Office Steampunk

Totally inspired by here, and because I too would love to do nothing more than sometimes shoot the people I work with...and what better than to do it in such a Geek way.

Not my photos, but totally inspiring. From above link.
Plus, you have to admit it looks a little like something Mal Reynolds would carry.

Sewers

Click to enlarge image

As a one page dungeon (OPD) [ view/download pdf ]

A Were-Rat led group of thieves is spying on the city from a sewer built hideout, called "The Hand" to honor their leaders missing appendage. Tthe human members (thieves) are not aware of the true nature of their leaders, but they are aware that they are spying for an "evil" power, and gathering supplies for a larger infiltration of the city.

Barad Tur

Click to enlarge image

As a one page dungeon (OPD) [ view/download pdf ]

The idea is to have an old tower that a clan of Goblins are using as a base while they raid a trade road. The Upper floors have all collapsed leaving the ground floor in ruins with the Dungeons/Catacombs acting as a home for the Goblins. The party is attacked by the Goblins (while guarding a caravan) and then track the Goblins back to their lair.

The catacombs bit comes from A Character for every game [ actual page ].

Fantasy freaks...

This book is a must for anybody who ever played Dungeons & Dragons and then put aside that part of themselves as life simply got in the way.

Ethan Gilsdorf's* journey back into the Dungeon, in no small way mirrors my own, a box of old maps, books and dice, that opens a floodgates of memories, wonderings and perhaps more importantly, new images of wondrous places, strong heros and dungeons filled with the vilest of the underworld.

I read this book, as I read many, either on the throne or as a diversion from another activity...only now those activities included graph paper and pencil, or rather a tablet PC and a new way of drawing maps and crafting a small corner of a world for me to dust off my DM skills and test the mettle of my players.

"As I met more and more gamers, particularly those my age, a pattern began to emerge. They'd tell me after years of playing only online, they returned to in-person paper-and-pencil games. "Soloing" on adventures in WoW and other MMO's made them lonely. They missed the face-to-face-ness of low-tech, tangible, tabletop gaming. I knew I had missed D&D's weekly ritual of camaraderie and fellowship." 
- pg 52, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

And maybe as a passage that's what any return to youthful fun is, our simple desire to engage, to share camaraderie, to connect in a world that is, thanks to the very thing that has made Geek mainstream more and more separate and distant. Or maybe, on some level, we all yearn for that child-like enjoyment we had before life and the world at large become the Orcish warrior threatening our way. Maybe, returning to D&D after all these years is a quest to return to something or rather sometime when everything was a little simpler, and the world focus was not so $$$.

* Sounds like a great name for a Dwarf...the Gilsdorf, not so much the Ethan.

Beer grown here

What's a Dwarf town without a brewery...heck for that matter what is any town without a brewery?

So let the battle, or rather, the defense of Bugman's begin.

A rekindled geek

The person, I most have to thank for my re-embracing of my Geek, did so with almost no preamble and seemingly secure in the knowledge that he was right,

Him: D&D or AD&D?

Me: Both, but I preferred D&D for its emphasis on Role not Roll.

Him: We should play.

Me. I'm in. When?

And thus inspired, I started (again), buying books, sorting through old modules while home visiting the parents, buying dice, armies (the Warhammer bug bit again, as well), building terrain, creating a bits box, buying dice, getting back into the Fantasy Lit. that I had missed, which my aforementioned friend as a writer of such was eager to share and generally embracing all the best parts of growing up, even Lego made a comeback. The second person I should thank is my girlfriend who is as eager in her support of my Geek as I am in supporting hers.

But this is now, and it all started some when else...

...when I was 7, an over budget Space Opera filmed in the African Desert change movie history and fired my imagination. The internal debate between whether I wanted to be Luke or Han was one that I still feel slightly conflicted over. On one hand you get to wield a light-saber and use the Force, but on the other hand I would get to fly the Millenium Falcon.

A few years later a friend introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, the same friend who a few years after that would lead me to Napoleonic Wargaming, add to that mix a Commodore 64 (at first), a 300Baud Modem, Tolkien, a part-time job in a computer store, Eddings, mix in some Howard, a lot of BASIC, a little piracy by way of 5.25" sector copying, Warhammer (all three: FB, 40K & RPG), White Dwarf, Pools of Radiance, Krull, a major crush on Sorsha and my high school label was cast in carbonite.

Later I added to this a degree with majors in History and Comp Sci, let my RPG roots lead me into re-enactment groups, War gaming replaced the mixed polyhedrons, Dragon, computers got upgraded and smaller, "Cowabunga", and eventually, though probably reluctantly, I joined the realm of those who "worked" for a living. Sadly this development led me away from my fellow geeks even as computers, thanks to the invention of a really smart guy from CERN were first starting to make us mainstream.

Over a decade passed with only the odd, at first computer then later console game, to keep my Geek credibility in a pathetic lost wilderness. The "work" part took me abroad, thankfully working in IT, but it always seemed to be just before a geographical jump that I would meet like-minded souls who craved to roll dice and slay dragons, and MMORPG didn't really, no matter how good, come close. As such I lived, or rather existed as something less than I wanted to be, until one day thanks possibly to age and maybe a shaky international economy the regular moves slowed and a friend asked a simple question...

...oh, and while I got to wield the closest thing to the Force I could (so far) with KOTOR and Force Unleashed I am still not sure it would trump getting to fly the Falcon, so I am still undecided.

So what have I...

...been doing?

Basically, thanks to Hirst Arts, eBay and a local Arts/Craft Store I have been making terrain for war gaming, more specifically, I have been making 25-28mm stone European/Fantasy buildings. I have been getting my geek on making forests, rivers, hills and whatever took my fancy, ergo:

Now I just need a place to setup and store it all...

...maybe its time to move non-digital homes again with a view to creating a man-cave.

So why the why?

Last year I walked away from a carefully crafted online persona, I deleted the blog, deleted the email account and abandoned the digital world of writing for a freelance gig with a magazine. Increasingly as I was, and continue to be paid to write, the mojo to put down my musings waned. Writing for multiple mistress's around the same topic became, quite frankly, tiresome, and so I walked from online thoughts. I reduced my digital footprint, especially the anonymous one, to that existing only in cache, I began to comment under my real name on the blogs I still followed and perhaps most importantly in a series of "fits and starts" I rediscovered and rekindled my inner Geek.

So why the "Why is the Platypus?"...well...

...quite simply it has to do with Rincewind, a place called Buggerup and a writer called Terry Pratchett. It might also have a little to do with the fact that it was the first blog I ever wrote, the first anonymous identity I crafted and the first I walked away from when the fourth wall threatened to fall. Besides, I had to call a blog about my Geek interests something, didn't I?