1/29/10: Sandra and I are working on our thirteenth year of happy marriage now, and we're just as playful and affectionate and silly as we ever have been (if not sillier), but we'd never actually been out dancing together, not once in all that time. Until yesterday. And man o man is Sandra even more beautiful when she dances!

So, a very heartfelt thank you to our friends for pulling us out the door and into another language we can share together (and for those who follow the font releases, you just might be able to guess the identity of one of the friends involved). Thank you for making January 28th a day worth remembering, again.

20-Sided Planets

1/18/10: While fiddling around with some space-gaming stuff, I had need of a nice clean old-school icosahedral blank map, and couldn't find one that exactly suited my needs, so I hashed one together and here it is, just in case you might need one, too.

Godless Bus Font v2.0

9/28/09: New at the Free Stuff of the Moment page is the long-overdue version 2.0 of Dirty Headline, the most experienced world-wanderer from the stress-font stable at the Cumberland Fontworks.

New in bookstores nowish (to the extent that October 1st is "nowish") is one of my favorite new uses of Dirty Headline, which decorates the cover of The Atheist's Guide to Christmas, edited by the lovely-and-talented Ariane Sherine and written by a roundtable of well-regarded rational-thinker types. If I know Ariane (and happily, these days, I do a bit) her editorial hand will have guided it to be warm, friendly, funny and insightful.

Not Quite A Mountain

9/9/09: Just out of curiosity I took stock of the Cumberland master archives this afternoon. This isn't my production archives (which are vast and scary), but the archive of every finished file I've published in some way - to the Web (mostly) - or on things like the Phasic Cyaborg CD.

I've been building this archive without really paying much attention to its growth over the years. But, here goes: the archive currently contains about 160 PDF files and 250 fonts (in addition to hundreds of ReadMe files, JPEGs, MP3 files, ZIPs, z-code and other oddities ... nearly 1,500 files in all). There is some redundancy (I archive the original version of a font and its most current revision, for instance) but even with that: holy crap.

Approximately 50 of the files are less than a year old. Most of them are freebies because I have this problem - some folks say, anyway - where I give away too much and sell too little. Ah well.

And the latest one: submission guidelines for Risus, as promised last entry (see the Risus page). And less than an hour after posting it I already have a proposal from someone interested in making the archive a little bigger. Man o man.

Not quite a mountain (yet), but we're way past molehill.

Submit to Uresia! Mwahaha!

8/31/09: Mainly of interest to Uresia fans: Cumberland Games is now accepting freelance proposal submissions for new Grave of Heaven material. Click here to download the guidelines. Of interest to other kinds of fans: Risus: The Anything RPG will be opening up to proposals soon; Uresia gets the "shakedown cruise" to see how things go.

One Sheet to the Wind

8/16/09: And sometimes, strange things from my gaming table just fall into the Blue Room where they can be prodded, sniffed, and carried off into the recesses of your own collection of miscellaneous gaming files. This new GURPS character sheet (I know; I didn't see that coming, either!) is such a file. The good news is, it'll make more sense to Blue Room readers than anyone else, 'cause it's an odd duck.

Marking Up Temphis

7/27/09: For those keeping track of the Temphis Runes, I've got a new one available for members of the Uresia Mailing List, listed over at the Free Stuff of the Moment page, and is this really my fifth update this month? Yikes! Knock on wood; don't want to jinx it!

It's Easy If You Try

7/23/09: I like to keep an eye on the world around me to see how my fonts are getting used (sometimes legitimately, with a license, sometimes in a more piratey way) and every day there's more to see. Hand-drawn Cumberland fonts like Apple Butter, Yank and Arvigo can be found, respectively, on Judy Blume book-covers, the Beatles Bar in Las Vegas, and carved into blades by a swordmaker. Stressed-type fonts like Dirty Headline and Nicotine Stains and Struck Dead can be found on posters and movie-trailers and Twix and Outback Steakhouse commercials. I can also see my fonts on wine labels, Barbie-doll boxes, state lottery tickets for at least two states, and packaging for schlocky horror movies. Being a fontmaker means putting a big, gentle, anonymous fingerprint on the world, and that's … a strangely peaceful feeling.

