Yes, I love games! If you’re wondering what I play, here’s an illustrated partial list …

Tomb Raider (2013)

Just finished! Adore this game. Definitely getting the 2015 version.

I am so on Team Lara & Sam.

Also playing in 2015:

Dragon Age: Inquisition (finished it on rogue, mid-way on mage)

Witcher 2

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles

Alien Isolation

Destiny

Pretty fun as a FPS, but I got tired of the forced grouping for end-game so I’m not playing at the moment.

This comic sums up my early thoughts about the game:

World of Warcraft — since Nov. 2004

I’ve put my account on hiatus and just pop into Hearthstone over breakfast these days. But here’s what I mainly played when I was playing:

I really like the battle-dress look that came out about a season ago in the PvP gear, so that’s my go-to look these days.

For the first four or so years I played WoW, I primarily played hunters. Then I switched to shaman healing in Lich King and stayed with heals after Blizz made it so much more interesting with Cataclysm. I have four of the five healing classes to level 90 and I’m very very slowly working on my Monk (melee healing? — what?)

I do still love the Orc Hunter look and have to log over to her from time to time because she’s my longest-running character:

Orcs!!!

The Secret World

Summer 2013 some friends talked me into The Secret World and I love the storytelling and the more flexible character progression. I haven’t been in it much lately because, well, I get busy. Plus most of my friends are in WoW so I tend to play there first.

Of course I had to roll a Dragon, and an Illuminati, and a Templar. I thought I’d like Dragons best but I fell in love with the Illuminati (huge crush on Kirsten Geary, omg). So here’s my Illuminati character:

Blade fists, mostly. Tremendous heals over time while she slashes her way through things.

My Dragon character mainly uses magic, though once she discovered the shotgun, we had a great time with shotgun + anything. And my Templar loves her hammer! (Hammer + shotgun = pure awesome.)

Dragon Age 2 / Mass Effect 3 / Skyrim

My Illuminati character above was actually as close as I could get in the TSW interface to Isabela from Dragon Age 2. Big fan of Isabela. I usually play the template look of Hawke or Shepard for the Bioware games (neither of them male). Though I do have a great playthrough of DA2 that I’m somewhere in the middle of where I made my version of Hawke look as much like Specialist Samatha Traynor from ME3 as possible and I’m playing as if I’m Traynor running a simulation about a nearby planet. How’s that for a crossover!

In Skyrim I have a Wood Elf Conjurer that I named Santana (yes, after Santana on Glee). She rolls with Lydia the housecarl and a flame atronoch named “Hot Stuff.”

Magic The Gathering 2013/2014

After wisely avoiding Magic for years (except for a great tutorial from my godson), I loaded up the Magic apps for my iPad and phone. If you’re wondering, my mana color is Blue, but my favorite card of all time is the Kor Spiritdancer.

This image from http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/boab/149 where you can also find out more about this card if you’re so inclined.

I should add that it’s my favorite both because of the look and because when played well it’s absolutely devastating.

Guild Wars 2 / Aion / EQ2

I played these for a little while. GW2 has some really great design elements, but I didn’t have the time to add it to my WoW habit. Aion was really pretty! EQ2 suffered from not letting Mac users onto the same server as PC users so I couldn’t play with my friends.

This is my toon from Aion and I had the same look in EQ2. I love the short but built barbarian with little or no hair look. Yes, I’m purple because I’m THAT gay.

And more!

Diablo 2 & 3

Dungeons & Dragons and Champions, back in the day

And Zombies, Run!

But how do you find the time?

Sometimes, frankly, I don’t. There are months when I do very little gaming — on the other hand, there are times when I set aside nice, long blocks of time for gaming. For example with the launch of Diablo 3, I did a lot of writing work ahead of time because I knew I’d want one to two weeks of spending all my spare time playing Diablo 3.

I do find that gaming is a great way to relax and separate myself out from writing work. It’s highly visual but much more active than television, so my brain stays engaged but my writer-mind can rest. For more about the intersection of writing and gaming in my life, see my post: On Writing and Gaming.