My Gencon Experience. A Personal Post.

Thanks for all the posts you’ve made over the past two years. Even if the blog never gets updated again, it’s been an amazing resource for me (just started DMing a few months ago) as I carve out my own home game. You rock, dude.

First and foremost, blog for yourself – not out of obligation to anyone or anything. If you love it, great – keep doing it. If you hate it, that’s okay – stop, maybe temporarily or maybe permanently. Either way, do what’s in your heart. If you try and force out posts you don’t want to write, you’ll end up hating and resenting they very thing(s) you used to love.

I’ll drop the same advice I give to people who get caught up with spending way too much time putting stuff up on Obsidian Portal: Take a break as soon as it feels like work. It’s supposed to be fun, and if it’s not, then ur doin it wrong.

I agree with you on the D&D announcements thing. I ended up leaving after about 10 minutes because I had a True Dungeon game to go to but also I realized I didn’t need to be there. There’s enough of this artificial need for “breaking news” in the real world – do we really need it for D&D? Is the Ravenloft announcement that important? I remember hearing about Dark Sun last year and everyone wanted to be the first to announce it but it’s been a year and I still don’t have it in my hands yet. So yeah, I don’t think being a breaking source of news is very critical. I’ll leave that to Danny and Dave on Critical Hits. They do a great job covering events and getting access, so I’ll stick back and worry about how to twist WOTC’s releases to make people’s games better.

For me, Gencon is about the culture. I just love being around that many geeks. While I’m not into any other game than D&D at the moment, I don’t mind hearing about them and I still love the people that play them.

The irony for me is that my favorite events of the week were events that just sort of happened. The Hooter’s D&D game, Red Boxing with Sarah Darkmagic, running a fake Dark Sun game for Grahm, his fiance, Milambus, and others was an absolute blast.

I know I’m wicked tired. I left from work to get there and played every waking moment until last night. I got six hours of sleep when I needed 10 and now I’m back at work.

Still, I loved this last year, and I’ll be going every year that I can.

Many of my conversations and visits with you (the ever-present Sly Flourish) were also great highlights of my trip. I’m really glad you were able to make it.

I just recently found your blog, and even though I’m a newbie to the newbie, if you have to take time off to figure things out, I wouldn’t mind in the least.

In all the games, DnD, City of Heroes and other MMOs, I play with friends who have a single rule, Real Life comes first. If we’re planning a huge raid, and one person has to bow out for something IRL, no hard feelings, the real comes before the digital.

It seems the other readers and fans here have a similar feeling, so this is just a glorified me too post. The fact that you’re willing to examine these impulses, these uncertainties, speaks volumes about you. The #DnD community will be around when things settle down for ya, regardless of what you realize your path to be from here.

I’ve been trying to write a long, detailed comment on your post, but I guess my language barrier will keep me from doing that. At least, I’ll try…

I think I’ve felt this way a few times before, and it’s really not pleasant, not at all. You start doing something, that turns out to be good. People enjoy it, and you create some type of commitment with yourself, you have to keep doing it, better and better. But, there comes a time when you realize the time and energy you spend doing it could be better spent somewhere else. But the level of commitment and involvement is so high, and you don’t want to disappoint anyone, so you just keep doing it, until you hit that spot you just did at Gencon.

I could be wrong, but I think you should just write when you feel like it. Blogging is serious work, I’ve been there myself. So just step out, and do whenever and whatever you feel like. And call it Enrico’s Personal Blog or whatever, what’s special about this blog and your writing is just yourself. And, like some guys pointed earlier, you’re a cool guy with cool ideas, passionate about the hobby and the community.

So, take your time, and if you ever feel like writing again, I will surely be here (or anywhere else, for that matter) to read. 😀

Abraços, e boa sorte!

Enrique,

I can’t help but agree with all of your supporters here. We’ll read what you write, and if you’re done writing we’ll listen to what you podcast. Personally, I wanted to thank you for the help you’ve given me when I’ve had a question or two. You literally had the fastest E-Mail response times I’ve ever seen in regards to 4th e. rules questions.

Good luck in life and all things,

John

Don’t worry Newbie, we’ve all felt like this. I think you have the right attitude. You write what you want to write, fir the pleasure of writing it. Forget about us readers; we will come see what you write, and comment on it, no matter.

If it stops being fun, stop. You owe us no favours; we’ll miss you though. 😀

This is sort of a relief to hear. I’ve been wondering how anyone could keep up with a blog, two (!) podcasts, and Twitter, the way you seem to do, and still be able to game, have a family, keep a job.

I figured I was just getting old.

Well, okay, I *am* getting old.

I appreciate your site and all your efforts. Keep doing what feels right.

Thanks for posting, man. I haven’t been reading too long, but you’ve helped so much in terms of both Pen and Paper and Blogging in general. I’m at a similar point myself with my blog, where I’m making myself feel somewhat obligated to post. I honestly hate writing as a requirement for something and not just for the fun of it. I love writing up my campaign blocks bit by bit, flashes of inspiration coming about at the best and oddest times. Hell, I used to do a fanfiction in middle school, for the fun of it.

