I started playing Dungeons and Dragons a while ago. I blame The Adventure Zone for sparking an interest in it and making it sound fun, and the confidence I gained through improv to make it seem not as wild of an idea to roleplay. I will admit I was completely in the "D&D is for nerds" camp for a while there, but through the persistence of the same person who got me to listen to TAZ I eventually caved and agreed to "try it just once."

Now I'm in two campaigns and running a third. So you could say I decided I liked it.

D&D is the literal definition of escapism and living out your fantasies that video games try to be. The difference being, of course, how much more finely you can control that in a tabletop setting. You aren't bound to set actions, map edges, and unbending rule sets. Your character and their actions exist completely as you want them to, within a world that is just as dynamic. It is truly an open world, which is amazing.

I have been having an absolute ball playing on both sides of the DM screen. It's incredibly interesting to me how the experience varies so much depending on who is running the game, and who else is participating. There is so much fluidity to the rules and play styles that no story would ever play the same way twice. I also love how accessible it is; you can play for free very easily, in person or online, with friends or with strangers. It's a heck of a game, and you can bet your butt there's going to be a lot of D&D related posts coming in the future.

Have you played D&D or another tabletop RPG? If you've thought about it but haven't tried it, what's holding you back?

Hi my name is Jenn and I'm an adult in my 30's who plays Pokemon GO.

I enjoyed playing Pokemon growing up. Between the two of us my sister and I played Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, and Crystal. We spent absurd amounts of time in Pokemon Stadium, printed our Pokemon Snap stickers at Blockbuster, and desperately (and hilariously) tried to befriend one in Hey You Pikachu. I still have my binders of Pokemon cards, and there's a box in my craft room that contains a ready-to-go deck alongside the gym badges I had earned at the Books-a-Million Pokemon League.

It was a whole thing.

My interest waned into gen 3 and beyond, though I did try again with Black and White. It just never hooked me the way the first 250 did. So, Pokemon became a thing I didn't actively participate in but still appreciated the roots of. I had collectibles, I kept my cartridges and card, but my engagement became passive for adulthood. It wasn't a franchise geared towards me, and that was fine.

And then Pokemon GO was released.

The nostalgia part of my brain embodied the Kool-Aid Man and burst through the rational walls of being a responsible adult and let the kid who loved Eevee and Ponyta to an absurd degree climb on through. There was a single Pokestop at the back of our neighborhood about a 5 minute bike ride away, so Geoff and I would spend our evenings after dinner with our phones mounted to our handlebars riding loops between home and those baseball fields catching the few Pokémon that appeared and hatching eggs.

After moving to Austin, it took on a new life. There were stops and gyms close to us! Places to go walk around outside that had high densities of Pokémon! We met people to go raiding with! On afternoons where we just need a break we head to the Domain, grab an iced beverage, and just wander for 2 hours. On raid days we create 18 person caravans and pre-plan routes so we can hit at least 18 raids (our best day we did 30 but decided that was a little more intense than we wanted to be for future ones and scaled it back), and if someone misses out on a shiny variant people within this group are totally willing to trade their extras to make sure everyone is covered. I'VE MET SO MANY DOGS.

This year we went to the annual Pokémon GO Fest in Chicago. At first we felt like it was silly to essentially take a Pokémon-themed vacation, but judgment be damned it's something we genuinely enjoy. Since tickets are a lottery system we decided we'd apply for the lottery and let the universe decide. If we got in great, and if we didn't then cool we'd do something else with that time off. The great Pokémon gods saw fit for us to go nerd out and granted us tickets. So off to Chicago we went.

I wasn't sure what to expect going into it, but it was a really cool experience. The park was divided up into biomes where certain types of Pokémon would spawn, and the areas were decorated to each theme. The Fairy Garden had trellises covered in flowers and bubble machines. Buckingham Fountain served as the water zone and kept everyone cool with the water sprays. The Spooky Woods were straight out of the front yard of that one house in your neighborhood that does Halloween right. The Winter Forest had "snow" covered trees. We met a lot of people from all over the world, traded for some rare finds, won some exclusive merch, and caught an obnoxious number of Pokémon (including shinies!). It was an exhausting day (Fitbit clocked 42k steps for me), but wonderful. 

