Back when I first founded the IRC channel over at suptg, we played nonstop. Games were happening several times a week; I was running 2-5 parties in the 10th Age at any given time, most of them permutations and combinations of the available people in the channel. That hasn't happened in a long time. Since writing my play (and having a rather brutal falling out with one of my longtime players and friends), the well of games has stopped, dried up; the fields seem fallow.
The Hounds wait perched upon the throat of victory or ignominious defeat at the Troll Crags. Ideas rattle around in my skull about mythic D&D settings, more like the D&D of the inestimable Middenmurk or Hill Cantons than the slavishly medieval/late classical D&D of the 10th Age. Wild harebrained schemes about Space 1889 and procedurally generated sandboxes flit through my vision as the lack of D&D slowly takes hold in my brainstem.
There was a period of four or five years when I didn't play at all. That was a black time, a time of shadows and doubt, when the very future of the 10th Age was in question. It was the 8th Age then, and abandoned it lied in the corners of my mind. It was only with a new rebirth that it was permitted to become the 10th Age at all.
I suppose what I'm saying is: play is important.
Theorizing, at least for me, rarely happens extemporaneously. It is a result of very real play sessions. The gears which turn to make D&D make sense turn only when I have a current game running. That's one of the reasons that the blog went dark for so long: we literally did not play a single session of D&D in all that time. Not to say we played nothing—once we played Paranoia.
However, more than anything, key to the hobby is actually engaging in play. Without it, there's no groundwork upon which to comment. So you may find that the blog wanders far afield until my games return. I'll be talking more about fantasy literature, science fiction, and other amusing topics and less about Dungeons and Dragons in specific.
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