Any day you can pet a lizard is a good day

Had a pretty good birthday yesterday. Started out making a couple of pizzas for me, my wife and our roommate. Tried out a recipe for thin crust dough which worked really well (This is the recipe if you're curious). Normally pizza dough recipes taste fine but they're a bit of a pain to work with, being too stretchy and hard to spread properly but this one was really easy to roll out and bake.

After lunch me and NJ decided to take a walk out to our local dairy queen for a blizzard as a birthday cake substitute. Walking back we finished just as we passed by a nearby thrift store, which is kind of our default for doing something outside of the house. While we were there we noticed an umbrella-holder full of swords, which certainly caught my interest. Checking the prices all were pretty cheap and while a lot were very battered (some missing their hilts entirely) quite a few were still in perfectly acceptable condition.

I ended up picking up a straight-bladed katana-style sword (I have no illusions as to its authenticity, but it looks neat) with an interesting wooden sheath and tasseled hilt. For 12 bucks it's a pretty sweet deal. Of course, then I had to walk back home carrying a sword, but fortunately there were no problems and I was able to resist the urge to slash at nearby tree branches, because I'm 12.

And then, on the way back we saw a tiny little skink on the ground, who apparently was not told that it was October. As already mentioned, I am 12 so I carefully grabbed it so me and NJ could take pictures, poke at it and generally annoy the hell out of a tiny animal. But at least I've graduated beyond putting them in a jar with a stick and a leaf.

So yeah, pretty good birthday. I mean, as good as you're going to get once you're over 30 and no one buys you giant cakes anymore.

Distracting Myself

So, it's been a bit (seems to be a pattern doesn't it?) but fortunately I've still had a fair amount of opportunity to work on my RPG projects.

So as I was working on the 6th (!!!) draft of Badass Kung Fu Demigods (more on that to come) I decided to distract myself with a new draft for my card-based fantasy heartbreaker. So, I present...

Dungeons And Decks

The broad strokes of the game haven't changed from when I last wrote about it, but I've spruced up the layout a bit and tinkered around with the class abilities to try and get a better balance and replacing a few iffy powers. 

Other than a few tweaks here and there I also included a very simple treasure system, an expanded list of example magical items and beefed up the bestiary a bit. 

All in all it seems pretty close to done. Certainly needs a bit more polish (and just re-reading bits for this post brought a few editing errors to my attention) and I'm currently tinkering with a rough multi-classing system to be included later, but overall it seems fairly solid.

By the way, I should mention that Dungeons and Decks is in desperate need of playtesting. I don't have much opportunity for face-to-face gaming and the card-based nature of the game makes playing online practically impossible. So, if any of you guys happen to give it a shot please, please pass along any feedback to me. I would be thrilled to hear anything, even if it's just a series of swear words and curses on my family's name. Any feedback is welcome.

Although Badass Kung Fu Demigods is kind of my passion project right now I think Dungeons and Decks will probably be the first RPG I attempt to put up for sale. It's got a familiar premise but a fun gimmick and there's plenty of opportunity for including some fun art, and certainly at least one or two custom card decks are already being planned. 

Speaking of art, one bit of good news is that my wife's condition is doing better. She's still far from "cured" but a new medication has allowed her to operate with a lot less pain. As a result she's been stretching her artistic wings a bit, sketching here and there, the first time in a couple of years. Still a long way from being able to resume her comic work or illustrating my games, but it's the first improvement we've seen in quite a while. 

Oh, and unrelated news, today is my birthday. So, happy birthday to me I suppose.