AI-generated soundtracks

Amidst all of the talk about the use of AI/Machine Learning to generate content for RPGs, I've only ever heard two forms of media discussed: words, and pictures. Of course, these are the things that RPG books and supplements are made up of, and so it seems obvious to talk about them. But they are not the only form of medium.

Some people set their games to music and sound-effects. Not me, and I've never been sure whether I would want to (background music is such a ubiquitous distraction nowadays, and I think that it detracts from the act of actually sitting down to appreciate good music) and, even so, I imagine it would take an awfully long time to pick out and compile a suitable soundtrack (especially if you are as fussy as me). However, there is clearly a demand for it, and some supplements I have downloaded from itch.io even come with their own soundtracks.

There is a precedent for music set to accompany perilous adventure, and it's in film and TV. It ought to be possible, although not trivial, to train an AI using scripts and soundtracks from the last hundred years of moving pictures, so that it can generate music appropriate to, say, yomping through the mountains, listening carefully at a door, tiptoeing into a darkened room, or fighting with a sodding great dragon. How this is integrated into the game presents another challenge, but it's a challenge similar to that already faced by anyone using music and sound effects to enhance their game: essentially, do you have a backing-track running throughout the whole thing, or do you press the "dragon fight" button to switch on the dragon fight music the instant the party starts to fight the dragon. Again, this problem isn't insurmountable.

So I wonder... is there anyone out there teaching computers to set roleplaying sessions to music?

By the way, I am in the process of writing a book "King Arthur vs Devil Kitteh", and if you could visit the Kickstarter page and sign up to be notified on launch, that would help me an awful lot, thanks! 

AI writing partnerships

The topic of using AI/Machine Learning in TTRPGs just won't go away. Most recently, I see that Monsters and Manuals has declared for the Luddite side. I can certainly appreciate this position from an ethical standpoint, and from an aesthetic standpoint I can see why a person would think that computer-created content lacks soul (and I agree, given the current state of the art, though I think that a computer will learn to mimic soulful words and pictures eventually. The question here is how long "eventually" takes to arrive). 

In the meantime there is a way in which AIs can be used both ethically and soulfully, particularly in the field of writing. And that is by putting a human in collaboration with an AI. Human-to-human  collaborations like this already exist - think of the classic comedy writing duo, or the sitcom "writers' room". Even many RPGs and RPG supplements are created by teams - I'm thinking in particular of Tracy & Laura Hickman, who really shook up the D&D world when they wrote the Desert of Desolation adventure series (and went on to write Ravenloft and then Dragonlace, both of which had an even bigger impact).

So, how about a writing duo, one half of which is a computer? It's fairly easy to picture how this would work: the human writer writes some stuff, feeds it into the computer, the AI riffs on the writer's ideas and style, throwing out new ideas which the human can then either incorporate into the original text, or finesse and publish as an entirely new piece of work.

In fact, this is already happening. My friend Charlene Putney who writes scripts for computer RPGs (including games such as the Divinity series and Baldur’s Gate 3) is one of the people behind a piece of software (currently in beta-testing) called LAIKA, which is intended to do just this. Once you have trained LAIKA, it will make suggestions as you write, throwing up options you may not have thought of, and helping you to break out of writer's block. You can also use pre-trained models in LAIKA if you would like to, say, write like Dostoevsky or Dickens, although that's not something that appeals to me at all (but it might help if you were writing a Dostoevskyan or Dickensian RPG). I have had a quick play with LAIKA, but don't really have enough of my own writing on which to train it. I'm working on that though...

I just started thinking again about this collaborative approach to AI because I revisited my earlier, surprisingly popular blog post "Generating random content for RPGs using Artificial Intelligence" and was impressed at rediscovering the surreal creativity of the prompts I wrote (at the very end of the post) in order to provoke the AI to also be surreal and creative. I don't think that the AI-produced random encounters are as good as the ones which I wrote (please, allow me a moment's immodesty), but the computer also produced some gold dust: I would never in a million years have come up with the idea of a "magical amulet, which will allow the wearer to control any sand-dune within 100 miles" and which an evil wizard is using to slowly bury a village in sand. I could very easily run with just that concept alone, spinning it out into a fully fledged adventure, without any further assistance from the computer.

