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 manual. So I hopped online, where I discovered that you don’t need a manual. You can make any bread machine recipe in any bread machine, as long as you know two things: the order of the ingredients, and the size of the loaf.

First, the order of the ingredients. All the ingredients should be added in the following order:

1. Liquids (including butter)
2. Flour
3. Remaining dry ingredients (except yeast)
4. Yeast

Why? Because as soon as the yeast hits the water, the yeast will “bloom,” or start to ferment. You don’t want that to happen until the bread machine says so. By putting the flour on top of the liquids, the flour will form a barrier, keeping the yeast dry on top.

And that’s it. Literally, you can use any recipe in your bread machine now. Unless, of course, the loaf would be too big for your machine.

This required some experimentation, but the key lies in the amount of flour. That will determine the size of the final loaf (plus a few other variables, but that’s the primary factor).

So, when you first make a loaf of bread, a 2-cup recipe is a great place to start. That’ll make a small loaf. Put the ingredients into the bread machine (in the order listed above), then turn it on for a normal loaf. See how much space the final loaf takes up, and you can adjust accordingly.

One final tip: If you buy a kitchen scale, you can measure by weight instead of using cups and measuring spoons. Not only is it more accurate, it’s faster and requires less cleanup: You just dump in X grams of an ingredient, reset the scale, dump in Y grams of the next ingredient, and so on. I regularly make bread with about 10 minutes’ worth of effort.

And here’s one of those recipes now!

Bread Machine Ciabatta

Prep time 10 minutes, total time 2 hours

Software:

1 and ¼ cups (150 grams) water

1 and ¼ cups (210 grams) bread flour (or all-purpose flour)

¾ tsp sugar

½ tsp salt

½ tsp yeast

Hardware:

Bread machine

Put the ingredients in the order listed above into the bread machine, making sure to sprinkle the flour evenly over the water so that the top of the flour is dry, and put the machine on the “dough” setting. Pre-heat the oven to 450° F as the bread machine makes the dough, then when it’s ready, remove the dough, stretch it into a log, and bake for 18 minutes. Voila!

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 a bad ending will ruin a story for me.

The ending has to feel bigger than the rest of the story. It may not be flashier, or have more action; that depends on the type of story. But since this is a war story, I wanted this to have a big war ending. I wanted the equivalent of ending Wolfenstein 3D by fighting a powered armor-wearing Hitler.

This meant two things: a battle against a powerful enemy, and a battle against the sahuagin king. However, according to D&D lore, sahuagin kings are simply more vicious than the others; they’re not inherently powerful enough to take down half a dozen seasoned adventurers.

So I could have gone in two directions. I could have increased the sahuagin king’s power, by giving him some magical artifact. Or I could add a separate, powerful martial character.

I chose the second route, though I just realized that I could have tied the adventure together much better by going the first route. The sahuagin king could have stolen the magical artifact that the players are seeking from the merfolk king, and that could be giving the sahuagin king the power to raise this army. Ah well.

So I created a separate martial antagonist. Since this adventure is designed for Dungeons & Dragons, I figured I should put a dragon in somewhere if I could, so I decided that the sahuagin king is pushing a priestess to summon a white dragon to do their bidding. (For the record, this would never have worked.)

So, the players venture northward, and come upon a huge sahuagin city, which sits mostly empty as the army is down south fighting the merfolk. But a strange glow is coming from a temple in the city. This is the only distinguishing characteristic.

So the players travel there, and navigate through its twisting passages to a large, amphitheater-like room in the back. There, they find the priestess, holding an orb and murmuring a ritual, while the sahuagin king and a bunch of bodyguards stand nearby, watching. The water swirls around the priestess, and small wisps of light flash in and out of existence within it. The players can just make out the ghostly form of a dragon inside, slowly growing more distinct.

So, the players must fight the bodyguards first (who rush towards the players immediately to prevent them from getting to the king or priestess), then the priestess (who has plenty of spells), and the king (who is a very good fighter). After their defeat, the war is effectively over, and Teela can return to her father and people.

And that’s the adventure: 3 to 5 encounters (depending on the number of sahuagin raiders that the DM decides to toss in), moving logically from one location to the next: the western sea, the aquatic elves, the merfolk capitol, the northern front, and the sahuagin capitol.

As you can see, my adventure creation method involves consequences. At each stage, I look for a next step that’s logical and interesting. Logical because the alternative frustrates players; interesting to keep players engaged.

Works well for me. Now to design the next one….

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 course. But I believe that a properly balanced person will instinctively know when it’s time to start improving again.

Breathe.

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 for the adventure. This was originally part of a larger campaign, where the players are seeking seven different magical stones, and the king of this undersea kingdom has one of them. So, they were going to travel there to meet him. The question was, what would prevent the players from just requesting and taking the stone back from the merfolk?

I didn’t have a good answer for that, so I began flipping through the Monster Manual to get ideas for the creatures that might be in that area. That’s when I stumbled on the sahuagin.

The sahuagin are nasty brutes who mostly raid coastal towns. They’re basically underwater goblins: they sneak up out of nowhere, attack anyone they find, and steal supplies.

Sound like fun antagonists. So what if they’re the real antagonists? What if they’re attacking the undersea kingdom?

Okay, so how to get the players involved in a war between the merfolk and the sahuagin? Well, the players are traveling to see the king. What if his daughter is in danger? An easy reason would be kidnapping; let’s flip that around. What if she went off in search of danger, lusting after sahuagin blood?

And there was my plot.

So then it was a matter of designing the conflicts. I wanted to expand the time spent traveling to the merfolk’s central city, so I added an early encounter with a sahuagin raiding party. I then added an enclave of aquatic elves who would help the players get through that area if the sahuagin proved too powerful. I also conjured up a High Council of the aquatic elves, who could answer the players’ early questions about this area of the world, and the conflict between the merfolk and sahuagin.