As an added bonus, there was increased Pokémon activity around the rest of the city too, so even on the other days we were there we could go hunting for more good stuff. We took advantage of that by spending time down on Navy Pier, and visited my penguin bros at the Shedd Aquarium (one of my favorite places on the planet). It was a short trip, but a unique way to wrap up a few busy weeks for us.

I would totally go to the event again if we can get tickets. Each day had its own set of problems (system went down for a while for us, rained out on another day, etc), but that's going to happen when you've got tens of thousands of people cramming into a small area outside. Overall it was all handled really well, and we had a great time.

Did any of you go? How did you do? What was your favorite part?

Let's start with the obvious: I'm sorry I have been so absent over the last several months. After several years of being relatively consistent with streams, videos, and posts, I am embarrassed I fell off as hard a I did.

I'm going to be real with you. Things got hard. I don't mean "oh I'm busy and just can't figure out how to fit everything in" hard, but emotionally and mentally "I really should be on medication and see a therapist, I am in a bad place" hard. I knew that, but also fell into that hole that other people are likely familiar with where I was too far into that place to muster the energy, physical and mental, to do it. I used busy as an excuse for the lack fo time for setting up any appointments, which to a degree were true, but probably not as true as I talked myself into believing.

I'm in a better spot now. The things that were dragging me down subsided, the things that are uplifting are no longer fighting that gravity and are actually elevating me, I've talked to a doctor and got on some meds to manage my anxiety and depression, and I finally sort of feel like I am really present again instead of just barely existing.

Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to not just get back into the swing of things, but I also want to talk a bit about what the last year or so has looked like. Some of it will just be to catch you up on what's affecting my life and what I'm working on, but some of it will be rooted in "lessons learned" things I want to share.

For now, I'm going to let my allergies finish destroying me and use the forced downtime to do things like sleep and read and actually go outside. See you all soon, glad to be back <3

First of all, massive shout out to the RT Community for your epic streams this last weekend! You guys killed it. And by "it" I mean childhood cancer and illness because you raised over $100k. I am so proud of all of you, and I was so excited to see my old stomping ground RT Michigan as a part of the official Community Stream.

I am unable to dedicate a day to doing a solid 24 hour stream myself (genLOCK isn't going to just make itself, ya know), but will be dedicating every stream this month to the cause. I will be streaming as part of Team Rooster Teeth, but raising money for the facility I was born in back in Michigan, Sparrow Children's Hospital. In addition to a handful of raffle prizes, I also have some stretch goals in place that include me finally biting the rage-inducing bullet that is Dark Souls III. I hope you'll help support Sparrow and my impending aneurysm!

If you're watching the RT Extra Life stream this weekend, you may see me around there too. I'm mostly helping work the event, but I may be a part of some...plans.

November 2nd is such an innocuous day for most people that they're likely barely aware of it.

For me, it's my Cancerversary. That will never not be weird to say.

Everyone defines their Cancerversary as something different. Some people it's the day they're diagnosed, Some call it the day they started treatment. I like to call it my last day of that chapter, the day I had my surgery to remove that pesky, sketchy uterus. For me, it's a day to celebrate.

It's also a day to remind everyone to go to the doctor. Check your boobs. Check your prostate. If you've got a vagina, get your PAP done regularly (they say you can do it every 3 years now if you haven't had an abnormal result, so yay!). I know it's uncomfortable and it sucks but lemme tell you not catching cancer early enough to do something about it sucks way worse. Take care of yourselves, and encourage the people you care about to take care of themselves.

Tell people you love them. Give your pets extra pats for me. Eat that extra piece of cake. Enjoy life while you can.

Related: go vote so people can have healthcare for this kind of shit.