Larping intro.

Damn I am talkative today...

I have had a lot of friends asking if I would come back to LARPing (both for local LARPs Alliance and Oz). I have been warring over that idea for a long time. I really do enjoy the hobby, but it is expensive, time consuming and I am not sure if I enjoy it as much as I used (or if I even actually enjoyed it as much as I thought I did). It is a mixed bag for me, no regrets, but a lot of ups and downs and as I get older I am not sure which way I want to go.

I suspect I will have many posts about LARPing, with having attended three boffer larps (Legacies, Amtgard and Dying Light), ran two of them as both head of departments and as owners. Jello and I have designed two LARPs, one from the ground up (and another is in the pipeline). In addition I have had friends attend two other LARPs and their stories match up almost exactly with my experiences.
I think I will break down the pros and cons here and then address those separately.

PROS
The role-play
The sense of community
The costuming
Learning new skills

CONS
The role-play
The sense of community
The costuming
The monetary and emotional/physical cost

You might think it is weird that three of the items are both pros and cons, but actually the extremes of each of these are what is great and horrible about LARPS.

Those items are just the things I think everyone comes across, there are additional things I want to post about, such as designing LARP rules, handling disputes, dealing with emergencies, etc.

I suspect I will post more today :)

Hobbies

Well, even though I am tired a lot from working, evidently my current job is less draining then my higher end prior job. I feel like doing things. I am running Shadowrun fairly regularly, I am starting to collect Warhammer 40k (and will start playing when I get my army built up enough), and I am considering a D&D or some other "easy running" game for Sundays.
 
I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into Warhammer, but Vince and Chuck have gotten me interested. So interested in fact that I bought a Space Marine squad and Captain (Space Marines because they are a good neutral army to start with). These are the first figs I have bought and began to paint in 20 years. Also I just noticed how bad my eyes are, I am going to have to buy one of those lighted magnifying setups so I can paint, so I can keep my lines straight.

I decided to play a no-name Chapter. I don't want a Chapter of Marines that has a specific paint scheme, I want to paint all different types of colors, above is the first squad painted about 3/4 of the way, of course after getting this far I have decided to paint my future Marines in German Wehrmacht colors (color scheme depending on squad). But I can always add four extra standard Marines painted differently if I need to.

I do plan on collecting a sizable Space Marine force, and then a second army that I am debating on. Once that is underway I want to also collect Bolt Action (World War II miniature game) and then finally Warhammer Fantasy. If nothing else I really like painting figs (and they will only get better from here).

I also want to play some Song of Blades, I need to pick up some generic fantasy figures for that though.

One other hobby I have gotten into is expanding my Youtube experience by opening a channel called "Things You Should Know". Basically it will be short 5-10 minute videos on different subjects such as accounting/auditing, government workings (I find a lot of misinformation here), historical things, biography and gaming (such as reviews of game systems, gaming techniques, etc). I put the first one  up last week. I am working on a sizable list of future videos, should have them regularly starting sometime this week.

I posted my first video for the channel. I talk about the common myth that we pay a flat tax rate and thus if we get a raise, sometimes we actually lose money because of taxes. Fortunately for all of us, that isn't true.