Jennifer M. Baldwin

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DCC Middle-Earth: Too Much Noodling?

October 28, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I know I JUST posted something about my ideas for a homebrewed DCC-based Middle Earth role-playing game, but now I’m starting to doubt all my noodling and tinkering. Why use DCC’s rules and characters if I’m going to change so many mechanics? (Like combat/damage rules, etc.)

Better to stick with the DCC rules-set and add on a few things (still looking at a Pendragon-style Hope/Despair trait) but keeping the general mechanics as-is. Even though I like Cairn and Nimble 2e’s roll for damage and not to-hit mechanic, it just messes up too many other aspects of DCC that I DO like (like the Deed Die, Turning Evil, etc.).

The real alterations need to be in terms of setting-specific things, like patrons, spells, etc. And using another game’s overland travel rules to capture how important traveling is to the Middle-Earth experience.

But whether we roll to hit or just roll for damage or whatever feels less important. What matters in a Middle-Earth-specific DCC game is making it suited to MIDDLE-EARTH through flavor details, magic, etc., and not worrying about which OSR or NuSR-style mechanic I’ll be using for combat or ability checks.

I need to work on world-building for a Middle-Earth setting and stop trying to Frankenstein all my favorite mechanics into one game.

More Middle-Earth RPG Noodling

October 26, 2025 / / 1 Comment

Making my Middle-Earth role-playing game heartbreaker using DCC RPG as the chassis and adding in various other elements from games like The One Ring, Nimble 2e, Dolmenwood, Shadowdark, MERP, Pendragon, and others has been both exhilarating and dispiriting, often in equal measures.

As I got deep into the weeds of character stats, magic systems, Luck/Hope/Despair mechanics, I was suddenly left wondering if maybe I should just learn The One Ring after all and call it a day. Why fight the system that everyone seems to agree “gets” Tolkien the best?

But my Middle-Earth RPG isn’t trying to capture TOLKIEN’s Middle-Earth; it’s trying to capture MY Middle-Earth: the one that I created as a kid via various versions including the Tolkien books, and cartoon movies, and other fantasy-related games, books, and media, and the aforementioned MERP, and my own ten-year-old imagination.

I want a Middle-Earth RPG that’s more 1960s “Frodo Lives” counter-culture and 1970s and 80s American fantasy publishing and Angus McBride MERP illustrations. That’s why I settled on DCC RPG as the main rule-set for my homebrew. DCC gives the right vibes of loose-goosey, pre-codified Dungeons and Dragons generic fantasy that feels right for how I imagine my own head-cannon Middle-Earth.

The One Ring, for all its virtues, is very much in line with the aesthetics and interpretation of Tolkien’s legendarium post-Jackson’s film trilogy. It’s got that WETA Workshop feeling–and listen, I love that WETA Workshop feeling! But I want something different for my homebrew game. I want something that takes me back to my kid days, when Middle-Earth wasn’t so “fixed” in everybody’s minds (including my own). It’s hard to describe this “kid-version” of Middle-Earth, but it was somehow more fluid, more malleable. My imagined Middle-Earth was more of a hodge-podge, and as good as the Peter Jackson films are, and as beautiful as Alan Lee’s and Ted Nasmith’s illustrations are, they aren’t my head-version of Middle-Earth.

Anyway, despite my frustrations, I don’t want to abandon my attempts. I’m a bit stuck on the Hope/Despair mechanic and how it will work. I want it to be similar to the Luck mechanic in DCC, but I’ve been toying with using Pendragon’s personality traits mechanic, where Hope and Despair are two opposed scores that add up to 20. If Hope is 10, Despair is 10; if Hope is 13, Despair is 7; etc.

But then what happens if a player spends Hope? Hope goes down, Despair goes up. This might disincentivize players from using Hope (a la Luck), which is one of my favorite DCC mechanics.

No. The Despair score needs to be something else.

This is where I thought maybe Despair might replace the DCC mechanic of Disapproval. Players start with Disapproval of 1, and it goes up by one point each time a character…what? Fails a Hope check? Falls unconscious? Hmm.

