than just the division presidents and regional presidents and district managers, check in with store managers and maybe even the kitchen managers- something like “hey, we’re thinking about this, do you understand what this means? What does this sound like to you?” Then, depending on the feedback, you can either send out “oh, whoa, that’s not what we meant at all” or “Yes! Great, thanks for the feedback!”

And, if you’re feeling really generous, you can write something in the relevant email like “after some extremely helpful feedback from the field, this is the wording we’re going with:” to try to minimize, if not eliminate any confusion, instead of being confused when you failed to send out directions until after the fact.

Another recent frustration is that, for whatever reason, we got new muffins, so our old blueberry and banana nut muffins were discontinued. The blueberry muffins went on sale for buy one get one free for the last couple weeks of July, if I remember correctly. When July ended, we still had blueberry muffins left, and we did eventually get rid of them, even if it was later than we were “supposed to” have disposed of them. At the same time that we were told to donate or dispose of the blueberry muffins, we were told to sell through our banana nut muffins.

Well, at my store, we didn’t sell many banana nut muffins. I had wondered if the beginning of September would mean that the banana nut muffins would be discontinued, and sure enough, according to the register on September 1 they were locked for sale (even though the production planner still has a line for them, so theoretically we could still be making them… but I don’t understand that logic). As a result, on September 1 I went ahead and made most of the banana nut muffins we had left, and after checking with the local nutrition site, I took half a dozen to a friends’ when we were playing D&D, I took 2 dozen muffins to the local nutrition site for breakfast the next day, and I left 9 muffins out for people to take home or whatever happened to them. Our new muffins are blueberry crumb and double chocolate chip, and, funny enough, they’re 20 cents more expensive than our old muffins. I wonder why? It seems to me that the double chocolate muffins are more popular than the blueberry crumb, and I haven’t tried the double chocolate chip muffins, but the muffins suddenly being 20 cents more expensive is suspicious, to me. I have no idea what the cost difference is between our new muffins and the old muffins.

As for the title of this post, we were supposed to start offering DoorDash from my store today, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but we had one order today and it wound up being canceled. Tuesdays are usually slower, and this afternoon we got a DoorDash order for a small BBQ brisket pizza, a 2 liter bottle of 7-UP, a brownie, some Advil, and some Benadryl. After making the pizza I looked around and we had everything except the 24 pack of Advil, so I followed the directions to call DoorDash, talked to a customer service representative with a thick East Asian accent, she tried contacting the customer and had me on hold for a bit, and then said she had tried contacting the customer and received no response so she was going to cancel the order. Sure enough, the canceled ticket printed out near the end of the phone call and I had wondered if the person might try ordering again, but she never did.

As far as work-related frustrations, we usually don’t get many online orders that include drinks, so I don’t usually pay much attention to our inventory of drinks, but every once in a while we get that frustrating order for bottled iced coffee or some energy drink or a soda or some other drink that we don’t have, so then I have to figure out a substitution and try to let the customer know. Most of the household goods are similar- despite their being available to order online for maybe a couple years now (I don’t remember when it was added, but I feel like it might have been circa spring 2020), I have yet to see any (other?) online orders where someone wants Benadryl or Advil or Tylenol or anything like that. I know I’ve seen a couple orders where someone wanted a loaf of bread, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone order a can of soup or a package of ramen or a package of paper plates or package of plastic cups or anything like that.

If the powers that be want to make things more convenient for guests, maybe they ought to make it easier for employees?

Rumination

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Rather than make one mega-post with several different trains of thought, I think I’ll make a couple and try to limit each post so each is at least vaguely related.

For example, rather than writing a post that mentions thinking about my ex and recent developments at work and ongoing frustration with dating apps and, upon further reflection, probably other things, I’ll make another post in a bit about the recent work developments and this can be the, uh, non-work post.

There isn’t much! Surprising, right? All I do is work and relax and work and relax and work and…

Let’s see… my grandparents are getting older, which is hardly surprising, and there’s not much I can say about that. They’re 93 and 92, and as the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth (and just about any old famous person) reminds me, one day they’ll be the ones mourned.

I’ve been playing Rimworld again, so that has been fun, but it’s also approaching the point where I’ve burned out on Rimworld and am due to switch to, I don’t know, Dominions 5 or something.

