Baelnorn

Dec 02 2021

Work, Work

By Baelnorn in Blogs

Oh boy, have I been on that content creation grind! I’ve put in a lot of work the last few days and I have some fun announcements to make. I’ve been working on both LARP content as well as a separate endeavor, a podcast, called High Trek. If you’d like to help keep up my motivation, you can buy me a coffee if you’d like.

Well, lets get to it!

New Project: LARP Chats

I’m introducing a new show to my line up, LARP Chats. It’s a series of short interviews of LARP players. Each season has a theme that connects all the interviews. This first season’s theme is Memories. The theme directs the basic questions I ask each for each interview throughout the season.

I’m excited for people to see them. Over the last few days I worked on a teaser trailer for the series. The one imbedded above. I tingle a little bit watching it. It’s my first effort of a YouTube show, something beyond fighting videos.

I’ve done Twitch Streams and I’ve posted the VODs on my YouTube, but this feels different. I made an effort to only do in person interviews. It has been a bit limiting, but I think the work is better for it.

I’ve had a blast doing the series, one interview in particular really hit me in the feels and that’s the interview of my squire Vincent. He was with me for the majority of all of the feasts I’ve done in Amtgard. and has been my right hand man. Sadly few people know who he was or the impact he had on me or the game of Amtgard.

He was visiting from Reno and I jumped at the chance to interview him. I can’t wait to introduce him to all of you. He affected the biggest impact on my Amtgard career. Come January, you’ll be able to see him and several more guests.

High Trek

High Trek is a podcast I’ve been working on with my friend Riley. We’ve put out five full episodes and two mini episodes over the last month and a half but we’ve been recording for months now.

The basic premise is that we get high, watch Star Trek The Next Generation and talk about the episode. I’ve seen the show numerous times but Riley, they haven’t seen it at all. This is a podcast where two extremes meet in the middle, eat some edibles and analyze the show.

Normally I edit a podcast over several days, but things got out of hand and I needed to edit a full episode in one day, which was two days ago. That’s not all the work I’ve done on High Trek though.

In the last two days I also created a Facebook Page, a Twitch account. I created an email and set up an email newsletter program and the most time consuming project of the lot, a web page, www.hightrekpodcast.com.

The Next Week

As I’m writing this I’m preparing to leave for Las Vegas. I leave the house at 5:30am and wont’ get home till Tuesday night. It’s going to be one of a time.

I won’t just be having fun though. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m also going to be working. I’m going to attempt to do a VBlog, but if anyone brings it up I’ll deny it till the project is done.

This is a much needed vacation. Over the last month I’ve been very productive and I’ve enjoyed it, but I need to break up the routine and have a little fun.

I will be bringing Gnomee with me. If you want to follow his adventures you can like his Facebook Page HERE.

If you like my content consider becoming a Patron on Patreon. You can see my Tier 2 (Rock Gnomes) and 3 (Tinker Gnomes) supporters on my Patreon Supporters page as well as find out how to become a Patron yourself.

Amtgard, Blog, LARP Chats
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Nov 17 2021

Rusting Over

By Baelnorn in Blogs

It has been several months since I made a post. It’s been a rough year and I just couldn’t keep up with my pre-pandemic pace of weekly blogs. Not to mention I haven’t been going to Amtgard weekly since things have opened up. I still go of course, but It’s more like 60% instead of 95% of the time.

On top of that I’ve been nursing a pulled arm muscle for several months now, making it impossible to use my left arm at Amtgard. That means I haven’t been playing the game for months now. I tried not using my left but I instinctually switch hands and swing and it hurts. I don’t want to unlearn that habit so I’m choosing to wait till I’m healed before I go back to fighting. The rust is settling in before it even had time to be shaken off.

New Tool, New Skill

That being said I’ve still been recording videos and thanks to my Patreons I was able to buy a gimbal for my phone, which I’ve been practicing with. There is a learning curve but I think I’m getting the hang of it pretty quickly. At the moment the quality of the videos isn’t as good as hand held, but I had years of practice of holding it level and still. I’ve only used the gimbal for maybe 2 or 3 total hours. Once I get the hang of it, I think there will be a noticeable difference.

If you look at Amtgard Fights: Sploob vs Odin Part 1 you can see my first attempt at using the gimbal. If you look at Amtgard Fights: Sploob vs Critias 2 you can see my second attempt. While not perfect I think there is marked improvement. I have another video I’m working on, my third attempt, where I filmed 45 minutes of ditching. I did some experiments with angles and moving around so I’m excited to see what that looks like. It’s fun learning a new skill.

