Tonight I had a nice online experience. It seems so easy to rant about dumb shit on the internet, so I felt it was high time to report some good (aside from sharing fun, strange or interesting media).

So, yeah, here I was intending on going to bed early (yeah, right) and ended up goofing off and hanging out with the usual suspects of my online life. The chatroom was going through some weird stuff today, but came back up later in the evening, so checked in with the regular crew. I got involved with other things and intended on going to bed (again) when I noticed someone new in the place that found it from the Paizo boards. I stopped in to say hi and the normal stuff, because I want folks to feel at home there (and honestly I’ve met some really solid folks there).

Anyway, the guy pops in talking about how he only played video game RPGs and only recently got involved with tabletop. I thought that was awesome. Sure, I know it happens. I’ve heard the reports. Hell, I might’ve even met a few folks who came to the tabletop hobby that way, but I’d forgotten the details since then. Maybe it was how the guy straight up laid out his journey to tabletop RPGs, or maybe it was that the tabletop RPG that he finally tumbled to was one that is near and dear to my heart. This lovely stranger found Pathfinder. Sure, he said he played 3.5 for like a year before finding Pathfinder, but still, how cool is that?

(Plus, the guy’s GM is a totally solid cat I’ve known on the boards for years, who’s reported a few troubles getting a table together in the past, so it’s good to see he’s got a good game going.)

Take that you we’re-losing-the-hobby-fanbase-due-to-video-games naysayers! Though in similar genres, the two types of games have tons of overlap and heaps of disconnect. I want to see a Venn diagram of those statistics before I make my call where things are headed, but I've still got my money on 'Fine'.