Prospect and Retrospect

Apparently the new year is the time to reflect on the past and the future of one's blog. So, two weeks in, here goes:

POST FREQUENCY

Ten posts in 2013. Now I am never going to be posting every day, or even every week, but surely I can manage once a month or better. I hereby resolve to do so. At least as an average (the summer months may be quiet for the foreseeable future).

POST CONTENT

I originally intended this blog to be quite narrowly-focused on the ethnography of the Tsandali Clan. Secondarily perhaps on Tekumelani naval warfare. I guess I have kept to that mandate fairly well. But I do suffer from distractibility: new ideas that get ahold of me and push away older projects. The Tsandali monograph is a prime example, relegating my naval warfare piece to long-term draftdom.

More recently, the map of the First Imperium, an idea that has been lurking for about six months and took over this fall. Actually, I had intended to work up a whole gamers guide to the First Imperium, pulling together what little we know about cities, clans, deities, history, architecture etc. and fleshing out the rest with unofficial fluff from my own imagination. The map was only supposed to be a part of that. But I really don't want to add any major projects until I have finished something. So for now, I am going to stop with the map. Maybe a gamers guide one day. Maybe not.

The art element has been fun. I like learning more and more about how to draw, and the blog has forced me to tinker more. Although, according to my countryman at the Tao of D&D what I derive from it is likely classified as "satisfaction" rather than "fun." Perhaps he is right. It is satisfying, not so much because I am ever satisfied with the result, but because each time I finish a map or a picture I learn something that opens up new possibilities for the next one.

LINKS

I really have to update my links. Some sites, some yahoo groups, have disappeared over the last year.

Most notably and most recently, Tekumel.com itself!!! WTF?

There are also some part-time Tekumel blogs I have discovered, and I should add those to my list.

On a related note, you may notice that I am not listed as "following" any blogs. That is because following/joining seems to require Friend Connect or Google+ and I am not yet convinced I really want to go there. But make no mistake, if you have a Tekumel related blog and I know about it, I am following you!

I follow some non-Tekumel gaming-related blogs as well, just because they have some quality of coolness. Maybe at some point I will post about the ones I follow and why.

PROJECTS AND PLANS

Okay, so here are my Tekumel-related plans for the coming year, more-or-less in order of priority:

1) Get back into some sculpting. I am determined to complete a portrait figure for a certain warrior-priest of Vimuhla. I expect I will do it in polymer clay, since it is a material I have at hand, and understand. But I would rather experiment with kneadatite, if I can find it somewhere I can just go to the store and pick it up.

2) Complete the environmental setting for Tenkare Prefecture. The complex tropical forest ecosystem of the Kikertla Hills still needs to be finalized. I have reduced my remaining art ambitions for this section to one cross-section of the valley, and one wildlife illustration. I do have a sketch of two little creatures chattering in the trees, but I haven't really tried to draw Tekumelani animals before, so it is a challenge finishing this.

3) Getting back to the Naval essay. I have no further artwork ambitions other than some simple maps of sea battles, so it is all about text, but still. Ever since I started on the Tsandali, I am afraid they (the Tsandali) have priority.

4) Project X. Something much more directly game-oriented than anything else I have even considered producing (I have not been an active gamer for 30 years). But I don't even want to think about this until I have some closure on my other more fluff-focused interests. So enough about that. Probably not this year.