Elastic Loaf Lovers

Somwhere between early '01 and late '02 I became concerned that we'd put a retard into office. I can't remember what triggered it. Maybe there wasn't a clear cut event.

Iranians have it a little easier. They have a clear cut event. Here it is. They're dumping some 2000 words from use in Iran. Pizza? "Elastic Loaf." Helicopter? "Rotating wings." Mobile phone? "Companion phone." (I guess phone is a Persian word) Cabin? "small room." Chat? "Short talk."

Someone needs to take this guy out behind the "small room" and have a "short talk" with him that probably ends in a "posterior support" "striking with a piece of wood."

Doomed

So I call an insurance today for benefits, like I do so often. It rings once, picks up, and says:

"Look upon my works with pain and despair."

then promptly rings again, and goes straight to the insurance directory computer.

"What the fuck," says I (being jerked from a half slumber), hang up, and call again.

This time, after the first ring, I get jazz music, then transferred to the directory computer. Whoa. So, I pick up my cell to call Wendy and tell her, only my phone turns off when I pick it up, then turns back on (battery meter has 2 of 3 bars on it).

Man. I'm fucked.

tentacular

Fuckin right. Got a little modeling done. Laid out the eyes and tentacles of the blob monster. Not bad for 45 minutes. Granted, this is all guide work right now. The next phase is to actually start drawing up the curves and piecing them together. The tentacles will be pretty easy since I modelled them straight to aid somewhat in boning... Figuring out how to cut the patches to accomodate the skin folds and 2 dozen eyes the thing has will be fun.

Spikey bits

OK. Here's an interesting allergic reaction for ya. Goomba move, too.

Today, I ran into a pine tree. Sort of. Ran into a low hanging branch while checking the time actually. In fact, I didn't even run into the branch, just got stabbed on the left side of my face by 30ish pine needles.

Now, I know I'm allergic to pine trees and the like only because the doc said so. Well, now I know from experience.

That side of my face is experiencing some fierce burning and itching. Strangely, my left eye feels droopy and drowsy, while my right really doesn't. Congesting has upped a few notches, but that's a pretty normal state of existance for me at this point in life. I can't tell if the spike in body temperature is a result of the needles or not. There's a hint of dizziness. Besides the eye bit, the weirdest part is being able to feel where each individual needle penetrated. Crazy.

I wish I had a mirror at my desk. I'm too lazy to hit the bathroom and check, but usually when I itch like this, my skin looks like a big dog scratched me, even if I don't touch the affected area at all. I think I'm gonna have to break down and scratch my fucking ear, though.... Since my environmental allergies tend to express as itching and skin irritation (stupid immune system. That is supposed to happen due to FOOD allergies) I'm usually pretty good at not scratching, but fuck me. When yer ear itches, it's hard not to scratch it...

Take Me Out

Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand. That, and Iron Man are the two songs I'm hung up on in Guitar Hero. I managed to mash my way through Infected and Smoke on the Water this weekend. Actually Infected liked to kill me. Ironic, no. I lost it once at 94% complete and couldn't get the rythm back after that for a few tries. Ouch.

Anyway, sorry for the lapse last week. We were down a couple of people at the hellspital and no one really stepped up to pick up the slack at all. That left me in a mass production sort of game plan, which sucked and made for a shitty shitty week. It all culminated on Friday morning with a Nigerian lady reaming me out because her sis was gonna need to get a cab and drive around the cities with $8,000 cash in her pocket. :(

So Gen Con is 16 days away. WHOOT! What still needs to be done? Well, at this point I think it's safe to say we aint doin costumes or custom t-shirts unless there's A) a local shop or B) Nick wants to pay fast shipping fees. I'll have to talk to him about that. He's the bank of the party right now, as I'm officially doing GC on the cheap now.

So, besides fashion, what's left? Well, we've got our tickets, got our hotel, got our events, got the new car I bought for most of the trips this summer and then didn't get to take on the one I really needed it for. So I think we just need to get food, get there and have fun. I need to remember to look at my MPR member card. I can get it extended to the Indy region, but can't remember how long it takes or when I should do it. It's only good for a week or so once it's done, which is all we need. Gonna be a tight timing issue, there. I think I'll check out the restaurants that get a buy1get1free deal to see where they're at in relation to the Con, first, too.

