The Hopeless Gamer

As part of my moving away from friends and gaming group (these things are mutually inclusive, mind you), I've had to re-think what I hang on to in order to meet my gaming needs. I haven't had a whole lot of opportunities lately to GM a game, but over the years I've picked up odd little bits and bobbles here and there. Things like pre-painted miniatures, little plastic trees, and map tiles have been snatched from the jaws of clearance sales, and like everyone in our hobby, all this cool stuff piles up over time.

Now the time has come to sort the good stuff from the junk, and I found myself throwing away lots of old character sheets, power cards from D&D 4th edition, and lots of other pretty useless things that I don't know why I kept. It actually felt really productive and positive, but then it got me thinking about the stuff I'm choosing to hang on to and move with me to another state. At this time, I can't separate myself from my Flipmats, for instance. I have four of them at this point, and they are just my favorite thing for depicting a space for an encounter at the tabletop. I feel pretty good hanging onto them though because they are light and extremely easy to store (two things that attracted me to them in the first place in fact). It does make me wonder though - will I have an opportunity to actually use them in the near future? What happens when I see a new one coming out that just looks so awesome - how can I justify buying it in the future?

So this puts me at an impasse with similar game aids. While I am very excited to dive into duet games with the Gamer Wife, and she's been a fan of what she's seen in the Pathfinder Beginner's Box (which is basically made to show off cool bits and bobbles), I still feel like I should focus on down-sizing my stuff which just will take up room. It should be noted that The Gamer Wife is in full support of me keeping all my crap, but damnit, I want to just as good a spouse for her as she is for me.

So anyway, outside of a couple of big one-shots I want to do when I'm back at the hometown with the friends, I really need to avoid buying, planning, and building big things. Ah well, maybe it'll help me focus more on those few games a year I run.

My Future.

I've been very fortunate to have the opportunity to move to a better position in my professional life (sadly still not anything professional within our shared collective hobbies, but still a productive move), and that means moving to a new town. I've struggled with the decision because the new job means good things for my wife, and kits, and I, but while the cats seem to be oblivious to the world around them (because they're so self-centered, you see), the Gamer Wife and I have been working our ways through processing what moving two hours away means for us. Moving away from friends, family, and our professional lives, not to mention out of our hometown where we've lived all our lives except when we went off to school, is just tough. Not surprisingly so, but still, it's tough.

This is, however, a gaming blog, and while I feel more comfortable nowadays writing a little bit more naturally and personally, I still don't want to lose sight of why The Hopeless Gamer exists, and that's tabletop games (and the occasional video game, of course). So, bringing it back to the actual topic of the HG, I'm finding myself doing some cleaning out of the old game collection. Generally speaking, I pick up a lot of stuff over the passage of time. I'll pick up a game book here or there with occasional big purchase times around Gencon every year, and it all adds up.

I need to make something clear right now - the Gamer Wife isn't asking me to get rid of anything. She's always been cool with my games collection and often participates in the enjoyment of said collection. But moving is always a hard thing, and I desperately don't want to move anything out of this apartment to another state to be unpacked in a new apartment just to sit on a shelf. I don't have anyone to impress with my game collection, and outside of a few mementos and cool books to keep, I only want to hang on to things I'll read or really intend to read at some point.

This means I've got to take a fine-toothed comb to my collection and peel away as much as possible for 1/2 priced books and the Gencon auction. What I find myself doing is keeping books with higher production values for the most part. I'm keeping most of my World of Darkness books, which is probably the single biggest collection from one game line that I have. They also have the benefit of being just full to the brim with fun little things to read. I'm also keeping Mouse Guard, as another example of great production value that won me over altogether as a product.

Although I haven't written as much about the game lately, my personal prize of my collection is my Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Collection. I don't know how AEG does it, but L5R 4th Edition is pretty much the best game line I've ever seen put together. I've never played a game (but would truly love to give it a shot since I love the Roll and Keep engine so much in theory), but I love samurai as a general genre, and the full-color hard-bound books of L5R are just amazing. I can't wait to pick up the Imperial Histories!

