I'm breaking my rule today...

... usually I confine this blog to being a geeky only blog but I feel passionate enough about this particular cause to go against my usual inclination.

This picture was taken March of 2019... and as content as I may seem in it, I was waiting to be admitted into a mental health facility.

I was having a really rough time. My circumstances had not changed in years but I had become tired of them. Soul tired. It got to the point where I chose to forego taking sleeping meds because I was too tempted to overdose. 

After some discussions with my mother, I contacted my psychiatrist and explained the problem. Clearly the medication I was on for my bipolar depression and situational depression wasn't being effective, but I had also just lost the will to combat the overwhelming exhaustion and despair that I was submerged in. He agreed that some time away would probably be the best and so we started the process of getting me admitted.

This brought a problem with work and social obligations. In both situations, my peers were completely unaware that it was a problem. I had one work colleague that knew I had some challenges, but didn't know I was in distress. I had colleagues who looked down on mental health issues as weakness, as not being strong enough, and of course the gossips who would just eat this up. Social obligations were basically my Friday D&D... which I felt at the time was my one ray of light in the week. I felt that I didn't want to just disappear with them thinking I was disinterested or something.

So I told my friends the truth, because my real-life deception score is pretty poor. And they leapt into action. The following week while I waited for a bed was spent taking me to the beach, giving me ice cream, taking me out for coffee, feeding me all kinds of fattening things, and just giving me something I didn't have up to that point (or that I didn't know I had): Social support.

It took a week and a half for a bed to be available at the mental health place... and that time was enough for me to get back on my feet. Yes, I was still in distress. No, it would take a long time for me to recover completely (years, in fact). But the immediate "I want to die right now" storm had passed. So when the bed was finally available, I declined going. 

I will be honest and say part of me wouldn't want to go there because I was raised in a world where mental health was tremendously stigmatised. But I am grateful that I (1) had the opportunity to go if I needed to and (2) was okay enough to decline the opportunity.

So why did I decide to share all this? Because today, 10 October, is World Mental Health Day and the best way to help sometimes is raising awareness, by being a bit more open than we usually are.

Streaming Thoughts and Plans

 It's been a while since I've done a stream on Twitch. I am planning to get back to it but I needed to take a break for a bit. That sounds dire, but honestly it wasn't for any negative reasons - all good ones, actually. Life just got very busy and there were things I've been waiting most my life to do which I got to do. So yay. 

But seeing as this isn't a life blog, I shan't go into too many details of the above. Suffice it to say that I am on a break and will return to trying to stream on a weekly basis when I feel like it. Which at this point is probably November, but no promises.

It does bring the question: What will I be streaming? I have ideas...

One of the games I'll definitely be playing on stream will be Satisfactory. It finally got it's 1.0 release after many years of being a delightful Early Access game and I haven't had the chance to dig into it yet. So I'm going to excitedly play that.

For those who don't know, Satisfactory is a first-person factory-building and exploration game where you're set on a planet to gather resources and build factories for items that the people off planet are looking for. 

It's the only factory game I've really gotten into and I enjoy it quite a bit. I will be trying to build less spaghetti-like factory lines this time around but there are no guarantees. I'm far too used to just running and jumping and sliding around, over, and under my mess of conveyor belts. If I haven't gotten organised in the 285 hours I've already spent on it, there's is virtually no chance that I'll magically bring order to chaos this time around.

Another game I will be eager to get back to is Aska. Another major update is scheduled for 14 October and, from what I've played in the game in general, I'm excited to see what the developers come up with.

I haven't babbled about Aska yet, but will in time when I've formed enough to say something about it. In short, it is a third-person settlement builder with strong Viking themes. There are some micromanaging things that need to be smoothed out. I can't jump every time a villager doesn't have a tool. But other than that, the bit that I've played it has been really good.

There is and always will be my D&D prep of creating maps on stream. Those will come in on sporadic bursts but I always have something I need to desperately work on, especially since running D&D games also was something that took a break. And I'm very glad for that break. But I've also become quite lazy because of it so catching up to the pace I need to prep things at to continue my DMing spree is going to be a challenge.