That’s the sticking point. In normal DCC, Disapproval goes up if a Cleric fails a spell check. But in my Middle-Earth homebrew, I’m considering getting rid of spell checks and using a mana point system for magic instead. So when does Disapproval/Despair go up?

This has led me back to Pendragon’s personality traits. Perhaps I keep DCC’s Luck mechanic as-is. Players can spend Luck and it works the same as the rules as written in DCC.

But in addition to Luck, there’s now a Hope/Despair trait. Players start with a base of 12 for Hope and 8 for Despair. They can make a Hope check right from the get-go in character creation, and if they roll under 12, they can add +1 to their Hope score.

Mechanically, players can ask for a Hope check at any time to help them on their journey. Maybe they need something really good to happen that can’t be covered by any other rule or mechanic, like they are in a tricky spot against an overwhelming number of goblins. They can ask to make a Hope check, and if it succeeds, then something good does happen–maybe a tunnel gets spotted that allows the party to escape the goblins, or one of the goblins gets too cocky and accidentally trips himself and several of his comrades. Maybe everyone in the party gets +2 to armor class or something during the fight. The player making the Hope check can decide in conversation with the GM. Later, after the session, they make a Hope check again, and a success means Hope goes up by one point (and Despair down by one).

But if the Hope roll during the game fails, then the player must put a check mark next to Despair, and at the end of the session, they make a Despair check, and success makes Despair go up (and Hope go down).

When Despair is higher than Hope, the player falls under the Shadow… not sure how this will work yet. Maybe I make this more of a role-playing thing and less mechanical. As Despair increases, the player must play their character as falling further and further under the sway of the Shadow, and that means they become more Denethor-like, or even Saruman-like. At some point, the PC might even reach a Despair of 19 or 20, in which case they might cease to be playable because they are too under the sway of the Dark Lord.

There’s also a possibility that Hope can get a check even without a player asking for a Hope roll. Maybe the GM can award a check for the party’s success in a difficult situation, and everyone can get a chance to increase their Hope. Similarly, Despair can also get a check when, let’s say, one of the party dies or is seriously injured without healing at the end of the adventure. PCs will have to make a Despair roll at the end of the session to make sure they aren’t overcome by the bad situation.

Maybe this is too swingy or fiddly, but if I make rising Despair into something that is more about role-playing and less about a mechanical disadvantage, then that might give players freedom to ask for Hope rolls during the game to advantage themselves, knowing that if Despair goes up, it’s more about the storytelling than about making their character less effective mechanically.

I’m also curious to try the Nimble 2e (and Cairn/Into the Odd’s) mechanic of only rolling for damage. This would mean hit points need to be slightly higher at first level, and I’m not sure I would use Nimble’s exploding crits mechanic (but I would keep its normal crit rule, where rolling the highest number on the die equals a crit and you can roll again and add to the total). I would keep Nimble’s rule of missing on a roll of 1 too.

I would also use Nimble’s armor class rule, where the AC is lower (normal AC score minus 8), and that’s what gets absorbed on a hit (but only when using Defend as a reaction, see below). Everything hits, basically, except a roll of 1.

Similarly, I would also keep Nimble’s action economy. Every PC gets three actions per round, and those can be used outside their turn as Reactions too (help, interpose, defend, opportunity attack). A PC could potentially attack three times in one round, but the second and third attacks are rolled with increasing disadvantage. Monsters would not get three actions; they would most likely get two actions (move and something else). The more dangerous the monster, the more actions they would get (using DCC’s action dice rules).

I think warriors and dwarves at higher levels will get more actions or special actions to make their classes special.

I would also steal Nimble’s magic system, where PCs would spend mana to cast instead of rolling. I feel like magic in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth rarely “fails.” I’ll keep the DCC spells, though (with a few subtractions… the ones that don’t fit the flavor of Middle-Earth).

My next big step in all this is to make a character sheet, come up with a starting occupations table that’s more Middle-Earth-centric (no gongfarmers, lol), and create the patron tables for Elbereth, Aule, Manwe, and Sauron. Then I gotta cut down the magic spells lists, figure out how to modify the DCC Annual’s Canticles rules to fit with Middle-Earth sensibilities, and playtest with some of my new rules (the Nimble combat and magic stuff, and the Hope/Despair mechanics especially).

