Vonnington, Vonnington, where have you been?

Or, as they say in the old country, "'ere bey, where you bin?"

It's that time of year again: the time when actual gaming begins to edge out typing nonsense about gaming on the Internet.  Life on the miniatures front has slowed down somewhat of late, since I don't live anywhere near the Dice and Decks lads any more and have yet to rally the local Warmachine crowd around my banner (steps are being taken and I've been pleasantly surprised to find battle boxes hiding on various people's shelves around the town - now to get the wretched things onto the table!).

However, life in roleplaying has kicked up a gear, and with remarkable frugality too, as I'm currently playing a game I actually own nothing for.

via absoluteastronomy.com

See, the thing about roleplaying is that not everyone needs everything, if you catch my drift.  Most seasoned roleplayers possess dice in abundance (although recent events have led me to believe that I could do with another d20 or two).  If the gaming group has access to two or three core rulebooks and one copy of any supplements that are needed, that usually does the job.

via onceuponageek

This sort of thing is hardly a requirement just to play the game a couple of times a week, after all.

I recently parted with my hoard of No Quarter magazines, in accordance with certain sage wisdom that invites us to inquire whether we actually gain anything for our time and money.  Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I did at the time; the roleplaying content in No Quarter is generally of excellent quality and the terrain building articles are very inspirational, if unhelpfully US-centric in their materials listings and purchase advice.  However, the magazine is not endlessly re-readable, and hoarding paper copies as insurance against that One Day when the article might come in handy is somewhat cumbersome, especially when you move house as often as I do, so I've traded them all away (except for the two which cover new model types for Warmahordes - it's still cheaper to buy two magazines for the sake of two articles than to buy a whole new rulebook for the sake of four pages).  Before I passed them on to their new owner, though, I did take the liberty of scanning in the articles I was still interested in, just in case that One Day comes around.