Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Stop Being Crazy In There!

Chaos Star
As you can tell from the frequency of posts, I have a lot of insanity going on. Where to begin? 

I'm teaching online classes all this week while trying to get my classroom up to NYSED standards. Social distancing for special edu students and all that jazz. Plus there is a ventilation standard, which is wholly dependent on a building inspection that no one at the school has any control of. I don't know what kind of HVAC we have... But that's not all, we have a mandated break starting next Monday which lasts until the first-day summer school could start. So, I might be doing a lot of work for not much benefit. And that's not all... We are taking in new students, who really want to be correctly placed in a quality school by the summer session, which means no one is assured of that mandated break. No pressure! 

In more minor news, the screen door latch fell off my front door and there are no replacements anywhere in the City of Buffalo. WTH? I had to order one online. I'm now checking USPS tracking like an eBay fanatic. In the meantime, we can't use our front door, even to check the mail... 

Anyway, I just want to post a reiteration that if you would like a link, a review, or whatever, go ahead and contact me at phil<zot :)>viverito at gmail<dot>com or leave me a note in the comments or contact me via mewe.com or facebook. I'm always happy to link share. 

At some point last week I had a spammer come in and drop a link. It doesn't happen that often but the person was an total asshat about it. What is really rotten about the whole thing is, he was promoting a product that pertains to my website and looks super cool. This isn't like the guy that tried to link his consignment store to my series called 52 Weeks of Magic, as if the items in his shop were real magic items. This product is actually way better than that and it is linked to another product I am ridiculously happy with. 

The name of the company is 3dMakerWorks.com and like the name implies, they produce 3d printed miniatures. The designs are by Fat Goblin Games, who is a great content producer on DriveThruRPG among other places. I purchased some clipart from them but then found it didn't match my setting, so now it's hanging on my wall as a great D&D themed piece of art. Great stuff. 

Anyway, what about these minis? 3dMakerworks.com has dozens of minis for sale. They look great for any D&D campaign. In perusing the link the spammer left, I thought, "Gee, I haven't ordered figures in a while." $30 later, I have an order for 7 Lizardfolk Warriors, 7 Ranged Skeletons, and 8 Melee Skeletons. 

(Jan 2023 update, all of the links are dead, so I removed them. Sorry.) 

Hmm... Damn it! I fell for the spam!




Thursday, June 11, 2020

Episode 003 - The Tomb of Horrors Sucks and Everybody Should Be a Bard

Welcome Back! What more can I say after that title? 


I have some new music so let's all give thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the following tracks:

Parting of the Ways - Part 2 Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Parting of the Ways - Part 1 Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

All hail Mr. MacLeod!

In this episode, I wax poetic about AD&D 1e Bards and Rage Against the worst module ever, Tomb of Horrors. 


Wednesday, June 10, 2020

sketching again

Just quick sketch today to test out the new blogger app and redesign. I also added two older sketches. 

There used to be a 400k limit on pictures, but it looks like that's gone. 

Yeah!

The Tek - May 2020

I had a very good month despite some hectic issues at home. I launched a new product called The Hex Pack. It was the best launch ever. 

May 2020 Downloads via DriveThruRPG:
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 6
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 6
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 6
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 5
The Hex Pack - 94
Swashbucklers Character Class - 3

I have hit my goal of of 100 downloads for every item, except Swashbucklers. It's more niche than niche, I think. These stats are as of 6/10, so they are higher than expected. 

AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 106
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 146
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 136
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 265
The Hex Pack - 104
Swashbucklers Character Class - 98

Webstats look good, but I have no idea why there was a huge spike on May 5th and May 7th. Nothing weird stands out to me. 



Google Analytics Pageviews - 2198
Google Analytics Sessions - 1869
Pageviews per Session - 1.18

I'm stuck at the second episode (not counting the pilot) of "That's Not New". I'm gonna have to kick this into high or drop it. Not sure which. I need some inspiration.