Amtgard Projects

I’m slowly getting back into streaming again on my Twitch Channel. It started last month when I restarted Baelnorn and Friends: October. Baelnorn and Friends is a monthly chat stream where I invite some of my LARP friends on to chat and drink. We talk Amtgard, LARP, games and general nerd things. The next one is actually this weekend, November 20th at 8pm PST (Facebook Event Page).

I also have some upcoming video projects. One, an interview series, is almost finished. I hope to make a trailer for it soon, however I’ve been putting it off because I want to tie it into my next project. My next project is a narrative LARP video series centered around a gladiator origination set in the world of Shattered Kingdoms.

I’m excited for the my second project and I can’t wait to get started, but I know it’s a long term project. I need to get at least 8 dedicated fighters who are willing to participle in cooperative story telling. There is a lot of pre-production work to do for both myself and the fighters.

My goal is to use the interview series to hype up a Kickstarter campaign to help pay for the narrative LARP video project. I’d like to run a production campout where most of the filming will take place. I have some pretty grand plans. If you want to be a fighter in the project, shoot me a message and we’ll chat.

Writing Stuff

I’m also still writing! I’m starting to get back on a weekly schedule for my writing streams. I’ve missed the last two weeks due to real world issues, but I hope to continue it next week. I stream from 11am to 1pm PST. Sometimes I’ll go longer but I’m trying to go for at least two hours. It feels good to get back to writing.

Speaking of which, I’ve once again wrote in my Philip Clowes novel. Over the span of a week I spent 3 days working on my novel and finished 19 pages of new material, on top of doing editing work. I haven’t put out this much work in a long time. It’s been crazy.

Coffee Please!

In an effort to give additional ways to help support me I finally set up a Ko-fi page. This does not take the place of my Patreon page. That’s still my main vehicle for my supporters to support me, but I thought that having the option of a one time payment might appeal to some.

On top of being a one time payment, I can tell you exactly what it will be used for, coffee. At this point all the proceeds raised from my Ko-fi page will go towards paying for coffee at my local café so I can have a fun, but distraction free, work place. You can rest comfortably in the knowledge that your $5 will be put to good use, renting a public office for my writing. On top of that you’ll get a special discord role, Coffee Patron, on my discord server!

If you want to donate you can click on the support me button floating on the bottom left of your page; I added a floating button. Or you can click on the following button

Don’t forget you can become a Patron too!

Amtgard, Blog, Foam Fighting, Twitch, YouTube
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Jul 20 2021

Shaking Off the Rust

By Baelnorn in Blogs

I did a double day weekend. I went to Silvermoon (Aumsville, OR) on Saturday and Dusk Hollow (Dallas, OR) on Sunday. Saturday was mostly a normal day, there was no special event, but something interesting did happen. Then on Sunday there was the Arcana fighter practice at Dusk Hollow, which I recorded a few videos from. On top of that, a few of my videos have popped off, at least compared to my usual, so I plan on sparing a few paraphs on that near the end.

Saturday

Indra got to do something he always wanted to do, play a ditcher in a class battle game. He’s been talking about there being some sort of class that was immune to all magic and abilities, both harmful and helpful, so Ice Blast wouldn’t work, nor would Resurrection or Heal. All spell balls would count as projectiles when they hit. The class can use all melee weapons and shields of any sizes. It wasn’t till that day that someone said sure, we’ll call it a monster and play test it. Indra was ecstatic.

Every time Indra talks about this class he gets it in his head that I hate the idea for some reason. I thought it was fine, I was just realistic and told him that I don’t think it would ever become an official class. I think the idea is interesting and I’m glad he has finally gotten to play it. Spoiler, he loved it!

I also tried it out. I filled in one round for Vale and I did enjoy myself. It was nice not having to worry about any crowd control abilities. It was very freeing; all I had to worry about was who I was going to fight and any projectiles that might be flying my way. I don’t know about the balance. It made no real difference in the two games that Indra played in, other than it actually got Indra to be in a class battle. I’m unsure of the balance if used more widely. I doubt it will take off but it’s nice they are letting Indra (and I guess me) test it out at our local park.

Other than playing that one round and talking with people I haven’t seen in a while, I didn’t do much actual Amtgard that day, but I did get some video. I got two YouTube Shorts and a Amtgard Fights video from the day. I’ll link my videos at the end of the blog if you’d like to take a look.

