A political gamer in my pocket.

The Minnesota State Fair - There's always someone uglier

2007-09-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

Hit the fair last night. Here's me food list:

Teryaki Ostrich on a Stick - rubbery, looked like hamburger, and tasted bad. Yuck.
Cotton Candy
French Fries
Mini Donuts
Dippin Dots
Hush Puppies
Frozen Grapes
Corn Dog
Fun Dip

Played Skee Ball, and road the Ferris Wheel with two wheels on a larger wheel. Good times. Oh, and I signed up to win an iPod from the Republicans, scored a free blinky thing from the post office for noticing that the trend in their quiz was that the answer is ALWAYS the biggest number, and met Mark Wheaton (sort of).

GC from Indy

2007-08-22T04:50:00.000-07:00

Well, no posts from the Con. No time for love Doctor Jones! Honestly, about the only thing Nick's laptop was used for was confirming event locations and updating Nick's D&D minis collection (nerd). It's been a week now, so the early days are hazy, but I'll try for a quick run down of events. Some of them might be summaries, so the real humor will show up on someone else's blog....

Thursday - Thursday housed the first in a long series of seminars with writers that said things like, "Don't make up your own world completely," and "Only make as much language as you need." That's not what I went to the seminars for, so most of them were a waste of time... The basic Green Stuff sculpting class I took was good for getting a sense of tools I'd need, but really didn't do much in the way of basics. However, True Dungeon made up for both of those let downs... It rocked, except for half of the party being turned to stone halfway through the event. *sigh* Oh well. John made it through alive at least. Thursday, all I scored from the vendor hall was an adventure from Paizo. Thursday was also the night of the Oompa Loompa, and me ralphing my dinner because I was laughing so hard.

Friday - Friday held another seminar that wasted my time, but followed that up with a fun and rousing game of Godlike. What did I learn from Godlike? I know the rules exceptionally well. Well enough I could end most encounters by myself in two to three rounds. Less if my squad mates listened. I should have been the Lt. I followed Godlike up with (or maybe precluded it, can't remember) a class on costuming that Wendy had signed up to take. I'm not sure why the class cost $7.50. It included a xeroxed booklet with a few tips, and there was no actual hands-on stuff. Scratch that, I know why. The instructor had wanted a two hour class, in which we would have made a top for belly dancing or a cloak, but we only had one hour. Friday was too busy for me to hit the dealer hall. We had rad sushi on Friday, though. I took a nap that evening and slept through the seminar I really wanted to take on RPG and education. Oh well.

Saturday - The last day for John and I as I wanted to hit the road early. Saturday was saw a seminar that didn't completely suck as well as a class on sculpting that helped out way more than the basic class and gave me tons of visions of cool dragon sculpts. Midnight Zombie Show was also Saturday, but I skipped. Matt when in my stead, and he and Nick had a blast. Hell, Nick even won a board game for good roleplaying... I scored fat loot on Saturday; playtesting and purchasing Condotierre from FFG (card game about rennaisance Italy), and picking up some dice and hentai for Wendy and I. Oh, and I bought Shadorwun's newest book, Augmentation.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the City of Brass boxed set, and I went cheap and didn't buy many of the RPGs that were on my list, because I can get them all locally. Sure, buying at GC means vendors go back. Unfortunately, I wanted to get to my mom's for lunch, otherwise we might have went back Sunday for some bargain shopping.

Oh well. The Con was fun, and I successfully pitched a setting to a publisher. Time to start working on that.....

Oh yeah, and WotC announced 4th edition.

Gen Con and reviews

2007-08-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

Well, since it's been a month plus since I posted last, the reviews will be a jumbled collection of things I can sort of remember. Driving Lessons has Rupert whatshisname (Ron Weasely), and that boy can act. He starts working for a crazy old lady at the bidding of his ridiculously publicly Christian mom. Antics progress from there. I liked the movie a lot.

Kung Fu Hustle also rocked, but don't expect much in the way of serious here. Also, don't expect a whole lot of the big band dance lines I remember seeing in the trailers. Either way, the movies a good slap stick parody of a legendary figures kung fu flick. Good times.

Who Killed the Electric Car? This movie isn't too bad, but the beginning is a little too propogandist for me. Sure, it's a documentary, but it's not an objective look at the issue. I always think that documentaries should do one of two things. Present both sides of an issue in a non-biased fashion so the audience can make up their own minds, OR present a mostly one sided view of an issue along with suggestions on how things can or could have turned out differently. This one did neither. It mosly pointed the finger at the auto industry, a few political figures, and American consumerism (oh, and don't forget Big Oil), and briefly outlined why hydrogen cells will fail. Even so, I liked the flick and it's good enough to get the ole brain gears going.

