Dirt Cheap - Terrain Fortified bunker from Troll Trader

Dirt Cheap Terrain Fortified Barracks by Troll Trader

Why is it so hard to be a gaming parent.

Recently I have been getting the itch, the itch that says I have been away from tabletop gaming for too long. Having two young children however does not make this easy. Now I'm sure there are those who are saying what's the problem here, set a day aside and go out to a local club or group and hang out and chill for a few hours. Now here is how it is for me, I work a job where I am working sometimes very long shifts that do not have set days. I also do not like leaving my wife for several hours in the evening to try and get both tykes to sleep on her own, especially when I have been at work all day.You could say at the end of the day I do feel guilty about going out as my wife has recently decided to leave work to be the primary carer for the children and as such doesn't get a lot of  free time to herself, I'm sure this is a common problem with a lot of spouses as well.

So some of you out there are going ok so why not do it from the comfort of your own home. The internet is great for rpg's nowadays what with all the online tabletop programs why not  just do a game online. Well here is the next problem, my kids ... don't really have a set bed time. Now before someone rants at me, at the moment my eldest is not even 3 and is not in preschool and gets plenty of sleep and so you know no bigge, So long as my eldest is in bed and trying to go to sleep by 10 I'm happy, Also we are a co sleeping family so its not a case of me dumping them in bed and letting them scream it out. The other one my lil daughter is not even a year so she's a temperamental sleeper at best. Getting back on topic this obviously means there will be little ones trying to get my attention whilst gaming which can be a distracting for other players. SO yeah lots of problems to overcome but where to start.

Here was my great plan I would assemble a group of friends to game with at a non fixed time every 2 weeks or so and I would be the GM. Why am I the GM? Simple, I am the person with the kids its me who is struggling to commit to a group so I will run the game so I can set the time and day we play etc so this sounds great. Turns out not so much. It seems that putting a group together to game has been somewhat difficult, so far I have encountered players who don't want to play the games I want to run  (who doesn't want to do Iron Kingdoms I mean seriously). I have players unwilling to commit because of not wanting to put some time aside every 2 weeks to a random date we'd all set. Setting a day hasn't helped with that either as the only other day I have off consistently is Sunday and that's when it seems to be everyone else's games night (fair enough). My favourite one of all is that the ones who are interested and never get back to me at all when I'm setting up dates for games.

So now at my wits end unable to even get a random one shot game going by placing a call out amongst my peers has now driven me to despair, What is one supposed to do to get a game going, are there any other gamer parents out there having the same problems and trying to come up with solutions? Or maybe do we need a place for hard working parents with little free time to get together somewhere online and sought out gaming groups. A place where we can set up our groups and say This is what free time I have what can you guys do lets get together like every two weeks and adventure.

Hi I'm Fen Tiger and I would love to run a iron kingdoms game every 2 weeks for some folks if they don't mind gaming between half 6 and half 8pm GMT.. Also please be warned there will be screaming munchkins from time to time.

T T T TRIPLE KILL!

So I have finally begun a monthly Iron kingdoms campaign you can watch us play live on twitch at www.twitch.tv/fen_tiger. So far weve had 2 games split over 3 sessions. And hoo boy never taken that long to do a average sized dungeon. Ill set the scene we had 4 players:
• Dwarven mechanik/seaforge commission and merc treasurer played by rob
• Ordic aristocrat/miltary officer and captain of merc company played by my wife Kylie
• Iosian gunmage/duelist played by Dave
• Caspian Sorcerer/Alchemist played by Jenny

This merc company low on funds and loaded with ammunition land at ternon crag after a disastrous mossion in Llael. Immediately the taverfrn is found drinks are drunk Rob goes off buying needed materials with there dwindling money.

They find out that the Sheriff is looking for a geoup of well armed people to look into citizens gone missing from there own homes in the dead of night. They track the missing persons to a abandoned mine shaft.
Inside the shaft they find monstrous grotesc creatures carving up the citizens of ternon crag and immediately death ensues. Straight into combat the party find out how terrifying combat in the iron kingdoms can be as one of the beasts takes a pistol and shoots Dave for mass damage. Immediately the team comes up with a new plan everyone behind Robs labor jack which proceeds to tear onto them. Feeling confident that a 2 wide corridor and a jack what takes up all the room will contain hold back the butchers of doom.