My project Nanodeities keeps getting kicked further and further into the future, but when I eventually get around to it (and I really do hope to do so) I shall certainly be collaborating with computers, probably in several ways including using both machine learning and procedurally-generated content (my Twitter bot @deitygalaxy currently runs procedurally). In fact, part of the conceit behind Nanodeities is that any tiny sentient entities which are already lurking inside my computer hardware and software (and I'm pretty certain such beings do exist, right?) will be gently pushing the content in whichever direction they see fit.

By the way, I am in the process of writing a book "King Arthur vs Devil Kitteh", and if you could visit the Kickstarter page and sign up to be notified on launch, that would help me an awful lot, thanks! 

Kaverns & Kittens

COMING SOON FROM PEAKRILL PRESS...

Writer Mister Daniel Nathan Sumption and Illustrator Master Maximillian Benjamin Hartley present: KING ARTHUR vs. DEVIL KITTEH, a modern retelling of the medieval story of good King Arthur, and of how he killed a giant cat (how very brave of him!)

This is a genuine medieval tale, and it's about the daftest thing we've read in a long time. We're almost certain that large parts of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail were based upon it.  It was first written down (in French) before the year 1250 CE, when it appeared within "The Old French Vulgate Cycle", and was translated into English as part of what is now know as "The Prose Merlin" around 1450 CE. Since then, it's become remarkably obscure (Monty Python aside), and we feel that its time it was unearthed again. And so, we're turning it into a beautiful illustrated book.

Arthur and Merlin unite Albion

Like we said, it's the story of Arthur, Albion's legendary king, killing a whopping great cat (a kitten, even!) on the advice of his wizard Merlin. There's a lot more to it than that but, I mean, do you really need to know more. Of course it includes the Devil Kitteh Origin Story, there's also the tale of the time Arthur decided to become Roman Emperor, trust us, there's plenty for you to sink your feline teeth into.

Arthur and Merlin arrive in Europe

We want to make a book as barmy and dark as the original tale. Inspired by kids books of the 1970s, with their weird spooky vibe and folk-artish illustrations, it will be a tale for children, adults, and immortals alike. Taking inspiration from Gawain and the Green Knight, Jabberwocky, The Goodies vs. Kitten Kong, and obviously Monty Python, we'll weave a good tale that will wow the world.

Of course, for fans of tabletop roleplaying games, we will wow you with the Stats of the Cat, a playable monster with skills and weaknesses the likes of which you've never seen before. Add Devil Kitteh to your game of D&D or Into The Odd, and your players will never complain about losing a limb ever again.

Who knows, perhaps one day we will make it a movie. One that wears its sources a little bit more up-front than that Holy Grail of 70s' cinema. 

To be kept up-to-date on the progress of this project, please sign up at the Kickstarter site for the book. This does not in any way commit you to backing it or buying a copy when it launches, it's just the best way for us to let you know when it's ready to launch.

Initial concept sketches

What Remains?*

Players: don't you hate it when you character dies? For most of my life, and in most of the games I have played, the idea of being forced to hand in my character sheet, one I've put so much into building up,  garlanding with story, tchotchkes, booty, and loot, it's almost... unthinkable.

Playing in noisms' Three Mile Tree campaign cured me of this fear. In that campaign I've watched five of my characters die and, if anything, I was a bit impatient for the last one to kick the bucket by the time the dice fated it. No one character is the story, the campaign is.

It is fun, though, to see where those dead characters' life stories pushed the world. With this in mind, as some sort of a compensation for a player's character death, why not allow that player to indulge in a bit of legend-making, a bit of "hey, why not stick around for your own funeral": ask the player of the dying character to name one thing for which, in years to come, that character will still be remembered. It doesn't have to be something they actually did, in fact it's probably more fun if it's untrue. "Remember Men-Kheper-Ra? If he hadn't started tinkering, trying to breed humans with insects, then we wouldn't have had stag-beetle men and all of this horrible mess could have been avoided".

(This is a sort of simplified riff on my game In My End Is My Beginning, where dying characters look back at the turning points and missed opportunities in their lives). 

*What Remains is also the title of a book by my friend (and I hope, some day, my undertaker) Ru Callender. It will be in all the bookshops, and hard to avoid, from next week. Read more about Ru's book What Remains: Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking.

I also have a book coming out soon: sign up here to be notified when King Arthur vs Devil Kitteh launches.

