2020 in Review

I don't think anyone could have predicted what 2020 turned out to be with any accuracy.  For readers who might not have first hand experience (I mean, I don't know when you're reading this), we had covid-19 pandemic which super sucked and I ended up working about 3/4 of the year from home like most of the folks who could do such a thing.  The bright side of this was that my commute was drastically reduced and I spent a lot more time hobbying, so there's that.  I think that's kind of how life is--you can't really predict the major beats and a lot of it is as much up to luck as anything else.  That's one of my big takeaways for thislast year.  

Gaming

Last last year (2019) wasn't great for gaming and 2020 wasn't either.  That isn't to say I didn't play anything, but it wasn't a focus of the year by any means.  The bulk of my unencumbered spare time hasn't been spent in video games for a while now so this shouldn't be surprising.  Younger me would have been terrified by this.  

Battletech ***** (2018)

I re-visted Hare-Brained Schemes' Battletech again this year and again it did not disappoint.  I bought all of the remaining expansions and re-played everything though not as modded as last time around.  I still enjoyed all of it even though it's my third time through the main storyline.  Battletech is one of the few things I have any nostalgia for and this particular game still delivers.  Given that at least some of my Battletech:  Clan Invasion kickstarter has arrived this year, we're well overdue for seeing some battlemech action in these un-hallowed pixels.

Mount and Blade II:  Bannerlord **** (2020)

I have burned a lot of words on my love of the Mount and Blade series.  I modded the crap out of the original.  I put about 400 hours into its successor, Warband.  So when Bannerlord was finally released this year, I was all in.  I ended up modding it for myself because they very cleverly switched from their own hand-rolled modding language to C# which has way more tools available.  I think I wouldn't have enjoyed it quite so much if I hadn't modded it but as the game is under active development, I suspect I'll take another look at some point in the future.  I wrote up my thoughts at the time here.  

Shadowrun Returns *** (2013)

I don't remember when I bought this game and I'm far too lazy to go look it up but much like Battletech, Shadowrun is a thing I have some nostalgia for.  Apparently most of my nostalgia is for FASA properties.  This isn't a great game, but it is a good one.  The first campaign is called Dead Man's Switch and the writing did a lot of the heavy lifting in it.  It captured the Shadowrun-ness with a handful of fairly fun characters (Kluwe, I'm lookin' at you, bro) and reminded me of all the things I loved in the 90s when I last played the tabletop RPG.  It also reminded me of all the things I hated about that system, so it's kind of like the original Mass Effect:  good writing, questionable gameplay.

Shadowrun Dragonfall **** (2014)

The next one off the HBS press was Dragonfall which really upped the writing acumen.  Demon-worshiping mage turned street sam'?  Punk rock front-elf shaman?  Elf Bear shaman wielding assault rifles?  Yes.  Yes, I want that, and all of it.  The characters are good in this one, real good, and there's even a fantastic pair of callbacks to my beloved Earthdawn for which I suspect I will always remember this game fondly.  There's a good twist, one I didn't predict though possibly because I played most of my ~30 hours with it very drunk.  There don't seem to be any "good" endings but Shadowrun wasn't ever really about good or bad so that's true to form.  This is the kind of writing I want to see in games:  punchy, irreverent, and thoughtful.  Next up:  Shadowun:  Hong Kong which I'm told is the best of the three.  Can't wait.

RPGs 

ThisLast year I ran two campaigns for most of the year.  The Saturday fantasy-every-other-week-supposedly-in-person game was done completely online and started in a brand-new sandbox world.  It's going well and it feels like it's just getting started even after 22 episodes.  The Sunday sci-fi-every-week-always-online game ran for most of the year before I killed it in early November.  It was past it's sell-by date most likely but we cleared a Star Trek:  The Next Generation in run time which is its own accomplishment.  I started a new fantasy game in its place in the same world as the Saturday game at roughly the same timeline but far, far away.  It's a concept game and is going well at the moment but it's way too early to know for sure.  

This year I did a lot more improvisation than usual, and I typically improvise a lot.  Most of my two campaigns were improvised, the fantasy one almost completely.  I think this is the best way to run these kinds of games but it is not for the faint of heart.  I never really got my thoughts together for youtube but I hope to some day.  The down side is that Roll20 is not improvisation friendly.  In fact, I haven't found a VTT that is.  It's easy in person to slap down tiles, some scatter, and some figs for an improvised encounter but online requires a lot more precision which takes a 5-10 minute operation and turns it into a 30-60 minute operation.  And yes, I have tiles in Roll20 but setting stuff up there isn't especially convenient.

