Jeremiah Donaldson's Blog: This and That

Welcome to the eleventh blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at Bases, a new addition with DTR2E.

Buildings can be found that are suitable to form the nucleus of a base. However, they may not be in ideal places for one reason or another. This means that new buildings need to be built where a base is needed or wanted. The structures built are either 'Crude' or 'Secure'

Crude and Secure structures have their own Recipes in their section that are not counted in the other 57 Recipe types and their ingredients are heavy and/or hard to carry. Another difference between these Recipes and the other types is that other characters can help complete many structure Recipes.

Full blog post:
https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

This is 10th in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing. It takes a look at my very newest recurring villain, President Peter Dicks.

President Peter Dicks is one of the antagonists in Dr. Lovedeath or: How I Was Made to Roll Up My Sleeve and Love the Jab. If any of the characters can be called that or protagonists in that story, which at its root is an emotional upwelling from the abject display of mental illness that was caused by the 'pandemic' and the deaths caused by the 'cure(s)', among other things. And the censorship. You know they shadow block this shit. At any rate, the characters are very real and I try to explore every angle in this piece of satire, much like I did in The Taming of the Pansy with those themes. Therefore, they're all characters, but who is who as far as pro or antagonist would depend largely on the reader. I'm just an observer as a writer goes, and the story is my account of how the pandemic felt and looked in a story.

On that note, President Peter Dicks is a loathsome, scandal ridden, dictator of a President who is under the control of...someone...but certainly not himself or the country, and has only one goal: to profit from the horse worm pandemic that has swept the world. His background is not explored and little attention is even paid to how he looks, because his actions matter, not his looks. He openly peddles CrookPharm's stock. He can't spell 'moral', much less give a definition. His hamster Winky, however, has millions spent on it so it can live another month. Or two.

He has few, if any, redeeming qualities and purposely uses people as pawns just as he is used by an unidentified puppet master, and happily goes along with both. Some people may be tempted to associate him with some of our own bad Presidents. You should. He's all of them along with all the other bad leaders that have ever existed. He isn't an 'everyman'. Peter Dicks is an 'everybadpolitician'.

He doesn't make many appearances in Dr. Lovedeath, but he's an omnipresent force that makes the story what it is. The followup to Dr. Lovedeath, Of Course You Know This Means War, coming 'sometime', will be the President's second appearance.

Original post:
https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

Welcome to the tenth blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at recipe changes in DTR2E.

Some Skills from 1E have been knocked down to only being Skill Recipes. This includes First Aid (now a Doctor Recipe) and Ammo Reloading (now a Weaponsmithing Recipe). The Doctor Training Skill from 1E is now called Doctor and has multiple Recipes attached to it, including the aforementioned First Aid Recipe. This alone added many Recipes, but most Recipes from the 1E expansion are also included, along with many completely new ones such as the Trap and Juice Recipes. All total, there are 57 Recipe types in 2E compared to 27 in the 1E rule book. This is upped to 58 Recipe types if the Structure Recipes are included in the count.

Two new groups of Recipes were added with 2E: Multi-skilled and Production.

Multi-skilled Recipes require more than one Skill to be at a certain minimum level to have a chance of success. These Recipes are used to create more powerful/useful/unusual items than the other Recipes.

Production Recipes are Recipes that only require the ingredients and time with no Skill Roll. There are not too many of them.

The 58th Recipe type in the DTR2E rule book consists of Structure Recipes, which are covered in the next part.

The next post will take a look at Bases in DTR2E.

Original post:
https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

The second part of the chicken series continues from the first with basics, but will touch on some other stuff.

One thing I left out in the first part of the chicken series are the two sounds I've heard from mine that aren't in their list of documented sounds. The first one is well known, but not listed for some reason I don't understand, except maybe for them not wanting to acknowledge it. This sound is a sound made only by young females that are not old enough to mate and it means something like 'I'm not old enough'. If you lightly pinch them in the back of the neck or when a male does accidentally tries to mount a juvenile, you will hear this screeching sound and it will be combined with them ducking their head down and attempting to dismount whatever is on their back.