Another thing I want to do is a creative challenge. I don't exactly what I am going to do for this but I am leaning towards running a solo Starforged game. That's going to be super challenging because the setup prep is relatively easy to do. The actual playing, on the other hand, gets tricky.

Tales of the Valiant: Players' Guide - Thoughts

 So it's been a couple of months since Tales of the Valiant (ToV) came out for everyone to see. For those who don't know what it is, Tales of the Valiant is a 5e compatible TTRPG by Kobold Press. So far they've released the Player's Guide and the Monster Manual, but the Game Master's Guide is still on the way.

Now before I start rambling, let me say that I'm a little scatterbrained today. So I don't know whether this is going to come out sensibly.

You've been warned...

So what is ToV?

Tales of the Valiant is in some ways Kobold Press' response to WotC's OGL scandal. It is a system that appears built on D&D 5th Edition's foundation with a few variations in it. Though not the most accurate of comparisons, the best way I can think to describe it is when Paizo created Pathfinder as an answer to the frustrations players had with D&D at the time.

What does ToV's Players' Guide consist of?

ToV approached its introduction as though you've never played D&D. And so everything you can imagine in how to run a game and character creation and rules are in there. For those who know D&D, and 5e specifically, you'll see that the book holds everything you need to create a ToV character with a few minor rules differences or clarifications. Nothing that completely rocks the boat, yet enough changes to make ToV feel like it's own game. 

I'll try to go into the differences in a bit more detail later or maybe in a later post... I dunno yet.

Compatibility with 5th Edition D&D.

What appealed to me of ToV was that, from the beginning, they stated that you'll be able to run 5e and ToV characters together and, from what I have read, they've kept to that. How would that work? Essentially for the GM, it will be important to tell your players that they can choose either a 5e character or a ToV character. They can't mix the two rulesets for their classes and whatnot. But you will be able to have a party that consists of characters from either set. The rules of ToV doesn't vary so much that there would be sticking points and they've even released a Conversion Document to assist.

It's all about the flavour...

Having read the Player's Guide, I think one will be both curious and a bit perplexed. As this is the initial release of Tales of the Valiant, I suspect the creators went for quality over quantity. As such, ToV doesn't have the same class versatility with respect to player options, but what it does have is flavour and that it has in spades.

Each class feels unique and, where D&D can sometimes feel like a melange of sameness, I think the way they approached the different classes is really intriguing. When creating a ToV character, you're not going to feel like this is a D&D clone. Sure the stats are similar, but when it comes to what each class does, how Talents work and even the heritages, there's a lot that makes you realise that, though they can eat at the same pasture, they're not the same kind of beast.

I would have liked to see more player options, but I also recognise that this is something they can build from. And that makes me curious to see what other things Kobold Press are going to come up with.

What I got stuck on...

The sharper tools in the shed would probably have found the magic concept in ToV easy to grasp. I've admittedly had difficulty. It's not impossible to understand, instead of separating the types of spells by class, it's done by 'source', such as Divine, Arcane, Primordial, to name but a few. In the class description, you'll learn which ones your character will utilize. It's when they overlap that I get confused. I think, for me at least, I'll need to create a couple of ToV characters before I'll adequately understand it. But I figured I'd be honest and mention that there was one hiccup in my reading.

(Dis)honourable mentions

Just a few things that I thought would be worth mentioning: 

• Some magic items are listed in the book and they have suggested prices.
• Crafting of Mundane items are tackled but not magical ones. This is supposedly going to be addressed in the GM's Guide.
• Eldrich Blast is a Warlock ability in ToV and not a spell and thus can't be twinned if you have a sorcerer multiclass.
• ... Oh! They have multiclassing...
• The Luck mechanic is awesome. I've already started incorporating it in my games.
• Kobold Press says NO to generative AI

Final Thoughts

I've been very supportive of a lot of Kobold Press things and Tales of the Valiant is one product I feel I can get behind. I don't know if I'm going to buy their setting guide (I have my own setting to play in, afterall), but any books that build on the classes, ancestries, and heritages that has been established in this initial book will definitely be purchased and consumed.

