Oh Hai?!, You’re Still Here!?!

Well, look at that. Another year around the sun and only a single blog post of note in 12 months. Congratulations, I’m sure I win some sort of prize.

Now, while I know I haven’t posted in forever, I have actually been somewhat busy. For those of you who were here last year, I’m referring to my last post where I was talking about rebuilding my old D&D world and revamping it to 5E.

Well, surprise of all surprises. I actually managed to wrangle the squirrels in my brain long enough to bang out a number of updates and upgrades to my world. I’ve always had an “In the beginning…” document that gave a semi-detailed account of the genesis of the world through till the modern age and several rough framework ideas that I’ve used as a basis for the world. I know the politics and the geography, climate and whatnot and can elaborate in some fashion when asked. The problem is that 90% of it has been in my head and I find it hard to put pen to paper and turn the ephemeral into reality.

Or at least it used to be a problem.

I’ve been tinkering with this world inside my head for almost 30 years now and I’ve always struggled to express what was inside my head effectively. I have all these elaborate maps and exotic locales inside my head that I’ve never had the skill to make effectively (I’ve tried multiple times and never been satisfactorily successful with my progress – but that’s a blog for another day). However, in the modern age we have websites like Inkarnate and Wonderdraft that make mapmaking like child’s play. And sites like World Anvil and the Homebrewery make world building easy. Not to mention DnD Beyond for character creation and the various Virtual Tabletop software that exists now. I swear that back in the day, these are the tools I dreamed of having. We are living in a golden age of creative empowerment.

Anyways, now that I have these tools, I’ve put them to somewhat good use. I’ve dabbled with a few of them while also futzing about with my tarsere.shadowmyth.net subdomain. I haven’t really settled on a theme or an idea yet but I decided to nail down some starting points and go from there. I revamped the history into a more cohesive document and tied down a few loose ephemera in the process. What really surprised me however was when I started digging in developing the races (oops. sorry – species rather </insert grumpy old man eyeroll here>)… When I started working on the species, I found that I was developing just as much lore and backstory for the world as I was while creating statblocks for the races that inhabit it. It was mindblowing how much creative power and freedom I had when I added a “fluff” sidebar that explained why X species did Y thing.

All in all, it took me about 2-3 months to actually finish the species and a few other bits then because, like I said, most of the other stuff is inside my brainbox, and I can futz it if I want. I was eager to get back into playing so once the races were done, I grabbed the guys. forced them to make characters and we’ve been stumbling along ever since.

They’ve only managed to reach level 3 and I’m not certain they’ll make it to 4 at this rate but we’re having fun which is all that matters. Stay tuned. I may even post another blog before the end of this year!

Exiled for the Good of the Realm

Well, I blinked again and it’s been two years since my last post. WTF!?!? Where did the time go. Oh I know. Covid. Stupid bastard plague!

Well, It has taken nearly two years but our defenses finally failed and Omicron invaded our house this past week. My Wife and eldest were both laid low by it and have spent the week alternately sleeping it off or lounging on the couch playing on the playstation.

Thankfully, both myself and the youngest tested negative (or were asymptomatic) and could function like semi-normal humans. However due to an overabundance of caution my work told me to take the week off and isolate so I’ve been catering to the whims of two sick people all week and avoiding all human contact.

Since my loving wife and daughter are hogging the PS5 pretty much 24/7 these days, I’ve been left to my own devices and with nothing much else to do, I have been dreaming dark dreams of creativity.

Since I haven’t seen my friends together in one place in over two years I haven’t had many creative outlets. Our Star Wars game ground to a halt for a number of reasons. (1. We couldn’t satisfactorily get it working online with everyone’s computer setup, 2. Fantasy Flight Games/Asmodee shifted the license to Edge Studios and there hasn’t been any books in 2 years, 3. Campaign/Theme fatigue. We need a change.)

With the government continually teasing that they’ll ease lockdown restrictions we’re ever hopeful that we can finish off the last adventure. None of us want to leave it hanging where we left it but we’re already looking for other ideas and games. Since none of my friends wants to be the GM, I’m stuck with it and after messing around with various options of different campaigns, I think we’ve decided to go back to D&D in the 5e setting.

Rather than just dive into one of the pre-built existing settings in D&D, I have to be unique and to that end I’ve decided to go back to my homebrew fantasy campaign, The Realm of Tarsere, and update it to the 5e system. I’ve revamped this system so many times that one would think that I’m sick of it but quite the opposite. The world building is my favourite part!

With this quarantine, when I haven’t been tending the plague-ridden, I’ve been digging through old files, cringing at bad (or weak) world-building decisions, and revamping what I can. I’m a bit of an ADHD squirrel at times because there is so much that I have already written and stored deep in the recesses of my brain that I almost don’t know where to start (Do I redo the map? Do I rebuild the races first? Ooooh! what about the Gods? etc.) but then I settle on something and my hyperfocus kicks in and blammo! Six hours later I have something tangible.