As far as the ongoing frustration with dating apps, I don’t know just how much I can write that wouldn’t just turn into pointless rambling (as cathartic as it may be for me). I’m convinced that my previous relationship (being introduced by a mutual friend when my now-ex and I were both in college in a city) is like the easy mode, if not “easiest” mode, for meeting people (and perhaps starting a relationship in general), compared to these days. I’m not in college any more, I work at a convenience store in a small town, and while I could be wrong, I’m convinced that most of the people my age or within the acceptable age range for a relationship are either already taken or may have other baggage. I don’t think this is a bad small town, but I don’t think there’s much of a nightlife (and I don’t get out much, so I’m hardly to be trusted as far as knowledge of the singles scene around here).

Read more: Rumination

I did think it was funny yesterday to remember that today was the anniversary of my ex and I starting our relationship, but considering it’s been 4.5 years since we broke up and over 2 years since I heard from her, I’m not sure what the traditional celebration is. A few weeks ago when I was thinking of the anniversary of our starting to date I started drafting a blog post with a playlist of songs that reminded me of her, though I didn’t feel like polishing that and posting it tonight. Maybe another day (or I guess I could always save it for another day, like the anniversary of our breaking up).

As far as dating apps, I’ve never really used OKCupid much, but Tinder and Bumble continually frustrate me because people either write nothing in their profiles, don’t write much in their profiles, are unoriginal (e.g., “touch my butt and buy me tacos”, “I like beer and tacos”, “my dog needs a daddy”), or the pictures seem bad. Maybe I don’t have much room to talk, since I don’t claim to have great pictures on my online dating profiles, but some people don’t look attractive, I’m personally not interested in lots of body modification (piercings, tattoos, etc.), and the profiles where they don’t even use a picture of themselves seem less than helpful (as far as the whole superficial “judging on appearance rather than substance and then make a binary choice” goes). I have a theory that people who are more “open to experience” tend to be more present on online dating, since I’ve seen a lot of people with tattoos and piercings and I suspect people who aren’t “open to experience” probably just meet their husbands/boyfriends through their social networks.

The best recent thing I’ve seen on a dating profile was on Bumble, I think, earlier this week and it was a woman whose profile said something like “Men who are over 6′ who only go for girls under 5’7″- why do you want your kids to play JV?” I think her profile said she was 5’9″, but as someone who’s about 6′ tall I thought that was hilarious. Of course, I also just appreciate seeing something new instead of the same trite nonsense about “I’m terrible at writing bios” or “not looking for hookups” or whatever nonsense.

Resuming a train of thought from earlier, I suspect that trying to date amid a respiratory pandemic (and that’s not even bringing monkeypox into the equation) is probably a bit more challenging than dating pre-pandemic. Additionally, as previously mentioned regarding location, dating in a city of one hundred fifty thousand at least offers more choices in a smaller area than trying to date in a small town of around a thousand. Even leaving aside the local ramifications of gossip and social networks, based on what I’ve seen on dating apps, there’s a lot of people who are more than 20 miles away, which isn’t too far, but it does seem like it’d slightly limit scheduling (as opposed to someone who was actually in the same town, or at least within 10 or so miles). Additionally, as I’ve thought before, in contrast to my ex, who was a full-time student when we were dating that didn’t have many friends, I assume that any future women I date (assuming I ever do date anyone again, of course) will probably have a job and probably friends and some kind of social life.

Of course, in order to start talking to someone through these various apps, I’d probably have to start swiping right, wouldn’t I? Why would I want to do that?

D&D plot ideas

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I put on my robe and wizard hat…

Actually, I’m not sure where my wizard hat is, and while I do have a robe in my apartment, the idea of wearing a robe over my work clothes seems silly.

Maybe I’ll write more about what I’ve been up to in another post. For now, a few recent Dungeons and Dragons-related ideas, though of course these (mostly) don’t require that specific system (or even genre).

I have had several D&D-inspired story ideas in the last 12 years, and while none of them have exactly resulted in a finished narrative, they’ve usually proven interesting to think about (until being overtaken by the newest idea). Briefly, last fall I had an idea for a story with a non-linear narrative, and a loose plot outline was as far as I had got before, as winter set in, I became interested in “Old Style Revival” games, specifically OSRIC, and reading about AD&D and other older editions.