I’m still teetering on the edge of my own despair (pun intended) that this homebrewed system won’t work or be worth the effort, but my hope hasn’t faded entirely yet. I think once I put some of these ideas into playtest, see how it goes, then perhaps I’ll feel better.

One may ask: “What’s the point of all this labor?” And I’m not sure I have a good answer. All I know is that I want to try it. I have an idea of playing in Middle-Earth, and I want something that keeps me in an OSR-space while also being a bit more Middle-Earthy than normal OSR DnD. For now, I’m still obsessed with making this homebrew, and despite my struggles, I’m still having fun.

“Rule 6: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.”

October 21, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I want to believe this rule. I want to live and make art and teach within the bounds of this rule. Like a mantra, I want this rule to be a constant refrain within me.

But this is a hard teaching.

I want badly to win, whatever that will mean. Maybe it means more readers, or more money, or more accolades. Maybe it means being happy with my output, with the finished product.

Instead, I fail. I don’t get the readers, or the money, or the accolades. I am unhappy with my output, doubting its quality, hating it. The finished product is an embarrassment. A mistake.

But nothing is a mistake. Like Yoda, this rule is saying either make or don’t make. Those are the only two sides to the dichotomy. Those who make, make. Those who don’t make, don’t make.

Winning and failing are not the opposed forces. Making and not-making are the opposed forces.

It’s the fear of mistakes, of wrongness, of failure that keeps us from making.

This is against the Rule.

Failure is an illusion. As are mistakes.

There is only make.

If you make, you are making. If you don’t make, you are not making. This is the only choice. Everything else–everything–is outside of your control. It doesn’t even exist according to the Rule.

“Nothing is a mistake.” That means you can’t possibly make a mistake. Only Nothing is a mistake. Only not-making is a mistake. It’s a mistake because we are called to be makers, to be sub-creators. If we don’t make, if we let Nothing into the world, then we have ceded ground to the mistake. Only by making can we prevent the Nothing.

This is why there’s no win or fail. A different kind of rule would say, “If you make, you win.” But that’s not this rule. This rule isn’t false positivity. It isn’t false praise. The whole concept of winning, of making something that “wins,” is the thing that’s false.

Making has nothing to do with winning or losing. Making has to do with making. There is only make or not-make. The win/lose is a paradigm of competition. Making is not a competition. A lot can happen if we make, and a lot can’t happen if we don’t make, but winning or losing are not part of those options.

If we make, we add to the world. We imitate God.

If we don’t make, well, we don’t. We go along with our lives doing other things, I guess, but those things are not making.

Right now, I am making something. These words are my making. They can sometimes feel like a mistake. I can start to worry that I’ve failed. I can yearn for the “win,” the high praise, the big bucks (though this is unlikely to happen for a lowly blog post!). I can fear the failure, but none of this–the wish to win, the fear of failure, the worrying about mistakes–is part of the actual making. The making is me putting words to the page. The making is stringing sentences together into a whole. The making is the act of making, and that really does exist outside of win/lose, success/fail.

I am making right now. Each letter typed is an act of making. Good/bad, win/lose: these are not involved. The only thing that is happening right now is the making.

And when I’m done, I’ll have a choice. To make or not-make. If I choose not-making, if I choose nothing, then, yes, I have made a mistake.

But I wonder if it’s even possible to choose nothing. Every moment is a moment of making if you think about it in the right terms. Every moment involves thoughts and actions. Those are part of making. Making decisions, making breakfast, making a joke, making a smile. We cannot help but make.

So there’s no fear when I sit down at the computer or with my notebook. I’m already doing the making. The making is already happening.

I don’t need to worry about believing in this Rule. Believing in it has nothing to do with it. Winning, failing: those are immaterial. Those are beliefs. Whether they are false or true is outside of this Rule. I don’t need to believe in either of them.

I only need to make. And I’m already making.

