Me: WotC's new web presence will be on a website called... gleemax.com? GLEEMAX?
KF: sounds like a condom.
Me: haha, yes, yes it does :P
In WoW news, Ajathka fulfills the name of his guild! Woo!
What's been the news from lynx central since the fabulous Loreena concert, you ask? Studying... lots of studying. I've scheduled my next Architectural Registration Exam for the first of June, so I've been hitting the books (all 2400+ pages of them) pretty consistantly. Work has also been mightly full, with multiple projects on the go, both big and small (plus, of course, ADT implementation). Getting to work on two projects right now that are design heavy, but from two different angles: one is very technical oriented, the other is more artistic oriented. On that latter I haven't been working on the design directly, but I have had my input, and had the great experience of suggesting a direction and having Jose later show me the design opening with "So, I took your idea and totally ran with it." Woo!
The hand continues to heal -- no iron palm for me yet alas -- and I'm back into the Kung Fu swing of things. The past couple of weekends I've pulled off some good Shaolin practice, doing straight sword, all three staff sets, the spear set, the cane set, along with all of the hand sets I know, with the accompanying great feeling of a workout that comes the day next. We've also completed 'learning' the Five Elements form of Xing Yi -- of course, the movements look simple, but to excecute them with all the concepts and energies is where we are developing ourselves, so learning is a somewhat imprecice term. It's neat to take Sun Style Tai Chi and discover the Xing Yi and Bagua influences inside it.
Still on Kung Fu, tuesday Evan brought in his new HD DV cam, which has a rather fun feature: a high-speed mode. That is, the camera records four seconds at a high frame rate, and then plays it back at .33x speed (so the 4 seconds is displayed over 12 seconds). We did some tornado kicks in front of the camera... A) I did some really amazing tornado kicks (and have a very sore left hand as reward) and B) wow the replay is very smooth and very interesting to watch at the slower speed. This could be lots of fun and one heck of a training tool.
In the short bursts of WoW I've been playing in between studying and other things I've been focussing on doing the Battlegrounds, which pretty much constitutes my only foray into the world of PVP. Definitively a different world, and with whom I'm being about it it's been overall quite fun. With my aims there nearly complete however (30 tokens from 3 of the BGs so I can get a nightsabre mount) my PVP time will likely come to a close.
Apart from alllll of that I've managed to hang out much with many friends and visitors, hit the Maker Faire (and find a way to work on a project I've been wanting to do, mmmmm), done some gaming, had BBQs, ridden the bike a bit and all the general goodness.
What I hadn't done was written here... oops! Now I'm up to date(ish).
More shameless self promotion... woo!
Eomer - "My company are those loyal to Rohan, and for that we are banished"
Legolas - "Oh man, sucks to be you."
DM - OH COME ON, you aren't even trying. I know you can do better than that.
Legolas - "Hark, thy fate sucketh?"
DM - That is... much worse.
(taken from The DM of the Rings
Wow, so Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine will both cease publication in September. That, for me, came completely out of the blue. I haven't purchased a Dragon magazine in about three years, but I'm still sad to see them go. I held a Dragon Magazine subscription for about five years 'back in the day', and loved receiving them. It's funny to look back on them now and to remember reading 'Forum', the section that was the precursor to, and quite supplanted by, the forums of the internet now. Of course I want to speculate... was that what killed Dragon, revenue lost by the ease of finding free original material online? From the many accounts I've read (online, funnily) it sounds as though Dragon and Dungeon were doing quite swimmingly, were profitable, and were being well received, so who knows. Plenty of rumours abound (speculation is our pastime!) it seems, especially with the Digital Initiative announced by WotC, and that (Related? Unrelated?) WotC has begun to not renew IP they had licensed out (such as Dragonlance and Ravenloft).
Just starting out to be an editor of a gaming magazine, the ending of Dragon/Dungeon amusingly strikes me from another angle as well. 359 issues for Dragon when it ends in Sept - we're talking _the_ most premiere and well-known gaming mag of all. I'm disappointed to see it go because the magazine holds a place in my memory, and at the same time I've got this sense of something - not sure what exactly, but something - because of my new role as editor/manager. The magazine I manage in no way competes with Dragon (different game lines), but we are online (does this bode well for online mags, will WotC's official online mag lend credence to them?) and we are a magazine in a similar vein and structure to Dragon. Really, it doesn't strike me any particular way, but it strikes me that it strikes me within this new context I have in taking on the role of launching and creating a bi-monthly gaming magazine. (Er, did that last sentence communicate?)
Dragon and Dungeon. A long reign and a retirement perhaps too soon. For the moment it seems like a loss: you forged many a game, set aloft many a mind, and launched many a writer into the industry they love. What may succeed it could well pick up where it left off, or not. Either way, it's legacy is not yet at an end.
Some links to the announcement and from 'big' players in the field: here (includes press releases), here, here, and here (scroll down to Monte's posts).
I blogged once before that I fell in love with the Pulse many moons ago... and while that dream of owning one may have receded, here's something new that could be equally fun: the VentureOne Hybrid. The Pulse back in its day could already get 100mpg at 55mph, this as an EV and Hybrid vehicle would be doubly awesome. Think I still prefer the body of the Pulse better, but hey, this one is available! (Or will be...)
On a more silly note, here's an idea who's time may have come.
Want to talk about light? In the field of prefab homes here is a particularly cool website that opens with several time-lapse movies of the quality of light within throughout the full cycle of the day. Nice quality of light indeed, and very cool to watch the play of shadows and light as it moves along. And the homes are, of course, sweet as well.
As for things, well, things are going very well. On the boo-side, I didn't get the gun drop yet again in my second run through the instance in WoW last friday (I wonder how raiders manage to stay sane after several hundred runs). Played Eberron this past weekend, got character concepts roughed out for a new campaign, worked on various projects, kung fu was great, and just generally having a blast in all areas and at all times. Now that is remarkable.
Current Possibility: Levity, Grace and Inspiration
Ah Friday, ah WoW. Ah, not as fruitful as I would've liked... I (and thus Ajathka) had one aim that evening: enter an instance and get a particular rifle that drops. Six hours and three instance runs later, I not only had not gotten the rifle (it did not drop) but I had also won (random rolls) only about 3 of the other items that did drop, netting me little gold or upgrades for the eve. Had me actually frustrated for a short bit (I had totally gotten attached to a particular outcome), but I've now sent out feelers for another run through the instance and we'll see what drops this time.
Saturday was truly a day for inquiry. In the afternoon a group of friends and I gathered to watch What the Bleep Do We Know, a film that gets the contemplation going and was much appreciated by all. Then, in the evening Melissa and I headed to see Blue Man Group's "How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.0" which, while certainly a different style and genre, has through it several currents of thought-provoking reflection on society, the media and on modern life. The show was quite different from their permanent show I saw in Vegas -- this one was much more focused on music and actual song (no vocals at the Vegas show), and less on performance acts. Also, much less mess-creating acts; when it's not your stage, you can't throw paint everywhere! Several of the acts and themes were common between both shows, of course. Happily, the music was very fine, the production was impactful, and the crowd was right there with them the whole way, right from the get go. Given that audience participation is a big thing in a Blue Man production, this was fortuitous -- seeing an entire arena of people waving their LCD-lit cell phones in the air in the dark was quite amazing. All the crazy percussion creations were heavily used, which certainly made me happy. Well worth it.
Just a quick note about the opening act (yep, the show had an opening act). An interesting combination of remixed music, with video, coupled with on-stage scratching that not only a) was ridiculously fast but b) also scratched the video track back and forth, (and sometimes the audio from said video track as well) which made for a pretty unique sound and experience. Also they showed a video of the Eepybird guys doing their geyser work on the Blue Man stage in NYC.
When Sunday evening was joined, it was for the last session of The Mines of Bloodstone, the second module in my campaign. The last few sessions were good solid affairs as the party explored the duregar temple carved into the very rock of the Underdark. Soon after the game started on Sunday, my lovingly crafted map was unfurled (hooray for large-format printers!) and the party ascended into a huge temple of the macabre, a summoning ceremony in progress around a large mercury pool. The battle was joined, there was tension, there was tactics, there was moments of resounding shouts of triumph, there was character anguish and anger, there were dirty tricks by the villains, and in the end, with things in the balance, it came down to the wire, and the PCs were victorious. It was a good end to a good set of sessions to a good run through the module. Hard to believe we began it in October of 2005, but it built well and maintained itself pretty well throughout, delays and small hiatuses notwithstanding. I had a good time running it and am now onto working on the third module.
Jason also announced that eve that he would be taking on the GM mantle, and so doth a new campaign begin! I'm excited, and coming up with several character ideas... woo!
"The most visible creators I know are those artists whose medium is life itself. The ones who express the inexpressible - without brush, hammer, clay or guitar. They neither paint nor sculpt - their medium is being. Whatever their presence touches has increased life. They see and don't have to draw. They are the artists of being alive." -- Jay Scott
It's been quite the fantastic week; there's been a certain composure there that's making its presence known. No doubt about it, this is going to be quite an unfolding over the next three months.
Saturday evening got a surprise call from Lumi who invited me to a local crab cioppino event, happening literally about a mile from my house. No problem, I ran the whole way there, worked up a bit of an appetite, and enjoyed much crab cooked in an aromatic broth. As we spoke between cracking legs and claws we caught up on our lives, shared some philosophical musings and marveled at the humour of the crab feast. Also got to catch up on something else on Sunday, mainly the staff sparring set. Rev and I learned it a good chunk of years ago - he rode over to our new training spot on Sunday (the Sunday Sifu/Tai Chi group found this great spot to train on Sundays) and we worked on the set for a bunch, managing to get the first half back to pretty good form by the time we were done. Between that, Tai Chi and practicing a few Shaolin forms it was a good 'fu weekend.
Gaming was Sunday night, a good game of the Bloodstone campaign. Some work for DP9, some more exploration in Outland in WoW and some cleaning rounded out the weekend.
Found this link today, which is pretty interesting: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/30/lily_white_and_not_loving_it/. Some food for thought in regards to the composition of online communities, and what that means for what gets created and/or had there. To take what the author says and take it further, it is kind of like, in a way, a giant theme park or fenced community. You have to be this tall to enter this ride... and by that very virtue it sets up a baseline meme that gets reinforced by newcomers who are then influenced by the meme and react according to it and which reinforces it even more. Not quite a direct reflection/representation of FirstLife.
Current Possibility: Being the artist where every situation is a blank canvas
Wow, much time has passed.
The new Hung Gar class is proving to be fun, and we've got a good sized class to boot, with several familiar faces re-joining and getting back into it, which is absolutely fantastic. We've also found a slightly different location for our Sunday practice which has the advantages of being a) sheltered b) receiving the morning sun and c) secluded and hidden in a way that if we wanted to practice weapon sets it would be quite alright to do so there, I'm sure. This was the second weekend we've practiced in that spot and it's great. Had a great lesson today, learning a whole tonne from Sifu, really delving into the concepts and the connections in Sun Style Tai Chi (concepts from Xing Yi mostly today), coupled with him testing us in various positions and having us do the applications so we could feel the power and body linking. I realized it is a lot like riding a bike: someone can tell you all about it, you can understand it, but until you distinguish balance you'll just fall right the heck over. (Some of you reading this might get that quote from a different source too...) So Sifu will test us and give us the chance to distinguish internal power. It's a privilege and very cool.
Afterwards I practiced #6, #7, #9, #3, #1, and #8. It's kinda crazy but in a way makes sense that my understanding and skill in a more external art like Shaolin is being informed by and improved by all the internal work we are doing. Sun Style has made a big difference over the past couple of weeks, and Bagua earlier in the year made a crazy difference in my tornado kicks (even if I get a lousy or tired takeoff I can still turn it into a good powerful kick). Really they all do come together at the higher levels.
