Lonely Fun. Not what you think.

In the heyday of AD&D and Choose Your Own Adventure, gaming used to be what D&D boss Mike Mearls called “a hobby of not playing the game you wanted to play.” Going back through blogs to BBS nodes, a very specific community has chronicled the millions of hours devoted to the realization of a fantasy world that doesn’t exist. In the dusty corners of our digital attic hide Gophers, and even Gopher - not the one on the Love Boat - knows about “lonely fun.”

Lonely Fun encompasses everything we do to enjoy the hobbies and games we want to play but can’t. Reading historical texts of the last line of Imperators from the Fallen Realm. Revisiting the component requirements for wild magic. This is not a pastime exclusive to RPG devotees. If you have spent 10 hours going back and forth with your clique to divide up the members of [someband], you have dipped your toes into the deep waters of Lonely Fun.

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I'm in a glass case of emotion! I know how to use Markup

This website is actually my own Lonely Fun. I love programming but don’t get to do it and without the time, the talent wanes. I want to learn Node.js and Ubuntu for no reason but that it scratches a very old itch. And so here I am. This will not be a very interesting or compelling website. However, behind the scenes and scattered among a hundred hidden pages, be sure there will be some kernels of coding greatness as I try to do stupid things just to see if I can.

I am old. I am supporting whipper snappers on Patreon who are building new virtual table top sysytems or Chrome extensions. I am watching them code on twitch and following along on Discord and trying to keep up with a world that is changing fast.

The one thing I have in common with these younglings is that we all love fantasy, role playing games, and will devote days on end thinking of new stories that weave into a collective consciousness that started with a pencil and paper. I will go feed my Gophers and see what they turn into, but only because they help carry my ideas to some other old fart who is also spending days wondering why wizards are always OP.