I’m not a traditionally “goal-motivated” person. For certain values of goal, motivated, and person. I have a formative memory of telling my third grade teacher that I would not be setting any new years resolutions because the idea is quite ridiculous, thank you. I continue to agree with past-me about that. “Goals” are sort of like a report card: some people are super motivated by getting good grades for some reason.
What began as a fear of undue influence transformed into a realization that ideas are meant to be shared, not hoarded—execution is what truly matters in the end.
Every December my partner and I make the drive down to the Warhammer Citadel in Grapevine, TX to play our end-of-year game. If you’re a fan of Warhammer but have never been to the Citadel, imagine a Games Workshop or Warhammer store that’s also a coffee shop. It’s the closest thing we have in North America to Warhammer World, but it’s closer to a normal Warhammer store than that statement might imply.
Wargaming as a hobby is incredibly cloistered, a series of rituals performed by robed adherents, and the systems broadly share so many concepts that you often draft on one to learn another. This means that onboarding someone into our mystery is often an afterthought - the process starts by reading thirty some-odd pages of scripture, but the real questions you’ll grapple with are the same as the fresh acolyte of any religion.
I’d like to talk a bit about my favorite Massively Multiplayer Online PvP Game: eBay
Establishing a baseline for reviewing things can be difficult.
I’m not “traditionally” goal motivated. What do I mean by that? I mean if I tried to set a goal for a year from now that looked something like this: “in one year I want to have written a book,” that would not, on its own, result in any of the behaviors that lead to a book being written.
I back a lot of things on Kickstarter. Like. A lot of things. Especially during the annual ZineQuest, where indie TTRPG creators are encouraged to take a chance on the small, wild ideas that sometimes grow up to be Something Big. At PAX Unplugged I had the chance to speak briefly with one such creator, and they asked me what I looked for when I was deciding to back a project, so this post is written to them.
If your primary concern is getting people together at a table to play at all, pick D&D 5E. Everyone knows how to play it, it can be molded to meet the needs of any table, and there are countless off the shelf supplements already available to help a current or aspiring Dungeon Master. The reality for many people is that it doesn’t matter which TTRPG system they use, because the struggle is going to be getting four or more adults together in a room for two or more hours in the first place.
Had an excellent conversation last night with Jerry Holkins from Penny Arcade about tyranid list building and strategy that has me reconsidering half my 10th edition list.