Last Friday, I released a post that was essentially the introductory post about my IT career. I talked about getting my start and the first couple of jobs that I had in this field, beginning with my first data center job all the way to leaving my third IT job, which was another data center in Kansas City. Today, I’ll be continuing the walkthrough of my history in IT with the next four jobs that I had, which are going to come with some… interesting stories, particularly a couple of the jobs. The most interesting of all of them is actually going to be the first job I’m talking about today: working for an insurance company’s data center. It was… something.

The Legend of Vox Machina is an animated adaptation of the first campaign in Critical Role’s live-play Dungeons and Dragons show. It’s an attempt at adapting months upon months of live storytelling among friends into a concise, cohesive animated story. I’m a fan of Critical Role, have been since campaign one, so I knew that trying to adapt the Briarwood arc—the one that they’re focusing on in this show—was going to be a significant undertaking. With only a few twenty or thirty-minute episodes at their disposal, this is a lot to condense… so, how’d they do?

In today’s post, I really just want to do a little chat and wrap-up. I’ll touch on some points I might have missed during this series, give you some final tips and suggestions, and just generally… wrap this up. Wow. I still can’t believe it. This series is over. Who would have thought? Not me.

Today, I thought it would be fun to share my personal IT career journey and talk about how it started and how I got where I am. This is going to be split into two parts since there’s a lot to go through. My hope is that by being thorough and open about this, I can show others that it’s entirely possible to build a career in a field like IT and support yourself without the need for a degree that you don’t actually want or care about.

This post isn’t about my favorites, it’s about my anticipated favorites. These are stories—be they books, movies, or games—that I can’t wait to experience this year, in 2022. I think it’ll be interesting to put these thoughts out there and then reflect on this post once I’ve actually experienced these stories to see if I was let down or not.

Today, we’re going to have one last session regarding players and how they can shape your world and story. Specifically, I’ll be talking about character arcs, which are sections of your campaign’s story that focus on one or two of the characters, giving them the spotlight. I’m going to talk about why they matter and give my suggestions for creating effective, impactful character arcs that are just as powerful (if not more so) than the main story.