Last night I learned of a new and interesting use of Dirty Headline. It is the "Atheist Bus" font, being plastered on buses throughout the United Kingdom. There are now followup versions popping up globally, so I can easily Google up pictures of buses labeled in German or Finnish, for example. I can also find parodies and political cartoons about it, or news stories about bus drivers refusing to drive one, and there in the background is my font. Huh.

Plus, it's nice to see Dirty Headline used in light colors; that's uncommon.

Me, I'm not exactly an atheist. I'm more of a no-harm-no-foul Semi-Agnostic Discordian Humanist, at least on most days. I believe love and empathy are the most important things, followed by a second-place stew of expression, eroticism, playfulness and the perfect hamburger (hot dogs on Friday). But the thing about the atheists is that they tend to be moral and humanistic, and that makes them close enough for me to consider them family. So: drive on, controversial buses. Proud to be there.

Whither Erthe?

7/14/09: Back in my AD&D hardcore days, we never had much use for the official character sheets. We used homebrew sheets made on typewriters, or plain notebook paper, or whatever oddball third-party sheets were laying around. Round about '85 or '86, one of those third-party sheets captured my permanent affections, and it became "my" AD&D sheet from that day forward, and has remained so. Whenever I'm paging through my old campaign archives, every sheet for every PC is on that sheet: the Erthe Gaming Systems sheet, an unlicensed AD&D product from the days when Open Gaming License was spelled "For Use With any Fantasy Role-Playing Game."

It recently occurred to me to look Erthe up, to see what scraps of their memory have survived into the modern hobby consciousness. Given that there's apparently an old-school movement growing right now, it seemed a sure bet that, at the very least, I'd find a thread or two on message-boards praising the old Erthe sheet and it's eye-friendly curves, unusually-large Experience Point box (a session-by-session record) and general audacity ... the Erthe sheet, you see, wasn't sold in tablets or booklets, but individually, printed on parchment-style paper and three-hole-punched, for the modest sum of 25 cents apiece. We sold them at the little comic shop where I worked in Havelock, North Carolina. They came to us from Diamond Distributors, and we had a small stack of them right next to the Armory paints and supplies, right near the front door.

Of course, very few gamers bought more than one ... we practically shared a parking lot with the tiny public library, and they had a photocopier where copies (strange, overly-slick copies) cost a nickel, so everyone bought a single Erthe sheet, and copied it (anyone who thinks gaming piracy was invented by the Internet is too young to be reading the Blue Room). This preserved some quarters for our regular jaunts to the convenience store at the end of the strip mall, where we'd pour change into the Gauntlet machine whenever we needed to stretch our legs for a few minutes. I don't even have my original sheet anymore; just dozens and dozens of second and third-generation photocopies, filled with characters (both mine, and those of my campaign players through the years).

My online search for Erthe Gaming Systems did, indeed, find a couple of message-board comments ... both of them by me, at RPGnet. It also netted a single reference to Loren/Lorin P. Martens of Jackson County, Oregon, who (maybe) is or was the alpha-omega of Erthe. Did they publish anything other than this one character sheet? I've always assumed so, but I've no idea. Did they even still exist in 1985, or were we just picking from leftover stock (the sheet is dated 1981)?

The thing is, it's still one of my favorite character sheet designs, for all its quirks and limitations (it's pre-Unearthed Arcana, so we had to pencil in our own "Comeliness" box in the gap to the right of the Dexterity stats, and it has no space for encumbrance at all). To amuse myself, I've been digitally reconstructing it, creating a "perfect" vector version which preserves, as closely as I can manage, every oddity of line-spacing, every curious case of kerning, and every friendly curve. I've got the front mostly done; I'm working on the back right now.

