Pure Unadulterated Chaos

 Ok, so, forgive me. Work has been absolutely nuts. Like, HR gets involved levels of nuts.

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Back to normal as soon as I can be.

Foundations

For many reasons, my therapist and I are exploring the idea of neurodiversity. Neurodiversity is a concept that has been gaining attention in recent years. It challenges the notion that all neurological disorders should be seen as diseases to be cured. Instead, it suggests that some of these disorders are simply different perspectives through which some people see the world. This idea goes against the common societal belief that there is a "norm" by which everyone should adhere, and because of that, the support structures simply don't exist to enable any way of thinking besides the most common one.

Unfortunately, this philosophy can sometimes lead to the glorification of certain conditions, such as autism. In media, we often see portrayals of individuals with autism as geniuses or individuals with extraordinary abilities. While it's essential to acknowledge and celebrate potential positives, we must not overlook the struggles and suffering experienced by those with autism.

In my own journey, my therapist believes I may also be dealing with a form of neurodivergence. However, it is challenging to diagnose precisely what type of neurodivergence I have because many different types exhibit similar symptoms. For example, both PTSD and autism can share common traits and overlap. Furthermore, there still remains a significant lack of research and understanding within the field of autism diagnosis in adults.

I personally believe I am autistic to some degree. Although I function relatively well on many fronts and can hold a job successfully (unlike some others), I do experience various difficulties in daily life. Large groups of people trigger panic attacks for me; hence I tend to avoid such situations whenever possible. Social gatherings often make me feel flaky due to fear of experiencing anxiety attacks. My brain constantly hyper-fixates on human interaction – trying tirelessly to analyze social dynamics and appropriate responses – but often leading me into overwhelming internal panic even when outwardly calm or composed.

My ability to handle social situations better than some others struggling with similar issues comes from being forced throughout my upbringing always to learn and grow in this regard; otherwise, survival would have been difficult. However, let me clarify - while I've learned how to navigate social settings decently enough out of sheer necessity over time - I mostly don't enjoy being around people or groups at all; interpersonal drama or toxicity holds no appeal for me whatsoever! Moreover, my tolerance for rude or inappropriate behavior from others is extremely low.

Certain situations trigger an immediate fight-or-flight response in me (or sometimes freeze). Flight mode manifests itself through flakiness - avoiding people entirely if possible; fight mode arises when someone nearby behaves poorly towards me (although this occurs rarely); freeze mode sets in when surrounded by unfamiliar faces – cornered off from everyone else while keeping strictly within myself.

Some might argue that these behaviors are not exclusive only among those who are neurodivergent but are shared by anyone during uncertain moments; however, they do not typically occur at such an extreme level as they do for someone like me who experiences neurodivergency on a regular basis.

To illustrate what stress feels like for someone like myself- think about Carmy from "The Bear" on Hulu: chest pains intensify while everything else fades into background noise; sounds become sharper along with ringing ears; migraines set in rapidly along with tension accumulating within neck/back/shoulder areas... And then there's me lashing out at others even if they haven't done anything wrong, incorrect emotional responses followed immediately by realizing my mistake, & apologizing (or walking away without apology) unable to accurately express myself.

One major fear associated with this issue revolves around uncertainties: Did I mess up socially without realizing it? Are there resentments against/dislike towards/misunderstandings about my actions? Should I have done something differently? Perhaps noticed any red flags indicating mistakes made? Once, I wasn't even aware I did this, which makes it that much worse now, because I hyper-fixate on the particulars of every conversation and person in my life, looking for where I messed up.  

It's humbling in the worst way, when you realize that you've probably been regularly misunderstanding every human interaction you've had for most of your life. That many of the failures to communicate have either been my fault, or at least have been the fault of a state of mind I wasn't aware of and therefore others were also not aware that I live with.

And hyperfixation. God dammit, the sheer number of times I've been completely obsessed with something just to forget it exists in lieu of obsessing over something else for a while, then doing it again. For a few weeks, I managed to focus on D&D, and then I got caught up in modding Skyrim for like 24 hours straight and forgot to eat, and now I'm hyper-fixating on the subject of hyper-fixation, overly bothered by the otherwise nice weekend I had modding a game that I've been playing off and on for 10+ years, because it got in the way of things I am acutely aware I should have been doing instead. Like writing this blog.

I'm working on trying to be more open about it, give people a chance to see how I think, and maybe respond positively. I can't help but feel most people don't want the burden though.

Social Work

So, some of you know about my job, some of you don't. Let's talk about it.

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I work overnights as a social worker at building that helps house the formerly unhoused. The general rule is that the goal is to permanently house anyone without the capacity to live independently, and if they have a hope of living independently to work with them until they get to that place.

I work with drug addicts, veterans, lgbtq+ folks, people with disabilities (physical or mental), people who were released from prison after an extended stay, etc. Pretty much anyone that gets through the "vetting process". Which, for the record, does not do a good job. Sometimes there are dangerous individuals, like those suffering from psychoses of varying types, or the "just out of prison"-ers who may simply have a defensive/aggressive mindset.

As you may be thinking, boy do I have stories to tell. This blog will probably include those stories sometimes, and I'll do my best to include trigger warnings where I can. One unfortunate side effect of working in this industry is that my boundaries for difficult topics are much wider than some people, so I can sometimes be forgetful about the way these topics affect people, including me, which is why I'm in therapy.

It's interesting, and I think my job is awesome, honestly. I love what I do. But its simultaneously oppressive when I get around my wife's friends or coworkers, mostly people who work in corporate, emotionally sanitized environments. Just mentioning what I do elicits reactions that make it clear I work in an industry that constantly puts me in rooms full of people who literally could not do what I do, maybe even find me intimidating because I CAN do what I do. It's very isolating. Working nights makes it moreso.

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That said, I love working nights too. Minimal oversight, freedom to do what I like, a decent amount of downtime to work on the blog or just to decompress and watch TV. But when things get crazy, they get about as crazy as crazy gets.

Last night, to introduce a relatively tame story as our first introduction to what I do, we had a flood in the building. One of our tenants hot-wired his oven to use the electrical wiring to charge his electric bikes battery, then he went and got high at someone else's apartment. The oven caught on fire, setting off the sprinklers in that unit. The smoke detectors batteries had been removed, but the heat still caused the sprinklers to function correctly. When he returned to the unit, the water was about 6 inches deep, and had been held inside the unit by a seal on the front door to the unit. That is, until he opened the door.

