Shonen Jump :August

Just got this bad boy in the mail. Bout halfway through.

Get a starter for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Interesting. I know my boy Joe likes the anime, so it can't be all that bad, but the intro/teaser lacked any kind of development or depth, so I found it rather unenticing. Have to wait and see the real thing I guess.

One Piece opens the real issue, with the continuing hunt for Nami. A little more development in the way of Arlong, but as usual, I'll just it rocks as it usually rocks, so as not to ruin anything. You do get a fair amount of Usopp in this one.

Naruto sees the intro to the next stage of testing for the young ninjas, but not much really happens. Actually, there's a lot of conversation in this one, and since it's like 7 conversations happening in close proximity to each other at the same time, it's a little jumbled and hard to follow.

Shaman King sees the end of Ren and Yoh's battle. Interesting turn of events. Not sure if I found it anti-climactic or not. I know I didn't see it coming, though.

Other than that, today saw a wrap up for the first piece of meat for the Myrrhlanthus guide AND I started a little bit of page layout. Good stuff, and I'm feeling like I got a lot of shit done. Now I need to figure out the order the books gonna run in.....

A menagerie of thought

I used to think menageries were dirty. I used to not know what the word meant. Anyway....

Lessee. Great fricking wrap up to his camping trip from earlier this month over at Nick's blog. Just makes you wanna go out and leave civilization behind. New updates over at TORC Press, too. I got El Gorio up, meaning I'm set on major updates over there until SDF:Odd Jobs comes out.

News? Well, lessee, everyone's bitching about the Prez's speech. My thoughts? Let's focus on something important than we can change, not something that's done and over. Like, I don't know, maybe the massive PR blitz that China's pushing to win over the hearts and minds of Americans for their purchase of Unical. Seriously, the loss of our third largest oil producer is WAY more important than how many times the President referenced the World Trade Center in a speech about why we're not leaving Iraq right now.

As for my thoughts on Iraq, here's a not so brief analogy:

Let's say 12 years ago, you won a drawing to have the roof replaced on your house. The company to do the replacement contacted you, excited, but could only advise you initially until YOU had removed your old roof. Halfway through removing your roof, you realize there's no advice coming your way and give up.

Fast forward to two years ago, when the company contacts you again. They're under new ownership, really sorry for the previous mistake and completely ready to rebuild your roof. The come in like a berserker, completely removing your old roof in record time. But then they subcontract the rebuilding and that doesn't go so well. A few storms slow progress, and today, two years later, the new roof STILL isn't finished, and worse off, it's now more leaky and less secure than before the company started working on it.

Now, I realize some of us would just be happy kicking them out and redoing the roof ourselves, but people with no roofing experience aren't likely to go the do-it-yourself route. Some people might just get a new roofing company. Regardless, most importantly, would you and your neighbors think worse of the company if it struggled to get the job done, but finally made it, or would they think worse of the company if they just up and left again, without finishing your roof?

Diary of a Slacker

I read a lot of blogs posted by professionals in the rpg industry, and here's what I see that seperates them from me; time invested. My personal goal is to spend an hour in development every day. That's an hour average, so while I spent three hours yesterday busting out a map of a huge mansion and developing the two important NPCs for the city's most prestigious inn (although it did spark an idea for ANOTHER inn I'd like to add to the published city, if not the in game one), I spent a half hour today only thinking about Myrrhlanthus.

Granted, part of that is due to the fact that I bust ass at two non-gaming jobs, run one homebrew campaign (which will also eventually be a publication), manage TORC Press's site, and occasionally give Wendy help with the wedding and house work. Still, most of those other guys have families, and some have other jobs, even if it is "merely" wearing the boss's pants at their own company. Hell, my buddy Joe over at TORC Press works as long and much harder at his job than I do at mine, and he still goes home every night and draws til his hands bleed.

It's the same deal I run into with my animation. Last month, I hit the animation hard. Then I stopped. Granted, I stopped to focus on Joe's site, but I still stopped.

The pragmatist in me knows full well that if I don't hit both industries hard, I'm not going anywhere in either. Now, in respect to gaming, it's a hobby I love and I'd just be happy with Organ Grinder selling enough product to support the hobby. Much like Joe, someone dropping me an email saying, "Hey, we just started a campaign in Myrrhlanthus dealing with river raiders and it rocks!" is about all I need to justify the work I put in.

Which means I should be animating more than I'm developing OGE stuff, but I'm not. Hopefully, wrapping up the latest batch of updates for TORC Press will see me revisting my avatar's head, but we'll see. *shrug*

Or maybe I should just stop reading blogs/development diaries of other creators. Work at my own pace, and if I get one book a year and one short piece every 2 or 3 years out, call it good.

Regardless, got some sketches back from Joe and I gotta say I've got high hopes for the art direction of the first book. I just hope I can set the page layout up to mesh with his style....

start learning chinese

Seriously. I know my rants against China may come off as prejudice doomsaying, but dig. Here's the latest in Chinese growth.