Which is, really, just the latest iteration of a lifetime of re-pirating that same 25 cent purchase I made years ago (since I worked for store credit, it wasn't even really a purchase). These days I can call it "preservation," and really mean it. But I'd love to learn more about them (or him, or her), find out what happened, if there were any more products, if the sheet did well for the time, or just (really, especially) if anyone else remembers their design as fondly as I do. You out there, Erthe? I remember you. Drop me a line, anyone, who knows anything.

And no, this is not another Battle Star Games. I did that gag already.

There Is No Fudge

7/10/09: Because a number of folks have asked: yes, I did get around to watching Warehouse 13, the new show on SyFy. I found it basically fun (once it got going) and harmless. Unchallenging, frothy, formulaic ... typical for the network, really. I liked the ferret thing and I especially liked the "fudge, where there is no fudge" bit. Will I watch more? Maybe, yeah. With the Doctor taking a year off, the pickings are a bit slim right now. Not "it's time to finally watch more Voyager" slim, but slim. Technically, I already have one "Moonlighting formula" show in my to-watch list, but it's between seasons right now, so.

Of course, few people care if I like the show. They're angling for my response to this and the many spots around the Web where you can find discussion about it. Having finally seen the show, I can only echo my initial responses, which amount, simply, to this: the idea is a thin one, a threadbare, cliché one.

The Stirling Westrup Usenet thing was awesome because the people involved made it awesome. GURPS Warehouse 23 was a good book because I, personally, made it one (even SJ, who was originally disappointed that the book failed to be the one he imagined, came around and accepted it as the one I had). If Warehouse 13 becomes a good show, it'll be because the showrunner and the screenwriters and directors make it so. At no point in any of these equations is there an idea with any value. It's all cliché, done a hundred times over, and the trick with cliché is that it's a powerful language ... you just have to use it as language (to communicate something else substantial) and never try to pawn it off as substance on its own. Warehouse 13 shows a faint glimmer of understanding along these lines, so in future episodes we may well see it rise above its premise. If that happens, it sure won't have anything to do with one of my old RPG supplements or any of the dozens of other things fans are accusing SyFy of riffing too closely on.

That said, it's fun to squint and play the let's-look-for-patterns and make-them-fit-the-theory game, because that's exactly the kind of thinking that actual tinfoil-hatted conspiracy nuts really engage in. Is Mrs. Frederick an echo of Dora Wolf? Is dunking an artifact in purple goo to neutralize it comparable to dunking the Crystal Skull in benzyl alchohol to neutralize it? Are those warning plaques too much like my warning plaques? Hey, isn't that Micgrogramma in the title credits, and a mix of bold and medium on the same line, no less?

But I really do think that, in the end, this is all a case of smelling fudge, where there is no fudge.

Hop, Clap, Kweepa

7/1/09: On a lark the other night, I spent a few hours hashing together a new PDF for fans of the old Infocom game, Leather Goddesses of Phobos. It's called "Lane Mastodon Alternates" and it's probably of no interest to folks who don't know what LGoP is, but on the other hand trying to make heads or tails of it might be entertaining, too. You can find it on this page, over at the IF Archive. And while we're on the subject of new files I've posted, I don't think I remembered to mention the latest font, "Unity Dances," that I posted awhile ago over at the Cumberland site. Snag it! It's a work dedicated to someone who has become a profoundly positive influence in our lives around here. Plus, cool font.

A-Kon Revisited!

3/18/09: I'm confirmed as a guest at A-Kon in Dallas, Texas this year, which should be a huge event as A-Kon are celebrating their 20th year this time around. I'll be there signing books, speaking on panels, running games and all that good stuff ... And those of you who know me from my other convention appearances know that I'm a very hands-on, let's-chat-the-night-away and get-those-dice-bouncing kind of guest, so head on out and say hi. This'll also mark my return to Texas soil, so I'll be in desperate need of a trip to Half-Price Books (we don't have those in Colorado)!

Dear 2009

1/1/09: You're going to have to work pretty hard to beat your predecessor, which, as years went, was ... let's just leave it at "notable." You know what I'm talking about. Well, you and Sandra. Nobody else knows all of it, but many of you out there know fragments of it (especially those of you who are fragments of it). And many thanks for all that.