Now I know this is silly as it’s not even something that isn’t going to come to fruition for months yet but right now, with all the shit that’s going on in the world right now, I need it to stay focused and sane.

If you’re bored and want to see my progress of stuff that I will eventually post. Swing over to http://tarsere.shadowmyth.net/. At some point I’ll update the website properly and tweak the theme.

For now. Stay safe out there fellow humans.

Well, Hello There.

Ok. I couldn’t resist a little Star Wars inside joke on today of all days.

So, the world is still spinning off its axis and into oblivion. COVID-19 is still going strong. The orange idiot in the south is still suggesting to his cult that they should inject themselves with bleach and UV light as the cure and the rest of the world watches in dumbstruck awe at the shite that pours from his mouth unfiltered.

Thankfully some parts of the world are showing signs of coming out on the other side of this. Lots of places are starting to reopen, though quite frankly, I think it’s too soon. Still no legible cure in sight and the best we can hope for is more social distancing and lots of PPE?… Not the best plan guys.

Anyways… I had originally decided to do a dorky Star Wars pun and make a post about Miniature painting. I hadn’t intended this post to go off the rails and be a state of the world post, though with as pervasive as this thing is, it colours everything we do these days whether we realize it or not. So before I get distracted any further, back to the original plan.

Since the lockdown and stay at home order, I’ve really tried to find something that centers me and calms me down. Too much shit going on in the world these days. I’ve stepped back from most of my video game time (plus my wife has been addicted to Sims4 on the PS4 lately so sharing a console can be a pain) and went old school. I read. I work on my Star Wars campaign and I paint miniatures.

I’ve been painting minis since my AD&D days back in grade 5 (thankfully none of those paint jobs survived) and after a 15+ year hiatus, I realized I missed it and decided to get back into it. I’ve had my new paints and miniatures for a couple of years now since I got back into the hobby but I can’t ever seem to get motivated to start painting with the same sort of passion that I used to. I’ll paint a base coat here, a shade there. One brushstroke on and off every other week sort of thing. I’ve used the excuse that I didn’t have enough time, or that maybe my passion had faded. I certainly don’t have the same skill I had back then and my eyes and hands aren’t as deft as they once were.

During this silly stay at home lockdown, I came to realize that my passion hadn’t faded, I did have the time, and sure my hands and eyes weren’t as young as they used to be but I wasn’t dead yet. As for the skill and “muscle memory”, after a few false starts I came to realize, that yeah I didn’t have the same skill I did before, I actually was better than I used to be. I just needed to do what everyone does… practice.

And practice I did.

After about 6 hours of futzing about, I finally came up with the first model in about 20 years that I have actually completed and am satisfied with.

Now, I can’t say that I’m 100% happy with him, and I could go on and on about what I see wrong about him still, but I honestly learned to accept when I’m done, rather than he’s “finished”. I could fiddle about with him for another 20 years and still not be finished.

I actually went well outside my comfort zone and posted this guy on one of the painting groups I’m a part of on Facebook and it was the weirdest feeling. First, I rarely post anything other than a positive comment here or there and I mostly lurk and admire all the amazing paint jobs and painters whose skill I won’t ever achieve. Yet I took the risk and I was amazed at the feedback and response. It’s the oddest feeling to have a 100+ random strangers like and comment on a piece you worked on. I got a ton of great feedback and it helped a lot to rebuild my confidence in my abilities and the realization that it didn’t have to be perfect, just better than the last one.

Yay me. Since I posted the pic on Facebook, I’ve put more paint to models than I have in years and I look forward to posting more of my work in the near-ish future.

Life Imitates Art…

And in case anyone wants to play along at home with my Nerd Bingo….
I direct you thusly to the Shadowrun Timeline

We may be a few years behind the basic framework but Covid-19 = definitely feels like VITAS-1 in my mind. We’ve already got the Political corruption and megacorps. Now we just need to bring on the Metas and The Great Ghost Dance.

Welcome to the Sixth World Chummer!

Ninja Stealth Update!

Now with extra filling!

For those of you who aren’t stalking me full time, you may not have noticed the addition of the Gallery link up in the top right corner of the page.

I finally got around to adding a place to show off all my painted miniatures. Unfortunately time and tide have had their effect on my old stuff and I have fewer surviving old pieces than I’d initially hoped. There are some that are salvageable with a few touch ups so I will get them up as soon as I can.

In the meantime, what I have is an empty space to put pics of my new painted miniatures when I finish them :-/ . Guess I better get at it and actually finish a miniature soon.

