There's been a flood of new releases coming from the studios in Nottingham, and here I am, not really caring too much one way or the other. I just couldn't get very excited about the brand new edition or the brand new Chaos Space Marines book. Starting a new army would mean I would have to sell some of my organs, so I decided to focus on only a couple of games for now.
My first love, as far as games go, has to be D&D. Yeah, I messed around with the red box as a kid, and I LOVED those TSR choose your own adventure books. Endless Quest is what they were called, and I would love to have a complete set of those.
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| You're totally lying if you never skipped back if you screwed up. |
So anyways, years later I bought Baldur's Gate II, thinking it looked pretty cool. Hours were lost on that game - I ran Irenicus's dungeon so many times whenever I made new characters. Anyways, the blur that was my twenties happened, great amounts of alcohol were consumed, and I forgot all about my fascination with D&D until just recently. I took the dip into 4e, even tried running it for a while, but it felt so...off. Easy to run, and easy enough to play, but...not quite D&D for some reason. Then there was Essentials. Then there was DDI and the online only character builder fiasco. From what I've heard about Next, I think as long as WotC has the D&D rights, it's going to continue to be a mess. However, there was another company that seemed to be doing it right...
I picked up the Pathfinder Core Rulebook a little bit after it was first released in a hardcover. It was amazing. I liked the art, I liked all the ridiculously detailed rules, so I started out with play by post games, sort of learning the system from square one. A couple years later, and I'm finally running my own play by post games, and looking to put a regular tabletop group together as well. I absolutely love running games for Pathfinder - and I'm getting much better all the time at it as well. The adventure paths are excellent, the supplements have been consistently excellent, and Paizo is a good company - where else can you talk directly to staff on the message boards?
As for miniature games, I have finally been won over by the Warmachine/Hordes game put out by Privateer Press. I'm just going to say it - it's a much better game than 40K. Less emphasis on list building, solid rules, and a good community. I even picked up the Iron Kingdoms RPG, and have been having some fun making characters and figuring out that game as well - it's similar in many respects to the Warmachine rules, at least as far as combat goes. Some of the model sculpts PP puts out are pretty cool, and they're fun to paint. Other models...well, let's just say that the Cryx collosal reminds me of something from Lost in Space. The Cygnar colossal, (Stormwall?) now that is a cool giant robot.
Meanwhile, my thin $50 hardcover codex books for Warhammer 40,000 are sitting on my shelf. My Fantasy books are doing the same thing, and I haven't been motivated to paint my meager reboot (5 Chaos Knights and a Lord) of Warriors of Chaos either. I have all kinds of Black Crusade and Deathwatch books that I still skim through occasionally, but I just can't get excited about playing or GMing those games either.
So yeah, for the time being, I'm just not that into 40K anymore. It's been like this for a while, at least since I last posted. I'm not sure if I want to jump back in any time soon. Probably not. Sure, the stuff GW has been putting out is pretty high quality, but they've pushed me out of the market with their prices, and kind of pushed me away from their games in general. 40K feels a lot like a grind these days, and when a game gets to feel like that, it just isn't fun anymore.
There's always going to be some new thing that comes out, or some new game that your friends want people to try. That's great, but I'm sticking to my guns this time. Now, I might build up a Hordes army, or even a more complete army faction in Warmachine, but there is a TON of choice when it comes to miniatures games these days. I can't buy into every system. There's a sizable local community here devoted to Warmachine/Hordes, and the players I've met seem very enthusiastic and positive.
So for now, I'm perfectly happy playing Warmachine occasionally and sticking with Pathfinder as my RPG, and my main gaming hobby. A few books, and a few models, and I feel like I'm set for a while. And you can never have enough dice, but dice are relatively cheap, right? Is this blog going to stick around? Sure, I see no reason to take it down. Will it change focus, or even the name? I don't know, but I might start a new blog. Stay tuned.