I’m Making a Podcast!

In this month’s “proof of life” post, I’m pleased to announce a podcast called “Here All Week.” It’s a new quarantine-inspired conversation with my friend Kelly Wright, about media, current events, goofy stuff, and what we did (or didn’t do) this week. We will release a new episode once a week on Wednesday-ish, and we’ve done three so far. That means we just need another ten thousand episodes before we know what we are doing.

I’m currently winding down the final days of the Lords of Vegas Underworld Kickstarter campaign, a new thing from Lone Shark Games. I’m co-designer of the game and its expansions, and I helped Mike with the videos for the campaign (which you will see clearly immediately because I’m in most of them). The campaign ends on May 21.

Quarantine life has been a mixed bag. I’ve been at home for seven weeks now, watching the summer conventions collapse like dominoes, and playing too much Animal Crossing. That game could not have been launched at a better time, as the whole world sits at home and grows fruit trees for Tom Nook. We actually have two copies in this house because (ironically) I was convinced that I would not have time to play this game except when traveling.

While I’m incapable of designing new games in the absence of playtesters, that’s clearly not the only thing slowing me down. I’m also failing to make much headway on projects that I could do alone. I’m dabbling in fiction, mostly backstories for games, but I have nothing ready for the public. But things move pretty slow in 2020.

Mostly I’ve been doing the usual quarantine things: baking bread, cleaning the basement, re-learning how to use my power tools. The podcast is at least a nice new thing where I can talk about all that other stuff, and then send it out into the world. It’s almost like interaction.

On the game side, I am actually making halting progress on After the Fog, after getting some useful feedback pre-lockdown that suggested some pretty deep cuts to the core. I manage to make a new build and test it with my family about once every two weeks. So on that schedule, I should be finished by 2049, about the same time that Las Vegas is nothing but orange dust and radioactive bees.

Like all of you, I have rediscovered my love for wasting an afternoon making bread.

Bonus: I learned two things about bread this week. For years I had interpreted the “punch down” instruction as “punch down and knead again,” and in some recipes I’m sure that’s how it goes. But I read this particular recipe more carefully today and it just said “punch down and let rise again,” so I didn’t do the usual step of re-kneading it and thereby working in more flour. The result was a wetter loaf and a better second rising.

Also, while I used to use the most sparing amount of oil when greasing the loaf pans, I’ve recently learned that the correct amount of oil is actually “way too much,” because the extra basically fries the crust to a crackly finish like Chicago-style pizza.

So yea, bread.