I was initially a little unsure about playing Banner of the Maid. It has a lot of things in it that I like – deeply tactical gameplay a la Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem Houses. It’s set in a sort of alternate French Revolution era which isn’t all that familiar to me, though I’m pretty sure Napoleon didn’t have a little sister as one of his generals. But why wouldn’t he? She is, after all, a Maid, a hero that, like* *Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orléans, would rise to save France from her martial ambitions. She and her fellow Maids will command the revolutionary forces throughout their European conquest. ...

I’m not really sure how to respond to today’s Blaugust Promptapalooza prompt, which is from Solarayo of Ace Asunder: Tell us about some of your hobbies outside of the realm of your specific niche. What even is my “specific niche”? Is gaming a “niche” hobby that I really need to develop interests outside of? Maybe the prompt should have been, “Tell us about the interests you don’t share on your blog”. ...

This is going to be a little Twitter-heavy, and I apologize for that. The @PantheonCrafter account, posted a survey today about crafting: Would you prefer the crafting mechanics for @PantheonMMO to be turn-based (like Vanguard or FFXIV), real-time (like EQ2), or Click-to-Craft (like WoW)? Feel free to reply and say more! #mmocrafting — Pantheon Crafters (@PantheonCrafter) August 18, 2020 I just had to question the whole idea of crafting. It’s become a checkbox item – does your MMO have… [x] crafting? [ ] fishing? [ ] dance emotes? ...

Sorry, I just spent the last half hour looking for exactly the best song I remembered from Martin Mull which was… perfect for this writing prompt. And that took me down a rabbit hole with Martin jamming with Glen Campbell (awesome!), and then I got to watching more YouTube and now it’s forty minutes until work and I have a blog post to write. I get distracted easily, and today’s prompt, from Nogamara of Battle Stance, is all about that: ...

A long, long time ago, I got a shiny metal bear in an EverQuest 2 expansion box. I kinda thought it looked like it could be a piece to a Monopoly game, so I took out my Monopoly board and played around with it a little… and the characters took on a life of their own. I don’t know what happened to Dire Bear. The rest of the crew are still in the Monopoly box, but I must have set Bear aside somewhere. I’ll find him eventually, and maybe there’ll be new stories for the crew to tell. ...

Using a stock photo with a watermark makes me feel like the Spiffing Brit. I’ve been gaming for a few days and not blogging, so I’ve really fallen behind on Blaugust. Even though I’m not an official participant, I’ve been enjoying reading people’s posts and taking part :-) Anyway, I got stuck on one from last week, “What gets me excited”, but I think I can answer that one, but first, I’m going to talk a little about the ones that I missed. ...

Finally, finally, FINALLY! All the work Tom and I have been doing in printing and painting miniatures and dungeon parts paid off last night as we finally sat down to play the first two scenarios in Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. Now available at your local Target. Jaws of the Lion is an introductory campaign to the Gloomhaven universe, where you and up to three friends take on the roles of a renowned mercenary company, the “Jaws of the Lion”, who have taken a job to look for a missing blacksmith and stumble onto a body snatching plot leading to some evil end. ...

I’m still catching up on the Blaugust “Promptapalooza” prompts that I missed during the clean up after Tropical Storm Isaias. Today’s prompt comes from Stingite over at The Friendly Necromancer, who asks: What skill do you want to improve the most? This is kind of an aspirational question, I guess. Truth is, if you want to build a skill, there’s no better time to start. Just recently on this blog, I was whining about how terrible I was at painting miniatures and dragging my feet on painting the Gloomhaven ones. Commenter Jeromai gave me some good starting tips, and I just went out and painted some minis. They didn’t turn out great, but every time, I learn a little more. ...

This prompt comes at a really good (or bad) time, because I am deep right now into thinking back on the past couple of decades when my life has been lived around and within online gaming, bar the occasional break from it all. SDWeasel at Unidentified Signal Source asks: What’s something you’ve lost along the way that you would love to have back? Spur of the moment? What’s on my mind right now? I’d like to have Brian “Psychochild” Green back. ...

I read on Twitter today that Daybreak Games had bought out another studio, Cold Iron, who are working on a game set in the Ridley Scott “Alien” universe. The developers had previously worked on City of Heroes, Champions Online and many other MMOs. That reminded me of a comic I made back when Champions Online was in beta… There seems no better time that to start picking up content from my old blog, West Karana. So here’s a couple comics I made once. ...