Imagine a man, high on fentanyl, opening the door to his unit and being forcibly ejected by a flood of water spilling out into the hallway. I expect that someone will pull the camera feed so we can see the chaos for ourselves. Gallows humor perhaps, but that's how you function at a job like this.

The apartment in question was on the 4th floor, so several units on the 3rd floor were displaced, and our cafeteria and drug clinic were flooded as well. Maintenance was in the building until late, setting up fans, vacuuming water, and tearing down walls/ceilings to save what we could. My place in all this was more people oriented. I had to keep everyone calm, usher people into and out of the building, getting them to their units and explaining the situation, while still retaining the privacy and dignity of the person that ultimately caused the flood.

That means I couldn't say much more than that "someone left their stove on". You know, for HIPAA reasons. Now, telling someone suffering from severe psychosis that the building flooded and I can't really give them details as to why is not a simple thing. Reactions vary from extreme anger and aggression to mild frustration to "Time to go get drunk." If I did drink, I'd agree with that last one.

At one point the police arrived, to "investigate". That investigation consisted of them arriving, immediately tackling the tenant that caused the fire to the ground and arresting them for arson without any conversation or discussion. They were taken the police station, questioned, found innocent, and then left outside the police station without any guidance. I tend to be respectful towards police by and large, they deal with the same types of people that I do, and it can be very hard. But their actions last night are definitely of the "Fuck the Police" variety.

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Anyway, it went relatively smoothly all things considered. Then my coworkers all showed up late and I had to stay an extra hour or so. It's overtime, but not welcome after a night like that. Still, I'm off for a couple days now, and I have therapy tomorrow so I should be able to manage.

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No work was done on Goblins. :(

Gas Station Ice Cream Sandwiches

So last night, I forgot my lunch for work. Working overnights, there's not much open, and Uber is absurdly priced in Seattle for anyone not working in tech. So, I went over to 7-11. I knew I needed to eat, but I wasn't terribly hungry, so I kept it simple. Some chips, and the freezer section caught my eye, ice cream sandwiches sounded delightful.

What a fucking mistake. Gas Station Burritos have nothing on the ordeal that was my life about an hour after eating these King Size bad boys. The toilet was my best friend for several hours, I got no work done. Ugh. Do not recommend.

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I did get some work done on Goblins. I'm nearly done compiling, with only a few pages of reading to do to finalize my 5th edition research, which is arguably the least interesting of the goblin variants. Anyway, I'm saving the talk for the actual post, but I'm expecting the 0e/1e post that will make up Part 1A as soon as next week.

Another day, another delay

Goblins Part 1 is looking like it's going to become the first part of a much longer series. To begin with, there are dozens of variants of Goblins in 2nd edition alone. Were I to be thorough, and I intend to be, Chainmail, 0e and 1e would be the new part 1, and then 2, 3, 4, and 5 all need their own parts individually, before I even start getting into the etymology and origins of Goblins, other systems their versions of goblins, and the breakdown of the eventual final product Goblin.

I'm including my own thoughts, summaries of the entries, commonalities between editions to support the final thesis (the presentation of a core Goblin baseline), etc. I'm also snapping screenshots and cropped entries from the PDF's of the books themselves, for accuracy, posterity, and debate. In 2e, that's a whole page, in other editions it is several full pages worth of material in pictures alone.

Needless to say, it's a lot, and it is taking longer than I thought, but the work is ongoing and progress is being made. Significant progress, even, and I'm enjoying the work. Once the material for all parts is compiled for further examination, I'll start the actual writing process, which shouldn't take more than a day once I get to that point. The compilation process on the other hand.... Stay tuned.

Quick Check-In

Just wanted to stop in. Work on 'Goblins, Part 1: The D&D Official Take' continues.

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As an aside, I've been reading up on Zak Sabbath/Smith, the once-popular porn star who also made D&D stuff before being accused of sexually assaulting his then-girlfriend. He consulted with WOTC, in addition to working on some of the best modules out there in the OSR, and many today still regularly cite their work in forums and so on.

I'd long held the opinion, one which has not changed, that based on the available evidence, we'll likely never know the exactitudes of what happened; that the guy definitely was an asshole for a long period of his life and needed to work on themselves; and ultimately that the vast amount of internet dog-piling that took place heavily distorts the ability to get at the truth of things. I will say that continuing evidence does not support either an assault claim, or the various claims that Zak is anti-LGBTQ. Evidence does, however, support that the guy was confrontational, blunt, and abrasive in a ton of interactions with strangers in forums/on Twitter as well as with individuals they knew personally whether professionally or in passing due to their popularity online. Evidence supports that they, at one point, used an individual's name (who had previously made themselves an enemy of Zak's) as a false identity on Reddit to post in their own favor; and evidence suggests a great many people were hurt by their behavior, sometimes justified, sometimes not, since Zak was being regularly attacked and spoken ill of, and would defend themselves aggressively.

Working in the industry I do, I think it's reasonable to assume the guy had his own issues with mental health.

If this all sounds like a lot of internet drama bullshit, it is. But it's one I regularly check in on, and try to keep up on the facts, because there are ongoing legal battles, and because the specifics are important to me as a member of the LGBTQ and sex-positive communities, as well as D&D as a hobby. I encourage listening to, and believing, women. I encourage taking accusations of this nature seriously, which is exactly what I'm doing when I look into this stuff for evidence and context. Furthermore, I believe in Occam's razor as a decent measuring stick for this kind of thing, and I'm led to believe that while the guy was definitely an asshole, its just that. He was just an asshole, not a rapist, not a serial abuser, not an internet harasser (at least not intentionally anyway).

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Anyway, rant done. Mostly, as a D&D blogger myself, I guess I'm part of that world now and I felt like I should have a take. And as with any asshole who is still skilled at what they do professionally, I will take the good and leave the bad, until such a time as I find evidence of actual intense wrongdoing to the degree that I would rather vomit than interact with their work.

Complicated topic, but if you end up as a fan of my blog, don't harass people who disagree with me, for fuck's sake. It just makes ME look bad, and they literally won't be affected in any way that turns them positively towards my opinions. Let me respond to what I think warrants a response, and let me ignore people who are ultimately trivial to me. Which is a philosophy that would have saved Zak S. ass many times over.

The work continues

So, let's talk about Dungeons and Dragons editions briefly, just as a note for future reference when I post Goblins, Part 1.

Credit goes to the many contributors to wikipedia. Donate to that site occasionally, yeah?