The second sound is way more complicated and means something like 'Holy cow, you're alive!'. I've only heard it once and it was tied to a specific event. I had some young chickens that were about two months old being attacked in their cage at the same time that I had to go in and out of town because of a family emergency and couldn't properly see to them. On the last night they were attacked, the last four were torn apart by raccoons (literally horror show stuff) before I headed out of town for the last time and for three weeks. When I finally got back home, the first thing I did was go look in on my adult Heritage RIRs (the only ones to have made it because of the attacks) and all three looked at me and made a really complicated and multi-toned call that was combined with their eyes widening. I can't even attempt to describe the noise, it didn't sound like a chicken noise at all, and never heard it before that night or since or seen anything like it mentioned. I can only figure that they thought the raccoons had got me also.

On the subject of recognition. Chickens can recognize up to 100 faces. I would assume that the Heritage breeds are also better at this than the Production breeds, considering their other differences, but maybe not. At any rate, this 100 faces includes everything around the birds. You, your family, your pets, other livestock, other chickens, neighbors, visitors, mail people, and so forth. Anyone they don't recognize makes them nervous and they'll move away from that person if they approach. However, they recognize people fairly quickly like they train quickly and it won't take them long to ignore visitors unless they throw treats out.

Full post:
https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

Welcome to the ninth blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at the artwork for DTR2E.

The 2nd edition contains a large amount of work in stark contrast to the 1st edition, which only had cover art, a world map, and a few black and white diagrams. The 2nd edition also has a full color interior and all diagrams have been redone to take advantage of that.

The Flooded New York artwork is by Doan Trang and was modeled on an old picture I'd done myself that was used for the DTR: Scavenger Edition in 2018. She has worked on several projects for me, including Death Derby: Nature's Rage and some book covers. The Overgrown City was originally commissioned from her for the cover to The Disturbance Fiction Collection (volume 1), but is little seen and so is included in the RPG's artwork section.

Most of the artwork in the book is by Jon Wells. He also did art for the Death Derby Core Deck, Death Derby: High Octane, Death Derby promo cards, Ott & Ren covers, and some other stuff. The cannibal family picture was going to be the 2nd edition cover, but I wanted something with higher contrast. He did the world map, cannibal family, and all the black and white artwork in the RPG.

The next post will take a look at the Recipe changes in DTR2E.

Original post: https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

This is 9th in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing. It takes a look at one of my newest recurring villains, Leland Weathertree.

Leland Weathertree is the main antagonist in the Stopping Leland Campaign. This campaign was originally created in the Neverwinter MMO Foundry in 2013 and was redone in 2023 with Unlimited Adventures, or FRUA, a 30 year-old construction kit released by SSI that has had several hundred modules made for it over the years. The original Foundries were lost in 2019 when Cryptic shut down the Foundries for the Neverwinter and Star Trek MMOs.

Leland himself is the spoiled son of Neverwinter Councilman Angus Weathertree. He is a physically fit, well kept, blond man in his early 20's, but his age has never been explicitly stated. He is heavily based on Dr. Frankenstein and uses his father's corrupt guards to help him commit and hide crimes that range from kidnapping to murder to fuel his strange experiments. Angus successfully protects Leland from the consequences of his crimes until Leland starts to get too bold, bringing more attention his way than can be explained or bribed away.

https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

Welcome to the eighth blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at Knacks in DTR2ed, which are completely new for the 2nd edition. They are roughly equal to Perks or Feats in other games, but are considerably more involved at the most complicated level.

As stated in the post on PC changes, Knacks are 'special abilities that modify a stat or skill or grants a new Skill'. As such, they have a very wide range of effects from increasing damage output, to increasing Damage Resistance, to climbing better, to speaking another language, to learning yet more skills. If you want that special ability to knock your PC or NPC up a notch, Knacks are where you look. There are 86 in the rule book and many of them don't have a limit on the number of times they can be stacked.

Full post: https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

This is 8th in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing. It takes a look at the only alien race I've created so far rather than an individual.

The alien race in question, Those-Who-Absorb-All, only has one appearance in my fiction, The Last Stop, but they have a major role in the Disturbance Timeline overall. There's little lore on their background in The Last Stop. The scenes that feature any of them, of which the water tower operator He-Who-Pushes-Buttons-Quickly is the main character from their species, are from their POV and they're dealing with immediate events. Therefore, a lot of this profile will be information from personal notes and the Disturbance Timeline itself.

