2018

            Another year has come and gone. Can you believe that I started this blog back in 2013, and it’s still here six years later? Six whole years of a new blog every week – plus the bonus stories of my D&D games, for those who read them. I never thought I could keep it going this long.

            While 2018 may not have been the best year globally, it was a pretty good one for me. I mean, for starters, we didn’t have any rats in the house, which was fantastic. Aside from that, though, it seemed to be a year of growth and change.

            One of the biggest changes is that this was the first year since it started Ringcrafts, my chainmaille business, didn’t attend any conventions or festivals. While we were sad to miss out on the events and seeing the friends we made there, we stand by the decision we made – with the increased success of Colleen’s Green Door Life Coaching, there was no way she could commit to the shows, and the set-up and tear-down of the shows couldn’t be done by me alone. Apart from freeing up a great deal of time, the lack of shows has also greatly reduced stress, making for a more relaxed year.

            For me, that extra time has been divided between a number of enterprises. The first, and by far most obvious of those, is Dungeons & Dragons. Last November, I switched from playing D&D weekly at the Devil’s Bench to running it, and I’m keeping a record of the ongoing adventure. That campaign has been running for over a year now, and has also led to me being invited to several other games. Not only that, but come the New Year, I’ll be starting a second campaign at the Bench! Crazy, I know.

            Apart from that, I’m still teaching myself computer programming and steadily advancing my skills. It’s both fun and useful, and I’m slowly understanding more about how these machines work (they could have run by magic, for all I knew). The stories I could tell you... but I won’t, because I know that if you’re as interested in the subject as I am, you’ll go and learn for yourself! (It’s easier than you think!)

            My writing projects, on the other hand, have slowed down drastically. I’m still working on them, of course, but the pace has slowed to a crawl. Why is that, you ask? I really don’t know. My best guess is that with all the creative energy I’m pouring into D&D (and the time spent recording the story) and the brainpower being absorbed by coding, my mind just doesn’t have enough juice left for my previous writing productivity. That’s alright with me, though, because I’m still quite happy with my other projects.

            Over the summer, I discovered what promises to be an amazing game, and got involved with a community awaiting its arrival. I could talk your ear off about it, but I’ll spare you by simply saying go check out Chronicles of Elyria – you won’t regret it. Your wallet might, if you get obsessed with the game, but you won’t.

            Right now, the most interesting thing is to look back over the year and see what I can best describe as a steady improvement in life. I couldn’t point at specific things and say, “That! That is better now!” but, when viewed as a whole, the world (at least my little corner of it) is just a little better than it was before, with promises of a continuing trend.

            Now it’s time to look forwards into 2019. As with all years, it’s certain to have its ups and downs, but I have high hopes for it.

            To you and yours, I wish a happy New Year. May it be full of joy and wonder, empty of sorrow, and an experience worth remembering.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Necessary Compromises

            The latest event in preparation of the upcoming game Chronicles of Elyria (now that we’ve overcome the plague) is map voting. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for the future players of this game to vote on, and determine, what the map of the world (well, the starting continent) will look like. And each server will have its own unique map – making for a very different game depending on which server you play on. Of course, to me, the most interesting part is how the community reacted.

            I can’t speak for the whole community – only the small piece I interact with – but I suspect it’s a fairly accurate representation of what happened elsewhere as well. It all started with the releasing of the maps...

            I promptly looked through all the maps. Taking into consideration the needs of my kingdom, duchy, and county, I promptly narrowed what I felt would be the best maps for us down to 3 or 4. Within an hour, I had chosen a favorite, which matched one of the favorites of the count of my county.

            At the duchy level, we had a discussion on each of the maps. I was happy to see that the map I’d chosen was also popular at this level of our organization, and I believe it even made it into the top three.

            After a few days, there was a meeting of all the duchy leaders at kingdom level. Each of them had brought their favorite maps – and then they selected the map that they felt suited everyone’s needs, and announced it to the community at large – saying they were free to vote however they wished, but this was the map the leadership felt would be best for our kingdom’s needs.