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Not listed on the chart above is Chainmail, the war and tactics game that was created just before D&D in 1971, and acts as the precursor to D&D due to the inclusion of an original set of "fantasy-based" rules. I mention it now only because there are several monsters listed in that section which we will include when relevant during our monster breakdowns.

Cover art for Chainmail.

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You see there in 1974 - Original Edition, otherwise known as OD&D, or some refer to it as zero edition and 0e. Most gamers of today wouldn't even recognize the rules of 0e, frankly. Every weapon in the game used the same damage dice, among many other obscure rules that don't exist today. Many of these rules were pulled straight from Chainmail, even referencing it and assuming familiarity with its rules.

In fact, this version of D&D is considered one of the hardest to parse, due to its creation as an at-home project by a couple of non-designers. The rules regularly omit important details, refer to war-gaming rules that it expects you to know already, and otherwise organizes its information very poorly.

Cover for 1 of the 3 volumes of 0e. Also sometimes called 'White Box D&D'.

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Then in 1977, all hell breaks loose, and the game splits. Rapid fire, you can see above the addition of both AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) and at the same time Basic (Holmes).

It's hard to articulate with brevity the breakdown of what's actually happening here, in part because there's actually additional missing pieces: after the release of 0e's core rules, several additional rules and supplements were released, most notably Greyhawk (the first to include Paladin's as a playable class). 

The expanded rules of 0e that were folded or edited out of Basic Edition.

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Greyhawk's additions as well as several more neat rules were included in Basic, which acted as a rewrite of 0e for formatting, clarity, and some minor expansions beyond Greyhawk.

All at once, Holmes' Basic acts as a rewrite, a simpler introduction to AD&D (more on that momentarily), and a game all its own. It was marketed as the "learning" version of D&D. Notably, Holmes Basic only included levels 1-3 of play, and was generally an odd duck, but as an intro to the more complex machinations of the bigger fish alongside it, it was popular and many a youngin', one day to become an old grognard, started here.

Interesting story, Eric Holmes threw this version together so that he could teach his kids to play, and offered the more organized version of the old rules to TSR (D&D's parent company). They took it, released it as an official version, and refused to pay Holmes' for it. Tsk, tsk.

Successful as a product, they would create a new, more refined version of it in time.

Butt-fucking-ugly, but a diamond on the inside. Much like me.

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In 1981, we get B/X. B/X stands for Basic/Expert. Not to be confused with Eric Holmes' Basic, Tom Moldvay's Basic was edited and streamlined by a different gentleman, and is considered by many who preferred 0e to the later 1e to be the definitive best version of Dungeons & Dragons. It's also the most likely inspiration for the most popular OSR rulesets. I really need to do an OSR post soon, it's going to come up a lot.

To begin with, B/X was actually two books, Moldvay's Basic Rules, and Dave Cook's Expert Rules. Moldvay's Basic included a simple and clean, what some call "distilled" and "pure", D&D experience, in a teachable format, with an inclusion of many of the supplemental rules from Advanced D&D without the unnecessary fluff. Stuff like wilderness/survival rules and the ability to manage and run your own domain (kingdom-building, fuck yeah!). All at only 64 pages. Dave Cook's Expert (partially co-written by Steve Marsh) expanded the level cap up to level 14!

Where Holmes' Basic clarified a lot of the wild west that was OD&D, B/X streamlined and simplified further. Where Basic was a single book, B/X was released as two box sets, Red Box and Blue Box (sometimes referred to as such).

Simple and clean is the way that you're making me feel toni- Oh! Hi. Didn't see you there.

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Here we have BECMI. ‘Basic’, ‘Expert’, ‘Companion’, ‘Masters’ and ‘Immortal’.

You know, there's a general sense of maturity and polish on these covers that appeals to me. D&D was finally being taken seriously, and didn't have the dare-I-say cartoonishness of previous editions.

Not to be further confusing, but this isn't Holmes Basic, or Moldvay/Cook's Basic/Expert. Now, we're onto Mentzer's BECMI, who if my history is correct, compiled the whole thing.

Generally speaking, this is my favorite older edition of D&D personally. Basic and Expert were further distillations and revisions of Moldvay/Cook's D&D. Companion was a further expansion of the level cap from 14 to 25, in addition to compiling the scattered and difficult to understand stronghold building rules from all the other editions, and adding in playable Druids! 

Master further raised the level cap to 36, as well as introducing the Mystic class, which later would have the psionic flavoring removed and be converted into what we now think of as the Monk class. Also, more spells, more monsters, more stuff to play D&D with. There were expanded stronghold rules, compiling and revising the domain rules from the earlier versions into a more incremental experience, transforming your stronghold from a building into a city into a nation into an empire. This book alone is what makes this version of D&D my favorite older edition, as it is the only book in all the many versions of D&D that seemed to understand how to market rules expansions. Modern D&D sucks at this, truly.

Finally, Immortal added rules to the game allowing players to become more than heroes, ascending into godhood.

Fundamentally, the difference here is that BECMI did not hold onto the philosophy that players would move on from a "teaching" version of D&D to Advanced D&D, thus the old rules got expansions that would not have been otherwise necessary, as they'd be covered by AD&D.

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And finally the Rules Cyclopedia from 1991, which contained all of BECMI and several additions on top of that with a few minor fiddly changes, all in one fancier edition.

Sexy lil' book, innit?

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It's worthwhile to note here before we get into Advanced D&D that a fundamental difference between this "teaching" line of books and the Advanced line of books is that Basic assumed you only needed to know so many rules before you could actually play, and only included those rules (until BECMI, at least). Advanced, on the other hand, included coverage for as many rules and scenarios as they possibly could. Many today believe that the Basic line, B/X in particular, is really the truest form of D&D as it doesn't include anything more than the purest, most necessary rules to play; and it is that idea that sparked the movement that would become the OSR in the early 2000's.

The lack of concrete official rules to cover every possible scenario meant that DM adjudication of rules happened more often, and DM's were given more freedom to do so, resulting in more organic gameplay, and less intrusive interruptions from the rules themselves to the kind of game your table wanted to play.

In any case, the teaching line of books was popular enough to cause TSR to continue to iterate and transform it from 1977 until 1991 when, after the Rules Cyclopedia was released, the Basic line saw its final sunset and Advanced D&D would become the priority. Still, the Basic line never lost steam in the hearts and minds of those that played it, and the OSR resurgence made it clear than ever that not everyone thinks "newer" means "better".

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Back on the other timeline, alongside Holmes Basic, we see the release of Advanced D&D 1st Edition, or what is otherwise known as 1st Edition and 1e.

