The skies are falling

Or rather, people in the chair. We've got an antique, 1920's dining set, and several weeks ago, one collapsed under Anthony. Quite humorous, and we now have what we need to fix the joints on the rest (except for time, gumption and know how. but those come along as you go).

We've also got a slick set of director's chairs that are at least 30 years old, but possibly 50. Wendy changed the fabric on one. The other was fine, so it's been in the closet I use for a work shop and minis studio. Today, I'm painting, when I hear the tell-tell sounds of a cat scratching on my couch. Look out. No cat. They're both at the bathroom door trying to figure out how to get in and watch Wendy shower. Can't blame em there.... I ignore this hint of pending doom and continue painting. I hear it again, louder, less tentative, and I pause in my brush stroke to ponder this sound. I get only the slightest hint of movement under my butt before the seat rips clean in half and I plummet to the floor.

In my most Jedi move this week, I not only avoided whacking my chin on the workbench, but I also avoided any mistake with the brush and set my almost finished mini on its base on top of the workbench on my way passed it. Score one for the reflexes.

Battlefield Ressurection

PC Gaming
I haven't played BF 2142 in a couple of weeks now. I normally don't play much by myself anyway, and with Phil's new son due any day now, his play time has been almost non-existant. Hopefully John gets high speed soon. ;)

At any rate, this week, if I've hopped on 2142 and Phil/Scott weren't on, I'd shut her down and fire up Guild Wars. I only have Prophecies, and I thought I was pretty far along when I had faded out of the game last time. Turns out, I'm not. I learned there are 25 story missions. I've finished 7. So, just over 1/4 of the way finished...

Either way, I'm enjoying it. I have a level 15 Necromancer/Mesmer that specializes in Blood Magic and Domination hexes. Mostly, he foces on damage over time spells, but keeps a good vampiric spell in the queue for finishing off the occasional monster whose DoT wore off 50 hp too early. As usual on MMOs, I'm not too social, so I mostly let the NPCs tag along with me.

It's been a little over a year since I last played the game. I think. The 2nd GW had came out shortly after the last time I played. I have to say, I like some of the features that have made it into Prophecies from the upgrades in the other game. I'm noticing that exceptional crafting stuff is dropping more often. This is the stuff like a Massive Hammer of Runic Fortitude that you can use the Exceptional Salvage Tool on and pull off the Haft of Fortitude or whatever, then use that as a craft item on another hammer to enhance that one. I'm not sure what the player market looks like on those, and I must be offering them for too little, because I'm making a killing selling them... Considering the shit that I want to buy costs in the tens to hundreds of platinum, though, I'm gonna have to pump up my prices.

Tabletop Gaming
Even though it'll be another couple of weeks before we get together again, I've wrapped up the first session of Godlike. I wanted to ease the guys in, so the first encounter only has one talent, and he doesn't even manifest until a certain amount of carnage is reached (so it's completely possible that he dies early and doesn't even manifest). There isn't' even any heavy armor until a little later in the session.

It's hard to estimate how many encounters there really are, though, because the mission is to capture a point and hold it until reinforcements arrive. If they reach the point and slaughter all the Italians, that's one encounter, but if half of them run away, regroup, and find/rescue/whatever their LT or Sgt, it might be two or more encounters depending on who survives. So, the squad may have to attack and then defend. Of course, they could sweep in stealthily, kill the radio man and brass so no distress call is sent, then slaughter the Eye Ties from the inside, then go home for a nap. We'll see, I've never seen these guys in a semi-tactical game before.

For those of you that want to know about the enemy talent... I'll talk about him after the game. Don't want to ruin any surprises for Nick. Suffice to say, I pulled a character from the Stalingrad campaign I had planned for John and Flynn. Good guy? Bad guy? Neither. Let me correct myself and say I stole the Talent from a character that freaked out seeing the destruction wrought by the initial German air assault. If it works out, I figer I'll start pulling some themed spell collections from D&D to use as Godlike talents when I'm at a loss for what the characters should face. Melf, Evard, Mordenkainen; here I come.

Too long Dr Jones

I should post more. Lessee. Reviews that are too short to be useful:

TMNT - I liked it. Had a good Turtles feel to it, mixed with a bit of Gargoyles. If you liked those, and you can still enjoy them without analyzing them as an adult, you'll probably like TMNT as a good bit of entertainment. If you liked them, but are too old to put the grown up aside (read LAME), you might still like it for the nostalgia. Either way, it's good for kids in my book.

Loreena McKinnet (sp?) - Whether you like her style of music or not, there's something to be said about any music that's played by top notch, highly skilled, and highly professional musicians in a live venue. I liked the show, and even picked up a few ideas for D&D or Godlike campaigns. That's just icing on the cake, though, cause (and here's where I get mushy) this show meant a lot to Wendy, and anytime I can be involved with her during an important event like that, I'm down.

Grave of Fireflies - Is GoF a good movie? Yes. Do I recommend you watch it? Yes. Here's my warning, though. It's the saddest damn movie I've ever seen. If you've ever taken care of or stuck up for a friend, younger sibling, older sibling, parent, pet or basically anyone you ever cared so much about that it would hurt to lose and/or fail them, it's a hard movie to watch. Do it anyway. It builds character.

Gaming
We haven't played Savage Tides or CoC for awhile because Wendy's had to pick Emily up for work at 8:30. Makes gaming hard when it starts around 7ish.

Last Sunday we did get together at Nick's for some character building for Godlike, In Nomine, and Werewolf.

No one brought In Nomine, so scratch that one. Big surprise there. Justin's in charge of running that game, but the books are at Charlie's. Guess what game I doubt we ever play....

Turns out White Wolf decided that World of Darkness was a sourcebook and everything else (Mage, Vampire, Werewolf) was a supplement. I didn't see that anywhere on the Werewolf book, and neither did Nick. Near the end of creating my Werewolf character we figured out that the last 1/3 of character creation or so can't be done with just the Werewolf "supplement." Oops. Nonetheless, Charlie and I both have partially completed werewolves. Charlie has an intelligent character that's in tune with the spirits and most things occult. I have a charismatic scout that's good enough at stealth, but shines at tricking information out of others. Justin didn't even get started because he and Charlie both came VERY late and he started on Godlike while Charlie worked on Werewolf.

In Godlike, eveyone picked 2 pregens and started on a character of their own. Nick picked the bulletproof strongman and the super alert nearly precognitive Irish Catholic. Then he made a Scottish Highlander, son of a distiller, whose powers include Zed (the ability to nullify other powers) and Inebriation (the ability to make others feel drunk. Really drunk). Charlie picked the time controlling truck driver and the angry French boy that can turn into just about anything. Justin picked the regenerative lizard and the hypercool singing sergeant. His character started off as a Ranger that could cause violent dyssentary by spitting into food, but then focused full on on teleporation instead. He's not quite a maffia Nightcrawler, but close.

Now, I've got til June to round up an adventure and get Charlie's character finished. I'll hound Nick to get the WoD book and also borrow In Nomine from Charlie or get the three of us together to make characters for that. I don't mind running Godlike first, but I'd like to have everything ready to go for the next guy so we don't have any lag between the short intro mission I have and the next game. Given the opening I have for these guys, I really need to see which of two directions they decide on before I work too far ahead. Don't want to plan one campaign and have them play another after all....