Dogged with a bit of a cold right now, but not letting that slow me down. Held a Lofty meeting the other weekend, creating ourselves anew and crafting our game plan for the first quarter. No gaming the past two weekends. Been reading a book, more of which I will share with you later. At work we've 'finally' started our first ADT pilot project, and studying for the next registration exam is underway by me.
And, yes, I have indeed purchased and am playing the Burning Crusade. 2.5 years into it WoW continues for me. I had the rather unfortunate experience of logging in about a month ago and noticing my level 60 character naked -- logging in confirmed that all his stuff had been vendored and the gold transferred out. In short, it quite appears I had been hacked. The GM/Customer Service team was unable to verify it nor to restore my equipment, so they sent me a 'baseline' set of equipment to get me going. Thanks to the in-game generosity of a few friends (thanks to you all!) and the baseline gear I was equipped well enough to take up the reins once again and ride into the Dark Portal with my trusty nightsabre Myrra at my side.
I've only played for a short while in the new realm known as the Outlands but it's been cool so far. The land/sky/etc is quite funktastic, the quests have been slightly more in variety and 'interestingness'. Tones o tones o tones of people there though, which makes for a slightly odd experience (so many running around doing the same quest as you) and a bit of lag in the town. The dropped and reward gear so far has been insane, as in insanely good. Don't know if that will continue the further in I get, but if so... wow. A bit of Rifts-itis. 'Course, we all like nice shiny gear...
Current Possibility: Waist Power
Saturday I snuck away up to a sakery in Berkeley for a surprise party for Patrick's. Which turned out to be amazingly successful. The look on Patrick's face was one of abject shock, confusion, disbelief and of having been hit with a frying pan. Mo did a fantastic job of organizing it all on the sly over the course of a couple of months, and much amusement and merriment was had by all. Oh, and great sake!
(And having been the recipient once of an equally successful surprise party I can totally relate to the frying pan look!)
Alas, the following is not a surprise: ExxonMobil has spent over the past few years around 16 million in a tobacco-company style FUD campaign, giving it to various front groups and the scientists who are members of about 9 to 12 of these groups at the same time. Their aim is delay and stagnation, under the guise of 'sound science.' As I said, not a surprise.
Bloodstone continued apace on Sunday, the party making their way through the heart of the Duregar's realm. Also did some studying, some Kung Fu/Tai Chi, and other weekendy stuff. Much niftyness at work this week that I now return to attend to!
I am finding it most amusing that a good number of my spam over the past couple of days have been about "Fantastic christmas gifts!" or "Special deals to start the holiday season!" Kinda missed the boat there, guys.
Today's LotD: Worst of the Worst video game ads from the late 80's and the second installment about the early 90's. Funny enough on their own, but doubly so with the rather sharp commentary.
I would like to announce that Aurora: The Silhouette Magazine is now available for download from Dream Pod 9's website. The shameless self-promotion is that I'm the editor for the magazine, and thus excited to release the first issue, giddy as I'm a longtime DP9 fan, and chuffed at the recognition on DP9's homepage.
We're accepting submissions right now for issue 2 ... got an idea? Read the guidelines, finish it up and send it in!
'Twas a good weekend for me. Got a chance to take the newly patched WoW for a spin (after I had managed to find all the updated or replacement add-ons, its amusing how 'dependant' I've become on them) and enjoyed all the new paladin talent goodness. Then there was not one but two xmas parties that Melissa and I attended, with Sunday's being a true treat. After missing it for the past couple of years I made a point of working out to be at Patrick and Mo's winter cheer party, complete with amazing baking by Patrick and much xmas tree ornament making that started with a Polaroid of yourself (actually done digitally with a photoprinter now, given Polaroid's bankruptcy) taken by Mo. Much amusement, merriment and discourse was had.
Sun Tai Chi continues to be amazing, and Sunday evening we completed Granite's campaign that ended in a TPK. Honestly I'm ambivalent about the ending. What he set up was not clear cut and led to soul searching and questioning, which was his intent and well handled. That it ended with the destruction of the world is not the outcome I consider good, nor am I completely satisfied with the process that led to its demise.
Today I type with burned fingers after an oops yesterday. Ow, not recommended!
25k words reached, and surpassed. Crazy, the halfway point -- feels so short and yet so long away. Prose is not flowing as easily as it had been as I get into the middle and strive to advance an actual story. I'm especially becoming prone to going back and reading what I already have to be sure I'm not repeating literary structure or just plain repeating, and I have to keep giving up doing that, that isn't part of my game. It's write, write, write...
I'm so glad no one has to read this drek, though!
Bloodstone was the game this past Sunday, and it went well. We got off to a late start but it moved along mostly well, and the characters have now entered leading to the most dungeon-y part of this module, woo! Truly the world of 1st edition has now been entered. The crux is near!
As I was idly reading a magazine this past weekend I came across an article that spoke of a new 'genre': the ecosexual. Related to the metrosexual, the ecosexual is one for whom their green-ness is such a part of their 'lifestyle' (and I do understand how loose or imprecise that word can be) that it can inform and influence whom they wish to be with in their lives. This latter point seems apart from the usual metrosexual definition, so I'm not sure if the article author was trying to say it automatically informed it, or the opposite direction, namely that some are quite into it and thus it shows up in their romantic potentials and possibilities. It wasn't a very in-depth or exhaustive article, but interesting nonetheless.
I added a nanowrimo counter to the right sidebar on my page, so you can now follow my follies! Or progress, if you prefer... clicking on the bar will take you to a more detailed breakdown and prediction. So far writing goes well, and I'm exited to see how long the ideas keep flowing and where I really have to start making stuff up.
This weekend, I discovered my gamer weakness, at least in this one campaign. Money, items, goods, they all held little draw for me. But when a fellow party member lucked out to receive a boatload of experience points, I was done for, I was hooked. My mind would think of little else the entire eve! Oh, sweet, sweet XP, how I crave thee! (and we are talking a BOATLOAD) Pulled me right out of character in many ways, oy. For shame!
Gaming Quote of the Day:
There is the 'bestiary' for metamorphs, which includes as one example the Berserker (an example of the 'Internal Metamorph'), along with a nanometal robot, three examples of lycanthrope and two selections from Mike Surbrook's Asian Bestiary, one of which is the Japanese prankster-spirit called the Tanuki, which in addition to its illusion/shapeshift abilities also has a scrotum measuring approximately 144 sq. ft. in area, allowing it to use this elastic mass for several power stunts in a Multipower (titled 'Enormous Scrotum') one of which is a hypnotic drumbeat with the Limitation Gestures ('must pound scrotum throughout').
Ladies and Gentlemen, this has to be the coolest Hero System Multipower EVAR. I mean, yes, Dr. Destroyer can blow you away with his 30 dice Energy Blast, but he can't whip out his gigantic ball sac and sling it around somebody's neck like a garrote. No siree. If your character saw that sort of thing, he'd be traumatized for life.
(back from vacation, will post soon to catch up!)
Hooray! It is taking an 'expansion pack' to do it, but finally Blizz has heard me and is introducing new paladin F/X for WoW: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Luthersburg/TBC/. Consider it the LotD!
We finished the Tiger Crane (Fu Hok) set last night -- something I consider quite amazing given the length of the set (and given my last 'Fu entry was before we even started the Tiger part!). But in just over a month we've completed it, leaving us a good chunk of time to review.
What a fun set! Tiger Crane is just one of those sets that, while all the gung fu sets I've learned I enjoy doing, some sets just stand out as being particularly fun. Shaolin #7 is one of those, the cane set is another... and there are more. And now I'll add Tiger Crane to that list. Something about it just makes it a blast to perform, a good combo of 'exoticness' (given my northern focus), some very nifty and funky moves, and, well, you get to make noises while doing it. It's a fairly long set, but once you get going it seems quite short to actually do.
It's also been fun learning a southern set -- I'm sure I still perform the set with a 'horrible' northern accent. One difference Sifu mentioned is the staccato-like movements, with a just discernable pause between each movement (making each movement 'crisp') as opposed to northern where many moves flow seamlessly into each other with continuing momentum. The stances are subtly different too, as is the way you strike (more diagonal or to the side vs northern's straight-on) and add-in the difference in how the arms are treated (the solid forearm of southern versus the rock-and-string model of northern). Tiger vs Dragon claws, Drunken Unicorn steps, Butterfly Palms -- lots of new and lots of nifty.
Of course, having Sifu teach the set was a real treat, as he brought in concept after concept after concept, offering us to test different hand and feet positions for power and stability, demonstrating, inventing and testing applications, tying movements to the basic concepts of all traditional Chinese martial arts ("135 degrees!" was my oft-given answer to his questions about angles) and comparing it specifically to moves from other systems we've learned (Northern, Bagua, Xing Yi), and all the knowledge a life-long TCMA teacher can bring to the table, er the kwoon. Fantastic.
I'll miss some of the upcoming classes for my trip home, but hey, big basement at home = lots of space in which to practice.
Oh, and my wrist is in the 'sorta kinda' phase now, which is proving to be both vexing and frustrating. The injury is mostly healed, now it's the joy of my tendonitis being angry, which leads to moments of perfect clarity and range of movement with no pain at all (hooray!) back to moments of dull pain (boo!) to movements of small twitch equals owie (wtf?) back to mostly good (woo!). This latter is the worst, in some ways, because I'll do things w/o thinking, reaching the point limit movement and then it's ouch. Grrr.
Things at work weren't terribly smooth this week, as my machine decided to start BSODing constantly (this after weeks of being used for heavy rendering with nary a problem). By Wednesday noon the problem seems to have been the PATA drive in the system -- either it is going out, or it was somehow conflicting with the SATA drive, or the OS was getting confused, or something. Basically put, we pulled the PATA drive out and the system's been stable since. Despite that interruption I still did manage to get about 90% of where I wanted to be in terms of being ready to implement Architectural Desktop for the office. No problem, as no job has yet been identified to be the 'test' project, so I've a few days left. Then I get to recreate texture maps and models that were lost during our server's RAID crash. That's not so fun.
Gaming was good last weekend, and we're doing a triple shot of Granite's game this weekend as not to break up my Bloodstone game with my trip home. Two very amusing things happened:
1 - We had to negotiate our way down a narrow ledge into a deep crevasse -- though smart in how we approached it we still needed to make some balance checks on the way down. Removing my armour, quaffing a potion of agility, I wasn't in too bad a chance to make my roll. I then proceeded to roll, on three dice, no lie, six rolls of 4 in a row. It became crazily comical as each successive 4 showed up on the die. Nevermind that I needed a 5 to succeed, the statistical improbability of that happening (1 in 64,000,000) is just too funny.
And no, I didn't buy a lottery ticket. The last time I tried that was after I rolled six 1s in a row (including two 1s at the same time on two separate dice rolled simultaneously) I got zero numbers matched on my ticket. Remember, these were _failures_. Six 20s on the die? I'm buying a ticket!
2 - Locah got his mount. It's one of the paladin powers he's never used -- for one from where he hails riding wasn't a big thing and for two, well, he's never had anyone to follow to know what his conviction in Aathome would grant him. A certain dilemma presented itself to the group: four summoned steeds and five characters. I chose to stay behind to return to our regular steeds and make my way slower to our destination. Shortly after my companions left what should descend from the sky and alight itself next to me but a wonderful gryphon. (Conveniently a gryphon mini was available on the table, hmmm... ) I am one happy paladin and player. (Ok, so Locah's not a dwarf and doesn't use a hammer, and it isn't WoW...)
On tap for this afternoon: 5.5 hours of the next Architectural Registration Exam!
LotD: An interesting article from an over-arching game design standpoint on casters in D&D by Monte Cook.
Another week went rapidly by!
Last Friday was the big push for the rendering project at work -- with all the horsepower I was rounding up it was done with nary a hitch (at least until our colour printer decided to start streaking the images) and the images look mighty fine, MIGHY mighty fine, if I do say so myself (I guess I just did). Now it's on to the animations... about 2-3 mins worth. Time to round up even more machines to put onto the farm...