On the gaming front, we picked up a Nintendo Wii. The game list is now Wii Sports, Wii Play, WarioWare, and Red Steel. We get the most use out of Wii Sports. I'm looking forward to getting Zelda:Twilight Princess and Mario Strikers (the soccer one, not sure if that's the right game). Also in the gaming field, Guitar Hero Rocks the 80's came out. I'm a little saddened at the music selection and the dummed down version of the game, but I'll still play it when the need arises. I've heard rumors of Guitar Hero III on the horizon.

The biggest news of all, though, is Gen Con! August 15th we roll down to Indy for some serious fun. I think the gaming will be minimal this year, so we'll see how much fun it is compared to last year. I have a Godlike game and the Midnight Zombie Show. The rest is seminars and classes. Two classes on minis sculpting, which should be interesting. We scored a hotel two blocks from the convention center this year, and judging from the construction downtown, I'm glad we did. Whoa.

Hopefully I can post from the Con, and even more importantly, post more than once a month in the future. Summers winding down, so I may be spending more time in front of El Computador anyway.

Independant

2007-07-05T19:19:00.001-07:00

The fam came and went. Readers, I hope your Fourth was as fun as mine. Hopefully, the familiy visit went as well as they say it did, and they'll come back sometime.

Breif recaps

- As mentioned, the family was here for four days. We hit the Science Museum of Minnesota, shopped, played Phase 10 and Wii, and ate at Fuji Ya, Everest on Grand, Khan's, and the Uptowner. Good times. My little bro (almost 6'6") is starting his own D&D campaign. I'm so proud.

- Work on the Gen Con mega adventure continues. I think I figured out the setting for my second artifact. Now I just need to stat it out, get Nick's character stats and post the sign up sheet online. I think maybe I'll do the latter first, as that'll give me more incentive to get shit written up... Also, continuing to meet with Nick every Sunday might help. Gen Con's only a month away!

- Picked up Expanded Psionics Handbook. Strangely enough, the book helped me narrow what I wanted the Borderlands to be in Iorthim. That's strange because I'm thinking Wild West. How did I get that from psionics, which play such a minimal role anywhere in the setting anyway?

- The Savage Tide continues. In our last game, the group shopped, then headed out to find Vanthus Vanderboren. The shopping was almost a full session itself, but it did a lot to secure the party as friends, boost some interesting dynamics, and bring out some personal story for a few of the characters. Pulled Kord more heavily into Bill's life, exerted a little more independance and pomp from Satanos, fortified Kima's feeling of loss for Oreana and accentuated her strangely placed girlyness, and put Nyfel on the fringes of the group where he belongs. Everyone's having fun, and looking forward to Wednesday nights. Whoot.

- I need a Wii.

2nd day

2007-06-25T18:32:00.000-07:00

Caught Daywatch this weekend with Nick. Good fuckin flick. Nick was a little displeased with a deus ex machina twist at the end, and I'll admit that given just the two flicks it does seem that's the case. Not having read the books yet, I'm reserving the displeasure until I know for sure if the twist actually has something to do with the final part of the trilogy or not.

Other than that, there isn't much to complain about if you take the story for what it is in the setting it builds. I definitely have to read the trilogy to see what's missing. Either way, toss the DVD on your Netflix for TOMORROW and then catch the movie while you still can. Unless you've seen Nightwatch, then get your ass to the theater.

Oh, and if you've seen Ice Pirates, tell me whether you think the "sex" scene with Anton/Olga/Sveta is inspired by the "sex" scene in Ice Pirates...

Vente

2007-06-12T18:32:00.000-07:00

Nick and I are planning on running an Epic level adventure at Gen Con. If enough people sign up, we'll have two teams chasing an artifact, racing each other for a wish. So far, my team is thus:

Incarnate Golem Monk 17. With a 100 ft move and Spring Attack, this bad boy controls the field. His Tumble of 23ish means he's going where he wants to go. Nearly 250 hit points, an AC of 40, and a flurry of blows for six attacks (half of which are at +33 to hit) all combine to mean he's there to stay when he's decided to.

Dwarf Rogue 10/Dwarven Defender 10. A Bluff of 23 means this guy applies his 5d6 sneak attack A LOT. With an attack similar to the monk, minus the flurry of blows, he hits a lot, too. Viatka, his keen dwarven waraxe of frosty chaotic outsider bane +5 just adds to the fun. Spending most of his cash on AC pumped his up to 46. Which is good, cause he's got less hit points than the monk.

Aasimar Sorcerer 4/Cleric 5/Mystic Theurge 10. I've barely even though about this guy, but he'll be able to cast over 90 spells PER DAY. That's hardcore.

Human Wizard 16/Archmage 4. Slowly working on this guy. Spell-like ability dispel magic 4/day combined with Mastery of Counterspelling means that at least four times a day he's sending a spell targeting him right back at the caster... Master of Shaping makes his area effects even more potent. Hell, I might just make the dude an Evoker rather than a wizard. Oh, did I mention he can automatically quicken any of his spells up to 3rd level?