A Lesson in Dependency

October 20, 2025 / / 0 Comments

This morning, as I made ready to drive into work, I tried opening my Hoopla app. Error messages ensued. I tried again. More errors. I tried a third time. Errors all the way down.

I grew frustrated. I considered deleting and redownloading the app, but the clock was ticking on my commute (I was still in the driveway, mucking about with the broken Hoopla app). I gave up and drove in while listening to NPR. The Marketplace Morning Report is not my jam, but I made do. S&P 500, NASDAQ blah-dee-blah, trade wars with India now. I let the financial news wash over me, but I was not happy.

I’ve been listening to a really good audiobook lately, and my kids have finally started to groove to A Horse and His Boy.

Alas.

So I tried again on the drive home from work. No more error messages, but clicking the login button does nothing. Bupkis. I click again. Nada. This time, I DO delete the app and redownload it, and still, there is no signing in. Everything seems ready and right for signing in, but the actual signing in, the clicking of the signing in button results in no response. Username and password looking lovely in their little login fields, but clicking of “LOGIN” not so lovely.

I check to see if others are having this problem. They are. Posting on X, Hoopla even apologized for technical difficulties around seven hours ago. It is a known issue.

And yet, I tried the login again. Tried typing in the password instead of letting my autofiller do it. Tried Googling again for answers.

This was futile, and I knew it would be, and yet I did it anyway.

Why did I do it? Why was I still trying to open Hoopla when I knew it was down, by the company’s own confession? Why was I sitting in my car in the parking lot at work for a good solid five or so minutes when I knew none of my efforts would bear fruit? Why did I try again when I got home, sitting for another five minutes in the garage, trying to login and relogin in, and delete the app and redownload the app, the same non-response as before, the same inoperability?

By my own unscientific count, I’d spent a good fifteen minutes trying to get Hoopla to work today, and no, fifteen minutes isn’t a super-long time, but it’s still time–time I could have spent listening to an Audible book or podcast, time I could have spent listening to music, time I could have spent in silence or thought or deep contemplation or simply driving on the road and getting to work/home a little faster. I wasted that time on trying to troubleshoot the stupid app instead of moving on with my life and doing something else.

And even more, I wasted energy and thought and emotion on this trivial thing. So what if Hoopla’s not working today? It’s not like I don’t have a lot of other ways to occupy my mind on the commute. It’s not like I don’t have other ways of listening to audiobooks. I might not love Marketplace Morning Report, but now I know just a little bit more about farmers learning how to adapt to climate change by using more eco-friendly agricultural practices. That ain’t nothing. I have a wealth, a king’s ransom worth of books and music and media of all sorts in my house and in my classroom, and even my radio is a wealth of music and ideas and information, and yet here I was spending time and energy and emotion on worrying about Hoopla.

Would I be sad if Hoopla disappeared? 100%. I love how many audio and ebooks I’ve discovered through the app.

But it’s not like I don’t have access to audiobooks and ebooks and regular book-books in other ways. I’m whining to myself about Hoopla when twenty years ago I would have had none of this plethora of literary media to choose from.

And this is why digital technology of every stripe–electronic technology really–is so frustrating. We come to rely upon it, and when it doesn’t work, when it goes down, when the power is cut off or the system crashes, we’re lost.

I mean, we’re not literally lost, but we feel lost. Bereft. We mash buttons and refresh pages and unplug and replug and do all the other things that are supposed to solve the problem, and as we do, our frustration grows at being cut off from the formerly-instantaneous pleasure machine.

Think about what happens when the internet goes out. When the power dies in a wind storm. When the app crashes.

We growl and grumble and spend fifteen precious minutes of our day trying to get back on, hook back up, return to the smooth seamlessness of our former digital lives.

Even now, I’m writing a ranty blog post about it. The Hoopla app’s crash has infected even this moment of my life.

It’s all so silly. I know I’m wasting time worrying about it. And yet my response to these things is always, “There must be a way to fix it!” As if I have any power in this situation.

I am powerless. And it is this powerlessness that is worst of all. It’s why I spent all that time in my respective driveways. I was trying to regain power. To fix the thing.

