A New Toy!

It has been an interesting week, to say the least.

First my mom passed away last Sunday. Then on Tuesday my son was diagnosed with a pneumonia, and on the same day I went for a test to see why I was suffering numbness and pain in both arms. As it turns out, I have moderate to severe carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists.

Then Wednesday we cremated my mom.

Friday I got a Dremel 3D20 Idea Maker 3D printer. I’m also shopping around for a new computer system.

I’ve already started to print out items with the printer. Some small stuff has turned out really great! The Poe Dameron blaster… not so much. Then again this is a learning experience for me, and if the props turn out to be kind of shitty, so be it. The more I use this printer, the better my work will become.

I’ll be talking about this for a little bit.

Over on Drivethrurpg there are a TON of free miniature files you can download and print out on a 3D printer if you happen to own one! I’ve already downloaded quite a few, and I do plan on doing a few test prints to see how they turn out.

Also the man who made my much beloved Colonial Marine armor has been printing out for quite some time now, and he sent me a link to Thingiverse, a site which has thousands upon thousands of free files you can download and use your 3D printer to create. I’ve already downloaded a whole mess of files to print out for my Talisman board game, several props I want to have for the upcoming expo, and a ton of other items.

I’ll be putting my nice new printer to good use over the next few months, that’s for damn sure!

As a long time gamer, this is one of the coolest toys I have ever had a chance to own. Mini’s, terrain, you name it, I can print it out and use it!

And the really sweet thing is the filament costs about the same as I would normally pay for an ink cartridge for my regular printer!

So expect me to talk about this in my upcoming blogs on a regular basis.

I spoke with Michael Varhola about converting all my creatures to Pathfinder. Since I currently have over 500 (for new readers, yes, that is correct) free OSR creatures on the Skirmisher site, this means over 500 hours of work to convert these to Pathfinder and Starfinder when it comes out.

Of course I was not thinking too clearly when I spoke to Michael, and the simple fact is I will be cutting this up into manageable chunks and we will publish the books as I finish a set of creatures. I don’t have to convert all at once before we publish them.

But first – we need to get my novel out, then the three mutation books, and after that THEN we can work on the creatures.

I know I’ve said this a ton of times already so we shall see how things progress in the near future.

It’s also been too damn long since I wrote a short story, and this week I managed to finish a story called ‘One Night’. Every character needs an origin, so this is an origin story!

I also got off my ass and created an index of all the short stories (and the order they should be read in).

To top it off, I created an index for my New Mutant Monday Series Three and Wednesday’s Wondrous Works.

Speaking of, here are this week’s entries – Braimice (Pathfinder Version), Rider Fungi (Pathfinder version), and the Flesh Map.

I was shocked to discover I had well over 200 likes and a mess of comments about the Rider Fungi on the Pathfinder FB page. Out of all the years I have been creating and posting material on the Skrimisher site, I have never had this happen before! Clearly I got a hit when I decided to start writing my material for this game system.

As much as I love the old school Gamma World, it doesn’t hold a candle to the amount of feedback and comments I get for creating in Pathfinder! I’m hoping this trend will continue and I will get more fans and feedback, and make sure my name gets out there and I get a presence in this particular community.

I have to thank James Valiant for his help as well, he pointed out several mistakes I was making, and cleaned up the Rider Fungi and is planning on writing the creature up as a Template!

Now due to my loss, you can understand why I didn’t have time to do much in the way of reading last week. I finished only one novel, called Invasion by Sean Platt. This book took me by surprise. I thought it was all about a family caught in the midst of an alien invasion, as the title suggested.

As it turns out it is about a doomsday prepper who is trying his best to get his family out of New York city and across the country to his hidden bunker in Colorado, and all the shit they have to endure on the way there!

The invasion is only a small portion near the end of the novel.

Well written, and one of my favorite narrators – Ray Porter – read this one. As usual, worth checking out and I’ve added the second book to my to-read list.

I’m hoping to get back to my usual 2-3 books a week now I have finished with all the terrible things that can happen to a man in a few short weeks.

And that’s it for this week. A hell of a lot shorter than my last blog, but then again I didn’t have as much to say.

So, until next week, stay happy and stay safe.