Update: A New Future For Chaos Magic

Needless to say that I'm long overdue for an update. The pandemic introduce new issues for me and made old problems that has plague the blog for a while worse.  One reason I will get into here is that I think this blog has lost its identity and for a long time I've struggle to figure out where to go to next. When I first got into war gaming being able to make my armies truly my own was extremely important. And not just what my vision of an army in that particular gaming world but an army that is independ of the game world I'm playing in.  The lore behind the armies I play are something wholly my own.  I started this blog because I wanted someplace where I could post the stories I created for my armies and have my friends read it.  The death of Warhammer Fantasy greatly hurt this blog.  At the time none of my local friends had any interest in moving to Age of Sigmar and I had no interest in playing the fan game 9th Age.  I got interested in other games but none of them really fit the needs of the blog.  To be a replacement for Warhammer Fantasy a game needed 3 things.  It had to be a game I was personally really excited to play.  It had to be a game that I could find other people willing to invest in and play the game.  And it had to be a game that lend itself well to game by game storytelling.  All the games I got into since the end of fantasy hit one or two of these points.  I couldn't find one that hit all 3 points.

So between all that and severe anxiety writing, I've been undecided on where to go next for a while.  I felt that whatever plans I come up with to replace the hole Warhammer Fantasy left, I wanted them to be something that combines games and storytelling.  And then in my indecisiveness I considered if that was worth being an issue at all.  It was such a struggle trying to figure out what I wanted to do.  This year I decided to put in the effort to make sure I was actually moving forward with personal goals, one of which is posting stories here.  There are a handful of projects that I've been thinking about or have already put in some work.  I think it is finally time to make those projects a reality on this blog.  This will be a very new look and direction for the blog as pen and paper role-playing games plays a big part in many of my new projects.  How that will affect the blog will be by me converting the game sessions into narrative chapters.  My goal is for the sessions to read like they are apart of a novel.  I will also write short stories that will be set in these new game universes.  This will be information player characters already know, something the players will learn about later or just something to flesh out the worlds.  Any additional content will be depended on the project as well as I'm still toying with things.  With that overview, here are the projects I will be starting.

My most ambitions project I'm currently calling Lancer X Battletech.  It is my own game world that borrows some ideas from the mech pen and paper role playing game Lancer and the 40 years old mech war game Battletech.  At its core the project is a Lancer game with the players being involved in a global militry conflict.  I will be keeping track of both sides combat strength during the campaign in a similar way to a detail tabletop war game campaign.  The players themselves will have a lot of control on the direction they go as a team.  As a result, any battle that lacks the players will be played out using the Battletech system.  These battles can greatly affect the story and the overall direction of the war.  The results of these games will be reported here either as a game battle report or told as an in universe narrative story.  Because the size of this project is so big, I don't plan on starting it any time soon.  My needs will require a large collection of Battletech minis.  I did invest in the last 2 Battletech kickstarters so I do own a lot of models with A LOT more coming soon.  Still that might not be enough so it will take some time buying and painting up my collection to reach what I have in mind.  Also for special mechs (which includes both enemy bosses and players "ultimate" design) I want to put together my own custom designs by using Gundam kits.  Lastly I want more experiences in running role playing games before trying something this massive.  I ran games before but not very often and what I did run didn't last very long.

So in the meantime I will be writing articles describing the elements of the setting.  There are things my eventual players will need to know before they make their characters.  I also would like to have lore that would be interesting if players wanted to know more the setting but is not mandatory.  And the purpose of posting it here is for it to be valuable to the players and still be entertaining for science fiction/fanstay fans. I'm also toying with the idea of running another roleplaying game or two in the setting, ones that are much smaller and shorter.  There are two possible systems I'm considering.  One of couse would be Lancer.  One of the reasons to run a smaller game is to get more experience game mastering so I might as well do it with the same system I'm planning the massive game with.  And using Lancer it wouldn't be hard to come up with a side adventure that would feel like a complete story on its own and setup for things to come in the bigger campaign.  My other idea for running a game in the setting is for a very VERY different game.  The other game I'm considering running is called "You're In Space And Everything's Fucked."  You can probably imagine the type of game that is and I can easy come up with an adventure using it that will tie into my bigger campaign and hint at some very sinsiter stuff that won't otherwise reveal itself for a while.  And yes, that was the exact title of the game.

And that summarizes my plans on this project.  The next few months I will be posting articles describing the setting and maybe a few pictures of how my Battletech forces is coming.  But I will not be showing off any of my Gundam conversions, those deserve to be reveal for the first time in the story.  And I might run a surprise game or two.

My second project is a modern fantasy role playing setting I call Dreams and Nightmares.  I've had several ideas to run modern fantasy games using the new "World of Darkness" system or as it now known as Chronicles of Darkness.  The version that became Dreams and Nightmares came about suddenly when I volunteered to run a game for my friends.  I created my setting starting with Mage the Awakening Second Edition and trying to make it something more superhero like.  After getting a general idea of the type of characters my friends wanted to play, I expanded on the setting, making it more of my own thing.  Overall it is still very similar to the Mage default setting but that isn't going to last.  Unfortunately that friend group is not good at meeting regularly.  So much that my friends still have not finished making their characters.  Yet there is still interest in playing and I've keep expanding on the setting.  The point when I decided I wanted Dreams and Nightmares to be a blog project was when I realize why I felt uneasy about running a Beyond the Supernatural RPG.  I was looking for a game to run and I've enjoy Palladium games in the past.  Yet there was something about Beyond the Supernatural that made me not want to run it.  I finally realize it was because I had already put so much energy into developing one modern fantasy game and I was reluctanted to do it again when Dreams and Nightmares was still sitting on the shelve.  The two games are too different to try to run them both in the same setting... or are they?  I came to an epiphany remembering (possibly missremembering) in my reading of the Mage setting, psychic stuff was mention to exist but I didn't see any game rules for it.  And Beyond the Supernatural is game from the players point of view nearly all psychic.  Even if I am wrong about Mage and it does have its own rules for psychics, I've decide Beyond the Supernatural rules is how psychic works in Dreams and Nightmares.  In addition, adding a second rule set to a setting opens the door for third and more.  Plus Mage the Awakening itself is one of about 10 game lines that was design to somewhat work together.  Now in my mind I have ideas of multiple campaigns all using different gaming systems to reach an "Avengers: Endgame" like conclusion using yet another game system, or even every player using a different systems.  I know this probably sounds needlessly complicated but I do gravitate towards complex games and I've spend some time thinking how I could run two different game systems at the same time and why.