Foodwise, hopefully we can stock up on travel/camping food and not spend much at the Con. I'm still trying to think what we can smuggle inside so as not to eat $7 hot dogs....

Eccentric night

Last week we started up what Nick dubbed the Menagerie campaign. I've explained the characters briefly before, but I don't think I recapped the game night. As I've mentioned before, the thing is supposed to be a pass it around story. Each DM heads it once and SHOULD start from the point the party left off (that way those of us that don't have time to prep a full adventure don't have to). Last week, Nick ran us through a published adventure. This week it's my turn.

Lacking much direction for our characters at this point, we started in some no name, medium sized town in an area that's civilized enough to have supplies and information, but savage enough to not blink much of an eye over a satyr, kenku, thri-kreen and man-dragon (ie, winged kobold) snooping around for info and buying the entire stock of mirrors. We had a map and rumors to a cave that laired a medusa. Well, sort of a map. It had two rooms.

We get there, and the first room is just as drawn on the map and full of nice stone statues, neatly arranged in two lines forming a natural hallway. Nothing else of interest was in the room, so we headed down the hall. We promptly reached a cavein, but there was a shaft leading way up formed by a disintegrate spell. The crew new it was gonna be tough going then, as a medusa's hard enough, but when the ugly bitch is disintegrating you AND turning you to stone, things aren't fun anymore.

The shaft presented a bit of a problem, as grasshopper man couldn't make the jump up. So, the kobold flew up, fortunately the kenku had a rope (what the hell does a thri-kreen that can easily jump 14' straight up need a damn rope for?), and strained his back holding while the kenku climbed. Satyr followed and the three of them managed to hold the Bone Painter's (thri-kreen) weight. We moved on.

The tunnel descended into the lair of the medusa, and everything was sized to accomadte her gaze attack. The stealthy kenku scouted ahead, but she spotted him right away. I think the satyr charged first and missed. The thri-kreen rushed in as the kenku retreated and cast a Blindness spell on the medusa, hoping to thwart her gaze attack. She seemed to resist the spell. Kobold popped greater invisibility, and we all set to square off. In that mix, a web trap shot out of nowhere and missed Marlibaut the satyr, but a ray of enfeeblement trap hit the thri-kreen full on, ensuring he would just cast spells this battle.

On the next round, Marlibaut shrugged off the medusa's gaze attack and nailed a fearsome blow into her, which negated that illusion. Doh! A lightning bolt whipped into the thri-kreen from nowhwere, and the kobold dispelled the Greater invisibilty and levitaion from the drider that had cast it. A summon Ogre skeleton and angry satyr made short work of the drider, but a couple more webs and lightning bolts were whipping around the room. We managed to locate one of the driders and dispatch it, and we're pretty sure a third one fled. Megauba, ever the environmentalist, recycled the two dead driders into skeletons.

Good thing, too, because after discovering an illusory wall, we quickly found a 90' shaft leading straight down. There were handholds, but none good enough for us to safely climb down, and we had only 50' of rope. So, one drider and the thri-kreen held the rope. The kobold glided down, while the other drider waited at the bottom of the rope for the satyr and kenku to climb down, then carried each down in his turn. The drider up top then carried the thri-kreen down, emperor style. Smooth. (At least, I think that's the order we went in. It was kind of convoluted)

The tunnel we found ourselves in led to some sort of sacrifice room that we didn't explore much. We moved on and came to a huge chasm with ledges pockmarking the sides. One ledge clearly had a tunnel leading from it, but we had no idea how to get there. There was a glowing, odd fungus at the bottom of the chasm, and I sent one drider onto the ledge to see if would react to movement. It didn't. The roper around the corner from us did, though, and quickly lashed onto the drider. The ledge was too narrow for us to make much of an assault on the roper with out being picked off one by one. The kobold flew out of grapple range and tried to fireball it, which failed (rules wise, Wendy had no hope. Even rolling a 20 would only get her a 28 on the caster level check, and a roper has spell resistance 30.) We reconnoitered, weighed our options, and decided that without knowing what was ahead or even if there would be any treasure at all in this damn place it wasn't worth risking. But what about saving the people of the surrounding villages from whatever turned those others into stone? Well, if the driders could cast Greater Invisibilty, maybe it was them. But that didn't really come up.

