This Blog

The thing about this blog is that it's kind of past its purpose. I've had this thing for years. In its heyday, people would come by and read it, but that was when the idea of talking about old-school D&D was sort of a niche thing.

These days, it's not even particularly interesting. There are a half dozen retroclones out there, including an official reprint. 5e D&D was intentionally made to try and recapture some of the building steam from people like me, who quite enjoyed D&D the way it was and didn't particularly need to play a detailed tactics game every single session.

The other part of the mix is that I just don't play roleplaying games as much as I used to. A big part of it is that I'm taking better care of myself these days. I've come to grips with the fact that I have depression, and that means treating a disease that I've ignored for almost 30 years now. Part of the way I used to deal with my depression was roleplaying games- they really are a lot of fun, they provide a good source of social interaction to somebody with a strong tendency to self-isolate, and they tend to attract people who are a little offbeat (my favorite kind of people). It also helped kill time when I was an unemployed alcoholic.

These days I've mostly stopped drinking, and I spend a lot of time at work. I'm an electrician now, so I spend a lot of time thinking, and being social, and walking around. So when I come home, I'm tired of thinking so hard, and I'm tired of having to talk to people all day. I'm also tired of moving, sometimes- so I play a lot of video games, now. I write little minigames now, and am more interested in board games. You know, something I can play in a couple of hours as a self-contained unit.

I'm still thinking about game design, though, and about critical theories and stuff. I've become a little more well read, politically. I still write all the time (on the weekends now, mostly), so there is that.

I've been thinking of starting with a clean slate on another blog, with a new name. I know nobody really reads this, but when that happens I'll make an announcement and see what happens. It's really not hard to be part of a blogging community (even though the phrase doesn't make as much sense as it did almost ten years ago when this blog started), and I think that something a little different will be a nice change of pace.

Yes, indeed. Everything's changed.