Thursday, November 17, 2005

Wow… It’s been five months…

Whoa. I can’t believe how much time has gone by since my last update. Well, yes I can. I am a big procrastinator of the highest order. A lot has gone on in the intervening time, but let’s see if I can sum up.

School started for the kids in August and my son brought home honor roll grades for the first time in his academic life. This development makes my wife and I very proud and has given the boy a shot of confidence. This combined with the fact that we have begun to let him pretty much wander the town at will has sown a remarkable change in the boy. He is truly maturing into one incredible little guy. =)

As for the girl, well, she can make friends anywhere. It took a bit longer than we thought, but with youth soccer and Girl Scouts she’s doing just fine. Academically, she’s the same as always, which is pretty darn good. (4 A’s & 3 B’s) =)

On the gaming front, the sci-fi game that D-Man and I started went down in a burst of apathy. It was fun at first, but then I realized that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. That combined with D’s thing of not putting forth his best effort into projects that aren’t completely his led to the game just sort of fizzling out. Shame too. I was just starting to do some development work turning the RPG background into a miniatures game setting.

Then I picked up WarMachine. I can’t say enough good things about it. Suffice to say that it plays quickly once you know the rules, the background is interesting, and the figures are absolutely gorgeous. Part of what makes the figs so nifty is that NONE of them are made of plastic. They are ALL metal. The whole metal/plastic thing has been one of my secret beefs with Games Workshop/Warhammer 40K. I don’t mind plastic figs for basic troops, but if I’m going to pay $35-$45 (US) for a non-vehicle figure, it better have some metal in it. Sadly, I picked up a Space Marine dreadnought for 40K and found it made entirely of plastic. Thrilled, I was not.

Beyond that, the convention (Winter War) is coming up at a new location. New, because the convention home for the past decade or so was condemned and demolished this year. It wasn’t that the building was in bad shape, it was just old and WAY out of code. For example, it would have taken around half a million dollars or so to remove the asbestos that was built into the place.
Anyhoo… Winter War is coming up this year and I don’t feel like running anything at all. In fact, I am playing (not running) in only ONE RPG currently, and I’m fine with that. Weird. Burnout doesn’t even begin to describe my mindstate concerning RPGs currently. Abject apathy might be a better descriptor.

On the music front, My wife and I finally catalogued the CD collection (appropriately dubbed the “Wall of Sound”) and discovered that we are about 20 entries shy of 1000. And I wonder why I have a hard time trying to decide what to listen to… =P

I think that’s it for now. If I come up with anything useful or profound, I try to post it in a more timely fashion.

peace… RHM

3 comments:

Jeff Rients said...

Hey! It's great to see a blogpost from you. I still need to finish checking out that cool Telenguard link you sent me.

The WarMachine figs you link to look awesome. I'd love to play some sort of figures game but painting is no fun for me, so the collectible route seems a better choice personally. But I love checking out all the set-ups at Winter War.

It's nice to hear you kids are doing well. A move out of a school district can be tough.

So what is the one game you're playing now?

the Red-Haired Maniac said...

Hey Jeff...

I just got done noodling around with a bit of Telegard. It is a nifty time waster. =)

WarMachine is really cool in terms of figures, but it is also an RPG setting. The mini-fig game is based off the Iron Kindoms D20 setting. Now with me being semi-biased against D20, the RPG stuff kind of turns me off. The setting is neat, but the whole HP/AC/Feat/AoO stuff does nothing for me.

As far as games go, I am playing in a Savage World game using the superpowers from Necessary Evil. The game is your standard comic-book hero-team type of thing.

Going back to miniatures... You say you'd like to play, but that painting is no fun for you. Why not have someone else paint the figs? Sure, it costs some extra dough, but it saves you some hassle. Just a thought... =)

peace... RHM

Anonymous said...

Hey... we let you off last year for Winter War, but I'm hoping for at least one game out of you.