Ben Stovall Blog

Tag: life

  • June 2025 Irregular Update

    June 2025 Irregular Update

    So, here we are again. Look, I won’t beat around the bush. It’s been a tough year, hasn’t it? With everything going on in the world, (especially right now) it’s been hard to get into a space for writing. There’s been a lot of times this year that the only thing that could still my mind at all was this hobby I returned to in December (more on that later).

    I’d love to be showing up with great news about a project, but the truth is I don’t have anything to report on. As mentioned before, the Tide rewrite totally stalled out, and I almost got started on something else before getting entirely derailed. And not by video games this time.

    So. Let’s dig in.

    Returning Hobby?

    When I was in my teens, just after I’d been working for a while and had this sudden surplus of disposable income, my friends and I got into the nerdiest hobby on the planet: Warhammer 40k. We assembled and painted overpriced plastic miniatures and played pretend-war on the tabletop and had a blast. Some of my fondest memories are of those days – of visiting a local game store and playing all day, getting everyone some food at McDonald’s or Cici’s Pizza for cheap.

    And, my first models for Warhammer 40k were a gift from my grandma. When we started, our friend had gotten the Assault on Black Reach starter set, and two people locked in with the Space Marines and Orks. The original owner of that set settled into Eldar, and I started with the T’au Empire. We played games (not to exact specification of the rules – we never ran objectives and had little in the way of terrain), painted, and enjoyed talking about the game and lore.

    I probably hadn’t painted any models in 8 years by the time December rolled around. But, after playing some Space Marine 2 with my friends and peeking at the minis, I finally caved at bought back in, starting with the Orks – the army I’d been leaning toward switching into near the end of our original time in the hobby.

    See, as teens, we all painted our share of orks. Our friend had more bodies than he could paint himself, and we were all happy for the practice. I got pretty good at painting orks, and, honestly? I think I’ve retained that skill.

    It’s been a much needed piece of serenity these last few months, and with the friends I’ve made in my guild on Warcraft, we’ve got our own little meta forming; one guy’s playing Death Guard and Custodes, another’s on Dark Angels and he’s brought in a friend playing Votann and Chaos Knights; we’ve got players on Tyranids, Imperial Guard, and Necrons. I’ve gotten a fair few games under my belt, and I’m looking forward to trying to find some time to play in person at a local store again. (We’re all across the continent, so we’ve been playing on Tabletop Sim.)

    So, that’s been my main focus the last little while. It hasn’t entirely stamped out writing, of course. I’m still running a D&D game weekly, and I’ve been running a once-to-twice a month game for my family. And, I’ve written little bits of lore about my army of Orks and the characters therein, written up some small narrative moments from some of the battles we’ve had.

    I mean to say I’m still exercising the muscle, even if I don’t have a book to report any progress on.

    … But You Will Write Another Book, Right?

    Yes. Yes, absolutely.

    Look, there’s been times when this has been disheartening. There’s been times when I’ve questioned whether it was worthwhile to keep paying the upkeep on the site and blog – especially since I have these long stretches where I do nothing with it. But, ultimately, writing means a lot to me. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care if no one read me – I want my stories to mean something to people.

    For that to happen, though, I have to write the damn things.

    So. I’d better do it then, huh?

    How’s About the Blog, then?

    Oh, yeah. So, you might’ve noticed the new digs. I’ve changed hosting services, and, after all the work I put in over the last week to set this all up, I’m going to hit myself if I keep letting this slip through my fingers.

    I get into my head about it, is the problem. I often feel like I have little to add or nothing of note to say. But this is my corner of the internet. If someone doesn’t want to hear what I have to say, they can good and damn well leave, can’t they?

    And if you’re one of the ones sticking around, thanks. Thank you for reading.

    I’ll see you again in the next one.

  • December 2024 Irregular Update

    December 2024 Irregular Update

    Hi.

    Yes. I know. It’s been much, much longer than I intended since the last one of these. Since the last blog post in general. I … did not mean for it to go this way. Hell, I think the only thing that’s putting a fire beneath my ass to do this now is that I have my 2024 Year in Review post ready to go and it feels like I should probably address some stuff before I do that.

    So. What the hell happened, huh? Maybe we can both figure it out after prattling on for a while.

    Where were the blog posts?

    Well, at the top of the year, I had some turmoil with D&D. Well, more correctly, holdover turmoil from our experiment with Pathfinder. The homebrew game I was running petered out. We had one player who wasn’t all that jazzed about going back to D&D and another who was losing availability for a couple of months. So, we wrapped up the dungeon we were in and called the game.