All I can say is, "It's not fair. These are bad ass characters, and I don't get to play any of them." :(

Tres

2007-06-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

Phil got a PS3. His woman felt bad for him and let him get one because they just had a baby. Not sure how that works, but there you go. Score for him. Got to play it a little last night.

True to form, the graphics are pretty damn impressive. He has a motocross type game and Need for Speed:Carbon, and has downloaded a ton of demos. Didn't play NfS. The motocross game was a blast, but it was disappointing in that multi-player was online only. Phil had bought a 2nd controller so we could do some racing, then come to find out, nope. Did a little bit on the Grand Turismo demo, but other than graphics, I didn't see much difference between that game and the one I have for the first Playstation.

Played the demo for Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Holy shit is that game bad ass. If the PS3 makes down into my "spend on a console" range, say $200-$300, I might get one just for that game. It was frickin' sweet. I don't normally like demos, either.

We also played Super Rub a Dub, which is a rubber ducky kids game that just uses the tilt axis of the controllers. Fun as hell when you're drinking. Those games are great.

The skies are falling

2007-05-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

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....

High Adventure Wednesday

2007-04-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

I'll start with Wednesday. We hit D&D and started up the Savage Tide path. The crew is as follows:
John (both humans of course)
Satanos - a young goth lad. Warlock. whipping boy of John's other character and pseudo adopted ward of one of Wendy's.
Bill Grimm - a huge fighter. modeled somewhat after Caramon Majere and a little of Ben Grimm (The Thing). Trouble is, Bill's one of the smartest in the group. His "low Charisma" of 10 means John plays him as an uncouth brute. Too bad, he could be the teams unofficial leader otherwise.

Wendy
Kima - an elven archer fighter type. She's a wiz with a shortbow. Not your typical elf, this girl has a bad case of ADD and eats a lot. I mean A LOT.
Oreana - human spirit shaman. she's the big sister of the group. Looks out for Satanos and likely keeps everyone from arguing.

Me
Nyfel - Nyfel is the fat kid everyone forgets about, which is great, because he shouldn't do too much as a a DM PC. He's a wizard/cleric, and I'm trying out the "booster" archetype from Complete Mage. His only offensive spell is magic missile.

*Spoiler warning*
The first job given in the Savage Tide is to board a ship and recover a signet ring for the party's soon to be proprietoress. The group does some good research, comes up with a good plan, and then hire the loudest boatsman in the world. Bribing him to be quiet solves the problem, but their ability to be incognito is nil. They eventually do sneak up to the ship, though.

Unfortunately, both of the armored fighters get hung up in the ships rigging trying to board. A fight begins before they're even aboard. There's 7 pirates and a leader aboard. The party makes pretty quick work of the underpaid pirates thanks to low morale. When it comes time for the pirate boss, though, and the monster that's loose in the hold, things go awry.

No amount of buff spells can counter not rolling above a 12 for a group of level 2 adventurers. Bill's sword got stuck in the mast, and he had to use his javelins as melee weapons. Took him a little time to take care of the pirate boss. Kima stayed up top to help him, which left the three support characters in the hold to take on a melee brute; a rhagodeesa. Given tactical options, the story might have gone differently. Unfortunately, they were stuck in a 20 by 20 hold with one tactic available: hit it with everything you have.

Oreana cast shillelagh and Nyfel used enlarge person on her. In retrospect, he should have used it on Bill up top to end that fight quicker. Satanos couldn't hit jack with his eldritch blasts, and his other abilities are more utilitarian. Once we have a little down time, Nyfel will probably make a dozen or so magic missile scrolls for Satanos to use with his Use Magic Device skill. Unfortunately, the rhagodeesa needed a 5 or higher to grab Oreana with it's tentacle things and a 7 to bite her (which dropped to 3 if she was grappled). She was doomed if her back up crew couldn't come up with something. They didn't.

Oreana died.

Her scream finally elicited help from Kima, and she made short order of the rhagodeesa, but it was still too late.

We stopped after the team found the ring. We didn't role play out the encounter with Lavinia, but we will. The group took the money they earned and had Oreana reincarnated. She came back as an elf. Too bad, I was hoping for a bugbear or gnoll.

Overall, good fun.

Bill's a strong character.
Satanos needs something, but I'm not sure what yet.
Kima can hold her own in, and, like Bill, she excels when things are right.
Oreana has potential, but she's hampered by a low strength. With no range weapon her AC is pitifully low. To her credit, we were cutting produce flame short. She should have been getting two attacks with the spell, not one. Overall, though, she either needs a bag of holding or bracers of AC.
Nyfel's just what he's meant to be, although I doubt he lives long. He's the type of character that picks the magic items last, and his AC will lag behind because he'll be pumping out scrolls whenever possible. With all of his buff spells, I'm gonna need to come up with some means of tracking when the effects end.

Should be interesting. Hopefully, the game stays fun. It's meant to be our goof off distraction so that we can maybe be a little more serious in the Cthulu campaign. We'll see if that effect works out.