I mean, that's our third biggest oil producer they want to buy. What happens if they do? Oil Unocal produces goes to China. Why's this a problem? Less for us, which means a higher price of fuel here in the U.S. Know what else? It almost completely takes care of China's oil needs, moving them from one of the world's largest oil importers to almost breaking even, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm not seeing this as a good thing at all. Crap. Not that I care much whether the U.S. is numero uno in the world's economy, but this is one of those moves that'll irreversibly take us out of that spot. *shrug*

a duldrum day

Well, I's gonna hit the lake this morning and test out some of the new tackle I picked up yesterday, but a pretty serious thunderstorm kept me in bed considerably longer than I would have liked. Bummer, cause I'd bought some new line, re-lined a crappy baitcasting reel I have and picked up some "weedless" weights and hooks, along with some plastic worms promising me "Fish Eat IT!"

Instead, I wrapped up some color proofs for Joe's site, which'll be up as soon as I get time and approval. *ding* That'll wrap up the TORC Press updates for awhile, since the webcomic has dropped to barely monthy from the biweekly we want. :(

Other than that, a pretty odd day. High temps and humidity should have seen my energy level spike, but instead I'm beset with a bit of depression that's only pushed aside by socializing. Fun, fun.

Jun

What's this, a weekend post? Happy Days!!!

What a day yesterday was. Little canoeing and fishing with Nick. I scored one roughly 7" perch that I threw back. Jervis Lake shit on Nick. Ate at least one of his lures and offered him nothing in return. Jerk.

Then we headed over to good ole' cheeseland and stocked up for the 4th of July. Roughly $120 between the two of us later, and we're good to go. Nick bought quality, I bought quantity, so it should be a good evening of killing everyone followed by a pretty aerial display, possibly with some gaming involved. *ding* Sounds like paradise to me. Specially since we're heading up Sunday night for some late night pitching a tent and early day canoeing, swimming, fishing, grilling, and generally being outside consumed by mosquitoes while floating in beaver shit. I love it.

Wrapped up the evening with Gaming. We played an Eberron Mark of Heroes RPGA event, which was good fun. Lukas stepped up to the plate and did a damn good job leading the party through a murder mystery that ended in them saving the multiverse from an army of nerra. Props to him, although I wish John had succeeded in busting the doomsday device open and flooding the room with acid. Woulda been my first complete party kill. As it stands, Nick's Barbarian and Wendy's kobold Wizard bit it. Good times. Quotes of the night?

"Look, I realize you have a sandwich, but this is important," said to a gordo, despondant secretary by Luke's artificer Trouban.

"AHHHH! THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES!!!!" screamed by the kobold PJ, after being awakened by Kirga, barbarian, from the effects of a nightmare spell.

"Kirga, wanna fight?" said often by Jack Baldwin (John's fighter), before being knocked unconscious by the barb. This happened almost every time these two got bored with the investigations.

"Kirga like tea," said to an old lady that was really a hag (literally) as the barbarian consumed a large quantity of the lady's tea.

Good stuff.

SELL, SELL, SELL!!!!!

Today I walk into the ER to the tune of explosions on CNN. The news report wasn't up on CNN.com, yet, but I found live coverage over at www.ksdk.com. That's home of Chopper 5 and Doppler 5 for those of us from SoIll. Turns out a propane/oxygen/industrial gasses plant was on fire. So, if you own stock in Praxia, Inc, sell that shit now. If you wanna buy stock in Praxia, wait awhile, cause I guaruntee the price is coming down. Give em a few months to decide whether to rebuild that plant or not. Praxia's a profitable company (I think), so the stock will definitely jump back up in price, but now's a good time to good ready to pounce on what will soon be a good deal because of investor jitters.

On an unrelated note, wish I could type a LOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG rant about the utter stupidity of my coworker, but she's liable to come look at my screen again, so I won't. :( Suffice to say someone's getting an earful tonight or tomorrow night. Gah.

Well, I have to go try to book a place to screw on my honeymoon. :)

Midgets? Where?!!

Nick's Back. Sounds like a helluva trip. Can't wait til he blogs his shit up. I got the abbreviated version.

Man. Fucking news across the country is overdramatizing the latest Imminent Domain ruling by the Supreme Court. "State and local government now has the right to seize your house and bulldoze it to build shopping malls." You know, that's stretching it a bit. While I disagree with their ruling, one or two of the comments they made said specifically that they aren't ruling across the board here, just on this case. In the case in question, there was obviously no private person or organization in mind when the zoning plan was put in place. If it's evident that's not true in another case, there's wiggle room for it to hit the Supreme Court again.

Can we get drama out of the news and just make it informative again?

...and on the 7th day, he took a massive shit.

Posting a little early today, which probably means a bit of boredom at work tonight, but oh well. Joe got me ranting about Global Warming over at his blog. Now I feel like rambling, but I have no purpose. I pity you. WARNING: This post is most likely a rambling, free writing exercise to entertain me while waiting for the UPS man........

Still reading? Sweet.

Anyway, I's gonna hit the lake this morning, but a combination of heat, laziness, knowing the UPS man is coming, and the DAMN CAT waking me up at 4:30 again saw me pissing on the alarm once again this morning. Instead, a little OGE work and house cleaning.