    Not something I’m unfamiliar with – I’ve been running D&D for nearly fifteen damn years at this point. I’ve had more games get canned than reach their intended conclusion. Still, this one stung. This game was practically full-on sandbox and I wanted to more or less run the game as a gift for the table, let them explore and self-direct to the extreme. I was happy to put in the extraordinary time I might need to week-to-week to set the track down right in front of the train, but it still didn’t work out. And perhaps the complete lack of direction wasn’t the right fit for the table or the characters they made, maybe it was entirely down to the external obstacles, but it stung to lose that campaign.

    After that, I ran Blades in the Dark for about three months or so with the two players who stuck around. That system was some good fun, and we enjoyed it well. It’s built incredibly well for allowing the players to have the initiative in their choices and actions – it’s the exact inverse of D&D. In the latter, the DM has a situation they present to the players and the players respond; in Blades, the players lay out a heist (called Scores) and the GM reacts to their actions. Perhaps a bit of an oversimplification, but it runs well and we had some good fun!

    Once we got to the end of our “first season” of that game, we got one of our players back and were joined by two others and we went back to D&D. I’ve been running Tyranny of Dragons since June and it’s been going well. It’s my second time using the module and I’ve made some major edits to its structure – ones I’d love to share here on the blog, but half of my table has a habit of reading this blog, so that’ll have to wait – at least until we’ve passed the moments that have been adjusted.

    (I know, I know. How can someone have a habit of reading this blog when it’s been silent basically all year. Hush.)

    Another major source for much of my RPG related-posts was playing in a friend’s game who was running the game for the first time. I had the boon of seeing someone with no experience running the game and it reminded me of many of the lessons I’ve learned over the years – and he managed to do some inspired things despite his inexperience that I wanted to praise. Unfortunately, that table also dissolved due to out-of-game circumstances (luckily after the module’s completion).

    I’ve since had the privilege of joining another game that’s run once a month run by another friend, but I had this block, this wall up, that held me off from drafting anything.

    I had some other topic ideas at the start of the year, which made me feel fired up enough back in the January Irregular update, but … well. I lost confidence in claiming that I had any worthwhile experience to actually write those posts.

    These ideas were about the steps I took for independent publishing. Problem is, it’d be delusional to say I’ve done this successfully – at least, to the degree that I feel like my experience would be valuable to someone desperately googling for advice. Regardless of the validity of that worry – it held me off from drafting those posts. So. There it is.

    And … Red Watch?

    In January, I was feeling good about my decision to rewrite the first two books, and I still think pulling them down was the right decision for me. By February, I had completed the draft of A Violent Peace, and sent it out to several folks, people who’ve previously read for me. To my knowledge, none of them ever got around to it, or got very far into it. And I do not begrudge or blame or have any negative feelings toward them; beta reading is a lot of work for no compensation – any time it’s done, it’s a favor, and I’m thankful for them all offering to begin with.

    The point is, the complete lack of engagement was disheartening. The book probably still has many problems. I think there’s some stuff within it that works well, but there’s likely far more that just isn’t working.

    I spent the next two months diving headfirst into the rewrite of A Tide of Bones. I made some excellent headway and I was really liking some of the changes I made. … But there were many more things that were proving exceptionally difficult. I had adjusted the characters a little to provide a new central tension in the first quest of the book, but those changes were … I don’t know if they were right. And I just kept struggling with more and more things; with proper POV division, with some repetitive motivations following the events in Souhal. There’s obviously too many characters, too, but I don’t know what to do about that.

    I mean, clearly the solution would be to cut characters. But to do that would be to surrender the goal I had of not completely changing the canon of the stories so returning readers could pick up A Violent Peace. And would require major rewrites to A Violent Peace, given that it was written with the previous canon to begin with.

    So … do I scupper the whole thing? This project is like a hydra – every problem I address spawns more. How much more do I want to wrestle with it? How much does it get mangled before it’s unrecognizable? Am I going to tie myself to this anchor and just keep on with it? Or do I cut it loose?

    I think … it’s probably the latter, isn’t it? It’s been eight months since I’ve written a word that wasn’t for D&D because of this weight around my neck. I even flubbed the journaling.

    “Sometimes, taking a leap forward means leaving a few things behind.”

    Maybe it’s time to do just that, Ekko.

    So … what’s next?

    If I’ve learned anything, it’s that making promises or exclamations in a random blog post aren’t worth a damn from me. Lately, I’ve been failing to find things to do – to find distractions that will keep me busy and off-track. For a long time this year, I was playing too much Warcraft, too much Baldur’s Gate and Deep Rock Galactic, over-prepping for D&D, all sorts of stuff. But, the sheen’s wearing off.