Personally, I was introduced to D&D in summer 2009 by playing “Revised 3rd Edition”, or 3.5. I’ve never played 4th edition (or, for that matter, 5th edition), but other than 3.5 most of my other D&D experience has actually come in the form of Pathfinder (1st Edition), also known as D&D 3.75.

One recent idea I had was to run the game with different editions at different levels. For example, starting the game with 1st Edition AD&D rules, then after level 5 switching to AD&D 2nd edition or D&D 3rd edition, then after another 5 or so levels continuing to 4th or 5th edition.

I could see where this might be a headache for the players and game master, since it’d probably involve having to do some calculations (never mind spells and other mechanics working differently between editions), but on the other hand, some of the things I’ve read about older-style campaigns fascinate me. For example, instead of your game following only a small group of mercenaries, also having the party accompanied by a coterie of non-player characters to serve as wagon-drivers, guards, or other needed expertise (and, if needed, apprentices and backup characters) seems interesting, particularly after the party has gained several levels and establishes a power center which then needs to be defended, maintained, and potentially expanded.

If your party establishes a stronghold and you want to try a new class, that may be an opportune time (at least in this idea) to retire the old character, maybe allow some time to pass, and then begin a new ‘campaign’ in the same setting. Maybe 30 years have passed, the old adventurers have died, retired, or otherwise left the area, and the children of the heroes of old have to take up the swords (or wands or staves or daggers) of their ancestors and fight back some new threat (goblin invasion, orc warlords, horse-riding nomads, etc.)

At least in 5th edition, I think I’ve read something before about lower level characters (maybe 1-5) being local heroes, levels 5-10 being powerful and notable in a wider region, while level 15+ characters may be well-known over continental or wider distances. Somewhere (maybe in Pathfinder) I’ve also read something about how most people in the world do not achieve high levels in their lifetimes- I think OSRIC or some other book I’ve read mentions that few people are capable of achieving character levels.

Another idea I’ve had is to play with the “traditional” start to a campaign. Instead of the stock “you all meet in a tavern”, I’ve had an idea before where the party has to come up with why they’re all imprisoned at the start of the game. Did they break a sumptuary law and wear the wrong color or fabric, were they in a bar fight, or did they commit grievous crimes against King and Temple and are awaiting their immediate execution at dawn?

“You all meet at the tavern you work at, or at least the smoking crater that used to be the tavern you work at” has amused me as an idea in the past, though it’s been a long time since I’ve run a game. I’m not sure when my next chance to run a game might be, though fortunately, at least, I’ve recently joined a Pathfinder game that is currently planned to start at level 5. Other than playing a human sorceror, I haven’t decided on an alignment, personality, or much about the background, though I think most of my ability scores and equipment have been decided upon.

No girlfriend, no games, no goals

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I came up with the title of this post while taking the dogs for a mid-day walk earlier this afternoon. While I don’t plan to make this a long post exhaustively breaking down the causes and effects, I do think this phrase succinctly describes my current situation (even if admitting this fact seems like telling on myself, or at least betraying that not all is well, in contrast to the usual depiction on social media).

As for no girlfriend, all I really have to say about that is that, in December, I’ll have been single for four years, and, of course, there’s still a pandemic raging. I haven’t dabbled much in online dating lately, but what little I have looked around (admittedly, mostly on Tinder and OkCupid) is disappointing because I want something more substantial than a blank bio and a picture, and because people are disappointing I suspect my list of desired qualities is probably rare in this area, to put it lightly. I also haven’t lost much sleep about this, because (much like pre-college) I figure I’ll meet someone eventually, so I don’t worry about it.

