029A2: Gummi Bouncing

Talisman: Kingdom Hearts

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 406

Despite my madcap effort to watch as many Masterclass video lessons as we can before our subscription expires after Tobie's birthday, we still found time to finally try out our new copy of Talisman: Kingdom Hearts last night. I had very mixed feelings about this game since it was based on the older Talisman game, which can feel rather clunky when compared to more modern games out there. 

But this particular game turned out to be pretty fun as it nicely embraced a lot of the quirks of the Kingdom Hearts video game franchise. Don't get me wrong - it still has some of the frustrations of the original Talisman game such as the fact that you'll be rolling dice a LOT and you'll be going back and forth around the board. But the tweaks to the board to better reflect the Kingdom Hearts games did add more flexibility in terms of how to cross between the different regions and to some degree they were also more generous with the amount of good stuff in the adventure deck. Throw in the fact that this game is more semi-cooperative and no longer has most of the more frustrating PVP aspects of the original game, and the end result is pretty cool.

On the subject of the current Masterclass binge, I'm toying with a few short story ideas that came to mind while going through Neil Gaiman's and N.K. Jemisen's courses on writing.
  1. First Person POV protagonist is exploring some new location like a beach or some other tourist destination. Things seem pretty mundane until he falls over or bumps into a wall and it is revealed that he's actually in a highly advanced VR rig since years have passed and he's still in a country that is under lockdown due to a pandemic.
  2. Some twist on the community pantry idea. Not quite sure what, but something along the lines of escalating things to a different level. Like the military setting up a community arsenal for weapons. Or some other stupid, ridiculous thing.
  3. Post-vaccination, people slowly discover that they can hear the thoughts of others who have been vaccinated. The catch is that it only works for people who received the same brand of vaccine. 
  4. The government is desperate to hunt down the last unvaccinated person in the country. Turns out he's a technophobe who lives in a remote part of the wilderness/mountains who never even heard about COVID-19 but he still shows up in the census data.
Obviously, I have a lot of pandemic story ideas floating around for now since I figure it's better to focus on what is familiar now and run with it. I really need to just try writing it and see how it goes but GAH, it still stresses me out to even think about fleshing things out. I need to get some short stories out just to grease the wheels again and get comfortable with things. I need to accept that I'm going to write a lot of crappy pieces before I get around to something that's more decent or legitimately interesting. 

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