To Lead and Lead

Again, another month and a bit has passed, and a fair bit has taken place. Plus, my arm/back is fully recovered! So let's dig in.

Work

Always nice to get the yearly bonus and as a result pay off more debts and the car. Yes, I finally own my car outright!

Meanwhile, at work, things have gone a bit "AI". Not surprising for a company that deals in financial data and wants to market tools to help users interact with it. So that makes a lot of sense compared to, say, Gen AI art, music, text, etc. Slop. So right now I am learning all about Model Context Protocols and how they allow a chatbot to interact with an API and, in turn, its data. The day to day example would be you asking a sentance to the bot "Book me a room at this hotel" and it being able to interact with the websites to do that as the MCPs direct how it interacts with the APIs and also guide it on how to send and receive the data.

But as always, at work, we are also highly wary of these tools. While they can automate boring tasks for us and help with coding, they are not to be trusted, and we always need a "person" in the loop.

Freelance Work

Work has resumed on Trashumanism, with more writing underway and other exciting stages of the project progressing. Needless to say, we are insulated from Gehenna Gaming, as that partnership has ended cleanly and in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, I am waiting to see more work for C7 published while a brand-new project is being spun up for another company - but as always, it is all hush-hush.

But in relation to this work, I have been reflecting a lot on how to be an RPG developer and the approach to take. Some of these ideas have been reinforced by James Hewitt's seminar at Chillcon last month, where he discussed how making a game's rulebook is hard and not linear. And that resonated strongly with me, as it confirmed my belief that the agile approach to computer programming can be applied to games. I'll likely blog more about this as projects progress and more can be said about either.

Hobby

So I finished painting the auxiliary expansion of the Gravediggers, thus completing the army for now. They are proving to be a lot of fun in games, both to use and play against.

I got a kind donation of dice, dice tray, and dice bag from Baron of Dice, to use in the demo games I have been running over the last few months at KrKur Con, Chillcon, and Lead and Steel. All of which were a blast, and Warmachine is proving a good sell to people, especially those looking for a game that is exciting to play at a small scale, and is not the exhausting bloat that Warhammer 40k has become.

I now also own most of the P3 paint range, and they are proving to be great fun to use (I used them to paint the Rascal Town Knight Goblin up top). I am working through my Gatormen army, currently using this paint range exclusively.

Regarding RPGs, we finished recording the first adventure series for Imperium Maledictum, and Hamilton is currently editing it.

So once I have painted a starter force for my Gators, I will be flipping to the Trench Crusade models I have, as I am eager to finally learn how to play that game.

As a final note, at Lead and Steel I sold a whole load of the Oldhammer minis a friend donated to me, and as a result I raised around £750 which I can get matched by a donation at work, which will amount to £1500 for Cancer Research UK.

Well that is all for now.