Ramblings Of A Mad Mage

The Cold Open Since its inception in 1974, the game known as Dungeons & Dragons has impacted various forms of nerdy popculture substantially. The game even inspired an entire genre of video games call Turn Based RPGs. If it weren't for the existance of D&D the most notible examples of this genre wouldn't exist, games like Final Fantasy, Crono Trigger, The Banner Saga, Octopath Traveler, Pokemon, & Fire emblem. D&D's influce of nerdy popculture doesn't just stop at video games. It's also showed up in a number of TV shows like Community , Sponge Bob , Futurama , Stranger Things , the Big Bang Theory , South Park , Buffy The Vampire Slayer , Gravity Falls , Teen Titians Go , The IT Crowd , The Goldbergs , Voltron Legendary Defender , & even Key & Peele . Given that D&D has ascended to the statis of a trope which entire episodes are written around, I became curious if the same could be said about TV comericals. So I began asking myself the...

Since 2016 I have followed a gaming subculture known as the Old School Rennisance/Revival. The OSR was a gaming movement born from a variety of self referencing blogs, forum posts, and YouTube video; in which gamers who played the popular game ‘Dungeons And Dragons’ in its hayday. Would lament about the direction in which it’s current corporate caretakers (Wizards Of The Coast) had taken the game’s development. In an attempt to capture the audience of Massive Multiplayer Video Games like ‘World Of Warcraft’, ‘Destiny’, ‘Club Penguin’, and ‘Poptropica’. WOTC shifted their focus and efforts towards MMO’s. This pulled D&D away from its dungeon crawling roots, causing issues like power creep, character builds, improv theatrics, ‘balanced combat’, and Game Master fatigue; to arise within modern WOTC produced iterations of the game. These issues would only compound with time, as newer and newer editions of the game were published, and more and more MMO enthusiasts were introduced to th...

This spring, as part of a school project I was required to compose a piece of music. I choose to put together what I imagined the Yellow City from David McGorgan's Yoon Suin Sounded like. Additionally I drew the city as I pictured it in my head. So here's the song, I hope you enjoy it.

Recently watched this video , and felt inspired to write about my own TTRPG journey. I first discovered DND and TTRPGs during spring break 2016, while attending high school. I was introduced to 5e by my school’s local club and I was immediately enamored. I spent the next 3 days of spring break reading up on the rules and creating a character. Unfortunately, my parents grew up during the satanic panic, and after a heated disagreement, I was barred from partaking in the hobby. Luckily that awakened urge was still there and I began looking to TTRPGs that ‘weren’t’ DND. I would go behind my parent’s backs (not proud of this) and watch Critical Role, Questing Beast, and buy PDFs to get my DND fix. Eventually, I shipped off to the Air Force and graduated into tech school. Where I went TTRPG crazy I bought everything Questing Beast reviewed that I could get my hands on as well as the 5e collector’s edition books. I then tried playing 5e but found it to be too complicated. So I ran my first...

Vintage Curations is a hobby blog focused on exploring the Retro and Vintage Gaming subcultures; with this blog I plan on highlighting the retro games and vintage games I am currently enjoying or excited for. Aswell as, sharig session reports, responding to hobby related drama, and sharing my house ruled content. As this blog develops, I hope to uncover why retro and vintage games are eagerly embraced by gamers both young and old; in an era that's radically different from the one they were created in.