Half a sink of dishes, plus cleaning the counters, microwave (inside and out), stove, and sweeping/mopping the kitchen and bathroom later, here I am. All of that in less than an hour, too. *ding* That just leaves Wendy with half a sink of dishes and the litter box, and we're all good. ;) Of course, I should do some laundry now, too.

And suddenly, the cats want to play fetch.

Anyway, I'm thinking of changing the name of Organ Grinder to something else. Haven't registered it yet, so it's no big. Trouble with the name is that if you Google for photos or sites dealing with organ grinders, you don't get meat grinders. You get chubby men from the late 19th century standing on street corners playing little hand held organs a lot like accordians. Just short of a monkey with a cymbal if you ask me. And I really don't wanna be Meat Grinder Entertainment.

Still, as usual, if I focus on the name now, it'll be a major hang up and I'll get jack and shit done for awhile. Can't afford that.

Regardless, got a major player in Myrrlanthus done today. He's the highest level and most complicated character I've made, thus far. Unfortunately, as with a few others, his campaign incarnation is gonna be different than his published incarnation, because I used a feat or two and prestige class not available in the SRD. Easy enough to change, but sure to throw the players off when I have them edit it.

And here's a dilemma. Editing. Obviously there is much playtesting going on as I use Myrrlanthus as the prime locale in my campaign. However, if we're still using it as a base when it comes time to edit the sourcebook, they'll be able to get a lot of "secret" info from it during that process. Means I'll either have to have most of that info revealed already or move them from that base of operations. Scratch that. I'll just make sure that only a very small amount of the published info is actually true in my campaign. Keep em guessing. There we go.

Oh. Gotta blow my own horn here a bit. Quote of the day is an exchange from another forum about throwing PCs off with magic items. My suggestion was to change up the base and structure of the items without changing the effect. You know, instead of making 50 charge wands, make yer wands be one use "flash" packs that the character has to light, say a magic word and toss into the air for the effect to take place. Anyway, the end of the post was "If you ever want a character to lick a chunk of dirt, have it radiate a slight to serious healing aura," and that got a good "Classic!" response from the Rat Bastard Dungeon Masters that are starting to consider me one of their brethren.

Oh yeah. I need to find a secret place to post my twisted, somewhat macabre, just plained fucked plot line(s) in my campaign. Almost had to tell Wendy this sweet ass idea I had this morning, because we all know my criminal empire crumbled because my ego NEEDS credit for the great things I do. Damn ego.

OK, fine. I'm done. Still awake? Go do something else, now.

I'm Diabolical

Damnit! I had a quote I was gonna use for my email sig, but lost it. Rats. But that's neither here nor there.

Quote of the day:
"I think I just had an evilgasm!"

That's right, evilgasm. Those rascals over at Order of the Stick nail my shit in my breeches with a full belly laugh once again. I love that comic. I wonder if they'll trade links with us over at TORC Press......

A little politicking

Well, Frist has announced he's leaving the Senate next year. Good riddance there. Talk about easily manipulated. First he announces he's dropping the Bolton issue, then mere hours later, he turns around at the Prez's whistle.

Now, I understand that congress has to work with the Man or he'll veto every bill, but seriously what president is gonna try that crap. Checks and balances. If he does, we've got a little procedure called impeachment.

So, no, clearly that's not the case. What that is is a simple case of Frist being one of Bush's whipping boys.

Unfortunately, word is, Fristy-poo's gonna run for President in '08. I'm registered Independant, so I can vote in that primary. Guess who isn't getting my support there. Even if the man wasn't an ass, his record in the past 5 years is shit. "Yes, masta president, whateva ya say masta president," is not the attitude of a man I won't to BE president in a couple of years.

No, what I'd like to see on the Republican front in '08 is McCane take another run at it. Seriously, we need some moderation in the front lines. With Cowboy Dean running the Dems for awhile, I don't expect them to provide it. Rather than running party vs. party, both sides need to run a "Best for America" campaign. Let's focus on education and our place in the international economy. No terrorism, no religion. We're losing ground in a big way to China and India. Nobody seems to notice. Make them notice. Whichever side does that gets my vote. Bottom line.

And yes, I realize this isn't my most well written post in awhile. Bummer.

yaay gama & gampa

That's right. Found out today my grandparents and Aunt Judy are rockin the wedding from southern Illinois. Can't even begin to say how excited that makes me. Sweet. Love em.

Not much else here. Slow day. Wrapped a coupla clerics for the temple in Myrrhlanthus, still got a couple more and a pally or two. Then a map and that parts ready to write. After that, coupla major economic and politcal players, map the major inn and I'm all caught up. SHOULD be able to get that done this weekend, depending on which campaign we play and how much planning I have to do with it. That remains to be seen, though. Regardless, hopefully I can get at least one of the clerics done tonight at work. We'll see.

Not much else. Still hung up on major design issues with the TORC Press RPG, but I got the final cast member for the website over there about half done. Course, that's cause I did the easy half first....

