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How To Make Any Loaf of Bread In a Bread Machine

As part of my constant quest to learn cool, new things, I bought myself a bread machine several years ago. How’d I afford it, you ask? Easy: I bought it at Salvation Army for $20. Got a few weird looks from the cashier, who asked if I’d ever use it, but that’s fine. Problem: No […]

How To Invent a Role-Playing Adventure, Part 2

When last we left our adventurers, they were swimming north in hot pursuit of Princess Teela, who adamantly refused to return to her parents until she’d wrought vengeance on the sahuagin for their invasion of her country. Endings are crucial. I can forgive a rocky beginning, and I can push through a dull middle, but […]

What To Do When You Don’t Feel Like Improving Yourself

I write a lot about self-improvement, and the importance thereof. So, what do you do when you just have no energy for self-improvement? When you just don’t feel like improving? Take a break. Really. Stop working at it for a while. Watch some movies, read a few books, and just relax. Don’t rest forever, of […]

How To Invent a Role-Playing Adventure, Part 1

I’ve been working on a D&D adventure, War in the Deep. It’s an underwater adventure in which the players are transported to an undersea kingdom, where they have to rescue a princess consumed with bloodlust. (Which, incidentally, you can buy at DriveThruRPG for $5!) Anyway, here’s how I designed it: I started with the reason […]

Personal, Take 2

I haven’t been able to keep up with this blog this week, due to the new job. Fortunately, it’s calming down this week, so I think I’ll be able to get back into a more normal blog routine next week. It’s weird, how much mental energy is required when starting a new job. I’m not […]

Personal

A little personal blogging today. I start my new job today. I’m nervous; Pop Rocks jumped around in my stomach as I drove in. Took longer than I expected, so I got in 10 minutes later than I thought I would. Which increased my nervousness. But this is a new opportunity. A new adventure. As […]

Does An American Tail Still Hold Up?

It’s Friday, review day, and I’m going to talk about a very special movie for me. A formative movie. I watched An American Tail when it was first released in theaters in 1986. I was ten years old. I was enthralled, and still remember the visceral thrill of several sequences: the storm on the ship, […]

Post to Several Twitter Accounts at Once with Matt

Twitter’s great; it lets you keep in touch with lots of people. For those of you who’ve already jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon, you may have heard of folks who have several Twitter accounts. I have 4 — my main account (BrentNewhall), BrentRPG for an online game I play through Twitter, OtakuNoVideo for my podcast, and Gunwave for announcements about my online game. How do I manage them all? Through Matt, the “Multi-Account […]

Planning for a New Job

I start my new job next week, supporting a military contract with a combination of training, configuration management, and web design. Or, at least, that’s the initial charter, based on my interview. I face a number of challenges: I’ll have to spend some time figuring out my real charter. Exactly what is expected of me? […]

What I Don’t Like About Playing in a Tabletop RPG

Much as I enjoy running tabletop RPGs, I don’t much enjoy playing a character. This is partly because characters have relatively little to do at any given time. Consider combat: in a four-person party, I’ll spend at best four-fifths of the time twiddling my thumbs, watching everyone else fight. Even outside of combat, I’m just […]

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