#252

Work

I really don’t write much about work any more, do I? I think it’s mostly because what I work on now is (1) closed source and (2) in the private sector. I can’t share code any more, or really give much in the way of concrete details of what I’m working on. If I talk about some new feature I’m implementing, that gives away something the company may not have announced yet. If I talk about some problem I’m fixing, that may undermine confidence.

Safer to say nothing at all.

Anyway, since joining GoCardless I’ve been a part of our “Financial Orchestration” team, which owns a lot of our core payment processing logic (the big black box between the public-facing API and our banking integrations). I’m still a mid-level developer here, but I’ve somehow found myself in the position of being the guy who gets given small but important projects, while most of the other devs on the team work together on the larger projects. It’s a nice position to be in, it’s obviously a position of trust, and it means I get to work on a bunch of different things.

But things are about to change.

Teams have been shuffled around, remits have changed, and from next month I’ll be on a team doing similar—but different—things. I’m not sure what the future will bring, but I’m cautiously optimistic for my first team change.

Books

This week I read:

• Volume 16 of So I’m a Spider, So What? by Okina Baba

  The end! The book even ended with a short epilogue for each character, to emphasise its finality. This series was pretty fun, I really hope there’s another season of the anime, as the first was great.

Roleplaying Games

The Dolmenwood kickstarter has been announced! And I’m very excited. It’s coming on the 9th of August. There’s a preview page up with more information.

In addition to the Dolmenwood core books that I used to run my campaign there will be:

• Four adventures!
• Minis (though I don’t really care about minis so I probably won’t bother getting these)
• Dice (likewise)
• A GM screen!
• Big maps!
• A soundtrack!

I’ll definitely be getting the adventures, screen, maps, and soundtrack. I’ve got a big space on my wall—currently occupied by two aging Discworld maps—that I’ve been leaving for a Dolmenwood map. It’ll be an expensive kickstarter for sure.

The Merry Mushmen have also announced a new kickstarter, for the first in what they hope to be a line of adventure modules. I think this will also be an immediate buy from me. Everything the Mushmen have done has been great. Now, if only they could do a fourth edition of Knock…

The Halls of Arden Vul

Here’s the Halls of Thoth, the most easily-accessible level of the dungeon, 8 sessions in. In this week’s session the players filled in everything south of the magic mouths round to the orange diagonal line (a rope bridge they’ve strung up across the chasm). They’ve visited other levels (reflected on other maps) and explored some of the ruined city on the surface too.

It’s slow going, but they’re starting to fill things in and connect the different entrances and exits!

Today they achieved a big goal: connecting the entrance on the right with the entrance in the middle. The middle-entrance is watched over by a gang of halfling thugs who extort adventurers by forcing people to buy “adventuring licenses” and demanding a tithe of any treasure found. Several sessions ago, the players found a tunnel from the surface which led down to the room on the right. But they didn’t know how the two entrances were connected. Today, they strung up a rope bridge (orange line) across the chasm (white lines), and explored westward until they found a connection.

One party member was horifically slain by a kind of translucent flying octopus. The rest made it through injured but alive. We ended the session with the party still in the dungeon, and I’m looking forward to what happens next.

There’s another potential exit they’ve found to the north: it goes up, but not all the way, ending in another underground section. Will they press on, ignoring injuries, and try to connect that to the surface? Or will they turn back, hoping that no chasm-dwellers have removed their bridge?

Miscellaneous

We’re a few weeks into the new anime season and there’s really not much that’s caught my eye.

Today I decided to give Zom 100 a go, I wasn’t expecting much but I quite enjoyed the first two episodes, and I think I’ll stick with it for the time being. I’m also going to check out the new seasons of Mushoku Tensei and Hataraku Maou-sama!!. Other than that, it’s a pretty poor selection…

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