The boss is a chicken shit
Ok, so not the boss, but still, the Director of Photographic Development. Lemme lay it down like this.
Tuesday, we got a call from one of the gophers over at corporate adding a shitload of photos to an order that was made waaay back on the 7th of the month and still hadn't been picked up. Apparently, it's photos of the daughter of a friend of the president of the company. Can I get anymore ofs in there? Our normal turn around time on photos is 72 hours. They absolutely had to have these in 5 hours. Absolutely. Had to have em. Before 4pm Tuesday. Can't be late.
Photos are still there at 9am Wednesday morning. Few things piss me off more than busting ass to make a deadline for a customer of any sort, only to have them not extend the same courtesy to me and pick the shit up on time. So, some lackey or another picks the photos up around 10, and the manager and I head to a meeting that'll decide my future for the next few months.
After the meeting, the boss comes into the lab and reems my ass out. The photos, printed 2 weeks apart, were slightly different hues/tones/colors whatever. That's because the damn photographer didn't have the key light set bright enough, so each time I reprint them, I have to manually brighten the photos in Photoshop. For normal customers, it's no big deal, cause they don't order the same photos over and over again, weeks apart, then view them side by side. So, the daughter of the friend of the president of the company got the exact same level of service as all of our other customers, except in 5 hours instead of 72.
On a slow day, no big. On Tuesday, we started most of the production for Wednesday's orders. 400 photos. So spending an hour or so matching these damn photos and making them perfect was out of the question. Couldn't explain that to anybody on Tuesday, though, so the boss got her ass reemed, then reemed mine. Trouble is, I fight back. I kind of feel sorry for my boss, cause everyone at the corporate headquarters knows that, so she gets stuck delivering the message.
This time, though, I'm tired of it and really in a "fuck this" kind of mood. After explaining to her that I don't want to work at a company that's gonna put the president's friends before the real customers, and rate said friends at a hire standard of quality, I insist on speaking to the PD director that reemed her. Fearing for my job (no one at my studio has a clue how to do what I do, so they don't wanna lose me), she won't give me his phone number. No big, the day moves on.
Later, PD director butthead calls to check up on the status of the order, and I happend to catch on that the boss is talking to him. "Mind if I have a chat," I say. She asks if he's got a minute, and he specifically replies, "I don't want to deal with him right now." At least, that's what she said the reply was, after much badgering from me. Her reply whilst on the phone was something along the lines of, "He doesn't have a minute," and doesn't know when he'll have a minute, which was my next question. He knew I's pissed, cause a few other corporate people were floating around the lab earlier in the day.
Prolly the thing that bugs me most is that I get so pissed at these corporate jack-asses that I almost yell at my boss for delivering their messages. Most of the time I don't yell, just get very commanding with my tone. She's said I seem to grow when I get that tone. Kind of funny, cause I'm a little guy, don't think of myself as intimidating at all, and actually haven't hit anybody or anything in prolly 5 years or so. Still, I feel bad for her, cause she's a decent person. Just has her own areas of incompetancy that have nothing to do with corporate. Of course, to her credit, she applied to be a photographer with our company, and they made her the studio manager. She's got no experience, doesn't even really wanna do it, and I admire her for sticking to it for the last couple of years, cause if I had to put up with the shit she does on a daily basis, at a job she doesn't really want, at a pay scale that's less than stellar, I'd have found something else very quietly at the very least, if not simply walked out one day.
Anyway, got a major sick & sniffly coming in by ambulance. Gotta get.
The Bad
Ok. I haven't given too much thought to the evil side of The Greater War. I want to kind of mold that around the skills of the players. I mean, if everybody makes a high level spell slinger, making the ruling class of bad guys simple fighters employing a slew of lower level casters is gonna make for an easy end to the war. That being said, here's what I got.