SR4 Loki Shaman

2007-04-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday we're getting back together for the mad rpg character session. We should have our SR4 characters done, and we'll make characters for Godlike, Anomane (sp?), and Werewolf. As I think I mentioned before, I've got 9 characters for Godlike ready to go. I want the crew to pick at least two so we don't spend all day making characters for just that game. I should have my SR4 character ready to go by then, too. For the most part, he is. I still need a personality and knowledge skills. Hopefully, I'll get to use those this time. Didn't happen with Gaz.

Parts of his personality are already determined.

He's an elf.
He's a caster of some Charisma based tradition.
Raven is his mentor.
Only two of his seven spells are combat spells, the rest are manipulation.
He has 9 dice in etiquette and Con, with 11 in Fast Talk (good bullshitter); plus 9 dice in spellcasting (with 13 in manipulation), but only 7 in ritual spellcasting, and 6 (1 level) in counterspelling.
5 dice in a firearms skill means it better not get that far on a bad day.

I was originally thinking of making him a shaman of the Crow people, but that character doesn't mesh with this character's skills OR the actual Raven mentor spirit. That character was a tad more benevolent than what I've sent this character up to be.

This character would be a dick if he wasn't quite so sauve. He manipulates everyone into getting what he wants, but it's not a brow beating, crush your will sort of manipulation. It's subtler. People want to help this guy, in part because he's capable, and sometimes does, help them back. He's not bad, but he does take more than he gets.

My thoughts for his tradition are threefold: shamanic, but with a power hungry twist; black magic, possibly opening him up to some good roleplaying options as he struggles with spirits that he can't quite manipulate like normal metahumans; and the Norse tradition, as a follower of Loki.

Let's consider Loki. As I understand it, the cult of Winternight saw the Matrix as the chains holding Loki prison and set about to destroy those chains to bring about Ragnarok, yada yada. They saw otaku and deckers as spawn of Loki. With that in mind, clearly they were wrong. If they were right, why did they fail?

I just decided I'm gonna name this guy Fritjof Odegard. It means "peace thief from a desolate place," so that should tell us a little bit about this chap. He's a snow elf from Sweden. Not albino, but white hair and pale eyes nonetheless. Luminescent white skin that his tattoos seam to glow from. I'll figure those out later. I digress. Back to Loki and Fritjof.

So, Fritjof doesn't worship Loki, he's a ganner. That's a spellweaver according to Street Magic. Hence, no worshiping, sacrificing, prostrating, etc. Instead, there's idolizing, hero worship, and acceptng guidance from Raven as the voice of Loki. At least, that's how Fritjof sees it. That leaves him some room to risk pacts with powerful spirits, possibly kiss the toxic side of things abit, and depending on where Charlie takes it, really struggle against the dark side of magic that involves Loki.

Public knowledge of Fritjof doesn't reveal much background. Raven spoke to him when he awakened and helped him find a pretty posh living in whatever sort of society the elves of Scandanavia have, but wanderlust, greed, and a taste for excitement sent Fritjof packing. He's in Denver because Minnesota was too much like home, ie boring, and Denver's similar climate-wise but way more exciting.

That's Fritjof Odegard in a nutshell. Thanks for listening. The bummer is I like this guy, I'm excited to play him, but I'm fully cognizant that the likelyhood of this SR4 campaign being a long term story is slim.

Checking in

2007-04-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

For those that read this that don't chat with me in some other forum, the promotion is working out well. Had three days this week flying solo and scored one comment of "You picked this up very quick!" Well, yeah. I fix shit that other people broke. Not that hard. Oh, and they pay me to break stuff during "testing." Also not hard. I got $6 more an hour for it. Whoot.

In worse news, I won't be posting any updates on getting published in Dungeon or Dragon magazine. Why? WotC isn't continueing the license with Paizo, so the mags are closing as of September. Makes me sad. I'm flying a wait and see on both WotC's proposed online content and Paizo's Pathfinder subscription service.

The Pathfinder is a 96 page bound book adventure path (first campaign runs levels 1-15 in 6 books) that sounds like it's a mix of Dungeon and Dragon mag content with the added advantage of being OGL. My trouble with it is the $19.99 plus $4 shipping price point. That's steep. First, it's only slightly less than a WotC splat book, and it's not hard cover. Granted, I paid more for 150ish pages in Expeditious Retreat material, but I'm always making new worlds. I usually only run published adventures in a pinch. My main reason for the subscriptions to the mags was to stay abreast of what they needed in submissions. It's a prestige thing I guess. Some people look confused when I say I've got shit published with a 3rd party publisher, but their eyes light up as if I'm famous when I then mention I have submissions into Dungeon mag...

Still, I get the first issue of Pathfinder with my subscription credit, so we'll see how it is. And I'll see what WotC puts out, too. Most importantly, I'll see how the restructuring in both companies affects the freelance market. The plus side is that not trying to do at least one subscription a month frees up more time for pursuing bigger paid projects. The down side is that 5 cents a word is so much more than 1/2 a cent per word, and the 5 is gone now.

