The Book of Destiny...on Hold

So, my microphone died. It's been a good microphone. It's been with us for probably 7-8 years.

That said, I'm looking at getting a much higher quality microphone for the Book of Destiny podcast.

In wanting to do that, I sort of want to re-record what I have recorded so far for the podcast, so that it will come out higher quality.

If I do that, it'll set me back weeks of work.

On top of that, starting in January was a bit...overambitious of me to begin with.



So, what I'm saying is that the Book of Destiny is currently on hold and will return this summer.

I'm going to leave the first two chapters up as a preview, but will return to posting weekly sometime then.

Movie Review: Into the Spiderverse

Spiderman Images Copyright Marvel and Sony Pictures.

I'll admit that when I first saw the trailer for Into the Spiderverse, I was mostly disinterested. I thought the multiverse angle might be interesting, and I was glad to see a Miles Morales Spiderman instead of the repeated Peter Parkers. However, despite that there are other animated movies that I like, an animated super hero film didn't interest me a lot. Especially not after having spent so many years watching the live-action ones. Additionally, seeing yet another Spiderman reboot sounded exhausting to me.

But I do love a good multiverse story, so between that aspect of it, many positive reviews from friends, and an unexpected free day, I decided to check it out. I was not disappointed.

Scott Pilgrim image copyright Universal Pictures

Comic Book Movie

The movie *really* felt like a comic book. They did a good job with

Book of Destiny Preview: Cover Art

See the really spectacular picture above that I commissioned for the cover of The Book of Destiny! It features three of the many awesome characters that you'll find in the story.

The main characters mostly fall into three groups, so I thought it was important that the cover represent one from each. Going from left to right, you have the following:

Book of Destiny Preview: Teaser

“Your world is so much more fragile than humanity knows.”

The worlds of the multiverse are in chaos.

A group known as 'wolves' has made a mission of destroying smaller worlds.

The void pours through rips in the Essence of varying worlds, and it tears apart the order that it finds so offensive.

Rumors circle about the return of mankind's greatest threat: dragons.



It's time to fight back. Hunt down the wolves. Patch up the rips. Stop the return of the dragons. Bring order to the world.

But can it all be done?

Find out in:

The Book of Destiny

Value of Fiction: Hope

Artist Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal

An important role that fiction sometimes plays is to give people hope. I know many people who have particular books that they turn to when things feel down or overwhelming in their own lives. In many cases, it's the Harry Potter series.

Everyone has moments that seem dark to them individually-the death of a loved one, financial ruin, the loss of a friendship, medical depression, etc. For all these things, there are stories, fictional or not, that have people overcoming the same challenges-or symbolically similar ones. When executed well and with consideration paid to those suffering, this can be reassuring to an individual that is going through suffering, even if the story is wholly fictional.

Descent into Laughter

I have very clear goals for what I need to focus on completing this month...

So, of course, I've gotten distracted by a smaller more personal project.

I recently tried to run a Numenera game for new players, mostly unfamiliar with tabletop RPGs or the setting of the Ninth World. I was using one of the adventures from Weird Discoveries. These adventures are designed to be run with little to no prep and sort of be the sort of thing one could recommend in the place of a board game. My experience running some of these with my regular players is that they have taken roughly 1.5-2 hours. We spent 3+ hours playing and didn't finish the adventure.

Which is fine. And I think that the players mostly had a good time, which is good. That's the objective.

But I was a bit surprised by how...slowly things seemed to go. Which isn't my normal experience with Numenera/Cypher System. Especially since I had chosen something I thought would be fast/exciting for my new players. I don't think either my players or I did anything wrong, and, as I said, it wasn't a bad experience. It just wasn't the experience I'd expected to have.

I spent a lot of time questioning if there was something that I could have run which would have been more in line with my objectives.

My objective was this: to find something that could introduce new players to roleplaying games with a simple system and fast-paced/exciting adventure.

Thus began my Descent.

Ruins & Robots Announcement

Humanity is gone. In their absence, robot-kind has grown and raised up its own civilization. 

I recently posted on my Facebook page about some of my upcoming projects, including (but not limited to Ruins & Robots. So, for those of you wondering, here's a little more about what that's all about.

Ruins and Robots is an upcoming series of books that I am working on. Like Heroism and Other Lies, these will be shorter books (between 15,000 and 30,000 words).