Cryptic musings aside, it's nice to take a moment to remember I have a homepage. Hiya, folks. I hope your New Years Eve was a festive one. For my part, I was kind of shuffling back and forth between two groups of friends, comedy-of-errors fashion. Nothing went as planned but everything went well, and in the end I could tally up a half-dozen happy-new-year hugs from cute, inebriated strangers, two very kind (but politely refused) offers of free booze, some pretty dramatic scenery (of all kinds, but mostly the fireworks) up on the roof of our building, easily a hundred well-wishes on the streets (up on Colfax they were especially gregarious), a rousing tale of a ten-minute dash across town to make a party after being released by the police at 11:50 (I was just enjoying the tale; not telling it), yummy New Year's kisses from Sandra, of course (a few minutes late, but near enough), some very tired feet from walking the same mile and change four different times, and (last but not least) a very fine plate of eggs, over easy, with rye toast.

So, Happy New Year, indeed. Bet it's gonna be a hoot.

Autumn Creeps In

10/14/08: Autumn inches into play here in Denver, and it's busy inching right now, treating us to the freshness of cold rain, the calm of grey skies, and the invigorating smells of icy air and woodsmoke. Real autumn isn't quite here yet, but summer is dying.

So, on my annual burst of cool-weather energy, I'm putting things back together after an unorthodox few weeks. My laptop died some time ago, sending work into a bit of a slump pending the arrival of a replacement. The replacement arrived packed with corrupt RAM, keeping work in the slump pending the arrival of the replacement RAM module (sent several days after I requested it ... by the slowest ground shipping they could find).

The laptop wasn't the only unusual thing in the time since my last update; there was also a Uresia campaign that spun some new things into our lives around here, but that is a long story for another time. Some kind of deathbed confession, perhaps.

The short version is that the new laptop is up to speed, now; life is good and different in a nice way, and Sandra and I are as cheery as ever. Right now I'm a bit sleepy, but that's okay ... when I'm too tired to do other stuff, I remember to update the Blue Room!

Got An Adventure In You?

7/02/08: If so, July is the month to get it out. We're now in the second annual World Adventure Writing Month, and if you're not sure what that means there's a blog and a forum and an archive of last year's adventures you should know about.

The concept is pretty straightforward, founded on the basic notion that there aren't enough RPG adventures in the world, and that if we set aside a specific time each year for mutual encouragement and celebration, maybe we can bring a few more into the light where they can be played and enjoyed. There are no real rules to follow, just: write an RPG adventure, any kind of RPG adventure, for whatever game you enjoy or for no game in particular or multi-statted or self contained or ... whatever smacks your buzzer. I intend to get one in myself this year, as time permits. Stuck for notions? I've got a page for that.

Overnight Flurries in Hell

6/19/08: Fifteen years ago, I rambled out a thing, and over time mostly forgot it until I'd dig it out of old files and read about it again. Then I'd talk about it and then forget it again. And then someone would ask me about it again, and then I'd forget it again. And for a decade and change, I've promised I'd never (ever) publish it, but here it is. And when you read it, you'll see ... that I really can worry too much. But we knew that. Hi there! Oh, and here are two spiffy new reviews for ToaSK and Uresia!

Spiffing

5/29/08: We're nearly done with the move ... we have some housecleaning to finish up at the old place this week, but that's not too bad; it's a different sort of way to pass the time (tonight Sandra will be doing the floors while I scrub out the fridge). It's a bit icky, and I think I've ingested a half-pound of dust so far, but with Sandra around anything's a lot more fun. At the new place, our stuff is still packed into a mountain of cardboard boxes; that'll change a lot more gradually, knowing us ...

Over at Cumberland, the Fontworks pages have beefed up dramatically overnight, going from twenty-something free fonts to nearly fifty, collecting some more of my favorites from the last nine years (including all of the most recent ones from the Free Stuff of the Moment page). I've also posted some signifigant changes to the Playtest page.