The best part about this project, other than the fun factor, is how much I've learned about mental ray and about making good looking stuff. Nicely will come in handy for the next big project(s).
Saturday had a rather light kung fu workout as an old-time student came by to visit. He was a bagua student and Sifu and I caught him up to date with what we'd done with the class, and then he and I and another student did a full circle set. Some running and the stairs (which, all things considered, didn't feel bad at all) and it was time to go. Less than a week until Tiger Crane starts up, and I am totally psyched! We're playing the game to PACK the kwoon with students, and I've got 3-4 new students who'll be starting up, four more who came in and whom I told about the course, and some feelers out, and we're getting in touch with a few who drifted away. This'll be a great class, I can tell already that it will be one of shared growth and much fun. Like Bagua it'll be all learning for me, this time in a similar yet subtly different style. Plus I'll be finishing up Six Harmonies Spear, learning Six Harmonies Broadsword and hopefully Kuan Do.
Wrist, after another Dr Wong visit, is healing nicely, and should be ready to go next week.
Saturday eve, Melissa and I heading over to Frederick and Ofelia's house eat, visit, party and see some slides of their recent trip to Austria before returning home for a rather quiet evening.
Sunday turned out to be a Bloodstone Sunday (the player who was to be absent discovered his trip starts next week), and the party spent much time interacting, searching, figuring things out, planning. A speak with dead upon a deceased svirfneblin brought more information, and his tale of enslavement roused a few party members. The portal (the one guarded by the demons) was eventually activated and the party took themselves deeper into the Underdark. They soon discovered a work detail, dispatching the duregar overseers and learning of a way to reach the svirfneblin kingdom-in-exile. One very amusing trap later as the party reached the city-under-captivity they wend their way down from a waterfall, through a field of fungus to a small passageway that their rescued svirfneblin companions said would take them to the kingdom-in-exile. Given the 1st edition nature of these modules it was a nice break from the majority of combat that has often dominated the sessions, and everyone got into it. Oh, and I think it's safe to say that Sir Barus loves his new hammer...
On a much sadder note, it seems Shadow is not doing all to well. She is 18, which I do understand is old for a cat, but that she was mousing (two mice in as many weeks!) just a couple of months ago makes this turn all the more sudden and harder to take. I called a vet and spoke to him today, and spoke to my parents and got a list of vets in their area who may do house calls. (Shadow could never stand going to the vet, she would get very violent and traumatized -- having someone come over is what I want for sure, having her freak out in this state would not be nice nor good) I should find out soon what the prognosis is, and will make the choices as they come.
That's it for this evening...
Much to catch up on!
Sunday past was Eberron, and wow, a damn good Eberron game. A great mix of action, investigation, searching, dialogue, interaction, events, mystery, discovery, creepiness, shock, running, fantastic locales (and mental images) and exhausted and taxed out characters. We were short two players/characters and rocked the house. I've never rolled so many diplomacy checks in my life. Good good good stuff.
Tuesday, we had very few in Kung Fu (practice month) so we were going through all the basic sets: Lian Bo, Tan Tuy, Tun Da, Staff, Moi Fa, Broadsword, Bot Bo, Spear, Moi I, Chum Sam. Mid-way through broadsword I fracked up my wrist. I felt it go OW, and I backed off somewhat, but completed the set. Did the rest of class, trying to not go to hard on the wrist. As to be expected, Wednesday it was really not happy. I've been to Dr Wong twice now and am giving it the herbal bag treatment -- let's just say I really whacked it up good. Ow, and much rest I will give it. It must be all healed for Tiger Crane Hung Gar in September...
In other news, the temperature has shot way back up again, I'm still studying, I still get to play with 3D stuff at work, editing Sifu's book, saw Wendy2 on Sunday for an excellent lunch (both food wise and especially company wise), discovered and uncovered some profound things for myself which have shown up in my life immediately, and another packed weekend ahead.
"The joy in journey is not the destination, but the journey itself."
I don't know if I can even describe this, but it is SUCH a classic gamer geekout that I have to.
Our party made it back to town in our Eberron game last night, and we had an opportunity to identify a few magic items we were still toting around, including a Bastard Sword and a Long Sword. The DM hadn't yet rolled the swords on the equipment table, so he let Granite do so. The bastard sword, +3. The Long Sword... (rolls) 97. Rolls again, 84. Rolls again, 98. Rolls again, 05. Rolls again, 68. Rolls again, 88. Rolls again 94 -- with every roll, the DM's face gets more and more distorted, and begins to look more and more incredulous. For at those extreme ends of the table are many 'roll twice more' or 'roll on the major chart' -type rolls. AND Granite was rolling HOT. Again. And again. And AGAIN. For. Five. Minutes. The DM begins to sputter. Then shake his head. Then curse. Then cry out in pain. The minutes tick by. We, the players, are dying with laughter as the DM just simply dies.
Finally the dice come to an end. And what do we have?
Hell's Slayer, CG. Longsword. Search +10, Cure Moderate Wounds 3/Day, Bless 3/Day, Fear 3/Day, Fireball 1/day, +2 Luck Bonus to Attack and Saving Throws. EGO 52.
The DM then realizes that the + of the weapon has not yet been rolled, for there is no limit when it is an intelligent item. Granite picks up the dice and rolls....
84.
Thus squeakily speaks the DM "The weapon is +5. I need a drink."
PS -- Granite's character is but 5th level too...
Wild wild days. Much text after the cut!
What has really opened up for me over the past couple of weeks is being calm in the midst of all the plates I'm juggling. Neverminding Lofty, my course and all the other things I've got going on, but just at work I've got three deadline-intense things on my plate. Yet there is no upset, no panic, no franticness, no deer in headlights of what to do next. It's really quite an amazing and new space to be in... and I get to enjoy a rendering project at work, continue to work on the new labs and implement, create and train the ADT deployment. This works for me, I think I'll keep it.
Bagua continues to be a total learning experience. Saturday's workout was a good one, with a not-to-deadly run and stairs, and then a focus on all the short, explosive Shaolin sets (#4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Tong Bei and Emperor Tai) along with the last third of #1. Evan and I have now learned the first four lessons to Six Harmonies Spear (no injury this week!) getting in practice every night. We also did a second workout on Saturday, to practice some two-person Bagua exercises -- quite the full day of exercise.
Then, I indulged in a couple of hours of WoW in the evening and got Khyborr up to 29. Just another 14 levels to go 'till he's back where he was at the end of closed beta!
FoodFu: Picnic! was held on Sunday with the usual gang. It was a good smattering of fare, lots of varied things (fruit, cheeses, breads, meats, hummus, guacamole, southwestern meatless wraps), and I made a Raspberry/Blackberry Gratin (which is an odd name considering it had no cheese, but it was broiled lightly) that met with much praise and appreciation and tastiness. Then, tennis was played by some in the courts nearby. I jumped in, having a good time and not sucking too horribly (I have more fingers on my hand than the number of times I've played), though I had forgotten my sunscreen upon leaving the house and now have quite the red tinge to show for it.
Sunday evening's D&D game was a great conclusion to the sub-story arc as we awoke in the midst of a carnage. Aathome said I wouldn't like the 'hero' who was chosen to wield the sword, and he was right. We faced off against some lizard folk whom we had not seen in two years (their lands being way to the south), we paused, sized up the situation, learned of a language barrier, troops began walking towards two of our party members, actions were taken, combat was joined. We were seriously outclassed (especially given the quite powerful sword). One member fell, but was healed up to 0 (by the mount of the hero, no less), another of our members was attacked repeatedly and fell well beyond our help. A short engagement between myself and the hero led to me backing off, looking/glaring at him as if to reach an understanding. He understood, for he went after Tito, testing him with his smite (and the blunt of his blade) to discover that Tito's aura of evil was just the taint of his fiendish transformation, not of his character.
With that the battle ended. A spell of comprehend languages allowed the hero to speak to us, and with that we learned the carnage around us was caused by an oath/law of their land that for every fallen of their number they extract a price of two upon the offender's race. (I really don't like him!) Further, the mage in our party, who had been slain, radiated enough evil to likely be seen from the high heavens. Quickly I realized it was the wraps he was carrying that he had taken from the fallen Archon. I said this to the hero, who cared not much a whit. What he did care for was that we had killed one of his troops, and a debt had now been incurred. The judgment was to take Tito's life as he was the 'transgressor', unless another would take his place. To which I immediately stepped forward.
And was struck down on the spot. The lizard folk turned and left.
Alexia turned to heal me and was rewarded with an electric shock. Tito was grief-stricken -- he and I were the last of the original band to leave the caulderra (where the campaign began). As Gravax went to check the other bodies, both I and our other dead party member rose into the air on crackles of energy, to be struck by lightning from above. With that, I awoke from the dead for the second time that day. I had taken oath to protect Tito so many moons ago -- the oath fulfilled Aathome brought me back, and once again I was able to commune with the divine (read: my paladin powers are functioning once more).
The rest of the evening was taken by our task to aid the island sisters recover and to destroy the evil magic item (over the protests of the once-again alive mage). The GM had little to do as for an hour+ we self-generated content. All in all, a great evening with some good roleplaying by all.
Great stuff ahead this week, with Wednesday being the current highlight with a special evening led by the most loving, direct and generous person I have ever met. I invite everyone in my life to come Wednesday night to think, to be moved, to see what's possible.
I got a spear injury yesterday! I took one right in the chest, it truly was a vicious battle.
Too bad I was the one holding the spear. Hmm. (Photo to come soon....)
Otherwise the stairs also kicked my butt yesterday, wasn't a good deep breathing day (doubly odd that later on, just walking to run an errand, saw some tightness at the bottom of my chest, could be allergies). Saturday wasn't really an 'on' day. Among other things, the spear was totally misbehaving even before I managed to graze myself, and that was on the third repetition of the set.
Class has moved into Bagua applications, and let me tell you there is nothing like seeing how your form and structure isn't all there than having someone resisting a technique. Bagua's moves are simple, but getting the internal energy and structure is what takes the skill development. I think during these two months I may ramp down on the amount of Shaolin and practice Bagua more, working everything over and over and over again. I was getting rather frustrated on thursday when I wasn't performing a move correctly despite repeated attempts, and I often feel like my alignment is all off and I'm not keeping things neutral when circling the opponent with arms touching (ie I'm losing). Though there have been some instances where we've both felt like we're not neutral or in control -- there's some sensitivity still to be learned, it seems. So, practice, practice, practice!
Of course, that being said, I'm also starting to learn a new Shaolin set. Evan bought the DVD for Six Harmonies Spear, so we're starting to learn that, and it promises to be a very crazy nifty set.
Saturday evening we shuffled gaming to that night to avoid another week off, and returned to Granite's game. When we'd last left our intrepid heroes, we had 'died' (purposfully) to enter the land of the dead. My Paladin has been walking around for quite some time without any divine powers, and following the fortune telling by an old lady in a city we'd made our way to the Green Isles to see the Seer Sisters. Oh, did I mention the fortune said they wouldn't be able to help me, but that I must go see them? Indeed, they couldn't help me, the solution to my ills was beyond their sight. Their suggested recourse was dying to enter the land of the dead to seek out what we could seek out. And there we began on saturday, having already been warned not to cross the river by the boat man (breathe the mists, forever forget your past) and to find the bridge. En route we were assailed by a fallen archon, and after a lengthy battle (due to our etherial nature we were not very combat capable) with much much much healing we were victorious and quite lost on the plains of the dead. Even trailing a line behind us couldn't keep us going straight (though we did at least know when we'd recrossed our steps). I suggested Tito hop up on my shoulders for a look, which through the haze he was able to spot the river, and with Alexia's further suggestion for him to remain there and keep it in sight, we made it to the bridge.