I'm going to read through the Monster Manual now and (maybe) post about it too at some point. If not, I'll definitely have a post on the Game Master's Guide after I've read it. Can't wait for that to be released!

Nanowrimo, AI, and digging yourself into a hole you can't crawl out of...

 It's been a while since I posted. I've been busy, but I'm still alive and doing well. So if you were wondering, wonder no more! 

It's no secret that I used to be a big fan of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which was, initially at least, a movement to get a person writing creatively for no other gain than to create. The idea was simple: Start the beginning of the month of November with a 'blank page' and write until the end of the month with a target of 50 000 words. It was crazy, zany but, importantly, it was 100% achievable.

I've been doing nanowrimo for over a decade and was successful a couple of times. Followers of this blog would know that I'd pitch the nanowrimo idea once a year (during the years I participated) by writing a post about it and its benefits while trying to make the daily word count of 1667 and I mostly succeeded doing just that.

Nanowrimo has done a lot of good. It has made strangers friends and sometimes even marriage partners. It has helped people write up their thesis, it has launched authors into the sphere of having content that they might one day publish (even though this was never the ultimate goal of the movement). In my own life, nanowrimo was how I got into D&D, how I met people who've made deep impacts on me, and helped teach me that I could if I put my mind and heart to it.

So it wasn't willy-nilly that I decided to delete my nanowrimo account a couple of days ago. It was with a heaviness I haven't felt in a long time.

What spurred it?

Nanowrimo recently release a statement (which they've now heavily edited) stating their stance on AI. I managed to find a copy of the 'first post' before they edited it and edited it again. I'm posting it as a picture, but for those who can't access images, it basically states that those who are unsupportive of using AI in writing are classist and ableist.

This broad-strokes acceptance of the use of AI in an activity that was meant to encourage human creativity in writing, and the statement that opposition to their acceptance was classist, ableist, and privileged, really rubbed me the wrong way. Let me be clear, the issue isn't using things like Grammarly to fix what has been written, but rather generative AI that generates the writing without enough creative input to call it the work of the data entrier. 

The other matter that ground my gears was the emphasis on publication. The original idea that Chris Baty came up with wasn't "let's get 21 people to publish or otherwise be considered failures". Creative expression, like any other hobby, can bring growth by doing without hitting professional or published spheres.

A tangent...

In writing this blog post, I got interrupted by a five-year-old who wanted my attention (not mine, I'm still allergic). We took out some Rory's Story cubes and crafted a story together using the pictures on the cubes as prompts. While it did throw me off of my thought of how I wanted to conclude the post, it did remind me of the magic of creativity and the joy that can come with it - even when it's only a single moment that will not be made permanent by publication or whatnot.

Nanowrimo has effectively killed that joy for me in my support for them. They've told me my disagreement makes me inferior and icky. And the knowledge that they're following the money of an AI-related sponsor over the original vision that made nanowrimo the highlight of my year is frustrating and heart-breaking.

Conclusion

I won't stop writing because of NaNoWriMo's actions, but it will no longer be the reason I do decide to write. And nothing they say now will bring me back to them. Because even in their final edited post which takes away the hurtful remarks, this wasn't done out of actual remorse or realisation that they were wrong. It has been to save face.

And what a unwashed, grubby face that is.

 

D&D 2024 - Will I or won't I?

Is anyone else conflicted about acquiring D&D 2024 books?

Let me explain my reservations.

I'm quite happy with fifth edition D&D. I'm open to learning other systems but not necessarily a new edition. 5e by no means is the perfect system, but it does everything I absolutely need it to. It engages without overwhelming the player. It's rules-medium (neither heavy nor lite). And yes, the crafting is useless and the CR-rating is laughably broken, but those are things I can overlook for the most part.

With that said, I had always thought that I would acquire the "new edition" of D&D's Dungeon Master's Guide. This deliberation came to mind when they initially talked about the next iteration - before the debate of 6e, 5.5e, One D&D, etc. It was just a thought of "Oh, it would be nice to get more help on the DM-ing side".

