Getting stuff done despite having no time

As usual, academics are taking up a lot of my attention, and what little is left has been mostly devoted to my family, so not much activity on the blog. I haven't been looking over Mentzer's DM book lately, but I'm not planning to abandon that line of posts. People seem to like it. It may stretch out a while, though, and I may give up my plans to continue through the Mentzer Expert, Companion and Master sets. That will depend on how the dissertation goes. [I'm getting my main experiment prepared, and doing a lot of background reading for that. Once I get that sorted out and I commence the experiment, I may have more time for blogging for a while, until it's time to write up everything, at least.]

On the plus side, I managed to squeeze in an impromptu game session last Saturday. I continued running Dean and Jeremy through an old dungeon I'd made for a 3E game and converted to Labyrinth Lord stats. They haven't completed it, but they found the puzzles and challenges to be good but not too difficult, and the combats so far have been hectic but not unwinnable (in the first session over a month ago, Dean and my older boy played through and came close to a TPK but avoided any loss of life, this time Dean and Jeremy each lost one of their two characters). They both feel like this is something I could publish. So I'll try to get one more session in to let them finish the dungeon, then try to find some time to write up some introductory material, rumors, additional information that could be researched, etc. Oh, and a few pre-generated PCs. And some art, maybe, but I'm not that great and I'm on a budget. Then I'll be ready to try selling it through my DrivethruRPG storefront.

Also on the plus side, I've been plugging away at my latest Chanbara draft (#4), and it's almost done. I just need to flesh out a starting area, and add a few things in the appendices. Then I'll be ready to have this thing play tested. Again, I might not have time to play test it myself due to the dissertation, but I'll try and see if anyone else can do it for me and give me some feedback.

So, if I can make good use of my very limited free time over the next month or so, I might get both of those projects completed. And if not by next month, then at least by the end of the year.