Rush Hour

            On my way home from a convention today, I found myself being passed on the highway by every other vehicle. Not just the occasional ones that is normal for me – usually there’s a mix of some passing me, me passing a few, and most going the same speed as me – but all the other vehicles. I wasn’t driving slower than usual, but I did realize this was rush hour. And I started to wonder why it was that everyone was in such a hurry that they would risk speeding tickets (and not small ones, either).

I figure that part of the reason is that most people don’t know how useless speeding actually is. If I look back to times I was in a particular hurry, I found that at the fastest speed I was willing to drive (admittedly not all that much over the speed limit – what can I say? My parents owned a driving school when I was growing up) I managed to shave a whole five minutes off a drive of more than an hour. That’s really not worth the trouble.

But then, I realized, it was unlikely that these people were all on a schedule to get somewhere. Not in the evening. They were most likely going home. So many people, rushing to get home – risking speeding tickets and, judging by the speed, the potential to lose their licences to get home.

            And I realized that what was most important to them was the feeling of getting home as fast as possible – the feeling that they had stolen a few more moments to spend time with their family, work on personal projects, play video games, or do whatever it was they want to do with their lives.

            So many people feel like they don’t have enough time in their lives – and let’s face it: they don’t. There are some extraordinary people out there who can balance professional and personal lives and be perfectly happy, but I don’t think the average person can. Otherwise, why would so many people daily risk the severe consequences of driving dangerously just to scrape a few more moments of time to themselves?

            It seems that I have added yet another reason to my belief that the average work weekshould be cut in half (with the economy adjusted to accommodate it). Not only would it improve mental health, make people happier overall, and increase the number of jobs for the workforce, but it would make people safer drivers because they wouldn’t feel like they had to rush around to have enough time to spend on what they want to do.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Legend of Minecraft

            Today I shall share with you the results of a project I started back at the end of December. While it’s true that I was working on this over the past seven months, because of the on-and-off nature of the time I spent on it, I feel it’s safe to say that the work itself only took a month or two.

            The project started when I decided to play through my collection of Zelda games – something I do once every few years. However, I was having trouble convincing myself to start playing the first one. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is a game from my earliest gaming days, back when the Super Nintendo was the hottest system on the market. As a result, I’ve played it so much that I pretty much have it memorized.

            I wanted to do something that would make this play-through of the game more interesting – and to make it last more than a couple days. So, I came up with the idea of combining it with another game: Minecraft. As I played through the A Link to the Past, I was going to build the world map in Minecraft.

            And now, at long last, it’s done.

            When I first started it, I was considering making not only the world, but the insides of the buildings and dungeons as well. However, I quickly discovered that this would be impossible: as with many video games, the buildings were bigger on the inside than the outside. Besides, I was beginning to understand the scope of the task I had undertaken. I wasn’t certain I would ever complete it, when at the end of my first session all I had was this:

            Of course, starting is always slow. The second day went much faster as I learned the rules I needed to follow to convert the 2D world into the 3D one. I had thought it would be easier, as both games were built on a block-like grid, however in the original game they were able to place objects halfway between two squares – something it was impossible to do in Minecraft. So, I had to take some artistic licence. By the end of day two, I was quite happy with the progress I had made.

            From there on, my rendition of the map steadily grew as, piece by piece, it came together.

            I did find I had to make a number of adjustments to the map, just to make it hold together. I needed to stretch a small section of the world so that it the rest of the world would pass behind Hyrule castle, rather than through it. As it was, the back of the castle had to be a sheer drop. However, the most annoying part was when I built Kakariko village, only to find that – what with all the ledges dropping ground level – the game designers had, thanks to the 2D nature of the game, created an Escher-like world. Luckily I had enough space to build a steep hill and connect the sections of the world as they were meant to be.

            In spite of the struggles, I was delighted with the results of my work. I was building locations that would be instantly recognizable to anyone who had played the game.

            When I completed the Master Sword’s grove....

            ... I knew I had come to the final, and most challenging, part of my task. This was the point where I would find out if I was going to complete this project, of give up on it. Death Mountain: the mountain that looms over all of Hyrule. And I have to admit, I came close to quitting when I had built most of the mountain only to discover that I had to move the whole thing (I don’t use mods or commands, so it was all done one block at a time).

            But, I persevered – and when part of the mountain still overlapped somewhere it shouldn’t, I improvised and made it make sense.

            Welcome to the The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’s kingdom of Hyrule, Minecraft style. Or, as I like to call it, The Legend of Minecraft.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Building a Playable World

            This week, I managed to get my nose to the grindstone working on a big project I started back in June. This is a campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons.