And then we had the OGL fiasco last year January and I found myself reconsidering.

I've not moved away from 5e, but I have found myself moving away from WotC in that I don't want to give them any more money than I already have. I've always looked for my homebrew for third-party content as well as the actual core stuff, because my players know their monsters too well and bringing diversity to a 10-year-old edition is always welcome. I welcome the introduction of Tales of the Valiant from Kobold press that promises compatibility to 5e while being its own game. I've already pre-ordered their GM Guide that's to come out in November-ish(?) and I'm incorporating a number of their monsters into my game.

Okay, that was a bit of a tangent. 

Basically I don't feel like I should encourage WotC/Hasbro's shenanigans with my money. The prices for hard-cover books have almost doubled and the content has not made up for the price. I'm not happy with the idea of AI DMs, AI Art, AI story creation. (The topic of artificial intelligence is a vast one and I'm not going to get into it besides saying that if it hits on story-telling, art, writing, and music - things that we incorporate into our culture - I'm very iffy about it. That cuts the livelihoods of creatives and doesn't give us anything other than recycled plagiarism to some extent.) WotC has had more than one AI whoopsie that was noticed by their customers.

Okay, that turned into another tangent.

Maybe all the tangents are the whole point and problem in supporting them by hauling out (a lot of) money for the new DMG. Every time I think about how nice it would be and how pretty the new books look, I wonder how they're attempting to screw us over next. And that's not the kind of thinking that inspires me to take the plunge.

40th Mischief and 50th session

Last week I celebrated my 40th bday. It went as gracefully (if not more gracefully) than my 30th and for that I am grateful. Birthdays are always tricky affairs, but my day went really well with the exception of one slight thing. So I can't complain.

My birthday week involved travelling about 10 hours in total by car by me onesy as I headed from Gqeberha to Mossel Bay and back. 

Once I got to Mossel Bay, I spent approximately three-and-a-half hours by a very talented tattoo artist who put a picture on my shoulder that we had been collaborating on for about a couple of months. This is a significant move for me. I don't put any tattoos on my skin if there isn't some kind of detailed significance to the act. My first was in mourning. This one was in celebration of something that has helped keep me sane and stable - namely TTRPGs.

The tattoo is that of a (cutesy) dragon in flight, grasping a 20-sided die in its front paws - presumably to add it to its hoard. I've named the dragon Mischief and I don't have a picture of it in a fully healed state, so I will share the pic we took on the day of inking.

Once Mischief is fully healed, I might make it the profile pic to this blog.

To celebrate my closer proximity to hagdom, I spent most of this past weekend playing D&D. I had two TNO (my homebrew) sessions - one with the SA+ crew on Friday and the other with the North Americans on Sunday morning. I had a D&D game I play in on Saturday where I got to draw from the Deck of Many Things, got one of the best cards (it gives you wishes), and almost immediately used a wish on the DM at an unexpected time... So that was fun. 

The Friday game was particularly significant as it was our 50th session playing TNO. I've babbled about my homebrew at length on this blog so I won't go too much into it now, but it is still remarkable that a game I thought was going to die six sessions in has lasted as long as it has and isn't even remotely close to a conclusion. New places, new challenges, new people, and new character progression levels means that there's always something that can happen to keep things from being stale. Or at least I hope so. 😛

Me, tabletop roleplaying, and D&D - A(n almost) ten-year journey

This year marks a couple of memorable milestones for me. I was an '84 baby, so that means 40 is knock, knock, knocking on my door. It's been ten years since my gran passed away, someone who was very much the angel on my shoulder. And it's also been ten years since I got pulled into the tabletop roleplaying scene - specifically with the drug that is Dungeons & Dragons.

Back in 2014, we were still stumbling through the new basic rules of D&D 5e (or D&D Next as it was known at the time). My first game was a oneshot in which was an almost TPK - prevented only because I turned around after my peeps dropped and ran screaming into the woods. While their gold-covered skeletons shambled through the corrupted temple in the end, I found myself very much hooked to the game and the encounter still remains one of the fond memories I keep in my memory bag of holding.

