Introductory Post

After writing for years on a personal blog, I'm breaking out my gaming writing onto its own separate commentary. Why? I don't know, because it seems like the thing to do - Warpstone Pile seems to get what Rush needs out of it for tracking his painting progress, and discussions of techniques; Mike has started one for his west coast adventures in finding miniature gaming at Black Ark Apathy.

So, what am I going to write about? Gaming. Mostly role playing games (RPGs) and board games. What I'm doing with them, what I'm thinking about them. I'm going to try to write twice a week, but no promises. We'll see how well the motivation and material lasts. 

What I Play
Role Playing Games: I've mostly been running games constantly since 2003 - 1-2 year long campaigns, some with better success than others. Adventure! ran for about 2 years. Then I ran Exalted through both first and second editions for what seemed like a long time, but was a bit less than 2 years. A short flirtation with Reign, where my players tried so hard to live with the system, but it just didn't work out. Then back to White Wolf for Changeling: The Lost.

Currently, I'm playing in 4th edition D&D game run by my college friend (and brother in law). It has just gotten off the ground and I'm having a lot of fun with playing again, even in a system that isn't my first choice - but definitely a system I think I'll probably enjoy playing around with.

Board Games: Race for the Galaxy is my most recent obsession; and I enjoy Ticket to Ride (Europe mostly); Colosseum; Puerto Rico on occasion; Dominion; and many others. I've discovered that I generally like bidding/auctioning mechanics and games with minimal "screw your neighbor" rules - as I play with the same people, it minimizes the number of grudges that form over the years. 

Miniatures: Right now only 40k, and I want to do others, but the modeling aspect is killing me. I'm hoping this blog will provide me added incentive to finish assembling and painting the figures.

Video Games: I fell out of video games for a long time, and only recently having gotten back into them. Mostly I'm not good enough to finish them so I play till I get bored and then use GameFly to send it back in and try a new one. It works mostly well, except when I get distracted. The recent Steam sales have been bad for my gaming habit, and I have a lot of older games that I missed out on to play through.

Narcissism
I'm a 30-something gamer, who's been gaming since I was 16 when someone saw me reading an Icewind Dale book and asked "So do you game?" And since then gaming has been part of my life. In college, I joined the Science Fiction/Fantasy Guild of James Madison University, and met a bunch of people there that I still game with to this day. As well as grill with, party with, and chat with.In other news, my wife is due in April, which is looming large in my mind - perhaps the point of this endeavor is to at least keep me thinking about gaming even if I'm not doing it as frequently.