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Date: January 25th, 2020.

Time of Writing: 10:38 PM.

Weather: Warmer than seasonal, with some rain.

Mood: Vibing.

Day Overview: I'm probably not in the best state to start talking about my day, but I'm gonna give it a shot anyway and see what happens. I woke up at my normal time of 8:30 AM today, but then I fell back asleep and only woke up truly at 10:30. I needed that extra sleep, I guess. I quickly showered and then hastened to the campus center for the first meeting of the Tabletop RPG Club for this semester. It was a good meeting, and the most surprising part about it was that there were a lot of DMs stepping up to the plate and announcing campaigns that they wanted to DM. I'm already in a campaign for the semester - more on that in a little bit - but it was truly inspiring to see all these people step up to the plate, especially considering last semester's DM shortage. After the meeting I went back to my dorm, walking through the rain. There, I started to work on the character sheet for the campaign I'm in - a campaign of Vampire: The Masquerade, 20th Anniversary Edition.

I know the system gets a lot of flak online because a lot of the campaigns run in it are really edgy and the LARP thing is whatever, but I think it's a really cool system with a lot of neat lore that's honestly better than Dungeons and Dragons. I've been in two Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, and while they were both pretty good, this Vampire campaign is going to absolutely rock. I'm playing a Tremere, a former conspiracy theorist who was part of an Occultist hobby group/sect and was embraced on accident because his Sire was trying to nab the leader of the group but decided to just roll with it and eventually guided him to Neonate status. He's got a lot of odd skills because he's worked a lot of odd jobs over the years after dropping out of college, and isn't geared to high level play so much as he is to being a fun character. His name is Kyle Emerson, but he goes by K. It's funny the way the characters broke down is we have two Tzimisce and two Tremere, but such is the way of life. I almost played a Toreador but I played a Bard in the last Dungeons and Dragons campaign I was in and that's basically what Toreador are in demeanor at least. Session Zero took place from around 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM, and afterwards I took the bus in the rain back home. I saw someone on the bus that I used to know in middle school, but she didn't reach out to me so I figured she forgot who I was and I didn't say anything.

I came back and had dinner and then went to my friend's dorm. I was waiting for them to let me in but they took a long time and I was tired so I decided to come back to my own dorm to rest. When I arrived however there were a few people there, and by a few I mean six or seven, standing around pregame vibing before they went out on the town. I could tell they'd been vibing for a bit, if you know what I mean. At first I was a little angry and just sort of sat around on my phone, but after a bit I got over myself and started to vibe with them too and I had a good time. They stuck around for about an hour before they headed off to whatever party they went to. I'm here, dealing with the remainder of the vibe, and telling you about my day. That's just what I'm doing!

On My Mind: Vampires are really cool, but what really interests me is the homebrew scene. I want to make my own system. I know that can sound bad considering I'm probably not the kind of person who should be making their own system but I have some cool ideas. It's based loosely based off of this SCP Foundation hub called Deer College and it'd be called University of Mystery which is basically a light urban fantasy in a college setting. Takes place at the eponymous school in the town of Mystery, which would be honestly probably loosely modeled after my own college? A state school kind of deal. University of Mystery, or UMyst, or Ol' Myst for short, would have a bunch of normal majors but also magical shit too. I think it'd be a cool location for games with a sort of comedic tone. Maybe someday I'll get to writing it, but I'm writing it down now so I don't forget!!!

Consumed:

• The Neon Skyline by Andy Shauf: Andy Shauf is one of those artists that I've only listened to one full album by, but that album was so resonant with me and landed just so perfectly well that I feel like I got several albums worth of enjoyment out of it. That album would be The Bearer of Bad News, which was pushed onto me by a member of the Radiohead subreddit a few years ago. Hometown Hero generally makes it into my top 100 songs of the year on Spotify at the end of every new revolution around the sun to this very day. Perhaps I set my expectations a little too high with this album but I didn't get quite the same level of engagement with the musical or lyrical content on this one. Instead of focussing on a series of loosely connected vignettes, this one aims to tell a more concrete story of a night out on the town. Maybe it'll click with me at a later date, but for now I feel all I could do with this release was appreciate the smoothness of the songs musically. I wish the horn section was more prominent in the mix, but it's present, so I can't really complain. I like it well enough. Hopefully it grows on me. 7/10.
• Suite For Max Brown by Jeff Parker: A decent enough jazz album that just makes some baffling choices sometimes. I don't think the tracks flow particularly well into one another, the first track is just sort of off with the way it does vocal layering, Fusion Swirl swirls the way that toilet water does when you flush it, and here and there you got some songs that just don't develop the way they ought to. When this album excels, it sounds pretty nice; Gnarciss and Max Brown especially. But on the whole its a somewhat disconnected listening experience without a consistent mood. It's a good selection of songs, if nothing else. 6/10.

Produced: A Vampire!!! That's basically it. Gomenasorry.

Other Thoughts: Thank you for reading! I don't really have any other thoughts, I'm gonna go hang out with some friends now, and vibe some more, bye bye!!