How i got Started with BattleTech (Story time)

 So, While we’re gearing up for the holidays, I’d like to share with all of you how i got started with this great game that we all love (and mostly tolerate the rest of the player base for).  For this grand, epic tale, we must hop into the wayback machine and visit long forgotten shores and accursed halls.  To begin this grand tale, we venture to the distant land of…1988, and Saturday morning cartoons. But Zardoz, i can hear you now, BattleTech didn’t have a cartoon on the airwaves in 1988.  You are correct, dear reader, but Robotech was on the air…

Culture and Gaming

Well, today kicked off a hell of a firestorm on Twitter (you know who you are and what you said that you shouldn’t have thought), and it kicked up an internal question/debate around the office. The first part of this discussion is one that crops up again and again in the tabletop community and it can be reduced down to “Our game is perfect and represents wide and varied cultures vs. No, it really doesn’t.”

Gatekeeping in our Community

So we talk about Gatekeeping a lot as it relates to a lot of communities and fandoms in the world we live in, but i want to talk a little bit about how it affects our gaming communities and the very easy way it can become a solution instead of a problem. First off, I am an absolutely filthy casual of a player and as long as you are polite and friendly, i will try to help you with anything i can, IF I HAVE A FREE MOMENT TO DO SO. I am totally happy helping new folks find their jam in a game so long as i am not trying to do a bunch of other things.

We need to have a talk about Tyler

With the recent revelations about the profoundly disturbing and predatory behavior laid at the feet of Tyler Carpenter, we need to have a chat. I’m an outsider looking in, but it has come out in the open that Tyler has abused several of the people in his closest circle of gaming friends in ways that hurt the soul and the heart. I have spent the last couple of days trying to process all of this and coming to a thing that i can do to try and help. I am usually pretty good with words, but the impact of this revelation has stripped me of that capacity. I’m going to try to express this in ways that i hope help out everyone affected by this trauma.