But I can’t fix the thing. Apps and electrical power grids are not things I can fix. Internet outages and system malfunctions are not things I am equipped to handle. I need experts. I need people in far-off places, with more expertise, with a desire to help, to help me.

The crashing of the Hoopla app is a lesson in my own dependency.

Maybe that’s why I raged against it all day. To be confronted with my helplessness. To face a thing I couldn’t fix.

Because I’m a person who wants to fix things, and when I can’t fix something, I rebel. The world is wrong. There must be a way. I’ll figure it out. Just give me a minute. I’ll solve this.

But I can’t solve the Hoopla app’s malfunction. I can’t solve so many problems of my modern, digital life. All these things are beyond my control. I must rely upon the kindness of strangers.

I’m sure they’ll fix it. Eventually.

But until then, I’ll have to accept my own vulnerability and imperfection. And recognize there are some things in this world I cannot fix.

Goal Update: October 2025

October 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

It’s been awhile. I’m going to try and be as upbeat as possible, but the results speak for themselves: I haven’t achieved most of my goals.

And yet! I’ve achieved some, and that ain’t nothing. Failing to success, right? Would I have achieved even these small things if I hadn’t set myself the goals?

Some may argue that yes, I would still have achieved these few things. And perhaps that’s true. Doing small actions every day does tend to add up to bigger things. My students who are writing for five minutes at the beginning of every class are seeing that happen in real-time. Their notebooks are filling up and they can’t quite believe it.

But there’s a part of me that thinks the simple act of articulating the goals helps me understand what my small actions are in service to. For my students, the daily writing added up to a class party (which we just had last week). For me, the daily/regular actions have added up to the completion of a couple of goals and slight progress on a few more. Again: that ain’t nothing.

What This All Means is precisely that it’s good to have some end goals, but it’s also good (better?) to keep plugging away. Achieving the goals isn’t the measurement; doing the small actions is. And not giving up. That’s important too.

Which is all to say that I’m writing this to self-assess, yes, but even more so, I’m writing this to remind myself that I must keep going. Even in a year’s time, I’ve accomplished things. Not much, but some.

And some is better than none.

Finish writing Norse City Limits (urban fantasy novel): I must admit that I’ve dropped the ball on this. I’m in that messy middle part in which I loathe every choice I’ve made thus far and feel utterly unsuited to the task of writing a novel.

I’ve taken a pause, honestly. Partly because I need to go back and reread and take better notes on what’s happened, but also partly because I think I need to do more reading/research. The Idea Well has run a bit dry. Problems of output are problems of input, and my Norse mythology/film noir input has been anemic these days (months?). I need to get back in touch with that part of myself.

The difficulty? I’ve started a few new projects and those are vying for my time. I feel the heat to work on them, whereas NCL has grown a bit cold.

I was worried about this, especially over the summer, when the novel was really stalled, but I’ve since made peace with it. This feels like how I work. I’m a multi-book reader, and I’m seeing how I’m really a multi-book writer too. It’s not the most efficient way of doing things, and maybe I need to retrain myself to write with white-lightning heat to finish a novel in a month or two or something, but for now, it seems that my process is more meandering.

It’s not like I haven’t been writing.

Maybe not as many words per week as I’d like, but I’m still writing. I’m finishing stories, I’m starting new stories, I’m writing Substack posts, and blog posts. I’m writing almost every day. Maybe not consumable words, but words that could turn into something later (I use my notebook/morning pages writing for ideas all the time).

I’m trying really hard to stop making demands on my Creative Voice. Instead of saying, “I must write this next chapter of __________,” I sit down at the computer, open a few documents (again, intuitively without deliberate thought), and I start cycling back through a story or start with a fresh page and new words, and I let the Creative Voice do its thing.

In fact, that’s precisely how I started this blog post. I let myself start writing what I felt like I needed to start writing, and an update on my writing goals is where Creative Voice led me.

It takes a great deal of trust in this process to operate like this, but I’m trying to trust it.

A bit like my insight on “inventing the process”: I need to stop prescribing the word count (or the work that “must” be done) and simply do what my Creative Voice wants to do. A story doesn’t have to be x-number of words long. I need to stop even thinking about stories as being “short,” “novella,” “novel,” etc. before I start writing them.

