So, first things first… Happy New Year!
It’s 2025, a time that promises great change and the anxiety and trepidation that naturally comes along with such change. What with all the war, strife, and political upheaval in the world right now, I suppose we could all use some good news.
Well, I don’t have any, especially if you are a longtime fan of this website.
You see, Today marks a watershed moment in my content creation career (if you can call what I’ve been doing a career). As of this moment, I have retired from podcasting, just as I retired from Livestreaming and video content creation back in 2020. My reasoning for this is exactly the same as why I quit Livestreaming: My health.
For those of you who have been listening to “Loot Mechanics” the last year or so, you may have noticed that my voice has been rough, and breaks quite often. I sound like a lifelong smoker, when I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. The reason for the decline in my vocal abilities is clear, though: I have caught COVID-19 variants four times since 2021, and twice in the last 12 months (in January and September of 2024).
COVID has done a number on my voice, to the point where I can’t hold a simple, short conversation without my voice starting the crack and break. It is irritating, in more ways than one, and I have to do something about it. Since I talk for a living in the Real World (I’m a Facilities Dispatcher for a very large Not-For-Profit Healthcare organization), I need to reserve my voice for the job first, talking with my sweetie second, and everything else last.
So my big brother Beoulus and I recorded the last few episodes of “Loot Mechanics” back in mid-December, and I recorded the last episodes of “The Worst Actual-Play Podcast Ever!” about 18 months ago. Seriously, I was over a year ahead on my Actual-Play, when I decided to take a few months off before recording the fifth season… only to never be able to come back. At least the format of that show worked in my favor, with monthly game changes, so no one is left hanging with the show’s cancellation.
This really sucks, because I truly enjoy podcasting, especially doing the Actual-Plays, but I just can’t keep up any longer. Beoulus was quite happy to walk away from LM when we did, because he knew I was struggling. We will continue to hang out and talk about games, just not in the formal setting of a weekly podcast.
“How’s that”, you ask? Simple.
We still have the Discord channel (see link in the site header), and we plan to get together when we can to talk on the Discord channel while playing multiplayer games. Beoulus plans to drag me, kicking and screaming, through many of his favorite games. “Baldur’s Gate 3”, “Minecraft Dungeons”, and of course “No Man’s Sky” have all been mentioned as games in which I will not be able to escape his grasp.
Regardless, I plan to rework the current voice chat channels on our Discord server, opening them up for all to use. I will be locking one channel down to use by specified site members, if we find that Trolls are interrupting our gaming sessions, but otherwise the server will be open for our community’s use.
Now then, while I know that no one reads blogs anymore, I do plan to return to my OG roots, and blast back into blogging. The goal is to post once a week, but I’m not going to keep myself locked down to that, and will basically post when I have something to say. As many of you know, I often have a LOT to say on gaming, so this shouldn’t be a problem. Also, since I won’t be podcasting any longer, I will be able to blog in the moment about current topics, as opposed to waiting up to two weeks to do so.
I have been podcasting in one form or another since 2008, and have been blogging longer than the term “blogging” has been actively in use (my internet posts range back to the mid-to-late 1990’s). So I’ve been at this for the better part of 30 years, and while no one may really be reading my posts anymore, I will continue to type them out, if only for myself.
This might also get me back into working on my latest Tabletop Roleplaying game…