Pugmire

Through the ten years, I played in many adventures and campaigns. Official ones like Hoard of the
Dragon Queen and Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and homebrewed creations that opened up the possibility for me to create my own story when I finally took to DMing myself. My first forays into being a DM (or GM when not running D&D) was cautious affairs full of planning and anxiety. 

In that time, I introduced my group to Pugmire - a D&D-esque game full of elevated and enlightened dogs and cats trying to find sense in a medieval-type world. I also stumbled over Fantasy AGE - which is also a really fun system - and brought that to the gaming table. There were a couple of failed attempts at Masks: A New Generation but that was mostly because I couldn't figure out how it worked... I still love the game but I haven't figured it out....

Then the pandemic hit and my gaming increased massively as online and work-from-home made connection in a disconnected world more possible and the introvert in me thrived despite the raging anxiety that the whole situation brought. I actually started playing too much, had too many connections and had to tone down my gaming to keep a balanced lifestyle (and an okayish sleep cycle).

The ten years were marked with some very low moments, but what I can say without a shadow of a doubt is that TTRPGs can be amazing for mental health provided you find the right group of people. I started with a 'right group' and accumulated more peeps as the years went on, which means that the impact it has had on my emotional wellbeing has been enormous. 

Me telling the peeps what's what at Game Over Cyberfest 

We have little over a month until my birthday. I have special things planned on the day and will probably celebrate the weekend by playing an enormous amount of D&D. It seems fitting...

Feedback on Game Over Gaming Cyberfestival March 2024 - D&D!

My experience of my trip to Game Over Gaming is always memorable. This time was no different!

Two years ago, I went for the first time and, despite nursing a migraine borne out of the depths of hell, the weekend had gone really well. This year the migraine wasn't physical, but I had a persistent pain in the butt due to car issues towards, throughout, and from Glentana. At least we got there safe and the issues were resolved soon after returning home. No long-lasting damage or anything. 

As for the actual convention, it was a little bigger than last time with definite potential for growth. I didn't take a lot of pictures (because I'm a dummy), but it consisted of a hall where the pc- and console-gaming happened, then an external room with stalls for comic-art, peripherals and other stuffs, and finally an outside tent for board gaming and hanging around.

There was a side room which is actually a kitchen / tuck shop that we used for our D&D games. Some people might frown at this setting, but I actually loved it. There are three places that are classic D&D spaces: The basement, the dining room, and the kitchen table. So being able to capture one of those spaces for the game was great.

I had a group of five players that I did a modified Out of the Abyss - Velkynvelve with. Four of them were newbies with one veteran... they all survived and managed to set everything on fire. In hindsight, having one of them be a dragonborn wasn't necessarily a good idea, but all-in-all I loved everything about the session. 

Especially the part that I didn't know the convention hall was watching... I knew it was being streamed on a twitch channel, but I didn't know the next room could see everything. Ignorance = bliss!!!

My anxiety did mean that I had to hide my hands because they were trembling, but at the same time, I tend to talk with my hands, thus it was a constant battle. But that's a normal thing for me. I'm still nervous even when I've done something a million times before.

But yes, it was fun. I slept very little, didn't eat enough, worried a lot about the car and things, but ultimately had a blast.

TTRPG Babble: New homebrew start-up and future possible joys

 This coming Saturday, I will be introducing more players to my homebrew world. I'm very excited at the prospect of doing so. 

When I crafted the idea of this homebrew, I wanted to create a world that experienced players could traverse without fear of their existing knowledge. So, instead of having them act dumb whenever they see a creature they've encountered a million times before and know the weaknesses of, I made their characters experienced warriors who've seen all of it before and knew how to respond - no distancing required. 

The second aspect I wanted to incorporate in the homebrew was the idea of character backstory being relevant in some way to the game. There are a number of players who want to have a solid backstory without knowing what the game is fully about. They craft all these amazing things that their character has supposedly already achieved and then, when they play, are forced into a far more insignificant role because a character at their level simply couldn't achieve slaying a dragon on by their onesy regardless of what their backstory says. With my homebrew's approach, they could very well have done all the amazing things the backstory states. In fact, it is encouraged to be as elaborate and grandiose as possible.