To follow up on the last post, about summer movies: I liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a lot more than I was worried I was going to. I think it's roughly on par with (and here I go damning it with faint praise) the other two Indiana Jones sequels: forgettable, disposable, muddled ... but decidedly well-meaning. Well-meaning goes a long way with me. So does putting Cate Blanchett in flared jodhpurs.

Moving Things

5/02/08: My celebratory work of text-adventure tomfoolery has enjoyed a few surprises in its first few months of existence, including an very kind review by Emily Short (a celebrated champion of exactly the kind of intelligent, sensitive work that ToaSK isn't) and even an IF-community award nomination (on the scale of these things, this would have required only two ToaSK customers to vote for the nomination, but that's two more than I would have expected). Groovy!

On the personal front, Sandra and I are moving again ... but nothing interstate this time. We love Capitol Hill so much we were determined to stay in the neighborhood, so we're moving just one block south, to get a place with better air-conditioning (our current apartment is great, but the drawback of a 15-foot mountain-facing window is a devastating afternoon greenhouse effect, and 1942 tenement buildings don't have the best AC). Our new apartment was built a whole decade later and (more importantly) has windows almost entirely shielded from direct sun ...

On matters of general geekery, it's that time again, when the summer blockbusters start rolling out. We're heading out to see Iron Man tonight, which I look forward to with high hopes. I'm still a little uneasy about the new Indiana Jones flick, though. On the one hand, Raiders of the Lost Ark remains one of my favorite films of all time ... and readers of Warehouse 23 already know that I loves me some Crystal Skull ... but on the other hand, Indiana Jones sequels were dodgy affairs even in the 80s, and George Lucas' recent record of franchise revival hasn't been a good trip overall. I'll be there (probably six or seven times, again), ready to hear the old music and very very ready to see Harrison Ford back under a wool-felt fedora, but, for the record, I have an uneasy feeling. Still, we've got Wall-E on the way, too, to provide consolation if things don't go well.

On other work matters: everything's trucking along, though slower than I (and probably anyone else) would prefer. Such is the way, but things are starting to shape up into final states a few at a time, now, and I daresay, the wait will be worth it ...

Very Happy Holidays

12/27/07: Sandra and I have enjoyed a decade of great Christmases together, but this was the first time we got to enjoy a white Christmas as a couple. The snow (falling again as I write this) is proper Christmas snow, too ... white and fluffy and twirling gently. Just enough to cover the ground with a softly-crunching blanket of white, not so much that we couldn't head out on Christmas day to enjoy it. And we did ... and we also stayed snug inside to enjoy good food and each other's company. Caught Walk Hard later in the day. Goofy and clever.

Christmas was also a special day-of-rest for me. On Christmas Eve, I released the latest Cumberland title, which is (in many ways) the most ambitious (and risky) release I've ever had (ToaSK beats out GURPS Russia for wordcount, making it my largest published work, never to be trumped until Fly From Evil finally sees the light of day). Like all my Encounter Critical material, this new text-adventure is all heart and precious few brains, at least on the surface. Beneath that, there's a whole lot more ... but I'll leave that to those with the funky barbarian groove to discover it.

And that's most of the news, lately. Our friend Tim Driscoll was out to visit not too long ago, so it was nice showing Denver off (again, under some snow), and the new Doctor Who Christmas Special is the greatest thing since sliced fun, but apart from that it's just: snuggles continue. Hope the same is true for you.

Winner, Best Chase Scene

10/8/07: Another breath of cold air hit Denver today, inspiring Sandra and I to venture out a bit and get back over to the Denver Zoo (for our third visit). We got there a little late in the day, so it wasn't a long trip this time, but the highlight was watching a kangaroo chase an emu. The two animals move so very differently, it was like every radiant wave of physical comedy on the planet suddenly converged on the Denver Zoo at that moment. It helped, too, that the kangaroo (accidentally?) switched emu in mid-stride at one point, refreshing the chase with better-rested quarry.

If I were a kangaroo, I'd totally chase emu all day, now that I know how much it rocks.