Maybe that’s the trouble with NCL? Maybe I committed to “a novel,” before I really had any idea what my Creative Voice wanted to do with this particular character in this particular world.

Well, anyway, I’m almost 50,000 words into the thing, so it must be something longer than a short story. What that thing is, though, I’m not sure yet. Maybe my idea that it must be 100,000 words long or whatever is getting in my way. Or maybe it’s shaping up to be 200k words or more… I certainly have enough story threads going and no idea how to weave them to a satisfying conclusion… It could end up being a door-stopper!

I’m somewhat tempted to throw a bunch of words out. Partly because I feel like certain choices bug me and I don’t like where they led me, but at the time, I didn’t have the courage to go back and redraft from those (seeming?) missteps. Do I have the courage now? Or is this just a way to avoid finishing?

I don’t think it’s a way to avoid finishing. I think it’s my intuition telling me that maybe I need to trust my gut and not keep putting lipstick on a pig.

Maybe I need to do that process reassessment after all and write with lightning heat…

What would that look like?

New Goal: Write an epic fantasy for middle grade readers/my kids (a novel about dragons): This came about because I wanted something for my kids to enjoy that went a little deeper than the dragon books they were bringing home from the library/Scholastic book fair.

I wanted them to have something like I had as a kid, a fantasy series that was epic and archetypal that also didn’t feel watered down. I’m a bit inspired by Katherine Rundell’s thoughts on children’s books and her novel The Explorer in particular, which we listened to as a family on audiobook.

This new dragon fantasy is partly why NCL is on hold.

As I’m typing all this out, I’m thinking I need to heed my own insights about writing one thing with lightning heat… I started this novel (working title: Shards of Stolen Breath) over the summer, and now it’s October and I’m only on Chapter 5. Maybe I need to write with white-heat and finish it as quickly as possible. My boy Thoreau always said, “Write while the heat’s in you.” Don’t let the fire die (hello, dragon pun, I see you).

What does it look like, for me, to write with white-heat?

Does it look like finishing a chapter a day? Write for thirty days, you got yourself thirty chapters. But what if Creative Voice doesn’t want to write a chapter a day? What if she wants to work on that other story that’s been brewing over here for a bit?

Okay, well, I just got done saying I wouldn’t boss my Creative Voice around, but I also wonder if Creative Voice would want to work on Shards every day if I actually, you know, thought about Shards every day. If I wrote about it in my morning pages, and took notes on it throughout the day, and dreamed about it at night.

I have a problem with daydreaming. I’m not doing it enough. I’m crowding out my thoughts with worries and a million other things. I need to schedule some daydream time.

Like, deliberately sit down (or go for a walk) and think about the story. Think about Shards.

I’ll admit that I’ve always been intrigued by guys like Moorcock (and Sanderson too) who can write something in a few days/months. Sanderson has spoken about this before. Write the novel as fast as you can, before the fire dies.

I like systems. I’m tempted to make this system for myself. The daydream about something, write it as quickly as possible, don’t let the fire die. Keep daydreaming so the fire stays stoked. (I swear I’m not writing all these dragon/fire puns on purpose.)

Isn’t it funny how writing all this out has led to insights? I hope they’re insights.

Finish writing Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess (second book in Merlin series): Similar to NCL, this one is on hold. Perhaps it’ll be faster to redraft from word one on this as well. I’m tempted, mightily tempted to redraft from word one both NCL and Ysbaddaden.

Do I have the courage to try it? Enough of a fool?

Finish a short story set in my sword and sorcery world: Not yet.

Finish a short story about a mother who learns a terrible secret about her son: Not yet.

Finish a short story set in my Children of Valesh universe: Not yet.

New Goal: Finish a short story set in my magical music academy world: Not yet, but almost! I started a story called “Bronwyn Harper” a little while back and I’m getting close to finishing it. Between this story and Shards, I’ve been writing steadily. I also finished a random short story about a dragon egg and submitted that to Writers of the Future, so I need to remember that I haven’t been idle simply because I haven’t finished one of my big novels.