Challenge Accepted!

Day 4

I make no bones about my geekiness. I was, am and always will be a nerd.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook by Gary Gygax

As I blogged about fairly recently. I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for D&D. It fueled my imagination. It increased my vocabulary well beyond my grade level. It allowed me to make complex mathematical calculations in my head. It empowered me to make friends. It made me problem solve and develop both communication and teamwork skills. It allowed the introvert inside me to learn to sometimes be an extrovert. It was in fact, the genesis of everything that I can take credit for today.

And yes Dorothy, if you noticed that every single one of those skills is something I can translate on to a resume today, you wouldn’t be wrong.

To anyone who reads this and fears D&D is evil and we’re all a bunch of Satanists bent on bringing about the apocalypse…  1) Please pry open that closed mind of yours and realize that D&D is nothing more than a tool to develop young minds into social, independent, smart, funny, radically thinking individuals who will amaze you with their skills. 2) Sod the Fuck off!

Tomorrow, we shall discuss dungeons deep and caverns old.

Shameless Self-Promotion

In case the picture of a metal D20 in the top left corner didn’t clue you in, I’m a bit of a geek. Specifically, I’m a roleplayer and like all roleplayers I desire a place to roll my dice in style.

To that end, I’ve wanted a gaming table to set up in my place for some time (since I was like, 12). Last year, there was an amazing kickstarter called the Table of Ultimate Gaming that suited the bill just right. I backed without hesitation and it would have been glorious… except it was a bit more expensive than I would have liked and after some serious self-reflection and adult conversations with myself, I backed out and missed out. Part of me regrets that decision still.

However, the dream has not died. One day, I will have both the gaming room and the table to go in it. Because the nice folks over at Table of Ultimate gaming are mind readers and fellow geeks and they want to help me out, they decided to run a contest and another kickstarter for a new table style they’ve created. I figured I would enter and see if I could get lucky. If you’re a gamer yourself, I highly suggest you follow this link and enter for yourself.

“Dovie’andi se tovya sagain.”


A Night of Games & Geekery.

As an kid I dreamed that as an adult I would sit around a table with my friends every weekend and we’d roll dice, slay monsters, rescue princesses (metaphorically… cause as a nerd kid I had no idea what to do with a princess when I rescued them), and generally nerd out to our hearts content.

As an adult, that dream was dragged into an alley by reality and beaten senseless with responsibilities, jobs, honey-do lists, and life. I blame reality for the state of my adult life. I hold a grudge.

These days, my friends and I are lucky to get together once a month (or every other month) to roll our dice, slay our princesses and fly away in a facsimile millennium falcons. If we’re extra lucky, we’ll get together prior to our RPG sessions and play a couple of board games that we’ve collected.

Recently, my wife was taking the girls down to the states to see her mom and that left me all alone for a week. My inner child rejoiced. The perfect opportunity to go hardcore like we did back in the day. An all day game session? Why yes please.

Sadly, reality took one look at my glee and bitch slapped me sideways. Not everyone else’s schedules coincided. An all day RPG fest was off the table as not enough people were going to be around to make it worthwhile.

However, enough people were interested in an evening of boardgames so some fun would at least be had. Boardgames are not  something that I regularly get a chance to do, and the fact that we all had piles of shame we needed to work through was incentive.  We managed to get through 3 off my bucket list. Sakura, Deja Vu: Fragments of Memory, and Planetarium. I was kind of hoping we’d get through a few more of mine and perhaps even get a game of Bloodbowl or Necromunda in but alas, time was not on our side and we’re not as young as we used to be.

Of the six that we played, my personal favourite was Planetarium. I enjoyed the concept of trying to create a planet and (potentially) messing with other people’s planets as well. I didn’t win, but I definitely had the most fun with it and would gladly play again. My next favourite was Yokohama. It’s a Japanese take on a worker placement game and it plays really well. Enjoyable, simple to learn, hard to master with multiple victory paths. Again, I’d gladly play it again.

While we tried to keep to games we hadn’t played before, Tiny Epic Defenders snuck in because the 2nd Edition and the expansion, made it a much more compelling game to play. We did not win that one and while I enjoyed it and would play it again, it doesn’t jump out as a “go-to” game that I’d play. Definitely better than the 1st Edition though.

Sakura was an interesting, simple trick taking game that took a little bit to master, but once we understood the card effects, it became a little more fun and a whole lot easier. I’d definitely play it again with a few more people but overall it falls in my “was fun but not spectacular” category.

I have mixed feelings about El Dorado. It is a gorgeous looking game and is well designed, fun and with it being tile-based, it definitely has replayability but I felt there was something missing. It lacked something, and I’m not sure what exactly. Even though I won the game, it fell a little flat for me. It wasn’t the best game I’ve played. Either there was something we missed in the rules, or something that will be addressed in the forthcoming expansion. I don’t know. I’ll certainly give it a go again just to see though.