Cerne2CERN the Pilgrim's Tarot

I may have dropped the occasional clew here about how I found the God/Esss and what I did when I found them. If I haven't, doubtless I will before long. In the interests of openness (as a byproduct of which I might try to sell you some tat - see below), I will tell you the tale of the day we finally immanentised the Eschaton.

There's no way easy way into this tale so I shall start, by explaining that this is/was either a complex joke masquerading as a religious ceremony, or a complex religious ceremony masquerading as a joke. A third possibility: Daisy Eris Campbell, central to this production, once yelled orgasmically "FUCK PUNCHDRUNK! This is how you do immersive theatre" (no offence intended, I went twice to the Punch Drunk producion "The Drowned Man" - wow! Took my daughter once to let her roam alone, one of the greatest things a dad can do).

Now it's certainly true that, if you take 69 fee-paying members of the public, call them all "pilgrims", cram them in a double decker bus for 5 days to see some far-out sites around Europe, implicating them all as audience, actors, directors and writers of a collaborative unfolding, there is a fucktonne of theatre involved. Exactly who's playing whom though... hmmm?

When you offload Daisy's charabanc trip at a spot in a field in the centre of Europe where also lies the geographical centre of the largest, least-dense, unmass of empty space in the entirety of our known universe (a 27-kilometer torus buried deep under the Alps, known as the "Large Hadron Collider"), which also happens to be on the exact site of a former Appolonian temple, and whose nearest neighbours (according to Google Maps) are the "Chaos Killers Motorcycle Club", then you're not just talking a pile of scatology, you're talking eschatology. When you start this trip, to visit the Large Hadron at that temple to moderity CERN, with a trip to touch the large hard-on at a temple to ancient times called Cerne then this whole caper has gone a bit beyond a joke.

(Is this all starting to get a little tweetle-Beatley for you yet? Far out! If you only came here for simple Role-Playing Games... well, hang around as the ride may get more Real than yer usual story game)

When you reach the centre of the universe and you finally do this (below) - and you decide that you've been doing it all along, since the universe began - then at least you know that you've boldly fucked about where no being has ever fucked about before:

When you look for clues, clews, threads, yarns, coincidences or synchronicities, you find them all at rates that bombard a human mind faster than quarks looking for holes in a wall. When all of that happens, and you find yourself in Gawain's Chapel Perilous, you may avail yourself of rest in the garden around the tower which the maestro of the synchronous, Carl Jung, built with his own hands. There you may take a breather, and listen to the wise words of Merlin, "root and branch will change places and the newness of the thing shall seem a miracle", while a sudden twister whips the mirror-smooth surface of Lake Zürich opaque, then ends just as rapidly as it began.

When you try to explain any of this in plain English, as my friend The Door heroically did, shortly after our return from Out There, you will find the task impossible. But since when has anything that's not impossible been really worth doing, anyway?

In the words of our patron Bill Drummond, "if we knew why, we wouldn't be doing it".

In words I once used myself, and use again, with nods to TS Eliot and Einstein: All this happened. This all a-happen-will. Oh Ma-ma-ma it's all a happening now!

To restate and expand upon some of the above in a slightly (but only slightly) more grokkable way:

A little over three years ago, 69 "pilgrims" travelled from The Manhole Cover in Liverpool (a site which Carl Jung - who never visited Liverpool-  dreamed about in the dream which he claimed was his most important) to Bollingen, where Carl Jung lived in a tower.

Inside that pilgrimage was another pilgrimage, from Cerne Abbas in Dorset to CERN on the French/Swiss border.

Inside that pilgrimage was a holiday at Damanhur and the Temples of Humankind, the eighth wonder of the world, where the 69ers learnt to speak in a silent language made of dance. Nobody knows what the fuck was going on.

Before the trip, in the midst of a maelstrom of over 5,000 emails, these 69 each chose a Pilgrim Name. Each then designed a Pilgrim Tarot Card. We should probably have made metal cocks and vulva badges (we did at least have one Norwegian witch hard gentle genital-sounding ancestor-child the Völva) but, to be honest, 5,000 emails and we just didn't think of it. We're not that kind of historical reënactment society. 

Perhaps surprisingly, nobody chose names from any "standard" tarot deck; I came closest, deciding at first the be The Fool (I had serious previous with foolery: I'd been appointed, by random ballot, the Official Fool of Festival 23). But I then thought "everyone is going to want to be the fool and so, haha, for a witty postmodern joke I'll the The Twat". But I then thought "gosh, should I really be appropriating female genitalia? when we also have this most wonderful term, The Pillock".