In the gleaming city of the dead we found our way to the library, where I met my diety, Aathome. Seems a sword given to me by one very ancient imprisionned warrior had caused an uproar as the sword was dedicated in the service of another diety. We interacted with Aathome, asked questions, got some answers, I had to ask the GM for some background info on my char (I inherrited him from another player), interacted some more, and then were returned to our bodies in a nice cliffhanger moment. Nicely done.
This week promises to be another packed one. Let the games begin...
Warning! This page may be... addictive. I've failed my WILL save at least thrice to stop going through it so far!
QotW:
Kannik: how the mighty have fallen
Murrgon: They're not mighty, just "super sized" :P
Wow, crazy. Been quite the while! The Lynx update in brief: odd spaces.
It's all after the cut...
Sifu Lam is away this month at the kwoon, so it has been a month of review and practice. I've been leading classes on the tues/thurs class nights, insofar as calling out the basic eight palm routine, then creating with the class what we'll work on for the rest of the night and guiding from there. We've done nights of going slow (and by slow I mean molasses in January slow, it's WAY harder than one would think), doing some two-person drills, some bagwork, and random/quick palm changes. Last class we paused to watch some DVD/VCD/AVIs of other Bagua masters. Sifu had suggested we do so to observe differences in styles, to see what they were doing, and compare to the basic Bagua fundamentals. Just another week before we start onto the next class (application) which will be interesting -- even after five months I feel like I'm only scratching my understanding of Bagua, which is probably an accurate assessment. Easy to learn, difficult to master.
Otherwise, Kung Fu has been somewhat binary (one of those odd spaces) for me, with great nights/weekends followed by nights of low energy and poor performance. I started to run the stairs again, with the first week being not too deadly if not particularly fast, the second weekend being pretty brutal. I also (finally!) got to start up Iron Palm for the year, and in three weeks I'm starting back on the steel without too much problem, which has me happy. Very late start this year, given all the rain.
Amazingly we haven't gamed since the Bloodstone at the start of the month -- various vacations have put a crimp on those plans. I've also only played another smattering of WoW during the time. Did play a game of Settlers of Catan; it was a fine game though I do prefer Carcassonne. The Heavy Gear expansion I did the graphic work for was duly posted to the DP9 website.
I scheduled my latest Architectural Registration Exam (on Contract Documents) and wrote it this past Monday. It was very refreshing, being who I am now, to be calm and composed over it and over my uncertainty about how I fared. A lot to know in that exam about drawings, about law and about contracts and my sense is I could have spent more time reviewing all the material. There were a few questions I hadn't heard material about, a few questions that were in non-related areas but I could've known the answers, and some that were tricky. And some I knew dead-on, of course. I should know in about four weeks if I have a P or X.
There's also been much friend visiting and some visiting friends. Lofty continues albeit somewhat slowly. Did some property scouting both near and afar (well, Vallejo far), had one meeting with a planning official and one coming up with a council member, starting to get some harder numbers on construction, looking into funding.
Really, the last few weeks have been pretty non-stop with my fingers in many pies. I'm amazed how many pies sometimes, and how well they're turning out. Also been a time of some self-discovery and exploration and a lot of observation/noticing, which accounts for much of the odd spaces. I'm definitively getting what I signed up for!
Well, sore glutes, at any rate. Went for a nice hike on Sunday morning with Christi at the Monte Bello open space preserve, heading up to Black Mountain (I so want to type Black Rock Peak there... especially as it does, indeed, have some spiky black rocks at the summit) which is probably one of the highest points on the ridge at 2800'. Our hike took us down 400' of elevation, then up to 1000' to the summit. Not huge, but enough to give those not-often worked glutes some working out. Total hike around 7 mi, nice and calm. And DAMN was the weather perfect -- 28~ (C, of course), nary a cloud in the sky. Sunscreen was in order, was worn, and protected well.
I think we've jumped right into summer.
Rest of the weekend was busy and good. Good practice Saturday morning at the Kwoon (Run, Straight Sword, Broad Sword, Staff, #1, #4, #5, #7, #8, #9, Tong Bei, Emperor Tai, Bagua), followed by lunch and a Lofty meeting. Sat eve was a bit sedate, many little things taken care of, with a whole 90 mins of WoW playing. Stunning!
Bloodstone was brought into existence once more on Sunday eve, and a good one it was. Still in the Underdark, the party found their way to a carved stone passageway that itself dead to a long bridge crossing a huge deep chasm (lava below for good measure) that lead to the largest stalagmite they had ever laid eyes upon. Inside they entered a small temple of sorts. Much of the evening was carried in combat time, with successive encounters outside, in the outer chamber then the temple's inner chamber. Undead, hideous beasts, human and hobgoblin and ogre guards, a high priest, and one opponent that surprised and shocked (and caused much consternation) for Vex -- all this and more! The whole thing moved along mostly smoothly, with some good flavour and good playing. Though we still finished the combat(s) quite late and into the early morning…
Amusingly, the next couple of weeks finds our varied schedules all jacked up, so it'll be some patchy playing.
This morning, I discovered a screw embedded in my beautiful new tires! Had to get that patched up at lunch... And now, onto the evening!
Anyone with a capable PS2 in the area? This is a mecha jockey's wet dream. (though primarily I'm interested in the Macross Valkyries, natch)
Wow, weiiird... LvLing service offered in a page add of the SJ Metro Paper. Amazing but true: check out the story here.
They just relased 1.10 for WoW, but in a preview for 1.11, the best thing has come to pass:
Night Elves will now lose a small percentage of experience after jumping
Yesssss!
They say lightning never strikes twice. Tell that to my dice!
Will this attain such legendary status as my previous strike(*)? Perhaps not, as this was not the climactic battle with the uber boss. Yet, a good roll is a good roll. 5d6: 6 6 6 6 5. FOOM! The light was strong with Tirron last night.
Actually, it was an amusing amount of good rolling last night, with criticals and power rolls galore (and enough ironic poor rolls to make up for it). We took out about 60-80 enemies and survived. We're queued up for a big fight next week -- tune in to see the thrilling conclusion of our two-parter!
BTW, I have to say, my friends ROCK. I asked Dave if he could stop by the Tea Party to pick up a bit of Monk's Blend tea (a divine black tea), maybe a couple of hundred grams.
He bought me a kilogram.
That rocks.
(*)OMGLAATS = Oh my god, look at all the sixes. Great (in-game )gaming story, a fine triumphant moment worthy of the Star Wars universe.
[insert mild swear word]. Keep this game away from me. Or you'll never see me again. Ever.
I mean, ever.
Holy cow.
Amazing ship designs, made from small components like colony pods, etc.
This could even be worse than MoO.
This past friday will be last friday I'll be able to game for the next chunk of months. What a finale it turned out to be for my champions character (thusly described here). We fought Dr Destroyer.
Woah, some of you say, the Dr Destroyer? Indeed, the one and only. I got to do a lot of interesting things that night. I got to create and hurl a bus at his island's power centre, increasing my bus-flinging powers by flying at the base at mach 1 on my flying motorbike (think Kaneda's bike that can fly). That took me out of the combat for a few phases. Upon my return, I did a similar trick, my dice rolling nicely and I hurled a sattelite-launching rocket at Dr D, which in itself was fun, but unable to stop I then wonked my bike off him, for 30d6 damage. I do believe that's the first time I've ever had to roll 30d6 for any reason. All at once. Fortunetaly my luck was holding out (character bought lots of luck) and the bike wasn't destroyed, and then my luck held out even more amazingly, with the GM rolling amazingly poorly and Dr D, now standing at the bottom of the Hudson river, managed to miss me not once, not twice, but thrice. All the while the other characters were zapping and hampering him.
Then, the coup de grace. Dr D had launched several orbital satellites with large ground attack energy beams. Two of our team members managed to get control of them. Says I: "I sense a deorbital burn coming up... no WAIT @#$^%@ that! Use the satellites on him." The GM thusly knew his own doom (though he figured it out about one-half second before I did, right after he had told us we had control of the sats). Thus was the second death of Doctor Destroyer (he was supposed to be already dead in this timeline) -- nuked with his own satellites. Ahhh, justice.
With that, Zed flys off into the sunset, to return in the Fall. It's ok, though -- he has a fan club to attend to in the meantime. (In game, of course!)
Firing up WoW on the laptop at work, I stood by the gong in Sillithus at the appointed (earliest) hour. Alas, several disconnects, hangs and World Server Down crashes, the gong was rung when I wasn't in game. Hote. Still managed to participate in some wild action later on in the eve, taking on one of the giant Colossus bosses, many 50' tall Anubei and smaller but tougher broad-chested insectisoids (looking vaguely akin to Invid shock troopers). I also died many a time, including being hit by a Colossus once for 11037 poitns of damage (I have about 3k HP, max). My repair bills will be, shall we say, expensive.
My only comment would be that the event didn't necessarily feel progressive or progressing -- if you downed the Colossus you knew it, but otherwise for at least the first 4 hours or so it didn't feel like taking on these big guys was accomplishing something towards a goal. Apparently later the army gathered at Cennarion Hold did march towards the gates, taking out a Colossus along the way, but with all the buildup there was little in the event to give sense of either a necessary defence or even important battles along the way (again, at least not for the first 4h or so of which I saw). World shouts by leaders and a series of important events/spawns taking place every 30 mins or so, giving directions, changing the conditions, etc, may have helped.
Fun 'little' event, and a good step by Blizz. You'll notice I didn't whine about lag in this post, I know you all know it was there, and pretty heavy (with the aforementioned World Server crashes). The event got lots of participation, and was the first major world event in WoW, the start, perhaps, of exciting things.
...Dragon, Bear, Monkey, Unicorn, Phoenix. So are the eight palms of Eight Animal Bagua.
The lessons in learning (that make any sense?) continues. In two months we've essentially learned all the moves to an entire system (think of learning all 10 sets of Shaolin in 2 months, or 10 Hung Gar sets in 2 months) -- but as I say, that's just the moves. To get the energy, rooting, power, sinking, motion, turning, walking, speed, reaction, etc, will take much longer, and the subtleties therein. MMMmmm, internal styles. Even walking has taken on a new meaning (and is a chance to practice). What's fun and a bonus is that I can feel how Bagua's been making a difference in my Shaolin, in certain sets and certain moves. Indeed I've kept up with my Shaolin practice, usually doing eight to twelve sets after class.
Riding into work in 3~ weather these past few days has been fantastic, nice crispness to the air not often felt here. Also a great way to ensure you're awake with all that chill. We had a small spot of rain, but now it's sunny as all-get go and clear skies, which makes for pleasant afternoons and frost overnight... good stuff.
Bloodstone ran its course on sunday, with several important encounters, some individual, some for the whole group. The party's travels through the Underdark led them to the bazzar of Grezneck, where goods were traded, information found out, and much hiding from drow by some of the party members. Mid-way through their visit, one of the players asks me "Wait, what race are these guys again?" (these guys being the majority of the merchants) to which I replied "Goblins." "I should've known, given the voice you were using..." Apparently I do a good WoW goblin impression, woo!
Outside the influence of Goblins, today at 16:40 on our server (Silver Hand) is when the Ahn'Quiraj event can begin, in the sands of Sillithus. Five days prior all the materials were turned in, and the buildup began. At least three, perhaps four, guilds on our server have crafted the staff that can strike the gong outside of the gates. The forces are gathering. The tension is mounting. The war is about to begin. The... servers are likely to implode. It doesn't bode well that our server was brought down for emergency maintenance this morning, and given the strain placed upon them when Eranikus was summoned into Moonglade, this event promises to punish them pretty hard I'm sure. Ajathka will be there with his ever faithful Myrra, lending both claw and gun to the effort. I've been taking many screencaptures of the buildup, and will likely take many more.
If the gong is rung tonight.
No, I hadn't gone completely mad, it was rabbit hole day. But it hasn't been all aliens, all the time at lynx central.
One month into Bagua. Every time I walk into the kwoon, I feel like a total n00b, and it's been GREAT. So very different from what I'd done before, and it's just plain fun to feel myself learning and gaining a deeper understanding every class. Long long long long way to go still, and that is fantasticness in itself.