Publish my short story collection: Yes, I did it!

This was a big goal for me in 2025, and I’m happy to report that I met it. A bright spot for sure. It took me longer than I’d hoped, but the key thing is that I did it.

Finish a novella in my City of Ashes series: Not yet. Maybe never? This was a thing my Creative Writing students challenged me to do, but I’m not loving it. Time will tell.

Blog every day: I am not blogging every day, but I am still blogging. I like that this is a place I can continue to return to. I still aspire to blog every day, but it’s okay if I don’t.

Send out Substack newsletter every two weeks: Not yet, but I’m getting better. I’m prioritizing it a bit more. I’m looking through my notebook each week with an eye toward what can go on the Substack, and I’m loosening up my internal “rules” for what I should write about. The topics and essays are a little more wide-ranging, and I find this suits my personality and writing goals better.

Play more role-playing games with my kids, my husband, family, and friends: This is happening and I couldn’t be happier! I just played a one-on-one session of Caverns of Thracia with my eight-year-old son the other day, and it was glorious. And now that my Dolmenwood stuff has arrived, I’m ready to start up campaigns with family and friends. As a family, we’ve been playing Mausritter, Hero Kids, and DnD 5e.

I’m also playing in a regular Shadowdark game, and I’m running Thracia as an open table at a FLGS.

This has been an unqualified success.

Create some RPG modules for Norse City Limits and Merlin’s Last Magic: Not yet.

Make a “Saturday Morning” zine series and publish an issue every month: Not yet.

Make other zines: Not yet.

Read more books with my kids (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Half-Magic, James and the Giant Peach, the Hobbit, the Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician’s Nephew, Last Battle, more Little House books, How to Train Your Dragon series, Harry Potter): I was doing this, and then we stalled, and now I’m ready to make this a priority again.

I think we need to force our kids a bit on these. They are sometimes reluctant to listen to these older books, but we think it’ll be good for them. First up, NIMH and A Horse and His Boy, then a retry with The Hobbit.

Start naalbinding again (finish the hat I started for my son and make another one for my other son): Ugh, not yet. I want to prioritize this. My son’s head will be too big if I don’t finish soon!

Practice my cartooning/comics drawing (for the zines): Hmm… a bit? Not much, though. Need to do more daily drawing.

Start a podcast: This is a new goal, but I have an idea I’m excited about and which I think my readers will really like. New goal for 2026 is to actually record the episodes and maybe even launch.

Write essays, poems, and fiction that will serve as models for my students next school year: Not much, and I’m wondering if I want to keep this as a goal. I’m not saying I never do this, but I don’t think I need to set it as a goal for myself. I can write things as needed and dictated by the students I have each year. But making it a personal goal feels like an unnecessary step. I’ll do the work if I need to as part of my day job; no need to “focus” on it here.

Bonus achievement: The dragon egg story I wrote on a whim and submitted to WotF. I was using a writing prompt, thinking it would just be an exercise, and then it turned into a whole story. Just goes to show that “practice” for writers can turn into real work (as is true for nearly all artists). Who knows if it’s any good, but I had fun writing it.

Shifting Season

October 9, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I love fall, and I hate it.

I love the weather, but I hate that I can’t always enjoy it.

Fall is busy. It’s the new school year, it’s making lunches again, it’s three birthdays in our family, it’s letters of recommendation and summer homework that needs grading. It’s always getting started on the wrong foot. It’s crisp mornings and warm afternoons, and evenings that start earlier. My walks shift from mornings to after dinner.

Fall is a shifting season.

I like the idea of fall. I hate the reality of it.

I wish my falls could be like what we see in commercials. The cozy apple orchard, pumpkins, sweateriness, the hot tea and reading under blankets, the hay rides and bonfires. I literally went to a hay ride and bonfire a week ago, and still, I cannot enjoy it. I cannot let go of all the ways my summer life has been upended, and how I haven’t yet adjusted.

Fall shifts us from summer to winter, and on some level, I love that shift. I really like winter! I really like summer too, but most of all, I like how I get to enjoy both, and I like the shift from one to the next. I adore seasons.