    When I’m not doing anything else, I end up writing.

    So. Let’s see what we end up working on, then.

  • January 2024 Irregular Update

    January 2024 Irregular Update

    Happy New Year, everyone! Been a while since the last one of these, so here we are again. Read on for updates on Red Watch 3, the blog, and more!

    Did you finish the draft of Red Watch 3?

    No. Not yet. I hit a bit of a wall that seemed bigger than it was. Coming into the new year, I picked up a new habit (more on that later) that helped me work through it. I’m making steady progress again, working on the penultimate or final chapters of each storyline in the book to be followed up by the epilogues. It’s the biggest ones left, but I’m optimistic about completing the draft by winter’s end.

    Still unsettled on a title. I have a short list of some ideas for one, but I haven’t been enamored with any of them yet. As a peek behind the curtain, the front-runners right now are A Violent Peace and A Merciless Union.

    One more thing for Red Watch: in the upcoming months I’ll share something big here on the blog. It’s something I’ve been considering for a long time and once the draft for book 3 is done, it’s my next project. You’ll know more about it in a few months.

    Latest on the Blog?

    So, middle of last year, I started missing dates for my goal of two posts per month. I still mostly got one out each month, but inconsistently. One month I’d drop one a few days in, the next one it was on the last week. A handful of factors played into that.

    The first: when I hit my wall on RW3, I ended up hardly writing anything. I was expecting I’d get disrupted by some of my hobbies in the back half of the last year (Baldur’s Gate 3), but I didn’t expect it to the degree to which it happened. And I’m not blaming BG3 – when it came out, it was all I was interested in spending my time on. That isn’t a fault in the game (probably a credit to it, really). It just coincided with a time when I also had few enticing ideas for blog posts.

    I had drafted a couple posts, even, but I wasn’t satisfied with them afterward. I had one cooking about Starfield – mostly outlining my disappointment and a growing frustration with customers who wanted to say that the jank was fine because Bethesda used to make good games. I had another about Warcraft, but I ended up disagreeing with my own thesis less than a week after drafting it. (It was written on the week 10.1 dropped, when we had the next zone available, but not the raid or mythic+ season. At the time, I was unenthused with the prospect of spending another patch pugging dungeons for all my progression, but my friends and I joined a guild and started having a lot more fun again. Playing an MMO with a community works, who would’ve guessed?)

    There’s a weird problem with the blog. I like to write on a topic when I feel like I have something to say about it, but oftentimes, it seems what I would say has been said already – in a reddit post, in a video essay, in an article. If I don’t feel like I’m adding to the conversation, I wonder what the point of the post even is. Sometimes it’s worthwhile – with the political posts, those are battles we keep having to fight.

    When it comes to Starfield? What’s one more nerd’s article about his disappointment good for? Do I really need to write a post about how weird it is that the fourth Indiana Jones movie got so much criticism when the movies all seem to be full of shlocky bullshit? Is that something I want to go to bat for?

    The final factor: I spent much of the year running a Pathfinder game. As I discussed in my blog post on the system, it’s really solidly built. (Awesome for some, didn’t work out for me.) One of D&D’s flaws is the holes in its system that I had to fill in over the years with homebrew solutions. The latter (while worse as far as a professionally designed product goes) (especially one released by one of the biggest companies in the world) provided more opportunities to find problems to solve, solutions to work out. Thoughts that might be worth sharing with others.

    Anyway. I’d like to get back to two posts per month. I just need to figure out what I want to write about – what kind of things you might want to read about. Hell, maybe you’ll see a post very much like those above-mentioned abandoned drafts.

    What else is going on?

    Earlier, I mentioned I picked up a new habit. At the suggestion of my younger brother and following the example of my older brother, I started journaling during the last week of December. (I believe all successful New Year’s Resolutions begin before the new year does.)

    I’ve journaled before – usually to vent or when I couldn’t sleep. Now, I’m doing it habitually. No matter how inane or uninteresting my day is, I write about it. (And I work from home, so my days can be really uninteresting.) I journal about my thoughts, my plans for the day, where I am with my writing. It’s helped; a lot. I’m fully bought in. I’ve got two more journals waiting in the wings.

    Otherwise, I’ve slammed through some books since Christmas. I read Murderbot #3-7 (Martha Wells) and the Sunlit Man (Brandon Sanderson) in these last three weeks. I’ve locked up one full, uninterrupted hour to read every day when I finish my shift at work.