Casting Couch

There're new updates to the cast over at TORC Press. You may notice a distinct difference in color style pre-Queelix&Quagmire vs. Shirac and later. That's because I frickin remembered a few tricks I'd learned at Flash. That's good, cause it means I've been out of that job long enough that I can acknowledge the benefits of my time spent (some would say wasted) there.

Anyway, T-storm just rolled in. I better shut this baby off.

universal adventure

Well, lemme just say I dug the shit out of Batman Begins. Good stuff all around. I will join Joe in his mild complaint about the fight scenes. It bugged the shit out of me in the first few. The problem is that the camera angle changes very quickly and with almost every new punch or kick. Very annoying in the first part of the movie. I can't tell if I got used to it or if it got better near the end, but it didn't bother me so much then.

Despite that, good acting, good story, and an all around solid movie. I'd like to see a Batman without a love interest, though.

I'd blog more, but I'm a bit miffed at game night getting the shaft yet again.

house orderly

Not much to blog about today. Most thought has left my brain.

On the development front, though, I did get some of the "Entering Myrrhlanthus" chapter started. That makes two chapters I've got a start on. Now I just have to finish one. Actually, hopefully I'll have time today to has out some of the city's major player I need to work. Got a few upper level priests to knock out, the mayor, a local crime lord, and the richest man in the city. I think, production wise, what I'm gonna do is make a list of people I think I'll need stats for and try to knock out two or three per week on top of writing and mapping for an hour. Still need to get an idea of the art and map style I want, too. That'll prolly be a weekend of just sitting in front of Campaign Cartographer and playing with it.

On the adventure front, I just need to come up with an animal handler for the return trip, and I should be good. Then, onto the next one. For some reason, though, lately I've felt really disconnected with the campaign. I mean, obviously from the last two or three posts, I'm nailing out details of it like crazy, but as far as the characters go, nothing. That might be cause tomorrow we're playing a Mark of Heroes adventure, but it may not. We'll see.

Other than that, I got nothing. part of my brain melted I think.

sidetracked

Man, I was gonna post about tides and what not because of the crazy lunar orbit action on Argren, but got sidetracked because I couldn't figure out said orbit. Then I got sidetracked further trying to explain my trouble to my coworker. In the end, I've got the orbit figured out, but don't feel like thinking about tides anymore. Oops.

Still, I notice that shit for Argren, the campaign world, seems to be coming along faster than shit for Myrrhlanthus right now. That's a problem, cause I have Myrrhlanthus slated to be published in October, while Argren's not even looking at '06. What I want is Myrrhlanthus this year, Croakus in the spring, the TORC Press RPG by the end of next year and MAYBE Argren in early '07. I'd rather just keep popping out city titles and the occasional adventure in said cities before I throw out the whole campaign world. Hell, I have two city ideas that aren't even in the campaign in my head right now. And I just added a third to the list that ARE in the campaign, albeit the last one isn't one the characters are likely to encounter for awhile. Man. I gotta start writing.

watershed

So, Nick got me thinking about the damn valley again, which got me to do some research, which again got me thinking more, which came up for a firm explanation to life in the Green River Valley. First, I gotta revisit the map and add some tributaries. But here's how it's possible the way I have it written.

To the north of the area, there's a sort of inlet sea. The cliff face on the three landed sides of the sea is wracked with caves. Now, because my world's flat, there's an irregular orbit to the sun, which generates seasons. Since the moon orbits closer to the world and opposite the sun to counter it's gravity pull, it's orbit is equally odd. Therefore, instead of a monthly lunar tide, there's an annual one, in winter, when the moon's closer to that half of the land than the other.

So, during the winter, the sea level rises, rushes into this inlet sea and fills the cave system. Well, there's a major underground water passage from here, up to the start of the Green River. In that passage, most of the salinity in the water is lost, swapped out for good solid minerals. For most of this journey, the water is just under the surface of the land, bubbling forth a mere couple hundred miles from the ocean and southern shore. So, during the winter, the water level on the river rises and the water table expands.

As it recedes back to it's summer levels, more traditional crops are planted. Irrigation is primarily a series of small canals running off of tributaries and left over creeks, while pumps are either powered by hand or a series of gears turned via ox or mule (or camel closer to the desert edge).

The west of the valley (the windward side) is bordered by a plateau/cliff and a series of hardened salt encrusted dunes. West of the valley, the desert is more of a steppe and dry plains than a true desert, getting some moisture from sea borne storms as well as small streams from the northern mountain range. Close to the western shore lies a large range of salt lands, bordered by mining communites, and a marshland exists on the southwestern end of the land, bordered by a village that specializes in swamp harvested spell components. Numerous oases exist throughout this area, making travel dangerous but not nearly as much as in the east.

The east side is a smoother transition into desert, but that desert is more harsh, being a windless, sun baked land with no rain and water only available in rare oases and mineral springs. Despite that, one of the great salt lands lies to the east and a well developed trade route runs from the river valley to the communities of salt miners existing out there. Also, the only natural pass through the northern mountains lies through this desert, but it is rarely utilized due to the harsh conditions of the desert lands north of the mountains, bordering the inlet sea and leading to the great Glacial Wall that marks the northern edge of the world.