There's a ruling council of the evil states, with the grandson of the old lich being the most prominent figure. Anyone that's read Terry Pratchett, think Vinaterri for this guy. He's the boss, but the rest of the council as a whole doesn't think he has the power that he has. How much of it is psychological and how much is legitimate power? I ain't sayin. :)
As for the grunts, it's your typical combination of orcs and evil races, mixed with barbaric humans from the south, etc. A few demons/devils to spice it up. There's been an aerial reaction to the good guys Air Corps, so Manticores, Chimeras and Chromatic Dragons do tend to do the sky above battlefields. Granted, dragons are rare on both sides, as this certainly isn't Krynn. In fact, the last great Dragon General was taken out near the end of the Great War by a simply pegasus knight. Knight lost his arm, declined divine healing for it, now acts as an advisor and diplomat for some of the higher ups in the good guys. So yeah, dragons = rare and not in game at the start of the campaign.
Other than that, the bad guy side of the dead zone both sides are fighting over is very similar to the good guy side, just a different mix of races. Orcs and some giants have developed a bit of culture and education, and the place is definitely not a Sauron-like war machine. Hell, there's actually more humans living in the "evil" provinces than in the "good" provinces. The main differnece is politics, which I think you'll find is the case in most wars.
The Air Corps
Well, here's a brief (yeah right) review of the "good guys" in the campaign.
Your typical alliance of dwarves, elves, and men doesn't leave much room for variation, eh? Well, originally, I'd wanted to focus on the air corp, which is based loosely on what little I know of the Amry Air Corps/Air Force during World War II, with some D&D variations and some of my own modernization, cause I'm the DM and it's a fantasy setting. The idea has expanded a bit from there, but we'll start with the air corps.
There are three basic wings of air soldiers, subdivided into the various mounts they fly on. There's the fighter pilots, focusing on the aerial dog-fighting. These guys tend to fly on beefy mounts, where lots of armor, carry lances, and be very cocky. After all, the occasional pegasus soldier will have to face down a dragon general cause he's the only poor shmuck left alive.
The bomber corps tends to be magic casters of some sort, although pretty much any skills that let the flyer focus on ground support are utilized. It's nothing unusual to see a couple of light weight gnomes on a griffon dropping greek fire all over the place. These guys tend to be less focused and more down to earth than the fighter squadrons, cause they tend to find themselves in predicaments where brashness gets ya killed.
Finally, combat wise, there's the combat search & rescue corp. These guys are usually pretty crazy. Got an infantry unit caught behind enemy lines? These guys go in after them, maybe escorting a transport. Got a spy that needs recovered? Here they come.
There's also your typical transport units and an aerial MASH unit or two.
Primarily, the Air Corps is male. Female aren't excluded, but it's definitely a "good ole boys club", and most of the females tend to operate in transport or MASH. With the high attrition rate the front lines see, and especially the Air Corps, women are a bit too valuable for these poistions. At least, that's the way THIS society sees it.
Tech wise, all pilots are equipped with a ring of feather falling for those tricky dismounts, and squadron member wear special headgear with limited telepathy for radio-like communication amongst units. Nothing long-range, although special missions may include a communication specialist armed with the appropriate spells or magic items.
Aside from the Air Corps, just think of good guys universally for political/social attitudes and what not.
Some other interesting points. There are a few "floating castles" the alliance maintains for forward troop deployment, and teleportation is key to the armies' successes. Forward scouts and front line troops generally carry the equipment necessary for an advanced magic user to teleport in, set up a quick but stable portal, and start bringing in reinforcements. Of course, the bad guys do the same.
Another interesting note is that a few bards are being selectively "imbedded" in a few of the military groups in hopes of bringing a sense of the troops heroics back to the pubs and inns of the workers supporting the war effort.
That's all I can think of right now, and I gotta get some work done. Next time I think I'll write up the state of the bad boys. Of course, that may not be necessary, since the response I've gotten is looking like it's gonna be Nick, Wendy and I playing, and they both know most of this shit already.
A brief history
In the beginning, there was darkness, then the Gods said darkness sucks, although there will be a great band called such in another realm, let's have some light. Fast forward a few millennia.
