The party makes their way to Phandalin. An outpost south of the Triboar Trail. There they meet interesting people and hear a few rumors. Oh, and there’s talk of ruffians that go by the name of The Redbrands.
Category: Gaming
Articles about my favorite hobby – roleplaying games (Pathfinder, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Spycraft, Savage Worlds, FATE, Castles & Crusades, Corporation, conventions, events, and whatever else comes up.
002 Clearing out the Cave
Episode 002 recaps the details that occurred in the session where the pc’s enter the cave in search of Gundren Rockseeker and ultimate discovery of Sidlar Hallwinter. The demise of Klarg the bugbear takes place and now the party needs to choose their next action.
001 Tasked to Deliver Supplies
Session 1 recap
You are hired by Gundren Rockseeker to take a shipment of supplies from Neverwinter to Barthen’s Provisions located in Phandalin, an outpost that attracts quite a few miners.
Here’s the recap.
Podcasts and Launch of Talent Jockey
Being a Recruiter has it’s ups and downs. You get the high of making an offer and getting back an acceptance. The lows are when that acceptance does not happen. You make a lot of different connections. One of them I made was my buddy, Brett. He was a contractor at the time and my employer was looking to bring him on as a full-time employee. Later on we realized we were both gamers. Since then we’d do lunch every couple weeks, or Brett would stop by my desk, and we’d talk about roleplaying games.
I have always been an avid listener of podcasts, mostly ones that relate to roleplaying games. Then it dawned on me, Brett and I talk a lot about them, why don’t we do one? At the time of this entry we have completed 15 episodes of Gaming and BS. Careful, we have an ‘explicit’ rating on the show. We tend to be passionate about our hobby and it comes through like a couple long-shore men. I love doing the show. I can’t believe we have listeners and subscribers, and that we have been at it consistently for 15 weeks!
Somewhere I came across Cliff Ravenscraft. He’s known as the Podcast Answer Man. It might have been one of his tutorials. Regardless, I have been devouring his episodes and has been quite an inspiration. It’s not just his show, it’s his genuine nature and his transparency. His show started out to help people do podcasting but it’s morphed into a mix of different topics. There is still podcasting, but there is also social media, personal/professional development, advice, and much more. It’s not hard technical, which is a turn off for some, but I don’t mind. It’s really a show to help people take their game to another level. Some day I’ll meet Cliff and personally thank him.
All of the above has lead me to launch TalentJockey.com. It is starting out as a podcast that helps job seekers, recruiters and hiring managers navigate the world that is talent acquisition. Eventually I will do workshops, public speaking, and advising. It is truly exciting. It will involve hard work and diligence, no question. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Even in roleplaying games we say that the journey is the fun part of it all.
If you’re interested in podcasting or obtaining advice on new media, then Cliff’s your guy and you should check out PodcastAnswerMan.com. If you like roleplaying games, and the occasional f bomb doesn’t offend you, then check out Gaming and BS. G&BS is what I do for fun. Talent Jockey is truly a new venture, and a professional one at that. I try to keep it light. Anyone that knows me, knows my demeanor. Check out the website for episodes and resources for my three audiences – job seekers, recruiters and hiring managers.
Gamer Business Card
Vista Print had a deal for low-cost business cards. I got inspired after I saw one of their templates. I made the following and seemed to get some pretty good feedback when I posted pics of the product on G+. I wanted to keep in touch with gamers that I run into at cons and thought this would be pretty cool to pass along. Modeled after the old OSR, yellow, 1st ed AD&D character sheets.
Gamehole Con Wrap Up
This past weekend I attended the first ever GameHole gaming convention here in Madison, WI. I can’t recall how I initially found out about the event. I know I ran into Josh Hoyt, overseeing gaming for the con, when I gamed with him at GaryCon in March. He was promoting the con there at the con located in Lake Geneva.
I can’t even recall if Madison had a gaming convention prior to this new venture. Correct me in the comments if I’m wrong. I don’t include WisCon, or any other of the geek-related events like Odd Con, Tesla Con, Geekkon, etc. Gaming seems to take a back seat at those events. I really wanted to see GameHole to succeed. The Madison area has more gaming stores (read it folks, we have at least 5) per capita than anywhere else in the US. We’re a decent sized city, population 250k for Madison and more than 150k for the burbs an outskirts. We’re about an hour away from Milwaukee, 4 hours from the twin cities, and a couple hours from Chicago. Not a bad place for a weekend of gaming fun.
There are certainly obstacles and hurdles to having a successful gaming convention. Having 5+ gaming stores in the area makes one wonder ‘why go to a local con when I can just game at one of the stores’? Some may even prefer to game with their own group in the privacy of someone’s house. Then there’s the cost of renting a hotel, the huge amounts of time that you have to dedicate to coordinate everything to include finding sponsors, speakers, a website, food, ecommerce, policies, marketing, and the list goes on and on. There are probably more reasons on how a con can fail than succeed. It can be a scary endeavor. Sure, many people are happy to just break even, but running in the red does nobody any favors. I gotta give these guys a lot of credit just based on the gumption to try and make it happen.
So GameCon
What can I say? I was really impressed. Continue reading Gamehole Con Wrap Up