            I was surprised, and disappointed, that the map was one that hadn’t even been seriously considered in my duchy. I wasn’t fond of it at all, and I wasn’t the only one. A fair number of people were expressing their disappointment in the choice, and demanded answers from the leadership.

            Our king then answered the questions, expressing that this map wasn’t the best pick for anyone, however it was the map that best suited the combined needs of all the groups in our kingdom. He went into further detail about the process that was used, and it was more than enough to make me (and others) accept this map. I promptly switched my train of thought to figuring out how to adapt to this new map, and I was satisfied that, while it was far from the best map, it was quite adequate.

            And, as usual, it got me thinking about the whole scenario, and applying it to the world at large. No matter what decision is made, at any level of an organization or a government, there are always people who speak up and are unhappy about it. It always seems the most remarkable when the leaders, who made the decision in the first place, are unhappy with it – why would they make the decision if they knew it wasn’t great?

            Often (not always!) it comes down to being a compromise. The more people you add to a group, the harder it becomes to make everyone happy about any one thing – and it’s outright impossible to make everyone happy about multiple things. So, in comes the compromise – the decision that nobody particularly likes, but is the best that can be done to make everyone happy.

            Yet, so many people insist on raging and being angry about these decisions. They will shout their anger to the world at large. Strangely, I don’t blame them – because the only thing that is usually presented is the decision, not the means of reaching it. Once a decision is made, it tends to be presented as the best option available, even if it clearly isn’t the case – the goal being to show confidence in the decision. I can’t help but wonder, would it work better if the leadership expressed that it was a compromise? It seems like people are more willing to accept a decision that’s a compromise if they know that’s what it is (provided they actually care about trying to make as many people happy as possible). At least, that’s how it worked out in the case of my little Elyrian microcosm.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

It's All The Same

            You would think that, given the opportunity, the majority of people would try to improve life – at least to the best of their ability. However, for some reason this doesn’t appear to be the case. There is an element to this related to the fact that those with the ability to bring about change don’t see the need for it, while those who want change the most lack the means. But, if this is the case, why do we see the same thing reflected in our fiction?

            With few (at least, comparatively few) exceptions, our fictional worlds tend to function remarkably similarly to ours. Oh, the names of everything changes, but there’s almost always some form of monetary system and a hierarchy of who is in charge – be it a democracy, meritocracy, theocracy, monarchy, or one of any number of other types, there is the familiar leadership structure.

            Now, there are reasons for doing this. Familiarity is important to help people be engaged with the content. If it isn’t an integral part of the story, having a consumer learn and figure out a whole new structure for a society is tedious and unnecessary. So, what people already know is what gets the most representation, which is fair – but I’ve noticed something else, as well: if people are given the option in a factional setting to make things different, they still choose to go with the familiar.

            The first example I have of this is the Dungeons & Dragons campaign I’m running. It’s set in a world I created with the specific intention of allowing the players to have a lot of control over how their society would develop. They were put in a situation where they were building up a civilization, where they were some of the most influential people around, and where there was no monetary system because everyone was struggling to survive. Did they try to influence their government into taking a new, potentially better structure? No. Did they try to create a new system of bartering? No – in fact, they specifically wanted the familiar monetary system and, through actions based on assuming it would resurface, accidentally caused it to re-emerge.

            Now I’m seeing the same thing again in Chronicles of Elyria. This is a game designed to be almost entirely within the control of the players – they run the governments and control the economies, laws, and the research. It is perfectly set up for people to test new ways of doing things, and yet... All these people who are setting up governments are setting up the familiar governing systems (to be fair, these are partially built into the game’s feudal system), planning for the same familiar capitalistic monetary systems, and planning on law systems that reflect our own.

