Collateral benefits

One of my goals behind the decision to write a blog was to relax a bit, to be relieved of the stress of a period where all I am doing all day is work... but in a period of such frentic activity it is very easy to just end up commenting what you are working on. For example, one of the my more time-consuming current endeavours is following the Italian edition of The One Ring rpg, due out by the end of October.
This is quite a funny story... I originally wrote the game in English, but I didn't get to translate it in Italian. In fact, I was very happy to hand out the job to Marco Crosa, one of the best out there, who has been working on Lord of the Rings games since another age of the world. He has done an excellent job, and reading my own words in a different language has been enchanting. His translation has been edited by Amado Angulo, a polyglot Mexican you might know from page 102 of the Loremaster's Book (and whose Distinctive features include 'Keen-eyed' and 'Trusty'), and then finally revised by yours truly. I am also doing the layout work for the books, and today I finished composing the character sheet. Since I was at it, I decided I might try to tweak its layout (by Paul Bourne) a bit, to fix one problem it had: the lack of space to record a character's Cultural Weapon Skill, if he has one (not Paul's fault, but mine!). And to be fair with our English-speaking fans I thought I might do a version in English too...

So, here is a link to a .pdf for my revised version of the character sheet. I'll post a link at Cubicle 7 forums too, so if anyone has any suggestions I'll be happy to read about those there.

TOR character sheet revised

A good read for The One Ring Loremasters

One of the things I will eventually blog about here is my The One Ring game. TOR is a tabletop role-playing game set in Middle-earth, the most famous literary creation of J.R.R. Tolkien, a legendary land known especially through his two masterpieces, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (hopefully I will return later to make amends for such a terrible summary!). The One Ring (a two-books plus maps slipcase) is making its way to game stores in the U.S. and Europe, and deals primarily with the region called Wilderland...

The One Ring at Cubicle 7

Now, writing a rpg is a taxing endeavour, and writing one about such a beloved literary work may be daunting. It took me more that three years, and I used every source I could to provide players with a playable environment. Among my many sources, direct and indirect, I found the writings of Michael Martinez to rank amongst the most insightful, provocative and entertaining. Michael is a true Tolkien enthusiast who combines his scholarly knowledge with a strong creative impulse. Over the years he has written many Tolkien-related essays, always succeeding in saying something interesting and fresh about the chosen subject. His work has certainly been useful to me, and I would have loved to have read the linked piece below before I wrapped up the rpg project, as it deals about one of my favourite ME topics: the unknown life and customs of the Woodmen of Mirkwood. Who has seen my game and read the chapters about Wilderland knows that there is a good deal of non-canon material in there, as Tolkien didn't give us too much to work upon. But he left us with many intriguing tidbits, details that can be connected to paint a wider picture. This is what Michael Martinez does in his piece 'Horror in the Woods', a must-read for every TOR Loremaster out there, ripe for the picking to set an adventure in the land of the Woodmen...

Horror in the Woods

Interesting places I have been this summer (1)

At the end of last August I finally took some days off, and once again headed for Puglia. It's my wife Beatrice's home region, so over time it has become a second home for me too (me and my wife Beatrice go back a long while together now...). It felt like I had my last holiday ages before (and it probably WAS ages before...) so we decided to do something we never did before, maybe also to show off a bit with our daughter Anita.
For starters, we booked a suite in a very nice (and usually expensive, we got it from booking.com) hotel in Lecce called Torre del Parco.
http://www.torredelparco.com/
'Torre' means tower, and the hotel is actually built in an structure dating back to the XV century... Anita was really excited at the idea of staying in a real castle, and the suite was everything we expected a suite in a castle tower to be: an extravagant place of luxury, with a four-poster bed, a large Jacuzzi-style bath (a small swimming pool as far as I am concerned), etc. ...

Anita was beside herself with excitement, and it was difficult to convince her that we actually had to leave the room to visit the city... luckily after much coaxing and bribing we succeeded, and spent some lovely hours in the city center: Lecce is one of the nicest towns in the south of Italy, with many archeological and architectural sights and places where to simply hang out and relax. When we finally headed to the hotel we were really happy at the prospect of resting under the vaulted ceiling of our unconventional suite... unfortunately, something went wrong - at least, for me...

I don't remember at what time it started, but that night I experienced the worst nightmare I had in years, possibly in my entire life. Just remembering it makes my skin crawl and look behind my back as I write. I don't remember the details, but it was me, Beatrice and Anita, we where walking together heading somewhere, and Anita lagged behind, so I was forced to stop once in a while and see what she was up to... and there she was, stopping on her tracks as I looked at her, and then suddenly moving very fast toward us, "The Ring"-like, when I was just turning my face away, so that only with the corner of my eye I could see her face twist into the most horrible demon-face, Linda Blair style! I was terrified, and slowly resurfaced from my sleep, only to enter in the worst half-sleep state I can remember, where I was conscious to be in the castle suite, but still capable to conceive that some terrible possession might have really occurred, and that my demon-daughter could be anywhere in the vast, silent and dark suite, as I curled in my bedsheets...

Needless to say, when I finally rose the next morning I didn't feel exactly that my money was well spent in the castle suite! Anita was as lovely as ever, but it took a while for me to dispel the scary images from my mind. I even spent some time considering to inquire about any possible hauntings in the hotel, but then concluded that it wasn't probably something the hotel staff might have been interested in discussing. I certainly didn't feel like talking about it at length yet. Writing about it now revived something of the thrill I felt (nothing even nearly pleasant...) but I felt it was worth recording somewhere!

Oh, why am I writing in English? Well, part of my job requires me to write, read and speak English, so I figured that blogging in English would help me with that. An additional stressful requirement I am enforcing on myself to get some discipline in my life...

There's a first time...

So here I am, talking (writing) to myself... a weak attempt at organising my work and time spent on the web. Will the effort needed to keep a blog reinforce my working output? We'll see... but I felt I had to try, I spend already so much time writing imaginary blogs in my head that I might as well write a real one. Will anyone read it? For the moment, that's not really the point. So. Let it begin. Press the orange button.