Man, I love working on this shit.

it's official

Well, news finally came in today. No promotion for me. Twas kind of misleading, really. In the past, the management team have been kings of delivering bad news via notes, emails and phone calls. So, when I was given an envelope with my name on it, I expected the worst. However, inside there was a note, handwritten no less, asking me to come to the supe's office to meet about the decision. Meeting in person usually signifies good news, so it was with mild excitement and some trepidition (bout whether I'm really qualified, etc.) that I hopped on the shuttle.

Well, the short meeting included a brief rundown of the person's qualifications they did pick (definitely a better candidate than I), but more importantly, compliments on my interviewing skills as well as the level of growth they've noticed since my start here four years ago, AND most importantly (at least for this run-on) a cryptic heads up about other opportunities for me coming up. Seriously, if I had to apply some sleuth skills to what limited information came out of the meeting, I'd think they might be setting up a leadership position for each ER that answers to the ER Team Lead. I'm prolly wrong, but that's the impression I got. At the very least, they've got me pegged for something, and it doesn't sound like a pink slip. Just hope it's nothing to do with the mental health admitting deck being built to take some load off of the Riverside Emergency Room. Not sure if I'd take something like that or not........

And I just realized I forgot to bring the stats for an NPC I wanted to introduce in a quick one shot RP session to Nick. Damn. Oh well, sounds like next weekend's out for hitting my campaign anyway, so that gives me at least another week and a half to get the next adventure sorted out. The challenge for me here is to not trivialize a journey that has no combat encounters. Maybe I'll write up some decriptions tonight.

An ass ending to a great day

Man. What a great day it was. Got up early (as evidenced by my less than sensible tooth care post) and got in some fishing. Nick and I hit Vadnais Lake, which is absolutely beautiful. Clear water, good fish habitat, great stuff. Can't decide, but I think my favorite part was hitting a carp with my lure. Dumb fish were just sitting there, eating the scum off of the surface, so I nailed one of em. Course, it was good fun watching the sunfish come up and strike my lure(s) on the clear side of the lake.

After that, we caught bagels at the St. Paul Bagelry. Not sure what Nick thought of the place, but it's a crawl of mine. Had some good D&D chatter, and instituted a new class of laborer that has to desalinate the canals and irrigation system in the river valley. Good times as I came out with some good ideas on how to improve the campaign world. Thanks, man.

Went home and spent most of the morning working up the border graphics in vector. This'd be easier if my animation classes had included more than one day of Illustrator. *shrug* The plan, though, is to get the complex outlines on, transfer it into a .jpg and paint it in some raster software like GIMP or something. Think it'll be easier to get the shiny metal look that way. Either that, or I hop over and do it in 3D. *shrug* Makes me no nevermind.

The only hang up I ran into today was the damn halfling caravan that's killing me. Balancing the race's general joviality with the fact that its a damn funeral procession is throwing me off. I need to set down and just make the group into characters so I can get a good feel for em...... First I think I'll read through their chapter of Races of Wild, though.

But, that all crashed down when I got to work. Tis busy as a politician at a fund raising dinner tonight. Figered the lax showing of sick people last week would kick us in the ass soon. Still, it's summer, so volume's gonna be nothing compared to the first couple of weeks of school, with all of the drunk freshman and sophomores coming in. Better enjoy it while it lasts, I guess.

brushing the teeth

After sleeping like crap last night, I grumpily arose from bed at 5:30 this morning in a haze of confusion and fatigue. Fishing called, so I ate some granola, had some tea and took my allergy meds. Operated on auto pilot for an hour trying to clear the cob webs out. Thus far, the most effective means has been Colgate. What is it about brushing your teeth that wakes you the fuck up? Sure, for some it's about the most activity they get in a day, but that's not the case for me. Hell, this morning I wasn't even mulling over a creative problem. Just woke me up, thoughtless as I was. I love it. I might have to utlizie this trick early in the day more often.....

Note: That's not to say are rarely brush, just that I tend to do it later, after fully awakening.

a multitude of lemons

Had I blogged earlier, I would have posted about the weekend, refreshment and the like. However, on the way in to work, NPR was talking about advertisements, because Proctor & Gamble announced today that they were spending considerably less this year on television advertising. Thought I'd blog about that instead. Still, can't decide.