What would this all look like?  First I will continue trying to get the Mage game off the ground and in a few months try to get a Beyond the Supernatural game running as well.  Like Lancer I planning on writing lore articles that describe the setting as well as a series of short stories set in the world.  I will enjoy trying to figure out how to write short stories with characters whom identities are both secret with enough information to know who they are when they are reveal in the campaigns.

I've been interested in certain types of history for all my life.  In fact when I was in college I took so many history classes on the side that I was closer to a history degree than my declared degree.  And I've been thinking about doing something with history for a while so while I was coming up with ideas for revamping the blog, I figured might as well try now.  I don't know how well this is going to work on (or even what exactly this is going to look like) but I think it is time for me to see what I can do on this front.

The plan is for me to pick something about history and then spend three or four months researching it.  After that try to come up with something interesting that I learned using miniatures.  Still not sure how miniatures will play a role in this as I'm not really into painting models historically accurate.  I'll just see what ideas I come up with when I doing the research.  A possible example what this will look like is an article about a particular time in history and then I will talk about a historical game that tries to recreate that experience and go over what the game gets rights and what it glosses over.

I have one more project I want to mention here and I called it Halloween.  It is simply a serial series that will only have chapters release in October.  It will have artwork that consist of miniatures on a watercolor background.  Watercolor painting is something I've recently pick up for the sole purpose of doing something like this with it.  I don't consider myself good at it so there will probably be fewer pictures at the beginning while I'm practicing to get better.  And that is basically it.  Halloween is very different from everything else I do here given it does not have a gaming component and it is purely fiction.  It is a fantasy setting that I took some inspiration from Norse Mythology and it can be expanded upon in many different ways.  But I think I want to wait until the series starts before discussing side projects for it.

That leaves 2 final points to end on.  One, these are not the only things I'm working on.  Besides everything else I've mention I want to do, this year I also want to write a novel and write a comic book series, the latter I will briefly discuss in another article here, and I want to be more active in two other blogs.  One is my Food Blog where I recount my adventures at restuarants and other related food stories.  The other is my photography blog, Mirrorless Magic.  Something else I've done since my last update is pick up photography and Mirrorless Magic is where my photography stories (not related to gaming) will go.  It will also have my Watercolor art that I mention in the Halloween section.  If a piece is more art than game, then it will be at Mirrorless Magic.  The last thing I want to mention in this update is that the one thing I've learn about me and this hobby is that things can change and can change fast.  Something new can easily change how I feel about any and or all my projects.  While I was crafting this final version of this update, Gamesworkshop release Warhammer: The Old World and I still don't know how that is going to affect me or the blog, if it does anything at all.  All I can say is that I wrote this update to be my vision for what I want this blog to be for the rest of this year and if something does change, I hope it doesn't take me another 3 years to mention it.  Let the stories begin!

The World We Live In

I finish moving at the beginning of the month. Since then I've been relaxing and getting used to the world we now find ourselves in. Needless to say the plans I had for after I had move are now completely out the window. It is kind of hard to get the motivation to work on hobby stuff when I don't know when I will get to play. In any case my art room/office still needs work to be used as intended. I need to rearrange the layout and buy new furniture so it can be a place I can always just sit down and work. So it will be a little while before I can get back to the miniature hobby. That and having to sort all my projects that got mix together in the moved. If I had to guess before I moved how many models I had, I would have been very very wrong. There is nothing like being tired of your moving and wondering if you can just toss that box in the corner that you haven't open in years in the trash. Only to open it up and realize no you can't because it has over $200 worth of miniatures in it, some of which is nicely painted.

I normally have a beginning of the year update that explains what my plans for the year are. I really struggled with it this year because I found myself listing out the games I plan to work on without being able to show any kind of progress on them. And that got to me. So I've decide to do each game with it own article after I've done some kind of modelling progress with it. This might prevent me from talking about some projects but I will feel better if I have something to show off while talking about a game. I also had 3 other projects I wanted to talk about in that failed beginning of the year update. One was that I still wanted to do my 80s project and to put a deadline on me by announcing I will having something for it done by September. That's not happening now. I have a collection of miniatures I either got for it or I pick up for other reasons that fell apart and repurposed them for the 80s project. And while I can paint these miniature up, they are just a small amount to the number I models I need and we are in a time where my abilities to get models (and paint) are limited for the foreseen future. Until we get to some kind of normality I can't have a timetable on when I can release my 80's project. I also realize I shouldn't show off my progress on the models in the 80's project for storytelling purposes. If a new villain suddenly appears in the story, the shock of it is lost on the audience if you see me painting the guy up for a year before his appearance! So in the end I do still plan on doing the 80's project but I can't talk about it until I'm ready to start releasing it. The other two projects I wanted to talk about in January are also not happening! The projects were two very different podcasts. One was a podcast on Battletech and Gundam in a similar style to my War Journal podcast with a different friend. Being able to discuss and compare these two giant mech settings with a fellow fan would have been fun and eye-opening. The other podcast was me interviewing local artists. It would have force me to study art in a way I have never experience before and learn to come up with engaging questions to people I don't know. I miss doing podcasts and I now have easy access to equipment to make them again. However the pandemic shut those podcast projects down. I don't see recording podcasts as an option for at least a year and doing it online is not an option I want to take. I think the sound quality would be terrible and trying to setup an interview online with people I don't know is a headache I do not want.

