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One of the reasons I have felt stymied in my pursuit of this hobby is my measurable decline in imagination. “Declining powers of imagination” … now that’s a phrase fraught with terror for me personally and one I never thought I’d utter, especially relative to myself. In the past decade or two of self-examination, I’ve come to believe that my penchant to get hooked on video games of specific types and titles is the cause of this decline. 

Welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we shoot the shit about the rpg and skirmish game hobby stuff. All right, let’s get into it.

Imagination, in my own forever-layman’s opinion, is similar to other physical human attributes, i.e. physical strength, mental prowess, et cetera. It’s a muscle that needs to work out lest it become … flabby or emaciated from disuse. 

If you wanna be able to do 50 pushups a day, which is a worthy goal, then you gotta … do … pushups. And it’s not that you gotta do 5 a day for a year and then you’ll be able to do 50, no no no, you gotta do 5 a day this week, then next week you gotta do 7 a day – and so on and so forth. You gotta work them muscles out! You gotta sweat. You gotta put the time in. And if you do, you’re guaranteed results. And there ain’t many guarantees in this life, that’s for sure.

So HOW are video games killing my imagination? Well, let’s illustrate this with a specific example. Let’s use Skyrim, ‘cause we both know we both know that game. So I load up Skyrim, grab my controller – yes I am a console gamer (with one very specific exception, we’ll get to that later) for two reasons: 1) my console is in the living room hooked up to the big tv where I like to chill out and burn precious time watching YouTube or slaying dragons; 2) the games I like are typically shooters and so pulling a physical trigger is something I just really cotton to, so to speak. 

So I load up Skyrim, there’s my custom character who I molded the digital flesh of, chose the hair style and color for, picked out some cool tattoos and scars, there she is, my badass wood elf rogue in her badass, intricate leather armor. And now we’re walking through an amazing biome with towering cliffs and glowing fairy trees and now we’re fighting some draugrs with our magic-imbued daggers and throwing fireballs and it’s great fun. The music is epic, the sound design impeccable. We head into Solitude – my aesthetically favorite Skyrim town – and visit the local weapon smith. The architecture is awesome, the interiors highly detailed, moody and strewn with collectibles and valuables and decorative items I can buy or steal and put into my own player-owned house. And on and on and on, right?

And now what is it that I do NOT have to do, at all, to engage with and experience this amazing world and the adventure it holds? That’s right, I don’t have to imagine anything. That part of my brain, that muscle in my brain, gets to be lazy, gets to sit on the proverbial couch and lick Cheeto dust of it’s fat sausage-like fingers. And when do I play Skyrim (let’s say, for the sake of this particular argument, I’m playing right after it was released): I play it for hours and hours every day. For a long time. Cause we both know, one play-through isn’t enough. You gotta make more characters, try out different spells, different weapons, put different classes of armor on that 3d paper doll just to see what looks cool. And all of this feels GOOD! Not only do I not have to get up outta my Lazy Boy to run around in this monster-infested fantasy landscape, but I don’t even have to think to hard. I just get to react and experience.

After years and years of this, though, what I’ve found is that when I try to write something or create, it’s much harder than it used to be. Like, REALLY difficult, in comparison to how I used to feel. I feel tired and at the first sign of having to put in some mental effort, I feel like quitting. I feel like getting up from the desk and returning to that Lazy Boy and hitting that main line of Skyrim on the Xbox.

Fifteen years ago I wrote screenplays for other filmmakers, I produced my own short films, ten years ago I made my own feature film, six years ago I made a fantasy action adventure web series and after that … I haven’t made hardly anything. When I sit down to work on my current projects, things we might talk about in future videos, it feels much more difficult to push through a work session of imagining new, fresh, exciting ideas – versus how I used to be able to work decades ago.

Video games create these low-level virtual realities that are becoming more and more detailed every year. And if you’re experiencing someone else’s creative vision, specifically built so you DON’T have to spend energy imagining things, I can’t see how your imagination’s growth isn’t affected in some way. Unless you work hard at specifically avoiding that. 

Now this is all anecdotal to me and my experience. I’m know there are plenty of people out there who are inspired by the games they play, they go on to create like I used to be able to do. I just wanted to discuss this in case anyone else out there was feeling the same way as me. Video games could be a factor.

So I did mention there was one exception to the console gaming and now that I think about, there are actually two exceptions: Minecraft and Tabletop Simulator. Minecraft is similar to our tabletop gaming hobby in a metaphysical way: it has an almost infinite number of ways in which to engage with and enjoy it. Sure, some people play Minecraft strictly as a competitive action video game but many more people, myself included, enjoy it as a creative outlet where you get to build things, all kinds of things, from simple architectural structures to intricate, logic-based mechanical devices to code-based game development to voxel art. 

