Accountability post 29th Jan

Late finish - just got back in from club having had my Night Watch roundly trounced by Grahame's Wildings.... typical Grahame force, lots of annoying missile troops in woods :D

Today? Today I did my taxes! Go me! Also went out, test drove and placed the deposit on (so, pretty much, bought) Anne a new (to her) car (the old one's a write-off) with which she is absolutely delighted, and I did manage to sort out printing quotes for various size print runs of a certain 72 to 96 page colour paperback book that you're all interested in.

The good news? You'll be able to buy a printed copy. In colour.

Tomorrow I'm in London all day for an interview, so don't expect much.

Accountability update 27 Jan 2018

Apologies for missing yesterday - three different recruiters decided they wanted to talk to me about jobs. After several go-arounds explaining what my plans were, and why they want to let me telecommute, I think I have one very good lead, and certainly another that's worth following to the next step. After that? Off to play a gig, and back home at 0030 or so. This rock and roll? Definitely a young man's game: I ache today!

Anyway:
Compendium:

• Finished the master province table barring some final details in the Irish and Scots provinces

 Club:

• Big committee meeting. Lots of action items that I'm slowly walking through.

Compendium update/accountability post 24th Jan

Busy day today, in between feeding tea to the builders and answering 'so, where do you want this?' questions.

The Compendium is now up to 60 pages and just shy of 20,000 words. I'm anticipating about another dozen or so pages, I think, but could be mistaken. Today's achievements:

• Added another Rich Clarke article (player notes) to the Appendices. As a note, these aren't as easy as they might sound, as they're not just a cut and paste job: they need formatting to match the rest of the book, editing to remove references to them being a blog post or standalone article, and sometimes also removing or rewriting a chunk of the pre/postamble, and invariably re-punctuating (missing commas!) and proof-reading.
• Added a chunk of stuff to the introduction.
• Moved a couple of things into the Appendices where I think they sit better, including the master terrain table, which has now become the master province table and includes resources and fortification levels.
• Started adding data to the new columns in the master province table.
• Reformatted everything that broke as a side-effect of the above!

Major outstanding tasks left:

• Finish the master province table
• Two Raid scenarios to write up properly, so I can start playtesting them
• More thinking about Battles
• Import the useful names table from the Lard Island site
• Finish off the Characters section
• Finish the 'campaign flowchart' Appendix
• Start deciding on quotes, 'fillos' and photos to fill up end-of-page spaces

and a few other odds and sods

Freyja's Wrath Kickstarter

Bad Squiddo Games have started another Kickstarter, and this one is right up my street. And I quote:

"You want a whole army of kick arse shieldmaidens? Well, hello. These are suitable for both Dark Ages and Fantasy wargaming, with some of the units and characters also being versatile for a whole number of uses. The core troops are historical dark age (but cool and interesting enough to be used with fantasy) with a mythological twist with some of the characters. All the crazy stuff is rooted in Norse Mythology. And following Bad Squiddo tradition - yes we have some adorable critters!"

They are really really nice sculpts, and are of fairly generic usefulness in any Dark Age or fantasy arms, and I want them!

Pledged. Go thou and do likewise.

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Accountability 
Compendium: research. Ho. Hum. Tomorrow,  a BIG table edit.
Club: swearing a LOT at various WordPress plugins that don't do what I want despite advertising that they do.

"Setting the Scene" book - act now if you haven't bought it!

If you haven't bought a copy of Pat (Silver Whistle)'s stunning scenery book, Setting the Scene, I have good and bad news.

The bad news is it's sold out (although I suppose from Pat's point of view that could be construed as good news!)

The good news is that they're planning a reprint if there is enough interest. If you go to the link from the book title, you can register an interest, but don't hang around as they're only letting this run for a week or so.

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Accountability update:
Compendium: Google research into provinces. Lots of it. :D

I'm going to have to take a day out sometime to do my taxes before the end of the month.
Also, please remember you have until Feb 1 to enter my 750K page view draw for a £20 TFL voucher.

Three-quarters of a million page views giveaway...

You know, I have to admit when I started this I wasn't expecting quite that many, even if there's been the odd hiatus to posting here and there. A huge thank you to everyone who's posted comments and encouragement, be it here, Twitter or FB. It's certainly helped me grow as a writer in all styles. But wow. 750,000! In just over 7 1/2 years. Not too shabby.

So, with that in mind, it's giveaway time!

How to enter?