No games stems from noticing that, according to my Steam library earlier today, apparently it’s been 3 weeks since I played anything (ignoring the 2.7 hours I spent a couple weeks ago using a floorplan generator to map a dungeon for my current D&D-inspired story idea). It’s also been 2 years since I last played D&D with anyone, and much like my frustration over not having a girlfriend or, indeed, any romantic prospects that I’m aware of, I think there’s a similar problem of having to meet other people and “put myself out there”. Indeed, the ongoing pandemic complicates the prospect of meeting in person (as if my work schedule and location didn’t already pose enough obstacles), which leaves online gaming, and I’m not currently aware of anyone who might be interested in playing and has a similar schedule. I haven’t exactly asked my friends, but most of my friends who might be interested seem to have families and jobs and other commitments, and they might not be game to meet for an online game at, say, midnight. Of course, scheduling is always a problem, but it’d be nice if I could work less and play more. D&D character ideas seem rather useless without having a prospect of playing them, and I also haven’t done any looking for groups in this department either. I think websites exist where I could play by post or something, but that’s a further effort. Playing with friends was simpler when I lived with a Game Master, and the other half of our party lived in the next apartment building of the same complex.

As for no goals, this stems from a coworker recently asking “What have you been up to?” and my answer being, as usual, something like “Not much.” As far as I can think of, my coworkers range in age from 16 to their mid-60s, which is quite a range. While a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old might be worried about their homework or preparing for college or enduring senior year, and someone in their mid-60s might be worried about medical procedures or health issues or their family, I feel like right now I’m relatively fortunate in that I don’t have to worry about much, but also I’m not really doing anything other than work.

I get up, I go to work 5 days a week, I come home, rinse and repeat. Since I don’t have any friends that live close, I can’t exactly swing by to socialize, and as previously mentioned most of the friends that do come to mind are busy, so we might chat, but it’s been a while since I’ve been to anyone’s house for a social event (discounting, I guess, my grandparents’ being visited by relatives).

If I was currently in college, for example, I might be studying or have assignments or projects or be busy with that, or if I had a family I’d have to consider childcare and whatever the child/children was doing (whether daycare or school). However, I’m not currently taking any classes and I have no children, so that rules those out.

I have things I want to do, or would be nice to do, but I’m not very organized about coming up with a list of goals for my day off (for example), or for “this week”, or “by November”, or anything like that.

I suspect I might be happier if not all three of those admitted simplifications were true, but who knows. It could certainly be worse.

Summer: Vacation, etc.

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For some reason, this morning I woke up and decided I could write a post here, because I was vaguely aware it had been a while and I figured I could write about some recent happenings.

After coming to WordPress, apparently I haven’t written here since the end of February. Really?

I, uh, can’t think of much to report, or at least not enough to write a thousand or so words about the last (does math) five months, give or take a week. I mean, I probably could find the words to figure out how to write 200 words about March, April, May, June, and July, plus the first not-quite-week of August, but I’m not sure what I’d report about each month, particularly some of the earlier months. Therefore, I’ll stick to more recent events, like the past few weeks.

A couple weeks ago (July 21-24) I took my first vacation in a while to visit my sister, and it was nice to see her and get away from the daily grind. I hadn’t been to my former city of residence since I moved away about a year ago (July 29, 2020). We didn’t do much- I got my oil changed and a couple new tires (I had asked them to rotate my tires at Wal-Mart while I was getting my oil changed, and then they told me they couldn’t rotate the tires because they were worn down to the belt, and I had sort of forgot about getting new tires), we went for a couple walks, and we got carry-out for several meals. I enjoyed the pan of brownies she had made, and despite taking a couple Mom-made masks and being worried about the current state of the pandemic, I didn’t even wear the masks at all, so that seemed a bit pointless.

It seems weird to think about it being time to get ready for school, though of course it’s been over a year since I’ve taken any classes, and I don’t have any children, so I don’t exactly have to worry much about it (which I’m somewhat thankful for, in light of the current state of the ongoing pandemic). There are several people at work that are leaving, apparently, including the assistant manager and several of the night kitchen people, so that’s potentially a problem, but hopefully more people get hired and I don’t wind up having to work a bunch of overtime (or something).

