FOMO

Do you ever get that feeling of missing out? It might be the latest release that might only be out for a limited period, like a boxed game, or some limited edition item. It might be a job? You could have applied, but you didn't feel ready for it?

Or it might be an event and a chance to network?

This last weekend it felt very much like the latter. With Gencon 2022 going on, and I have not been to any hobby/work-related event in 2 years now, I got the pang of missing out.

I think on the one hand it was because for the first time at Gencon, on sale were several books for the first time that I had a hand in writing. Wrath and Glory, The Horned Rat, Iron Kingdoms: Borderlands and Beyond, Children of the Blood, plus Khaldoun Khelil was there running demos of the new scenario released on the ST Vault that I co-wrote with him, Our Graves Are Empty. Writing for these books means collaborating with a lot of people across the globe, and a good number are in the US. And when you see the pictures of events and meetups there is that feeling that you might be missing a good gig opportunity simply because a) oceans, and b) anyone who seems to make big waves with games is at Gencon. It's quite annoying and something I try hard to put in the back of my mind. Gencon is not the centre of the gaming world these days, no matter what they would like you to think. Having lived in Germany, Essen Spiele was always a fun experience, with such a diverse range of products on show, without focusing on personalities. Likewise, UKGE, and Dragonmeet, offer similar networking opportunities. Dragonmeet being a smaller one-day event and just RPGs is intimate and has a very collaborative approach for streamers to help each other at the event, while UKGE I would hazard to say has much more going on if you are into wargames since the UK is lead (as in the metal) central for miniatures. Anyway, on to some positive stuff. I have in the last week being training up in Plotly Dash, and working on webapps, such as RPG character builders. It's been a fun experience and one useful for my day job, and I hope I get to show off the result of some of that training. Projects for C7 are drawing to a close, and that has been some work. Lots of work. And as I said, the pdf for Our Graves Are Empty is out on ST Vault. That was an absolute joy to write and explore a sandbox approach to a scenario, where we gave as many tools to the ST to run the scenario in any setting.

I had fun chatting about my work with Adam for Snyder's Return.

We talked a lot about how I got into gaming and into freelance work (something I will likely talk more about with Crystal Mazur for her freelance series on Darker Days Radio).

Right time for some minis.