I hated any and all writing assignments, even if they were decent ones or about myself. My blog’s been in a bit of a limbo for quite a while now, and it’s gotten even worse with school, my internship, & planning my gaming sessions (like I’m gonna drop that). Yet I’ll still post a simple video every now and then, and even a custom ringtone that I cook up; I love doing those because I like to share what I like with others. I think the last time I wrote a “blog-worthy” piece was on a whim from a ranty Facebook post that I pretty much copied and pasted. I keep setting goals for writing these posts, and I never reach them.

I don’t think I’ll be dropping my blog, but I’ll definetly be changing up what’s posted. And to be honest, I came to this decision just after reading your post and commenting here. Look, you’ve helped me again! Whatever you do, you’ll have fans and peers encouraging you to do what you want to do. If you’re not doing what you want to do with yourself, you’re not living. 😀

thank you and good luck

Enrique, you’ll always be the NewbieDM to me. 🙂

Seriously, though… what you’ve done for new and rusty (and even experienced) DMs can’t be trivialized. You’ve put some amazing stuff on this site that will be useful for people for years to come.

“If you love something, set it free…”

Take whatever time you need Enrique.

Hope all goes well man, game on.

You made the mistake of saying that no jerks had commented yet on your post. Well, here I am.

Joking, of course.

I’ve been weighing all day how to respond to this and, in the meanwhile, other people have come in a posted some truly great responses. So, I’ve got just three things to add. However, I am wordy, so they will be long things.

First: I love writing and I love gaming. And I have never, ever wanted to do either for a living. Now, I am sure that there are those who actually do one or the other for a living who will disagree with me, but I’ve never wanted to do what I love as a career. The reason is this: there will come a day when you wake up and don’t want to do it, no matter how much you love it, but because it is your job, you will have to. If too many of those days happen, you not only become unhappy with your career, but you also risk losing your love. Of course, it is easy enough for me to say that because no one is offering me a check to do it. But I never want to risk turning my passion into an obligation.

Second: If you had gone to GenCon, had a good time, and said “sorry guys, Newbie DM is away for a week, but I’ll probably tell you all about it when I get back,” the truth is that no one would have said anything crosswise. The expectation that you would report, the obligation that you should, those are illusions. You love gaming, you love talking about it, and you love a great many people in the community. So, you got wrapped up in this idea of being obligated to the community. The irony is that it does neither you nor the community any good for you to feel that way. After all, part of what makes your writing useful, what makes it great, is that you are passionate. That shows through. The moment you get wrapped up in the obligation and start to feel put out, you lose the soul of your writing. I would rather see you scale back, do what you love, and do it because you love it than see the love of the game sucked out of your writing. And I think that, apart from genuine affection for you and wanting to see you happy, those who have responded before me also recognize that.

If you want to do what will make you happy, walk away from the sense of obligation. If you want to do what is right and good for the community, walk away from the sense of obligation. Scale back, take some time off, do whatever you have to do. We will support you because we care about you and because we don’t want to lose what makes you such a great part of the community.

Third: I am a new kid on the block, as far as the RPG blogging community is concerned. But you probably remember that I got my start “in the community” when I helped found a podcast. The podcast’s cocreator decided to take the show in a different direction and forced me out. Then, I was known as DM_Simonides. At that time, I was on the fringes of the community. I had barely heard of the “big names” like Critical Hits, The Tome, and folks like you and ChattyDM and all the rest.

When it all went south, I was more or less content to fade back into the shadows of being an internet lurker. But by that time, I had been exposed to two folks who seemed to really be pillars of the community. They wrote about gaming and people loved their stuff, read it, commented, and enjoyed it. They were passionate, interesting, entertaining, and inspiring. And, well, it made me a little jealous. Because my first creative endeavor in the public eye had been such a short-lived disaster.

Now, I am not saying those two people were the biggest. They were just names that people kept mentioned, or that kept popping up at dndinsider.com and the like. Names people bandied about. And ultimately, they were the reason I bought the webspace and have been gradually been trying to build up my own identity.

And when I started to think about the voice and tone I wanted to use and the persona I wanted to build – for fun – I blatantly ripped off their name formats – ChattyDM, NewbieDM, TheAngryDM.

The reason I admit all of this is because what inspired me was that those two people, my first real exposure to the community, had genuine passion and a real love for the game. They weren’t fake. They weren’t writing to ‘make it big,’ or, if they were, it didn’t show, and this was a stark contrast to certain others I had been introduced to in the community and had worked with.

I have since met many other people via Twitter, blogs, and everything else, and while I am still just a newbie to the community, I feel very lucky to have found so many people who are genuine about what they do and are motivated by nothing more than their love for a game that has made me happy for almost 25 years.

But those two names were the first two I saw, the first two to draw me out into the community. And it wasn’t their on-the-spot-reporting or in-depth reviews or anything else. It was just that they were people who I’d love to sit down and game with. People I could be friends with. And people who loved what I loved.

Apart from the thanks I obviously owe you, I say this only to emphasize what I said above: if you lose the love of what you write, you lose the very thing that people turn up to see and the very thing that inspired me to change my name, by a domain, and just have fun with it.