I've talked a lot about what is NOT going to happen here, I should probably get into what I will be doing. Due to social distancing, these last few weeks I've turn to looking at pen and paper games. Most of my physical games have move online to the Roll20 web site. While working on transferring my paper character sheets into digital ones for Roll20, I was filled with ideas for games that I could run. I've been thinking about running a game for a while and converting characters to Roll20 feed into that. Eventually I got an idea for a massive game universe with Pathfinder that I love so much I had to do it. Unfortunately I'm limited on what I can say about it because there will be a twist that I want to be a surprise for the players. I envision 4 ways for the game to interact with this blog; 2 ways immediately and 2 way later down the road. The setting resembles Arthurian Myth with Olympian gods. In universe there are many stories about the gods the populace tells themselves and these stories changes depending on the region. Instead of just summarizing these stories, I will write them out into full stories and post them here. The first few stories will be ones that the player characters would have heard growing up. As the party adventures through the world, they will come across both new stories and vastly different versions of stories they already knew. At higher levels and with the party interacting more with the gods themselves, the players will start to learn about the actual source of those stories, what the real version of those stories were. Some of these stories will be important to the campaign. Others are just there to enrich the world. I will post all those stories here so the players will have a place to read them as well anyone else who is interested in reading about a mythology I just made up.

The second way Pathfinder will make an appearance here will be a narrative version of each game session. I won't post anything from the game sessions itself because I don't think it is fair for the people involve and there are some thing that should just stay private. What I will do is take a summary of what happen during the session (in-character stuff only) and make a narrative version of it. If I do it right, they should sound like classic Dungeon & Dragons novels like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. Once I have a few posted I will make a page dedicated to Pathfinder so all the myth stories and game session stories will be all in one place. Once the real world goes back to normal and I can meet with friends in person, I will have a need to buy and paint a new range of miniatures. I've been interested in painting miniatures for role playing games for a while and running Pathfinder in a physical place will give me a reason to do just that. If the game last that long, I will post pictures of any models I make for the game. Some of those pictures might have to wait until the party face them in the game first. Lastly, one of my players is also a war gamer. If everything goes will with my campaign, the two of us could come up with a way to use Warhammer or another war game to play in my setting. Might even get to a point where his character leads an army and the result of the battle affects the Pathfinder campaign. But those are ideas for a much later date.

So, I'm back and Chaos Magic future will have a lot of tabletop role playing games in it. Beside the Pathfinder game I'm going to run, I still plan on writing those Flashback Storytime entries. My miniature hobby will make a return at some point. It is just that the menu is going to be role playing heavy for a while. Until next time, stay safe.

Warhammer Gifts From A Friend, and Reset

A friend of mine did some house cleaning and came across old miniatures (mostly Warhammer Fantasy) he brought a long time ago. He brought them with the idea of making a fantasy chess board. At this point that project was never going to happen so he offered them to his gaming buddies (which includes me). I, of course said loudly I wanted them and he was more than happy to toss the boxes and blisters packs my way. Here is a picture of some of those gifts...

What to do with these new old models got me thinking. At first I consider using some of the collection for conversion projects but I couldn't think of anything they would be good for. Then I remember that I wanted an elven army eventually for Chaos Magic lore reasons and these miniatures would be a decent start. I'm not going to immediately put together the entire collection but I think I will work on the box of High Elves, the box of Dark Elves and maybe one blister soonish. This might even allow me to get in some Age of Sigmar games in.

Which leads into another decision about the models and even the blog itself. Am I going to build these miniatures so I can used them in both Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition and in Age of Sigmar or should I only keep AoS in mind? There are elements of 8th edition I like and do not see in any game I'm currently playing. That and along with the good memories I have of playing 8th is why I held out hope that I will get to play it again sometime. I really want to finish the Border Prince Campaign as well as play through the scenarios that were in the End Times books. However I'm beginning to realize it is getting unlikely that I will get to play 8th edition again and will probably never get to regularly play it. I only have one friend that I know of that still has 8th edition armies and has an interest in playing. That said, we never played one last year and even he has started selling of some of his armies. The final nail for me is that my friend is leaving soon for college. That means there is no hope for me playing 8th edition for at least 2 or 3 years from now. It makes no sense for me to work on new 8th edition armies, especially since I don't own any of the elven army books. There are lots of local players that play 40k and/or Age of Sigmar. I don't know how these models will fit into AoS but they along with my Bretonnians should be fun to find out.

I think it is time for me to remove the Border Prince Campaign page. I had a lot of story plans connect to the campaign but it doesn't make sense to have most of my blog's lore based on an unfinished campaign that will remain unfinished for years to come. As much as it pains me, at this point its better for me to reset my lore and start again with a new campaign or narrative tool. Age of Sigmar was made with narrative battles in mind and those are perfect for telling stories through fiction and gaming. Before I make any new plans for gaming fiction, I want to concentrate on getting more of my collection assembled and painted. I will need some time to decide where to take my fantasy stories and I have plenty of models to paint and even more to assemble.