The 3 core rulebooks of AD&D 1e.

The codified, to-this-day still king of the hill, 80's D&D. Combining and expanding on all of the rules that came before, and covering many more of the various weird things that can happen in Dungeons & Dragons, this version was the first to use the standard 3-book core set of the PHB, DMG, and MM, seen above.

Notably, this version is the one that was most heavily involved in the Satanic Panic, even the covers alone looking like half naked demons to the eye of the untrained 80's Karen.

While the PHB in more modern times includes, typically, all of the rules to play D&D; AD&D actively hid rules from player's putting the gameplay mechanics in the DMG only, and leaving pretty much just the most base gameplay elements and character creation rules in the hands of the player. This is a further reflection of the early belief from D&D's creators that the rules were meant to be obfuscated, and sometimes disregarded entirely for the benefit of the game itself. At the same time, there was a clear push in the book that you as the DM should stick to the rules wherever the rules pre-existed, or else it wouldn't be D&D any longer. That perspective does not mesh with veterans of the OD&D era, who prefer in many cases to make rulings, and homebrew the hell out of some mechanics.

In the modern day, we often take for granted many aspects of tabletop gaming, if only because as a hobby its been around for a while, and many people have a learned understanding of the expectations of the game, and what it looks like to play games like this one. But in that day, that wasn't the case at all, and so these books really set the standard for what role playing games look like at-the-table.

There's not much to say else-wise, save for that there was a lot of money and effort behind AD&D 1e, with many additional books released and many new and innovative ideas tossed around. But, all things come to an end. Ownership of D&D's parent company changed hands, and AD&D 2e was released in 1989, right around the same time as BECMI, and it signaled a clear shift in thinking on the part of the developers.

This has nothing to do with anything, its just funny.

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So, lets clarify a few things. Firstly, Gary Gygax, the guy that arguably invented D&D was not longer with the company at this point. 1e was going crazy with extra books, and rules spread across numerous sources. Not to mention the significant backlash from the Karen-demons during the Satanic Panic.

D&D was in the news for bad reasons, it was known for being math-heavy, it was a nerds game for nerds of the highest caliber. TSR didn't like that. Like most companies, they knew you can't make all the money in the entire world if a big chunk of the world doesn't buy the product because they think it makes you worship the devil.

More Jeff Easley, everyone. The mad lad has done it again. Remember that picture from the other day? That was on the DMG.

References to demons and the hells get removed, rules from across many sources get streamlined, things are universally brought to a more kid-friendly place and everything get's redesigned and rereleased. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition is born.

To start, the whole philosophy shifted in terms of what the game was supposed to be. Previous editions of D&D focused on players as scroungers, dicking around in dungeons, barely surviving to try to make it out with treasure and maybe try again. But 2e wanted to get away from that, and embrace a sense of power and epic battle. They wanted you to feel like a HERO (tm).

Lot's of things shifted as a result. Balance, progression, spells, monster difficulty, the overall transparency of the games mechanical systems all got overhauled. Many mechanical touchstones recognizable in later Wizards of the Coast editions of the game can be found in their infancy here.

Several notable settings got released in this time period as well, including Planescape, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun. Additionally, tabletop gaming beyond Dungeons & Dragons was beginning to catch on with stuff like Vampire: The Masquerade, and my personal favorite Shadowrun, being released during this time.

Sadly, where older editions of D&D maintained that the rules of the game were simply tools for the DM to use as they please, newer editions -even up until today- trended towards the belief that rules were to be handed down from on high by the company and that the rules were for all the players, not the DM per se. There were positives and negatives to this idea, as can be seen by the sheer volume of people who play old editions of D&D and other games, or retro-clones of those games, in order to get away from that very idea and return to the old do it yourself days of gaming.

TSR gets bought out in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast, due in no small part to their success with their other game, Magic: the Addiction, and they would soon release their own edition to get away from the royalty payments of yesteryear.

At a glance, I don't think this is even a quarter of the 2e books that were ultimately released.

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My god, the sheer number of books in 3rd edition. I have more than this on my own shelves from this edition, and I know for a fact, I don't have even 10% of them.

So, Wizards of the Coast's first foray into the ttrpg world was 3rd Edition, in the year 2000. 3e was unbalanced, and was shortly fixed thereafter in 2003, when 3.5 was released. In short, 3e was buggy and unbalanced, and numerous changes needed to be made because the game developers didn't account for many things they should have. Druids can turn into monsters, just like druids of 5th edition can, except that they didn't account for monster's innate abilities in 3e, so Druids even at low levels were jsut significantly more versatile than every other class. For example.

3.5e was backwards compatible with 3e sourcebooks, so unless WOTC specifically rereleased the book, it can be assumed to be fully compatible with the 3.5e rules.

3/3.5e was the first time that D&D truly stepped fully into the player-centric philosophy of tabletop gaming, creating numerous books that were for player's alone, for specific classes, or books with nothing but new spells, and so on. Stuff that a DM ultimately never needed to look at to actually run a game, if they didn't want to.

Inadvertently, they created an incredibly fun, but incredibly different kind of rpg. One that many people remember fondly. I imagine its unlikely we'll ever see something like an OSR for this edition though, due to the fact that Pathfinder exists. Pathfinder 1e was a 3/3.5e clone that was supported until shortly after 2019 when Pathfinder 2e released. It was created in response to the overall community distaste for 4th edition D&D.

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Not gonna' lie, the artwork in 4e is probably my least favorite. Too stylized and cartoony for my taste. Give me more of that high art stuff, or alternatively I do enjoy the sketchpad scribble style of rpg art as well.

4th Edition D&D was, to put it mildly, a fiasco. WOTC, for its part, had faith in their product and a solid plan. They intended for 4th Edition to be books that you'd buy and pair with a digital platform to actually run the games, but that you wouldn't need per se if you wanted to play in the old way. They underestimated their fanbase though, and over-utilized very board-gamey and video-gamey mechanical elements. Elements that, to their credit, were well designed but simply don't belong at a table where miniatures aren't present. 4e leaned heavily on grid-based tactics, and it becomes unmanageable at times without an appropriate medium to express those tactics.

To be fair, WOTC was thinking clearly here. Digital tools and video games were, and still are, king of the market. World of Warcraft was just taking off, and they had every chance to get ahead of the curve and do something incredibly innovative and fun. But alas, life happens.