We made a return jaunt into both Granite's game and into Eberron in the past month's worth of gaming. Continue to walk down the path of LoftyOne, which is an adventure on its own. Saw a Lego exhibit one weekend, pretty fun with lots of local landmarks, ships, aircraft, mecha, structures, cranes, etc, all well made. Also some impressive bridges (including one spanning I swear 12') and some Lego trains -- now this is interesting. I knew of Lego fan groups, I knew of many a model railroading club (with my own interests there), but never had I known until that day about Lego Railroading clubs. Apparently not so rare.
Studying also continues for the next ARE exam, though it seems everyday I learn about more and more I need to study for this particular exam; like the so-called real world, things/exams overlap.
Interestingly, SW:RotS wasn't nominated for F/X at the Oscars this year -- as the granddaddy of modern-day effects, while ILM did get nominated for another film, the lack of SW seems almost odd... the two are almost synonymous (even though I say WETA is the newest gods of F/X).
This has been a life-update post!
So I've reinstalled Flight Sim onto my machine. Some of you may remember what happened last time . Well, it's happening again.
The other day I downloaded an available addition that promised to have all the Canadian Roads in it (save those in BC and NS due to licensing issues). Fair enough... that could be fun. It took a bit of work, ending with some batch files I created to move some files out of FS's directories (lest I end up with both its and this new set of roads)but I have it installed. Fired it up, took off from Pearson (YYZ) and flew down to Toronto. From downtown, I followed the Don Valley Parkway north. HOLY COW. The 401/DVP interchange was something else -- no kidding the roads were there, along with all the tangle of ramps. Every one in stark layout.
Well, let's just see how complete, I though to myself. A quick mouse click and I was flying out of Oshawa (YOO). Fly towards the lake, pick up the 401 and fly out towards Bowmanville. Clear as can be, there's the 57 interchange, there's the Liberty St exit. Follow Liberty St north, see where it turns on to Conc. 7. I'm impressed already. Fly along Conc. 7 and there it is -- the dirt road off which my parent's house resides.
It really DOES have all the Canadian roads. YOW! (And I didn't mean Ottawa International Airport)
Dragons, dragons and DRAGONS, oh my!
With the start of the new year is the start of the new format at kung fu, and it's all dragons there. Dragon Hands Swimming Body Bagua began last Tuesday, and by Thursday we've grown to quite the large class. We learned and practiced the basics last week, from the Bagua Wuji stance, Dragon Palm and Single Palm Change, Circle Walking. We've also pushed on each other a bit, done a bit of application, and definitively gotten a taste for the pace. No mistake, this will be nice an intense: Sifu even got rid of the couch that used to grace the kwoon for the parents. There are some students who know they will be missing one class a week, and they're totally jazzed at making it up on Saturdays or just coming in early on Tuesdays to catch up. Good energy, I like it muchly -- and I mean not only the energy of the class, but the energy in doing the Bagua. Circle walking may seem 'oooooook' when you first think about it, but practicing it on Saturday on my own I had no problem keeping focus or it getting tedious. I think this will be a treat.
Sunday had a slight niggle in our gaming plans, so we played Three Dragon Ante, a new (non-collectable, blessedly) card game from WotC tied a bit into the DnD lore. The most any of us had played was J who had played one hand with a store owner to get a feel, so it was all fresh to us. An interesting game that seems to have good potential for tactics as you try to take to both take the gambit (to win the pot), or try to use the special powers on your cards (for advantages, get cards or steal from the pot), maybe try to bid high into the ante to start the turn (but give up a high card to do so), match strengths or dragon colours, and so on. We played three games over the course of about as many hours, and it was good fun had by all.
But what about those DRAGONS?
Last Tuesday saw patch 1.9 come out for WoW, and the start of a world event known as the Gates of Ahn'Quiraj. Ostensibly it's a 20- and 40- man raid area/instance, but the kicker is that to open the gates to Ahn'Quirj requires a world-wide effort. At first glance, to me it didn't seem too complicated of an effort -- both factions have to turn in thousands upon thousands of supplies. Though, even this has gotten people talking about the oncoming war against the Silithids, and even gotten the factions working together to an extent, much like they did in Warcraft3 against the Burning Legion. There's even ambassadors in the other faction's cities, there's visible supplies and activity around the 'warrior' areas of two of the major cities.
Interesting, but I was thinking 'meh, it's just a series of turnin quests, whoop'.
Oh. Gods. No.
Blizzard has implemented something on a MASSIVE scale that is just packed to the brim with lore. I've been seeing web pages with it (http://www.fohguild.org/index.php for example), read about it on the WoW forums, found videos of it and even participated in part of it.
Saturday night I got a message over our guild channel that something BIG was going down in Moonglade. A whack of us hightail it over there, and find the zone just LOADED with people, and the place being attacked by a huge number of LVL 62+ Elite Shades. Apparently, as part of the major quest line Eranikus the corrupted is summoned into the world, is HUGE and is MAD. Alas, by the time I got there Eranikus was no longer seen, and there were so many in the area that lag was horrendous -- at least 20 secs from button pressing to action, and just targetting things was a chore. Soon the Shades were all vanquished, and the zone fell silent. (and the quest may have been bugged and not completed, argh)
But then I started to scour more, seek out videos, and saw one very nifty event where a raid party participates in an event that has the events that led to the sealing of the Ahn'Quiraj gate replayed out in the world in front of said gates in a sort of cutscene (albeit one you are in the midst of, kind of like the Pensive from Potter), with four of the five Dragonflights represented as a dragon in turn flies overhead, sealing the gates, all with much dialogue ensuing.
Some other quests have you chasing after crazy people to gather items, you interact with many dragons, there are hints to the old gods... it's massive, involved, in-depth. I'm seriously impressed with Blizz on this one. They've drawn upon their lore and put forth something that seems appropriate for those who spawned the very acclaimed Warcraft (and Starcraft) games.
My only question is whether many of these quests will be repeatable by others later on. The gates themselves, once opened, will stay open, that's no question. But the replaying of the sealing? The crazy gnome quests? It'd be a shame to let only a few percent of each server have a chance to witness this fine work. One CM has mentioned that they will be repeatable, and I really can't see Blizz throwing out that work and not letting it be reused. It may not make sense anymore, but then, does anything really make sense in a persistent world (where the completion of your quest leaves things just the way they were)?
So, yeah, lots of DRAGONS. For my part, I spent a chunk of the weekend with a reptile of a different sort, doing my first bit of grinding ever to gather materials for the war effort, in an attempt to raise my faction so I can buy a Nightsabre mount. I got to Revered, but I've calculated it would take me another 80 hours to get to Exhalted where I need to get. Ugh.
I did manage to score the new music used in front of the gates of Ahn'Quiraj scene -- very haunting, great depth, evocative. Glad I managed to extract it.
And I hit Lvl 60, the cap, with my main character. Crazy.
As in crazy good. Play by play, starting at lunch on friday: Lunch with friend, LoftyOne, Gaming, Kung Fu, Party (1), Party (2), LoftyOne Meeting, FoodFu, Gaming. Whiew!
In more detail, the FoodFu on Sunday was actually a TeaFu, wherein the fu-gang got together and sampled approximately 6 teas, accompanied with cookies and other sweets. Many of the teas were from China, and half of mine didn't fare very well in a large-pot environment. The famous Monk's Blend tea though (I must get more! I just rediscovered the address of the Tea Party store in Ottawa!) was a huge hit, as it always is. A black tea, but with an added layer of delicate flavour. Evan brought a red chrysanthemum tea that bloomed in the pot and was a great ending. And speaking of cookies, I ate WAY to many this weekend. With the various parties and get togethers I ate a lot this weekend, though I can't say I ate particularly well. Waddling like a penguin, filled to the brim with baked treats (and more).
The return to sunday gaming (been off for many a week) was I continuing the Bloodstone game. Exploration and discovery was at hand that evening, with the environment dishing out some amusement (or, at least, providing an area where amusement was dished into). The encounter that rounded out the evening was a drawn out affair, unhelped by the players' less-than-stellar dice rolls (though amusing for me) and certain events that didn't transpire as they'd planned it to. Tactics were present though, and everyone gave a good showing of their character in action. A good evening, made late only by the late start of the game... I'm looking forward to the next time I run it.
Got a lot of legwork done on LoftyOne, set up more things, researched more things, and things are just happening there. }:) Now, I am preparing to fly home tommorow evening -- I feel so disorganized this year, it's odd, amusing and mildly unsettling. There are gifts I haven't bought, or sent out, not sure I've packed everything, what should I read/bring/work on for the week away, etc. I have a day to figure it out!
Four day weekend, much to say! I'll put it behind a cut lest this get to long for the front page.
Turkey day this year was spent in a languid manner over at T&Es, with food, lazing, desert, more lazing... very relaxed-like, very nice. I brought over a bottle of Archibald's Oak-Aged Ida Red (Apple) wine, and it was perfect with dinner.
Friday saw me mostly studying furiously for the upcoming Architectural Registration Exam I scheduled (fast approaching this coming Thursday). The evening, however, was dedicated to much WoW playing with my Tauren Shaman, Ahahthurne. JimM and I headed into the Wailing Caverns, joined by a pick-up group of... well, originally three others, including a level 60 shaman, a friend of the orc warlock who had joined. Oddly, this shaman took note at rule one of our group: this will be an RP instance, stating they didn't like to roleplay. Once in the instance, it was gang-crazy with them rushing forward and plowing through things (as a level 60 can in a level 20 instance), making it not very amusing for the rest of us. They agreed to leave, which made Ahathurne happy, for while the warlock had pledged his allegiance to Thrall, those who toy with the burning legion's power leave him rather uneasy. We were later joined by another player from JimM's guild, and the four of us had a fantastic roleplayed instance, culminating in taking out the world's largest murloc. I kid you not.
Saturday I returned to the kwoon for practice, thus ending my Week of Healing (tm). By that point my legs were actually hurting and jittery from _inactivity_, and as was expected it felt odd in the endurance and heart area as I got back into it. I did a double-run, then did mostly weapon sets for the day (with some hand sets for good measure). I also began to work on double-spinning as that came up in the DHS lesson I missed last week. Having never done double-broadsword (where it is usually taught) I am SO not graceful nor even fully capable of doing it w/o thinking, which'll make the DHS part of it very... amusing when we get to it this coming Tuesday. Much practice I will do!
That evening saw me heading off to the Firefly LARP, my first LARP experience ever. Given that, and that it was the third episode of this particular LARP, I didn't know exactly what to expect. I had my character, I had my backstory (4 pages of it! I'm very proud of myself about it), I had a ship image chosen, I had props, costume...
It went FANTASTIC. For the evening, I think I ended up with three compliments on my costume, a compliment on my backstory, a compliment on a previous discussion I had with one of the GMs about the map of the 'verse, I got some compliments from the director's on my RPing, AND to top it off, my accent stayed intact for almost the entire evening, never slipping into that of Cortez (one of JimM's characters in our Friday games). The game was rockin, everyone staying well in character, and the Directors having plotted things out nicely, obviously having read my backstory and incorporating it, timing things so that they could work the story with my character, and also working with what the players were doing in-game and crafting something quite grand. I have to say, I was quite impressed, and I had a blast just RPing for 4 hours straight. Nearly straight -- there's a way to go OOC so you can ask Qs to the GMs.
In short, my character arrived on-station (20 minutes before start of game), was herded along with everyone else onto an Alliance Cruiser, where we were interrogated in turn while the rest of us stewed, got gassed and knocked out, made some contacts for his business (he's a Navigator, and I had made business cards), did Tai Chi, found his ship had been searched, had to make some deals to save his life AND to top it all off had to contend with chickens running amok. Next game is in January.