Holy Moon Update

With everything else that I'm working on I felt I need to discuss the reasons why my Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights series hasn't started yet. First and foremost when I decided to do Holy Moon I had very little planned out. I figured that since many of the plot points were going to be decided by the results of game battles, I could just make up the story as I went along. The only things I had worked out was the meaning of the name and concepts of a few main characters that I later work to flesh out. I figure I could just wing it since the result of games would have an affect on the story. I saw myself similar to being a comic book/manga writers that release a new chapter weekly or monthly. But then I realize I was mistaken. Most manga artist probably don't write their stories on the fly. They spend a lot of time developing their story before its starts being release. Sure in many cases the story develops in ways that is either different or in new ways the author didn't initially plan but overall professional writers knows the high points of their story. I know of examples of manga artist putting their work on hiatus so they focus working on their story.

Realizing this, I knew I was unprepared to start writing a serial. Of course I can't have a hard outline of the plot since I want game results to have an impact on the story. However I do need to have a better understanding of my plot elements. In advance I need to know who are the major players in the world that have the potential of appearing in the story and I need to know what are their goals. That way I will have a firm understanding of what the stakes are in each battle as well as know what each side will do next if they win/lose. So on this front I need to do a lot of prep work to make the vision I have for my series work. Prep work I will enjoy doing and now have more time for.

For most of this year Team Yankee has crowded out my other miniature hobbies, which is another reason I haven't done anything with Holy Moon. But now that my podcasting partner is focusing his time on a different project, it doesn't make as much since for me to all my hobby time into Team Yankee at the moment. Which is a little sad with so much movement with Team Yankee as West Germans were just release and British is coming out next month! I didn't expect British to be coming so soon. I'm not completely abandoning Team Yankee as I still have a lot of work to do on my models but since it is unlikely I will be able to play a game of it anytime soon, it is now no longer a focus of me.

Speaking of models that need work, there is one last point I want to make on the Holy Moon delay. I don't limit my imagination to the games I'm playing. Instead I let it run wild and then later try to conform those ideas into a game system. As a result many of the story concepts I want to write about are models that I do not own yet. And the ones that I do are unassembled and/or are not painted. Painting has always been my bane in this hobby. Getting something on the table so I can play has always been my one number priority. Painting has been an important but distance second. But that is not going to work for essentially a miniature comic so I need to overcome my personal insecurities with painting. Getting my sizeable collection fully assembled and painted is not only a must but a start for something new for me as well. Up to this point I never had to consider buying or building terrain. I have always join communities that already had plenty of terrain so their was no need for me to add to it. With the Holy Moon project I now have great need for not only my own terrain but also miniature set pieces you would find in a board game. I can still use the terrain at my local gaming store when I'm playing out the game battles. What I need terrain for is the fiction sections of Holy Moon. Much like a light novel, I want to have a few images to go with my story parts. That means I need appropriate terrain to take pictures of. I'm thinking I will be reusing a handful of locations for these images. Throne room, meeting hall, camp fire and the like. So I don't have to pick up a lot of terrain (at least not immediately) but considering I currently have none this will take some time. And the exact terrain I will need will be depended on where my prep work discuss above will take me. Since this all will take a while, in the mean time I will post pictures of finished Holy Moon models. This will gives myself and anyone interested a sense of progression until Holy Moon is ready to start. Thanks for your interest.

Update in Chaos (3-28-16)

Recently the only thing I've been working on is Team Yankee. That was because I was preparing to go to TwisterCon which was this past weekend. It was a 20 hour affair but it was a blast and well worth the effort. I got the chance to meet another community of Team Yankee players. Going forward any events or campaigns I come up for Team Yankee now potential has a much larger pool players who may participate. Exciting times! My Team Yankee force is coming together but there is still a lot of work to be done on it. At the same time I have push aside work that needs to be done on other projects that I want to get back to. So after doing another progress video and an overview of my time at TwisterCon, I'm going to put Team Yankee on the back burner so I can get something done on my other projects. Getting started on the Bretonnian Battalion is number one on my list. Watch for more to come!

Short Update

This week I spent most of my time working on a video showcasing the miniatures I am working on as they relate to my projects. I had plan it would take a day or two to finish the video and then I could work on the first issue of Holy Moon. Instead it took the entire week to finish. My experience with making this video will go a long way to help me with future editing. I now know the process of what goes into making a video for when I start to produce my own battle reports. I also got a valuable lesson into what it takes to make the War Journal: Flames of War podcast. New episodes will be recorded the same as before but now it will be on me to put them together.

Outside of working on the video, I did find the time to play a practice game of Warhammer Fantasy. It was months since the last time we played and I figure we need the practice to get back into form. The rules came back to us fairly quickly but I realize there is one skill in Warhammer that I have sometimes neglected. List building. When I make a list in Warhammer, what kind of story I want to tell usually has a bigger factor than battlefield effectiveness. I don't want my web novel to be about the Bretonnians that loses every battle! I don't plan on being hyper competitive but I now realize list building I need to pay more attention to. Not that Bretonnians have that many choices compare to armies with newer books, which is everyone else.

So here is a quick run down: Holy Moon - Going to start writing the first issue this week. I plan on it being out in about 2 weeks. Going to play another practice game with Bretonnians this week. Might do a short battle report about it. Everything else I'm working on is touch on in my new Project Progress video. Until next time!

New Year Update!

2015 was a very mix year for me and Chaos Magic. I co-started a Flames of War podcast and we were able to release new episodes throughout the year semi-regularly. I also took the steps needed to move this hobby into a business. In the middle of the year I had a personal crisis which derailed everything I was doing for 4 months which prevented me from having the level of progress I had hope for in 2015. 2015 was not the year I hope it to be but it was a year I took many steps forward. For that I am very grateful. And I need to keep going. For me to be successful in 2016 I need to produce even more quality content. Here is all my current projects and my plans for what I plan to do in 2016 with them.