Anyway, the lead programmer in charge of that digital platform killed his wife, shooting her multiple times in a parking lot before killing himself. His name was Joseph Batten, and you can google that story for yourself pretty easily. Given that it was a small team, and given that the community was already losing faith in WOTC because the digital tools weren't yet released and they were effectively missing half of what 4th edition should have been, WOTC cut their losses and moved on to Fifth Edition.

More recently, 4th Edition has seen an odd resurgence thanks to the advent of third party digital battlemaps like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. Its been applauded for many of the decisions it made, not the least of which beings its 1hp minion rules that I use regularly, and its monster creation and battle creation rules, which allowed for consistently easy to run combats with balanced and effective enemy party makeups. We'll be making good use (when building our monster manual) of the monsters from 4th edition for its mechanics, at least. Not as much for the lore.

There was also the release of 4e Essentials, which was a paired down and simplified take on 4e, ultimately compatible for the most part with base 4e. The differences are so minor, I won't go into detail here, but suffice it to say at some point WOTC started trying new things because 4e wasn't working. Many elements of Essentials ended up in Fifth Edition.

As an aside, 4th Edition's lore was an odd bird. Where previous editions of D&D used multiple different settings, or simply just a generic "fantasy" setting, 4th Edition created its own setting referred to as "Points of Light". I don't have much to say about it, beyond that it borrowed various elements from several settings that were used in older editions, including Planescape's planar wheel, and some of the lore from Forgotten Realms. It was an odd setting, and it was retired for a reason, but it acts as a step towards what would eventually become the Fifth Edition paradigm of attempting to slowly merge all of the best elements of previous edition settings into one, under the Forgotten Realms umbrella (which had previously been its own unique setting).

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That brings us to the current day, with Fifth Edition, which is sunsetting as we speak.

Again, I have way more than this from this edition. I just found this picture on google. I'm dangerously close to owning every 5e official book now.

5e's fine. It's the culmination of years of WOTC taking D&D in a different direction, but its still, at its core, Dungeons & Dragons. Things are changing all the time in the TTRPG world though, the internet has put a significant dent in making D&D more accessible, the culture surrounding it has shifted radically, Critical Role and other live-play streaming games exist now, games that take the narrative-heavy options that 5e enables have created their own off-shoot genre: ttrpg story-games.

And now, of course, D&D One is coming, which is labelled as a sort of 5.5e more than a 6e. WOTC has returned to the "digital tools" philosophy of 4e, and begun re-engaging with online battlemaps and other digital tools through D&D Beyond.

My opinion on D&D One is essentially, I'll believe it when I see it. Right now, its just more WOTC bullshit, so it doesn't mean much to me. In the timeless words of David Bowie: "Turn and face the strange changes, there's gonna' have to be a different man. Time may change me, but I can't trace time."

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All that to say, the editions we'll be addressing for every monster we cover will be:

Chainmail (when relevant)
B/X (other 0e editions only when there are significant differences for the monster in question)
AD&D 1e
AD&D 2e
3.5e (unless 3.0 has something interesting to add)
4e
5e (and 5.5e if there's anything of note)

Jesus H, this has been a long one, but it needed to be done for the sake of later articles. I'll keep truckin',  but I may take a break from posting until I've gotten more done on Goblins Part 1. I'm real excited for it ya'll.

Web Comics

 Keeping this one pretty short, if only because I want to spend my writing time working on Goblins. So, here's a few webcomics I enjoy! 

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Purple Hyacinth is pretty good. Cop vs assassin romance. Very attractive people doing crime stuff. Great sense of humor, compelling story. I'm just hoping this one finishes, been a while since it posted.

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint is badass. "Dokja was an average office worker whose sole interest was reading his favorite web novel 'Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse.' But when the novel suddenly becomes reality, he is the only person who knows how the world will end." It's way more exciting than that, but yeah, the meta-narrative about living through a fated story is quite excellent honestly, for the anime sensibilities here.

Kill Six Billion Demons is like what if Moebius made a comic about hell, but still maintained that sense of wonder that Moebius could sometimes provoke.

Here, for instance, is the Bus.

Lovely.

And here's Stand Still, Stay Silent. The About page for the comic does more that I can to sell it: https://sssscomic.com/?id=about

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Not an exhaustive list, or even my favorites, but I enjoyed them, and they're all ongoing.

Honorable mention, this one has some controversy tied to it, but its relevant given that its: Goblins! I'm no expert on internet controversies, but from what I understand, the webcomic includes a character who is assaulted. The character in question and the storyline involved were mirrors of the real-world trauma that the author's mother went through and were written into the webcomic with the mom's permission, but readers didn't know that at the time and thought the author may have been trivializing rape as a plot device. This happens in stories, and it's inappropriate when it happens, but having read it myself I don't believe the author was being problematic here.
Still, its a slow-going webcomic, and the art is much rougher than some of the others.

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Anyway, I'm off to go write. Dueces.

Therapy, part 2

I mean, what is therapy even?

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I had my consultation today, with a chubby soft-spoken white guy, with a tiny braided beard. Not like a sick-as-hell Jafar from Aladdin type beard either. This guy looks like Jonah Hill, but gayer and with less grooming skills. Beard all uneven, scraggly, and shorter than it ought to be to be seriously considered a beard. Like braided pubes on his chin. Shouldn'ta gone with the twisty, it looks lame my guy.

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Finding a therapist is not something the Internet has created a platform for yet. When seeking a therapist, the average person, myself included, doesn't have a clue what they actually need. We're all the foremost experts on ourselves, who we are, what we've lived through; but not on what we need. Especially when you haven't been getting it, it can be hard to recognize what you're missing.

I was recommended by one therapist that I try someone who specializes in Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, that's a specific program and type of therapy that is intensive, includes group sessions and homework. But my insurance's website only listed a single person in the country that is in-network and practices that format. This person I'm working with now is that single therapist in the country. Ole' Twisty Pubes.

Now, I get into the consultation call, and of course the first thing they say is that DBT is something they 'trained in/went to school for' but not something they actually do, and instead they specialize in Internal Family Systems, another, different, type of therapy which aims to compartmentalize different aspects of the psyche and treat them as different arguing family members. I hate this analogy, by the way, family is stressful enough. Isn't the goal of therapy to ease stress?

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Every time I try a new therapist, there appears to be some new technique or method they think is best, but ultimately it's really about what "I" think is best. But, therapy as it stands today doesn't put the tools in a patient's hands to even begin considering the kind of therapy they might need. Self-diagnosis is probably a bad idea for many anyway, but in my case we're talking about advice from a therapist to seek a certain type of practitioner only to find the tools aren't available to seek specific types of practice.