But the other shift in fall–the harder shift–is the shift into all this busy-ness. It should be the opposite–shifting from summer to winter should be a shift FROM busy TO restful. Instead, the shift is seismic. I lose my balance. I falter.

Spring shifts us too, but that’s a springboard shift. A leap into summer. A welcome shift where the end of the school year is in sight.

I love fall, but I also hate it. I resent it, I suppose. I resent that what I wish it could be is not what it is.

The shift is happening TO me, not the other way around. If I could do the shifting, if I could be in control, then the turn from summer to winter would be beautiful.

But I’m not in control. The shift is happening TO me. I am buffeted about and pulled in a thousand directions. I am the leaf that falls and gets blown hither and yon.

Just as I was thinking all this, an email from Cal Newport hit my inbox in which he mentions the Gen Z trend to “lock in” for the remainder of 2025. This “locking in” is about focusing hard for the next three months to finish 2025 strong and get something done that doesn’t involve doomscrolling or wasting time on TikTok.

Newport then links to his Youtube video where he lays out a plan for using the last four months of the year to “reinvent your life.”

Shifts.

Gen Z’s locking in, Newport’s reinvention plan–these are ways of shifting, of taking control of fall and using the season to move into something better. The shift of fall means change, but Newport’s idea is that this change can be positive.

Would it be possible for me to use fall for my own shift? To stop the winds of autumn from blowing me about like a stray brown?

I am not sure.

I like the idea of taking charge, of shifting things in the right direction instead of being shifted into chaos. But how does one take control of the shift when so much is outside my control?

Perhaps this is just September. Perhaps no matter who controls the shift–me or the world–there will be discomfort. There will be chaos.

It is a shift after all. And I can’t help that it’s a shift into more–more responsibilities, more work, more things on my plate. I can fight the shift, cry about the shift, accept the shift, or ride the shift. I can take more control, but I can’t stop the onrush of birthdays and lunches and grading and earlier mornings. Some things are inevitable. The seasons change.

And I do like the changing of seasons.

I like fall.

There’s a certain glow to the sunlight in September, in early October. There’s a lovely dryness right now, where it’s warm but I can still wear a long-sleeved shirt, and the sun is bright but not intense. There’s a gentleness to the weather. A mildness.

A strange contrast to the hectic day-to-day of tasks and responsibilities.

Maybe I don’t have to like all the chaos and busyness of fall, but I can still enjoy the crisp mornings and the fresh apples and the hay rides. Maybe I can reinvent myself too. Maybe Newport and the Gen Zers are on to something. Fall may be busy, and it may be an uncomfortable shift, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be a meaningless one. Perhaps I can wrest back a little control, shift things in subtle ways.

Maybe fall is just the shift I need to reaffirm my desires and my goals.

If everything is in tumult these days, why not use that unsettling to unsettle some of my complacency, some of my resignation?

What meaning can I find in all this?

Perhaps I need to reaffirm my desires. Perhaps all this shifting (which I find so uncomfortable) is a sign that I’m not in the right place, that something is off. Perhaps I need to recommit to a writing career; perhaps I need to remember what’s important and what’s peripheral; perhaps I need to dream a bit bigger and not give in to despair.

Maybe that’s the challenge of fall. As the weather cools and the days darken, as work piles up and up and up, the challenge is to not let it overwhelm you. The shift is happening beneath your feet and in the air and on your To Do list, but that shift doesn’t have to bury you.

Instead, weathering the shift is a kind of victory. Winter may be a time for rest and healing, but we feel that rest more deeply when we’ve gone through the wringer. The shifting of fall may be troublesome at times, but it can shake loose old ways of thinking; it can challenge us deeply, but facing those challenges can make us stronger.

I’m still annoyed by all the busyness of fall, but now I can sense that there’s an invitation happening too. I am invited to see the tumult as a crucible, as a shaking loose. I can shed old ways and discover new ones. I can let old frameworks die and resurrect deeper desires. I can also stumble and fall. That will happen too.

But it’s right there in the name. Fall.

In some ways it’s inevitable that this season will challenge me.

And yet, despite the challenges, I always manage to make it through.

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