Border Prince Campaign - As far as I know, I am one of only two players in my local community that is still interested in playing Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition. As long as that is the case then the Border Prince Campaign will remain on hiatus. That doesn't mean there won't be new updates in the new year for the Border Prince story. When I went through my notes to finish the skip story article, I realize I have many more partially written short stories that needs to be finish and posted. In addition I have ideas for stories I can tell as flashbacks in the Border Prince Campaign to help flesh out the overall story. The Border Prince Campaign will no longer be the main focus of this blog but these new stories will help bridge any gaps with my new main projects.

Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar - I no longer know enough people interested in Warhammer Fantasy or Age of Sigmar to do a normal campaign. So instead I'm going to commit to a narrative campaign. How this is going to work is I will write a story that ends with a battle of some kind. I will play out the game with my friend Phil using either Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition, Age of Sigmar or Kings of War, depending on what we want to play. I will followed our game up with a battle report here. Based on the results of that game will determine what direction the next part of the story will go. While Phil has told me he has no interest in working on the story aspect of the campaign, he will have an opinion on what armies we will play with, which in turn will affect how the story will go. My goal will be to have at least 1 story post and 1 battle report a month this year. The name and intro of the campaign will be upcoming in the next two weeks or so.

BattleTech - I have two projects in BattleTech I plan to do this year. I mention the Warhammer narrative campaign to my friend Chris and he suggested I do something similar with BattleTech. He gave me the idea to do a story about a group of warriors that is defending their home during a planetary invasion conflict. I love the idea as it immediately made me think about my favorite Gundam series, After War Gundam X. I don't feel as confident in writing science fiction but this is a great idea for me start practicing! I still don't own that much BattleTech stuff. After coming up with my team of heroes and their equipment I will need to pick up the corresponding models. The problem is that I'm not familiar enough with BattleTech to know what I want in my force (I'm always amazed at how large and in-depth this setting is). This have given me the idea of doing another project first before starting the narrative campaign. Chris and myself will compete in an abstract attrition campaign. The both of us will start with a set number of BV points, like 200k. When we decide to play a game, we will pick mechs from our individual rosters. At any time we can add new mechs to our roster by buying it with BV points. The campaign is over when one side is out of BV points and have no functioning mechs. There will also be a resource mechanic that will be earn by winning some of the battles. Resource will be use to fix damage mechs that have otherwise survive a battle or to pay ransom to the other player in certain scenarios. This gives us an easy to run campaign that will eventually end on its own. It is also a system that will allow me to try out many different types of mechs. I will give updates on where we are on starting the narrative campaign. Once we work out the numbers more details on the abstract campaign will be posted and its first battle will be around a month from now, hopefully.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark - I mention in my Refocusing post that I was considering doing something with Descent. Since then I have started running friends through the base game campaign. So far I am enjoying the game and I think my friends are as well, even though we are still making a lot mistakes with the system. Trying to craft a story to fit into my setting will be harder than I initially thought. So after we finish the base campaign, if my friends are still interested I will pick up one of the expansions and run them through that campaign as well. After that I think I might be confident enough to design my own campaign. In the meantime I will be picking up various Descent products such as lieutenant packs and the monster packs. We are playing with Tracy's copy of the game but eventually I want to get my own copy so I can paint the models. In the coming months I will be showing off my Descent models and maybe reviewing elements of the game. I am not sure we will get to my own crafted campaigns this year but we will see how far we can get.

Alien vs Predator: The Hunt Begins - This is a game I heard about but I really did not think it would be something that would affect me. I was wrong. I failed to realize how much Tracy and Chris were Alien fans. Tracy picked up the game when we were at the gaming store to play Team Yankee. We have since played it 3 times and overall think its a very good game despite some pretty big flaws. The rules are in desperate need of a FAQ. That said I can see many fun hours being had with this game. With it being such a big brand and how protective Fox is with this brand, I am much more reluctant to do anything with this game. That said, sometime my mind doesn't listen to reason and have already generate ideas on how to develop stories with this game. Nevertheless this is one game I will never buy anything for nor will I have any pictures of its models here. There is too much risk for me to include them. A possible idea I could do is recreate our games with Descent tiles and Warhammer models and I could take pictures of that. My only problem with that is that the marines don't have a good analogy in my fantasy fiction. Of course two weeks ago I barely heard of this game and there was no way for me to imagine it might be one of my most play games in this new year. Given more time I am sure I will come up with something.

Team Yankee - Team Yankee as well as Flames of War is in a weird spot for me in that I know they will be major elements of this blog in the new year but I am not sure how. With Team Yankee being a new game, all of my current efforts are going into learning how to play the game and deciding on what my force will look like. Much like with Flames of War, I am not sure if Tracy will have the time to commit to do a campaign with either game. That said, I have notice there is a lot of buzz about Team Yankee around my local gaming store when we played. If a couple people pick up the game in addition to Tracy and myself, then the prospect of a Team Yankee campaign increases immensely. The only thing I can be confident on is that I will have Team Yankee models in my gallery and a few battle reports here and there. I am very interested to see where Team Yankee takes me in the new year.

Others - Even when I think my hobby is full, something always surprises me and changes things up. I am sure 2016 will continue that trend. I have side projects like Relic Knights, Samurai Battles and BattleLore that I'm not sure at this time what my level of interest will be in the new year. It is possible in six months one or more of these games will be added or replace my current project list. Or they might remain on my shelves, unplayed. I do plan to show up at my local gaming store more often this year on my own and see what people whom I don't normally play with are playing. I might discover a new game that I'm interested in with new friends to play with.

I will end on two more points. In this new year I plan on playing as many games as possible and giving my thoughts on those games here. Whether I'm doing reviews, offering tactic advice or exploring ideas on how to make games better, I hope readers will find my content entertaining and informative. On my major project I will work hard to make sure they are release on a reliable schedule. I am working with friends whom have their own time constraints and may not be available when I would like. I will try to work around my friends' schedules but that may not always be possible. Those are my plans for the new year. Be safe and have a Happy New Year!