Bad marketing, if you ask me.

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This week is the week I'll start putting my Goblins together. I've been researching these little fucker's for months now, and I'm finally ready (excited, even) to start putting those thoughts down on paper. LFG.

A Welcome to All: Wut dis?

Credit for this image goes to yangyang sui, found it with a quick search over on artstation!

Today's era of Twitter-hype (I suppose its X-hype now, how fucking gross) and mob mentality makes maintaining passion for anything one might choose to love a challenge. It's too easy to be critical of things, easier still to get lost in criticizing things. Game mechanics, lore, entire iterations of a game, entire game series, publishing companies, entire industries, cultures, nations, the entire f'ing species. All brought under the microscope by everyone from 12 year old, hormonal, bullying little shits on up to sports pundits, celebrities, and academics. 

I've concluded that one of two things is true, either everything actually sucks as much as what we're being told to think it does, or everything's just not as bad as we're being told to believe. It's one or the other, opposing ideas with no middle ground.

Which is it? The answer remains, as always, a matter of faith. And for those who still care to attempt answering questions they'll die still answering. Without regard for exactly how bad things actually are, we're left with one honest truth though, that some things could definitely be better.

It's good to be critical; about a great many things we SHOULD be critical. There are a great many things that need to be thought through more diligently, or that need to be discarded entirely as we move forward into progress as a species. 

Just as science isn't guesswork, it's method; criticism isn't anger, it's philosophical exercise. Criticism, when approached with logic and pattern and methodology is more than a rant, its the momentum behind progress, allowing us to move forward into change.

It's never: Why is this bad and why should we hate it? How angry should I be? How loud should I shout about it?

It's: Can this be improved? If so, how? If not, what can replace it? If there is no replacement or improvement to be had, is it better to tear it down? Once improvement or replacement is decided on, what barriers or bureaucracies stand in the way, resistant to any change to status quo, and can they be improved/replaced/removed? If so, how? And so on until the job is done.

In short, at what point does bitching about a problem begin to contribute to the very problems we're bitching about?

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There aren't a lot of good reasons to completely discard the things you love outright and not attempt to improve them first, or at least ensure a better alternative doesn't exist before throwing the Belle out with the bathwater.

This is the mindset I'm approaching this blog with. I love Dungeons and Dragons. I love gaming in general, pop culture media, storytelling, and I love my friends. And much like my friends and I, with all our flaws, everything has room for improvement including the greatest game ever made. I can't pick apart my friends with logic and discourse and break them down into parts though, at least not outside my basement laboratory. I've got a critical mind that needs a healthy outlet.

This blog is going to be a safe place to think, criticize (without the drama, preferably), and be passionate. A place in the back alleys of the internet that doesn't smell like its rotting, where a dirty old man lives in a cardboard shack, burns stolen incense to keep immensely large rats at bay, and dispenses strange wisdom that only those brave enough to consider that odd fellow still human will ever hear. And the guy probably has a wizard hat, just so.

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Also, my wife's father died a couple of weeks ago, and this is partly written for him. He was a 40+ year DM, who loved board games and D&D, and a majority of his collection of RPG books and even his personal DM notebook was given to me. An honor I far from deserve, and a legacy I'll do my best to live up to. Cheers to you, Ron. See ya' around.

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Anyway, what's all that mean for this blog? It means I'm going to do my best to not bitch or complain, but instead to further the conversation surrounding the topics we bring up here. Deeper thinking, preferably, but at least more than surface-level bullshit. Here we shall avoid the naivete, and the angry, in favor of the considerate and the tolerant.

Method to the madness dictates starting from first principles. I'll choose D&D as a topic of note which will be our primary focus on this blog but not the only thing we talk about here.

I've thought about this for some time, what the first principles of games like D&D would be.

It's easy to say it's the six stats, or it's the d20, or whatever. Some of those things have changed from one iteration of the game to another though, and others have been used in other games to such an extent that those things aren't unique to D&D anymore. From edition to edition, from game to game, very little can be said to uniquely and specifically shoulder the full burden of Dungeons & Dragons.

That makes examining all parts of the whole, and verifying authenticity, consistency, historical and mythological foundation, fun and desirability, and of course balance extremely important. Because if any one aspect of D&D lacks these things, that thing and at once the whole can feel corrupted. Something other than D&D entirely.

More, the more that is added to the hobby, the further we get from the fundamentals required to be D&D and we move towards something bloated and weighed down with unnecessary tacked on elements over time.

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Now, while I'd like to examine each and every part of D&D and critique and philosophize about them all... Ain't nobody got time for that.

So, here's my plan. I'm going to go through the 5e Monster Manual, one monster at a time to examine their lore and their stat block. Then, I'm going to examine the lore of previous editions and stat blocks. Then, I'm gonna' look at other games and their stat blocks and lore. I'm going to look at the historical context: the human mythos surrounding the creature in question, its origins and its current depictions in society- what that creature means to us as a species and as a global culture of internet citizens at once connected but still stranger to each other and our dizzyingly varied subcultures.

In most cases, I'll try and create some sort of fundamental variant of the monster, and some specialized mage, warrior, boss, and so on when it seems like a good idea; or alternatively, I'll talk about why that's not a good idea, or ways you might do it yourself. I'll make these variants for simple D&D-like gaming as it goes, or maybe I'll revisit posts sometimes and make a Daggerheart or a 1stEd. version or something, but generally, my goal is to make a definitive Dungeons and Dragons catch-all of the monster that improves on that absolute dogshit that we got in the 5e Monster Manual, clarifies the monster's place in the context of the game as a whole, and is compatible (with minor conversions), with any edition of D&D, or similar fantasy rpg.

Various other mechanics (like methods for custom monster creation or ideas about Armor Class) will come up over time, and there will be intermittent articles about other things like comics or personal stuff. I may recommend visiting around the blogosphere to get an idea of my thinking about some things, so as to not repeat the work others have so diligently done already, but I'll try to provide direct links where possible.

I'm trying to make a post a day, so not everything is going to be the most well-thought out essay. Sometimes, it'll be more a journal entry type of thing, so welcome to inside my mind, I guess. I've found it to be relatively inhospitable, but maybe you'll find it charming.