            Back when I was in the planning stages for the D&D marathon for Cystic Fibrosis, I was talking with the Dungeon Master of the weekly game I play in and the idea was floated that I could eventually start running a second game at the board game cafe. I liked the idea, but at the same time I prefer to be a player rather than a DM. At the same time, I knew that there was a waiting list and it would be great for the gaming community.

            So, naturally, I began thinking about the possibilities for games I could run. What did I want to see in a game? What would be fun for me to run, and fun for players to play? And that’s when a seed took root in my mind.

            One of the things that makes D&D such a great game is its versatility. You can do absolutely anything with it. Even in the most complex video game, there is a limit to the decisions a player can make – they can be given a great amount of freedom, and still be chained down by the limited options. In D&D, there are no limitations – yet the games frequently take on the same shape of “Here is your quest”, go to the dungeon, get the reward. There’s often plotlines and political situations woven in, but it doesn’t take advantage of D&D’s true ability to do anything. I feel that this is largely due to the players, having been trained by video games and society’s expectations, don’t necessarily understand how much freedom they have – and they don’t necessarily understand the depth of the world they’ve been thrown into.

            And so, I came up with an idea for a world that will (hopefully) open the players’ minds to all they can do: a world where the players are colonizing a “new world”. So, rather than being thrown into a world where there are kingdoms and empires and complex political structures that they know nothing about, the players will be put into a world that is as strange to the non-player-characters around them as it is to them. This puts the players at the centre of everything as a new society is established, and it gives them the freedom to do absolutely whatever they want. Do they want to help establish a settlement? Do they want to go off and explore the new world? The world is entirely open for them to choose what to do.

            Now, obviously, from a DM’s perspective, a world like that is a bit challenging to run. There needs to be plots to keep the players engaged, and in a world so free and open, it is hard to know what to prepare for the game. So, I started writing up the campaign setting – which is, essentially, a description of the world, everything in it, and guidelines for making the world easier for the DM to run. It is an immense task, but hey – I’m part of the Alliance of Worldbuilders; building worlds is what we do.

            So far, it is coming along well. I’ve outlined the world, its history, and the basics for how the game functions. The functions need a lot of work, but I’ll get them done eventually.

            This week, however, I was focusing on a very fun task: monsters. Even though this world lacks civilization (and, largely, because of that), this world is crawling with monsters. So, I combed through D&D’s monster manual and cherry picked monsters to have established societies in this world. Then I created those societies and figured out what politics they had, both within themselves and with all the others.

            It was so much fun and, let me tell you, I can’t wait until I’ve completed this setting and I get to see it in action. Who knows? I may even decide it’s good enough to publish through the Dungeon Masters’ Guild.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Bug Eyes

            Watching a bug today, I started wondering what the world must look like to something so small. Certainly, everything is bigger – a crumb would be like a large rock – but are there any differences to how they actually see?

            Certainly, bugs must see more details than we do – much like how a piece of fabric looks like something solid from a distance, while the closer you get the more individual threads you can see. But is that where it stops?

            Through the use of microscopes, humans can examine things too small for them to see. We can break objects down into their individual parts. To insects, those parts are so much bigger in the first place. So, can they already see them? Does your vision become more magnified the smaller you get?

            If so, that must mean that the smallest of bugs view the world on a molecular level. How strange that must be, to look at something and see all the pieces it was made from. Like being able to count all the bricks in a wall, only the wall is a crumb.

            Oh, the knowledge we could glean if only we could communicate with other beings.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Unstoppable Creativity

            You’d think I would have learned by now. Because I haven’t, I’ve now broken my cardinal rule. That’s right, I’m working on more than one book at a time.

            It may not seem like such an important rule. Loads of people work on more than one book at once, so why is it such a big problem? Well, it’s a problem because it gives the writer an excuse to not finish a project. The Dark Lord of the Alliance of Worldbuilders is a prime example – he’d written 100,000 words or more in a single month (wow!) and yet, to my knowledge, he had never completed a book (we all give him a hard time about it).

            Now, in my case, I couldn’t help starting a second project. As I mentioned a few blogs back, I’m currently working on rewriting a project. Apparently, after seven years of writing every day, rewriting isn’t enough of a creative outlet for my brain. After a while, an idea surfaced that I couldn’t resist – so now, here I am, splitting my writing time between two projects when I should be focusing on one.

            It just goes to show that creativity is a habit. Once you get into it, you just have to keep going.

            Feel free to take that as encouragement to build a creative habit – or a warning to avoid doing so. Whichever suits you best.

            Either way, know that you can’t stop the creativity. Creators must create.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.