Let's Check In

[Manoil]

Hey. Been a long time. Shake the cobwebs off and come say hello.

How's life been? What have you been pursuing in the last 6 months/5 years/decade?
What's been the thing keeping you going?
What experiences in gaming, reading, and film have really brought you joy and enrichment in that time?

What's been a big change for you?
What's a piece of you that you've held onto despite life tugging in the other direction?

Respond or don't, but I'm glad there are still people here. It's nice to see some things survive.

[SenisterDenister]

Those are some heavy questions man.
1. Fair for the most part. Haven't really been pursuing anything beyond necessities. May go back and get a teaching degree. That would put my history degree to actual use as a high school teacher. I dunno.
2. Spite. Giving up would be too easy.
3. There's been a lot of good indie RPG's and publishers like Hooded Horse are around pushing a lot of good stuff nowadays. There are still good movies every now and then, Mandy was probably one of my favorite films in the past decade. I've also enjoyed the Dune films, they aren't perfect but they're still good. A friend let me borrow these books and I've been reading them right now.
4. Nothing really, I've held down a job for nearly two years now, which is a first. The longest I've gone so far was a little over a year, to date. I also bought a new car. Still no kids or anything.
5. My sense of humor.

Good to see you, Danny. How have you been holding up?

[Gimp Mask]

- How's life been? What have you been pursuing in the last 6 months/5 years/decade?
A mental rollercoaster ride so business as usual. Trying not to pursuit anything these days, zen and all that shit, but I get lost inside my head very easily and I like thinking about emptiness and infinities and stuff like that so I guess I'm pursuing nothing and everything. Turns out they ain't all that different

- What's been the thing keeping you going?
Probably some biological survival instinct

- What experiences in gaming, reading, and film have really brought you joy and enrichment in that time?
Breath of the wild captured the sense of adventure brilliantly for me, like a faux throwback to the first Zelda that I never played as a kid. I feel like Tao Te Ching's probably the best book, a lot of writing feels like a poor reformulation of it. I started watching anime and some of it is very good; Made in Abyss, Ping Pong the Animation, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju are worthwhile

- What's been a big change for you?
The COVID / break-up / brain damage of a friend pipeline, I don't think I ever went back to my old self but then how different would I be now had these things not happened, who knows. Still, that shit kinda broke me

- What's a piece of you that you've held onto despite life tugging in the other direction?
Good question, an inquisitive mind perhaps? I don't feel like I hold onto much anything consciously, but I'm carrying plenty baggage I'm sure

Pretty underwhelming answers all in all but so it goes. I'm not good with time or memories so who knows what's really happened in the past decae

[Hyacinth]

- How's life past 5 years
Finished the training part of my career and I'm now working as a rental in Norway when I feel for it for good cash during periods I choose and where in the country I want. Got married to a local of Eastern Europe so got the trad wife checked too. We're happy and in sync, she travels with me so we live free and unbound. She works remotely so it's all good and flexible. My neighbor ratted me out to the cops for smoking on my balcony so now the police record shows it and that's a bit of a bitch for the coming 4.5 years until it gets removed.

- Experiences
Had some interesting spiritual experiences the last 10 years. Might be developing paranoid schizofrenia but hey I judge that it's not. Enjoying Dune movies, me and the wife listened to the books, they are enjoyable. Drove to north cap and back on a adventure bike, camping sucks. Mostly play games to try the features, seldom finishes anything but according to my steam it's been mostly military FPS and war thunder. Also enjoyed Zelda on the switch but didn't try the latest because I sold the switch after finishing the first eh. Currently downloading games that has some promise I suppose, but we'll see.

- What's been a big change for you?
Parents are getting older but are not in too bad shape, so I'm grateful for that. Mom had some neurosurgery recently though so now she's on opiods and I'm alittle concerned about her recovery but it's probably going to be fine. Big sis had a kid which was the first in the family, so that was very cool. Marriage. Probably will get a kid when I'm closing in on 40.:planned parenthood:

- What's a piece of you that you've held onto despite life tugging
Wasteland for life lol I don't know something about my childhood struck a "fuck everyone, shape life to own idea and not according to society, life free or die haha ::"-flavor in me. I suppose I'm just a special kind of Antisocial. Also grounded in mindfulness peace.

[ExtremeDrinker]

How's life been? What have you been pursuing in the last 6 months/5 years/decade?
I've got two kids, one almost an adult. Married for 19 years next weekend to someone I dated since 2002. I've been in the same field for 24 years, but switching it up to an office job in August...I'm pretty pumped.