Recently I’ve been toying with some Dungeons and Dragons/Pathfinder-inspired story ideas. Last fall, I think, I had an idea for a story that was inspired by reading about some of the class options in Pathfinder (specifically, the water elemental bloodline for sorcerers), and this spring (or maybe summer) I had another idea for another D&D-inspired idea, and most recently I’ve been inspired by a game I discovered while visiting my sister last month. The game is called Good Old Dungeon, and it’s a fairly simple dungeon crawl where you control a character and fight monsters and, of course, can use experience points, gold, and materials to advance your character. I created a wizard and thus decided I wanted to build a D&D wizard. I’ve been playing with some ideas recently for a D&D inspired story where this wizard is the main character, and of course building a D&D character has made me want to play D&D or a similar game, though I’m not currently aware of anyone that’s playing. As usual, scheduling is an issue- if I wanted to run a game, I could probably figure out how to find a group of people interested in playing, though the question as ever would be if they’re available or willing to play when I am- say, at 10 pm on Thursdays and Fridays, or after 9 pm most days of the week, or some other not-quite-conventional hour. What I always slightly disliked about playing with my former roommate and other friends several years ago was that we would get together to play on Sunday afternoons at noon. Since I usually worked at 4 PM on Sunday, losing my scarce time before work always slightly vexed me.

Recently, reading about the history of the county where I work has led me to some old books that are available online and were published in the 1880s. Aside from reading about the early history of the county, and the strangeness of imagining the area in the 1840s when it was the unsettled frontier and people were worrying about Indian attacks, I have to admit being amused by some of the flowery writing- I doubt that a history published in 2021 would talk about how “savages” made no use of the country and how the area has some of the most fertile soil in the world (or at least the United States). It’s amusing to imagine such a history- aside from an additional 140 years to cover, unless it was written by a Republican or similar conservative, it’s easier to imagine a more “politically correct” (“woke”?) history that, for example, would not use the phrase “savage” unless it was a direct quote from a contemporary source, and only used if it had good reason. For that matter, I imagine such a history written now might include some native sources, or at least sources that weren’t solely from white men. Some history about slavery in this area might be interesting, for example, though as this was the northernmost outcropping of legal slavery, my understanding is that there wasn’t a lot of it (as opposed to, say, the lower South where cotton and other crops were the basis of the economy). I’ll admit I’m not well versed in antebellum history on this local level!

As a weird and tangentially related note on local history, Wednesday morning on my way to work my mom called and said the local museum was closing and she had been called by someone who was trying to return things to the families that had donated/loaned them. After work Wednesday, I met my mom there and we picked up several things that had belonged to my First World War veteran great-grandfather and had been donated by my grandparents, including his uniform, chest, mess kit and some other memorabilia that had been in the chest, a hay knife, a green bean snipper, an egg scale, a chicken feeder, a table, and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. We also picked up an old washing machine that didn’t belong to my relatives, but I think belonged to one of our neighbors (or at least someone that was the ancestor of some of our neighbors).

Speaking of my grandparents, they celebrated their 70th anniversary August 1. I worked that day, but their children (my aunts and father) took them out to lunch and I stopped by Sunday morning before work to see them. My grandparents are certainly in good shape for being in their early 90s, and I’ve sort of already decided that I’ve probably lost my chance to match that particular milestone (unless I somehow meet and marry someone and we both live another 70 years, which may or may not happen depending on medical technology of the late 21st century).

Let’s see- local history, family, vacation, story ideas- I’m not sure what else to write about. Well, I can think of some funny work-related anecdotes, but this post seems like it’s long enough already, so I think I might put those in another post. I don’t know about writing here more regularly, but it also seems like that’s not the worst idea. Until next time.

Month in review

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Another month draws to a close, and as usual I haven’t written here for some time. How long? I haven’t looked- I don’t remember the last time I visited this site, but offhand I bet it’s been at least a month, maybe closer to two.

In any event, what have I done this month? I don’t have a list of events to hand, but I can think of a few things off the top of my head. Let’s begin.

At the end of last month, after a bit of online car shopping and talking to my parents, I bought a pickup truck! Previously I had been driving vehicles they owned and insured, but a few days after buying my truck (which did involve borrowing some money from my parents) I began paying for my own insurance.