No DnD tonight, so we're getting together for some Circus Maximus -- which is Renegade Legion, so that's all good (though a beer and pretzels game unlike the other RenLeg games).
'nuff said!
(though they haven't released all the patch notes quite yet, so all the other changes (and they are major) I don't know yet...)
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/main/kptribute
Just read a shocker: Keith Parkinson has died.
To anyone who gamed or was interested in fantasy artwork back in the 80s-90s, Keith's artwork is pretty much ubiquitous with the genre. D&D especially would not have its rich visual history without him, with defining pictures including Draconians, the Great Dragon, Northern Borders, and many many more including seminal Dragonlance images and artwork for the Rifts RPG. His 'high era' style of fantasy art truly defined the magestic feel of the products it touched, contemporary with others such as Larry Elmore, but a style of art that has fallen to the wayside in recent times. Fallen, but for some of us 'old timers', it remains the art that comes to mind when swords, magic, dragons and adventuring comes to mind.
Rest easy, Keith. May your new path lead you to lands of beauty such that you painted for us for so many years.
Wow, basically November already. TWO years of my blog have now elapsed. Ca-razy!
A fairly low-key weekend was had. After a great visit, I drove my parents to the airport early Saturday morning, returned home to nap and head to practice. I didn't do the stairs, but did the main run almost double (the way the route worked out), then did the Shaolin stairmaster of the sets in order (of the ones I know), plus the two sets from shaolin, punctuated by straight sword, cane and DHS. We're but a few moves into the set, and it's already a very good challenge in some coordinated spinning/hooking/curling maneuvers that look anything but coordinated or smooth right now. A good workout, good lunch then... I took a different tact that day and kicked back, set up an athmosphere in the appartment and relaxed for the rest of the day. Woo!
Sunday I caught up with some studying, maintenance et al, and also headed over to Wendy2's place where I querried her about some things to expect for the upcoming Firefly LARP I'll be joining. We also worked our magic and developed a good chunk of my character's background, and I finished choosing stats/skills/etc. Besides the char sheet, I have a bunch of querries for the GMs and have to pin down some solid info on the 'verse...
Of course, there was all the info that came out of BlizzCon this weekend, about WoW and the Burning Crusade expansion pack. I'm still waiting for patch 1.9 (paladin revamp, baby! Khyborr will be back!) but even without the expansion there's nice stuff a-coming -- linked auction houses, weather effects, that sort of thing. My interest in the expansion is there, but I'll wait to see what the new alliance race is before I go ape or just woo about it.
But what would a post be without some architecture. For one, I link to you Foster's new Faculty of Pharmacy at UoT, a building I wouldn't immediatly associate with Foster's name or feel. Also, some very attractive looking prefab by Marmol Radziner, available now, made in their own factories, with renewable and enviro-friendly materials. Wowza!
The rest of the weekend was also shiny. Friday saw the start of a new campaign, this time a Champions game. I haven't played Champions in ages (about the same time as when I'd last GMed, as I GMed the Champions game). Pulling from a humourous picture/situation from China, I've created the character named Zed. His superpower: the ability to generate random stuff and project it at high velocities. Thing is, he really has no control over what he generates. If he's unlucky, he'll create pens and markers. If he's luckier, he'll generate knives, or even swords, maybe heavy books. If he's being lucky, he'll generate a stove, or a safe. And if he's on top of the luck game, he'll generate grenades, rockets and other instruments of hurt. If he's lucky.
Gamer geek: Basically, he's built on a multipower with a limitation: random (-1/4), rolling each time he uses it to see what of the four multipower slots is chosen: EB(P), RKA(P), AoE EB (P) and Entangle. Then, each of those Multipower slots is itself built on a series of nested activation rolls, each adding more damage/dice. The rest is primarily stats and some armour given to him by another team member.
What's interesting is that I have many points left over after building the character. Since FREd (HERO 5th ed) came out, you are now built on 200 base points rather than 100 -- that's quite the increase.
Saturday morning was, as always, Kung Fu practice. I went a bit sluggishly, and did the run, and was in this take it easy funk (with a bit of a stressed inner thigh). Evan was there, and he was starting his training for the next Berkeley competition, and was going to go over Cane and #3 -- so I joined in. A full, solid hour+ of cane and #3, it was awesome. Then the Bagua student showed up and we worked falls for about 40 mins. And sunday all soreness was gone.
After spending the afternoon distinguishing things with Evan, we headed over to Wendy2's place for a b-day party/gathering/shindig that was full of food (yes, the weekend of food!), wine, and the oddest assortment of conversations... very amusing.
Sunday night was Blodstone, as the party ventured to the mines. Not quite as packed or engaged as the previous games. The party is about to hit... the start of some interesting bits. And also about to hit 17th level -- 9th level spells. That'll be interesting for me to see what that does to the game...
And that was the (packed!) weekend. To finish this off, something that'll bust your ky000te glands...
A little back tweakage after thursday's class (just one muscle too) was still nigging me, so I forwent the stairs on saturday and instead ran the loop twice -- once with another KF-ite and then once on my own, trying to push it faster than normal. Then, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, I did a weapons workout, including picking up the 3SS for the first time in a month. A bit shaky (which is rather unsettling with a flexible weapon) but overall good for the month away from it. The morning still managed to be a pretty good aerobic workout, even without the usual up/down of the hand sets. What was very cool was that, while the other 'saturday regulars' were away, we had 3 others there practicing, which brought back thoughts of saturdays a couple of years ago when a good group of us was there, just working out, doing some sets together, enjoying our KF. Very nice.
The adventure for the weekend began in earnest after KF, as Rev and I trucked up to the city (after stops along the way to check out a fish store and some buildings for sale). From Colma it was BART to the city, walking up (this is SF, after all) to then through SF's Chinatown. We each had our goals: fu dogs to put in a fish tank for him, and a bowl gong/singing bowl for me. Partial aside: that was the one thing on my trip to China I had difficulty finding, the bowl gongs used in the temples. Only found one on the whole trip, and it was bought by another in the group. And it was surprisingly difficult to find them here as well, though in the end I did find a bunch of them... at... rather higher prices than I would have wanted. Of course, I am very partial to the deep resonating tones of the larger bells, so that places me into the higher price ranges. Alas, Chinatown is apparently not like being in China, in that if you try to bargain they throw you out (or so I've heard). I've held off on the purchase for now. Instead, I bought some incense, that turns out to be very nice burning (nearly smokeless) incense. The fu dogs, in jade, and a kite were handily acquired.
The odd thing of the day was that the Blue Angels were in town, and flying all over the place, and I wasn't there to see them (I believe the airshow is actually next weekend, though). I was certainly trying to find them every time I heard them...
Dinner was at the Stinking Rose. Very tasty. Very lingering.
Sunday evening, Bloodstone continued with a session that I dare say was great and had the players generating their characters... and being subtly freaked out. People were engaged with the town, puzzling over things, creating ideas, screaming in rage and anguish, burrying things under piles of rock, and having moments of dawning comprehension that caused the GM (uh, me) to laugh both inwardly and outwardly. Sir Barus also found his journal and has been adding to it once again. Another session this upcomming sunday, then one week break while my parents are in town (and I won't be able to game).
And... a Food Fu next weekend! I must research my recepie. The adventures continue...
I don't know what it was exactly about the box, seen in passing at the World's Largest Bookstore, but it stuck in my mind. When I saw it again at the hobby store downtown Bowmanville, I picked it up, read the back copy, and bought it. Thus was Top Secret, by TSR, the first RPG I ever played* (I should even say ran, for I was the first GM for what was to become my first gaming group).
So it comes as no surprise to my friends (and blog readers) that the superspy genre of games have always excited me and even evoke a certain sense of nostalgia. Covert action, gadgets and guns (or superpowers), world hopping, and larger-than-life plots, fights, action, chases... all part of the genre. When Spycraft (by AEG) came out, I eagerly leapt in and found a game that ran so well and captured the old 'TS' feel that I have come to call such things (and even movies or novels) 'spycraftian' in nature.
While I was in China, my newly-released Spycraft 2.0 (second edition) arrived. How is it, you ask? Is it a good game? Does it capture the genre? Let me tell you what I think...
This game is AMAZING. That's the short of it. My grand-ultimate game system (GUGS? I need a better name...) would/will now consist of a combination of Silhouette, HERO and Spycraft 2.0.
The medium of it says that what the makers of this game have done is put together a ruleset that fully supports 20th century action and could even support some future-day genres. By default, the action is geared towards the heroic, with capable characters, but it's not into the realm of the fantastic. The copy on the back cover announces "Your license to Improvise!" and they use the word "toolkit" as well - both are very apt.
Here is the long of it.
Before I get too deep in, I'll say two things that may want to make you stop reading now:
One, it's an OGL game, ie, based on the d20 rules. If you have some FUNDAMENTAL problem with d20, you'll have problems with this game. I'm talking something like you just refuse to play a game with classes and levels, or you can't stand the task resolution system, or you hate feats, or your hat of d02 knows no bounds, then Spycraft 2.0 isn't for you.
Two, this game is very PRECISE. Flexible, but precise. Things are very spelled out, be it about resolution, about what characteristics weapons possess, about the three different types of skill rolls, about your character's status, etc. If you are of the mindset 'freeform!' and 'rules light, let the GM figure it out', then Spycraft 2.0 isn't for you.
For those still with me, let me talk about what makes Spycraft 2.0 so cool and froody.
I'll begin with precision. It is not that the game is restrictive or bounding -- again their slogan is "License to Improvise" -- it's more that what is usually left ambiguous is spelled out in 2.0. Everything from skills to weapons to equipment has certain 'tags' associated with it, that lists what's needed, what penalties apply, or what special qualities it possesses. Effects are quantified and summarized in a list of status/conditions. Things are fully cross-referenced (with page numbers) to other rules that apply. The net result of all this is that everything needed is actually there. There's less chance for interpretation and argument, or ambiguous wording. It's all there.
One area where this shows up quite prominently is with skills. For starters, there are only a few skills, but some skills cover a broad range of abilities (in keeping with the heroic nature of the characters). Within those broad skills are specific rules for select actions that can be performed with the skill, rules that cover specialized cases. For example, Acrobatics has specifics on Balance, Falling, Jump, Skydiving, Tumble, and even Maneuvering Personal Vehicles. Each skill is further defined by action type (see below), governing attribute, time, possible for take 10/20, tags (requirements and effects), cooperation capable, and retries allowed -- all summarized on a table. There's no question what's up.
What I find especially refreshing is that each action/skill is listed as being either Active, Passive or Secret skill check. Active is your standard check; Secret is when the character performs a task but shouldn't know the result (GM rolls) and Passive is when the GM chooses when to roll and doesn't even tell the character he rolled unless necessary. This precise spelling out sets up different situations, and removes the scenario similar to "Should I know?" or "Make a Spot Check." "3" "Um. Ok." "My character suddenly loads his gun. For no reason at all, he, uh, just likes doing it."
Of course, weapons and gear also get this treatment, which should come as no surprise. Actions are listed just as precisely (adding in Trick and Final to the usual mix of Full, Half and Free). Vision/Hearing checks are nicely spelled out, making perception no longer quite as interpretive. Damage has several types with defined effects: physical, fire, electricity, and so on.
Precision covers huge grounds, all over the book, from the above-mentioned skills to combat, where it is, of course, especially notable (and welcome). Precision covers 75% of what I find great in 2.0.
Another area improved are the character classes. Now, while I greatly prefer classless stat-and-skill systems, 2.0 does go a long way to making the classes and characters pretty flexible, with good multiclassing rules and rogue-ing the classes. What I mean by rogue-ing is they borrow a page from the rogue in the d20 SRD, where at certain levels you can choose from a list of 'special abilities'. This very nicely means you can customize what your character is all about as you go along, so not every Wheelman will be exactly the same.
