Random thoughts

Just some random stuff:

- I'm jealous of the folks in Jeff Rients's Caves of Myrddin game. I'd love to throw my hat in but he runs game during my work hours (yeah I'm at work at 5 am until mid-morning, as well as most nights and on weekends - welcome to working in the 2000s). It's a bit sillier than how I prefer to run my own games, but it's pickup D&D early in the morning, so silly+coffee seems ideal. One of these day a Constantcon game I can regularly make will show up and I'm totally going for it.

- Captcha is a great source of fantasy game names. It's a creative whack, really - next captcha code you need to plug in, jot it down and try to make it into something in your fantasy game.

- I miss painting minis, but I'm busy and I can't remember where I packed my pin drills and files for minis prep. So I dropped by my FLGS (actually not so L, but very F), Timewarp Comics & Games, grabbed some of Reaper's pre-painted plastics. Nice, I wish they had more. Other pre-painted non-random fantasy plastic would be cool, too if anyone has recommendations.
I've got enough lead and pewter, unpainted, to last a lifetime . . .

- When writing adventures, a punchy, one-sentence description of a room, item, or monster is better than a long, dripping description. A few sentences is fine if there is a lot to say. And in any description, it's unacceptable to say "You see blah, blah, blah, blah. And three orcs are running at you." Yeah, I'm going to notice blah, blah, blah, and blah, and then the orcs? Keep situational blindness in mind, but don't get silly - fighters do notice obstacles and surroundings. But the first thing we notice is the other guy.

- If you're going system agnostic, "This should be hard to do" is better than "roll X at -Y." Don't make me learn a system to use your non-system-based tool. If you've got a system, keep it descriptive. "Eric is the best swordsman in the city" is better than "Eric is a level 7 swordsman" and make me look up your 7-level descriptive rankings.

Just some random stuff that's been on my mind over the past few days as I read, shopping, stared at my boxes and boxes and boxes of unpainted minis, and did some writing.