(Male/female/non-binary issues were a bit of a theme of our games, as we journey from Cerne-man's shaft to CERN-woman's hole and we all accidentally had... a story for another day).

The cards submitted were a rainbow of ideas, pictures, styles, collages and personal sigils. Dotted among the pilgrim cards were significant locations and concepts, from Cerne to CERN, from the Chaos Killers Motorcycle Club to the Toilet on the Bus. They were wonder-full! 

I was privileged to be the one collating these designs into an actual deck of "tarot" cards. My mate Chris Barker, laugh-or-you'll-cry chronicler of Brexshit Britain and Sergeant Pepper-sprayer of dead celebrities, designed the Happy Shopper box for the cards. My other mate (we're all allowed two) Zali Krishna, publisher of quality books of indeterminate genre and perhaps the first ever person to have used the word "novelettino", pointed me at a decent printer's. 100 packs were... I believe the term is, "manifested".

69 packs went to the pilgrims. 20-odd went to "stay-at-home pilgrims". With one or two more slipping through gaps in the matrix... the Law of Fives has determined that

I get to end up with five spare decks. 

Our "caper" literally vibrated the universe, even if no-one noticed at the time. We know this because when Alan Moore gave us a reading using a more traditional tarot deck, he managed to pick out the first eight major arcana IN ORDER (when has that ever happened before)? Our Eschaton's shockwaves still spread through the counterculture, they're beginning to tickle the mainstream. I'm not saying that we didn't have COVID and a terrifying new world order before the approximate middle of 2019, but we didn't have COVID and a terrifying  new world before the approximate middle of 2019.

But the Eschaton's not just there for the nasty things in life. Hey, even Merlin's shaggy beard grew from a deadly worldwide pandemic (I don't have the source, but there are legends which back this up). Plus I moved to a nice new house in the country last year so, you know, swings and roundabouts. The five remaining tarot decks have requested to be sent out into the universe and into muggles' homes. 

What all of the above amounts to, basically, is that  there are five packs of seriously playful playing cards in my online shop, and if you're very quick you might get one. "Friends" in the know assure me that you'll be selling one on eBay in 2323 (If man has, still, a tree) for a quandrazillion Imperial Currencyunits.

Footnote: if you've clicked on every link on this page, read background, watched videos, perhaps even stopped to think, then welcome, pilgrim. You are one of us now.

“Scientific proof” and “self-help”

The sun rose today, but will it rise tomorrow?

I mentioned in my last post that Peakrill Press is branching out into a variety of non-gaming related content. I will also be blogging more about random stuff. If you're here just for RPGs, that's cool: there'll still be plenty, and you can skip the rest. But I hope that, if you enjoy my writing about games, you'll appreciate my writing about everything else under the sun.

Below is an example of such other stuff. I'm thinking of writing - bear with me here - a self-help book. I already posted what I guess you could call some advice on productivity and, after 53 years struggling to stay cheerful and get things done, while also managing Bipolar Disorder, I feel I have useful advice to offer.

The passage below will be part of the book, either an introduction or an appendix. I'd especially appreciate any scientists giving it the once-over. As for scientismists, I'd love them to read it, though it may bring them out in a rash.

Any good scientist will tell you that there is no such thing as "scientific proof". What this inaccurate but handy phrase is shorthand for is “a scientific theory that has a lot of evidence that appears to back it up”. As the great philosopher David Hume teaches us, even the theory that “the sun rises every morning” is one we can never prove to be true, because: what about tomorrow morning?

There are folks, I’ll call them scientismists, some of whom believe that scientific proof is a thing, and almost all of whom believe that if a thing doesn’t have at least “a lot of evidence that appears to back it up” then it’s not worth doing, perhaps even dangerous. What a joyless approach to life!

What scientismists appear to forget (even though they often use the term!) is a thing called the “Placebo Effect” which basically means that even when a thing doesn’t work, it works! There’s a belief out there that if something - say, for example, homoeopathy - is “only” as effective as the placebo effect then it’s bunkum, to be avoided at all costs. What a wrong-headed approach to doing good!