So, I got a lot of crap done this weekend. Both in the apartment and on gaming/OGE stuff. Surprising. Might be because I essentially took last week off from D&D. Spent the week making new characters for the Age of Worms adventure path, as I mentioned earlier. Final shoot is Nick - gnome Favoured Soul, Lukas - human Wu Jen, John - human Swashbuckler, Wendy - human Warlock. Looks like a balanced party. Wendy'd rather play the Spirit Shaman, I know, and Nick would rather NOT play a gnome (not grumpy enough for him, I think), but I think they're both gonna be cool about it and play the shit out. It suddenly struck me that there was no rogue figure. Oh well. In my opinion, the most unfortunate thing is the characters designed to utilize underplayed tactics in our games weren't picked. No hexblade with a spiked chain, no samurai tripping and feinting. Again, oh well. The Age of Worms is like our back up, back up path, so it will be the end of the year before we finish the first adventure most likely. *shrug*

In our local campaign, I hashed out the outline/flowchart for the funeral journey and realized that it's not going to take nearly as long PLAY time as I thought. Depending on the PCs, it'll be at least 14 or 18 days GAME time, but mostly, it's roleplaying. Should be fun. Best part is, it fits in the story line we're working up, AND force/challenges me to actually do some serious role-playing. I think that's where my weakest point is, which is dumb, cause that's what I find to be the most fun in the game....

Another realization I had was that I haven't planned far enough ahead. Because we're playing a Mark of Heroes adventure next week (or two), I have sweet time to plan a few adventures up. Unfortunately, a couple are basically done (with mods needed based on PC level), one or two are primarily roleplaying, and at least one is ENTIRELY dependant upon the roleplaying days.

As for the Mark of Heroes, we just grabbed the "fast play" characters, leaving the field looking like this; Nick - Shifter Barbarian, John - Human Tank (Fighter w/ scale and tower shield), Wendy - Kobold Wizard, Lukas - Dwarven Artificer. Should be fun.

I could keep rambling, but I'll leave it at that. I'll save the OGE news for later.

character review.

So, in Dungeon 124, they included the beginning of the "Age of Worms" adventure path. That's a 12 adventure arc that'll take the characters from levels 1-20. Definitely not something I want to mix into my own campaign, but still, I'm interested in playing it. So, rather than have the group invest time and emotion into making characters for one of several "back up" campaigns that we'll primarily play when someone can't make it, I made up 12 characters, which they'll pick from (randomly) to play through this series with. Should be fun. Best of all, the classes all stem from the "Compelte X" series of rulebooks, which I'll likely encourage them to solo class. Here's a taste of what we have.

Female Dwarf Scout that really, really likes to throw things.

Male 1/2 Elf Spellthief that loves to tumble/wade through melee on his way to the wizbangs (spellcasters).

Male 1/2 Orc Ninja. nuff said, hehe.

Hexblade (forgot the race/sex) that focuses on curses and fucking shit up with his Spiked Chain.

Female Human Samurai that stole her katana/wakizashi from her dead father's tomb, but found vengeance to taste bad. Now she feels the need to right the regain her own honor from that vengeance quest.

Swashbuckler (again with the forgeting) that works as a contortionist/acrobat in the "Emporium".

Earth Shugenja (can't remember jack about this guy).

Gnome Favoured Soul of Garl Glittergold. He's a badass with a battle axe, AND he likes a good practical joke.

Female human Spirit Shaman that follows a buffalo spirit. She delivered a message to a nearby barbarian tribe, and then received a dream quest from her spirit guide that sent her to the town the adventure starts in.

Female Human Warmage, totin a morningstar and chain shirt, broke off her ass, but damn good at tripping her opponents in combat, then casting some mad spells.

Male Human Warlock sporting a frightening accent to his eldritch blast.

X Wu Jen that I havent' made yet.

Good times. I'd willingly play any of these characters. I hope the players feel the same. Hope I can get the dudes that randomly get chics to RP the chics, too.

Oh yeah, and we get 2 RPGA points for playing each AoW adventure. Shityeah.

BTW: Quote of the Day: "Sacrificing minions. Is there any problem it can't solve?" From Order of the Stick.

Guild Wars n Overpopulation

So, census numbers from last year show that we're sitting at almost 630 million people in el U S of A. I think. 630 or 640. Can't remember. A full half of our growth was the hispanic population, BUT for the first time since 1960 more hispanic children were born in the U.S. then swam to get here. Shityeah. That makes me happy. Seriously, I'm not sure why, but it's prolly somethng to do with illegal immigration and citizenship loyalties, I think. Don't feel like doing too much more self analysis today.

So, instead, I'll review Guild Wars. Fun little MMORPG. Best part is, I play online with millions but pay absolutely NO monthly fee for it. Go NCSoft. Other nice innovations;

You mutliclass. You get a primary profession and later pick up a secondary one. Yer primary has a special skill that's only received as a primary. Fer instance, being a ranger, my special skill is "Expertise" which makes me more accurate and reduces energy uses from attacks and nature shit. My secondary prof is elementalist, so I'm a ranger shooting arrows, sending my panther friend at people, and dropping fire from the sky. Had I picked elementalis as my primary, I'd have had "energy storage" as my special skill, which would give me more energy, but I wouldn't have "expertise" if I picked ranger as my 2ndary. I might still restart the guy and go with elementalist as my primary. We'll see.

The only "zones" that you share with the millions of other players are the cities. Missions and combat zones only have you in them. UNLESS you form a party of 1-7 other players, then they're all there with you.

You can form and join guilds, which then take part in the namesake guild wars. Didn't look at these too much, but I'm sure it's all about grabbing land, completing missions, and beating the crap out of other guilds. That's what makes guilds fun.

