Hello again! If you are a regular reader, you will have noticed my absence this past week. I apologize to you for the lack of content from my end, and to Coinflip, who ended up shouldering the blogging duties. I was dealing with a potent life cocktail of a sick family, job stress, and multiple trips (which, if you have kids, you know are ordeals no matter what). I will not go in to the excuses, just say that I am sorry and that I will attempt to maintain blogging regularity (that sounds like some sort of bowel issue..) so that we can keep making this blog a blog of substance and class. Or just give you more to read for funsies. Either way.
Since I am back from a life-imposed break, I thought I would pull it back and tip back the fez again for another installment of "Who is this Fezzypug guy?" If you have no desire to read another post about me (I am not a narcissist, honest), I absolutely understand. But coming back to the blog, I feel the need to give you a better understanding of my personal viewpoint. I could write articles and never touch on who I am or why I say or prefer certain things, and that would be perfectly valid. That is easy to find on the internet. But the blogs that resonate with me are those where I have a sense of who is behind the words on the screen. Knowing their viewpoint lets me connect on a more personal level to their thoughts and opinions, especially when it comes to reviews, because I have an idea of where they are coming from. So for the next few paragraphs, I will give you my personal viewpoint so you can understand a bit why, for example, I prefer certain game types.
As you can gather from my previous posts, I am a married middle-aged parent of two younger children. I have a full-time, 9-5 job (documentation specialist in higher ed IT) as does my wife. We have no local family, which means that we are either traveling quite a bot to see folks, or else we are hosting visitors on weekends. So what does generic bio mean in terms of my gaming viewpoint? Let's take a look.
I mentioned in a previous post that I dislike boss fights in video games. Feel free to go back and read that post for details, but one of the main reasons is that I don't have the time or patience to spend throwing myself at what many times seems like arbitrary game play gates for the sake of lengthening play times. As you can gather from my bio above, I don't have much game time right now. Between working and taking care of children, my free time is a sliver of what it once was, so I have to be a bit choosier about what I play. Not only do I not have time, but I lack the patience to grind endlessly or learn the subtle nuances. Having younger children whittles down your supply of patience, and the lack of sleep that comes with children that do not sleep through the night cuts that supply to a wafer-thin amount that can quickly run dry if a game tests me.
Due to this lack of time and patience, my current gaming mindset is one of escapism and relaxation. For this reason, I prefer story over mechanical complexity, in all aspects of gaming. Where once I thrilled to play mechanically complex board, role-playing, and video games, I now seek out more relaxed, story-driven experiences. I have a tough time now enjoying games categories like euro games, tactical strategy games, or extremely crunchy roleplaying systems (at least to run, I can still enjoy these as long as I am not behind the screen). Don't mistake this for me disliking these categories. Far from it. I just find it hard to enjoy them at this stage in my life as my mind is generally mushy with stress and lack of sleep. Additionally, I find myself playing games on easy mode rather than challenging so that I can use that precious time to relax and enjoy the story rather than tensing and stressing over game play (I will have an upcoming post on the benefits of easy modes in games, stay tuned).
In the roleplaying realm, I am dealing with not only my issues, but also a gaming group that is in a similar situation, which causes difficulty in finding regular play time with consistent players. That is why I have turned my attention to game ideas like the Fantasy Boomtown idea I wrote about easlier, a game that is broken down into one or two nights per adventure, does not require the same people or same characters at every session, and is more about a place rather than a complex plotline. I like the idea that I can build the continuous story in the background of such a game, and not have play sessions be a bottleneck to the story. It also allows for a more random schedule, which is what I am dealing with. In addition, I am restricting my focus on running either a personally well-known system (like Deadlands) or else exploring systems that may be mechanically lighter in favor of story (Monster of the Week being a current interest and the topic of an upcoming review).
As you can see, I am more story-oriented, casual, and time concious in this stage of my life. Another pillar of my viewpoint is a preference for cooperative play over competative play. In my past, I was a very competative gamer, even falling headlong into competative Magic: the Gathering tournament play. But these days, I find myself prefering to co-op my games. In video games, I enjoy playing on a team with folks that I know, preferrably versus the game, but I don't mind playing a competative game as long as they know that I am not serious about climbing ladders or getting ranks. IN boardgames, the boom in co-operative gaming is a boon, as I continue to find new and intersting cooperative dungeon crawlers, deck builders, and games that eschew traditional competition for more common interest goals. And roleplaying, for me, has always been a shared experience rather than my, the game master, versus the party. To me, roleplaying is the pinnacle of a cooperative, share storytelling experience, with the game master as a force to help the players create a story and not and adversary (I have known a few adversarial game masters and to me that diminishes the fun overall).
Hopefully this rambling mess of words gives you an understanding of my viewpoint on gaming as you (hopefully) read my posts and reviews. This is not who I was and this may not be who I will be in the future, but for now, this is Fezzypug. Hopefully knowing me a little bit will let you enjoy my posts a bit more and give you a better understanding of where I am coming from when I review games going forward. Maybe knowing me a bit lets you completely disregard what I write because it will not be relevant to you, so hooray for saving you time! If nothing else, my thanks for letting me ramble. I will do my best to write less about myself now that I have this post out of my system. With that, I replace my fez, nod my head, and bid you good day.
Glad that you are back. Also enjoyed the peek under the lid of Fezzy Pug.
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