Those-Who-Absorb-All enter the Disturbance Timeline in 3633. This is ~500 years after humans have 'died off' in the Solar System due to poisoned food products as far as the 'history' is concerned (it was actually a mad scientist turned mass killer who literally kills all of humanity in the Solar System which will be detailed in a short story, eventually). It is also ~500 years before The Ship and the Protectors arrive at The Last Stop and Those-Who-Absorb-All enter the fictional narrative. See profile #5 or the timeline on my website for reference.

Full post: https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

This will touch on chickens, but there is so much information about them that this only scratches the surface. This is only taking a look at the most basic chicken information that you need to get started.

First and foremost, you have two main types of chickens: heritage and production.

Heritage chickens are the old style chickens, the old breeds, that were either originally bred from the Jungle Fowl or from a combination of the original breeds that were bred from Jungle Fowl. These chickens are what people think of when they think of a 'chicken'. They chase bugs, fight among themselves, take dirt baths, are good at predator evasion, are very hardy, have medium to excellent foraging abilities, are duel purpose (they're good layers and get big enough for the dinner table), can be trained pretty quickly, and are far smarter than anyone wants to admit (30+ vocalizations have been documented and I've IDed a minimum of two more from my birds, aka, they talk to each other and they talk to you). Two of the most popular heritage birds are Heritage Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons. I also have Barnevelders (a heritage breed from Holland). A few other popular heritage breeds are Australorps (Australian Orpingtons), Silkies (best known for their hair-like feathers), and the Jersey Giant (the largest of all duel purpose breeds).

Production chicks are the newer breeds that sacrificed EVERYTHING for pure production. These birds are pretty stupid compared to heritage breeds (poor instincts, but can learn if you mix them) and they are never duel purpose. The two most common production breeds are the Cornish Rock, which goes by a few different names, including 'Frankenchicken', because they grow so fast they have to be culled by 8-10 weeks to prevent them from dying on their own from heart issues (chicken breasts you buy in the store all came from ~8 week old Cornish Rocks), and the Leghorn, which is a tiny bird (4.5 lbs) that lays an extra large egg, and they are also prone to health issues due to how often they lay such big eggs. Another very popular production breed are the ISA Browns, which are a production chicken that was bred from Rhode Island Reds and Rhode Island Whites but are sex-linked, aka, you can tell the male/female chicks apart at hatch via coloration. There's also a Production Rhode Island Red that is smaller than the Heritage RIR that lays bigger eggs but doesn't have enough body weight to be duel purpose. There's a few other production chickens, but I stay away from them in general. As stated before, they're not as smart, which makes them a bit more aggressive, they have far more health issues, and they lack many of the other heritage characteristics such as being able to forage for themselves. All this means that they're far harder to care for than their heritage cousins.

Full post: https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...

This is a 7th in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing. It takes a look at another of my oldest characters.

Moss Valley is the main character from my first novel, Plague, which is my most successful release and series to date, but one that I soured on.

Plague was my first attempt at writing more than poems and essays in roughly a decade at the point that I started it in late 2004. The story was inspired by two things. 1) A dream I had in which me and another person were watching a city burn from several stories above the ground. 2) The series of 2004 hurricanes that hit Florida (where I was until I moved back to Ky in 2008) that caused mass chaos, evacuations, damage, and social unrest. I can't remember why I picked Ebola as the virus, but the story was meant to be hard SF and I needed a nasty virus. I finished the first draft by the end of 2005 in almost exactly a year, mostly between customers at an office job, and edited it in 2006 at the same job. Technically, I was paid for writing it before it was ever released. I took what I now see as some super bad advice in the final editing and cut one character, John, who was replaced in a later revision years later. From the end of 2006 to 2008 or so it was a free download from my website and print editions were on Lulu. Then I took the free download down and put it on Kindle. It got a big bump in sales during the 2013 West African Ebola epidemic and I got some credit for predicting the lackadaisical international response to Ebola during that outbreak. Two followup short stories, John's Story and Escape, finished up that storyline in two different collections (Aftermath and Ruination), but they were done years after Plague and were 3rd person instead of 1st and had stories by other people in them. The series wasn't planned out very well and was allowed to die with Escape. Every mistake that could have been made was made, although I still had some more to make and still do. Now, all three stories are in one volume called Plague: Moss and John and I'm only three years from Plague's 20th anniversary. Maybe, I'll do something special for the 20th anniversary and maybe I'll just let it lay. Not sure yet.

But this is a character profile, not a book profile, so on to Moss.

Full blog post: https://www.jeremiahdonaldson.com/blo...