A short while ago, in this campaign, there was a world encompassing war known as the Great War. On one side was a council of evil wizards headed by your typical dictatorial lich. On the other was your also typical coalition of humans, elves, and dwarves. The lich wanted to rule the world, the coalition said no way. Much magic was thrown around, both sides incorporated a "Scorched Earth" policy, many heroes were born, died, resurrected, retired, and brought of retirement on both sides. In the end, a suicidal charge by one of the lich's own minions destroyed the lich, and disrupted the council enough to bring on peace. Pretty typical fantasy world stuff there.
Time passed and the lich's bastard, unknown grandson (possibly great even) discovered his roots, his power, and reformed the council. The world once again erupted into war. Two years have passed and the world is still at war. However, both sides have "agreed" that there was enough destruction during the last war and have thus accepted that outright badness of "Scorched Earth." Likewise, non-combatants are safe from attacks on both sides, as are necessities such as water and food production. All in all, it's a good war. Much hate still abounds of course, but there's certainly nothing wrong with an occasional human vs. orc soccer match while the Dragon Generals are napping after their afternoon spot of tea and scones.
That's the present setting of the Greater War Campaign. Next time we'll have a run down of the good guys or the bad guys. Maybe a brief spot on some of the "technology" the wizards have cooked up on both sides.
General Overview of "The Greater War"
OK, so the campaign is gonna be very similar to World War II. In this as of yet unnamed setting, the world has not fully recovered from a previous world war called the Great War, when the same enemies, arise to overthrow the good people of the land once again. There are essentially two sides (more on them in later posts) battling over the world. This will be a grand campaign, hopefully encompassing many different characters and many different aspects of the D&D settings.
I'd like to make this thing both high level and high magic, with magic replacing technology. However, one of my favorite aspects of D&D is the character development you get from playing your character up from nothing to a Lord/Lady of the land. So, one of the things we're gonna try is a twist on character creation. Instead of making a character of X level, we're gonna first discuss a character idea. Where the character is, where they came from, etc, and then we're gonna create them from the ground up. We'll start with level 1, and work our through levels until the character reaches the point you'd like to start playing them at. Remember, this isn't a God campaign, so depending on your concept, there will be a level cap, and if you can't make it under that cap, you're shut off. Ex. I think level 5 is the minimum level a Fighter needs to become a Windrider. So, the Windrider cap will be around level 7. You could make a level 7 Windrider, or a level 4 Magician trying to become a Windrider...depends on what you wanna play.
Since the campaign is intended to be so large, I'd like everyone to have a couple of different characters within a couple of different story arcs, all happening at the same time, so if yer playing a low level character in one arc and want to play a higher level bad-ass in a different area, that's cool. That'll give each of us a chance to make people of our characters, rather than a set of numbers meant to throw the meanest fireball into a horde of orcs.
As for story arcs, I'm interested in running an Airborne campaign and a political/diplomatic storyline. The airborne forces could either go paratroopers, fighter/bomber squadrons, or even Combat Search & Rescue type stuff. The politcal arena could be diplomatic missions, some espionage, assasination corps, or maybe just following the lines of Britains "Bureau of Ungentlemanly Warfare." Nick will probably have a couple of his own ideas, and depending on player desire, we could have characters on both sides of the conflict.
Feel free to email me with any questions, and look for comments from Nick once I tell him to chime in.
Campaign Beginnings
If you're in the Twin Cities (MN) area and interested in some D&D action, give a read. My email is amazingshafeman@yahoo.com if any of the next few days worth of posting interests you, as I'm gonna start free forming a campaign with the help of my co-DM Nick.
Well, last night we played Lunch Money. Rockin game. Cards represent assaults and ya gotta nab $20 from your opponents. Fun enough two player, but it really shines with 3 or more, and the more the merrier. Seems to be slightly therapeutic for some people, too.