!e! Yep, that many games

2007-04-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

Last week, Wendy wasn't feeling up to Cthulu, and I was bemoaning the fact that there was some cool shit in both the Age of Worms and Savage Tide campaign paths that they would never see. So, we made characters for Savage Tide. Wendy and John both made two (John did a fighter and warlock, Wendy did a fighter and spirit shaman), and I filled in the gaps with a personalityless wizard/cleric. I don't know much about the other two, but the DMPC is basically gonna be a booster type filled with self doubt and constantly comparing his own inabilities to the heroic actions of his friends and teammates, while never realizing that he's somewhat and sometimes primarily responsible for the success of those same said heroic actions. On the one hand, I hate the guy, on the other, I'd love to have him as a player character. There's a big understanding with the players, though, that if this guy steals the limelight or gets any favoritism, tell me, and he's out. Also, he's never confidant enough to give an opinion.

That takes care of Horrorble Hump Day (so named for playing Cthulu on Wednesday of course). On to Shadow Sunday.

Turns out that Charlie was/is about as uninterested in having Outback survivalists in Hong Kong as we were in playing that game. Couple that with his current bid to be a Fanpro Commando (John, if that goes through, you'll have to come play SR4 at the Source once a month), and the man is experiencing burnout on our Sunday gaming. Understandable, but frustrating from a player perspective. From now on, my new motto is "Don't quit, kill em." At least then there's an end to the game. ;)

Charlie's original request was for someone else to GM entirely on Sundays. No one jumped up and said, "Oh hell, yeah, I've got this great idea!" So, we started out by making a list of every game that we had and one of us would run. Pretty much everything but Shadowrun had at least one of us waffling on it, and nobody was really willing or confidant enough to dedicate to running that. So, we each picked a game we'd run, and we'll alternate through adventures. For instance, I'll run a Godlike mission, followed by a chapter (or whatever the hell White Wolf calls adventures) of Werewolf ran by Nick, then some Inomine from Justin, and finally SR4 from Charlie. Or some order like that. We'll each finish our respective adventures before passing the GM scepter.

Honestly, I don't expect much story to come out of this. Let's look at our SR4 experiences thus far. Anything more complex than going into a low security building to retrieve some data has taken upwards of four weeks to finish.

Godlike is hard to tell. We had five full combat encounters in six hours of play at GenCon. Having only played it once, I don't know if that's fast or slow. I think it was fast, as I know we blazed through a few encounters on sheer numbers. The game started with 10 players and ended with 6. One encounter was drastically shortened by some quick thinking by a few of us. I think we faced 3 or 4 rival talents that were supposed to be tough, but the sniper took out one with a rifle grenade to the head, and I blew up the human torch by saying "Hot Potato" and tossing him a satchel charge, which he caught instinctively, blowing us both up, but not so badly that I didn't regenerate. :) I digress.

So, let's say four weeks average per SR4 run. 1 week to research, 1 to get in and hit a cliffhanger, 1 to fight the big bad and run away, and 1 to hide out and drop the loot. Let's say 3 weeks on Godlike. Werewolf? Hell, I don't know, 3-6 depending on whether Nick runs a thick story or just full on bruiser sessions. Inomine is a wild card, but let's stick with the average and say 4. So, I run a Godlike session. It'll be 11-14 weeks before I run another one, barring weekends off for camping, tournaments, conventions, weddings, vacations, etc. Think any of us are gonna remember what the hell we were doing 3 months ago?

My bet is we rethink the whole think around Gen Con. Consider the 29th is our next session, and that one's character development. Add that to us probably playing twice in May, most of June, and probably twice in July. What you have is Gen Con coming on and we've played one mission of Godlike or Werewolf and maybe one round of Shadowrun.

But who knows, that might be great for my ADD.

Router poop pop drop netgear to linksys Stop Flop

2007-03-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, our router died. Not sure what's wrong with the damn thing. It doesn't broadcast a wireless signal most of the time, and even when it does, you can't connect to the internet wirelessly. You can connect to the internet via ethernet cable through the router, but what's the point in having a wireless route if you're using ethernet cables?

The router was a netgear WGR614. We got a little over 18 months of use before it crapped out. Obviously, I didn't want to go the netgear router route. My netgear wireless card in my PC is holding up ok (a little glitchy at times, though, and I can't create a full on network through it to save my life), but still. Nor did I want a D-link, cause every piece of equipment I've ever had from them crapped out in 6 months or less. So, I went with linksys. Hopefully, it stands up. The signal is a little weaker than the netgear was, but I like the interface so far, and the firmware is 10 times easier to upgrade, so I'm pleased so far.

So, that's my Yay for the weekend.

and it's off

2007-03-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

Hoorah. Fired off the adventure proposal for March. Let's see how long I can keep this up, eh. I'm gonna lay off the Campaign Workbook and any Dragon ideas until after I get Joe's site topped up. That leaves me the next couple of weeks anyway to just brainstorming and Cthulu. Might have to consider not doing Cthulu every week, though in the meantime.