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The monsters will be inspected in an order of my choosing, semi-randomly but with some intention behind the choice, as I will have things to say about the process, the goal, and the game as a whole in addition to the monster itself, and so I will recommend here that you should read the blog in order for the most part. Some things stated in early posts may be fundamental to the thinking laid out later on. I'll try to formalize a structure later on, so that you don't have to read my every nonsense thought to get to the good stuff. Oh, and I'll be starting with Goblins, so prep your butt. If there are specific monsters you want me to get to early, drop a comment on any recent post (after verifying I didn't already give that monster a go, of course)

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I'm not keeping a set time schedule, as admittedly I have no clue when I'll have time to do these things or if I can keep any measure of personal consistency. In that light, I'll never ask for money or whatever to continue on. I do this to give back to the things I love, not to profit from them. There's a donation button on the right, though, if you want to support my 4/20 fund. -Hey, it's legal here, loser! Get with the (high) times.-

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To be honest, the monsters of D&D aren't particularly foundational to D&D in most cases, though they definitely are in others. They're just another single part of the whole, but this method gives me a sense of order and it gives us a lockpick in the door, so to speak, to the more complex ideas in D&D's overall workings.

It also appeals to my world-building and tinkering sensibilities, which should help fuel the drive to keep blogging. Moreover, for you dear reader, monsters are cool and probably more interesting to read about than the specific mathematics behind game balance.

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On the subject of lore, I acknowledge that this is very setting-dependent, and I will be keeping an overall setting-agnostic approach, as I always felt Dungeons & Dragons officially should. (More on that in a later post.)

But try to think of each monster as follows:

1. A step-by-step look at the D&D official take from each relevant edition: the statblock and lore for the monster and what we like/don't like about it.

2. Other interesting takes on that monster from other games or settings. Goblins as an example: Pathfinder's Golarion goblins, The Wandering Inn web-serial's goblins, or Shadowrun's Goblinization, among many others.

3. The mythos behind the monster from real-world legends and tales, covering the origins and historical developments in addition to my personal thoughts on why the monster became what it is to us today, attempting to embrace worldwide takes on the monster where applicable and include a diverse range of perspectives.

4. The meaning and importance of the monster in society, both historically and in the modern day. The emotions it provokes or is intended to provoke, and why they're important. An example might be zombies, a word first recorded in the 1800's, brought over by Haitian slaves from Africa, having a completely different connotation then (a religious and spiritual concept) than the Walking Dead's zombies have today (representing people who walk through life half-awake, among other definitions).

5. My ultimate take on the monster, containing the quintessential things that make this monster its own thing, as concluded by me (but I appreciate community feedback!)

6. A few additional takes or variants on the core stat-block if applicable, or points of customization for your own use.

7. A paragraph or two of lore, covering only the absolutely required lore of the monster without which it isn't really that monster, it's something else. (An example would be that a zombie should always be a risen corpse, otherwise, it's not a zombie. A ghost should pretty much always be a spirit of some sort. An orc should generally have tusks, though it may or may not be pig-like.)

8. Notes on balance, notes for use in non-fantasy settings, or use in other games assuming I have any thoughts.

9. A final section covering how I, personally, will use the monster in my homebrew world.

Interspersed, I will likely include thoughts on related or adjacent mechanics beyond the creature itself, such as the 6-stats, or AC, and so on.

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As a fundamental rule, Dungeons & Dragons is, to me, fantasy (sometimes different kinds of fantasy, weird fantasy or scifi fantasy, but always fantasy). And the monsters therein should be catered to that as well. So, I do assume the existence of magic to some degree: divine beings, arcane rituals, wizards and clerics and kaiju, oh my!

I DON'T assume any particular amount of magic, low-fantasy vs epic-fantasy, for instance. I don't assume any particular level of interaction by the gods, and I don't assume the existence of the traditional planescape, though I do like various planescapes from different settings and use my own custom planar development in my homebrew world.

Furthermore, I don't assume a medieval time period. I try to assume only the bare minimum required to make a monster fit in a generic fantasy world, which should make the creature's lore easy to add to, and easy to fit into any campaign or setting from the Forgotten Realms to Shadowrun, from Golarion to Exandria, with minor adjustments.

While I will assume 5e or 5.5e(OneD&D) for the mechanics and balance; I will typically try to include very little that could not be adjusted to fit the style of play known as Old School. I have various thoughts on that subject as well, but overall I am fond of the OSR and want to include it in my thinking for myself, if not for others.

For those of you wondering about what I mean by the OSR, stay tuned, it's simply too much for an introductory article like this. But know that generally what I mean by the Old School style, as opposed to the OSR gaming movement, has little to do with the historical need to be 1st edition or 2nd edition D&D, or pre-1980's, or whatever. Rather, I'm referring to the at-the-table philosophy of gaming preferred by the game masters of old, and the principles inherent to that style. Things such as, "The answer is not on your character sheet." and "Rulings not Rules." are some obvious, and oft-quoted, tenets.

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Lastly, I'll note that I'm self-conscious and anxious about this entire endeavor. I've been playing D&D myself since I was a kid, and I'm 33 now. Maybe 20+ years? No Ancient Grognard with a 40CR, but I'm not new at this. I know folks might find me overly wordy, outright incorrect, or alternatively not worth listening to. Possibly ugly, or having an annoying voice. You don't know me right? Why should you listen to a random guy on the internet?

Not wrong. Not wrong. But I read D&D blogs and forums myself, and I can't really tell you why I chose to read the ones I do, or whether I'll offer the same quality of posts. Some people have managed to enjoy doing this though, somehow, and at times they've been influential in the hobby, and if that's the best I could hope for I'd be satisfied.

I'll simply say that a good man believed I had something to say before he died, and I want to have faith in that.

(And now I have to make a 40CR creature called an Ancient Grognard. Inspiration strikes again.)

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Anywho, all that out of the way, 'Goblins, Part 1' is coming soon. If you happen to read it, tell me what else you want to see done early on! Dueces.

Therapy

So, I was supposed to start my first day of therapy today at 3:15pm. I set an alarm for 3:05pm. I have a job that has me sleeping through the day and up at night, so there's no such thing as a convenient time for me to have therapy. No one does sessions after 6pm or before 9am.

Anyway, I woke up at 4pm, the alarm having not functioned. I triple checked it when I set it, and again when I woke up, everything was correct. It makes no sense.

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This is actually my second attempt at therapy in the last 2 weeks. The first, a consultation with a new therapist, was alarming. The therapist literally told me that I was, in her words, out of her league. She wasn't trained/educated to deal with the severity of difficult issues that I'm facing.

That's a pretty heavy gut-shot when you're already going through things. To be told by a professional that the things you're dealing with go beyond what they spent years in college for. Things have been crazy enough. I need the universe to cut me, and my wife, some slack. I need this therapy, I know I do. Hell, I probably need medication, but the times I've tried that previously were not fun.