After encountering the merfolk king, the players then had to find the princess. I figured the king would know at least roughly where the princess was, so I made that easy; the players just traveled north to a border town. On the way, they traveled above abandoned merfolk villages (as the merfolk prepared for war, they abandoned their easily-attacked villages).

Up to now, the players had been fighting sahuagin raiding parties, so I wanted to get across the feel of a large war. So I designed the next battle was a real battle, with dozens of sahuagin and several siege weapons assaulting this northern border town. The princess is in among the fray, giving it something of a Battle of Helm’s Deep feel.

Now what? How to finish this up with a satisfying ending? I’ll let you think about how you’d do it, and I’ll answer in part 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 overwhelmed with work; I’m overwhelmed with new inputs, even when those inputs are “just” peoples’ names. All the change is painful.

And I’m someone who keeps telling folks the importance of accepting change. Can’t quite take my own medicine, can I?

In any event, that’s why I’ve been incommunicado this week, and hopefully everything will be relatively normal on Monday.

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 I heard on Sunday: you fear that which has risk, so fear is a sign that you’re risking something. And risk (when it comes from the heart) is almost always good.

So, I’m risking. And excited.

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, the singing of “Somewhere Out There,” and the dockside cat chasing scene.

You probably all know I’m an anime fan. Well, that’s part of my larger interest in animation itself. I watched with fascination several discs of weird Russian animated films and shorts, and have watched animated shorts from all over the world. Animation just fascinates me.

And I think I can track it all back to An American Tail.

I re-watched it recently. That’s always quite an experience, returning to a childhood favorite with the cold reasoning of an adult.

The story falls apart. There’s very little connective tissue to link one scene to another; the entire movie almost feels like an excuse to put half a dozen intense sequences on screen.

But those sequences are intense, and I’d put three of them on par with anything Disney or Miyazaki’s ever done: the storm at sea, in which Fievel confronts a storm sweeping across the deck of the ship; the dockside cat chase, with its desperate scrambling to fire off a huge mechanical contraption; and the final search for Fievel, an amazingly quiet scene of an emotionally demolished boy.

The first two scenes are frenetic and powerful, with bold but careful uses of color and movement. Neither scene ever confused me; instead, they presented a lot of action, going in what seemed like ten directions at once.

And it sold me on its protagonist. Fievel wasn’t just a boy in danger; it was a boy lost in a wondrous but confusing place. The genius of the premise lay in the fact that he wasn’t attacked by cats at every turn (any more than the entire mice population). He was just…orphaned.

And I loved its representation of turn-of-the-20th-century New York (and America in general): amazing, ruthless, hectic, and truly a land of opportunity. Flawed, certainly; there are sweatshops, discrimination, and a classically crooked politician (not evil, just completely crooked).

But it quickly becomes home for the characters. Despite all its flaws, despite the tragedy of the story, America still represents great potential.

And it’s saying a lot that I believe this despite the flaws in the story. The movie can be difficult to follow at times, but it gets across deeper things. Which is more than most works of art can say.

I’m certainly glad I re-watched it. It’s usually worthwhile to track down those old gems of childhood, if just to re-experience them.

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 Twitter Tweeter” (now defunct). It’s an online service where, after you create an account, you add the username and password for each of your Twitter accounts. From Matt, you can post to one, some, or all of your Twitter accounts, all from one page.

What’s even more cool: Matt was built in 4 days by a development team, just to see if they could do it. See the full story.

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:

1. I’ll have to spend some time figuring out my real charter. Exactly what is expected of me?
2. I’ll have to build relationships with several different clients, each of which will need different things from me. This will involve lots of “people skills,” and some penetrating questions about what my clients really need.
3. I’ll be establishing my reputation, so my work will need to be excellent (as it always needs to be, but especially now).
4. The group I’ll be working with is still setting itself up, apparently, so I’ll be establishing my work environment. I’ll need to set up my computer for web evelopment, which requires a lot of software. Since many offices have strong restrictions on what can be installed on a system, I’ll probably have to set up many work-arounds just to build a productive work environment.

Even more problematically: Much of this can’t be specifically planned. While I can plan to meet with clients, I won’t know who to meet until I get there, nor do I know how to deal with them.

So, while I have a basic plan, I’ll need to react quickly while keeping my plan up-to-date.

And all of this must be done while I’m still learning everyone’s names, remembering where the bathroom is, etc. And teaching adult ed classes every evening.

I’ll be tired, stressed out, and probably cranky once I return home from my classes at night. But it’s a fantastic opportunity, and by the end I’ll have grown and improved.

And thank goodness for Getting Things Done.

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 one of several adventurers.

Also, role-playing is social. As quoted in a recent post on Sin Aesthetics: “Enjoying roleplaying is rather like enjoying dancing: At some point you have to throw your inhibitions to the wind, admit you might look like a fool to passing spectators and enjoy the moment. Also like dancing, which at first may seem like a fairly limited activity, roleplaying has almost infinite depth and variety in the experiences it provides.”

While I can “throw my inhibitions to the wind” with good friends, that’s tough to do outside of intimate groups. And my role-playing friends don’t really reward good role-playing. They’re good guys; they’re just focused more on killing stuff and taking loot than on role-playing, at this stage.

And that’s one of the big limitations of role-playing: it requires a certain kind of mentality. Now, I think practically anyone can learn to role-play, just like anyone can play a game of charades. But it’s a mentality that I don’t get much of a charge out of.

Part of the trouble, too, is that I create worlds. I love thinking up cities and societies and people. If there’s going to be someone in the whole process doing that, why not me?