And the PC version – known as Java Edition – is a much better experience on mouse and keyboard than controller or touch-screen, at least for me. Tabletop Simulator on the other hand is simply a way for me to engage in tabletop games with friends and family who are far away. So those two games don’t really seem to hinder my imagination, at least not from my internal viewpoint.

Another reason I think video games, for me, is killing my imagination is they usurp time I used to use for reading. Now, there are a ton of things in this current society that compete for and capture our attention and take up precious time. For me personally, though, as I’m sort of allergic to anything with an infinite scroll, it’s video games that hook me in and keep me playing rather than reading or even watching movies. 

Reading is like that pull-up bar you hung in the bedroom doorway for two days and now hides under the winter coats in the closet (what? that’s just a random metaphor, man, c’mon). Anyway, reading is like a pull-up bar for your brain, in particular for your imagination. Because it not only facilitates the usage of your brain but REQUIRES it. And every day, I feel like we all get a little less inclined to read – and when I say “read” here, I’m referring to the consumption of fiction and non-fiction that isn’t “comment-based”. You know, like, “hey, I read Reddit for 17 hours today, I feel great!” Cause, be honest, nobody feels great after reading any comment section for too long. Let’s face it, there’s just a [bleep]load of dopamine dealers in our faces all the time, and they’re all legal and they all feel good in the moment. Even the ones that make you mad. Especially the ones that make you mad, but that’s just emotional provocation for clicks, just somebody hacking your limbic system.

Now I know the bottom line is that I’m responsible for choosing to play video games instead of reading or playing a Warcry match or running a D&D session. I get that, I accept full responsibility. This is in fact one of the reasons I decided to create this channel. For me, Tabletop Alchemy is one way to kind of force myself to operate and engage with a hobby that fosters imagination rather than time sinks like looter shooters. Years ago I broke a two year addiction to World of Warcraft, and I’m happy I did. I don’t have generally addictive personality, but I do have a couple of specific things I get trapped by – one of those is video games. 

I’m definitely not trying to say that this is the same issue for everyone. You know me, this channel is – and I would argue MOST YouTube channels are – completely subjective, opinion-based endeavors. If you play video games and you like ‘em, and you’re happy with your life, that’s awesome. Seriously. I just had to take some time for self-examination and I determined that this theory of video games forcibly alleviating the use of my imagination, versus like a novel or piece of art, et cetera, this theory really resonated with me, in my specific case. 

I’ve found that tabletop games and producing content for this channel are helping me work out my imagination, simple as that. D&D in particular – though this would be true for any rpg – is really helping kickstart my imagination workouts. The very nature of role playing games are fundamentally imagination-based exercises. If you’re writing or creating your own adventure for your players, that’s just doubling the workout. Even if you’re just running a pre-written adventure module, the act of running a game session REQUIRES heavy lifting from the old noggin. Inventing dialogue, describing scenarios, reacting to player actions, this activity is all mental and imagination-based and I love it. It’s challenging, but it’s challenging in that good way, like a gym membership that actually entices me into returning for more workouts. 

All right, that’s it. As always, I love to hear other people’s opinions down in the comments but yeah, get outta here, that’s the end of the video. See ya next time on Tabletop Alchemy.

If you’re like me, you have been lovingly cultivating, feeding and growing your own personal treasure trove of miniatures and terrain pieces like a venerable gold dragon presiding over its hoard. Some people desperately want us to feel bad and refer to this mass of plastic riches as our “pile of shame” and yet – you and I both know, this is really our Pile of Opportunity!

That’s right, we seek and acquire miniatures and models on a scale far beyond our mere earthly ability to paint and base such vast numbers of hobby-related products. Some say we may be afflicted. Others stand in awe of our overwhelming stock of plastic crack. And some relate to that invisible drive, nay, compulsion! to recreate our friendly local game store’s stockroom in our own home. 

Greetings good humans, I’m Ignatius and you’re you and we’re all stuck on this rock together. Welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we deal in the dreams and nightmares of our tabletop gaming hobby.

All right, let’s talk about these Piles of Opportunity. Or as I like to call it: The Art of Collecting Miniatures. 

Now we all buy models for use in our games, we’ve got all kinds of excuses, you and me, excuses and mental gymnastics to game ourselves into buying more stuff. We succumb to advertising – which is just our brains losing battles against a highly sophisticated industry of behavioral scientists deploying artificial intelligence algorithms to exploit our base human responses – and we’re all addicted to those tasty little dopamine treats. Hey, we’re human! It is what it is.