Sunday

Spoiler alert, Sunday was my fun day. I got there early, along with the Arcana members, who’s practice was taking place before the start of Dusk Hollow. I got some decent video, but what I’d really like to talk about is all the fun I had.

After their practice opened up to other members, and I was done with video recording, I picked up a shield and short sword and joined the ditch. I had a blast, plus I was doing fairly well. I even killed all three players on the other side and ended up by myself vs four people. It was a few rounds before I got a kill, but I had some good starts where I was able to divide the pack, legging someone and moving on.

The ditch didn’t go on very long, but long enough that everyone wanted to take a short break and it was decently short. It wasn’t long till some more people showed up and we started another ditch. That’s where I really began to feel like I was having fun. I grabbed a short sword (thanks for the loaner Critias), and joined in the ditch.

I don’t remember the precise time we started, but I know I fought for at least half an hour straight, maybe up to an hour. I fought long enough that as I’m sitting here writing this I am still pretty sore. My shoulders from swinging the sword, lower back/waist area from twisting, my legs due to bending my knees and bursts of movement and even my hand from gripping the sword is swore. Every bit of me was out of shape and not used to the movements of fighting.

Despite the soreness I’m dealing with now, I don’t regret getting out there and having the fun I had. Not only was it fun, I was told by a few others that I was doing pretty good and I have to agree. I got kills with my short sword and some pretty good ones actually. I was pretty consistent, especially considering how rusty I am.

There was one fight where Cid moved to far in front of his line and I said fuck it, he’s close enough, I could rush his side and kill him before he could block. I knew I’d die in the process, but I mentally shrugged and went for it. I rushed in, killing him and in return a person with a great sword tagged my arm and a few people swung, but in the end, I stood there alive and Cid was dead. Everyone stood around there stunned, no one moved into kill me for what seemed like an eternity, but was likely more like 5 seconds.

I was stunned, how was I not dead? I still don’t know how it happened, but if I hadn’t assumed I was going to die, I may very well gotten a few more kills. I wasn’t the only one stunned at what happened. After the moment passed we all chuckled about it and no one really understood why no one moved it. It was just one of those weird and surprising moments.

That was the only fighting I got that day, mainly because it was the last ditch of the day. I felt really good and I’m looking forward to more fighting in the future!

YouTube and TikTock Videos

Last night I posted a TikTok video, one that I posted on YouTube, called Critias the Killer. It had performed well on YouTube, at least for me, so I figured I should put it to music, and publish it on TikTok and so I did. I went to bed thinking nothing of it. I figured if it was doing well I might have a few hundred views and maybe 20 or so likes.

Much to my surprise, when I woke up and looked at the video I had 1800+ views and 80+ likes. I was blown away. To put it into perspective my highest viewed video 1455 views and 31 likes and that video was posted in October of 2020. I can’t wait to see if this translates to my videos getting even more views in the future. I can’t wait to find out. I’ve already gotten 10 or so new followers.

While at the park Saturday I posted the YouTube video of Critias the Killer and I shared it around the local Amtgard Facebook Groups. If you haven’t seen it (Link Below), take a watch. Between Saturday and Monday the video had around 60 views, which is pretty good for me. I was happy. Then, when I woke up this morning (Tuesday), after I already was hyped from the success of my TikTok, I found that it had 255 views and 9 likes. I was like “Holy Shit”! That’s more than any views or likes I’ve had yet.

To top it off, as I’m writing this, just after the last paraph I wrote actually, I checked the YouTube video and I got an additional 100 views and 3 more likes. It’s only been two hours! It must have gotten picked up by the algorithm last night and is still doing the rounds. I had two big hits of dopamine this morning.

The Future

I look forward to putting out more videos. I have a few already edited and ready to go. It’s been hard not posting them, when they are done, I really want to share them, but for growth’s sake it’s best if I release them over time. I plan on continuing adding videos, it’s seeing success like this that really makes me feel like I’m going in the right direction. It’s great!

I’m going to be doing Amtgard interviews with people at park in the future. They will be shorter videos, I’m aiming for 15-30 minutes, just to highlight other players. I don’t intend this to just be a series of popular Amtgarders, but also the “average” Amtgarder. So look for that over the next few months. I should start recording them in the next few weeks. I just don’t know what my editing schedule will be like.

Next week I’ll be attending Mystic Seas (Troutdale, OR). There is a knights meeting that I shouldn’t miss, but I’m sure I’ll get in some whacks too and of course record some videos.