I hope all you fuckers enjoyed your Blue Sky.
It is coming.
You reap what you sow.
The right to free speech is a hill I will die upon.
Slight update:
Anyone who attempts to post a reply anonymously will
be marked as spam and not allowed to appear on this blog.
This week my wife and I said goodbye to one of our babies. Maddie had just hit 17 years old on Monday and left us on Thursday. It was heartbreaking as we watched her slowly decline over the last year. About a month ago things took a turn for the worse and we knew the end was near.. She was my constant companion over the last four years of divorce, depression, loneliness, and then the joy of a new marriage. My new wife took such good care of her in her very, very elderly years, treating her with kindness and love as the days got harder and harder.
She will be missed dearly every day, but I am glad of the time we had with her and the love she gave us. We all loved you, Maddie, and thank you for everything over the last 17 years.
I am fortunate to have been born in the best country on the planet and happy to have served my fellow citizens. May we forever be a beacon of liberty and hope on this blue ball circling the sun.
Update: Wow, the negative and hateful comments I have received for this post are simply shocking. This post is simply celebrating the fact that our country is amazing and a beacon of freedom and liberty. As comments on my blog are moderated, you won't see these comments because this is my blog and I won't condone your silliness. Go pet a puppy or something. Y'all need to get a grip.
A break from my usual stuff. The folks over at USAA have put together a non-profit to help fight veteran suicide. Simply put, the numbers are staggering. 120k suicides since 2001. 57% higher than the national average. 120k means 400+ veterans a month commit suicide, a shocking number. We can do better.
Be your buddy's 6.
Never leave a friend behind.
Find out more at:
https://wefacethefight.org/
I have been thinking about this for quite a long time and though I am not an eloquent man, I thought I should put these random and chaotic thoughts down in pixels. A sort of 'My journey in creative endeavors' or some such. This is somewhat rambley and covers a lot of random thoughts/ideas. I feel my thoughts on gaming have come full circle in a rather strange way, but somehow I am back where I started (at least I hope so). Some may view that as bad, or some may view it as good. I think it is good. You can be the judge, but here I am. This may also piss some people off as they might view this as me attacking what they are doing. Maybe I am.
G+ ushered in a massive communal environment, where we were all creating and sharing, building lots of ideas and sharing them freely...excitedly creating things for the good of us all. This was a great time in the hobby and I repeatedly see people referring to this as a 'Golden Age' and I wholeheartedly agree.
At some point this turned in 'I can create and make funds from this', and suddenly everyone and their brother stopped creating for free and turned to creating for money. I participated in this and had a Patreon for about a year. I slowly became disillusioned by this as greed leached into the hobby and the majority turned from creating "because that's who we are" to "creating to make money".
Related to this, at this time our hobby took a massive turn in mentality.
Let me explain. When we were kids, back in yonder days, those who created did so for their game table which comprised of us and our friends who we knew very well. We made things we enjoyed making but also things we would use fairly quickly at our tables. Very few of us created things we thought we could sell, or even thought someone else might use/enjoy. None of that mattered. We created for us. But when money came into the picture, most of us created for others. I think this is important to note, as I think the hobby changed drastically.
The reason I bring this up is that I had an epiphany in the last couple of weeks when I realized part of what was holding me back from playing was that I was creating things for my game, always with an angle that I would share it for others to use.
While for some, this might be a tiny thing to make note of, but for me, this was significant.
The realization that I had changed my viewpoint on creating for the hobby for others and no longer for myself (and my table). I also realized this was holding me back from creating. I was putting others concerns, likes, wants, needs, ahead of my own. I was always creating things - even playing games - with the intent of sharing with others, putting their enjoyment equal or even ahead of my own enjoyment. Views, downloads, clicks, shares, etc were a driving motivator for what I was doing. When I approached a new idea, first and foremost was the thought "Will others find this useful?" Which was quickly followed by "How to present this so others can use it?"
In any case, I needed to say this, get it off my chest, if you will and I am going to try to play the games I like, in a way I like, but more importantly, for ME. Put me before others in my game.
Ok, I need a hand. So life sucks amiright? Well, my buddy Christian has been making this really cool setting, a single page at a time for his post-apocalypse death world called Gath. You can check it out at his blog Destination Unknown.
I got this nutty idea today that we need him to turn this into a hex crawl, a la The Dark of Hot Springs Island. Seriously, if you don't know what that is, take a moment and educate yourself.
Anyway, today I played around with a hexmap to get him started. Now, I need your help. We need to make him do this. Harass him. Bug him. Send skellies and mutants! We world can only get better with a Legends of Gath hexcrawl!
