RIHAHN.COM

Month: July 2019

  • Getting back on the horse…

    Last night I sat down, moved the dozens of things I generally have on my plate aside, and started plotting out the story for my next adventure.

    Since the 90’s I’ve used an app called “Dramatica Pro” to nail down the characters, premise, structure, and acts for my settings and writing. It’s a fantastic bit of kit for anyone who does world-building or writing; highly recommended.

    Anyway, I hammered out the rough genera, theme, plot, and characters last night, and am at the ‘let it simmer’ stage where I give it a day before going back and looking it over critically. I’ll probably have most of the 20-ish pages of first draft done over the weekend, and will be in a position to put pen to paper some time next week.

    I’m fairly certain this effort will take place in my Caerth setting as I’ve been vacationing there since the early 80’s and know most of the place intimately. This usually makes it easier to come up with shenanigans for the characters to contend with.

    The goal this time is to put together an actual self-contained novel-length three-act story for publishing, being as self-publishing is actually a thing now.

    A self-contained tale is a bit outside of my comfort zone as I tend to create settings for other players to do things with, so being both the “GM” and the “Player” for the entire process will be interesting.

    As I mentioned back in April, I’m also kicking around the idea of writing in a friend of mine as a character. Which is fraught with peril… I’m not one for playing other people’s characters or putting words in their mouths so to speak, so the perpetual fret over if I’m being faithful to the character might overly complicate things.

  • Final Fantasy XIV

    The latest expansion for the MMO version of Final Fantasy released on the second of July, and brought with it two new races; a lion-like race called the Hrothgar, and a rabbit-like race called the Viera.

    I’ve always been something of a fan of the Viera design; elegant Amazonian warrior rabbits with Icelandic accents!

    Now, Final Fantasy and I have a bit of a love / hate relationship. While I really, really like the storytelling and imaginative setting, I have a difficult time slogging through the leveling treadmill to see it… I just don’t have the time to ‘unlock’ a couple of paragraphs in a 300 page novel every other evening.

    It’s the same reason I don’t do TV shows ‘live’, but instead wait until I can binge-watch the whole season.

    Anyway, with the Viera coming into the picture and Square Enix offering a for-pay instant level 70, I decided to try it again. Meaning that for a mere $25 I could instantly reach within ten levels of the level cap and then casually stroll through the first couple of expansion story-lines for the entertainment.

    Well, okay — it’s not quite that easy; the dungeon and trial content reduces you to the upper-end of its level range… So even though I’m level 60, in a level 40 dungeon my character is reduced to the equivalent power and ability of a well-geared level 40 character.

    So there’s still some challenge there in that you need to beat up bosses and handle their mechanics with 3-7 strangers, and you’re at the boss’s power-level while you’re doing it… But dungeons are kind of fun for this old, experienced MMO player and tend to be 30-ish minute events that I can work into an evening easy enough.

    All of this leads to this evening, where I finished the first story arc; the one the game re-released with called “A Realm Reborn” — and it was really good.

    The reason it’s called “A Realm Reborn” is that when FF14 “1.0” released back in 2010 it was a train wreck and Square Enix eventually shut it down. 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j5v8jlndM — is the ‘end of the world’ cinematic from “1.0”.

    Not accepting the failure, Square Enix set about re-making the game; taking the cataclysmic ending story they created to shut down the world and based a second era on it. And in 2013 Square Enix re-released the game… Which resulted in a new video that adds a bit from the fade-to-white of the first one: https://youtu.be/1xOOFCltZuc?t=336

    Since the re-release there have been several huge story arcs; Heavensward, Stormblood, and the one that just came out — Shadowbringers… So I have quite a bit more adventuring to do!

    FF14 “2.0” is actually really well done, and I recommend it for anyone looking for a nice MMO full of nice people.

    And hey — if you happen to decide to play, let me know and I’ll be happy to help out!

  • Update…

    It’s been about a month since the last installment of my ongoing journey through this thing we call life.

    The fencing down south happened a month quicker, and a thousand dollars more expensive, than projected — but it’s done. So everything is cleaned up (there was a dilapidated shack in the east 40 that I had buried) and fenced up now.

    I had to drive down there on the 3rd to talk to the attorney and go over the stipulations on the purchase; the fellow I’m buying the land from wants right of first refusal if I sell it, and there was some verbiage for the easement through the neighboring property… My gate comes off the side of their driveway, so it’s not a complicated situation fortunately.

    The attorney is an interesting fellow; he’s in his 70’s and once upon a time worked at NASA Houston.

    Anyway, the adjustments to the language for the deed required some re-writing, but that should be done by next week and then the deed will get re-signed, filed, and I’ll finally own what I agreed to purchase about a year ago.

    Huzzah for governmental efficiency!

    Once the ink is dry and the paper filed in whatever antique cabinet they use down there in Walsenburg, then I have to start on foundation work…

    As I’m only planning on a ‘manufactured home’ (aka; trailer), the foundation should be pretty easy — like concrete slab easy… But once again the governmental machine is involved and I have to get an engineer to do a soil compression and irrigation study, have an engineer bless the location, get another engineer to design the foundation, yet another engineer to doodle out the utility connections, and get it all rubber stamped by Walsenburg before I can actually do anything.

    You know; spend thousands to get permission to spend thousands.

    I’m not holding my breath, but if I can get all of the above engineering and rubber stamping done before winter then next year I might be able to pour concrete. Once there is a foundation on the property that’s enough to generate an address, and then I can transfer things to that address where stuff is far, far less expensive.

    For example; moving my car from “Denver Tech Center” to “20 Miles West of Nowhere” reduces my insurance cost by about 30%, and my tax/title costs by roughly 50%.

    Granted, this cost reduction is minuscule compared to the costs of getting the address to get the cost reduction — but I’ll take what I can get.