            I don’t fault them for any of this – it’s all very practical – but I can’t help seeing these scenarios and thinking, why are we just doing the same things over again? Why are we reusing material that, while it works, we know it doesn’t work well? In the real world, I understand – change takes a lot of time, investment, and risk in the real world. On the other hand, in a game, when given this much ability to build and design how the world will function, there is far less risk. Why do we fall back on the same old dysfunctional systems?

            Familiarity is the key, I believe. It’s familiar, comfortable, and easy, so that’s how we choose to do things. We know it isn’t perfect, but at least we know what to expect. It’s all very sensible, of course, but we’re missing out on trying to find a better way of doing things. If we can’t be bothered to find a better way in our fiction, how can we expect to find a better way in our reality?

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Digital Plagues

            May years ago, there was a plague released into the game of World of Warcraft as part of an event. It wasn’t supposed to last very long, but there was a flaw in the code that allowed characters’ pets to carry it out of the region it was supposed to be contained to – and to spread it to others. Before long, there was an epidemic – low level characters couldn’t withstand the disease, while higher level ones were practically immune. It was out of control before the developers could do anything about it.

            The community rallied into different groups – with most of them working to fight the plague. Stronger players helped the weak to safety. Then, of course, there were others working to actively spread the plague, for reasons of their own.

            When the Center for Disease Control heard about this, they were intrigued – because the various reactions of the people playing the game matched what happens during an outbreak. I don’t know the whole story, but I believe they were able to make great use of the data gathered in the game during that time.

            It’s interesting to reflect back on that, though I have – shockingly – never played WoW, as I’m currently helping fight a somewhat more intentional virtual plague that was released upon the community of the Chronicles of Elyria. We’re seeing the same sort of things happening – some people fighting for the plague, while the majority are fighting against it. In the middle, there are some people who just want a shot at the free copy of the game they can possibly earn through participating in this event.

            While some people find the comparisons surprising, I’ve come to expect it. Whenever you get enough people in one place, they form a microcosm, reflecting reality in almost every way. What people forget is that people are people, and if you hand people a situation, you’ll always find someone in the group whose opinion differs from the others.

            Massively multiplayer games have been around for a long time, and they’re very popular within certain circles. I know human experimentation is wrong, but really... look at how perfect these test groups are for exploring how people react in different circumstances. It’s a perfect medium for delving deeper into the human psyche...

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Stepping Up

            An interesting reoccurring occurrence in my life is that, while I very strongly dislike being in a position of leadership, I frequently seem to find myself filling a leadership role. Be it for work or play, it seems like I always end up as one of the people making the decisions – a very unfortunate job for a chronic fence-sitter.

            My most recent of such experiences took place over this weekend, but to understand just how often this has happened, we really need to go back quite a ways. I don’t know precisely when it started, but the first I can think of chronologically was in my highschool choir. In grade 9, there was a decent sized selection of male singers, but most of them were in their last year – including the one that informally led them simply by being such a strong singer. The following year, there were only 4 males in the 30-or-so person choir, and I happened to be the one who stepped into the empty leadership role – though I was thankfully replaced for part of the year when teachers were invited to join. However, the mantle fell back to me the next year, and eventually led to me being in the smaller jazz choir and even performing one song where I was the only person on the melody and everyone else was basically a back-up-singer.

            Also in my highschool years, I joined Amtgard, a Live Action Roleplaying Game. Three months in, I ran in the election for the role of the records-keeper and treasurer because at the time the records weren’t being kept up to date, and I held that role – which also assisted in other aspects of running the group – for three years straight (six terms), and then took six months in the primary leadership role.

After highschool, when I got a job, it quickly became known that if someone needed extra help, or called in sick, I could always be relied upon to come in – to the point where I had to arrange to be the last person called, because it was known that if everyone else said no, I could be relied upon to say yes because, well, someone had to step up and do it. I became one of the primary trainers for new employees, and ended up holding titles like crew leader and shift manager even though I had no interest in them.

