From Archaic to Esoteric

 Discovery of the Old Ways

I have been diving into making RPG props and materials as of late. This has been a unique rabbit whole to fall down as I stumbled upon a section of passionate hobbyists around this idea of the stationary arts in the form of letter writing.

While discovering the almost forgotten art of writing letters, I have fallen into a vast realm that is full of people with passions around these bygone skills and craftmanship. I have discovered a love of wax sealing. This led me to find uses for such a thing which led me to gifts and letters. Gifts and letters led me to rediscovering my penmanship roots. This in turn led me to discovering the world of fountain pens. I continue to fall further and further into this realm of interests, and it is allowing me to grow in ways I didn't anticipate.

The Pen Is Mightier

I have revisited my penmanship roots. I grew up homeschooled through a program that taught what I only just learned is called D'nealian Cursive. I had to teach myself block print to fill out college forms back in 2009. I have always enjoyed my handwriting but have never fully thought about what it meant to actually have the ability to write like this. There is also the imposter syndrome of "I don't write that nice." Picking up the fountain pen to master it is proving both fun and therapeutic. I only have a cheap pen for now, but I am already looking at upgrading. My goal is to master my own handwriting and the fountain pen by writing regular letters. This gives me a chance to do more wax sealing too!

A Legacy

While I have been learning these new skills, my children have taken interested, wanting to help and participate. My daughter loved my handwriting and now is working hard to learn cursive and even asked to learn with the fountain pen. Both helped me to seal my letter and it was a wonderful experience. I have found a strong desire to learn something of value to pass down to my children, and that has been found in this forgotten act of writing a letter for someone else.

I will continue in my adventures with this new hobby but will also be looking to learn a few new things as well! Stay tuned!

PS These will help make the coolest notes to my TTRPG players!

Return to Gaming

The Plague and the Comeback

Greetings after multiple years of inactivity! Talk about a wild ride. New kid, job change, a worldwide plague forcing people to avoid in person gaming and activities.... no big deal...

TTRPGs and My Addiction to Books

Anyways.. so there have been a lot of things going on and gaming fell to the side as a focus and priority. Thankfully things have continued to change, just this time for the better! I have rediscovered my love for gaming, but it has taken a turn more towards ttrpgs. I am now unofficially collecting a wide variety of systems and setting to the point i would normally not have time nor resources to play/run them all. But I have found a solution to this problem!

Recently I have discovered a cool online ttrpg community at the Adventure Syndicate on Discord (link in the side panel). They run a variety of games periodically including ones-shots and short series. I have already run one game there playtesting my own setting (will discuss later). I am now going to be running a series of event called "RPG Deep Dive." The whole point with this is to take 4 sessions to dive into non-mainstream games and settings. This gives me the chance to explore and run all my games and it gives others the chance to check out materials and games they normally wouldn't have. Come join the community!

This comes to my next RPG endeavor: my custom settings. I have been working on two separate settings over the last couple years. One space opera and one fantasy, these two setting have been passion projects of mine as I pulled influences from my favorite inspirational sources. I will be doing features on each setting discussing them in more detail.

As I collect more ttrpgs and expand my own settings, I will be doing more and more ttrpg related content.

A Departure from Wargames

I have taken large amount of my wargame collection and sold it to reduce clutter. I owned more systems and armies than I could afford time or resources to paint & play. I struggled spreading myself too thin and was unable to truly enjoy the hobby or have satisfaction with the games. I would play one game a month of a system, then bounce to another, then another. This meant I couldn't actually gain any skill leading to much frustration. I also started to see that I had an insurmountable number of miniatures I would never take the time to paint. By reducing what I owned I was able to make my painting que much smaller and more appealing to paint.

I haven't given up playing miniature wargames, but I almost never play army scale anymore and really only play two skirmish scale games. This change has shaped a couple rules I follow when considering starting a new game:

1. Is there a community already in my local area? I no longer have the time to focus on starting a new game community. If no community already exists, I will not play.
2. Is it a high model count game? I do not have time to paint hundreds of models anymore. My patience is low, and I enjoy painting very specific models now. If it needs me to have more than 20-30 models, I will not play.
3. Is it more fun than what I play already? When playing games, I have two areas I organize them into: competitive and casual. Competitive are games I seek to play and own what is most optimal. I seek to have a high level of play and that challenge drives me. Casual games I play with the intent to enjoy narrative or "theme" more than what is considered optimal. These are games I will play how I want even if that way has a lower chance to win. If a new game is not as enjoyable as the game I currently have for that purpose (casual or competitive), then I will not play.

This is all under the understanding that I have limited time as is, I am getting pickier with my time expenditure, and I have several real-life things happening that are priority.

Hobby Expansion

I have purchased a resin 3d printer and have begun to expand on several RPG enhancing hobbies like wax seals and even fountain pen calligraphy. Multiple projects will mean I will have multiple things to share as I learn and expand my hobbies! At this point even my kids are wanting to get involved!

This does mean I have slowly stopped playing as many videogames. I will be putting a much high emphasis on tabletop games and the adjacent hobbies.

Exciting Future

I am excited for what is coming as gaming and other hobbies are explored! This has been a great way for me to find new communities and friends and I am looking forward to creating more blog content!

Malifaux 3rd Edition

The time has come! Malifaux 3rd edition has fallen upon us and I may have fallen off the deep end...

This game has for a very long time been my favorite tabletop wargame to play. It mixes themes I love with a dynamic world and captivating story. Mix in gorgeous models and a skirmish game unique in this current market of games and you get a game that is highly approachable by players of all skill levels.

Now there have been a lot of game reviews my favorite so far being from Third Floor Wars, but I will be giving an overview of my own game experiences playing certain masters and crews and playing against others. Since I primarily play the Outcast faction, most of my write-ups will be focused there but I will be including general strategies as well as my impressions of my opponent's factions and crews.

I will also being trying to document my games and giving my general thoughts on strategy. Hope you enjoy the things to come!