Recently in Misc Category
I'm in the doghouse, and I deserve to be. I'm not sure I'll make the dog collar a permanent fashion accessory (we're pretty casual around here for such elaborate bling), but it is appropriate in the short term. When clients ask me why I'm wearing a dog collar with a tag labeled "Providence," I'll explain to them that some really important people wanted to remind me that my clients are taking me away from what I'm supposed to be doing.
One day, I'll tell you the story about how the Poet snagged the Puppetmaster, the Sculptor and the Cultist up into a mad scientist project, all while Sploit got sucked into some kind of psychological testing project. Lesson: even a deep team bench can be devestated by the realities of people chasing a living (the flip side being, of course, it is so much easier if someone is paying you a wage and telling you it is your job.)
Solutions: an even deeper team bench and a recontemplation of what it means to provision them. Armchair quarterbacking yourself mid-recovery is gauche, though, and I'm already in the Lovecraftian doghouse. Why bring a knife to a rocket propelled grenade launcher fight?
Your outpouring of friendly support is amazing, and has barely felt like stalking at all! I'm humbled by it and don't take any of you for granted. I've missed you too. The pre-production wheels are already in motion of making sure we earned that support, although the proof will be in the pudding.
It all started when that strange, short new staff member reported in for duty just before the holidays. It claimed it came from the "home office" and that it was paid for out of someone else's budget, but it refused to give us a picture of when it was 12 years old for our staff page (claims that was before photography was invented) and didn't want a phone extention. Mike tried to distract him with the "origami-a-day" calendar, but he was more interested in our production plans for Book Three.
I think we've managed to keep his creepy tentacles out of the storyline, but I totally blame him for falling behind on the meta materials, including the amazing stories you've been telling. I'm told they are calling it the Cthecret Cthanta Worm. We call it Worst Intern Ever, but only when we think it isn't watching us.
Creative players keep us honest:
if we mess up, then they'll be on us!
The Dog of Dreams
wields giggling screams:
just witness their Limerick contest!
We hate to show our cowardice,
but their humor comes sans notice!
We'd join them in play
but they keep us away
with their dreaded Terms of Service.
Can we survive the horrible pun?
Is there escape from what has begun?
Or have they unleashed
some horrible beast?
Damn, you guys are fun.
You can join in the chat using the ARGNet chat, just enter your nickname and use stfeline for the channel. If you'd like more detailed instructions, check out this unfiction thread. For those already familiar with IRC just head on over to irc.chat-solutions.org and join #stfeline.
We hope to see you there, but if you can't make it or would like to revisit the evening, we'll be sure to link to a log of the chat from this post after the fact.
Shared nightmares were a major theme of B.A. Saint-Feline's journey in "The Providence Prophecies," and participants emailed and called in their own nightmares (both real and imagined) to B.A. continuously as the nearly five-month story unfolded. We used a service called JConnect to manage the phone calls -- part of that service includes voice mails emailed to you as MP3s. Hundreds and hundreds of MP3, each more frightening and disturbing than the last.
GMD Studios Lead Developer Jim Rhoades took on the task of starting to craft all that audio into an exquisite corpse, a collaborative narrative of "The Providence Prophecies" (at least a part of it) as told through the dream calls. A lot of cataloging and editing later, he had reduced it to a chilling 12 minutes plus extended audio collage of atmospheric crafting courtesy of the wonderfuly deconstructed remixes of John Vanderslice's in "MGM Endings" (a free download from John's site) -- catch him on tour now (I will on Monday.)
Pieces of this are going to end up in other places (including the new Eldritch Errors site redesign), but the "extended remix" is just for fans: consider it the first installment of the Eldritch Errors Soundtrack (and not the only installment you'll get before the interlude is over.)
Eldritch Errors Soundtrack
Track 1 - "The Providence Nightmares" (16.45 MB MP3)
As has become tradition in the Alternate Reality Gaming community, we will be joining the players for an IRC chat about the experience. Of course, anyone with interest in the project is welcome to attend and we hope that you'll be able to make it.
The chat will be held Monday, September 10 (yes, that's tonight!) at 9:30 PM EDT / 6:30 PM PDT in #stfeline on irc.chat-solutions.org. If you don't have an IRC client, you can connect to that server through both unfiction and ARGNet. For more information, check out this unfiction thread.
We're really excited about finally getting to chat without the curtain coming between us, but as this is only an interlude, there will be many questions that we cannot answer. We do hope that you will understand and not throw virtual tomatoes at us in return for the inevitable winks and dodges. Don't worry, if we can't discuss it, it just means that you'll get your answer in a far more exciting way. There's still plenty of interesting things to talk about and, I'm sure, some of the discussion will go on to inspire future posts here at Schmeldritch.
We hope to see you there tonight, and we'll link to the log of the chat from this message after the fact.