I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about how great it would be to contribute to my hobby in a more meaningful way than ploughing cash into gamestores.
Not that it's really ploughing, more of a gentle sprinkle (although Mrs Wargamer would disagree).
Last night I was assembling and painting some 28mm Anglo Saxons for a game of SAGA (much more on that to come I suspect...), and listening to the centennial episode of "The Independent Characters". If you haven't listened to it yet, I can't recommend it enough. Carl, Geoff, Justin and Adan were discussing how to get started in podcasting, the work involved etc. I was really struck by the fact that despite the toll it clearly takes on them in time and resources, they really feel like they get a lot out of the experience, and it kept them primed for their hobby. (Link at the bottom of the post).
They talked at great length about "finding your own voice" as a podcast, and making sure that what you produce is something that you yourself would want to listen to. Now, I'm not in a position to start a podcast, nor do I really want to (I hate the sound of my voice on tape - although Mrs Wargamer would probably tell you that I love the sound of my voice in general, so why should taping it make a difference?). So I figured I'd write a blog.
What to write about though? What's my angle? What would I want to read?
Well, here goes. I have a two really good friends, let's call them Yoda and Loki. Yoda is a really smart guy, who always has some seriously good insights into whatever I talk to him about. He is pretty funny too, but it's dry humour, oh so dry. Loki on the other hand, is a joker, every time I talk to him, he always cracks me up with a story about how something bad has happened to him, usually entirely his fault. He is also a really smart guy, whose insights are always valuable.
My favourite times are when I get to relax with these two, perhaps over a beer or two, shooting the shit. Often, we talk about wargaming. We all played as kids, then we all stopped as teenagers. I was the first to fall back in, probably my second year at university, when I picked up a copy of BloodBowl on eBay. Loki and I were really into the Madden series of games on Xbox, and BloodBowl seemed like a perfect continuation, as we had played when we were younger. So, we used to waste a lot of time playing BloodBowl. Yoda wasn't so into it then, but after another prolonged break from gaming, I started to get back into 40K. I managed to convince Yoda to pull an army together too, and we went to a tournament. The rest is history.
Yoda and I regularly play together, Loki will get involved when he can, but he doesn't have much time. The conversations we have, minus the 25 years worth of in-jokes, are the sort of thing I would like to read. So that's what I'm going for. Demographics be damned, this is the sort of stuff that three thirty-somethings talk about when they drink beer and roll dice. Or at least drink beer and talk about rolling dice, which seems to happen an awful lot more than the actual gaming...
Thanks for reading this inaugural post, we'll see what comes next.
I, Wargamer.
The Independent Characters Podcast