So as far as the art of collecting miniatures goes, I’ve got three rules for myself. 

The first rule of collecting miniatures is … we don’t talk about collecting miniatures. The second rule is … We Don’t Talk About Collecting Miniatures. [pause] You knew that was coming, don’t even front.

All right, jokes aside, I do have three rules of thumb that I consider intrinsic to artfully collecting miniatures.

Rule Number One – The Rule of Cool

Now, I gotta preface this one with the idea that I don’t play large war-games. I don’t build army-scale … armies? So if you play Age of Sigmar or Warhammer 40k or Kings of War, or other games where you need to field like acres of units, you’re stuck sometimes having to buy miniatures that may not fit the Rule of Cool according to your own aesthetic within the army you’re playing. But the Rule of Cool definitely applies and sometimes even drives my own purchase decisions when considering skirmish games and Dungeons and Dragons. 

For me, the rule of cool means that I need to really, REALLY, like a miniature in order to drop some cash on it. I’ve gotten more stringent on myself as time passes with this personal internal metric. If I even think for a second that something about a miniature just doesn’t inspire me 100 percent, I pass on it. Usually. Every solid rule has exceptions and of course the rule of cool is no different. 

Rule Number Two – Multi-usage

I gauge every miniature on whether or not I can use it in multiple games. My typical internal question is “can I use this model in D&D?” because most miniatures I look at, aside from the growing arena of 3D printable sculpts, are from skirmish or war-game types of studios. Games Workshop makes a ton of really badass miniatures – but if I don’t think I can use a wicked cool GW model in a D&D campaign or a skirmish game, I’m gonna pass on it. Now this is just for me, of course, you gotta do you, figure out what you want from your miniatures. 

For example, 99% of the big Warhammer command units, these massive models with hero or commander characters on big ol’ mounts or whatever, I’m never gonna be able to use those in a game outside of Age of Sigmar or 40k. So I just don’t invest in those. 

But again there are always exceptions. As another example, I picked up a GW Daughters of Khaine Morathi kit because it absolutely fits the Rule of Cool for me AND I can totally see putting her on a table as a “BBG” (big bad guy) in a D&D campaign. Can you imagine my players seeing Morathi appear in front of their little hero miniatures? I can hear the shock and awe already. 

Rule Number Three – Organization

All right, we both know we’ve got miniatures and terrain pieces crammed in boxes, stashed under beds and in closets, buried in basement bunkers, maybe even squirreled away in attics, et cetera. We both know the feeling of surprised excitement when we open some box or other looking for something and stumble across a miniature or two or twenty that we completely and utterly forgot even existed. Not only does it exist, our dopamine hit says, but it exists IN OUR POSSESSION! That’s right, the Pile of Opportunity has excelled once again! And then we stuff it back in the box with the full and fully flawed confidence that we’ll be working on those miniatures as soon as next week! 

What’s the saying? Oh right, “rinse and repeat”.

So organization. Hey, relax, I know you’re freaking out. You’re like, dude, Ignatius, I AM organized. Or, dude, Ignatius, I know where everything is. No, you don’t. But that’s okay – this is a painless method of organization. You don’t have to unearth your collection, you don’t have to put things in labelled boxes, you don’t have to organize a single physical item in your Pile of Opportunity. You can organize everything virtually. It’s a simple concept really, but it does require one extra set of actions at the time of purchase. Get a picture of that miniature you just bought – take a pic of it on your phone, swipe the box art jpeg from the website, whatever, just get a picture. And then rename that image file with something that relates to categories you want to view your collection with. Like I have here, I name all miniatures that are dwarfs with the start of the file name being Dwarf underscore. Or Monster underscore. Or Undead underscore. After the underscore, put whatever name I wanna refer to that mini as. And if you do this with every miniature you collect, you’ll have a very simple visual gallery of all the miniatures you own. After I paint a mini, I remove it from the Pile of Opportunity gallery.

For me, all these rules apply to terrain as well, just the same thing – especially Rule Number Two – Multi-usage. Most terrain can be used in any game, so it’s really not that big of a deal.

Now, of course, all these things are just suggestions. There is no one way to do any of this hobby stuff. Or even any of this life stuff. This is how I’m currently operating as far as collecting miniatures and terrain, and I just wanted to share in case my thoughts might inspire some ideas in other folks. If you have other methods for controlling and operating your Pile of Opportunity, drop ‘em down in the comments, I’m always looking to upgrade and widen my thoughts on things and I’m sure a lot of you out there feel the same.