Some of the stuff I’ll suggest here - in particular the habit of “gratitude journaling” that forms the heart of this book - have “a lot of evidence which appears to back them up”. Other stuff, like drawing trees or counting the number of petals on a daisy, probably don’t. That shouldn’t stop you from doing them. 

(Disclaimer: not everything untested is as good as a placebo. For example, the theory that jumping out of a plane without a parachute is better for you than jumping out with one has not yet been tested, and I don’t advise you to be the first to try).

By the way, there are some very good books out there which go into detail on which “self-help” practices appear to be more effective than the Placebo Effect -  I recommend starting with Richard Wiseman’s “59 Seconds”. But do bear in mind that all you need to do in order for something you do to do you good, is to believe that it does you good.

I say “all you need to do”. Forcing yourself to believe something is a tough nut to crack, especially if you’ve cynical tendencies like mine. But it is doable. Just remember: the Placebo Effect exists. And it’s magic!

What's new? Lots new!

A quick note about exciting new developments at the Peakrill cottage. First up, things you can buy from me, and where to buy them. My book Learning to Draw Trees is now out, and I've moved my shop to Shopify - purchase all sorts of Good Stuff from me here! Shopify's monthly fee is a fair bit more than I'm making from sales at the moment but... you know how to change that, right? Buy, buy, buy!

As well as books/zines/leaflets whatever, this includes art prints and mugs of the trees I've drawn. More of both will be coming soon, as well as greeting cards and... I dunno, tea-towels? Branded underwear? Comment here with your wants and your needs.

I'm also selling the last few of a very special pack of "tarot" cards, a magical artifact which will be spoken of a thousand years from now.

I've also also, finally, got around to drawing trees again. A beautiful ash tree covered in freaky boles, which I found in Robin Wood, Loxley, Sheffield (Ha, Robin Wood, Loxley! I've only just realised the pun). You want mugs of this? Prints? T-shirt? G-string? Let me know, and the gods will arrange. 

Bole ash tree, Robin Wood 

More exciting publishing projects coming soon. Peakrill Press is branching out! Like my friends over at Polyversity Press, I'm a big fan of "quality books of indeterminate genre", brought together by the passions and personality of the person publishing them (I'm also a big fan of "covers that look like textbooks for subjects that almost certainly don't qualify as real sciences", though that's a little less relevant here). And so, while my main focus will continue to be on gaming related guff, I'll be printing other stuff that I love, not all of it by me.

Next up will be new editions of some inspirational books on walking by my father-in-law, Terry Howard. Terry has been a huge force in the movement to secure the Right to Roam in the UK over the last 50-odd years. A documentary called Ramble On has recently been made about Terry, by Director Charlie Thorne, and it's an absolutely wonderful piece of "slow cinema". It made me cry. I believe that you can catch it next at Sheffield's Festival of the Mind on 22nd September. Here's the trailer:

Finally, for those of you in the USA and nearby territories, I'm glad to say that you can now save on mail costs by my purchasing my Cairn adventure Gespenwald from the Cairn Store - or at least, you'll be able to once Yochai gets back from vacation. Likewise, both Gespenwald and Mostly Harmless Meetings will soon be up for sale on Exalted Funeral. Words cannot express what a confidence boost it is for me having those folks appreciate my stuff so much that they will pay for bundles of it to be shipped to the USA. 

Actually, that wasn't such a short update, was it?

Oh! And there is... just one more thing (and thank you for reading this far!) My wife makes some absolutely amazing stuff out of vintage fabrics, under the moniker "Made by Candlelight". I'm hoping to add that too to my online shop in due time, although meanwhile she has a folksy store but... it's sold out. She's frantically making patchwork hot-water bottle covers in time for Winter, but if anything below catches your eye then drop me a line, custom orders always very welcome! We recently shipped a beautiful wheelchair blanket to Natchitoches, Louisiana - something else which makes me beam with joy. 

Happy almost-autumn, and may your mushroom-hunting always be safe.

The Stone Bone Mound

Here is my entry to this year's One Page Dungeon Contest. With a working title of "negative space dungeon", it's a solution to a thought experiment which came to me, as do all of the best ideas, while walking on the moors: what if I were to use all of the dungeon map, and not just the white bits. As part of the process of making it, I learnt how to draw a labyrinth, which turns out to be super simple and is also super rewarding: I sometimes draw them just for relaxation now.

