Gaming Thoughts

I've been thinking about my own gaming of late. A few observations:

Painting Shrine. If I leave a clean bowl of water in my painting area, it's a sort of shrine to painting, a living reminder that I'm still in process. This somehow makes it easier to sit down for a few minutes and start painting without a long ritual of getting everything out and beginning. Painting in short increments is especially helpful for models I need, but don't really want to paint. I've got an ogre hunter that I really despise as a model, but I want him for his contribution to the army. I can't spend more than 15 minutes on him before I want to do something else. It's enough time to do a single color and then quit for a while.

Exercise vs. Performance. I've noticed I have a resistance to playing new board games. I think it's because it feels like exercise. Exercise is one of those things you resist doing, but when you finally do, you really enjoy it and wish you could hold on to the memory of that feeling for the next time you're reluctant. Role-playing games feel like performance, rather than exercise. I don't feel the reluctance to get started, although I do feel the reluctance to re-commit to long campaigns. There's a creative, emotional energetic commitment to role-playing games, whereas board games just take up some of your mental CPU cycles.

Rules. For some reason I'm comfortable with the fuzziness of role-playing rules, but that fuzziness bothers me when it comes to miniature gaming. Maybe it's the commitment to building an army, or maybe it's because miniature gaming seems like a complicated version of a board game, which generally has well-defined rules. I can see why gamers gravitate towards board games as they get older.

Dice. I've picked up the habit of dice as accessories, requiring a new set for each army/character with a matching bag. It makes me feel pretty. ;)

Ogre hunter with sabretusks