Personally, I'm enjoying soloing and figerin out what skills/profs work well together. I like the ranger/elementalist, but I wonder if elementalist/ranger might not be better. I'd like to try mesmer also, which is like an illusionist/enchanter type figure. Maybe mesmer/ranger or elementalist/mesmer. We'll see.

First off

A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Wendy. Quarter of a Century. Old hag. Crazy old cat lady.

So, anyway, gonna be busy as a....hell, I can't think of anything that won't insult someone today, and while I really feel like being an ass....I won't. Suffice it to say, the storm this morning, times the potential for storm tonight, plus the relative quiet of last night, to the power of me wanting to work on D&D shit, again added to the bad karma I acrued wishing this no-drive SOB that cut me off would get a flat tire means I expect the next 2 minutes to be the extent of my downtime.

Which is good, cause I got little to blog about. I did, but I forgot, and here comes a sick N sniffly. Startin early, not even two minutes.

We got the funk. We got the funk. We got the funk. WE got da

Man. I should frickin be a lot happier than I am now. Great day today. Blame it on lack of food or something much deeper, but the funk that's continued from Sunday is still present.

So, last night, while trying to get to sleep, I had a sweet idea for the framing graphic for the pages in the Myrrhlanthus book. Rather than get up and try to draw it all bleary eyed and what not, I waited til this morning. Lo, it stuck with me and I gots a good design now. Some sweet etched knife blades. Now I just gotta scan em and get em done digitally. That's the real challenge. Regardless, that's one headache mostly done.

On top of that, I had an interview for a promotion this afternoon. Initially, I's a little unsure about it, but after interview, I have to say, I'm pretty pumped. The interview went well (I think I nailed it, so it's just a matter of what the competition did), and I think I prolly can do the job pretty well. Guess we'll see.

Incidentally, I just scarfed a sammich, and I'm in a much better mood now. Can't say the funk is gone, but at least my belly's full. And a fool if you go with my first spelling.

I'm a fooooooool, a fool for food. What I wouldn't doo oo ooo for fooo oood. I'm a foooooool, a fool for food.

Sorry, got a little Reservoir Dogsy on ya there.

Adventures in Tax Land

Man, you'd think the Small Business Association or the SBCO (forget what that stands for, but it's like the SBA) would be the place to go with questions about starting your own business. Nope.

I called today with a couple of questions. Being - Can I claim business expenses which are incurred BEFORE I file my assumed business name? After I file, do I have to file quarterly sales tax reports, even if I I'm not selling anything yet? Likewise, do I have to file quarterly tax reports even before I actually have a product?

Nope. No help. They offered to send me a really informative book, but I already have it (and it was damn informative). First, she suggested I set up a meeting with a professional counselor to help me with my finances, but since my start-up cost is less than $200 until I actually need a website, that seemed dumb. So, no help at all.

Fortunately, after about 20 minutes of digging around on the state tax website, I found a phone number for questions not answered in the sites FAQ. THAT DUDE was a lot of help.

Turns out a) yes, because filing an assumed name doesn't mean you're starting that business, just that you're starting to do business under that name. I knew that, but wanted to make sure I was right. B) I don't have to get a tax ID number til I actually start selling crap, so good to go there. C)The quarterly tax report is not a quarterly tax report in the sense that you're filing an income tax. It's a tax ESTIMATE, and of course, it's easy as pie to estimate taxes on no earnings. Good to go, there.

So, for now, I'm set. $25 to file an assumed name. Bummer is though, I gotta spend another $80 to have a notice printed in legal newspapers for a couple a months after that. That'll have to wait, cause Wendy's birthday is Wednesday, and I gotsa get her some loot.

Review: Shonen Jump #31

Got this bad boy a week or so ago, and haven't had time to read it. Here's what I got so far, though.

Yu-Gi-Oh! - As usual I skip good ole Yugi.

Naruto - Without giving too much away, this issue wraps-up the second exam. Does Naruto and team survive? I won't say. Suffice it to say, though, that I'm always a little disappointed with the issues that wrap up a long, hard fight. They always seem so anti-climactic to me. Instead of an issue containing one fight chapter that ends it, followed by two wrap-up chapters, I think it'd be better to finish the fight in the previous issue and just have this issue be all wrap-up. There're enough titles in Shonen Jump to stagger the wrap-ups to make each issue worthwhile, I think.

One Piece - As usual rocks. Luffy and crew set off after Nami and the plot thickens. Nuff said, really. One Piece is always good.

Shaman King - Again with the cliffhanger. I predict next issue we see the completion of Yoh vs. Ren and two chapters of wrap up. :( Regardless, this isn't a bad series this issue, as we get alittle bit of a hint at the competition in the tournament and a few hints at Ren's past.

YuYu Hakusho - Solid fighting and plot thickening here as the team continues to get screwed with every turn of the page. Good stuff, and I started out not liking this title much.

Hikaru no Go - Not a lot of action this month, but some pretty intriguing story nonetheless. I predict Hikaru fails another English test. Of course, in the world today, he should be learning Chinese, anyway. That's the business language of tomorrow.

