Raise Blog!

Believe it or not, I've never had a character resurrected. We played pretty hard core back in my player days, and mostly at levels below ten. So, resurrection was usually way too expensive or hard to find. Your local cantrev priest was not in possession of such power. A few characters I DMed tried to find it, but always failed in some manner or other.

So here I am contemplating the attempted resurrection of my beloved gaming blog. As my last entry, almost a full year ago, shows I had come to a bit of a cross-roads in my gaming life. I had found a game I really like, HackMaster but was having a hard time making a regular game happen. HackMaster 5e is certainly old school in spirit, but certainly was its own creature as well. Taking its inspiration from AD&D, but transformed by gamers I strongly identified with into a new, modern game that preserved all the oomph I so loved, while clearly taking the game in a new direction HackMaster was a sort of philosophical schooling for me.

I tried, and failed to start several virtual HM games, mostly due to time and schedules of those concerned myself most of all. I found some guys willing to give it a go locally (when we weren't playing PathGrinder), but several moved on, and schedules still crushed me most of the time. I played with my kiddos once; and in truth this was all the gaming I was really getting done, with my own kids. But the kids loved Castles & Crusades, which they had cut their gaming teeth on, and we mostly defaulted to that for quick one-offs. It was easiest to whip up on short notice and just pull out the dice and game whenever I had some spare time. Meanwhile I wrote and puttered with several gaming projects, mostly late at night when the kids were in bed, my homework, office-work, and such were finally done.

I had left the blog, because I was no longer struggling with what old school was, and how to embrace and support it in my gaming life. And I felt somewhat disingenuous prattling on about old school vs new school. The gaming scene had seemed to come to terms with it, and in truth, I had too. The problem was I couldn't settle on what to write about. I missed interacting with the gaming world via my blog, but wanted to shift from the old world of my blog to a new focus in my gaming life. So what to write about? And was this blog the most appropriate way to interact with readers in this new way?

I tried to build a new blog on which to offer resources and gaming material I had written. But there are numerous designers out there now with offerings much better than I might be able or have the time to produce commercially--even for free. And what with so many avenues for self game-resource publishing, there was little need for another such startup. And that wasn't necessarily turned my crank anyway. I prefer to talk about games and gaming experience and theory. I also have a strong nostalgic current running through me that comes out in my gaming regardless of the game I'm playing. So, why not keep on referencing the Classic era of D&D via my current play and reflect on these experiences through a Classic lens?

Yes! I think I found the sweet spot for a second life for Classic RPG Realms. Thus, after much consideration, I journeyed to the Temple of the Digital Masters and made the offering to secure a Raise Blog Spell cast by a will, if not all too sympathetic Cleric, and the rest as they say will be history :-)

Now to see whether I survive my system shock roll or not ...