Month: July 2018

In The Beginning…

Posted on by Greg

Growing up I was shy, quiet and very reserved. These days, I’d be labeled an introvert but back when I was growing up I was a considered a nerd and had very few friends. I’d tried Hockey but it wasn’t for me. I’d tried Cubs and it wasn’t for me. I’d tried soccer and I liked it but I wasn’t amazing at it. While I was never picked on or harassed like the extreme end of the nerd spectrum, I wasn’t ever part of the cool kids cliques either. I was a blip on the school radar and that was it. Which made me very happy. I enjoyed the invisibility (though the slew of 80s teen movies had me secretly dreaming to be the hero of my own story). I  survived by telling stories inside my head and hanging with the few friends I did have.

My mind was a far better place than this drab reality that we currently subscribe to. My cousin had turned me on to Tolkien and Lewis and they fueled my early imagination. Narnia and Middle Earth were my homes away from home, along with Treasure Island and a thousand other fantasies. My imagination roamed these worlds created by others and dreamt of something more. Then, in the summer of ’84, I met a kid named Brian Henderson and everything changed. Continue reading “In The Beginning…”

Storied Dreams Come to Life

Posted on by Greg

Multimedia adaptations of books have long been a thing. Some are successful. Some are not. Either because they only have a 2 hour window to visually depict a world that’s been described in detail in thousands of words or they deviate from the author’s vision or the fan’s expectations too much.

My favourite author, Neil Gaiman, has had a spate of recent adaptations of his works with a fair amount of success. Stardust was awesome. American Gods is a wildly fantastic show. Lucifer is decent. Neverwhere was great and even How to Talk to girls at parties was quirky and off-beat but cool just the same.

While rumours swirl constantly about Gaiman’s opus, a movie of Sandman, I can’t see it happening any time soon. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see it visualized, but I can’t see it being done with the right tone or with enough justice to the source material for it to be truly successful.

Another one of Gaiman’s works that I always thought would be difficult to adapt to the screen, was his collaboration with the late, great, Terry Pratchett. Good Omens. However, I was wrong. They’re doing it as a mini-series over at Amazon Prime. Not only that, but it has David Tennant (the 10th Doctor for those of you playing along at home) and Michael Sheen as two of the main characters.

Right then. I’m in and I’m looking forward to this. Moreso now that they released a teaser/trailer at this year’s Comicon. It looks amazeballs…. but don’t take my word for it.

 

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

Posted on by Greg

So, you may have noticed that this post constitutes the fifth day in a row where I’ve added content to the site. *boggle*. I don’t think I’ve had a run this long since late 2010 or so. I’m not guaranteeing that I’ll post daily, but I am trying to update more regularly, even if it is only just a meme or something silly that catches my fancy.

As I said a few posts ago. I’m trying to keep the blog focused on writing, rpgs and painting. with the predominance being on roleplaying and painting which will hopefully lead to more creativity in the writing.

In my last post I showed off a recent WIP miniature that I’ve been working on and I expect to show more in time. My focus with miniatures is for fun and show. I always hated painting “bulk” armies. In fact I have a whole chapter of old Ultramarines kicking around my bitz bin that will probably never see a lick of paint by themselves because I just can’t stomach repetition.

Most of my painting lately has been on cool minis that I can use in my Star Wars campaign or just cool show pieces.I also have teams of Blood Bowl and Necromunda that I plan to paint for the new editions of those rules.

I don’t play D&D anymore, but I still love the cool and unique minis. The ones I like best are ones with some sort of dynamism to them. Whether it be a flowing cape or a non-standard pose, as long as it has character I’m usually attracted to it. Usually what gets me into trouble is I see an amazing painter’s work on a particular figure and I have to have it because I want to do the same thing. This can be frustrating as my skills aren’t there yet but I’m always trying to be better. One of these days I will master my airbrush, the wet-blending technique and paint OSL and NMM in my sleep.

My gaming recently has been intentionally limited. If I’m lucky and the stars align, my group gets together once a month for a couple of hours. Usually we’re playing in a Star wars campaign that I’m running using Fantasy Flight Games’ Edge of the Empire narrative rules. Occasionally we’ll play something else. If you’re at all interested, we (I) keep a campaign log over at Obsidian Portal.  It’s usually somewhat up to date.

When I’m not playing Star Wars, I’m more than likely involved in a new board game. While I’m not the most prolific board gamer, I still enjoy most of the ones I’ve played. One of these days, my friends and I will manage to play through every game we have at least once….. one of these days.

Right I think that’s enough babbling for one night. Off to bed.

Tidying up

Posted on by Greg

Alright. I think I’ve finally settled on a simple theme I can work with. If you’ve stumbled here in the past few days you may have seen a couple of different iterations. I wasn’t wholly satisfied with them and they weren’t clean and minimalistic enough for me while still being somewhat aesthetically pleasing.

I think this one will work for the time being. I’m sure if/when I start posting more frequently I will look at other options, but for now I’m satisfied.

Now I shall go back to fiddling with the upcoming script of my group’s latest adventure. It should be fun. Thankfully I found a couple of new tools to make my GMing life so much easier. I’ve been using Scapple to storyboard the adventure. It suits my free-form, semi-sandbox style of GMing with it’s flowcharts, interchangeability and simple ease of use.

Thread Necromancy!

Posted on by Greg

Well hello there world. It’s been a long time and here I am back again with yet another attempt to focus the swirling thoughts inside my head. I still don’t have enough time in the day to really give this site the attention that I want but I’m going to try a more minimalist approach and see where it takes me.

I still have a lot of great plans for the site, but the lack of updates, and backlog of things I wanted to do or had planned on trying was a monkey on my back for so long that it just became almost insurmountable. Even my attempt at a theme change last year sat there untouched because it was just too much.

So with that in mind, I’ve stripped back the theme to something more basic (but still somewhat palatable) and  I’m going to narrow the focus of the blog to three things and keep it simple.

First up. My friends and I are playing an Edge of the Empire Star wars campaign. While I’m going to keep the bulk of the campaign information contained over on it’s page on Obsidian Portal, I may reference it here from time to time.

I also have my standard fantasy campaign world, ‘The Realm of Tarsere’, but as it’s currently on hiatus the only thing that I plan on doing is to use the source material to build a series of stories I’ve been writing. I may even share them here.

Lastly, thanks in part to my daughters, I’ve rediscovered the joy of painting miniatures and am now trying to recover my painting skills to at least a shadow of their former glory. Progress is slow but I’m having fun, which is all that matters. While I doubt I’ll ever do a stream of me painting, I will probably post a few pics of works in progress and finished works.

I’m sure I’ve removed some functionality when I switched the theme but at this point I’m okay with it. I’ll address the broken links if and when I need them. In the meantime. Enjoy your stay.