Update on My Lore

I have written about my Chaos Magic Lore in a few articles. Some of the things I have talked about have change slightly. Most of it has remain the same thou there are now some new issues. Since I am about to release a series of new lore pieces I figure this would be a good opportunity to restate what my lore is and to clear up issues relating to it.

Chaos Magic Lore is the fiction that gives life to my wargaming armies and the campaigns I play in. A literary world that continues to grow with each additional campaign and self-contained short story. I do consider my settings to be different from the official settings of the games I play in. That means I do not try to write in a way to fit in with the official settings and I have the option to change game systems if need be. This last point has been mostly academic since I only played one game system with each setting. However with the release of Age of Sigmar I now have a real opportunity to do fantasy campaigns with two different systems.

All of my lore is not one single universe. I have separate settings for each genre of games: Fantasy, World War II, Space Age Science Fiction. As I expand on the number of settings I write about I will develop methods to make sure it will be easy to know what canon each article belongs to. Currently I have only written lore in two settings. One article was about my team in the BattleTech League. Every other piece is in my fantasy canon which up to this point have been played exclusively on Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition. I am reluctant to remove articles I have already posted here but that may be the fate of the lone BattleTech piece. The League ended before I was able to write anything else on it, lore or gameplay elements. That means the piece is not anchored to anything else in the setting. There will be future BattleTech campaigns or leagues I will be apart of and it would be nice if I was able to connect that old piece with the new lore whatever that is. However it is possible that the new lore will contradict what I have already written. In that case I will remove the current BattleTech story. Until then it will remain here on its lonesome.

One method I will be using to help organize my lore is with pages I call "nexuses". A nexus is a page dedicated to one topic such as a campaign or a setting in general. Each nexus will have at least two major parts. The first part is background information about the topic and the second will have all the relevant links to articles on the blog in one organize location. I plan to have three new nexus pages out soon, two of which should be out next month. These will be the Border Prince and World of Chaos nexuses. The Border Prince Nexus will have the story behind the campaign, a description of how the campaign is played, and links to every Border Prince article. Someone new to the blog will be able to quickly understand what the Border Prince campaign is and be able to follow how it played out by reading the nexus. The other major nexus I'm working on is the World of Chaos Nexus. The World of Chaos Nexus will be dedicated to explaining my fantasy setting in general. It will have major characters' histories, glossary for unique elements, describing how campaigns are connected and much more. The third nexus will be dedicated to the new campaign I will be running myself and it will be up around the time that campaign is ready to start.

Hopefully this will make more sense once my nexus pages are up if this isn't clear. Feel free to send me any questions or comments. In the meantime enjoy my up coming (and long overdue) lore fiction.

Update in Chaos (6-28-15)

Hello. As was hinted at on the War Journal podcast, I am currently dealing with a crisis that is affecting my progress here. I do not want to go into the details at this time. What I can say is that the issue is mentally draining for me and it directly influence Chaos Magic in several ways. I currently do not have a proper place to assemble and/or paint models at my home. I am also hesitant to carry a lot of items out of my home. This means I can't play Warhammer unless I'm playing with someone else army. Flames of War and Battletech is not an issue because I mostly play with other people models. That said my crisis doesn't look like it will end anytime soon and I can not allow it to paralysis me any longer. I figure this will be a good time to update the progress of my current projects.

Warhammer - To my surprise I have already found people willing to help me finish the Border Prince Campaign storyline. Sadly it will be a while before we can get to games because I don't have access to my army and I wanted to start my own campaign first. In the meantime I will be working on the backlog of the Border Prince storyline and the Border Prince Page. I won't give a timeline for when they will come out since I have a horrible track record of sticking to those dates. I will say the storyline piece that I skipped should be out soonish and the Border Prince Page will be right afterwards.

I am still working on the design of the campaign I will run myself. I have shown my rough ideas to my potential players and they seem happy with the direction I am taking the campaign. I have temporary named the campaign "Dragon's Fall." One of my ideas for the campaign is to have every army possess 3 different special rules. After I come up with a list of unique rules I plan to go to the Warhammer community for help balancing that list of rules. Of course this is probably not a good time as the World of Warhammer is in a upheaval over the new edition. Personally I've decided to avoid the rumor mill and wait until the new edition is out before I decide to what to do on this aspect of my hobby. Just hope I can get help with my rules during this chaos. Besides the rules, I need to polish the random ideas I have for the storyline behind Dragon's Fall itself and the army I will be playing in it. If all goes well, I will be publishing the introduction of Dragon's Fall shortly after I catchup on the Border Prince Campaign. Lastly, I want to create my own map that will be in the style of the Border Prince map. However the map is one of the last things on my list of priorities so I will not be starting on it until most of everything else I mention in this section is done.

Flames of War - The War Journal podcast is going strong. Last week we release our 10th episode and since we have started we have only missed one week due to technical difficulties. I am proud of the work we have put into the podcast. The next project we plan to do is a video battle report. So that we have as little proxying as possible we are waiting until I finish assembling my two Whirlwinds and the Jagdtiger. For gaming purposes the Whirlwinds are actually done (finished the second one yesterday morning). Both still needs a little more work before I can prime and paint them. After the battle report we need to look into doing a mini campaign. A few months ago I started designing a campaign I named "Call of Calamity." I wrote down my initial ideas but I have not gone back to the campaign since. Probably the reason for this is that my vision for Call of Calamity is way more ambitions than what we are able to handle at the moment. Instead I am going to design a much smaller campaign so we can get it off the ground as soon as possible. As much as I like stories, I do not think this campaign will have one. I think just getting something more long term to play and to be able to test part of the Call of Calamity system is more important than story.