Unfortuantely, there's word from editors on the Paizo forums that there won't be a meeting to review proposals anytime soon. Might as well fill the waiting with more proposals, right?

duldrums

2007-03-12T04:53:00.000-07:00

Whoo boy. Add another trip to the roster this year. Fuck. I was gonna be able to swing most of the travel action with relatively little vacation time, but the third wedding is definitely this year, so shit got hectic and tight on the budget and vacation bank. I'll have to watch that shit close.

As such, this morning left a bad taste in my mouth about Gen Con and the expense of the hotel, so I had to go hang on the forums about to get pumped back up. Considering the productivity of this weekend, it wasn't too hard.

Weekend Recap
300 rocked. I loved it. You won't get much intellectual review out of me this morning, though. Go see it, that's all I can say.

Got the basic layout for the TORC Press revamp done, barring further revamp suggestions by Joe. Hoorah. Moving on to the CGI script that will let Joe update the News & Production sections on his own. That'll be fun. What little I know about Perl only allows me to modify other Perl scripts to fit my needs. Accordingly, I'm not even sure Perl is the way to go, but that's where I'm starting.

Still hung up on the query to Paizo. Anyone know what the style of movie/narrative/story is called when you have several different factions chasing the same item? Sort of like Smokin Aces or Hanna Barbera's race cartoons. One stupide term shouldn't be this much of a hang up, but without it, my opening line is lame squared.

The mystery mini-campaign is probably getting put on hold yet again. I really need to focus on Joe's site, so I don't have a ton of time to research. I might be able to work on it at work for after I get the Paizo query written up, and I might swing a day a week or so, but that's about it. I know that I won't make much headway on CGI scripting just doing it Thursday through Saturday. *shrug*

absolute safari

2007-03-09T05:04:00.000-08:00

Yes. Score. Figured out the problem I was having on the new TORCPress web design. Safari renders differently then IE, so it looked wrong. I had put the position data for the DIV tags into the CSS file. Apparently, that info has be directly coded into the html instead. Whoops. Trial and error figured it out, but not before I broke the IE version, too. LOL. I did learn that the IE version will work more consistently if I do a little extra coding up top, though, so score two for me.

Thinking about starting another blog. Actually several. One that we could all log into to add road tunes for Gen Con, and at least one other that we could all use to post costume and shirt ideas, and later, once the game/panel schedules are up, we could post the things we're interested in. *shrug*

spring dreamin

2007-03-06T04:56:00.000-08:00

Wendy's about to steal the lappy to go to work. Brevity is key.

Gen Con update- Roster: Me, Nick, John, Matt. We're expecting 5, so the hotel sits at 200 ea. Nick's paid, John's almost there, Matt still needs an update I think. Have any of us bought tickets yet? I doubt it. LOL.

SR4 update- We went ghoul hunting but found Nagas instead. They were friendly at least. Oh, and after much complaining about how much money he's given us in the past, Charlie gave us old data that could be worth upwards of a million nuyen. If we can sell it.

Project update- The mysterious publishing project conitnues. I've got a lot of research done on one faction and have laid out the water and coastlines. Interior of the map is sketched up and it's just a matter of deciding on style to finish it. I still have to research/decide on Vikings and research some of the more traditional enemies.

Got a solid enough idea for the March paizo submittal to write that up, too, I think. Calling this one "Big Tom and the Little Orphans." The February proposal is "A Dish Best Served Undead" along with a critical threat for one of my old characters. The latter won't pass muster, though, as I forgot to rebuild him with level appropriate treasure and use the elite stat tier. Oh well. Still have to decide on a Campaign workbook or Dragon piece for March. My goal is at least one adventure and preferrably and adventure plus campaign workbook each month, on top of some solid 3rd party work.

Still working on Joe's rebuild, too. Damn Safari uses a different render engine than PC browsers, and it doens't like my div tags. :( Might have to use some javascript to say, OH, HI Safari, your private room is waiting. Bleh.

Where have all the Elder Gods gone?

2007-03-01T04:38:00.000-08:00

No Cthulu last night. John had to finish up a few papers for school. Didn't look like Wendy was in the mood, so I didn't ask. Next week, baby. It's the end of the world next week.

Instead, i got a fair amount of research done, focusing on games and toys for one of my cultures. I'm drawing up blanks on their actual religion and can't decide whether to give them a new class or not. Cleric doesn't work at all, and druid has a lot of cannonicle associations to get around to fill the role as is. *shrug* I'll figure it out. Might just work on my map and the other cultures a bit until I get an idea.... I should research and see if there's any other OGL classes that would work. That'll make the pitching phase a little more hairy, though, when I say, "Oh yeah, I used the SpiderMonkeyNinja class from SomePoorSchmucks OGL .pdf called '649 Classes You'll Never Need'." It's OGL, so it's legal, but most of the smaller guys don't like to step on each other's toes.