            Then I started my own business. If I have to elaborate on that, you should do some research into what running a business entails.

            Over the course of July, I joined a community of people awaiting the release of a game called Chronicles of Elyria. I joined a Kingdom, then a Duchy, then a specific County, and I began working with the Count on helping with organization and lore writing for both the County and Duchy, making it clear all along that I had no interest in a leadership role. Then my Count went ahead and named me Chancellor of our county which essentially means I can speak for him when he’s not around to do so, both in the County and the Duchy.

            Then, this past weekend, an event launched for the Elyria community which involves a mini-game that will be running for the rest of the summer that allows people to control some of the lore for the world and – remarkably – affords people (like me) who haven’t already bought into the game to earn a free copy of the game for when it releases. From the moment the game was released, it was clear a great deal of teamwork and organization would be required, and my Kingdom quickly got to work on that. However, I soon noticed that everyone doing the organizing had a game package – and since the game works differently for those without game packages, I stepped up to share my knowledge and help out. The next day, some people in my Duchy were talking about Duchy-specific organization and, well, no one else was stepping up to the plate, so I did so and laid out the groundwork.

            And then it occurred to me that, once again, I was falling into leadership roles. So, I started looking back at my history, wondering what the cause was for this. Why was it that someone like me, who would much rather sit back and silently watch, who has a very hard time making decisions, and who really dislikes being a leader – why did I keep becoming a leader?

            The answer, it turns out, is remarkably simple. No one else was doing it, and so I stepped up to the task. Because someone had to do it. In each and every case, something needed to be done, and I did it because no one else was.

            And I realized that a leader is exactly that. Someone who steps up and takes the reins when no one else does. It isn’t something that makes me happier about being doomed to leadership, but it at least makes me more accepting of my fate.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Reflective Debates

            This week I had the fascinating experience of participating in a political debate. Not real for real politics, of course, although real enough to merit the attention of myself and others. However, like most things that aren’t real, it granted very accurate insight into the function of real politics – and I came out not only with a greater respect for politicians, but with a much greater understanding of why it takes them so long to get anything done.

            The topic for debate was around the development of policies for the group I joined that is eagerly awaiting the release of the Chronicles of Elyria. In essence, a decision needed to be made on how to deal with people who choose to settle on our land, but choose not to officially join the larger group. It may not seem like such a hard decision to make, but there are a lot of nuances surrounding it.

            For a bit more frame of reference, in Elyria (which is a MMORPG), the governmental system (including laws and taxes) is controlled by players. So a lot of things have to be considered – such as military strategy, infrastructure, and resource management (as resources are finite and can be exhausted). So the question was, if someone takes control of some land and pays their taxes and follows the laws of the larger governing body, but doesn’t engage in the co-operative initiatives of the larger group, how should they be handled?

            This topic had been getting discussed by the policy-makers, and when it came down to being time for making the policy, they put out a call for anyone interested in helping to write it. I suggested an open forum for the discussion, and was surprised when it actually happened – and resulted in a five hour long conversation.

            I won’t bore you with the details, but it boiled down to two polar ideals, with everyone involved somewhere on a spectrum between the two. At one end were the people who believed that the settlements should be left alone so long as they didn’t prove hostile or cause problems by being unwilling to trade resources, and at the other end were the people who believed such settlements as refuse to join the bigger group should be immediately and forcefully eliminated.

            The result, in the end, is still yet to be determined – but we provided some new ideas for the policy writers, and showed them that the will of the people had the same spectrum of opinions as the governing body – which was determined to be a good thing, as it meant the views of the people were accurately represented.

            For my part, it was mostly an enjoyable experience, working with the more open-minded people to find a middle ground. There was also some frustration with the less open-minded people who, rather than discussing, stated their opinion repeatedly and wouldn’t sway from their viewpoint in the least.

            Coming out of it, my overall thought was, “Well... so this is why governments in the real world take so long to accomplish anything.” Suddenly I have more respect for what politicians deal with.