When we were looking at the truck that I would end up buying, my dad commented that the tires were worn and I’d have to save up for new tires. Sure enough, about a week and a half after buying my truck, one night after work I had a tire blow out a couple miles south of town. I had originally pulled over because I noticed it was riding really rough, and I wanted to look at it, but once I saw the tire had blown I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to limp the few miles to the next town to put air in my tires, as I had been hoping. The guy driving behind me stopped to see if he could help, and he said that he thought I had hit a deer, but he didn’t have a jack that could lift my truck. I realized, after checking the manual in my glove compartment and looking for the jack, that I didn’t get a jack with my truck. Fortunately, a local law enforcement officer also stopped when he saw me pull over and put my emergency lights on, and he also didn’t have a jack that would work, but he called a couple people and some other law enforcement officer brought the right jack and a tire iron, so the first officer changed my tire while I (and two other law enforcement officers) watched. After limping home, I called a garage and made an appointment, and later that week (I think) I ordered two new tires.

A few days later, on Valentine’s Day I was asked if I could come in to work at 1 pm, instead of 3 as I think I was originally scheduled. I said I could do that, and the weather was bad (it was snowing and cold) so my mom let me drive her truck, but I decided to drive on what I thought would be a better road, since I thought I’d have more traction on gravel than on pavement. That turned out to be a mistake, since I got stuck in a ditch about half a mile east of home, but Dad was able to pick me up, brought me back home, and that day I drove the 2010 Jeep Compass to work. I had been driving it for about the past 7 years (before I bought my truck, at least), and I think that was the last day I wound up driving it. Fortunately, despite the snow and cold, once I got onto the asphalt, I was able to get to work without further incident. Later that week, I would get my new tires (and a tire pressure monitor sensor, since apparently I had lost that when the tire blew out).

Last week, Tuesday night after work I was pulled over by a county deputy, and he said he hadn’t seen my transit stickers until he was right behind my truck. After looking at my paperwork and borrowing my driver’s license for a moment he let me continue on my way. Wednesday I called a couple local government offices about what paperwork I’d need to license my truck, and I wound up driving to town to get an odometer reading inspection (for lack of a better word, not sure what the actual terminology would be). As of a couple years ago, in the state of Missouri vehicles that are less than 10 years old and have less than 150,000 miles on them don’t need inspections to get licensed (if I remember correctly), so due to my truck being a model year 2012 and only having about 25 thousand miles on the odometer, I didn’t need a full inspection. Last Friday I got my truck licensed, finally, at sort of the last minute, and so now it’s on to the next problem, I guess. I can’t particularly think of any problems right now, but I think Dad said something the other day about how now I’m ready for the next hail storm, or something like that about how that might be the next problem to worry about.

It seems weird thinking about it being March (and that’s without even delving into the weirdness of the pandemic and how that kind of hit my life in March 2020), but after the cold snap we had a couple weeks ago (or Arctic vortex or whatever that was about), it’s been warmer lately, with highs in the 40s and 50s, so that’s been pleasant. Less enjoyable has been the melt, due to all of the snow and ice we had melting, so the ground has been saturated. It’s not all a muddy mess, but there are definitely patches that are awful.

As far as work, I’ve been working a lot lately, and not exactly enjoying it! Someone got fired last Sunday, so I “got” to pick up several shifts she had been scheduled to work, and I think someone else didn’t show up yesterday, so I didn’t get a weekend off after all, despite being scheduled to have Saturday and Sunday off this weekend. Instead, I got a call from the assistant manager yesterday asking if I could work 8 to close last night, and after some texting yesterday evening, I agreed to work 1 to 6 pm today. I had the opportunity to only work 6 to close, but I wasn’t “jazzed” about that idea considering I already close just about every day this week, and it was nice being home a few minutes after sunset instead of at 11:45 pm, or whenever I usually get home. Overtime will help me financially, I guess, though I’d rather just go back to working 35 hours a week instead of 43 or whatever I have been and/or am due for. It’d be nice if we could hire some people, but I don’t know where we stand on that front (and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were stupid reasons, like not having the labor hour budget to support hiring more people or something dumb like that).

I’d like to take up a project or something, but I’m also not really sure what to do. I have a few story ideas, or I could begin playing a game or something, but what I’d really like is a few days off work so I can sort of forget that I’m employed, or at least just relax at home and not have to be anywhere. A vacation would be nice, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards in the near future.

In other news, I happened to think recently that late February 2015 is when I started talking to my now-ex-girlfriend, which made me wonder what I’ll be doing in 6 years. Fingers crossed, some things will be different (and maybe even better!)