Painting

ThisLast year I really wanted to level up my painting and I knew going into my 2020 crafting challenge that I didn't actually know how far I could push quality.  I'd meant to do this last year in 2019 but never did.  Over 2020 I did this intentionally eight times and learned a lot in the process.  In order with calendar time, these landed thuslywise:

• Nolzur's Human Female Ranger (flatbow), January 9th, 25 hours
• Highland Heroine, January 19th, 30-35 hours
• Kogo, Male Kitsune, July 4th, < 5 hours
• Dijoro, Female Kitsune, July 4th, < 5 hours
• Juliette, Female Sorceress, July 7th, < 5 hours
• Whitemane Duelists (2), September 7th, ~50 hours
• Aina, Female Valkyrie, November 16th, ~9 hours

Overall these eight figures (and their pals) account for a serious chunk of the total time I spent hobbying this year and some good stuff came with them.  Contrast is now something I push as a reflex more than a hassle even if I'm still not good at it.  Thinking through color theory and composition is easier.  NMM no longer seems like impossible magic, though, I don't think it'll ever be easy.  I don't view basing as an arcane inanity any longer.  I have significantly improved my brush control, learned a lot more about brushes and their care, and have shifted from buying a millionty shades of each color to mixing my own.  Given all of that, I can say with some confidence, that I've succeeded in my goal.

The biggest takeaway from this effort is that quality comes at a price.  It's obvious when you saytype it but it's true across all kinds of things.  There seems to be a point in any high-effort project where it seems like nothing's going right and that there's way too much work left to go to get where you want.  This occurs regularly around 20 or 30 hours (for the efforts that reach that size, anyway) and I note that when I was actively engineering I recall that 3-4 days is when I hit this on coding projects, too.  In my art I've only ever pulled out all the stops twice: the Hayabusa which remains my favorite SHIP, and the Normandy SR2 which has won multiple awards and not just for its size.  I've yet to do this with a miniature--maybe nextthis year.

The other major takeaway is that speed comes with experience which is something Uncle Atom told me...somewhere in his backlog, but now I have first hand evidence of it.  My studies of James Wappel's painting techniques has helped tremendously.  His is one of the top Patreons I contribute to and worth every penny.  Last yearIn 2019 I didn't think I could ever paint a "real" fig (whatever that means) in fewer than eight hours.  Now I'm regularly finishing figs at tabletop quality within three--faster if I'm batch painting.  Ironically, pushing quality helped speed quite a lot too.  It became more clear which things made bigger bangs in quality so focusing on those things really sped stuff up.  I also made a real effort to use my airbrush more which I really need more reps with.  

Deliberate practice helped me more than I ever thought it could in a year.  I am in no way a good painter and I might not ever be, but I'm getting closer to where I want to be and thislast year presented a better than average opportunity.  Without the bulk of figs (226 and 4.5x my original goal) I seriously doubt I would have made as much progress.  This represents somewhere in the ballpark of 400-600 hours at best estimate and gives me hope that some day I'll get through my pile of shamepotential, or at least the parts I care about, before my time is up.

Two and a half-ish years ago I embarked on my mini painting journey more as a thing that I thought I should do more than a thing that I particularly cared about.  I painted because I felt like I had to more than because I wanted to.  I've heard this referred to as "hate painting" and I think I'm past that now.  For sure I don't enjoy everything about the hobby but this year somewhere the switch flipped which is pretty cool.  Being cooped up in the house by myself for nine months with no end in sight did not hurt in this respect.

Crafting

This year also marked a return to foam crafting, specifically XPS.  I did a lot of this in 2019 thanks to Shoe's 30 for 30 challenge and my then-recent purchasing of my trusty Proxxon hot wire foam cutter.  This time up, we focused on airlift ships for use in my in-person-every-other-Saturday fantasy campaign which we still haven't used.  When I built them, I didn't expect we'd end the year in lockdown. 

These ships really stretched what I thought I could do with XPS.  They're the kind of thing I'd always envisioned building with balsa wood when I was small dreaming about tall ships.  I tried lots of stuff which was captured here, here, and here.  Magnetizing the Cutter and Golden Sun was an improvised experiment that really demands more experimentation.  It solves a problem with my multi-story buildings like this one whose construction was terribly complicated by having to friction-fit the floors together.  The details on the ships are still lacking but I feel like I'm capable enough now as a crafter and painter to punch these up another level with a little effort.  I suspect that when I build my next building (whenever that might be), I'll have learned enough this time around to try something fairly different and hopefully better!

Fin

So that was my 2020 in a nutshell.  Like most years it was some good, some bad, but overall it was a thing.  It'd be easy to chalk 2020 up as an all-bad nightmare but I don't think it had to be.  I suspect if we look real close, we can find all kinds of stuff that were good--not just my hobbying.