Got a little 2142 in as well. Scored a promotion, Major Silver now, and kept my unlock in my pocket for the expansion. I actually DIDN'T want to play as commander last night, but both servers I played on, the round was almost over when I came in, and the next round didn't have a commander. My overall goal was kill streaks, as I'm only 3 away from a couple of ribbons that need the highest kill streak of anyone in that round.

Came close on the last game with 10, but we lost too quick to get more. Most kills in that round was 18, so I don't know what the streak was. It was annoying because none of our squads would defend our titan. So, we had 1 guy defending it. Fortunately, the entire enemy force was defending their titan, so the 1 guy had only to kill the same 1 guy that occasionally podded over to ours. Unfortunately, my 1 guy wasn't very good, and their 1 guy was. So, that part of the battle went like this:

Enemy lands on our titan, runs in, kills Bob. Bob respawns on the titan and runs back to Enemy. Bob kills Enemy, but not before Enemy blew up one console. Enemy defends his own titan until he dies, then spawns as recon and comes back to ours again. Kills Bob, blows up console, then Bob kills Enemy again. Rinse and repeat. That 1 Enemy took out our whole Titan by himself. Why didn't I do anything? *shrug* Honestly didn't care that much. You can't die in the titan guns unless a teammate kills you. And when I was manning the titan guns, people were trying to destroy them, which meant they weren't defending the titan or capturing missile silos or attacking my consoles. It also meant my kill streak went up and I got repair points. :) So, on a personal level, I had more fun in the guns than running into the titan to kill the Enemy every 5-7 minutes, plus, it's hard to defend the titan as engineer, but you NEED to be engy to repair the guns if you wanna use them. *shrug*

Now, in previous rounds, I got a FUCKLOAD of defend kills setting my C-4 traps. Love those things. Overall, I ended up with two 10 kills streaks, but it wasn't enough to get me closer to those ribbons.

Put your cap back on

2007-02-28T04:35:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the end of the month. February. Usually gaming shit takes off late in the year and dies down mid-summer for us, but this season was backwards. It died down late fall when we started house/apartment hunting like mad. It's just now rejuvenating.

As I've mentioned, Shadowrun is back, and our Australian characters are in Hong Kong. I'm disappointed for two reasons. 1 - We weren't made for this environment, so it's a fish out of water story, but without the associated fish out of wateryness. Which leads to 2 - Hong Kong is a city of public face. It's everything. We're brash, abrasive, uncouth, and in Baru's case, poorly educated, yet not once have we stumbled into a brawl for insulting some schmuck. Granted, your average human asian laborer isn't gonna nut shot a mystical orc or cybered troll in full camo, but you'd think in two weeks or so at least some ganger or Triad kid would throw down. *shrug*

And tonight, we hit it Elder God style. John and Wendy are pitching up characters for a trifecta of Cthulu story arcs I have in mind. Three eras, three generations of characters interrelated by family, friends, location, and/or plot. Should be fun. I've been thnking about it, and I can weave the 1890's and current plot lines simultaneously, but the 1920's St. Paul is heavily dependant on the 1890's, at least at the beginning, so unless I wanna give those characters full on short term amnesia, that ones gotta wait. That, unfortunately, means the current era has to wait as well, otherwise it would give too much away. *sigh*

And that's that. Two submissions into Paizo that have yet to be shot down by the Gray Render, so they might make it to the meeting, whenever that is. Started some fun research on a pseudo-campaign setting to pitch to the 3rd party market. Good times.

in bed with a 1 ton woman

2007-02-22T04:53:00.000-08:00

Just saw a video from the news in Boston, they had a low-speed cop chase. The police were following a 2000 pound Scottish heifer. Best part was hearing the cop giggle in the background of his traffic cam.

So, last night I played some 2142. Was working on my silver Titan Commander Badge. I'd finally reached the 1000 titan commander point requirement, so all I needed was 20 minutes as commander in a round. That's no problem, as my team wasn't good enough to sweep the other guys (although we got sweeped the game before cause that commander sucked).

The round starts as usual, I move the titan into range of its guns and start defending a few silos on my own. We start winning, enemy shields go down, they stop us from hitting their titan from the inside, but then the same happens on our side - Our shields go down, but most of the team stays in our titan to defend. So, we have two squads out battling for silos, one in the enemy titan, and 14 stragglers not in squads defending our titan. Let me reiterate. WE ARE WINNING.

