Playing With Work

Before I went to sleep last night, I told myself I'd work a bit more on the whole "Terani" project I'm doing for my tabletop RPG campaign.

Normally, whenever I get focused on a project as fun as this one, I get easily distracted by some other form of amusement. I might be typing up a storyline or developing stats for (originally not-vital) NPCs when all of a sudden I get caught up in one line of thought (e.g.: How much damage would a semi-automatic Steyr AUG A1 do in-game using the d20 Modern system?). Initial research done on the Internet soon has me winding up at TV Tropes looking up something completely off topic like the "Funny" page of Game of Thrones - all within a span of five minutes. While entertaining in its own right (hearing sweet Lena Headey constantly insulting Joffrey with curses in the second episode's commentary: frakking hilarious, especially when you consider who she plays), it usually puts me behind.

The above paragraph is true - it only took me two minutes to type it out, yet the overall time spent using those two minutes ended up being a half-hour - getting the link for Cersei Lannister somehow got me to read TV Tropes - and as I typed this out I kept switching from Blogger to Tropic Thunder's trope page. *shakes head in amusement*

Okay. I'm getting distracted. I need to focus. *deep breath*

Anyway. I said I was going to put myself to work on Terani, and here I am, typing things up and... and, uh... *looks below*

This is "work." It's me taking a picture of (Lego!)me taking a picture of... me. Photoception?

...what the frak am I doing...!?





CURRENT MUSIC:
Bear McCreary - "Apocalypse, Part I"
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan & Razor Original Soundtrack

Now that I'm relaxed and ready to type a bunch of things out, it's time to get the gears grinding at a work pace. That means it's time for something ethnic, heavy, and aurally damning. By that last part, I mean "music that says '(Humanity:) you're frakked' and 'taking care of business' all at once" - and unless you've done work related to television or movie scores, that's kind of hard to pull off. (Wait, this paragraph looks oddly familiar...)

Truth be told, I wasn't planning on typing a whole lot today - I just figured I'd play with my Lego collection all day and what not work on the Terani campaign like I told myself I would and call it a day well-spent. Since today's activities involved planning death on a massive scale, there was only one track I deemed worthy of getting me in the mood for war at the time: "Apocalypse, Part I."

Used in Battlestar Galactica: The Plan as the Cylons position their entire fleet over each of the twelve colonies, this musical piece takes a heavy-driven rock guitar riff and the wailing harmonics of an electric violin, combining them with the ethnic sounds of pulsing taiko and a singing duduk. Combined together, the instruments give off an ambiance that seems to passively alert us that something apocalyptic is about to occur.

And as Terani prepares itself for her first world war, I couldn't help but compare myself to the Cylons. We're both orchestrating the events that will culminate in the deaths of millions of people. We're mercilessly doing this in cold blood because we believe it's the right thing to do. Most importantly, we're conducting our genocides with awesome things - the Centurions and skinjobs get cool spaceships, and I get to demonstrate my story's deaths with Lego!

Genocide never rocked out so well.


Jeremy Zuckerman - "Firebending Training"
The Legend of Korra: Original Music from Book One

I felt in the mood for something that wasn't traditional. By that, I mean something I'm not normally used to hearing. And that's where The Legend of Korra's soundtrack comes in - because it was something music fans couldn't legally get their hands on until recently.

This short, fast-paced track aurally combines everything you'd expect from the fantastical world that Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra have created. Instruments from Asia (especially 'dem taiko!) mesh with a rhythm to create a piece well-suited for the scene - in this case: a combat one. Very fitting, especially when it's used as background for Avatar Korra's final firebending test early on in the first episode. It may only be a minute and fifteen seconds long, but it accomplishes so much that the listener could care less about the length.

There's several reasons why I have this soundtrack on this year's birthday wish list - and "Firebending Training" is one of them.





Good day there, reader! Time for me to get to work typing things out and planning. And by that, I mean I'll be playing.

This is how I imagine I look whenever I'm playing working with my Lego collection.

Yes, that's what I'm doing today. Despite what it may look like, I'm actually being productive with this. I told myself in the past that if I were ever in charge of a tabletop campaign, I'd use my growing Lego collection to represent a good portion of the game. Earlier this year, I wound up getting assigned to make a campaign of my own. And so my watch begins. And here we are...

Initially, that only meant character miniatures, solely because customizing your own minifigure seems a lot cooler than using a character sheet's info to picture the guy/gal in question. For one of my friend's Star Wars roleplaying campaigns, I actually suggested that we use my minifigures to represent us, and after I proved it by creating my character (a Cerean techie with insane piloting skills), the rest of the group quickly followed suit (using my pieces, of course).

With "Terani," I figured I'd do the same thing. A thought occurred to me, though: maybe I could represent the scope of battle as a whole with support from my Lego collection. By this I mean creating things other than characters - vehicles such as tanks or IFVs, props such as field guns or a makeshift radio tower, and (given enough time and pieces,) mock sets of where the characters are.

Soldiers hold a parade march in front of a famous political leader.
(I haven't exactly figured out if she might be anyone important just yet.)

I feel that doing this would help bring the characters and the story to life. Sure, a vivid description of the lush and tranquil valley sounds great, but no one wants to hear two minutes of scenery porn only to discover that there's a large force of bandits on horseback headed straight for the village. There's a saying out there: "show, don't tell" - and with these Legos I can certainly do that.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go ahead and keep play- er, working. Yeah...