On the way back, we did happen to notice something awry in the sacrifice room, and that led to another illusory wall. The tunnel behind it circumvented the roper and took us to a ledge farther up and closer to the ledge we wanted to get to. Close enough, in fact, that the thri-kreen stuffed everyone into his bag of holding, and ran and jumped the chasm. On the other side, he quickly deposited the rest of the party before they suffocated.

clan toys

Over at Team RIP, the BF2 clan I'm in, a few of the members are "southern gentlemen." Of course that's a nice way of saying they're a tad more redneck than most of the people I went to school with. That doesn't mean they're dumb though. Quite the contrary. Here's a link to a few of the wartoy gadgets they've come up with:

http://www.teamrip.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1917

The 2nd one (dunebuggy/fourwheeler) is mounted with a paintball gatling gun. That's sweet.

Pass it around wiki

Our newest campaign is supposed to be a pass it around story. We each DM one week and pick up where the other left off. Each DM can steer the story away from the direction it was headed, but should try to do it in a flowing manner, ie, no waking up to discover that last quest was a weird shared dream.

To facilitate information sharing, I made a secure wiki for the group, but only two of us have posted our characters, and neither of us did any sort of character development outside of posting stats (in case a character sheet is left at home, etc), nor has last weeks DM put up any notes about what NPCs shouldn't be used, etc. So, the first real step in getting the story going, I think, is going to be organization. That's our biggest challenge as a gaming group. We'll have to set a DM rotation. We've got to get everyone involved in the wiki. All that shit. I suppose it's not necessary, but I'm anal and think it will help.

For our wiki, I used jotspot, which I think is related to blogspot here. Now, jotspot offers free, secure wikis, but they're limited. You get 20 pages and 5 registered users. Beyond that, you have to pay a fee. The freebie is fine for our needs, but if I do a serious wiki for a campaign I think I'd either A) set up my own secure wiki server or B) use one of the other free, not so secure wiki options and just not post copyrighted material. Either way, I think in my freetime (not this week then) at work, I might hit ENworld, check out some of the campaign wikis people have posted there, and see what others are using. It's a handy tool, though.

puckered

Been trying to post for the last few days, but work has been shit. This week at the hellspital is what clusterfucks STRIVE to be. Young clusterfucks collect clusterfuck trading cards and get the autographed by the hellspital this week. It's an icon of clusterfuckitude. In the Clusterfucked CCG, this week at FV is the Mox Pearl of the original printing.

Beyond that, here's a big post....

Pirates:Dead Man's Titties.
Good movie. Funnier than the first, but maybe not as good. Still not sure. Regardless, I like it a lot. That's the short and skinny version. Not enough time to get into the whole thing. Regardless, Can't wait for the next one.

In other news, the Mazda has returned. Hooray! It's nice to like driving again. Best part is, the body shop called today with a telephone poll, so I got to actually bitch about the loaner stinking and it taking them 2 weeks longer than they said. Bitches.

In other news, we're going to war with the Middle East. Welcome to another clusterfuck. That Clusterfuck studied here at FV, by the way.

Fuck my ass, what else? I have a whole game theory post in here somewhere but my mind is a jumbled mess of chaos right now and coherent isn't a word that's spelled with a c, h, a, o, or s.

Project # 6248B

Wendy's added a new beasty to the menagerie. Meet Project #6248B (I think that's his name).

Take a kobold. Run him through a series of mysterious experiments (which he may or may not be willing to talk about) that end up giving him wings, killing him, reviving him, and eventually setting him loose in a psychotic fury upon the crazed wizard that's been torturing him for so long. He teaches himself magic. Steals the dead wizard's libray. Learns some tricks from religious texts about casting divine magic practiced by long dead gods. Spends a little time focusing on spellcasting, then remembers some of the mad expirements and recalls the power of blood. What do you get? Wendy's character. Wizard/archivist/mystic theurge/blood magus. With sunglasses. Good times.

The Menagerie

ADD and Palyhate got the better of the game crew last night. Well, Palyhate is the wrong term for it, but regardless, the consesus was that the gestalt Palys weren't working out. At first Nick and John were just going to make a couple new characters for the AoW campaign, but then I piped up with a "Let's just wing a campaign. We each DM one week, then pass to the other guy." Everyone jumped on board, and we made the craziest characters we could come up with. Well, sort of. If we'd tried, we could have min/maxed crazier characters that were considerably better than these are. So we made the craziest characters that we actually wanted to play.