The addition of stress damage to the game brings ability to simulate how things 'pile up' for a character as things happen throughout the game/mission, leading to penalties if the levels get too high. Allow for the 'cool under fire all the time' vs 'wound up stressball' differentiation between characters. Overall, a well-implemented layer that is tied precisely to the rest of the game (including hobbies!)
But the piece de resistence is 2.0's NPC generation system. This is one very rocking system, able to generate HORDES of NPCs (including animals, robots, etc), very quickly, all within a set power level yet varied. There are seven traits, each trait is rated from 1-10, and, using a table, you correlate the trait's rating with the desired threat level (ie, challenge rating of the npc) and you have a value that is applied across a broad range of NPC abilities. Tack on special qualities from a medium-size but inclusive list, and you're done. Now, you may be thinking "Woah, where's the precision in that?" and you'd be right -- this is much more 'broad brush' rather than precise. This doesn't mean you CAN'T build a character or NPC using the usual PC rules -- that's quite appropriate for the big bad -- but you can create everyday adversaries from a few pages that don't need to be fully fleshed out, only what they can do for their short on-screen time. Elegant, fast, and one to be seen.
The last thing I'll mention isn't so much a general-game excellence, but one that relates to the Spycraft genre itself and an improvement over the first edition, which is in picking gear. Gear picking would almost take an entire session on its own when we played -- we have X points, and Y mission points, and you can share the mission points, and what should I spend that last 2 points on, and etc. Now, you get a specific number of gear picks from specific categories at a specific calibre (depending on the calibre of the mission). Yes, this means more tables to glance over, but it makes it much much faster, and even manages to introduce some differentiation between the different classes (soldiers will get more weaponry picks than the snoop, but less electronics picks).
There are few areas of the game that I am ambivalent about, starting with some of the feats, specifically, the martial arts feats. While on the one hand I give them props for their inclusion of stances into the game, and for the usual feat things, the way it's organized I'm not so crazy about. Each martial art feat gives one stance and one maneuver. Thing is, sometimes I can't picture how the stance is supposed to tie into the purported martial arts style or maneuver the feat names. Ditto at times with the maneuver. Given other aspects of the game, something more flexible, allowing for even more options (and non-trained characters to at least attempt some of these) and freeing up X stance from a style/maneuver your character doesn't want would've been appreciated.
One thing from the original game that truly rocked was the chase system. The cool news is that the chase system concept has been expanded to cover all sorts of things including interrogation, hacking and seduction. Also cool news is that they removed the maneuver comparison cross-reference table which, by the very way I am trying to describe it, you get that it was somewhat complex and really didn't add much. Now for the bad news: I'm not crazy with what else has been done to the system. If you win the opposed roll, you have this list of effects (precision!) you can choose from, some of which seem to... make the whole thing pointless? If you roll 4 above you get to choose two of the effects... I dunno. Maybe I need to see it in action, but right now something doesn't strike me right about it.
And there seems to be a lack of night-vision goggles. How could they forget those?
The final word: Wow. This game is one amazing piece of work.
Hopefully I'll get a chance to see it in action soon. Spycraftian action!
Extraordinary.
Following up on Tuesday's awesomeness, Thursday's class also came off very well, and Saturday's practice felt great after a bit of a slow start. While I haven't, generally speaking, learned anything new (ie, any new sets) since the return from Shaolin, I've learned lots about the sets I know, and presenting that material. I'm creating a framed poster that includes material from the Shaolin temple as well as Wu De, the martial code, for the front of the kwoon, and helping Evan to create a page for every set that includes name in chinese characters, mandarin and cantoneese pronounciation, english translation of the name, the character of the set, the focus of the set (ie, what we're looking for), and the set's lyrics. Things are happening.
Friday was, of course, Serenity, sandwitched between two good friend-food outings. Saturday afternoon was busy getting the car waxed, which is, indeed, shiny.
Sunday saw the return of the Bloodstone campaign, as the players head onto module H-2. One player is out for this one (temporary leave), but we also gained another player, a former instructor from my KF school. The session rocked. Everyone (save the new player) finished up and accomplished what they wanted to in the two months game-time downtime, everyone got a chance to describe what parts of their backstories they wanted known or would have shared during the two months, the new character's introduction went well, the setup went well, and the whole game just generally went off smoothly, with RP present, with the players ready to tackle things, some funny moments, some great ideas by the players, and some shocking in-game events. The only mar was a server problem that took one of the players away for 60% of the evening.
A new week to create now lays before me.
The apocalypse is here.
Dungeons and Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God. A Sci Fi Pictures Original Movie. Saturday, Oct 8th.
I wish I was making this up.
On Enworld's frontpage today was a series of excerpts from a messageboard thread titled "Is the Market Dying?" The excerpt had quotes from a half-dozeon or so different 'industry players', who talked stats, impressions, trends, cycles, distribution... the usual. But right at the bottom, one designer said something akin to "... don't discount Kevin and Palladium." And that got me thinking.
Palladium. These guys have been around forever, at least as long as my earliest gaming days. My first exposure to them was buying the Robotech RPG way back when (I bought nearly all the books in one fell swoop, oy). Later, I got a second-hand copy of the Palladium RPG (2nd ed, I think) and Ninjas and Superspies, and some of their generic weaponry books. Of course, then dawned Rifts. While there are about a billion books in that line, I've only bought a few (but have enjoyed the imagery/designs in many others) and while it's been a long time I played in a few Rifts campaigns. Pretty much everyone knows Rifts.
And that's what got me thinking about Palladium. For an RPG company, they produce a lot of material, every year, constantly, for the past 10+ years. Their books look exactly the same today as they did back then: black and white, two column, plain pages with images sprinkled throughout and the occasional full-page image. Topping it off, their system has remained almost exactly the same, with only a little tweak here and there. What a system it is. Just about anyone I've read or asked about Palladium say "Nifty books, but damn if their system doesn't suck really hard."
I don't think there's a system more reviled in the RPG circles I've passed through than Palladium's. Many have also admitted that Rifts really isn't original or anything, it being a 'mix everything together in one world' type of a thing. And then there's the power inflation present in many of their books. But. Palladium persists, and persists well. When we played Rifts, we didn't change systems, we still used its hated system. They have a team of artists (though I still wonder what happened that made Kevin Long, who had illustrated their books seemingly forever, suddenly part company) that can create some fantastic mecha and vehicles (and some fantastic duds too). Palladium's Robotech treatment was my only source for RTech goodness until I got the videos (why I didn't watch the series on TV is another story in its own right). Rifts, despite being genericish, allowed for all sorts of play styles. Their histories were interesting enough backstories to hang off of, just as long as you didn't look too carefully behind the curtain.
Kevin persists. Like Apple Computer, he's lashed out and attacked anyone trying to do anything with his product that wasn't authorized. Large chunks of the books are reprinted material. Production values haven't changed. Many licenced products, including minis, comic books, and so on, have come out, languished, dissapeared. The system gets no better even as game design moves on elsewhere. Some books get more and more rediculous in power. Some things plain don't work. Even Kevin has admitted (I recently read) that he uses house rules in his game. Layout and indexing is horrible. Yet... Kevin persists. The company persists. Palladium turns out several books a year. A movie is in the works for Rifts.
It's interesting. I started work once on an alternate game system for it. I converted it into yet another system for an abortive RTech game. I and James regularly laugh at Kevin-isms, shake our heads at retreads, and have just come to an understanding with the books. I haven't bought, but I still look at the new Rifts books when they come out. I muse about using some of the designs in fantastico campaigns one day. I remember well the Rifts games I had (with some good GMing).
Somehow, Kevin persists. Don't write him off.
Pun/Groan of the Day
Post 1: Thinking quickly, I responded, "you cracked open the beholder's body like an egg and found the scrolls inside." How convenient is that - monster and treasure in one neat package! Anyway, what are the weirdest places you have found (or placed) treasure?
Reply: Scrolls? That is odd. Wouldn't you find a nymph located in the creature's ocular organ instead? After all .... "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
Dear Microsoft. Please fix your CSS implementation in IE to actually work. Thank you. -- Kannik
Guess its time for a bit of an update on what's new and been going on, for things have been busy these past few weeks.
Kung Fu has been going well, with the classes I've taught feeling very good with energy and interest both present. My own training has also been moderate-to-good, especially saturday mornings. Finished the Broadsword vs Spear set, and started the other side (ie, now learning the Broadsword side) so that we'll know both sides soon enough. I had stopped practicing 3SS for a little while to let the wrist catch up -- what a difference a couple weeks make. Feel like I'm going to bonk my head badly already, it's quick to run from the mind. Iron Palm has been off and on, depending on the condition of my wrists, but when it's on, it's been on, with the steel feeling very good. Lasty, and of course, there's the China trip that's in just over a week -- must finish preparing!
For the trip, I bought myself a Tilley hat to protect myself from the blazing sun while we're over there. Many of you may have heard the elephant story vis-a-vis Tilley hats. Short version: a zookeeper has had his hat eaten 3 times by an elephant, and it's always survived and been wearable after a wash. Well, what's amusing is that this story happened at the Bowmanville Zoo(!). Small world.
I also bought a 12" pre-seasond cast iron pan. But I'm not bringing that to China. Work has also been busy, and I'll be teaching an InDesign primer to everyone this coming thursday. Our Friday Cyberpunk (sorta, see previous entries) game has ended, with brilliance, pizzaz and fun. Jim, Jim and Matt, it's been an awesome game, hats off to you (and now I even have a hat to do that with).
Our Sundays have been full of Eberron as various people are absent, and they've been pretty cool as we've been tooling around the tower-city of Sharn. Assasination attempts, interacting with the Dragonmarked Houses, deals and sub-deals, and to top it all off, the Race of the Eight Winds. The GM and I got together to hash out the rules for it (originally considering Spycraft chase rules, but choosing something simpler), then the GM simplified it even more, made a nice little diagram, had the other players run the other contestants (I managed to kill all three, including two VERY spectacular impacts), and with commentary turned it into an amusing episode. Natch, our party member won, and we finished off the evening with the party arriving together once more (we were all about doing our thing), an ambush that had me nearly depleated in power, and the halfling, with his sling, Natural-20ing an uber-long-range shot to knock out a fleeing mage. Wow.
This weekend, it's time to dust off Locah for Granite's game. Of course, I'll be gone for two weekends in Aug, so I'll miss a couple of Eberron games, but I plan on working on part two of the Bloodstone campaign and should have it ready to go by September. WoW-wise, 56.5, amazingly.
Lasty, been working on a Community Project that has been taking up a lot of time and has been fantastic...
When I began my Bloodstone Campaign, one of the first things I had to choose (and offer up as a choice) was how to handle the mass combat present in the module. I could either go the Battlesystem route, and run it as a full-out tactical battle with each miniature being 10 people, every turn a minute, and dice-a-flying. Otherwise, I was contemplating running it as a series of small personal-level encounters, with the larger battle at hand raging in the background (as a backdrop, if you will). The outcome(s) of the party-based combat would affect how well or not well the overall battle at large went. In essence, I'd draw up a flowchart of encounters, much like you'd see in a feature film, where the camera stays mainly on the main characters, leading, battling with significant foes, with the chaos of combat all around them.
In the end, we chose the Battlesystem route (using, indeed, the 2nd ed Battlesystem rules for the most part). Quality of success: not so high. The latter system appears that it would have provided more satisfaction and quicker play.
What should come out recently but a new supplement for DnD entitled Heroes of Battle. Contained within? A way to flowchart for character action within the larger context of a mass battle/campagin. Haha!
Benefit: Hippopotami cannot attack you. In addition, you can rebuke and command hippopotami as an evil cleric rebukes or commands undead.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention our friday Cyberpunk game as well, for it was another amazing evening of unfolding mysteries, of development, but above all, of unbridled cooperative storytelling. With character initiated action of the most mundane sort (we woke up) with one little detail from the GM (you had that dream again [detail]), everything unfolded with character inteactions, the players and the GM making reality, and just being the characters to drive the whole experience.
It was a good weekend of gaming.
