Wow, last post in May, 2 days after starting the blog...
Summer escalated quickly, but no excuse. Well, now that Autumn is peering round the corner (although it is a beautiful summer evening outside, with no prospect of falling leaves in sight!), I thought I'd get back into it.
Happily, my wargame / hobby activity hasn't been as limited as my work on the blog, and I've achieved a fair bit, a 40k doubles tournament with Yoda being the highlight, with a fair bit of work required to get the army finished (we used my daemons), that took up a good month and a half of hobby time - I'll post my thoughts on that particular tournament sometime soon.
I also started a new project, 40k Sons of Medusa - again, I'll talk through my rationale for that in a future post, and what I hope to get out of the project.
Whilst I was on the Independent Characters forums, I got involved in a discussion about competitiveness in 40k. I'd had a couple of beers, and seemingly from nowhere, the following soundbite popped into my head - "40k is a toolset, not a ruleset".
This seemed to sum up neatly how I feel about the hobby, but also threw something else into pretty sharp relief - I haven't done anything with that toolset other than follow the most basic instructions.
What I mean by that is that despite all the games I've played, and the narrative events I've been to, I have never taken those tools and created something unique and cool, which represents the game as I want to play it.
I've been a pretty passive participant really, and I've still jawed a little about how I'd like things to be. So here goes - I'm going to create and run my own little narrative campaign.
It will be designed to get Yoda, Loki and I together for a weekend, and act as a catalyst for Loki to get his models finished - he has a very busy job which requires a lot of travel, and doesn't have much hobby time.
I'll share as much of the creative process with you on here, and will make all the campaign materials available for download too, so you can see if its any good!
So here is to a busy Autumn of blogging, hobby and wargaming - I hope you'll join me.
I, Wargamer.
Sunday, 31 August 2014
Monday, 12 May 2014
The never-ending mountain
Like most gamers, I have a ton of unpainted miniatures awaiting attention. Worse yet, I have many an unassembled miniature, although I don't think I have anything still shrink wrapped...
Why do I do this to myself? Why, given a limited amount of time to spend hobbying, do I insist on making sure that I'll never get it all done? What am I punishing myself for?
Many people will have encountered the dreaded "lead mountain", or "resin mountain", or "injection moulded plastic mountain", so why do we perpetuate the situation by continuing to add to it?
It's as if Sisyphus, at five o' clock every day, reached down, jammed a rock under his huge boulder, then went back to the bottom of the mountain. There, he would go to the rock store (which is probably way out of town, or in a district where the rent is so high he can barely turn around inside it), and spend a goodly chunk of that day's wages on more rocks. Then, he'd trek back up the mountain, past his boulder, right to the top, and drop his newly purchased rocks there, making that mountain just a little higher.
Kind of cray-cray when you think about it, right? You know what makes it worse? Sisyphus has another job. One that pays. He even has a life outside of rock rolling. He loves rolling that rock though - so much so, he never really wants it to end, which is why he keeps buying more mountain.
I, Wargamer
Why do I do this to myself? Why, given a limited amount of time to spend hobbying, do I insist on making sure that I'll never get it all done? What am I punishing myself for?
Many people will have encountered the dreaded "lead mountain", or "resin mountain", or "injection moulded plastic mountain", so why do we perpetuate the situation by continuing to add to it?
It's as if Sisyphus, at five o' clock every day, reached down, jammed a rock under his huge boulder, then went back to the bottom of the mountain. There, he would go to the rock store (which is probably way out of town, or in a district where the rent is so high he can barely turn around inside it), and spend a goodly chunk of that day's wages on more rocks. Then, he'd trek back up the mountain, past his boulder, right to the top, and drop his newly purchased rocks there, making that mountain just a little higher.
Kind of cray-cray when you think about it, right? You know what makes it worse? Sisyphus has another job. One that pays. He even has a life outside of rock rolling. He loves rolling that rock though - so much so, he never really wants it to end, which is why he keeps buying more mountain.
I, Wargamer
I, Wargamer
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
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
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