It all started off with Nick and John contemplating Azers. Then Nick jumped on the Satyr love train. With that as his base, he knew he wanted to play a Gatecrasher from the Planar Handbook, which pretty much set our level and gave the game a planar travels theme. One character down. A satyr Swashbuckler Gatecrasher with boots of speed that runs all over the battlefield and stings the fuck out of everything. He's either going with a super keen rapier for a 25% chance to crit or a Sun Blade for extra damage output. Fun character either way.

John started off with a human desert ranger (the variant from Sandstorm), but changed his mind and went with kenku after I picked thri-kreen as my race (that's my fav race, and I've only got to play it in one session). Since kenku are inherintly evil, he swapped a few levels of ranger for assassin and grabbed a viper as his animal companion. Stealth master superme, he's yet to pick equipment, so we don't know what method of precise death he'll be dealing.

While John and Nick were pumping out their characters I was teetering between a multiclass character and just a flat out bad ass one. The trouble was I can min/max a fucking kick ass thri-kreen fighter pretty easily, but didn't want to. So I tossed fighter out the window and struggled between warlock/dread necro or just one or the other. In the end, a level 10 dread necromancer won out, so I grabbed some Charisma items, adjusted my stats and came out with a fast, charismatic dread necromancer capable of making up to 90 HD worth of skeletons/zombies (he'll go skeletons because he thinks flesh is inferior). He likes to jump around the field of battle with his guisarme. I'm contemplating coming up with an alchemist fire/goblin skeleton molatov cocktail from above combo.

The goofiness of it all might get Wendy back into the game, and I think she'll try to top the chaos we've created. Good times.

reviews: Guitar Hero & EA Sports:FIFA Germany World Cup 2006

Been a while since I posted. Last Friday I was ill. Rested up most of the weekend. Monday was a day of apocolypse at work. Rather than rant about all of that, here are a couple of reviews of video games for PS2.

FIFA World Cup 2006
I'm not sure whether this game is a limited version or extended version of the standard EA Sports soccer game, but it's fun. As usual, for me, I find the Amateur setting to be far too easy and the next level, Semi-Pro, to be damn hard. Not sure why I have this particular problem with EA games, but there you go, soccer's no different.

Regardless, game play is fun. Squad management is limited though. You can change you subs and rework your starting lineup, but that's about it. Stat-wise, all you get is goals scored and clean sheets really. So yeah, it's all pretty sparse.

The soundtrack is fun though - full of world pop. It's pretty fun to take your team from the qualifying rounds up to the finals, if you can. Let me tell you, qualifying in the Oceania division is a pain in the ass. First, you play all 5 other teams in that division. Then the top two teams have a 2 game playoff. Then, the winner of that duel goes on to play the African league's number 5 team. That's where I'm at with Australia. Anyway, not a bad way to spend an hour or so.

Guitar Hero
You want a new addiction? Go play Guitar Hero. Seriously. The game is a bit hefty price wise at $70, but if you hit Best Buy with a coupon, you're golden. It comes with it's own controller, which is a guitar, with a "strum bar", whammy handle, and 5 fret buttons. Much like DDR, the screen is a scrollbar indicating which of the fret/note buttons to hit when, in tandem with the strum bar of course. On long notes, go crazy on the whammy. There are 4 levels, starting with easy which uses 3 buttons, up to expert, which uses all 5 and requires "advanced" techniques like hammer-ons and pull-offs. At medium, there are 30 different songs to play; there may be more on harder levels. At medium and above, you get cash for your shows depending on performance, which you can use to unlock characters (like the grim reaper), extra guitars, new songs, etc.

I like pretty much all of the songs I've encountered so far (haven't hit the unlocks yet), but there are some that I think should be in the game, but aren't. There's no Van Halen, GNR, ACDC, etc. There is 'Iron Man' (which is the first song I've got 4 stars on in Medium mode), 'Symphony of Destruction', a little Bowie, Cream, and Hendrix. A decent mix, and really, in a game like this, everyone's gonna have a song or two they think should be in there. Fear not, there's Guitar Hero 2 in November, supposedly with over 100 new songs and a "cooperative" component. I've heard that head to head in the original is super great fun.

Regardless, nailing a 105 note streak and 5 star performance on Franz Ferdinan's "Take Me Out" keeps you rocking and make you wanna play just one more song. So does completely failing on Motorhead's "Ace of Spades."