What this blog is about and why I created it

What is this blog about?

The short version: solo focused tabletop gaming

For those of you only interested in actual solo content, feel free to ignore this post and instead explore the rest of this blog. Look through the different categories in the header, and I'm sure that you'll find something for your preferred genre of game.
If you are, however, interested in the details and the thoughts that went into the creation of this hobby blog, then read on. I hope you learn something interesting or even get inspired to start your own blog.

• Project Showcases
• Miniature painting, terrain building, kitbashing, retrospectives
• Actual Plays
• Solo roleplaying games of all sorts - varied genres and playstyles
• After Action Reports (AARs)
• Retelling and war stories of solo miniature wargames and boardgames
• First Impressions
• Overviews and impressions of solo relevant tabletop products
• Reviews
• These will be on the rarer side as I only like to review products that I have thoroughly tested by using them during my sessions
• Solo Resources
• Useful tools and supplements that I either personally use or have created for my games

Why create this blog?

In an endless ocean of hobby blogs floating around the Internet, why create another?

Why am I planning to spend all this time writing to an audience that most likely won’t exist? The short and easy answer: I think it will be an enjoyable thing to do.

The actual answer is a bit longer because I spent quite a long time thinking about whether I should dedicate myself to this project. Presenting your hobby experiences in a readable format takes more time than you might think.

For those of you only interested in actual solo content, feel free to ignore this post and instead explore the rest of this blog.

The main reasons

• Sharing is fun
• Personal archive
• I like reading other hobby blogs
• Giving back to the community

Sharing is fun

I spent most of my time in the tabletop hobby playing traditional multiplayer games. I started with miniature wargames and then quickly moved to being a GM for roleplaying games as I really liked to see how the events of the game interacted with the world. These games are an inherently social experience, and they are able to create shared war stories that are fun to recount even years after the event itself.

Solo games are obviously not a social experience by default. Most of them get set up, played, and packed up again without interacting with another human being. There’s nothing wrong with that of course - many people find this to be one of the best aspects of solo games after all - but I learned that my personal experience is enhanced when I get to talk about some of my gaming sessions. Not every session needs recounting (and some are better off forgotten), but the world of solo tabletop games has so much to offer, that it seems a shame not to share these stories with other people.

Writing a blog isn’t the same as an active dialog, but it fits that perfect parasocial sweet spot where I can take as much time as I want, and you (the reader) can pick and choose the content you want to read and how you want to consume it.

Personal archive

Handwritten journals and notebooks will always have a special place in my heart, but the reality of everyday life is that these tomes of memory are prone to get damaged, lost, or even destroyed. Digital notes may not have the same comforting charm, but they are so much easier to store and backup that they’ve won me over. The fact that I am going to digitally record most of my sessions anyway gave me the final nudge to start this blog.

Another benefit of a blog is that it’s independent of my personal storage solutions. It will act as a sort of personal archive, and the fact that I will be able to visit it even years after making the final post is really exciting to me. Which leads me to my next reason:

I like reading other hobby blogs

When I started this hobby as a kid, it was actually incredibly difficult for me to stop comparing myself to the work that others chose to share. They all were vastly more skilled than teenage me, and it took me a very long time (and a several year long break) to overcome these insecurities and for me to start comparing myself to my older work instead.

Hobby blogs were vital in that process. They felt more ‘real’ in a sense as they offered me a broader sense of the hobby community and made me realize that it’s not just Golden Demon or Crystal Brush winners everywhere.

This goes for most things in life: never compare your ‘behind the scenes’ with the highlights others choose to share.

The passion to try new things, and the willingness to talk about failed projects, made me fall in love with the concept of sharing your hobby experiences. I’ve discovered multiple blogs years after they stopped being active, and I'm almost always discovering something interesting that is new to me or otherwise inspires me.

I really hope that my blog can do the same to someone out there and if I manage to reach even a single person, it will have been wort it.

Giving back to the community

I couldn’t possibly count the times the tabletop gaming community has provided me with free and useful resources. It’s actually mind-boggling how much content is out there. You could spend years playing different games and never spend a cent. Remember to support small content creators, as they are the invisible foundation of large parts of the community!

A mountain of half-finished projects is a stark reminder of the fact that I haven’t yet given anything back to this amazing community. Hastily scribbled homebrew, that gets created on a ‘needed-to-play’ basis, gets forgotten after it’s needed and needlessly recreated a few months later.

This blog will help me organize any systems, rules, and homebrew nonsense I create for my sessions. If any of you get any use out of them, then even better. It’s about time that I put my work out there.