So, first and foremost, gentle readers, I apologize for the….

(checks amount of time since last post)

…very long time since I last posted on this most haphazard of blogs. To put it frankly, I simply had a lot going on in my life: my work has become more intense and demanding, I had moved into a new place last year, and even more recently I have become a full-time cat dad again. Prior to that, I had just been dealing with the worst feeling of burnout. Call it depression, call it exhaustion, call it the inevitable weight on life bearing down on you like a soul-crushing anvil, but the result is that for the past few years I’ve barely gotten any writing done. Or wargaming. Or painting. Or…really much of anything I used to enjoy, if I’m honest.

Starting today, I’m trying to change that, and I’m starting here with this post.

Last month, my girlfriend took up the 2025 Character Creation Challenge, as started and detailed here on the blog of TardisCaptain. Essentially, the idea is to create a new character in an RPG system once per day, each day, in January, as an exercise to get your creativity flowing, to learn about different RPG systems and to generally try to make interesting characters. You don’t necessarily need to plan on using any of these characters: it is more about creating something new than actually planning something for a new campaign.

With all of that being said…it is not exactly January any more. And also, a lot of game systems are not exactly easy to make a character for in one sitting.

Thankfully, however, after chatting with a few of my friends on Discord about this little idea, we’ve all agreed that it still sounds like a fun idea and that we’d all like to try it.

SO…

As part of a group effort, I am now going to be taking on my own version of the 2025 Character Creation Challenge here on this blog…with a few caveats. Instead of once per day, for instance, I will be doing once per week. This, I think, will give me ample opportunity to read up more thoroughly on rules, to write accompanying fiction blurbs, and to really flesh out the character as much as I’d like. Given that I am still very much at the mercy of an exhausting 9-5 work week, I think giving myself this amount of space is generally for the best, and I think it will ultimately do me a lot of good. I see this whole exercise primarily as an excuse to get some real writing done again, after what feels a far, far too lengthy hiatus of me just being endlessly distracted by the internet, dealing with real life crap and sinking into a mire of imposter syndrome. So if I get to do that and indulge in my love of TTRPGs as well, then I see that as a win!

Finally: I hope to explore a lot of TTRPGs I’ve never looked at before, both old and new. I know that my girlfriend took the opportunity to dabble in titles such as Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, Cyberpunk RED, Lancer, Delta Green, Don’t Rest Your Head, Jamais Vu and even her own homegrown system. Inspired by this, I would absolutely like to take the time to dabble in newer systems as well– Cohors Cthulhu, Mork Borg, and Free League’s Alien RPG,have all caught my attention. And who knows, maybe I’ll find a system that I like enough that I’ll really want to play it at some point. Maybe, possibly.

So, as much as the more realistic, pessimistic part of my brain is cautioning that I can’t do this indefinitely and might get tired of this after a while, the exciteable hype man part of my brain is going full Shia LaBeouf and screaming “DO IT!” So, I guess I’m doing it.

Starting tomorrow, that is. I may or may not be attempting to convert a CRPG character into a TTRPG. Badly.

Till next time!