What's been the thing keeping you going?
I collect toys. I have enough that I could probably have a good start if I opened my own shop. I make enough extra from doing quick 30 second videos for Amazon that I haven't spent "real" money on my collection in years. I get a lot of joy from interesting ink pens and pencils, too. I've started a collection of refillable comfortable pens and that really pleases me. I'm a fan of the Lamy Safari and Uni Jetstream Edge in particular.

What experiences in gaming, reading, and film have really brought you joy and enrichment in that time?
Three games stand out as ones I always go back to - Fallout (3/NV/4), Minecraft, and GTA V Online. I'm also addicted to a free mobile game called Seed Ship. I've played that for years at least once a week. Books...Too many books to count, but Rivers of London or Murderbot Chronicles come to mind.

What's been a big change for you?
I had a mild heart attack last year while at work and my dad died of cancer. Made me realize I'd rather spend time with family than working 60hrs a week...hence the move to an office job in August. Before my dad died he made us promise to move in and take care of my mom...So we've been living "rent" free for a year, just paying bills. Amazing how much money you save when you don't have a mortgage.

What's a piece of you that you've held onto despite life tugging in the other direction?
I refuse to take things seriously or get bothered by things that are of no consequence to me. I've lost lots of friends in the past decade because I won't engage in their politics or religion. Life is too short, and life's decisions don't have to be black and white.

[Gimp Mask]

spiritual experiences

schizofrenia

both spiritual people and schizophrenics are gonna h8 on me for saying this but those two don't seem all that different from each other to me in many respects. i'm kinda in the same boat, maybe one of us can get enlightened and the other one medicated, yin yang twins baby

sendin love to your mamma, tell her gimp mask wishes for her speedy recovery she'll know what it means

edit: condolences / happy anniversary ryno! think i still have my lamy safari somewhere, it's nice

[Manoil]

Life’s been hills and valleys. Pretty good, at times, and harsh in others.

I just turned 35. I wrote a big thing on Facebook recently about gratitude, feeling burned out and overwhelmed, and the guilt that came from the latter being in the face of the former.

I spent so much of my 20s in wasted time. About a third of that was spent processing and getting over abuse from one ex, another third putting an ex behind me who cheated on our anniversary. It wasn’t all bad-- I met some pretty incredible people and built some incredible things. I really don’t want to ever get back into the downtown nightclub scene, but without those experiences, I wouldn’t have met a close friend and creative partner. It was alongside him that I put together those post-apocalyptic photoshoots I’ve mentioned on here before. I found out at 25-- rather late into adulthood-- that I’m autistic and don’t really have the strategies or guidance to navigate that, and I’ve been struggling to get things figured out on that front. The revelation has kinda made me regret having an internet presence before I understood myself.

Seven years ago, I got pulled into my first D&D campaign, and it set a fire under me. Almost immediately, I started writing my own worldsetting, and over about 3-4 years, I wrote more than 4000 pages for it and ran a number of campaigns. Doing that, I managed to connect with some new friends who have become my ride-or-dies. I’ve got some really solid, healthy friendships that mean the world to me, and they’ve been solidified by our TTRPG adventures-- enough so that I had the pleasure of officiating my friends’ marriage this last October.

We’ve almost permanently been playing one thing or another since 2017 but there was a hiatus in 2020 with COVID. I soon after discovered SW5e-- Star Wars using D&D 5th edition-- and it was genius. Used a ton of great additional mechanics I’d tried to build separately, but far cleaner and more balanced than any of my original attempts. I ended up building a campaign that I ran for a little over two years-- The Development at West Mesa-- and it was polished and rewarding for players enough that we played almost every Saturday in those two years for about 6 hours a session. I also ended up writing and publishing several supplements for it: Imperial Forces, Desperate Rebellion, Emerson’s Archive of Archetypes, and a non-advertised 3rd party IPs one, Strangest Foes. Haven’t looked at them in a while so I can’t say whether or not GMBinder’s infrequent code changes have broken them again.

SW5e’s system is great enough that I had designed some side adventures, including one in Fallout that takes place in the Mojave wasteland one week after the second battle for Hoover dam. Couldn’t find enough maps to get a cohesive thing going with it, but the player characters were all rad. Same situation for a deep space salvage campaign that I kept the full details from my party, leading them to a number of hypotheses and paranoia about what they’d end up encountering. I’ve really enjoyed building these one-offs, to the point that these things motivate and excite me for months on end. Going without getting to run them, though, creates such a vacuum of dopamine that it feels like waking up hungover for weeks on end.