The final game on our list, Deja Vu, was visually very pretty with an anime-esque art style, but a frustrating game to play. A lot of that frustration stemmed from the rulebook not being concisely translated into English so there were paragraphs that didn’t make sense and then became contradicted two paragraphs on. Once we figured out the basics, it became a little more strategic and a little more fun, but I was definitely underwhelmed by the game itself. Oh well. Live and learn.

Next time the wife’s away, I’m going to take reality out back and shoot it. I needs me a nostalgic game night.

The Forest Was Looking Rather Grimm

Tonight was game night. Again one of those cosmically aligned nights that allowed us all to socialize with each other as a family instead of basking in the glow of various electronic devices. Sadly days like these are too few and far between so I grab them at every opportunity. Nobody complains too much anyways, it’s just another chance for them to pick on daddy.

Tonight we delved into the faerie tale realm of The Grimm Forest. A wonderfully fun game that I found on Kickstarter last year and have had the pleasure of playing about 5 or 6 times now, both with my usual gaming crowd as well as a couple of times around the family table.

The game premise is pretty simple. You’re the nieces and nephews of the 3 Little Pigs. The aforementioned Trio are retiring and it’s your job to impress the king with your building skills. First piglet to build 3 houses gets the job.

As in the classic tale you can build from either straw, wood or brick. And as this is a faerie tale, there are some non-standard building obstacles that you might come across, such as giants and dragons, bridge trolls and of course, the big bad wolf. Thankfully their are also some friends such as Rapunzel, Tom Thumb, Rumpelstiltskin etc to help you (or hinder the other players) along the way.

It’s a pretty simple game to learn and while not hard to master, there is definitely some strategy in it that allows for replayability. My 8 year old asks for the occasional clarification on what the friends cards effects are, but once she knows, It’s really all downhill from there as she’ll invariably use the card to great advantage (usually against me).

It doesn’t take up a lot of real estate at the table  and set up and take down are a breeze with the built in trays inside the game.

Overall it’s a great game. 4/5 small medieval dictators agree that it should be played at every table.

 

And no… I didn’t win.

 

 

Paint Night!

My kids have been bugging me to have a paint night again. I haven’t painted anything since the last time I painted with the kids which was about a month ago, if not longer. The creative juices just haven’t been flowing in that direction lately. It’s  been more writing and adventure building in Star Wars than anything else but sometimes a change is needed because I could feel myself starting to burn out.

Recognising that need (plus the need to spend quality time with my children) is something I’m becoming much more acutely aware of and I try to act on it when I see it. It is often hard to arrange painting  around my work schedule but last night was one of those nights where the universe aligned in our favour. I gave them the option of painting or playing some board games and they chose painting. Who am I to get in the way of the creative urge.

The girls have long since decided that dad’s miniatures are cool but they would rather I paint them. They have been having more fun altering their littlest pet shop toys in  various colour schemes and then getting me to seal them. While i twitch a little at the “misuse” of my brushes and paints I would much rather they be doing this than playing on their phones all night watching puerile youtube videos.

So once dinner was cleared, we grabbed our gear and started to paint. It took me some time to focus, like I said the creative muse was not with me paint-wise, but I did eventually get in to a groove and put paint on minis.

I have so many ideas of what I want to paint I tend to be all over the place and put x colour on y miniature then rather than continue with the next colour on the same miniature I move onto a completely different miniature and different colour. The result is I often have a pile of 80-90%  completed figures that I should finish but don’t. Last night however I grabbed an old mini that has been sitting at the 40% mark for the past 10 years or so and started painting with the goal to finish it.

I broke out my new wet palette that I’d backed via Kickstarter and started painting. It was my first time using a wet palette and it was a dream. I’ve used palette paper lots but having the moisture that kept my paint from drying out was a godsend. It allowed for some very smooth blending of colours that I’d always have trouble with before. Unfortunately I did not get completely finished with the miniature but I’m a breath away from it and it makes me happy. I’ll post some pictures once I have access to the ones I took last night.

Yay for nerd nights!

 

                          

Edit: Obviously I’ve posted pictures. The Yhetee on the right is the miniature I was speaking about. He’s for my Norse Bloodbowl team that I’m slowly scratch building. He’s been a drab grey for the past 10 years. I’ve finally added some blue wash and increasingly blue-white highlights to him to bring him up. I still need to detail the face, talons and the couple of bones tied into his hair and then tidy up the accoutrements

The ghost on the left is a reaper miniature. He’s a better example of the wet blending I was talking about. He’s still not done either, but he only really needs his chains, eyes and a bit of tidy up here and there to be done.