Roleplay Life

Looks like it’s almost out. Paizo has it listed for pre-order here. They’re saying December 2009, so it should be soon, or pushed out.

When we’re young, you got all the time in the world for gaming. When you get older, that time decreases. Get married? Lose more time. Have a kid? Count yourself lucky if you have any time at all. Guess you all figured that out from my irregular postings.

Outside my regular D&D game (which may go on a bit of a hiatus as the DM himself is having a kid), I just joined the Gaming Grunts for a weekly lunch hour game. They’ve had a game going for a bit now, and even post their games as podcasts. Currently we’re playing 6th edition Call of Cthulhu, set in the 1920s. I’m playing Handsome Hank Harrison, a not so good looking, not so bright, ex-boxer.

FInally got myself back into D&D. It was a short but sweet game, next time should be longer if I can keep up the house work.

Parenting since gaming wasn’t the only first for me today, I also had my first experience gaming with a remote player. We used a laptop, a logitech webcam, cable internet, and skype to pull it off, and I think it went pretty well. Eventually I’d like to set up a remote game with some people across the country that I miss gaming with.

The D&D insider character generator sped up my character generation process. The UI is very pretty, so I’m left wondering does it really work well, or does the spiffy interface gloss over the program’s weak points? I’ve used character generators for Unisystem and GURPS which worked okay, but had a very dry interface.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to game more often, and I’ll get back into the swing of blogging.

Sunday I may actually get to game! It’s been three months since my daughter was born, and a week or so more since I last gamed. If you remember, Kat showed up the day my wife and I were getting ready for Dundracon. All I have to do is get the house ready for the game.
I’ve heard some parents got back into gaming just a month after their kid was born, and others have been waiting five years to get back in. Three months seems like a good amount to me.
All that’s left to figure out is frequency.

My daughter has been home one week so far. Since she was an “early release”, the hospital kept her a for observation. Getting used to the new sleep schedule is taking some work, and I won’t be back to my regular gaming group for a bit yet. Instead, I’ve taken up playing Daddies & Diapers, and BURPS.

Yes, I know, bad gamer dad jokes.

I know I was supposed to post from Dundracon ‘09, but l was unable to attend. On that first day, Friday the 13th, my wife gave birth to my daughter. While she’s 6 weeks early, she’s doing pretty well, and will get to come home soon.

Needless to say, the convention was right out of the question. However, there were a few convention experiences I did have during that weekend -

• Staying up weird hours.
• Sleeping in a chair.
• Paying too much for food cause you don’t want to/can’t leave the building.
• Running into people you used to know (true story - my wife knew one of her nurses from an after school activity)
• Making new friends.

When I found out I was going to be a parent, I looked for posts and articles by other gaming parents. One blog I found was Wired’s Geek Dad. He has posts on teaching kids to game, a starter guide for gaming with your kids, and setting up a gaming group with your kids. I also got some good advice from the meetup group I’m a member of on gaming and parenting, which I will share. I hope those of you who regularly read this blog and have kids share some of your best pieces of advice with us in the comment section.

Welcome to Roleplay Life in ‘09. I’m working a few ideas for this site that I’m not going to talk about until I got them all worked out.

One thing I will talk about is that in late March. I’m expecting my first kid. So I’ll be blogging about gaming as a new parent. Hopefully I can get some advice from parent gamers. I’ve already gotten a few pieces of advice on a few boards I’m on.

Happy ‘09.

In the beginning, I was doing a lot of gaming news reporting. After a while, I realized that’s not what I wanted to do with this site, and that there’s other sites that do it better. So I haven’t been watching the gaming news as closely. Going over old news, it looks like Topps has closed off WizKids, who owns the rights to Battletech and Shadowrun. Catalyst Game Labs still has a license, but they’ve made a move to purchase these two intellectual properties, and I hope they can pull it off.

With this news, I’m going to a little Nostradamus, and make a prediction. I predict that 4ed will be the last edition of D&D produced by Wizards of the Coast, or Wizards of the Coasts under Hasbro. There may be a 4.5, but I don’t think they’ll go beyond that. I don’t think a large company like Hasbro has the commitment to do a product like D&D well, hence all the erratas and bugs in the game.

My guess for who could take over the brand after WotC would be Paizo. They look the most ready to take over the line if someone had to.

I’m no good with crazy vague poetry, so I couldn’t go full Nostradamus. (”the golems shall take the dungeons from the wizards on the shore, and there they shall dwell with the dragons “). Feel free to add predictions in the comments below.

It looks like I won’t have to go another DunDraCon without a copy of Anima - Beyond Fantasy. My copy arrived yesterday from Amazon. I’ve only briefly flipped through it, but it looks nice and is in great condition. The pricing at Amazon is great, but the availability isn’t  (1 to 2 months for delivery). You’re probably better off ordering directly from Fantasy Flight Games.

(bonus points if you can name the artist)

I was begining to think gaming had lost it’s appeal to me. I’d go to games, and I wouldn’t have much fun. Turns out that it wasn’t what I was playing, but with who. Sometimes we have friends we enjoy hanging out with, but when it comes to that one activity, hanging out becomes something of a chore.

It wasn’t until I got into this one group, and the one trouble making player left, that I realized it wasn’t what I was playing but who I was playing with. Suddenly, the magic was back, things clicked, and all was good. I had got my groove back.

Fast forward to today, suddenly I found myself back in a familiar scenario. Through a chain of friendships, one player who I really didn’t enjoy playing with, was about to join my group. I tried to be okay with it, but in the end, I was only stressing out my self. I should have been honest from the start, and put my foot down and said “No.” My attempts to not hurt anyone’s feelings ended up blowing up in my face.

Sometimes we need to remember, just because we enjoy hanging out with someone doesn’t mean that we’ll have a great time gaming. I have a great time hanging out with my mom, but I really don’t think a game of GURPS would as fun with her. And because we don’t want to game with someone doesn’t mean that we hate them. Just means we want different things from a game.