Until next time, let them dice roll! See ya!

Greetings good humans, and welcome to a brand new tabletop hobby channel: Tabletop Alchemy. I’ll explain that title in a bit. First off, my name is Ignatius. Yep, Ignatius. And yeah, it’s a cool name now that I’m not, like, you know, seven.

I’m sure the main question is: what kinda content should you expect from me? Followed by “why bother watching” and maybe “who is this old dude and what’s he doing here?”

First and foremost, this is a variety channel within the tabletop hobby space, which is why I’ve called it Tabletop Alchemy. You know, alchemy is essentially the mixing of different elements in the hopes that something new emerges.

I like Dungeons & Dragons, I like Warhammer, I like skirmish games, I like painting miniatures, crafting terrain, writing adventure content for rpgs, making maps, I like sci-fi/fantasy as a genre from books to movies to art and everything in between. Couple things I dig outside this tabletop hobby are Lego and Minecraft. Hey! Who’s the geek here?

My professional background includes filmmaking, special fx, videography and photography. I started out in the film industry creating miniatures for movies like Titanic and The Fifth Element – in fact, my very first job was fabricating the front end of the Earth warship from Luc Besson’s epic sci-fi adventure flick. And right there, you can see the little canvas lifeboat covers I made for the James Cameron flick. As an indy filmmaker I wrote a sci-fi/horror flick for a friend of mine to direct called The Men Who Fell, which was shot on the original DVX100 standard definition video camera with an anamorphic lens – for those of you that know, you know. I co-wrote and directed my own feature film called Lisl and the Lorlok, it’s a dark fantasy for kids and their grandparents [laugh] and it played on Russian TV for a while. Then I made the first, uh, let’s call it the first volume of a cheesy no-budget fantasy action adventure web series called Freelancers The Series.

[insert scene from freelancers]

I’d really like to remake that as a full show with a real budget someday. My dream scene to direct is masquerade ball that devolves into a pitched sword fight and magic duel. 

All these indy projects were done on shoestring budgets – “shoestring” being generous – and they’re not great by any means, but they were an intense amount of work and pretty wonderful to work on.

My background as a tabletop gamer, briefly, is probably like a lot of folks out there in my age range. I stumbled into playing D&D at the end of high school, played it through a few years in the Army, and then got into Shadowrun and cyberpunk and that’s when I started painting miniatures and eventually fell into the Warhammer warp. I played 40k 2^nd edition, Warhammer Fantasy 4^th edition and even Bloodbowl 3^rd (yeah, I think 3^rd edition). I had too many armies, too many ideas, et cetera. Then I got the job in the film industry working in special fx and that killed my gaming hobby right quick. Working on models in an industrial shop 60 hours a week for a few years can do that to a person. And then I went off into filmmaking territory and didn’t find my way back into the tabletop gaming hobby until a few years ago. I’ve always loved miniatures for some reason and I found D&D was alive and thriving. And then Stranger Things hit and we know what’s happened since then. 

So, what can you expect from Tabletop Alchemy. Like I said, I’m interested in all kinds of facets within this gleaming gem that is our tabletop hobby. I’ll be discussing a variety of tabletop topics related to writing and designing rpg adventures, crafting terrain for skirmish war-games and rpg scenarios, painting miniatures and trying out new techniques and tools and stuff like that, discussing fantasy books, movies and series as well as artists and filmmakers … I might do some product reviews once in a while, maybe conduct an interview or two with other creators or artists, or just share things I find really interesting. And I’ll most likely talk about life philosophies that somehow pop into my head because of and along with all this tabletop stuff. 

My goal is to drop a video every Thursday, and within that release schedule I plan to have a monthly category structure that includes one D&D or rpg-related video, one skirmish game-related video, a crafting or painting video and the fourth monthly video will be on whatever tabletop hobby thing has caught my interest. 

I’m fully aware that this not how one is supposed to engineer a YouTube channel – we’re supposed to pick a niche and drill down on that niche until we’re burned out or simply don’t do anything else. I know myself enough by now to know how and why I get burned out on things, and it’s really because I’m interested in a lot of different things. Producing content for Tabletop Alchemy is designed in some ways to help me put a dent in my own Pile of Opportunity but overall this channel is dedicated to sharing and discussing OUR journey – that’s right, you and me – our journey through the tabletop gaming hobby.

So there it is – welcome to Tabletop Alchemy. A little bit of everything, but with specific focus. Let the dice roll – go do something.