OK, so...later this month or early next month I'm having some surgery. Nothing big. Laproscopic day surgery. Then I'm going to be bedridden on some really fantastic painkilling drugs for three days. Then I'm going to have to take a few weeks off work while things heal up.
Now, I'm going to treat this like a holiday / work break in which I finally get my lawn under control, get my teeth scaled, and buy new clothes, but basically for three days I'm going to be able to not do very much, and I'm going to want a -heap- of distraction.
So, if you'd like to suggest some Ars stuff I could write, that would be brilliant, guys.
Thanks.
(PS - this is why I have not been emailing anyone, or doing my vlogs, or my blog. Sorry if you are one of the many people I have let down by this. Basically the last 6 months or so have been really bad news for me, in terms of my family and health. Hopefully this is the final hurdle.)
Find a picture online of a cluttered wizards lab then stat up every thing you see there. Write the character's background, what is their house what magic do they specialize in? Come up with the titles for the books you can see and what they're about. What is his familiar like. Is that a magical broom in the corner? What features does the lab have? If it seems like the lab is in use what project are they working on. What hooks could connect this character to a ArM saga.
For suggestions, something dealing with "Take advantage of my recently created covenant and these are tips oin your first saga and how not to go overboard with it" might be a good idea. I would have loved that when I started playing Ars. Maybe the first 3 sagas wouldn't have been a failure.
I've long been curious about the possibilities of the years, even decades, leading up to the establishment of a new Spring Covenant. How those new magi might be selected, culled and thrown together, how the funding and support is gathered, what open offers or back-room negotiations and deals are made, and what counter-efforts, against the founding or success of the effort, might have occurred over the long period leading up to what most Players take for granted as the "start of the Saga".
If that's something that interests you, either as a single example or broader "supplementary material for thought"... sure!
First off, best wishes with the upcoming procedure mate (see personal email to follow). Your health, as always, takes priority.
Don't overestimate your ability to write during recovery, you will feel a bit washed out for a while I suspect.
Given I've just got Hooks, I would suggest if you feel up to it that you consider Hooks-style lead ins to some of your existing supplements, in no particular order:
Against the Dark / True Lineages (Tremere focus)
Rival Magic (more Soqotran lead ins)
Hedge Magic
that one we're both working on but can't talk about yet due to NDA
that other one you're working on that I was going to work on, but you can't talk about yet and we discussed the "primer concept" (hint, hint)
Otherwise some more Faeries for "Beyond the Fields You Know"
See, in terms of the writing, I think maybe when I'm feeling all washed out I may just prop my video recorder at the end of my bed and ramble at it, and then go back and edit out the sane parts. Oh, you know what I mean.
I hope this is a spur to get me organised, so that I restart some of the projects which have just been on the never-never while I've been off colour. I do have a bit of The Patient Art, and a bit of a novel. More hooks are a good idea, too.
I would advise waiting until you don't need pain-killers before being tempted by video.
I had a friend who thought he was Darth Vader for a good couple of days... which would be inspirational in the right context I guess, but was just weird.
On my work blog, where I review library books, there is one post I did from my phone while floating in a bath, zonked out on painkillers.
I have to say, it got a lot of interest in the library blogsphere. I am one of the few librarians who can legitimately claim to have been legally doing his job while both naked and high.
