Winter 2017 Gaming and Last Jedi Thoughts!

This Fall I setup a Discord guild for my gaming group. Initially it was for the members of the group but I decided that I wanted to try to setup a gaming community and so far it seems to be growing. Right now we have several active games, ranging from D&D to Vampire the Masquerade. We’ve done away with the shared gamemaster method I mentioned in this post. Currently I am running a Vampire 20 game as well as planning a Star Wars game.

On the story side of things, there has been a bit of writing. Not as much as I would like though. The problem is procrastination and distractions. The places that are available to write are not conductive to writing in peace and quiet. Maybe I can drive to the coffee shop and write two cups worth of story? Since this story is tied to the vampire game, there hasn’t been any lull in creativity. It’s even prompted me to buy a bunch of werewolf and vampire novels. One of the vampire books, Enter, Night is rather dark. A bit too dark for a winter read. Instead I picked up Thrawn by Timothy Zahn. So far I am enjoying it. I wish Disney had went with Thrawn as the returning villain instead of Snoke. A waste of an opportunity.

Speaking of Star Wars, the wife and I went to see the Last Jedi a week after its premier. Hate to say it but I didn’t care for it. It seems to have divided fandom and I find myself agreeing with a lot of the criticisms. The biggest problem I have with the film is Luke’s legacy. I agree with Marl Hamill. This isn’t Luke. It’s someone else. The below gif sums up my feelings.

Angry Luke
Angry Luke Mad at Disney for shitting on his legacy.

Disney and JJ better step up for the final is all I’m saying!

Recent Gaming

I’ve been actively trying to game more recently. For 30 years of my life I’ve gone through cycles where I get involved in a campaign and will get back into gaming for months and then life will happen and I can’t get into something else, or rather it’s hard to find players that want to play what I want to or run. So I game for a year or so and then back to years passing by before another campaign comes along. I’m trying to break that habit. I find I’m more creative when I am working on or playing in a campaign. It’s also a nice way to decompress after a hellish week and I can involve the family too. So my buddy Jon and I have come up with a Shared GM system where we run short campaigns, maybe 16 sessions at most before switching out and running something different. This has helped us both with burn out and scratching the creative itch. We used to play D&D and it’s not that I don’t enjoy D&D, but rather I want to try new things. This new system is great for that too. We even have a blog and podcast! With that…

Handy Gaming Links!

DicenPeanuts
My buddy Jon’s gaming blog. Thrilling stuff! Check it out. Do it!

DicenPeanuts Podcast
Home of the New Bastards Actual Plays and ill informed ranting.

Veins of the Earth
Super fun dungeon sub-terra setting book for the amazing Lamentations of the Flame Princess