• Comment here for one entry to win a £20 Too Fat Lardies gift voucher. 
• Share, and link to your share in the comment, for a second entry.
• And what the heck, I'm shameless - link to my Mill House Studios (again with proof) site for a third entry.

The winning entry will be picked randomly on Feb 1 at 12 noon.

And yes, here's some Kate, because... well, milestone = Kate. Armour somewhat interestingly implausible, but, hey, it's the Underworld universe. I am starting to run out of good action movies with her in, mind :D

So, I'm also going to repeat a set of questions I posted back when I broke a 100 day posting streak, so you actually have something to comment about:

• What would you like to see more of on the blog, if anything?
• What would you like to see less of on the blog, if anything?
• Anything I'm not blogging about you'd like to challenge me to?

Accountability for today: zip bar this post, because all day band rehearsal, and I am shattered :D

Well, that was a washout...

Jolted rather rudely out of bed by a very large bang under the window.

I know that looks like a nuke going off over South Peterborough, but in fact it's the sun shining straight up our road and straight into the eyes of someone who didn't see Anne's empty parked car....

So Anne has my car for the day, and I've spent the entire day playing phone tag with insurers, repair shops and car hire. To add insult to injury (or perhaps more accurately the other way round) I pulled a calf muscle chasing after the car hire bloke to get him to park in the right place. Ow.

Managed to get some club admin done while waiting for phone calls and people to ring the doorbell, and added a couple of Firefly pieces to the Mill House Studios site. It's something, I guess.

Accountability post 18th Jan

Phew. I have a phone again with a working touch screen. Definitely among the more serious of First World Problems, that :D (and another two hours of driving around Peterborough and moaning at Halfords about my non-working hands-free kit (now I have a phone to prove it's not working!)).

Compendium:

Just to whet your appetite, here's the draft cover.

• Much head scratching over trying to tidy up the campaign flow section, and figuring out how to reduce it to an 'every campaign month' section without it starting to look like a 'pick your path to adventure' book ("If the British have won, turn to paragraph 4.1") :D Copious notes and a rough outline.
• Decided how to deal with Rich's "Meaty Dux" article from the 2012 Summer Special, which is really just about adding a level of detail to the defences for each province. And means I have to completely re-format and probably re-title the blasted Terrain table again, adding two more columns - made a start on this. Swore a lot.
• Re-formatted the record sheets section to be on white backgrounds for ease of printing or photocopying.

I have set an unofficial deadline of the end of the first week in February to get this to the point where I can punt it at a first set of proof-readers. (I know who they are, so please don't ask yet. Your turn will come!)

Mill House Studios

• Did the necessary Wordpress magic to hook the site up to FB and Twitter.
• Dug out some of my bits of game-related fiction and added them to the site. If after reading them, you would like to consider commissioning me to write game-related fluff for your rulebook or supplement, get in touch!

Tomorrow, barring interruptions (which there have been far too many of this week), is a serious Compendium day. The taxman can wait till Monday :D

Mill House Studios / Accountability post 17 Jan

Thus proving that no logo design survives contact with the WordPress template. :D

My wargames writer for hire site is now up, and I'll be registering with HMRC as a sole trader (alongside any future full-time developer work) sometime before October.

How's it going to work? Well, the blog will stay here: it's where its always been and I see no reason to move it. The Mill House Studio site exists to gather together and showcase published stuff I've done for magazines etc, and will also include the 3D printing services, web and design work, audio, etc.

Which pretty much sums up today's accountability post, after quite a bit of pondering things through yesterday: I designed a logo and built a website.

Cryptic accountability post for 16th Jan

Accountability post for 15th Jan

[Okay that answers the nagging question I had when I woke up this morning: no I didn’t hit publish on this post last night. :)]

Late start, because I stayed up far far too late watching the Vikings beat the Saints last night. (One of the perks of not having to be up early on a Monday just at the moment!)

Day then royally messed up by iPhone touchscreen packing up, much faffing around trying to persuade it to work for long enough to let me back it up. On the good side, my man Tony thinks it's a 30quid fix if I'm lucky, and I get to go visit him again tomorrow. If I'm not lucky, time for a new phone :(

Compendium progress: largely note-taking and thinking today. Had a long think (and talk with Tom at the club) about battles again. While I think we have a kind of solution that improves on what's in the rulebook, it doesn't quite have the right feel. Need to think some more.