I’ve only ever read your blog to see how other people play, to get ideas, never for reviews or anything like that. Write what you want to write, as often as you feel like it. If your game starts up again or you get involved in a new one, I’d be happy to read what happened and what was interesting; if you want to vent about life, free feel, I’d still read it. You blog is one of the few I bother to read, as so many are all alike and like to think they are better than others, that their word is ‘truth’ or something.

Anyway, look forward to your next update, whenever it is and whatever is happens to be about.

Take care, Enrique, happy thoughts

Enrique, I’m glad you had fun hanging out! That Friday night definitely needed an appearance from you to complete it, and on top of that I couldn’t let you play Space Hulk with Mike Shea, Mearls and Jeremy Crawford for the whole night! Very Jealous!

It’s funny for me because last year at GenCon I only ran into you once or twice and that was incredibly brief, so I was happy that this year we got to see each other at least a little bit more! I’m very glad that you decided to come this year, and I hope the bad feelings and uncertainties fade away but the good feelings linger and maybe we’ll see you there next year as well (or before then).

Lots of great posts above mine, so I’ll try to keep this short…

I’ve been reading your blog for a little over a year now (around the time my friends and I picked up a copy of 4th edition and decided it was time to get back to our D&D roots, none of us having played since 2nd edition). I read your blog (as I’m sure many others do) in order to capitalize on some of the great ideas you have.

I could care less about reviews (unless they are of truly great products, as you mentioned), because I don’t need to hear about every product that hits the market, that’s not really how I play the game. I’d much rather have the basics and build anything else I need (either with raw materials or with my mind). I also could care less about a play-by-play report from Gencon (or anything else). But that’s just me, and my opinion shouldn’t really matter to you either.

Who cares what anyone else thinks? The people who read this blog do so for their own reasons, unless this is your job you don’t have any expectation of pleasing any of them any of the time. The readers who follow your blog do so because they have found things here that they like, if that content changes over time (or disappears entirely) you don’t owe them anything.

Do what works for you, in response people who share those interests will follow your blog, those who don’t can’t either bore themselves reading something they don’t like or they can go find better ways to spend their time.

Thanks for all the great information up to this point, I selfishly hope to read more of it going forward, but you don’t owe me (or anyone else) anything. Good luck!

I look forward to whatever you have to say whenever you choose to say it, about D&D and otherwise. And you know I love the minicast. I guess this is just, “I’m behind you, man!”

There is a quote near the end of Spinal Tap that is my mantra in life: “have a good time, all the time”. Whenever fun feels like work, do something else. Take a break. There is a lot of imagined urgency, a lot of supposed importance. The heavy bloggers (bless them) self-sustain their excitement, and that is great so long as they have fun. But life is fine without Twitter, without the Internet. Most important is your actual life, your actual desire to play and DM. Recover the sense of fun and of priority and the rest will fall in place.

Скайп – это удобный инструмент для работы. Его удобство заключается отнюдь не в том, что при помощи такого оборудования легко общаться, и можно видеть лицо своего второго абонента на мониторе, – этим сейчас мало кого удивишь, – а в том, что осуществить это возможно за совсем небольшие деньги, в круглосуточном режиме, в том числе, и на работе.
Рабочее место, снабженное скайпом, позволяет взаимодейтсвовать с заказчиком, сотрудником, партнером так, как будто он находится здесь же, впомещении. Качество связи позволяет видеть мимические реакции собеседника, которые подчас становятся ценнее, чем его замечания, выраженные в словесной форме. Скайп дает возможность быстро общаться с клиентами, обсуждать даже малейшие нюансы работы, и следовательно, выполнять ее в оптимальном соответствии с запросами клиентов.
При этом для того, чтобы пользоваться опциями сервиса в полной мере, нужно не просто закупить все необходимое оборудование, в том числе веб-камеру и микрофон. Необходимо также выкупить и установить все важное для исправной и высокоэффективной работы оборудования программное обеспечение. Да, его можно купитьзаполучить за деньги через интернет, или в произвольном из магазинов, продающих различные программы и игры, но реально также скачать скайп бесплатно – снова, посредством эксплуатации услуг определенных сайтов. На сегодняшний день любой пользователь может претендовать на получение бесплатных программ для скайпа, имеющих в должной мере приличное качество и все другие характеристики.
Используя скайп, абонент платит только за трафик. И благодаря упомянутой особенности этого типа связи, можно осуществлять международные и междугородние переговоры совсем недорого, экономя при этом весьма серьезные суммы. Скайп дает возможность проводить онлайн – конференцию, взаимодействуя сразу с несколькими партнерами для обсуждения разного рода проблем, что и делает данный сервис весьма полезным и эффективным инструментом для осуществления деятельности.
Но использовать скайп в обязательном порядке для ведения дел совсем необязательно. Каждый человек может установить его у себя дома, чтобы с удовольствием общаться с друзьями и родными, в том числе, и живущими в других районах, а то и вовсе за границей. Эксплуатация скайпа в домашних условиях, для личного удовольствия, также позволяет сэкономить немалоналичности, и сохранять при этом постоянное общение с проживающими далеко людьми. Это очень важное и эффективное оборудование.