OSR 24

For me Dungeon 23 was an abject failure. To be fair the whole year was pretty tumultuous. Consistency has always been an enemy for me. Having just finished school I was having a hard time adjusting to a non structured life. Something I am working to change now is how does one live without deadlines. I could create my own deadlines. However, I fear it will be ineffective with out the threat of wasting my tuition. But I am at better place now with significantly more control over my machinations. 

So why did Dungeon 23 fail?

Scope creep

I believe the spirit of Dungeon 23 was not to actually create a workable mega dungeon but to sharpen ones dungeon building skills. Creators were encouraged to just focus on a single room a day. What the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies. Its almost impossible not falling into the perils of mega world building. With in the first week I was planning out which months I would work on which themes of the dungeon. It was going to be a silent hill themed location in which a town summoned a primordial fae god by sacrificing the town beggar. This plunging the town into a fae hell. Each of the four locations was to be based on the 4 tarot suits with the major arcana being god level NPC's and bosses. I would work on each of the locations for each of the four quarters of the year. This quickly demotivated me. The second I skipped a day, a week, a month. It was harder to restart, as I felt I need to go back to make up lost time. 

Eventually I abandoned the idea and started from scrap.

In August I found myself trying again, again ran into scope issues. This one was a lich sewer or some sort. I let myself focus more on the rooms but I still felt myself running to the back of the journal to stat out monsters and write about NPCS.

Time and Space

When I did sit down to work on the project it meant I had time. I felt unfulfilled writing one simple room. And I felt the book did not provide enough space to embellish. I hated flipping to the back of the book to finish writing out the person, object, or monster that I was working on. Also each time passing the failures of the prior month. 

What will be OSR 24?  

I will switch out the Hobonichi Techo for the Hon Techo. The Hon has a grid for each day of the year. Everyday I will create an OSR thing. This could be a monster, a map, a room, location concept, anything really. This will allow me to still work on my OSR skills but doesn't have the constraints of the previous project. I can work on what feels right in the moment. I have space to embellish and explore, but without trigging scope creep. If there is more to an idea I can add onto it the next day. But isn't this just the same a journaling? Yes, but its got more rules. 

Rules of engagement. 

• If a day is skipped it is gone. There is to be no going back. The pain of empty pages needs to be felt. 
• Stealing is ok, its just me and my thoughts. 
• Don't share it with too many people. The second it becomes a performance, the goal will to be to impress, and once someone is impressed the dopamine stops.  
• Also no one cares what you are journaling about. 
• Give your self space to be stupid, there is nothing wrong with stupidity. 

Black Ash Fuzz

I managed to get the Black Ash Fuzz transcribed from a schematic to a breadboard. This is the first time I have been able to do this. The Black Ash is basically a modified tone bender. I might not have the ear for it but it seems like the bias and top pots do nothing. I am looking through some other ton bender schematic to see if there is a different configuration that I would prefer. I figured out that R5 creates most of the Fuzz sound. I tried using a dual gang to control both the R5 resistance and the Fuzz pot. I think the range of the pot was too much because the vast majority of it was a clean signal. I like the idea of adding a pot at R5 but I don't think I should have two Fuzz pots. 

I was fantasizing about making a fuzz octave for my first pedal. To my dismay when looking at the Lizard Queen, the JHS and EH  pedal they just put out is a tone bender octave combo. I might look into other options. 

Either way this will be Mock/ Mox FX first pedal. I think I will call it lavender fuzz or Lavandula Fuzz. I don't personally like lavender all that much but its my wife's favorite sent.

Speak The Fuzzy Lexicon

I just got the PDF copy of Speak False Machine. The absolute banger of a tome by Patrick Stuart, chronicling his 10 years of blogging. Reading through his posts in this format is really fulfilling for me. If every form of reading material was a series of essays with little to no editing than I would enjoy more literature. 

So this is another post about blogging and perhaps a sort of determination. This time for sure I will actually start blogging. What makes this time different? Well I'm not in school anymore, and my hobbies have had time to germinate. But other than that I can only hope the gods of productivity smile on me. 

If I can manage every night I will be sitting myself down and bashing my hands against this keyboard. Hopefully it will result in something useful. Between RPGs, Guitar Pedals, and music I should have some thing on my mind every night. 

Lets talk about what's to come. 

• I do plan on doing Dungeon 24, I don't know how many other people will be doing it, but I feel like its become a sort of pilgrimage. Dungeon 23
• I am working on a clone of EQD Black Ash, basically a tone bender. I am trying to see what kind of mods I can currently do on it. 
• I have found some sources of pressed flower to start my enclosure project. 
• I have some ideas about music I would like to pursue. Currently I am thinking about taking 60s ska and making it dissonant and depressing/ creepy.