Updates

I totally forgot to mention a couple of other things of note that occurred over the past few months, like a few of my weekly RPG sessions:

If I recall correctly we bounced around from a couple systems, never making headway far past a few sessions due to lack of enthusiasm or scheduling conflicts. Among the games we briefly toyed with, we played:

• an alternate-future GURPS game. (Still not really a fan of this system. Way too general and rules heavy without a good premise/background to support it.)
• an attempted L5R resurrection with a whole bunch of additional players. (I think we had 8 people, which is the most I think I've ever played with. It was really fun while it lasted.)
• another attempt to break into Eclipse Phase. (I'm determined that something can be done with this game, it just takes an interesting hook/planning on part of the GM. There's tons of great material to work with in the game world, but without direction we as the player's seemed to find ourselves at a loss in both character creation and gameplay.)
• a rather successful series of sessions playing Heavy Gear as a special forces squad that saw action inside and outside of our gears. (Not too much to say about the system, but seems to work well with a little house-ruling. Effective mechanics for transitioning between human and mechs. We might return to Heavy Gear once we take a break from Mouse Guard.)

One of the other important events that I failed to mention pertains to Star Wars: The Old Republic and the guild I started: Aegis Company. I knew from the beginning it was a big experiment having an MMO newbie like myself creating a guild. I was fuelled by a combination of enthusiasm, rabid fanboyism, ignorance, and a good amount of aloofness. I created the guild purely for fun, and in the hopes that other's could share in that fun. And I'm not saying I don't think it accomplished that goal. But, I just grew less interested in the affairs of the guild and even SWTOR itself. The last time I had an major sway in the guild I believe was back in March, and soon after I wasn't playing at all, and then after that I cancelled my subscription.

Part of me was and still is kinda disappointed in a few ways: I'd been closely following the development of SWTOR since it first began, being such a huge Star Wars fan; here I thought this was going to be the game that'd get me into MMO's. That turned out not to be true and it settled it for good on my stance of MMO's: sure they can be fun but they're too repetitive to keep me interested and even though the story's there to help alleviate that, I just don't have the time or interest to grind through all the meaningless levelling in that pursuit. Some could say then why do I play tabletop RPGs then, since they're essentially the same idea of levelling up? Most are, some aren't. But tabletop RPGs I find much more engaging because they're so much more dynamic and social in a way that even the best ventrillo or RP servers lack. I don't play RPGs solely to kill monsters, get loot, and level up. (Though that can be fun in of itself, looking back at some RPGs like old school D&D, 4e, and modern retro-clones.) I play for the social aspect of the game, as I'm sure the majority of those whole play do.

Anyway, I decided that SWTOR just wasn't worth my time and money, so I let the game and the guild slide into obscurity. I do feel bad about having a created this guild and bringing in all these members only to let it fall into neglect, and hope that I haven't truly disappointed any members. I haven't heard anything about it from the members I do know in real life actually, so I guess that's a good sign. I know the game was losing momentum after launch, that guilds themselves rise and fall quickly, and I'm sure that everyone has moved on.

In other news I've gone through all my RPG stuff and complied a list of which I currently own and/or played; which I should put up in a future post.