It's The People At The Table That Keep Me Doing This

I'm sure most of us have gone through periods where you just don't care about the games you're running and prepping for that next session feels like doing homework for a school assignment. I've been in that mode since January. Happened to me in D&D after Christmas and that ended. I thought about just dropping Mouse Guard before it even started when it became so hard to schedule that first session. Fortunately for me, two of my friends' enthusiasm to play kept me from just scrapping the idea. We finally all sat down to play after over a month of rescheduling. I'll be honest, up until the moment that we started to play, I was just kind of there. But once we started role-playing, I might have been the happiest guy in the world.
Sure, prepping for a game can be a huge chore but to be able to escape into a make-believe world with them for a few hours makes it all worthwhile.

2011 Gaming Resolutions

I'm noticing fewer and fewer New Year Resolutions being made among people that I know. I've personally never bothered to make them, but since I have a blog, why not.

My goals for 2011 gaming consist of:
1. Paint all of my Guild/Malifaux miniatures
2. Build a gaming board with full set of terrain for Malifaux
3. Play at least one game with my Anima Tactics stuff
4. Launch my Mouse Guard campaign
5. Assemble all of my Legion of Everblight miniatures
6. Actively read and post on the forums and blogs that I frequent instead of just wandering aimlessly through them and wasting precious time.

What're you guys planning to do this year?

Craft Sunday!

So I spent the day at my local comic & games store, Warp 1 in Edmonton. T'was a good time as I got to sit down and paint my first Malifaux minis with others, give some tips to the new hobbysists and watched a few games of Warmachine/Hordes take place. It's really rewarding to see people now showing up at the store to play mini war games as well as paint or assemble their minis. We've played RPG's and CCG's at the store all along but the mini war gaming aspect was something really lacking in the area. I remember bugging Kris, the games manager to special order stuff for me then later on, stock miniatures for Warmachine/Hordes while I was bugging my friends to start playing Warmachine with me and now he himself has recently started playing and has tackled the hobby aspect too. It's a big deal because he was very very guarded against the hobby side of things.

The close ups are the Judge and Death Marshals that I painted this afternoon for my Guild crew.

I WANT!!! Super Dungeon Explore

So this evening I decided to follow up on some sites for the tabletop skirmish games that I've been collecting minis from. I word it this way because it's been a long time since I've played with my little metal soldiers. My Winter Elves and Dragonspawn are calling from the closet.

Well, when I went to the Sodapop Miniatures site, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were developing a new line of miniatures that look like a cross between chibi anime characters and the sprites from Maple Story. Super Dungeon Explore! While I have no interest at the moment in the game that's under development, the minis definitely have my attention. Hopefully they don't take too long before going into production as my attention will just veer off to something else. But look at them! THEY'RE SO CUTE!

The Paper Behind Paper Legends

How Paper Legends started off...

The idea of trying my hand at DMing was slowly brewing on the inside of me and the trigger; being able to get two friends of mine whom I had grown up with to play it. Since my return to the comics and games shop in adulthood a couple of years ago, it had always been one of those somewhat segregated things where these hobbies stayed at home and with the friends I had made from Warp 1. Most of my friends who knew about my interest in comics, gaming (board games, table top war games, card games) and anime were respective and supportive of it but it was never a topic that I would really talk about with them aside from if they saw a copy of _____(insert graphic novel, game expansion supplement book, etc) laying on the coffee table and they'd ask what it was. I'd give a six sentence description, they might flip through it to look at the pictures and give a "Oh that's pretty cool" type statement and back on the table it went and we carried on doing whatever we were doing.

Anyway, one day my friend Josh and I stopped by Warp 1. I wanted to say hi to some of the staff and it was a great way to get free parking while we walked Whyte Avenue to smoke cigars. While we were in there, the DM for the Eberron campaign that I'm playing in showed up and then we all went BSing about D&D, what stupid things we saw people do at work that week, etc. Josh and I left the store to go smoke cigars. While we were walking around enjoying our tobacco, he made a statement along the lines of "they're normal fun guys who happen to really like things with wizards and lasers". Yaddiyadda and he looked like he was interested. Later on I asked if he'd want to play Dungeons & Dragons if I was to start a campaign and he said yes. I called up Alex whom I had known since 5th grade and he was game too. This sealed the deal and it was set, I had to start up my own D&D campaign.

I've always enjoyed being able to do creative things. Through Paper Legends I'd be able to create a world and invite my friends over to play in it while beating the crap out of bad guys at the same time. What's not to love? But the story and game element wouldn't be enough for me. When I got into Eberron I had made gaming tiles. For this I'd really need something to give it that Mr. Kok stamp that would look different from other people's D&D group.

Whenever I think about RPG's in general outside of D&D, my brain generally defaults to anime looking guys from video game. Final Fantasy VII, IX, Shining Force, Tales of Symphonia, etc. I decided that I would make the character minis/markers in a chibi anime style. We'll go into a little more detail about the different drafts of art styles in a future post.

KOK'ed Dice? Why?

Is it necessary for another "blog" to exist on the world wide web concerning Dungeons & Dragons 4E? In the generality of things and to make sure that the world goes round...not at all. But for whatever reason, I do feel that by joining the ranks of blogger, my life (and possibly the lives of others) will be that enriched if not at least captivated from that wonderful creative outlet known as the role playing game. Dungeons & Dragons to be precise.

My primary goal with this account is to notate the adventures of the campaign dubbed "Paper Legends" that has just taken off. Filling the role of recap and putting it all together in a somewhat more story like format. Hooray for reference! After that I will be sharing my thoughts, feelings and ideas about the games that I have taken part in or just cool things that I've stumbled upon. Toss in a tip or two with possible tutorials and we're good to go.

I've always been fascinated by the role playing game since 4th or 5th grade but never really got to experience it till last year at the age of 27. The idea of RPG video games were also always fascinating to me but I could never get into it as I found the whole grinding to level up before facing so and so boss guy tedious and very boring. It still amazes me that I have so much intrigue from the worlds of Final Fantasy when all I have is maybe an hour tops of actual play time.

I finally got to play D&D late last year and it's been a blast. This has been one of the biggest deals to me in entertainment since my dad bought me and my sister a Nintendo Famicom (I was born in Malaysia). Getting to collectively experience and shape a story with friends over food, booze and funny shaped dice in order to let my imagination run wild? Heck yes! And I'm coming back for more!