Here it is: The Stone Bone Mound

New stuff in't store

 

Gespenwald

A very quick post to say that I have added two new products to my online store and both are currently on special offer: Learning to Draw Trees is a 44-page book documenting my attempt to, well, learn to draw trees. Contains drawings, photos, thoughts and tips. Gespenwald, meanwhile, is a free-form TTRPG adventure, my entry to the Forests of Another Name game jam for Cairn. 

Just Do The Work

Well of Bolonchen by Frederick Catherwood

[This post was originally intended for my personal blog, but I figured that folks here may find it useful]

I am well acquainted with the whoosh of deadlines, and I've just been overtaken by yet another; weeks, months, stopped in my tracks by Seasonal Affective Disorder and Bipolar Disorder (or perhaps I'm lazy and that's just my excuse?)

My inability to complete work to schedule has bugged me all of my life, as I know it does many people. My bipolar disorder (of which I will say more at the end of this post) makes this particularly tricky. But, partly because of this, I've spent many years investigating different life-hacking techniques, and have a fair idea of what does and doesn't work. A serial deadline-misser like me may seem to be the worst person to give advice on productivity hacks, but that's what I'm going to do anyway.

First of all, and most importantly: Do The Work. The short and sweet book The War of Art by Steven Pressfied is very clear on this subject. Sit down, every day, and crack on with things. Do this regardless of whether the muse moves you or not. Treat every project like paid employment, and treat being there as an obligation. Even doing a few minutes every day will soon build into something worthwhile, and will result in in more Stuff produced over the course of week, a month, a year, a lifetime.

Which is all well and good, but turning up regularly can be difficult; sometimes just remembering to do the work is itself a job of work. Elastic Habits by Stephen Guise helps you to build the muscle that keeps you battling on. To build elastic habits, you learn to consider the smallest possible increment of work as something worth doing. Simply making sure that you Do The Work with regularity will, over the course of a few months, build a self-sustaining habit. Of course, you don't want to always be doing the smallest amount possible: the system sets 3 different goal-sizes (and usually 3 different variations on the task, for variety) to help you monitor your achievements and stay on track.

For example, say I want to get fit. I could have three different activities that count towards getting fit, let's say floor exercises, swimming, and running (doing any one of those in a day counts as Doing The Work). For each of them, I will set three different levels of difficulty. The first one has to be so simple that you can do it almost without effort: one set of floor exercises, swimming one length, running for a minute. The next level should be a little harder: 3 reps/lengths/minutes. And the next, quite a bit higher, perhaps 15 reps/lengths/minutes. Each day, you make damn sure that you either run, swim, or do floor exercises at least a tiny amount. You can adjust your goals as you go along - if you fail to make even the simplest level, perhaps you can simplify further: lie on the floor/get your bike out of the shed/visualise swimming. If you're managing the hardest level every day, then make it harder.

Another book I've found helpful in tackling my own specific difficulties is Your Own Worst Enemy by Kenneth Christian. This book is aimed at "high achievers" who are not achieving. The premise is that those of us who do extremely well in school (or at least in the early years) start to assume that we can just coast through life. This turns out not to be true, and so we fail, and think of ourselves as failures, until learn how to put in the necessary effort to Do The Work. Again, this book mainly focuses on Just Doing The Work, as well as visualising future achievements (a well-proven psychological technique for bringing those achievements closer to realisation).

Speaking of getting things done, the book of that name is a classic of the productivity genre. Like most books in this field, it can be summed up in a few sentences. It employs three basic tools: a to-do list, a calendar, and a filing system. Many of us will have a pile of paper on our desk and/or an inbox full of unread emails and/or a bunch of vague ideas in our heads which serve (badly) all three purposes. We will also have an accompanying cognitive load and frequent moments of "oh gosh, I'm sure there was something I was supposed to do today, what was it again?" The premise of Getting Things Done is that immediately shifting each piece of paper/email/idea into one of the three buckets (to-do/calendar/filing) gets it off your mind and into a place where you cannot fail to have access to it exactly when you need it. I struggled with this system for years because I was never any good at to-do lists: I tried both paper and digital ones, but always found myself soon overwhelmed with too many items. But a few years ago I discovered Todoist, and suddenly everything fitted into place. Todoist's flexibility - allowing you to use it as a basic list, but containing more advanced optional features such as due dates, projects, and labels - has allowed me to hack it into to a system that works for me, and that does not overwhelm me on a day-to-day basis.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is accountability. In my case, accountability that is inflexible and dangerous. I have written about how I use the Book of Horkos to fulfil this role. Less perilous forms of accountability, I have found, are easy to sidestep (which I have done so many times that it almost comes naturally). The cost is that people will think worse of me and will trust me less, but in my darker moments I feel that I've probably lost all of their trust already and anyway, so what does it matter? For some people, simply by stating in public "I am going to Do The Work" (with the potential loss of face of failing to Do The Work) means that they will Do The Work. For me, it requires an immovable deadline and another person or people who will not only think less of me if I fail, but will themselves suffer some inconvenience. I hate letting other people down!

