Tales from The Sidequest Inn

At the time that I type these words, there are 50 members in our Facebook Group: Hellfire Club - Brantford Chapter - after ejecting one potential spambot.  By itself, this is impressive for a Facebook Social Group with such a narrow geographic appeal and only four weeks in existence. What impresses me even more is the level of cautious seriousness on the part of nearly every member that joins.  Most members have been a part of RPG groups that have fallen apart, frustration with efforts to find a new group or even locating a place to play.  At a minimum, I believe that this group is just the very beginning of a community-driven effort to address these concerns and more. Me? I'm James Greg Levett  (I answer to most of the names and a few others).  I'm the founder of the page and one of two of the Admins running the Facebook Group.  I'm also the proprietor of Sidequest Loot, an online-only selling business that has found me interested in developing my product ...

  Here it is: The Trollslayer's Axe, to the tune of "The Log Driver's Waltz" - because of course it is! If you ask any Troll, from Altdorf to Nuln What scares him the most from his warts to his toeses He'll tell you his guts are stronger than fear But he does dread to meet with a Trollslayer Chorus: For he goes whirling down the dungeon corridors That's where the Trollslayer learns to stay spritely Yes, twirling down the dungeon corridors The Trollslayer's axe slays the trolls completely! When Undead come to town, I like to go down And watch all the men try to come to our rescue They'll grunt and they'll hack, to stave off the attack But what we need is a surly Trollslayer Chorus: For he goes whirling down the dungeon corridors That's where the Trollslayer learns to slay mightily Yes, twirling down the dungeon corridors The Trollslayer's axe slays the trolls completely! To round out your band, you'll need different skills And travel wi...

Before I registered Sidequest Loot as a business, I was just some dude selling things on Facebook Marketplace.  I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it very much and I'm STILL not certain that it can be any way lucrative. As I pushed past fifty listings while rotating new products in to replace the ones that were sold, I wanted to at least try to take things a little more seriously.  A lot of this was following the things that I liked in other listings while avoiding things that I didn't like.  Sure, I could have read an article with a professional opinion - make that make sense - or look over an AI overview of suggested advice.  With my odd blend of items, some of those found helpful words weren't going to be much help. I applied my own logic and my own risk tolerance as a buyer.  Amongst the things that I liked were good, clean photos - but not TOO clean.  A picture of a perfect item with the background photoshopped out always made me feel like the seller had s...

The idea that I could actually do Sidequest Loot as even a side "thing" started back in December 2024.  Looking for a little extra money for the holidays, I parted with some of my childhood toys and games.  Mostly Transformers and Video Games. Ebay looked awfully complicated and expensive.  I wasn't sure of many of the others.  I had done some random one-off deals on Kijiji and found that Facebook Marketplace was quite similar.  Neither took any commission on the actual sales and there was no charge to list the items. Kijiji just felt somehow... dirty.  Can't quite explain it.  Maybe because I was looking for an outlet that felt a little bit less like a garage sale.  Besides that, it seemed that FB carried a much larger potential audience of users and hopefully buyers. I'll reference the two interchangeably because the process to use them is very much the same.  I listed on both items, a process called cross-posting.  Some dedication to ...

There’s a reason why a song, a smell, or even a sesame seed bagel can take you straight back in time. Not just in memory, but in emotion. Nostalgia isn’t just daydreaming about the past; it’s a scientifically proven psychological comfort blanket that our brains pull over us when adulthood starts feeling like too much. Researchers say nostalgia helps increase feelings of connection and optimism, almost like an emotional multivitamin. It’s our brain’s way of saying,  “Hey, remember when things were good? Yeah, you’ve felt joy before, and you can again.”  It doesn’t matter if the past wasn’t perfect as our minds have this beautiful ability to edit out the chaos and highlight the magic. It’s selective memory, and honestly, I’m not mad about it. For me, nostalgia hides in the smallest details. The kind that sneak up on you in the middle of a grocery store aisle or the first bite of something familiar. I can still picture myself in my mum’s Buick, when she said,  “You’d probabl...

Full disclosure: I have not been an RPG player in over 25 years. A sense of familiarity and perhaps personal nostalgia drew me to participate in a couple of Dungeons & Dragons themed events.  I recognized the community involved and could at least carry on a bit of a conversation.  As much as publishing companies have done their very best to ruin their game in new and creative ways (ask ANY player of ANY system), the core is very much the same.  This has nothing to do with anything that they print, the core is the ragtag band of adventurers that try to meet weekly.  Always has been.  Always will be. These groups are as close as any similar circles that you will find, like a golfing foursome or the same team that comes back every year to lose most of their beer-league games.  In roleplaying games you will act out of character and frequently in absurd fashion to help move the story along to a satisfactory conclusion.  Your fellow players might tease...