Shadowrun: Crossfire - My Shadowrun: Crossfire show is an example of my imagination and excitement running away with themselves. This was a project I should have stopped and thought about before writing about it here. Do not get me wrong. I still think the idea of a Crossfire show has merit. However in my excitement I failed or ignored two issues a Crossfire show would bring up. First it doesn't fit the direction I am trying to take Chaos Magic in. This blog is very different today from how I imagine it would be when I first started it. I have change the image and direction of Chaos Magic many times but two core elements have always remained the same. And that is miniature gaming and story telling related to miniature gaming. Once Chaos Magic is much larger I can see it branching into other gaming fields. Shadowrun: Crossfire has nothing to do with miniatures and given that Chaos Magic currently does not have a lot of material related to its core element, I feel its a little premature to add an non core project to Chaos Magic at this time. The second issue is that I eventually realize how I wanted to do the show was going to require a lot more work than I initially thought. I figured at first all that would be required is to record us playing the game and then doing some minor editing. That changed when I decided to only used images from the cards instead of a live video. The reason for this was that I wanted to make sure it would be easier for the viewer to understand what was going on. This lead to the need of having limited animation ... And so on. I do not have the skills to do this and I know from my experience with the War Journal podcast there will be a lot of headaches before I would get it right. For a side project this amount to way too much work. At least for now. I do have future miniature plans that would require similar skills as the Crossfire show. Whether that means I will be coming back to Crossfire sooner to practice those skills or later after mastering them I am not sure. What I can say is that I have a lot on my plate at the moment and Shadowrun: Crossfire is not a top priority for right now.

Other - There are many other projects I have ideas for and many other games I want to play. BattleTech, Relic Knights, Horde and more. For many of these games I am at the mercy of friends of when I can play and its up to them to develop campaign like events. For my other projects I need to put them on the back burner for now. Warhammer and Flames of War is where I am putting my focus on at the moment. Of course I am the type of person that switching focus often but I think this time I can stay on target until I am able to finish some loose ends.

Update in Chaos (1-11-15)

We are now a few days into the new year and its pass time for me to reflect on 2014 and where I want to go next. While I am happy that I have made some progress with the site this last year, Chaos Magic is no where near the place I need it to be. The progress I did make gave me a taste of what I need to do and what I need to change about myself to make Chaos Magic my livelihood. Unfortunately I know those changes are not easy to make and I am running out of time to make them.

A bright point in the year for me was National Write a Novel Month. If you are unfamiliar with NaNo, the idea is to challenge yourself write 50,000 words during the month of November. Its a world wide event and being apart of a community trying to do the same helps motivates you. This was my 7th year participating and for the first time I achieve 50,000 words. 'Winning' as it so call have been a goal of mine for a long time and I was extremely happy that I finally reach that accomplishment. What I wrote was a mess but that is besides the point. It proves that I am capable of constantly writing nearly everyday for a month. It proves that I do have what it takes to make a living on this hobby. I just need to take that first step that takes my dream into reality. And then the second step, and then the third ...

Anyway, here are updates to the projects I am currently working on at Chaos Magic.

Battletech - Sadly all my Battletech plans are in limbo. I struggled with trying to come up with a format to cover the league here. Beside those issues which were due to the nature of the league, there was also another Battletech campaign that stole some of the league's thunder. Several players were in both and to be frank the campaign look like it was more interesting as it was squad on squad action oppose to a one on one gladiatorial fight. To top it off the commissioner got burned out from working on both games and need to take a break. If and when the league starts up again is not in my hands. If it does return my participation might be reduce. I do miss playing Battletech but I much rather play larger battles oppose to one on one fights. The two mechs I got for the league will be sideline in the meantime.

Border Prince - The Border Prince Campaign is still going strong. The last two turns have been extended due to the holidays and player sickness. The next meeting should be around the end of this month. I am behind on the turn maps and Chaos Lore. I should be back on track with the turn maps by the time the next meeting happens. As for the lore that might be a little longer. I want to setup a Border Prince page before I work on my backlog of lore. The page would allow me to have all the Border Prince related links in one easy to read location. My current backlog is Warriors of Chaos 3, 6 and 7. It will probably a grow a little before I can get to it. The plan now is to get the page up around mid February with the backlog to follow on a weekly schedule.

Warhammer - I have greatly expanded my Chaos army over the holidays. Between Creatures of the Chaos Waste box, Hellstriders of Slaanesh box and all my other incomplete models I have a lot of stuff to put together and paint. Once finish I will have a wide spread of options for my Warriors of Chaos army. After one last purchase (the new Putrid Blightkings), I think I start working on my second army for fantasy. My initial plans was to build an Undead and Goblin army. An all goblin army that will use the lore of undeath to summon undead. The rumors of 9th edition briefly gave me pause but I think I will still work on it. I like the concept of the army so I'm willing to take a risk on it. My long term plans requires a large variety of models so if my goblin army is unplayable in 9th then the models will still be of use to me. Other Warhammer plans outside of picking up terrain pieces are on hold until 9th edition comes out.

Flames of War - Until recently I had not done much with Flames of War because my friend disappeared from my gaming circle. Turns out Tracy was looking to move into a house so he could invite people over to play games ... like Flames of War. He has started making Flames of War video content on his youtube channel here. I am working on designing a Flames of War narrative campaign that the two of us can play. It is still in the early sketches but the idea will be to have the storyline posted here and battle reports posted on his channel.

There is still talks of us going to tournaments. For tournaments I have decide to settle on a few tank company list in Bridge at Remagen. Given that Tracy has none of the models that could be in those lists I need to buy everything in it myself. Currently I own very little stuff for Flames of War, which is why I can not play without Tracy's involvement. I will probably start picking Flames of War stuff up next month.