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Anyway, I'm sure you're all super interested in my despair. Don't worry, tonight I should be able to finish the "Welcome to the Blog" first major post, where I'll explain what we're all about here. That should be more interesting than what you've seen so far. It's all about just doing the work every day right now.

Day 2-

No credit, sorry! I always try to find the image source, but Pinterest is being a little shit today.

Day 2- Still lost. 

Blogging feels like being stranded on an island. Ideas pass by, and you try and make an SOS in time. "Please, idea! Save me from this damned inner world! Give me something to think about other than work!" Alas, poor Wilson, the volleyball. May he rest in peace.

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I did have a thought, in passing the other night, about perhaps talking about some Dungeons & Dragons art that I'm fond of, particularly some of the older fantasy works by my fav Jeff Easley, and others from that era. Expect that to come soon, maybe even a series of posts, but I'm also writing the early articles that this blog is 'actually' supposed to be about. Given that the goal is to write every day, finding things to fill the gaps that aren't just me rambling seems reasonable, but they also can't be exhausting or lengthy. Only so much time in the day.

Isn't this just fantastic? Why are there bubbles? Who cares? Jeff Easley, everybody.

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Speaking of short things, my wife (who is also short, but not what I'm referring to- hi, Bambi) and I recently watched The Bear, and we're following that up with Ted Lasso. Two shows that both have shorter episodes than I'm used to, at only 30 minutes or so.

On the topic of the length of time, I'm finding that short shows like that are impossible to watch just one episode at a time. They're just too short, and its not fulfilling to digest just that much at once. Maybe it's just me, or maybe we've all been trained by Netflix to watch in big sessions, but I do not like. My D&D games are the same way, I've always preferred big all-day affairs with snacks and breaks, in person. Online, or even just short sessions, always feel like a chore instead of a party. No one with any sense only parties hard for a couple hours. Partying hard requires an all-night rager, right? Of course.

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On the topic of The Bear, holy shit go watch it. It is, imo, the best show since the year 2000, beating out Breaking Bad and The Wire in my personal top 10.

A little insight into me, I feel like the main character, Carmy all the time. That character resonates with my internal anxieties and the way I perceive the world so fully that I felt genuinely confronted when I watched it. No show has ever demonstrated what it's like quite like that one.

Look at this sexy New York shithead. So cute. 

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On the topic of Ted Lasso, I'm less impressed. It's a popular topic among my coworkers, and they recommended it to me based on my description of The Bear to them. They are VERY different shows. Ted Lasso is funny because its a comedy, that sometimes takes itself seriously, but usually is just corny and silly and heartwarming. The Bear is funny because it has to be to make its audience comfortable with how tragic and gut-wrenching it is at times.

Also, Ted Lasso's characters are very hit-or-miss for me. The all-male main characters are universally more boring, more corny, and more naive than two female main characters. That said, I'll continue watching just for those two ladies.

I hope nothing bad happens to them! Fuck Rupert!

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I'm amused by the amount of media I'm seeing that does a good job with mental health portrayals. I'd like to find clever ways to get that kind of thinking into D&D, but D&D is already so close to a group therapy session sometimes (not something I tend to promote as necessary, but a healthy side-effect nevertheless).

Anywho, ta ta for now.

New to this.

Never written a blog, no idea where to start, definitely not sure how to market it or convince people to read it. But I'm curious enough about the idea, and I have enough to say that I wish I'd written down over the years that just doing it seems appropriate. My good buddy Jake had an epiphany once about 'Just Doing It' where action needed to be taken, and the simplicity of that philosophy has struck me many a time, in spite of my anxiety and hesitation preventing me from actually taking it to heart. Maybe this endeavor will help.

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I'm starting to read a new book, at the advice from my boss at work. Good boss, probably a good book? "Be Water, My Friend." The Teachings of Bruce Lee, written by Mr. Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee.

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Empty your mind.

Be formless, shapeless, like water.

You put water into a cup; it becomes the cup.

You put water into a teapot; it becomes the teapot.

You put it into a bottle; it becomes the bottle.

Now water can flow, or it can crash!

Be water, my friend. 

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That's a Bruce Lee quote, apparently. Was Bruce Lee a Taoist? That sounds like Taoism to me. Maybe I should just read the book.

That does remind me, though. I had the great privilege of running a Dungeons and Dragons game for a friend of mine, M'zee. No idea the nationality of that name, but he was a big black man (with dreads at the time), taller than most and a bit overweight. Turned out he was diabetic, and during the course of that D&D game, I watched him lose like 100lbs or something after he was diagnosed and started watching his heath. Anyway, M'zee had never played D&D before, so for that campaign (with several other first timers), I really dispensed with the rules about race and class, and just told them to tell me what they want to be, and I'd make the character creation happen for them for their first time. I tend to bend character creation rules more than any other in D&D simply because a lack of familiarity with class/race mechanics is the biggest barrier for new players, and even more so for those unfamiliar with fantasy or gaming tropes.

Never one to hesitate (something I have a real problem with, I've found), M'zee immediately said, "I'm a golden dragon who fights like Dragonball Z fighters." And therefore, he was. A golden scaled dragonborn monk, whom he named Shenron, after the great dragon from Dragonball. Shenron was a talented fighter, Way of the Four Elements, and a gifted philosopher who only ever spoke in Bruce Lee quotes.

Now me, having only seen like 2 Bruce Lee movies (one of which I watched because of this character, and even today I haven't seen more than those 2), I had a blast learning and listening to those quotes. But there lies the end of my experience with Bruce Lee, before this book.

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Now, I doubt my boss recommended the book on the basis of Bruce Lee alone. They referred to the book as the closest thing they have to a Bible, and he said that the day after we had a long conversation about my home life, which I'm sure you're acutely aware is not great right now. My father-in-law died a few weeks ago, my wife was already in poor mental health before that happened, and I've been struggling through a lot of personal issues that have persisted since I was a kid.

So, perhaps this book is meant to help with all that somehow? Perhaps it's just entertaining and might help me get my mind off things.

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Anyway, this blog isn't going to be a journal entry a day, it won't always be this freeflowing and inarticulate. I've got plans for this here cart n' buggy. But I do plan to write at least once a day for the foreseeable future, so if sometimes the writing is a little less than professional quality, so be it.

Anywho, here's hoping you stick around for all the pop culture, board game, and personal life stuff that will end up here.