New Store!

There's now an online comic store over at TORC Press!!! Just click on "Comic Shop", and you can buy Joe's comics!!! Sweet.

Everybody's working for the weekend.

http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1362783&sdm=web&qtw=480&qth=300

First off, here's Pride and Prejudice with that hottie Keara "I can't spell your name, but here's my ding dong" Knightley.

Not much else in the world of Shafeman. Got a little digital color action going on my lunch hour, but it's a double day, so not much time to work on personal jazz. Hopefully I'll be able to balance hanging time with work time this weekend, but we'll see. Regardless, tomorrow night is GAME NIGHT! Bitchin.

On the plate for the weekend? Arcane school and temple to the war deity. Former is just a matter of writing up stats for 1 or 2 more NPCs. Latter has very little done for it. Of course, I could take some serious time on each and figure out what defenses are in place for infiltration and full scale invasion. I think, though, at this juncture I'll just make some notes on that and leave it there. If, after all is written, the book looks anemic, I'll pump it up with some tactics iron. Initially, though, I'm gonna stick with personalities and fluff... What do you, my readers, think?

sensory overload *zzzistzz*

Man, so I have this rockin ass cut scene floating around in my head. Deals with some action that the PCs are gonna hear rumors of, but that I doubt they take any interest in. Wanna write it now. Might do it anyway and just not publish it, cause I'm sure I could develop the area and use the scene as the intro story for an Organ Grinder book......

But, that's pulling me away from other things. Like the fact that I'm now almost 2 weeks behind on the Myrrhlanthus source book. HOPEFULLY I can get caught up on that this weekend. I'm now ahead on the shopping cart production for TORC Press, so that's a little less weight. Hopefully we'll have the ability to sale comics online through PayPal over there by next week. That should please Amazo. Hell, if I get that thing done by then, I end up being almost two months ahead of production over there. Unfortunately, I have a poop load of coloring to do for the cast section that I have to work into all of this. :(

So, here's how it looks.

Myrrhlanthus - 2 weeks behind, should have almost all of the technical work for the arcane magic chapter done as well as a major portion of the temple work statted out. I'm about 75% done with the arcane and 28% done with the divine. Still need to wrap up a look for the maps. Hand drawn? 3/4 view? Old style? Technically accurate? Oy. Ideally, it'll be on the market in October. Ideally.

TORC Press RPG - crap. Haven't had much time to consider this in months. Tentative date is before Gen Con next year, but that might end up being '07 instead. Gotta play test, too.

TORC Press website - shopping cart almost done. New cast members almost started.

Personal campaign - How do halflings celebrate death? Hopefully I can get Wendy to help me on this, since it's Levvy's concern.

Shafeman Avatar - meh. I was going to patch model the head, but I suck at taking a sphere and turning it into a face. So, I thought to use the sphere head as a guide and radial it. Instead, I think I'm gonna cut the nose and mouth from the radial model and mix them into the patch model, as those were the areas I have the most trouble with patch modeling..... Here's to hoping I can put a couple of hours into it next week.

In reveiw news, Dungeon 124 came in the other day. As usual I like the campaign articles in the back, but I only skimmed the adventures for stuff useful to me now. The Age of Worms adventure path looks good. Think I'm gonna see if the boys and girl want to use that arc as our "Crap, Nick worked a double, and I don't have anything planned," side story. What I'd really like to do is make 12 characters and have each player roll a die to see what they play. Could be a bit challenging that way. Initially I'd right up a background for each of them, but it's up to the player to decide how the background shapes the character's personality and outlook, so I'd leave the alignment up to them.... Could be fun.

And in closing, thank you for reading my disconnected stream of thought.

funny politics

So, our present governor in Minnesota ran on a No New Taxes pledge. Now he wants to add a "fee" to cigarrettes, which I'm fine with, but Democrats are saying, "Uh uh, that's a tax buddy." SO, to solve that problem, there's a bill in our state congress to change all instances of the word "tax" to the word "fee" in every law the state has. Sheesh. How bout we get a budget, overturn the No Fault car insurance regulations, and make in state student residents pay less than out of state residents for tuition first?

Nother funny thing. Earlier in the week, when asked about vetoing the new stem cell bill the Senate just worked up, Bush said something like "We shouldn't use tax payer money to create death." What the fuck are we doing in Iraq?

In more personal news, I got a cavity filled today, and for some reason, there's no tylenol/aspirin/ibuprofen/morphine or any other pain reliever in our apartment, and despite the fact that I work in a frickin hospital, the only way for me to conveniently get some is to go down the road to a pharmacy/general store type place.... Suffice it to say it's gonna be a long, grumpy night. Eesh.

Oh yeah, and it's looking like I'm flying solo to Gen Con, cause so far the only people to respond to my email about it are people that I knew couldn't make it. Grr. That's my biggest complaint in general right now, specially bout the gaming group. No one (cept Nick when Crenius is involved directly and I specifically ask for a response) responds to emails. Kind of takes away the motivation to spend 12+ hours a week on creating a story centered around the characters when they don't seem to care....