Others - There a few others things I am currently working on or plan to start working on soon. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to start finishing models. I have a lot of models that is mostly painted or partially painted but I have nothing that I would consider done. While I won't go back to have a routine painting log like I've done before, I will be posting pictures of my finish models onto a gallery page. This will mostly be Warriors of Chaos pictures though hopefully I can finish a few Flames of War or Battletech models as well. In addition to finish models I will be posting pictures of my kitbasing projects to the gallery page. I will be talking more about my kitbasing projects on the gallery page once it is up.

Also I want to do a few videos. Since this site deals so much with the miniature gaming hobby I figure I should probably make a video discussing in detail what the hobby is. Then I want to do a video series on Relic Knights. Relic Knights is a game I like the looks of but I have never played it. I figure this would be a good opportunity to record a show about one of my miniature hobbies from the beginning.

Lastly, I am still planning on doing a World of Chaos page that will host the background stories display in many of my campaigns. At the latest I foresee the page being up in mid February and its first entry to be posted shortly there after.

Update in Chaos (8-25-14)

Sometimes life can throw you a curve ball and if you do not have strong convictions it can derail your plans.  I'm recovery from such a situation.  On the bright side (assuming the issue is done with) I am in a much better position to work on this blog.  Since my hiatus a lot has happen in my gaming world.  Here is a rundown of that news.

Warhammer - My group has decide to end the Blood in the Badlands campaign early.  Many players were unhappy with the rule set.  I suppose I am not surprised.  Blood in the Badlands has a lot of interesting ideas and concepts but the rules were too loose and confusing.  A good GM can run patch these problems as they come up to make an enjoyable campaign.  However our GM ran the campaign in a tournament style with a prize for the winner at the end.  With a campaign like these the GM doesn't have the flexibility need overcome these problems and the Badlands flaws quickly became quite obvious.  I also think the designers wrote Badlands to be more of a narrative style campaign anyways.

For our next campaign the group decided on a narrative Border Prince campaign from the General's Compendium.  The GM did some minor tweak to the rules and added that players get bonus points for battles by writing short stories about our general and/or army adventures in the campaign.  The campaign has already started and we are on turn 3.  With Border Prince battles are not automatic each turn.  Two enemy banners need to meet up before a battle will happen.  If at the end of the turn there are no battles to fight we will immediately proceed to the next turn.  This is why we are on turn 3 after the first meeting.  I will post a map later this week to show what everyone controls so far.  In the coming weeks I will make a page for the campaign.

My World of Chaos page and entries are still coming.  Work on them will start once my current games are up to date.  I've change the topics I was going to start with.  Because of the Border Prince campaign the first two entries will be on the Arkyrian Cabal and Arkyrian member Vanacyr.  Amirren's forces will probably be after them.

Battletech - My friend has started a Solaris Battletech League which I am a part of.  Each player that joins the League starts with 3 pilots and $30,000,000 C-Bills to buy at least 3 mechs.  Players can play as much or as little as they want or have the time.  In the coming weeks I will make a page for the League so others can follow some of the action.  Given how the League operates I am unsure at how to format the information.  It may take me much longer to get it out than the Border Prince page.  We will see.  I will be posting some short stories about my faction here.  Summaries and links will be on the League page.

Flames of War - There is still talks about starting a Flames of War campaign but nothing has been formalized yet to my knowledge.  I hear that the number of FoW players in the area is growing so once a campaign does get off the ground there should be more than enough interest to support it.  On the hobby side I've decide to change how I collect Flames of War.  Originally I was going to choose my purchases by picking units I like using.  After a while I would have a large enough force that I can using my own models without proxying.  This is how I built (still building actually) my Chaos army.  However when my friend Tracy mention he wants to go to a tournament sometime I realize I did too.  To make a legal list as fast as possible I've decide to write up a list I am happy with and only buy items in that list.  I will still play with other lists in pick-up games and/or the campaign if one starts.  I will make that list after Battlefront gives the point totals for official tournaments in the 2014-2015 season.  Until then I can pick up the things I know will be in the list and work on the story behind my fantasy German army.

This is a glimpse of my current projects.  I will be going into far more details on everything discuss so far and more in the coming weeks.  Until then.

Update in Chaos

This month have been disappointing in terms of progress for this blog.  Hopefully I can turn that around soon.  In the meantime here is the statuses of my blog projects.

Flames of War - After posting the last battle report I learned the global campaign had ended two days earlier.  *sigh* With the campaign over I will not be doing much with the game.  I still enjoy Flames of War but my funds are limited and I have a very long list to use them on.  Before I say goodbye to Flames of War for the near future I want to play one more game dealing with Operation Overlord. and post a video battle report.  Obvious it will not affect the campaign but it was the next Flames of War related thing on my to do list.  It will also give me practice doing video reports.

Showcase - I have miss posting a showcase for the last couple of weeks for a variety of reasons, none of them good.  Last week I left my home to do some painting and photo work but I never made it to the shop.  I did learn one thing from that trip.  I have a cockatrice that I have mostly basecoated at home and will be added to the painting log.  I say mostly because it is missing some spots which prove I do not have the proper lighting to paint at home.  I do not have anything to carry the cockatrice in so I've just been holding it by hand when I transport it.  On my failed trip to the shop last week I notice that I have somehow been striping the paint off the cockatrice with my fingers.  I guess I must be holding it too hard or something.  It is frustrating but not a big deal as I am still basecoating it.  However now I must find a carrying case for it and my chimera that I've recent put together before I can do any detail painting on it.  My current plans is to do a new showcase next week on Tuesday.

GM Campaign - Beside me being horribly late in updating, the campaign is proceeding reasonably well.  We are currently on Turn 6 and the last turn had a free for all Storm of Magic mega battle.  The game had some "interesting" events to say the least.  My current goal is to write and post my prologue story that have been hiding in my head for a few months now by this Saturday.  The first campaign recap I hope to post by next Monday.