Cards such as Tantrum and 2-Fer make for interesting one shots as you describe your attacks, and you can get great combos in, such as being Grabbed, and knocked senseless with a Powerplay/Hail Mary combo, while an Imaginary Friend Kicks you into oblivian. That's $14 you lose in one hit by the way. :(
So, last night we played 6 games, we being Nick, Wendy and I, and each won two games. Nick did land the afforementioned Powerplay/Hail Mary, but his Imaginary Friend was off hittin on girls or something, so I only lost $10. Hilarity ensued once again when Wendy Backlashed Nick's Tantrum, causing him to spaz out on himself. That's twice in two nights of Lunch Money she's done that to him, and each time I comment on him "forgeting his special helmet." One of those you had to be there jokes, probably.
One of the most damaging combos in the game happened thus. Someone called another player a Hippie, which lets everyone have a free basic attack on them. An Uppercut and a Headbutt later, saw the Hippie down $7, but then an Imaginary Friend came in with a big Kick for another $4.
Granted, I'm a little biased, but in my opinion, I had the best game winner of all. Early on, I was Grabbed and given Cooties. Cooties causes the loss of $1 each turn and can only be passed onto another player through a Grab. No other means of Cooties cleansing exists. Late in the game, with only $4 to her name, I managed to Grab Wendy, give her a really Weird (adds $2 to an attack) Wedgy and transfer Cooties to her. Wedgy's a $1 attack that makes all her futures attacks at -1 until she manages Freedom. She had a hand full of First Aids, though and managed to stay alive another couple turns. Long enough to knock Nick out with a shot to the Nuts.
Anyway, that's Lunch Money, and I need breakfast. Until next time, buy the game and beat up your friend's, only not in that "A video game made me do it" sort of way. Maybe play with your parents and convince them that some of what you do is indeed they're fault.
HoT Fire Enlightenment vs. Crane Dueler
Well, Nick rebuilt his Crane deck, focusing on it with all of his cards to the exclusion of all his other decks, much like I did/am doing with my Rat deck. Twice in fact, because his cats made a fun game of "slide across the floor on an L5R card" with the first rebirth of Crane. This game was that deck vs. my new Dragon deck.
I started with Ring of Fire in play, cause who wouldn't playing against Crane. I got Void out in a few turns, while Nick was still struggling with his crappy draw. Well, sort of crappy draw. He had nothing but gold for several turns, but then started rolling with a couple of ranged attackers, his Daimyo and then his Champion.
At that point, I had Earth in my hand, and didn't figure I'd get a better chance to play it, since I had enough force showing in my provinces to defend if he let me through. He defended, and after his Champ dodged Fists of Earth twice, I managed to send him home with Refugees, while all of his other personalities were bowed. He lost a province, three peeps and I got Earth into play.
Game slowed down here, as he started pumping peeps out. I had to pay full price for my guys and honor race him, which actually worked for a few turns in the way of favor denial. The whole time I was sitting on Ring of Air with only 1 Kiho in hand. I managed to stock up on 3 Kihos and a spell, but still couldn't get Air into play without heading into battle.
On Nick's last turn, he went to 42 honor, so I had to win. Played Look Into the Void, drew another, played the second, drew a Kiho, bowed the Dragon Champ to find Ring of Water, and went into battle. All on one provine, cause none of my battle cards needed opposing peeps.
He defended the opposite provinces, leaving me with no opponents. One Kiho got cancelled, but the next got through to bring Air into play, then I dropped two Kihos, a Furios Strike (we play Open), and finally a "Destiny Has No Secrets" to reveal only the Ring of Water in my hand, allowing me to play Water and Transcend to victory.
Now I carry two titles in my play group. First to Lose to Dishonor (Rat vs. Crane) and First to Enlightenment.
And I have to say, playing enlightenment is challenging, but damn fun. There's some adrenaline associated with the military smash styles of Rat and Uni, but Transcendance requires some serious skill. I like it.
Well, the sole reason for me testing this blog has come to fruition. You can read Cactus Joe's blog at www.torcpress.com/blog.html. Shortly we'll hash that thing out to look like the rest of www.torcpress.com, but I gotta relearn CSS first. Haven't used it in almost 5 years. Until then, I'll prolly keep goofin off with L5R stuff here. Thanks for reading so far.