Obviously there's other stuff I'm hanging on to (things like The One Ring and Empire of Dust box sets are both prized possessions), but really this just leaves me with what I'm getting rid of. A big part was beginning the pruning of my World of Darkness collection. There were some books that I've read, enjoyed, but am ready to let go. The other selection is pretty much all of my D&D 4th Edition stuff. Not to go all hipster on you, dear reader, but I've actually had my 4th edition stuff in the "to go" box for over a year now - well before the announcement of 5th edition. I don't own a whole lot of 4th edition, but what I do own, well it has a high production value, just doesn't really stimulate me either mechanically or story-wise, and so it has to go. I'm still going back and forth on my Essentials Heroes of the Fallen Lands simply because if I decide I want to play in a local game (which I don't know if I'll be able to find one honestly), I'll at least be able to play a basic version of a character. Still, D&D pretty much has to go!

Since this stuff is kind of dominating my life and thoughts right now, I'll likely be posting more about it, but I'm very interested in talking about duet games with the Gamer Wife, finding two-player games, making time to get back to my group to play games occasionally, and solo games. I've already been doing a lot of research of alternatives, so that's just a little preview of what may be coming up in the next couple of weeks (and probably months) while I learn about where I am as a gamer in a new state.

The other day, the wife bought a heating pad for her back. We have two cats, and it took us until today to realize that the heating pad is probably the single greatest pleasure a neutered cat can derive from this world. Now, our cats love them some blankets and couch cushions. They'll lay, dead to the world, for hours at a time on the back of the couch, preferably atop a pile of freshly-folded blankets. I'm confident that blankets + cats = infinite heat generating machine. I'm pretty sure the cats are confident about this as well. But then something strange (and to my cat, wonderful) happened this afternoon. Our young'un 20 pound cat was laying on the heating pad (after all - it's practically a blanket on its own), and we decided to turn that bad boy on. Cue instant pur generating machine as Barney squeezed his eyes tightly in pure kitty bliss.

This got me thinking about myself and you, my fellow gamer. You see, I believe that we all have our blankets and our heating pads when it comes to games. Blankets are the every - day kind of good that we all crave. In other terms, blankets are the entry level drug. It's that first good high that's familiar, reliable, and largely self-sufficient once you plop yourself down on and/or in it. You enjoy your blanket. You get a lot out of it, and it's satisfying in ways few other things can even get close to. Then one day you come across this new exciting thing. It hits all the buttons the blanket hits, but it's so much more pure and concentrated, and it just seems to work better than any blanket you've found at pleasing your gaming needs. This is your heat pad. It's the thing that maybe needs a little outside juice, or maybe it's something that you can only really get to when you're around friends or a helping hand.

Ok, so this is actually a gaming blog, not a blog about how great cats are and how to make your cat great. So where am I going with this? I think there's a blanket and a heating pad out there for everyone when it comes to role-playing games. I think for the vast majority of tabletop gamers, their blanket is likely to be Dungeons & Dragons. It's the game that seems just right and exciting, and can run itself pretty much on autopilot once it gets going. Well I enjoy the random game of D&D, it's not exactly my blanket. I'm instead going to go with Savage Worlds. It's a simple generic system that is easy for me to figure out how to run lots of different games, and it inspires me to come up with new settings. It's my entry drug, but it's not quite spot-on enough for me to be my heating pad.

And here lies the problem - I've found easily a half dozen games that could potentially be my heating pad. My latest two obsessions are the Fate system and the PDQ system. They both seem to work so well, and given that I really do prefer rules-liter games over crunchier systems. The problem for me is that I haven't gotten an opportunity to really try anything to make sure it's my heating pad. I'm really leaning heavily toward PDQ at this point as I recently picked up Jaws of the Six Serpents and began reading it quite quickly. I love this book, and it's very much in line with how I feel a good story can be told with both experienced role-players and people sitting down at the table for the first time.

But here's the rub - I really need to temper my excitement for yet another new game with another cool setting and another really exciting set of rules. I know that one of my greatest weaknesses is my excitement for the new thing, even if it isn't actually very new to the rest of the world. I can't help it. I want to make the thing work for me because it inspires me with new ideas. But then eventually I move on to the next new thing when my attention wanes, and I don't learn anything for it. Well, maybe I learn a little bit more about what I actually like about a game book, but beyond that, I lose the possibility for any great insight. Every new game that grabs my attention like this is another person flipping the switch on a potential heating pad, but each heating pad, just like the last, just doesn't quite feel right to make me go from zero to 60 purring power. I'm just going to close my eyes and keep moving forward, hoping that this heating pad is the right one for me.

