Hey guys!
I don't know if any of you are interested in this kind of stuff...
But my brother just started his new Kickstarter today for his Knife and Sword forge:
That's awesome, I hope he meets his goal and more.
It’s pretty late at night as I am writing this. I’ve been through a significant amount of struggles through the past two years (actually through the past 41 but especially the past 2). I’ve had worse stretches of time before but I believe that these past struggles were due to my own lack of maturity and self-awareness at the time those events took place.
Likely those events were necessary for me to experience to survive the events of the past two years and get through them as well as I have. Physical ailments, getting older and requiring more sleep, bankruptcy, and ultimately divorce. You know life is not going swimmingly when going to work feels like a vacation.
Regardless, when I first started getting involved in PbP on the boards it was a chance to play, finally! I’d been DMing for the bulk of the time that I’ve played table top that I was enjoying being able to be a player for once. Then with so many damn flaky GM’s I just started running games and well, things snow balled from there.
Life was fairly stable at the time the normal ups and downs. Then about two years ago, I started getting into PbP as a way to escape reality. Sort of the same ways drugs were casual and enjoyable for me as a teen and ultimately led me as close to suicide as I ever want to get again.
I am not saying that PbP has made me suicidal but I am saying that I recognize that I was using PbP as a coping mechanism to avoid a bad marriage. PbP did NOT lead to the failure of my marriage but it did contribute to my ability to tune it out.
I make a decent living but between bankruptcy and divorce I’ve little to show for it (well except for this killer book and RPG collection ). I could point the finger at my soon to be ex-wife but when you point one finger at a person, three more point back at you. I could have prevented things from becoming this bad and I chose not to. I did it, ironically, because I believed that if I had the marriage would have ended and ended badly, so much for best intentions. I am not going to second guess myself, what happened happened. As divorces go, this one has been rather amicable as we have put our daughter first and ourselves second.
Being married to someone who makes as much if not more money then you (depending on sales that year) places one in a position to “take it easy” when it comes to being aggressive about making money (well it placed me in such a position anyhow perhaps because making money does not move me).
Early on in my career I had an opportunity to become a premiere M&A Financial Services Tax Attorney in a Big 4 Firm. It’s a big deal and potentially a lot of money but I did not really want it because I knew I would be working a lot and traveling a lot. My ex agreed that I should turn it down as she did not want to be married to a workaholic and that was not who I wanted to be anyway. Nor do I want to be that person now. (In yet another twist of irony, she has become a workaholic, funny how things turn out).
I do not regret the decision though I do lament the loss of income that such a decision would have brought to me.
All of this rambling nonsense is leading to the point of this post, I need to work more. Not at my current job nor do I want to get a new job, I actually like being there as odd as that sounds (to me). I need to get a second and perhaps a third job, side gigs. At 41 about to turn 42 with no retirement and no savings for my daughters college, I can no longer hope that the ex’s business will come through as an investment plan. Even if it does, I will not be the beneficiary of that largesse. I need to make up for 11 years of being “comfortable” simply working.
Thus, it is with heavy heart that I am announcing that I will need to close down a number of the threads I run and withdraw from a number of the games I am a PC in.
I suppose this decision will not be a surprise to many of you as my posting rates have been abysmal since these events took a turn for the worse (in some respects the better to be honest) since Thanksgiving of 2017.
I am not generally a person that feels remorse or guilt but I do feel a level of disappointment with having to make this decision. I apologize for disappointing many of you who put work into PCs relying on my consistency as a GM/DM over the course of the past several years.
My plan had always been to run a hardcore dose of RPG’s until my daughter was a teenager and then, spend my free time writing the novel I had been working on since before she was born. I had hoped that over the next 9 years or so I could wrap up most of these campaigns and the few that remained would be more manageable.
Life has not worked out that way.
The good news is that I will still run several games but the current load is too much for me to handle in this transition. The further good news is that I believe this will allow for those games to move along much more quickly.
By tomorrow I will have made my decision as to which games I will keep and which I will shut down.
Thank you all for taking the journeys with me despite the lack of length or resolution of so many of them.
I will still be around just in a diminished capacity so this is not goodbye just a “be seeing less of you”.
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I totally understand Shadow. I will be sad to see this game go as I've been very excited about this campaign, and everyone else here, but I most certainly understand.
I'll go ahead and also admit, that the amount of games you are in has always seemed staggering towards me, and I have been impressed with the amount of time we have gotten from you. Even with the extremely diminished posting rate, I've still managed to enjoy this campaign up to this point and have continued to feel a sense of excitement going forward. So thanks for that.
If this is farewell then I truly hope things work out well for you and your daughter and that things with your marriage continue to be amicable. My parents divorced roughly 6 years back, and I think from the child's perspective some of the most important things for me and my brothers were that:
-They worked to stay amicable (after a few rough years to start).
-They continued to work hard for us, but they also eventually continued moving forward with their own lives. It was as painful for me to see my father suffer initially as it was to come to terms with things myself.
So, again, I wish you a great deal of luck with everything, financially, with your daughter, and with your own life (and book!).
To everyone else: If we get to continue playing together that would be fantastic. But I'd like to go ahead and say that however short things have been, I've enjoyed taking some time out of life to go on this little expedition with you all.
Dear Shadow,
You gotta do for you and your family what you gotta do. I don't think anyone who's played any game with you would feel otherwise. Perhaps a sense of sadness because you are a great GM who comes up with fun twists and turns that make the run of the mill into exciting.
While I do hope that this one continues, I also hope you are able to take whatever steps you need to make your life manageable.
All the best to you and to my fellow secret Pathfinders :)
Understood.
Thanks for the support guys.
I have decided to keep this particular game IN the rotation. Look for updates Wednesday night.
sweeet
Yippee! That's 3 for 3! Thanks a bunch!
=)
Certainly excited to hear that as well.
My apologies for the prolonged absence but I was hoping that working through some things would clear me up to retain a good chunk of my posting interests.
Unfortunately, that is not going to be feasible.
I need to start working a second or third job possibly in the coming months so my time will be much more limited than it was before. As a result I will need to close down this game.
Thanks for understanding.
best of luck, ST
Dang it! Varloo was going to be so much fun to play.
OK, I understand GM.
Please take care. I will see you in 2 of our other games hopefully!
=)