Man, how sucky and scary would this be? Cruisin through a national park, see some elephants, your sportin the wrong elephant gang colors on your car, so they proceed to whoop your trucks ass Wolverine Berserker style. Ouch.
Nezumi vs. Tomorrow
On Monday, whilst sick, Nick and I played a little L5R. I played my Ratling deck and he played a freshly constructed Shadowlands Oni Horde deck. To his credit, he'd just made it and our games were the first playtest, but my Nezumi ate his ass for lunch.
My deck has slowly been evolving away from its original purpose, so it still had Tch Tch Warrens as the Stronghold and a few Ninja Thieves (obviously meant to still everything from the opponent). I haven't been fortunate enough to pull a Tomorrow Sensei, and none of us are competitive enough to buy singles yet. That may change if one of us builds a dominate deck, but for now, it's a well balanced, easy going play environment.
So, in the first game, I got a rockin opening draw, popping out a Ratling Village first turn and starting to build the rat swarm in a hurry. If I remember right, Nick was stuck with one Oni for awhile, while I whittled him down to two provinces. Then Iuchiban came out and Nick looked smug. However, on my very next turn, Occult Murders flipped for me, so out Iuchiban went, while I lost only a Ch'krt. Not a bad trade, and next turn Nick bowed out, cause the rat swarm was gonna finish him. Of course he demanded a rematch...
Second game started much more slowly for me, but on turn two or three I pulled a Plains of Otusan Uchi and sped up a hair. Occult Murders traded that damn ranged 7 Oni for my Transcendant rat Z'iee fellow. Again my swarm whittled Nick down to two provinces, but the 2nd one he could have stopped I think, but he let it through with intent to swarm me back. He did, but I'd been sitting on a Call to Arms since turn 1. First thing I did was Slaughter the Scout to take out a Voigarti with some special Claws and a Skeletal Troopers. Then my Ratling Archers knocked out a Goblin Slingers. Iuchiban wasn't havin his army slaughtered out from under him, so he dueled Chk'rt into oblivian. I dropped a Battlefield of the Shallow Graves, and the game was over, but I can't remember if there was an exchange of ranged fire after that or not. Regardless, that wiped his army out, since a Ratling Conjuror pump gave me 28 force, and cutting his in half left him with something like 12. After that, I just swarmed him, and Nick took it like a man.
Since then, I've switched the Stronghold over to the Meeting Place and I MAY drop a Migawari for 2 Voitargis. Voitargi is a good value for 3 gold, but Migawari's ability to steal followers has saved me in past games.
Regardless, the Rat deck thus far is 5-1 in duels, and the loss came against a Crane honor runner, solely because I forgot to attack on one turn. Still haven't tested it in multi-player, which is what we usually play. I think it'd take some good diplomacy on my part to win, since I'm pretty sure there isn't 39 points of honor in the deck anyway. Still, might add some flavor to multi's, since they tend to be a race to 40 anyway...
The Start of a Haphazard Legend of the Five Rings Diary
Probably one of the oddest things I enjoy about playing L5R is emailing battle reports to my friend Joe. Joe is the artist at www.torcpress.com and also initially got me interested in L5R. However, he lives in Illinois, I live in Minnesota. I didn't start playing til I found out that a couple of other friends in Minnesota are part of a decently sized L5R play group. Hence my need to relate battle reports to Joe. And now, my readers. Lucky you.
A local radio station's web site (www.93x.com) has a "Hot Chick of the Day." It's a decent place to kill some time sitting at work, as it's not porn, and since I work in a photo studio I can chalk it off as research, hehe.
Anyway, one of the usual questions is along the lines of "What does your future hold?" Nothing cracks me up more than the amount of girls that answer that question with a variant on, "I want to be a positive role model for young girls or change a young girl's life." Anyone selling their body acting as a role model cracks me up. Chalks up a lot of the U.S.'s societal problems right there. Even the "Do what it takes to make tons of cash, then be a good person," mentality a lot of the models try to pass off disappoints me. Not to say I disagree with doing what it takes to succeed, just that I'm not going to sugar coat any moral shortcomings of that road with all of the good I intend to do once I'm successful. You want to be a positive role model for young girls? Get a degree, be a productive and successful member of society. Don't sell your body, even if it is just to sell underwear or motorcycles. Sure, sex sells, but does it neccessarily sell good things?
