Friday, June 8, 2012

Things Return in Spades

I am sure I am not alone when I say I have been forced to get rid of some of my gaming habits over the years. Sometimes it has been to make room for other gaming habits. Other times it has been to get money to live. Parting with things has always been hard for me. Books and cards are like old friends that I want to keep around but just can’t.


Prior to leaving Helena, I had to get rid of cards for a game I played back in High School. It was an old TCG based on Highlander. You may notice as I continue to post that I have a thing for Highlander. I own all of the seasons of the TV show in one format or another. And I have a Director’s Cut of the original film. Anyways, when the card game came out, I spent much of my free money (which was a bit at the time) on cards. I had a huge collection including hard-to-get promo cards. The company that produced it went out of business some time ago, so there hasn’t been anything new released in a while. After a while, the group that I played with ultimately stopped playing and changed back to Magic. A dear friend said that he was willing to take the collection as he was trying to keep the game alive with a few of his friends. I let them go as they were just taking up space in my little apartment.
When I got to Missoula, I again had to make peace with getting rid of some books. For the angst-y part of my teenage years, I became quite fond of World of Darkness (old school not the new stuff). Primarily I played Vampire: the Masquerade but also had most of the Werewolf: the Apolcalypse and Mage: the Ascension books. Thankfully, Andy at Gallant games understood what it meant to be in dire need of cash. I moved here with enough money to pay for gas in the vehicles it took to haul my stuff from Helena. What I could make from my books had to go to feeding me until I got a job and became a bit more stable. He bought them all.


So a year or so ago, a friend on the MisCon Committee said that he needed to get rid of some old World of Darkness books. He was no longer using them and they were just taking up space. At the time, I had gotten a jones-ing to play the games of my youth again and was trying to put together a workable library. While I could easily have reacquired the entire library in digital form via various torrent sites, I would rather have the hard copies while I work on game bits. So he brought them to a meeting and the moment I laid eyes on them I beamed. I was looking at my old friends. Not all of them. But many of the books he had brought were the ones I had parted with several years before. He confirmed my suspicion that he had acquired them as used books from Gallant Games. A couple of months later, a friend from Helena said that he had lost his storage space and asked if I knew anyone who was interested in a bunch of World of Darkness books. I said that I would be glad to take them off of his hands. I know have all of the books that I had before moving here plus several more.
Just a few minutes ago, I returned from reacquiring my old Highlander cards. It turns out that the friend that I had turned them over to had given them to a mutual friend. I had posted a couple times on Facebook how much I missed playing the game and the new owner said that he had them. After talking to him for a bit he agreed to part ways with them. In addition to the cards I had, I have acquired hundreds more. I now have enough to make several good decks to play with friends and reminisce about times long past.


I suppose this is like geek karma. Put good things out into the geek world and the geek world will return three fold. My suggestions for all geeks, keep putting out good karma and it will return.

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