I wrote enough that I was long-desiring to write professionally for Lucasfilm, but I just couldn’t see a way in the door. When I had waited long enough to see concepts I’d written start to show up in their releases, it kinda killed my spirits about it.

While running that story in 2021, I met my current girlfriend, and last year, we moved in together. It’s been great, and I have never had such an excellent partner. We’re both writers and we collaborate, support each other through our struggles, and have been able to take a couple vacations together. I still get these feelings of being overwhelmed and intense burnout, but I have a partner who understands and has my back through it.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of media and games but I’m finding some of my favorite experiences with gaming are trying out mod overhauls to older games. An example in mind is the Saga Edition mod to Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (2005). Something newer that I’ve liked is Mega City Force, a bullet hell steeped in 80s action vibes. I also play a ton of Valheim, treating it like a digital zen garden, and in a friend’s server that’s been heavily developed, I play the Fel Wizard Zed, court wizard to the throne of Realmheim and keeper of the Fellowship of the Wolf, a werewolf cult that crystalizes the blood of its enemies into rubies.

Tom (Dogmeatlives) and I speak on the phone about 2-3 times a month, mostly opening with him doing a bit. I'd say we should be playing something together, but I know our time zones are all over the place. Shit's fucked. World events are escalating, so remember to take the time to check in on your comrades around the globe. Hard to say which of us will still be kicking when another post like this drops in ten years.

[Gimp Mask]

Real talk. Relatable on many levels, looking like I'm probably on the spectrum too but I dunno if I should bother with a diagnosis, kinda against the medicalization of the manifold human experience (I'd never tell anyone else how they should approach the matter of course). Do you feel it's been beneficial besides increasing your self-awareness?

Valheim's great, put in 200+ hrs last summer instead of like going outside and stuff, shoulda been on my list

[SenisterDenister]

So have you tried FFG's Star Wars tabletop game? I haven't tried it myself, but knowing them it's probably d100, which I like more than d20. I used to play their stuff all the time when they did 40k stuff, like Dark Heresy and whatnot. My friends and I are waiting for Imperium Maledictum to get more support and expansions before we move over to it since we have years of DH behind us already.

[Manoil]

Do you feel it's been beneficial besides increasing your self-awareness?

Only in identifying the things I'm mishandling, but when you get into autistic burnout, you tend to forget the skills for management and coping that you develop. Ouroboros of frustration.

So have you tried FFG's Star Wars tabletop game?

I haven't, and while the game itself looks neat, the resources frustrate me. The maps they have don't conform to grids and trying to use them for D&D has been shitty. It took a lot of websurfing and scraping together resources to get through my story, and I built the finale Imperial Base entirely using assets from a Ko-Fi illustrator I'm fond of.

I've backed four kickstarters that are all coming out soon-- a folk horror one, a victorian horror one based off of Bloodborne, an Eastern mythology one with an adventure for hunting kaiju, and one that functions as an entirely new TTRPG called Break!. I'm already running a separate thing on Foundry right now that I'm enjoying and playing in two other campaigns, potentially joining a third, but I'm freaking out about my time constraints. Writing for all of these has been rewarding but I'm really bushed

[SenisterDenister]

It's great you've got so many campaigns going. I haven't really done anything in the past couple years, as far as ttrpg's go. My friends and I mostly play tabletop war games nowadays. Honestly we end up going to the range more than anything now. My friend surprised me and made a replica NCR rifle for me.

[Manoil]

My friend surprised me and made a replica NCR rifle for me.

Oh! Funny you mention that!

We kinda stopped progress on it but one of the things we were putting together in the new place has been a sci-fi weapon wall! It currently only has the PKD Blaster and my two lightsabers, but I had mostly finished a Bryar Pistol and was going to resume printing a Holorifle (Dead Money), TL-50 (Star Wars), and a couple of revolvers. I'd been wanting to build a replica of the 8-foot Kanabo used by my favorite character, an Oni, but I think I've more or less given up on starting that one

[SenisterDenister]

Maybe I should clarify there, it is a fully functional replica. We've taken it to the range and zeroed it for 200 yards. I didn't take any pictures then, but I have a couple 20 round magazines for it. It's a really nice rifle.

[Manoil]

Oh yeah, that's definitely more impressive a project