Of course, I'm a hornball and a perv, as well as a hypocrit after this post. *shrug* So, I'm gonna say, I'm not dissing the modeling industry or its models. I just don't think they make good role models. Good role models would be Hilary Clinton and Mia Hamm.
Another disjointed post
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a "fire watch" actually include a tour of the grounds at some point? In basic, our fire watches included touring the barracks, the bathrooms, and the drill grounds. Why do I bring this up? Because the security officer in my area at the hospital has called dispatch to check off on two fire watches tonight, without actually leaving his desk. 20 minutes later, he calls dispatch to check back in with an all clear. All clear of what? Things to do on the web maybe. Not to mention an abundance of personal calls tonight. I'm surprised at the employees here that make personal calls between 3am and 6am. Anybody I could call is most definitely asleep at that point, or at least tired enough to tell me good night and hang up.
On a different note (lack of transitions happen a lot on the night shift), Legends of the Five Rings fiction rocks. Mostly, it rocks because the players influence it. Take the big tourney at GenCon. Going into it, Crab was getting butt poked by Iuchiban's Hordes and the Tsuno, while Unicorn, Lion and Dragon were all fighting of a city, with Scorpion stuposedly on Lion's side, but who ever knows for sure where Scorpion sits?
Based on the top clan players decisions (and where the story team takes those decisions), Crab is intent on allying with Daigotsu of the Shadowlands to fight fire with fire and oust Iuchiban's Tsuno from behind the Carpenters Wall. For a little extra oomph, Daigotsu is prolly gonna find The Forgotten Tomb of Fu Leng, cause you can never have too much power when you're evil, yet honorable. On the other side of things, Unicorn wants to ally with Crab, while Lion wants to ally with Crane, so it looks to be a war of Unicorn/Crab/Daigotsu vs. Lion/Crane/Dragon, with Scorpion getting some good dirt on the Unicorn champion for blackmail purposes. That'll be an interesting melee if it comes to pass.
Of course, I could see Iuchiban holding back Crab/Daigotsu long enough to make it Unicorn vs. Lion/Crane, while Dragon just recruits an important Lion family member to become a monk and leaves. However, before Unicorn starts roughing up the blues and browns, Scorp'll convince Moto Chagatai that it's just a good idea to leave, because Chagatai did bargain with the Shi Ten Wie-ding (or whatever) to start spreading some altars to the Lords of Death...
None of this is as important as the anticipation of a Naga awakening and joining my boys the Ratlings, complete in Name and status. That should help us regain some decent warrens from the dark dark horde.
Holy crap, he just did it again. Cleared a fire watch and sat in the lobby to watch CNN. I think I'm gonna go to www.homestarrunner.com and see if Strong Bad can wake me up.
almost 3am rant
Well, there's prolly no substance in this one, but I forgot to bring my book to work...
Anyway, http://store.animearigato.com/ seems to be a good place for cheap anime dvds and soundtracks. I dig. Just hope I'm not advertising a bootlegging site here.
Also, for any L5R heads out there, http://62.142.214.30/l5r is a nice little site that lets you build a deck and play online. Provided you can load the page with the java applet, as sometimes the server is slow. Lots of nice people here to help out newbs like me, too. For instance, I learned that during the first few turns, "flush your provinces like your ass is dripping."
I had a rant, but all night I've been trying to remember what I wanted to research online, and I just remembered. Excuse me, I must go look at cars.
Dig
Well, here's our first post in what's starting as a simple test for a blog addition to www.torcpress.com. This may turn into a regular thing for me, but for now, it's a sample for Cactus Joe to preview. So, check 1, check 1, 2, 3. Yep, this thing's on.