            And, once again, we see how well fiction reflects reality. Many people may declaim that “it’s just a game”, but what we’re seeing is a microcosm that reflects our own world. I can’t wait for this game to launch so I can see where this goes.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Chronicles of Elyria

            This week I happened upon something that I found so exciting that it’s captured all my attention and it is scooping up all of my free time. Naturally, that means you get to hear about it now. It’s called... The Chronicles of Elyria.

            The Chronicles of Elyria is a new Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game that won’t even come out until next yet – and here I am, waiting for it as I haven’t waited since the days of waiting for the new Harry Potter books to come out. And I’m not the only one! There’s a huge community waiting out there, some of whom have been desperately waiting for this game since 2016 or earlier. That’s how awesome this game is!

            So, let me tell you a bit about the Chronicles of Elyria. To start off with, I suppose I should tell you how I found it. It was through an online add I saw for the game. Normally I ignore adds, but this one caught my attention – informing me that this was a game where creatures could be hunted to extinction. This was such an intriguing notion that I clicked – and was dragged down the rabbit hole.

            Now, for those of you who don’t know about MMORPGs, basically they are video games with large worlds where you can interact and play with other people. However, aside from that, they’re an awful lot like any other video game – there are real people around, but you don’t have to interact with them. Everything you need is still provided by the Non-Player Characters, and you have a set of quests that you do – and if you get stuck, you just have to look up a guide to figure out how to get unstuck.

            With CoE, everything is different. For starters, you don’t get sent on quests by NPCs waiting around to send you on a mission – when you create you character, an A.I. generates a storyline unique to your character that will appear randomly in the game, with larger events only occurring if you do something in the game that triggers them – such as stealing for the first time, or travelling to a specific town. Rather than chasing around after stories, your story follows you.

            And that’s not all! The kingdoms and towns in the game are primarily run by the players – that’s right, you can climb through the ranks and become a king, bringing whole new levels to the game – shifting from being and adventuring game to a resource management game if you so choose. This, coupled with the resources in the world being finite (they’re usually unlimited), including species being able to go extinct, makes for an incredibly in-depth survival game.

            But, wait, there’s more. Apart from all the wondrous gameplay elements that are too numerous to mention, one incredible aspect of the game is that your character actually ages and dies. That’s right – not only are the resources finite, but so is your time. A character lives for roughly one real-world year, then dies – but their soul lives on. You can then create another character, who inherits skills through the soul, and who might even be part of your own family (yes, you can have families and kids).

            And, the final and most interesting element is that, to maintain the continuity of the game – keeping everyone aging at the same rate and whatnot – when you log out of the game, the A.I. takes over your character and it keeps playing! You leave instructions, and your character continues on in your absence – perhaps saving you tons of time training skills, or performing other tasks.

            There is so much more to tell about this game, but those – at least for me – are the key highlights. The community waiting for the launch is also wonderful, friendly, and welcoming – at least, the one I joined up with is. I was welcomed so warmly when I joined that even I – antisocial though I am – am actually interacting with them. I’ve even contributed to the Lore they are creating – which, it is worth noting, the awesome game developers are incorporating into the game.

            So, if any of that interests you, go check out the Chronicles of Elyria! If you poke around and decide to join the community, I strongly encourage you to consider the Duchy known as the Conclave of Aritaur located in the Kingdom of Vornair on the NA-East server. If I see you mentioning that I sent you, I may even be able to get you welcomed into the county I joined.

            And if you know me in person, I strongly encourage you to send me a message if you plan to sign up on the Chronicles of Elyria website; I can give you my friend code, which will not only earn me points, but it will tell the game we’re friends so it can try to place us relatively close together in the game world – otherwise we might have literal hours to walk if we want to play together. If we can even find each other.

            That’s it. Now, go! Become madly obsessed with Elyria that you might share in my torment as we await its release date!

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.