I don't know if my incorporating of these two aspects into my game is all that unique, but I'm very happy with it. And I do think that one day I'd like to assemble this campaign into a book form. Not because it's absolutely amazing, but because I believe it gives the starting points where anyone can build something amazing from it.

But I digress. 

So I have a new campaign coming up and I'm absolutely delighted by the initiative this group has taken in crafting round characters. They've even given me ammunition to make their characters' lives miserable! My discord server's channels are filled with conversations and questions posed at each other about characters and story. They've even gone as far as writing snippets of fiction to better define and introduce their characters and the world to each other. It's been fantastic.

Naturally, it does mean that I'm nervous about the game, but I've realised that my excitement manifests as anxiety, so the more anxious I am, then in truth, the more excited I am. 

I'm very excited.

In keeping with my commitment to not overextend myself, this campaign is only going to play out once a month. There are some challenges connected with that - people forget and you spend more time in a session talking about what happened in the previous ones - but at the same time, there is also an understanding among the group that everyone is busy and we should make do with what we can.

But, speaking of excitement. I have been surprised by an offer to play Ironsworn Starforged co-op with a friend. It came out of the blue and I'm genuinely thrilled. To make it more interesting, the plan is to stream it on her channel. It makes more sense to do it on hers seeing as we'll be playing at times where the peeps who usually watch my stream are sleeping like normal people. Also, her videos stay up longer. So that's also a win. 

This will hopefully start up in April. I'll probably babble about it more here once I have more specifics.

TTRPG Babble: How do we cultivate more game masters?

 This is going to be a pointless ramble, because I don't actually have an answer to the question. If anything, I'm rather ardently looking for it. The TLDR (too long didn't read) version of this is simply the following:

• The problem: There aren't enough people willing to step into the shoes of Game Masters to run games.
• Which creates the problem: There's no way to facilitate growth of people playing TTRPGs.
• Conclusion: Stagnation/Shriveling and general disappointment.

The longer babble:

As far as I know, there aren't any conclusive answers as to what the ratio is of GMs versus Players in the hobby. Even with D&D, it's hard to say. It is played internationally by thousands of people, sure, and for that to happen there has to be GMs running the games. But there also isn't any information on how many people are waiting to play that lack the opportunity because there isn't any facilitation of the game.

Now there are some old grognards that would say "It doesn't matter if you're new. Just GM for your friends. Read the book. It's not that difficult..." but those who learnt to GM this way are few and, in my opinion, the minority of game masters out there.

I've been playing the game for nearly ten years and started running my own games somewhere around three or four years after I started playing. The group I was in (and still play with) naturally encourages and cultivates the desire to run games for others. There is no one game master. Everyone has the chance to run. Everyone has a pet project that they would like to run and we take turns as life and busy schedules allow. It is an unpressured environment that naturally sparks curiosity and a sense of 'what if I tried?'

In the past two weeks, I've become aware of how... I don't want to say desperate... but how much people are itching to play. In the posts I see on Reddit, Discord, Facebook, etc. often involve people asking to play and other people also adding their voices to the post, wishing for the same thing: to be part of a game. 

This has bothered me quite a bit. 

I used to describe myself as someone with ultimately two passions: 1. to learn, and 2. to share what I've learnt. Because of these inherent desires, these needs required basically to function, I have to sit on my hands to keep myself from tossing my hat in the ring. To help DM multiple groups. To introduce people to this hobby that I love so much. But I can't... because I don't have the capacity to do so. I've only just started not getting burnt out from doing too much and so my ability to actually jump in and be helpful has been hobbled.

But even if I had the capacity, would that really help the problem? Because one more DM is not going to change the tide, is it? You almost need the same thing I had - where you not only learnt to play but learnt to run the game.

I guess it's the girl with the starfish story though, right? You can't save them all but you can make the world of difference to the ones you throw in the sea.

As I said above, I don't really have answers. It's just bothering me enough to write about it. I don't quite know what can be done. At the same time, I know I want to be part of the solution... without going into burnout.