Shattered Kingdoms

So I was looking for some people to play games with, dove into DnD on discord. Started doing some text role plays. Avrae bot is cool, but finding groups to play with is terrible. Then I remembered there's a whole game here. Automated, text, people, and I think its easier than it has ever been to get started. Anyway, long time, no see, my SK peeps. I'm not on most of the social media, but I'm still around and looking to play more SK.

One thing that should be said is that I am thankful for all of you folks. Even you haters. I wish I had been an even better staff member than I was. I believe I had turned some good folks off and for that I am sorry. Most of you are lovable folks who have mostly good places in my memories. I apologize for being young and butting heads with folks that I did. I've come back to find some old friends and hopefully to negotiate acceptance of mistakes made and forgiven. Or you can just come PK me into the dirt.

I'm old, mostly retired. I love playing games still. I live a full time adventure now. Working on a third year living off grid. Moving with the weather and generating solar power to run satellite and computers. I'm headed to Alaska this month. Love to chat or anything with you folks. It wouldn't be hard to guess who I'm playing currently...

Updates on stuff from this side of the screen. I might be screaming into the void, but maybe someone will creep out of the shadows and start screaming back.

Passed from Idaho to British Columbia. Saw our first bears there. Moved through Alberta and back into northern BC yesterday. Saw all kinds of wildlife! Black bear, grizzly bear, moose, caribou, mountain goat, and a handful of porcupine! I had no idea they were so prevalent here. The adventure continues into the Yukon, where we have set up camp about a half mile from the Alaska Highway. Sun for 20 hours and gaining. Time for some small repairs before hitting the road for the last five hundred miles or so to the Alaska border.

Been trying to get online in the down times, but really struggling to stay awake after long road hours. Excited to join the media team for the first ever Vanstock in Palmer, Alaska in July. Really enjoying the play when I can get on SK.

Random side question: does the site respond like molasses for everyone else?

To answer the big question No you are never to old to play games but you may not be able to play them as much as you want too.

The site moves like Molasses because there is 399 bots crawling the site for AI compared to the 1 real user per day.

As far as RL Stuff sounds like a lot of fun the world is a big place and lots to see and do good thing SK will basically work from anywhere in the world.

Life's too short to feel too old and hand-wring over doing what you want. If that's games, have at it. I got sucked back into SK when I had the opportunity to DM a campaign for my wife and some of her coworkers. It's a very comfortable exercise in pivoting to different voices quickly - hadn't done anything like it in ages. The campaign fell apart as they do with life happening. I still try to jump down to the local card shop at least once a quarter - they run one-shots on Sundays.

I think hope we all know we could've done better in the past, and are gentle with ourselves knowing future us is going to look back to today with the same lens. I think that way, at least.

I ebb and flow. I play pretty intensely for a bit, then flake out for a bit. I just embrace the burn bright/burn out/rebirth cycle of my relationship with games these days. Mostly on my phone during work hours and then evenings + a whiskey or three. It stings a bit that SK is pretty much 'feature complete' now, but it's pretty hard to expect a game to have an active development cycle of 25-30 years. Sure, some MUDs manage it, but not many.

I wish retirement was in the cards anytime soon. I work in a (currently poison-pill) combination of 'healthcare' and 'government'. My wife and I just got back from a long Alaska trip end of last week - beautiful country, cold as [REDACTED]. I mostly do some trash-tier woodworking and upkeep projects on an old house, game, try to consume live arts when I can, and travel.

Good to have some fresh (old?) blood poking around. I hope we all want at least a little sense of community with [gestures vaguely at the world]. Just know with a 25 year old text-base game, we still manage have a spectrum of people from 'chill' to 'xbox live 13-year-old leaving their mic open'