A Story About DnD

So Eric wants to play this game called Warmachine. To explain why this idea even remotely slightly interests me after The 40k Debacle, I have to tell you a story.

Three or four years ago, I was working on a DnD campaign with Tony. Now, I have discussed this before and how it fell apart and never happened. Following these events, I was all engorged with creativity and such and needed an outlet or I was just going to ooze all over everyone and everything.

I didn't know what to do though. I needed inspiration. I couldn't run with what Tony and I did, because that was ours, not just mine, and I didn't feel like I had the right to do what I wanted with it. I also didn't want to do anything like what I'd done before. I searched high and low, Deadlands d20, Mutants and Masterminds, basically anything and everything that was comfortably d20 compatible but interesting or different from what we'd played before. One day I stumbled upon something called the Iron Kingdoms.

It was amazing and awesome and different. It really struck something inside me and I poured over the books for hours on end figuring out what I liked and what was stupid. I sent countless emails back and forth with Shawn discussing what I was trying to do and trying to get ideas on how to avoid the whole "A wizard did it!" issue with some of the stuff. I even lamented the fact that warjack and workjack were awesome names and I couldn't rip them off and instead had to use steam titan and steam strider in my world. Eventually I scrapped the steam driven mech idea (for now! ::wink::) and moved on to stuff like sodium/water cannons and grenades, and eventually I returned to the mech idea on a smaller, more sorcerous scale via the Soulless of my campaign world. For the most part, I was able to avoid direct copying and instead looked at the books as inspiration and put my own flavor on the Heck If I Know campaign.

So yeah, there is a shit ton of Iron Kingdoms/Warmachine love in my heart. I have thought about buying miniatures from Privateer Press before, the warjacks are awesome, at least the Khador and Cygnar ones are. It would be super easy to drop a 100 bucks on models and books and go nuts exactly like we (mostly Tony and I) did during The 40k Debacle, which would have been less of a debacle if Shawn didn't live two and a half hours away like a Dogdamn heathen.

Anyway, to prevent another Debacle from being added to the roster, I have come up with The Plan, and it is as follows:

-Sell off excess 40k stuff (Space Hulk, my Ork stuff, my Defiler pieces, and probably my Chaos Space Marine Raptors and Raptor Chaos Lord, along with whatever other Chaos bits and pieces I feel I can part with).

-Gauge the group's interest, obviously Shawn and Tony will find this ridiculous (Edit After The Fact: They did).

-Read and comprehend the Warmachine quick-start rules, then use proxies to play several games with multiple armies against multiple armies, i.e. experience the variety of the game. The goal is to be able to play the game at this level of complexity without having to refer to the pdf every few seconds.

-Purchase the main game's rulebook in hard copy and continue using proxy armies (possibly upgrade from 11 points to 15) to play various factions multiple times against one another in great variety. The goal here is to get a concrete understanding of the game and also to find a faction we like the look and play style of.

-Purchase models and faction books as appropriate for our interests and level of play.

-Paint the models and play the game.

Side Goal Alpha: Set aside small amounts of money here and there to finance this bullshit.

So that's that. A bit about the past and a plan for the future.

Pertinent Info: I type this from my parent's house and am wearing my fucking gloves as an additional layer of sock to protect my toes from the rampant frostbite in this glacial Hellhole. My coat is on too.