Next session comes along Jenny was not avalible and we were down a team mate. Continuing into tje mine they find the coridkrs widen tears stream from robs eyes. As new combat rages on. Perception rolls are taken each turn for all the beasties nearby. They soo  find that the creatures have managed to circle around the party and attack them from the rear. After a quite epic combat round is resolved the party search the roo.s to fi d loot vlasting powder and jerkyed remaoms of humans dwarves and trollkin.

Due to outside reasons we had to due the second half of the session the followong week. This time my wife was unavailable but Jenny was and the boss dight ensued. 1 boss monster, 2 lieutenants and 3 minions. The team adopted rhe plan of plugging the hole with a jack and Rob  plugging the end gap. And this is where the party learned the next part of ik rpgs combat viciousness.

Jenny and dave now only have one choice to shoot over Rob as hes in the way of there target. So there is rob and his jack plugging the gap taking a beating getting bloodied up by the lieutenants at the same time bullets and ice spells are going over there heads. Then the unthinkable happened jenny shot a boosted spell at the lt dighting rob missed she then rolled to see if she hits rob and she does dealing almost max damage as robs armour stat is reduced when hit from behind. Rob goes down bleeding out.  At this point the team begins to panic a lt and the minions ard down but the other lt and the boss are still standing and the boss has got full health.

Jenny tries to revive rob whilst dave holds the gap as the jack continues irts last order.unable to revive rob jenny stands there confused and unable to figure out what to do dave defiant that they can take the beasts or die trying.  Suddenly as if spurred on by the gods the dwarf wakes up nearly dead and orders the two to run as they do he blows the blasting powder taking the jack himself and the monsters. With the explosion and caved in the mine juat as the group escaped.

So wounded physicaly and moraly the party sets off to town to get there reward and set sail to Corvis the city of ghosts.

It was by that point I realised 3 games ive run with rob in and 3 times his characters have died. Unlucky or divine planning ... ill nevet tell.

COSMIC REBOOT!!!

Greetings geeks hows it going Fen here back after ankther long hiatus.
Where have I been you ask and all I can say is im a daddy. Thats right 11months ago my son was born and boy have I been busy. So I havent had much chance to do alot of things I hsed to do. So why reboot the blog after so long you ask, simple my good people I wish to get back to doing the things I love. Blogging is something I can easily get on with easily.

When it comes to being a dad you find time is limited specially when I spend half ky free time looking after the lil man solo because tbe missus is working again aswell. In doing so ive had to have a clean out of stuff I aint vonna use no more eg my 9k point space marine army. But getging rid of those items frees me up to focus on other interests.
During my break from blogging I tried my hand at doing a lets play series on youtube starting doing a minecraft let's play with my wife and then moving o  to Kerbal space program. I didn't get far due to its easy to hit record but time consuming to do editing. I want to give this another shot as I enjoyed what I did and I have some ideas on what I want to record.

I badly want to get back into playing warmachine and hordes as hell that gane is fun. But this requires the ability to go out to a store or club and find a opponent, which as described earlier is tough because of work and family commitments.

Now how bout rpgs can I get back to playing me some pnp rpg. Possibly if im lucky. It will be difficult to put together a game on a weekly basis but a monthly basis I could probably do one session a month. I doubt I would be able to get into a gaming group as a player easily due to committing to a weekly gaming session. Another possible probelm is assembling a group of player's in person due to people movi g around my usual group has dispersed to the four winds. The best option would be to assemble a gaming group online using skype and roll20 virtual game table.
With that decided  I need to decide what to run.
Well more on that next time folks until then have fun and be safe.

Green lantern vs the very hungry caterpillar

The ultimate battle for the galaxy

We did it again

Watch "Cambridgeshire Jedi Noobs Part 2" on YouTube
Yep we just couldnt help ourselves so here is part 2