    I’ve been looking at the Blades in the Dark TTRPG, and I’m planning to start running it with my table in a few weeks. Really excited about the system. It’s hard to like Hasbro / WOTC right now, so I kind of just don’t. Makes it even more enticing to give it a run.

    Think that’s about it! I’m taking the risk to say I’m pretty optimistic for this year. I think it’ll be a good one. As always, thank you for reading. Good luck this year, y’all.

  • 2022: Year in Review

    2022: Year in Review

    As we come upon the end of 2022, I wanted to take a moment to look back at all of the media I’ve enjoyed this year and talk about what I loved. Consider this a graduation of a “Ben Recommends” post, one plus-sized entry to talk about several games, books, movies, and TV shows that I didn’t devote an entire post to earlier in the year. Not all of these projects were released this year, but they were things I experienced for the first time in 2022. As always, we’ll avoid spoilers as much as we can, so without further delay, let’s dive in.

    Books

    I didn’t read as much as I’d planned to this year, but there was certainly no shortage of quality books that completely ensnared me. The craft on display inspired me to keep honing my own writing, to pursue the best I can manage and always improve.

    A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace

    Arkady Martine’s Hugo winning duology was instantly one of the best books I’d ever read. I remember a moment – the first “on-screen” interaction between Ambassador Mahit and her predecessor Yskandr – that I just felt floored. Every time I pick up a Hugo winner, I find something, an idea or an impeccable presentation, some way to present a thought in a way that I hadn’t been able to consider or articulate myself, that just reminds me why I was so drawn to writing in the first place. I read Desolation before 2022’s Hugos were awarded, but I had no doubt it my mind it would snag the win.

    The Rage of Dragons

    I first picked up Evan Winter’s novel to read while I was unable to engage in my more persistent distractions, but I found it so gripping that even when I’d finally returned home, it was still consuming my time. Reading it reminded me of the way Game of Thrones made me feel when the show had been at its best, even despite how different the two tales are. The book is so deliberate, so consistent, that even moments that might drag in a lesser novel remained just as enthralling here. I can’t wait to catch up with the Fires of Vengeance and join everyone else in waiting for the next novel.

    Elder Race

    Adrian Tchaikovsky is an author whose name I’d see pop up on the fantasy subreddit time and again, so I decided to give Elder Race a try to dip my toes into his work. I finished the entire novella in a day, moving only when my spot on the couch started to become uncomfortable. Only once I’d finished did I set the book down, adding more of his work to my wish list for the holidays.

    Movies

    I only found my way into a theater a handful of times this year, catching The Batman and the new Marvel movies, and when I did sit down with a movie at home it was often one I’d already seen. Still, there was a notable exception that deserves a spot of recognition here.

    Knives Out & Glass Onion

    Say what you will for Rian Johnson’s entry into Star Wars, but the man knows how to craft an exciting mystery. I finally got around to seeing Knives Out this year, and I immediately knew I had to share the movie with my mother. It’s a wonderful film with surprising twists and turns all throughout, and Glass Onion certainly serves as a great sequel to expand the canon on Benoit Blanc.

    TV Shows

    There were a lot of new shows this year that I didn’t ever get around to watching. I’ve heard great things about dozens of shows, but never had the opportunity to check most of them out. Of what I did see, the two below really stick out as the best of the best.

    Better Call Saul

    I was a huge fan of Better Call Saul since the first season. Each time they finally got added to Netflix, I slammed through each episode, hungry for more. Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan worked a miracle, following up one of the best television dramas ever with a spinoff sequel, that, for me, surpassed the original. It’s a master class in pacing, in setup and payoff, in following through, even if it might become predictable. The final season stuck the landing, and I can’t wait to see what these guys do next.

    Andor

    If it hadn’t finished so close to the year, I think Andor would’ve had its own entire post. This show was something I’d always wanted from Star Wars: a gritty, grounded story about people rising against the tyranny of the empire. It isn’t afraid to take its time, to build clear stakes and show us who these characters are. Despite the darkness it is hopeful – things are bad, but there are those who are willing to fight, to build a tomorrow they will never see, so that things will be better one day.

    Video Games

    The video game industry continues to swing wildly between the best and the worst it can be. In the same year that we get Elden Ring and God of War: Ragnarok as examples of the pinnacle of what games can be, we get Diablo: Immortal, a blatant pay-to-win cash grab, and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet releases as a buggy mess with very little in the way of innovation despite being one of the highest grossing media franchises in the world. I’ve always been a bit of a patient gamer, only buying games on day one when they’re a highly anticipated release, but I still got around to a lot of games that were new this year.