Also, club scenery audit, so I came home with a box of stuff needing repair.

Accountability post for 14th Jan

I'm allowed a day mostly off, right? It is Sunday, after all!

A bit of restructuring and reformatting (Mac OS X Pages is brilliant for that) of the Compendium, and for those who missed it, I gave my writing chops a workout and wrote the next piece for the Linnius Campaign, at least partly inspired by Bad Squiddo's figure range.

Oh, and I built Warbases's sightscreen from their Cricket Pavilion kit. Need it for Dead's Army :D I'd upload a photo, but the touchscreen on my iPhone seems to have literally just packed up.

Accountability post for 13th Jan

Well, that didn't go as planned!

Responded to a post on the Facebook Dux Britanniarum page for Dux stuff in the TFL Specials, to find there were two articles I had omitted from consideration due to not being aware they were Rich's.

(Note: I'm not necessarily restricting additional stuff in the Compendium to Rich's, but I do already have his blanket permission, and I know that in general his additions are designed to fit in relatively seamlessly with the original rules. That said, if you have an article or scenario you think adds to 'core' Dux or Raiders and would fit in the Compendium, let's talk. I can't guarantee I'll use it, as I have a definite vision for certain sections of the book, but it can't hurt to ask.)

Today, then, I spent tidying, condensing and editing the weather rules from the Christmas 2012 Special: there's a lot of additional descriptive text which has a place in a Special article that really doesn't need to be in a rules compendium, and of course cutting and pasting text and tables from a PDF always leads to entertaining issues.

Tomorrow, back to consolidating the campaign advancement tables, including Rich's other article, into Appendix 1.

"Setting The Scene" book, accountability post for 12th Jan

Oddly quiet day, apart from showing Reuben round the building works and feeding the builders tea.

I have been mostly doing something I should have done a while ago, namely re-reading the two Dux Britanniarum books and making notes: had an awful moment of wondering whether I'd screwed something up in our campaign to my detriment, but sadly not :D I aim to spend a chunk of tomorrow making sure I have the rules from all three books for a Lord's advancement properly amalgamated.

Other than that, seems to have been a day for life-related admin (oh the joys of being technically unemployed).

Today's arrival, though?

Silver Whistle (Pat Smith)'s rather fabulous "Setting The Scene" book, on terrain building, specifically a winter table.

Gorgeous pictures, and I've always found his scenery work an inspiration - check out his SP/War of The Roses table. Recommended buy, definitely, with just one teensy criticism: given the amount of white space available on all the 103 pages, it might perhaps have been a kindness to those of us with failing or recovering eyesight to up the font size on the text a bit. But that's my only gripe on an otherwise absolutely beautiful book.

Accountability post for 11th Jan

Probably a sign that I've been busy that all you're getting is an accountability post today.

So:

Compendium:

• Quite a long tidy-up pass on formatting. I know I kinda don't need to bother yet, but seeing what I have done neatly formatted to match the look of the rulebook and Raiders is somehow motivating;
• Extended the 'Campaign Chronicles' section;
• Completed first draft of one of the remaining Raid scenarios.

Club:

• Booked us to take the infamous 'Dead's Army' game to RoBiN in Nottingham next month. (Which necessitated adding a bunch of stuff to the todo list including building the Warbases cricket pavilion...)
• Placed an order with PE2 Collectables for some Warlord Home Front bits (one each Operation Sea Lion - Defenders of the Realm, Smith Gun, Northover Projector and Blacker Bombard). Some of these may or may not put in an appearance in Dead's Army.

It is freakin' 'uuuuuge.

Other:

• Unpacked the Mythic Battles: Pantheon KS box to check contents. Unlike Neil's and Mike's, it all arrived in one 75 x 55 x 50 cm box. Now I just have to decide what the heck to do with it.

Accountability post for 10th Jan

I'm making a policy of keeping this as a separate post when the regular day's post is a battle report or part of a series.

So...

No Dux Brit progress today, barring a check on stuff to do with physical printing, due to...

• Setting up a merchandise store for Peterborough Wargames Club members using clothes2order.com (highly recommended in the UK - very little effort once you have suitable graphics, and they'll run a store for you without having to do that thing where you do the whole 'ok, who wants a shirt, what size?' herding cats thing before you can place a bulk order and someone inevitably asks for one the day after you put the order in....);
• Building a website for our local Neighbourhood Council;
• A Meeples recording session.

Back to the Compendium tomorrow.