So, I'm not sure which dude did it - once someone asked for a UAV, but it was deployed elsewhere, and once a sniper asked for a supply crate, but it was recharging after I dropped one for a tank and battlewalker. Maybe it was one of those guys, maybe not. I'm in a titan gun, in a rousing battle with four engineers that kept blowing up the titan guns. We had three engys on the titan repairing our guns, hopping in and blowing those guys up. Nobody would take that silo, easy as it was sitting under our titan like that. Our guys just ignored it. All of a sudden, one of the clan members of the server I'm in kills me, shoots me flat out in the back of the head. No way this was an accident either, I'm in a shielded hangar surrounded by nothing but friendlies. Hell yeah I punish the guy for a team kill. So, I spawn back there. He's nowhere to be found. He didn't kill me cause he wanted my seat, didn't mutiny cause he wanted to be commander, didn't respond to "Why did you just shoot the commander in the back of the head," nothing.

Regardless, we won, and I left the server. My warning to you is this
(=A=) clan has some rude and stupid players on their clan. Don't play on their server.

Bossanova. Chevy Nova?

2007-02-20T04:45:00.000-08:00

That's right. CG Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Out in March. I love it.

What's new here?

In the gaming world, Shadowrun has geared back up with Gaz and Baru heading to Hong Kong to hunt for Dreamstones (bleh) and their lost sister (meh). It's really annoying but we're makin the best of it. What's annoying about it? We made characters for the Outback. For survival. For hunting magical beasts. Now we're in a city where everything you do insults someone's honor, and we're really insulting. Our current adventure has us trying to outscam a scammer triad, and while Nick and I have tons of ideas, Baru and Gaz don't. The other character in the group is a pirate, so he should be knocking this shit out, but he's not. His idea isn't bad, but I still can't piece together how this plan is gonna get us the book we need. Supposedly it'll get us into the gang, and once we're on the inside, we're past the magical wards and just have to whack "30-40 personal guards" and we're fine. *shrug* We'll see. It's still good to be gaming again. Just wish the adventure was ready to go when we fuckin got there.

On Wednesday nights, the request has went up for Call of Cthulu in a campaign setting. So, we'll be starting up the trifecta campaign. Three characters per player, each in a different era, each intertwined into the same plot. Good times. I think I can get by with running the 1920's and 1890's parallel and putting the present era as an endgame. Should be fun.

Politics? Haven't been paying attention. With 21 months til the election I could care less about who's exploring the presidency. So far, none of the Dems have turned me on in the race against Coleman, and you'd think that wouldn't be hard, cause I fucking hate that guy. How do you vote against Kerry for flip-flopping, but Coleman, who was Dem, but now smokes Bush cock, was put in 2 years before. And look at him now vs. pre-war. Then - We gotta kill Saddam or the terrorists will be in America raping our goats. Now - We gotta get out of Iraq or the world won't be safe anymore because Iran will drive up the price of caviar. He just rolls onto his back for whomever can keep him in office doesn't he? Not who I want representing my state. Then there's all the crazy fuckers that I can't do anything about. Michelle Bachman for one. WTF? What cooch monger got her elected? When did the permanently insane get to lead the country?

And here's where I should put in a conclusive paragraph, but I have none. Still no word from Paizo. Tonight I'll either finish up a Critical Threat submission or work on the campaign. I hope.

New schedule

2007-02-14T04:49:00.000-08:00

So, on the phone, on hold, I started developing rules for a new CCG. Nick gave me a kick ass idea on how to improve it, and then we learned there was already one out there similar that bombed.

Before that, though, I'd come up with a sort of after work production schedule for my three big projects right now - updated Joe's site, the CCG, and a partial campaign setting to pitch to a couple of pdf d20 publishers. The CCG was #2 on the list, since I'm sure it's such a good system the collective human subconscious will take it from me and give it to someone else if I don't pitch it to the right company soon.

However, since it's less likely to get bought because it's already been done a little differently and failed.... it's dropped to #3. So, the new production schedule is thus:

Mon/Tues - campaign
Wed - game night
Thur/Fri - TORC Press
Sat - Whichever one I feel like
Sun - CCG and game night

Of course, those are all interrupted by real life. This Monday I worked on taxes. Last night I rearranged the den and started working on (mostly finished in fact) a Photoshop project for Wendy. Still need to finish reupholstering the chairs. And there's always Battlefield to play. ;)

Regardless, that's that. Happy VD Day everyone.

Oh yeah, and I have a couple of ideas for Paizo submissions. I have to get another one together by the end of February, since Wendy and I made a deal to goad/conjole/push/pork/entice/etc each other into hitting the short market harder. I can usually work on them at work, though. lol

yet another book

2007-01-31T15:47:00.000-08:00

OK, nevermind. I had a rant about government officials pumping out books like mad. Inspired by Chuck Schumer's latest attempt to win recognition by telling America what the Dems need to do to win again, of course. But as I wrote it, and read it, I sounded more like I was saying that government officials were slaves of the people. Really, they're representatives of the people. I bet they don't even realize that anymore. I could rant about that instead, but I'm rather deflated and checked now. Aint this a pathetic post? And considering I just started to digress from my own point in response to my previous poorly thought out point, I think I'm calling it done for now. My convoy of thought got lost on some back country synapsis. The Hills Have Eyes is playing out in some forgotten portion of my brain.