Skyrim isn't technically me first Elder Scrolls game. I tried playing Oblivion on both the PC and the PS3, and could not get into the story at all. I didn't care straight away from the opening, and the controls seemed counter-intuitive for me (the same could be said for my experiences trying Fallout 3 sadly). I was however taken in immediately from the opening cart ride through avoiding the dragon to choosing (obviously) to work with the Storm Cloaks instead of escaping with the Imperial Legion. The game just felt right immediately. If a game grabs me like that, it usually has me for the whole ride as I delve deeper into the story. Skyrim took that and ran with it, and Bethesda has done something truly amazing with the game.

I've got two big reasons why Skyrim just works for me. Because I love making lists, I made a list!

It turns out that taking a break from the week-in, week-out grind of over-whelming bloggery responsibilities is good for the soul and rejuvenating for the mind. Who knew? Plenty of people, but that's really not the point. I've been trying to decide for a while now if I was done with the whole blogging thing. I've had a great time over the couple of years of The Hopeless Gamer. Although my audience (you, if you're reading these words right now) is quite meager, I've been given some really cool opportunities since I've become a blogger simply because I kept a semi-active blog. A part from the nice press passes to shows like Gencon and c2e2, I got to play Battles of Westeros way before it was released and was taught the game by the designer himself. Not too shabby all in all.

The blog has been a couple of different things to me in my short time writing for it. It's been an outlet for me to get my creative juices flowing. It's been a way for me to get int writing flash fiction and explore some really dark (and fun) places for my horror ideas. It's given me an opportunity to talk about role-playing games I wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to really discuss if I didn't have the blog.

It's also given me a lot of stress as I drive myself crazy over comparing myself to others out there. My peers, and people I strive to emulate out of respect for their own content. I've had lots of failures and lots of great examples of trying too hard to make this blog like someone else's just because it seems like the thing you do when you blog. I think that was ultimately what made me take such a long break from The HG.  I started focusing on what I thought the blog should be rather than what I wanted it to be. These things turned out to be incongruous, and I think my posts have suffered as a result.

So, after all the yammering, if anyone out there is reading to this far, I've decided to get back into the blogging thing. It was touch-and-go for a while there, but I think my batteries are recharged a bit, and I'm excited to see what excites me to write about this year. Now, let's get back to it.

So, quick post today, and it seems random (mostly because it is an unplanned), but I did want to say for those of you who might actually have given it a second thought - I'm still alive. I'm just taking a break from the regular posting as I've had to take a mental break from the whole exercise. Anyway, THG is not dead, I'm not dead, and gaming is, I might add, most definitely not dead. In fact, I've been continuing to work on my own pet project. It's a project that, I'm not afraid to admit, has just exploded and grown much quicker than I would have expected since I started the blogging break. Apart from my own creations, I've been playing some Dragon Age tabletop (and DA 2 for the ps3) and tons of Lord of the Rings LCG still. I've also been continuing to buy weekly digital comics since September. Outside of that, I don't have a whole lot more to talk about (another legitimate reason I've been holding off from much blogging).

And lastly, because I always love to post pictures of cool stuff, you should go over and get the details on FFG's new announcement on Star Wars themed card sleeves.

I posted following Gencon that one of my biggest surprises - as in something I had never even heard of going into the convention - was picking up a small softcover pre-release version of a new indie-styled (i.e. simply not traditional or very crunchy) pulp sci-fi game Cosmic Patrol from Catalyst Games (Battletech, Shadowrun). I love my little softcover version, but those hardcovers to the right there look very nice.

Cosmic Patrol is a game that captured my imagination right away. The rules are simple, the setting expansive and open to interpretation, and the art is just awesome. I'm very excited to see that Cosmic is finally getting it's wide release, and highly recommend you pick up a copy. I'm almost debating myself to pick up an additional copy just to have both soft and hardcover versions. It's an incredibly fun-looking little game, and I can't wait to see what Catalyst has planned next for it as hinted at on the recent blog post announcing the release of the hardcover.