Thoughts On - Hobby Shopping - Updated

 Hi Everybody,

                      I have been pondering spending in the hobby at the moment, as I have been earning a wage for the last 6 months, after a two-year gap of employment. There are some great products out there, but I have a problem justifying the expense of it.

 Hardback rule sets have come in at £20 - £30 pounds, with fantastic artwork. But the problem is, we have a major crisis coming down the road at us all, with food and energy bills going up and that's just what we know about at the moment.

 There is usually .pdf files of games and rules available, which is great, but without a tablet, you are usually looking at a large outlay of ink to do it justice, which does not come cheap. (I don't think I have turned my printer on this year, as I was on my last cartridge.)

                      So the question is, "Do I spend on the hobby, now or later, go down the PDF route (with or without printing the files out), or use what I have until things calm down if they ever do."

In case you are wondering what my shopping list might be, Edition three of Five Parsecs from Home in hardback (Modiphious Press) .D100 Solo Adventures, Ironsworn Starforged, not to mention some sort of upgrade for my 12-year-old, long-suffering PC.

Do let me know if you have a similar situation in the comments and what your goody list is at the moment.

Regards all,

Ivor Cogdell

P.S. I do have the second edition of Five Parsecs From Home, which I have had for a while. I have been waiting to get some more figures and terrain, thanks to the generosity of the author, Ivan Sorensen.

P.P.S. 15 October 2022 - I have upgraded to a SATA 2 SSD, it was delayed by the postal strike, plus the events described in the post "Disaster" (3 Nov 2022"), so it has not been fitted yet. I plan to do a clean install of Windows 10 on it. 

3rd November 2022 - I was made redundant at the end of last month, so that pretty much limits me to free stuff on Drive through RPG until my fortunes do an upturn. Please do comment though if you see something I should add to my wish list.

7th November - I spotted a 10" Samsung Tablet in a second-hand shop. "Not too expensive", I thought, "at £38 GBP. Once home, I found out why. I could not get a secure connection to the net. The "Play Store" was out of date and would not load. Edge, Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers would not load. I could not download any PDF reader/editors, which is what I had planned to use it for mainly. Needless to say, it went back to the shop the next day.

 A sales assistant asked, "Were you not told it was sub-standard when you bought it ?" 

"No", I replied, thinking "Otherwise I would not have bought it, you idiot".

I am proud to say, I gave better service to my customers when I worked in retail. But, at least I did get my money back.

Ivor Cogdell