Due to the whooshing deadline I mentioned at the start of this post, I have today initiated a new harsh form of accountability. I have hired... I'm not quite sure what to call her, something between a PA and a life-coach. I pay her money, and every week I tell her her exactly what I will complete in the next week. Then we will look back on the previous week and check that I did in fact achieve what I said I would. The person I have hired to do this is my daughter because, not only is she as sharp as a pin, she is perhaps the one person in the world that I could never bring myself to let down. I know that she is going to be ruthless at her job, and I know that this is going to keep me in line.

I said at the outset that Bipolar Disorder makes my task a lot trickier. My specific flavour of bipolar disorder is BP-II. On the surface this appears far less severe than classic BP-I "manic depression", but BP-II's mood swings are far more frequent, and the disruptive effect this has on one's life can barely be overstated (BP-II sufferers are far more likely to attempt suicide than those with BP-I, because of this frequent inability to function).  When I'm depressed, all bets are off, and everything falls apart. The frequency with which this happens means that habit-building is virtually impossible. People often say that to form a habit, you should do it at the same time as you brush your teeth. In 50+ years I have never managed to acquire the habit of brushing my teeth regularly. This inability to be consistent is known to cause many problems in the life of those with BP-II, in particular psychosocial impairment results from being unable to be consistent in one's relationships (I was in my my 30s before I began to understand how one interacts with other people, and it's only due to having an amazing and supportive wife that I'm able to function reasonably normally today).

And that, I believe, is why I've never quite managed to dial in those productivity habits that I know so much about for any real length of time (the longest I've managed is about 2 months). But that's not going to stop me trying. And my next attempt starts today. Once I'm done, I'll probably write a book on productivity hacks for bipolar folks.

Naming Things

The Ship of Yoharneth-Lahai by Sidney Sime

After a lecture at Cornell in which Lord Dunsany had mentioned his longtime collaborator, the artist Sidney Sime, somebody said what a perfect name Sime was for him. “I don’t know,” said Dunsany; “I think Rhibelungzanedroom would suit him better.”

I have recently been reading Lord Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith's short stories. They're full of names like Yoh-Vombis, Ubbo-Sathla, Thlūnrāna and Karna-Vootra (alongside plenty of purple prose). Exotic, huh? Hmm.

Weird and wonderful (presumably) made-up names like these proliferate in fantasy RPG-land. Usually packed full of Zs, Ks, Qs, hyphens, and dïạćrîtĩcŝ, this Khazad-dûmbing-down of names does very little for me. These names have no resonance, and tell me nothing except "you tried to make this name sound weird". As a result they all end up sounding much of a muchness, interchangeable letter-mush. And are almost never memorable.

"The names used in the adventure are a complete bricolage signifying no particular human culture. In fact they are all the names of caves." - Patrick Stuart, Deep Carbon Observatory

I've found that using pre-existing words, perhaps with the odd letter changed here and there, makes for far more satisfying and memorable names. Electric Bastionland does a very good job of this, suggesting names for each of its failed careers which, although not entirely familiar, are suggestive and simple to remember. There are many potential sources for names, from Patrick's cave names via place names, technical and domain-specific terms, body parts... not to mention the zillions of lists of baby names out there. The names of climbing routes have an exotic but resonant charm of their own and (perhaps unsurprisingly) remind me of the spaceship names of M John Harrison and Iain M Banks. And I'm reminded of a story of a South American country where the naming of babies after components of car engines became so popular that it had to be banned (I may name my next character Carburettor O'Sump).

Despite this, it's not long since I advocated using the names SsShrp, SvyrySshp, and FssSuSshs. So please take everything that I say with a pinch of salt.

Update: here is another great blog post about naming places in RPGs.