Hey everyone! Long time no post. Long story short, life has been busy. Being the parent of two small children and working the day job which is 100% on-site means I've been very busy and it can be tiring at the end of the day. With my day to day responsibilities and busy schedules, plus general exhaustion, it can be difficult sometimes to sit in front of the painting desk and get anything done. Not to mention it can be hard getting any games in.
This lack of playing has certainly impacted my desire to paint. I've been uninterested in sitting at my hobby desk most nights, and have turned to other things to entertain me, usually video games or watching tv.
Enter something new I've begun to dabble with. Something to reignite that love of gaming and painting that doesn't take too much energy and can be done on my own schedule - Solo games! There are two games I've started to play, both from the same game creator, Modiphius. The two games are Five Parsecs From Home and Star Trek Adventures: Captain's Log.
The Star Trek game makes a lot of sense for me. I've started to be a Gamemaster (GM) on occasion for my regular D&D group running the Star Trek Adventures RPG. I've become very familiar with the system, and the Captain's Log version allows me a chance to world build in-universe along side my player's game. There are a few small adaptions I'm getting used to, but I've got the general idea and I'm working through my first mission.
The other game is Five Parsecs From Home, which is a model agnostic system that lets me tap into the 20+ years of warhammer collecting I've done and use it on the table. I've already played a few campaign rounds and have a pretty solid understanding of the game play loop. This means I can get a round done in about 1.5-2hrs which is about how much time I have after the kids go to bed before I need to go to bed. The game is pretty straight forwards, rolling a lot on some d100 tables to determine events or other procedurally generated elements. Each round also has a table top skirmish which is about the size of a Warhammer Killteam game. Using the results of the tables and the game, I generate a story that unfolds as I play it.
For both of these games, I might begin doing write-ups as they are meant to be as in-depth as I want them to be and it will give me something I can more reliably post about on my blog. So look forward to some short story/recap work as I start playing these games.
I'll also still post when I actually get some painting done. But I have certainly begun to be inspired by playing these two games!
Until next time!