    Vampire Survivors

    I was an early adopter of this tiny little game, picking it up at the start of February in early access. Very, very few games are as much of a value trade as this ended up being. For that $3 price point I got 54 hours of excellent gameplay, and they just released a $2 DLC that I’m excited to get around to diving into soon. For a while, I was keeping up with each patch and collecting the achievements as they came, but I hadn’t played since April until a couple weeks ago and I had a lot of new things to check out when I got back into it.

    Potionomics

    I was never someone who was interested in dating simulator games. I’d confidently skipped over them all, certain I wasn’t missing anything. Then, I saw someone playing Potionomics on a stream and decided to give it a shot. It had just enough of a game laid overtop that I bought in, and I enjoyed the game immensely. I stuck around for two full playthroughs to get all of the achievements on Steam and I have no regrets. I don’t think it’s completely changed my opinion on dating simulators, but if this team releases another one with another decent game on top, they’ve at a minimum earned my interest.

    Dicey Dungeons

    A friend of mine played this game on Game Pass and immediately knew I’d love it. That same day he sent me a gifted copy, and he was completely correct. This little roguelike battle game has been an absolute blast to play. The game gives you items to equip on each run that you use rolled six-sided dice to dismantle your foes with. There’s appropriately six characters to play as, each with their own unique dice interactions and mechanics: the warrior can reroll dice to get better results, the rogue wants lower dice values to unleash a flurry of attacks, the robot rolls each dice one-at-a-time with a hard cap on how much their CPU can handle each turn. With lots of comedy buried in the enemy profiles you unlock with each achievement, this game is overflowing with charm.

    My Game of the Year: God of War Ragnarok

    Ragnarok is a sequel in the most honest sense of the word. Everything about God of War (2018) is improved upon here: the gameplay is smoother, the systems are more developed with more options, things are expanded naturally, and the story and performances are top-notch. Elden Ring is absolutely one of the best games I’ve ever played, but Ragnarok appeals more to me as a person. It would be a lie to say Elden Ring lacks a narrative, but presentation between these two games couldn’t be more different, and I’m a sucker for a great story.

    There’s also something to be said for the difference in boss design in these two games. While you have so much more freedom in how you build your character in Elden Ring, there’s certainly a value in the way a God of War boss can have mechanics that require a specific answer to be dealt with. In Elden Ring and the Dark Souls games, what you’re capable of as a character can be so varied that I don’t believe there’s any mechanics in the game that the dodge roll can’t avoid. In Ragnarok, there was a boss that I needed to interrupt with a weapon throw, or a couple mechanics that I could use a specific arrow from my ally to interrupt, and it felt fantastic to go step-for-step in these dance-like encounters. Neither of these design philosophies is better than the other: what you gain in player choice and freedom in Elden Ring is incredibly valuable, while the limited choices you make in God of War can still adjust your playstyle, just not nearly as much as the decisions in Elden Ring.

    2022 delivered some truly incredible stories, and I couldn’t be more thankful to have the opportunity to experience them. I’m excited to see what new stories we can share with one another in 2023. As always, thank you for reading. I hope you have a happy New Year, and I’ll see you again soon.

  • Ebonskar and What’s Next

    Ebonskar and What’s Next

    So! There it is. Ebonskar will be out on November 18th. I’m excited for it to get into your hands and I hope you enjoy it. I believe it’s my best work so far, and I can’t wait to see how everyone else feels about it.

    That just leaves one question, doesn’t it?

    What’s next?

    Well. There’s at least a half dozen people hungry for Red Watch’s third installment. If that’s you, thank you for being patient while I went and did this second thing. Let me say you’ve waited long enough, and to apologize in advance that the wait is going to be a little longer. Red Watch 3 will absolutely be commanding my attention until it’s finished, but it’s not done yet. There’s going to be a bit more time to wait, and I’m going to do what I can to mitigate it as much as I can.

    Following that, I’m not certain yet. My current plan finds Red Watch reaching its end in the fourth book, but I think I’ll want to land on something between the third and fourth. I have two sequels in early stages to follow Ebonskar to make a trilogy. If people are dying to see the follow up there, I could see Tyrant’s Mask 2 as the book following. Otherwise, one of those little ideas I played with earlier this year. It’d be nice to have a standalone available for others to ease in, see if they’re interested in my writing style.

    The blog will proceed as is. I’ll post when I’ve got something I want to say, or an event to inform you about. As with my last post, I’m not going to call out each one on social media, so if you want to get updates for each of the blog entries emailed to you, use the option on the right to subscribe. Emails will only come through when a blog post goes up.

    Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoy Ebonskar!