What I anticipate most for 2018 is actually getting to play, and getting to play a lot.  Because I’m launching a new company, Level Up Guild, with my partner Elwood Schaad, with the express purpose of running high-end games professionally.

Level Up Guild (like us on Facebook for more updates) won’t be a publishing company; we’re going to specialize in offering and developing tools and resources to help people “level up” their games, to help you became game masters yourselves, and by running really, really nice games for people.

Our first product is a local offering called the Mad Wizards League.  This will be a semi-competitive D&D experience launching at the end of October.  You and three of your friends will form a team and take on the Crucible, a difficult and deadly dungeon.  Your team earns a score based on how well you progress in the adventure, and at the end of a season (about 3 months), the best scoring teams will win prizes.  Other awards will be given for “best team theme” and a few other aspects yet to be named.

The Crucible will be played with high-end custom dungeon terrain, miniatures, and other high end tools to make the experience fun and easy.  We’re hoping to really knit together the local D&D scene around our product, to bring all the various groups together in the spirit of friendly competition.  We will be hosted by a local gaming store to be named soon.

I have no idea if any of it will work.  But I’m really enjoying building, designing, and planning it.  I’ll be talking more about it as we get closer to our release.

I tell you what – this has been really fun. I’ve enjoyed thinking about these questions and exploring things that I had sort of forgotten about how important they were to me. I’m looking forward to making RPGs an integral part of my life again with the Level Up Guild and maybe just running a game or two here and there for fun.  I hope that if you’ve never played an RPG, these posts have inspired you to seek out a chance to experience a role-playing game for yourself.  And if you’re like me and semi-lapsed, I hope you get your gang back together and sally forth once more into the realms of imaginary adventure.  In these times, we need escapism more than ever.  Take a break from saving the real world now and then to save a fictional one. I think you’ll feel better for it.

Until the next post, I thank you for reading!

For the month of August, I have been participating in #RPGaDay. I haven’t posted much on this blog about my love for role-playing games, and for a while, I wasn’t really acknowledging that love myself.  But RPGs were my entry point in the the geek lifestyle, and they are very important to me.  I explored my relationship with RPGs all month with these posts.