Reading Resolutions '24

I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me

— The Mountain Goats

Last year was tough motivation-wise, but my wife and I did start on Bad Blood, a sequel to our previous set of Shadowrun adventures. WorldEmber, however, was a nightmare. Fortunately I had a Dimi Mission which led to a Primer for the Valley of Plenty and that helped inspire me to make an in-universe primer for Shadowland. Which is something I've been wanting to start on for a while, as I intend to expand it on Holostreets. I covered both primers in a journal post.
But first, let's get into a list of neat articles from WorldEmber. And with one stone, two birds in mind, I used my judging shortlist for that. Of course there were plenty of other neat articles about in the geographical category, but if you get me started we'll be here all year. I won't bore you with the full notes either. So in no particular order, here we go!

WorldAnvil Focus

ㅤ Shadowland
ㅤ Valley of Plenty

Shadowrun Focus

ㅤ Bad Blood
ㅤ Spiel On
ㅤ Holostreets

Other Ideas

ㅤ LARP arsenal
ㅤ Organized office

Showcase

Lessons Learned

The biggest thing is readability. And for that, you don't need fancy layouts or whatnot, just some space to breath. A lot of these articles had a nice structure including images or maps. I don't often use images, but I should look into a few nices ones to reuse. That way, even if it's just a fancy horizontal line, I can really improve how my articles look even without detailed css tweaks.

And then there is tone. Some articles were subtly or explicitly spooky, some came with a humorous narrator. For Shadowland, WorldEmber had me decide on Moenen as my narrative character. He is far from a boring personality, putting his opinions out there for the world to see. For the Valley, I should experiment with the tone, to illustrate the slow descend into despair.

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Resolutions

Gentle Schedule

One of the things that killed my motivation, was just getting stuck then procrastinating. I need to break that habit, but not by overextending myself then blaming myself every time I fall short.
So the plan is to do something nice on a semi-fixed slot every two weeks. Every second Sunday, I am going to work on the project of the month. Just take a few hours and do something I've been wanting to do for a while.

Various Projects

And there are so many projects... There is of course my LARP prep. But more importantly is Holostreets, aka self-published Shadowrun material. Now granted, Bad Blood comes first. But after that...
First of there's my intro scenario Spiel On. I am also considering bringing more-detailed versions of my Adventure April articles to Holostreets. This comes with an overhaul of Shadowland, as a free appetizer. In other words, plenty things to do!

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