Last night, in our Eberron game, the poor rolling streak continued. That this can be bad in combat was something we knew, however, this is not what presented itself last night.
What we learned is that in a game of cities, traders, intrigue and negotiation/diplomacy, bad rolls can be far, far worse.
Kind of in a tight spot now.
You may remember this post from last year, wherein I had just finished much work for a gaming book. Said book was then delayed, but that allowed some more time for more work, but then said book sat idle for a long time (or, I should say, my part in it ended insofar as I heard nay more).
Well, said book is now coming out, but in a highly different format that will cut just about every single thing I did for it (including all the things mentioned in the post) except for perhaps a few aircraft designs. Now I must find out if I will get store credit or nay for said work.
Phooey.
"Look upon these men, oh people of Bloodstone, for they walk the true path of Illmateer"
So spoke Baron Tranth, to begin the last couple of hours to wrap-up the first module of the Bloodstone Campaign.
A year after it began this chapter came to a close on Sunday, with a nice, calm wind down of item IDing, tying up some loose ends, and the XP giving. Before the game began, I gave the members of the group (players, not PCs) an opportunity to speak anything that was on their mind that would prevent them from being complete with the game. While no one spoke up, and while I know there may well be some issues given strained comments overheard during the game, having provided the opportunity allowed this last session to slide nicely to a conclusion. The Baron praised the players, as did the dwarven king and centaur tribal leader. A party was held in the village to celebrate the vanquishing of the bandit army, Vex presented some magic weapons and armour to the finest warriors of the village, and Sir Barus and Garrett shuttled much of the missing Bloodstone back to the village coffers. Amidst the peace and celebration more portents were uncovered however, and just what the future may bring is uncertain...
To round out the evening, a couple of hours were played in Granite's campaign. I'll spend the next few months preparing part two of the Bloodstone campaign.
Friday also saw hot gaming action, with a return to the "Cyberpunk" campaign I spoke about back in December. Our characters are now back in the 'real world' of the utopian society, but those of us who had VR time have... learned/kept the skills (and thoughts and habits) we developed and were exposed to within the VR simulation, a very disturbing prospect indeed for the society at large. But our skills may come in handy, as we track down the nearly 1.4 million others who had been infected by the rogue AI. We have already seen action, leading to a fantastic scene of my character whipping a flying firetruck around and opening the valves to create a water-cannon-like-effect and knock down an infected individual. Much fun. Looks like we'll continue that campaign for the next little while until everyone can rejoin the Friday DnD game.
WoW-wise, Ajathka has hit 50, the RP continues to be very binary (when it's found, it's good, and when it's good group, it's GOOD, otherwise, it's just not there, and its all meta), Khyborr's 24, and the new so-called Honour system (which should really be called the killtotal system) has turned parts of the world into corpse fields where there really is neither honour nor RP. Fortunately, I have not been in any of those areas, so I have remained unawares save second-hand stories.
And to finish this off, a quote by the DM, from a couple of weeks ago in Eberron:
"Apparently, there is nothing visibly valuable."
I stood upon the cliffs of Thunder Bluff last night, and I wept.
I wept for Bloodhoof village as it burned.
I wept as smoke rose over the mountains from the remnants of the Crossroads.
I wept for Astranaar, because I knew it would be the closest target in the inevitable retaliation.
I even wept for Tarren Mill, a place I had sworn never to defend again.
I wept for the innocents slaughtered without remorse, the "civilians"... people who posed no threat.
I wept for my friends on both sides of this "war", who suddenly believed that honor was measured in how much blood you had spilled.
I wept at the look in their eyes, that I had only seen before in the eyes of the Scourge.
I wept at the Truth that was revealed, about the nature of Horde and Alliance alike.
I wept because the world I thought I knew was a lie.
And most of all, I wept for the death of Honor.
And my tears were carried away with the wind, like pieces of a dream that would never be whole again.
... I used to play. Elladora Leroux. Very, VERY fine SW:RPG (WEG) story. Very fun character. As I'm sure you can tell if the above strip reminds me of her.
(No, she never went to the dark side, though)
A good weekend was had, with a couple of instances tackled and under my belt (WoW, what else?) sandwitching a good practice on saturday. Sunday saw the return (gasp!) of the Bloodstone campaign (it's only been, what, 4 months?). The gaming session itself got off toa bit of a rough start, with a forgotten power cord for a laptop and a rapidly dead battery, and two other laptops that just wouldn't work out. So we all trucked out from the infamous kitchen table and into the living room, where we got the game on using the HTPC that was there. Worked out very well, actually, complete with full-screen surround sound paladin action. While I had made (dire?) predictions about this being the last session for this adventure, with the late start and much hijinks from the insanity-ed elven archmage, one more session to go. The game itself was rather jovial and filled with ease, and ended with a perfect montage shot to roll the credits over and set up the next session (cue party coming out of a Windwalk spell, appearing in front of the town's walls, in front of the advancing remnants of the bandit army, in perfect battle poses o' doom, with the paladin flying high above on his dragonel mount... niiice). Been getting a few projects done, also been very powerful at work, banging away on some projects and enjoying myself (though the actual tasks/projects/job itself haven't changed). Busy week again this week, but class tonight was good, I'm loving the three-section-staff (even if I did whack my ear rather nicely) and I practiced a bunch of #9 and #3, both long sets. Also starting up Iron Palm again (after the rain/sore wrist incidents of the past weeks) which is always a good thing. And to cap it off, they poked fun of Frank Ghery on the Simpsons this past weekend (I'm sure Jason will post about Ghery, I swear these last few posts have all been about memories from uni days, interesting...)
Yes, this post was the attack of the ellipses (as if you didn't guess).
Despite many a threat, mostly against fellow party members and inanimate objects, my dwarven yellow mage in the friday game has actually only ever used his hammer in combat once. And that happened yesterday, for a whole two rounds. Despite his many years away from regular hammer use, it turned out rather well on the second of two swings: "I will kneecap him!" Roll. Hit. Critical. 3d8+3. 8, 8 and 8. "You hit the first knee, then the second, then continue through. He is now legless, and quite dead."
Now his threats will have real oomph behind them.
The other weekend two things happened in WoW, at about the same time. My main character, Ajathka, found himself in the Alrathi Highlands, looking for Crystal Motes. This marked a return for me (the player) to the area where I experienced the most amazing RP experience ever within WoW. It also marked the point where Ajathka depassed Khyborr's max level from Beta. It has been about four months since the game went retail and I've been playing on the Silver Hand RP server. How has the RP been?
For the most part, I would say "Meh". On the whole, the RP on the server is a notch or two above the RP that was on the Beta server. I've seen some in towns here and there, and the people in the Nightsabre Vanguard and associates have generally also been excellent RPers in the midst of the game environment. But the majority of my interactions with others and in pick-up groups, the RP has been minimal, if present at all. The RP tag has scared away 1337s well enough, but there are still continually jumping elves, people standing in the fire, OMG WTF LOLs, people emoting to make their character do rude-ish things, riding mounts through the middle of town and much game vs char speak. Balancing that has been more people sitting in taverns speaking, some characters actually walking while in town, drive-by generosity. So it is more RP than the straight Beta server, but not as much as I thought it might be.
The reasons for this may be explained by the fact that Silver Hand was one of the first RP servers (ie, available at game launch), the only RP server on the west coast, and thus may have had people join on without being fully aware what an RP server tries to espouse. I've heard rumours from some friends who have played alts on some of the other RP servers that the RP there seems to be a bit thicker ( and the populations lower) so perhaps that serves the theory.
At any rate, given that it is 'better' than in Beta, I am certainly not enjoying the game any less than from that time. Just fun to take stock of it all. And reflect on both Khyborr's days and Ajathka's development, and await the next content patch to fix a few quest goofs.
AW NUTS, I just broke RP with that...
Must. Stop. Downloadig. Flight. Sim. Add. Ons.
But. Ottawa! With 300 buildings! Including the parliament buildings! (which weren't in the official FS2004 release, bah!)
So what if I haven't reinstalled FS yet... so what if I've downloaded 4 gigs worth of add ons already... muahahaha, Ottawa is MINE!
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=122099
Enough said.
So, we can't actually log onto WoW right now (position 112 in queue), but last night while playing I came accross a paladin who who did a drive-by buffing -- but accompanying the buff was a nice /say about two sentences long ("Ajathka, by the holy light in your journey I protect you! By the light I give you Blessing of Sanctuary!", or similar). Very cool, and nice to see especially on the RP server. Kudos for the person creating the macro with the /cast and the /say to do so.
FotD: Model T MPG: 25. Avergae MPG in US last year: 24.
Well, the return to Kung Fu after three weeks off resulted pretty much as one could expect: sorness, especially in the back of the legs from high kicks. Still workable, however. Practice on saturday, after the initial sorness, was a great one! A small run, then just able to work on sets, running through almost all the weapon sets and my most recent hand sets. Nice.
Work was pretty busy in spurts. Was donated a 21" monitor that unfortunetaly just doesn't fit on my desk anywhere (!). Played way to much WoW (no surprise). Decided when I'll take my Lateral Forces exam.
Returned to Peggy's game on friday -- and two very interesting things happened. Other than the two new players. The first was that Keldorn (which I learned today was used in one of the Baldur's Gate games? Gah! I didn't know...) started speaking in a rather amusing accent, likely due to RotK and WoW. The second was that Keldorn's speech and behaviour turned into a sarcastic, biting, banterful pattern. That's what happens when you approach a shard of the gods -- not only does perception of reality get altered, but so too does the dwarf!
With no gaming tonight, I'm off to Vicki's for a dinner making night, the first in a long time! On the menu tonight is a Lamb Stew, and a Thai-inspired Chicken Curry dish. Woo!
The Friday before leaving for vacation, the cyberpunk mini-campaign I was in concluded. Now that the game is over, I am free to talk about it -- I say this as it was an interesting campaign within a campaign.
Ostensibly, we were in a cyberpunk world. Five characters, one of whom was the 'plot device', there to serve the whims of the GM, and the primary goal of our mission. Unbeknownst to our characters, the plot device teenager was developing rather interesting powers of the body and even crazier, the mind, able to tap into electronic devices and the net.
However, the player of the plot device did not know one very important thing. None of this was real. The cyberpunk world was actually a virtual simulation, with all the other characters being workers at a clinic in a utopian world trying to help this very deranged child. This would be the reason I could not speak of it before, to keep the secret, well, secret.
In the end, the treatment failed, the boy awoke and manifested those powers in real life (an AI had seen a chance for ascendancy when the boy was brought in and used him, feeding his delusion while slowly changing his body), after some combat he was trapped, and the game ended with an anti-tank missile and a messy end.
This game was a planeload of fun. For starters, I hadn’t played cyberpunk in a while, and it was cool to revisit. The game-within-a-game was also amusing, where players and their characters had to be detached in two different ways. First, not letting on that what was apparent was really just a scenario and there was some other purpose behind it. Secondly and closer to the usual divorce: as players we were in the same room as the boy began to learn of his growing powers, yet of course our characters did not know and so could not adjust for them. It was a game of double blind, doubled.
But the piece de resistance was a result of the over-premise. This was a VR simulation, created by our characters to help this kid. As such, our word became the world. The relationships we created for our character backgrounds (in the 'real world') became important aspects in the game. As the malevolent AI threw things our way, not realizing there was an AI doing so, we would react, and what we would say, explain or imply would become the virtual world reality. And in that reality, there were no limits. So pretty much what we wanted could be accommodated.
Taken all together, the game had a feel akin somewhat to a shared story writing experience. With little prep time, the GM was mostly creating on the fly (I believe, anyway) and seemed happy to work whatever we insinuated into the game; the laws and history were not fixed in stone tablets.
Too much mutability would get blasé and make games easy over time. For a single tie-over adventure, however, coupled with the double-game it made for a rather unusual and fresh adventure.
Ah, glorious frost. Certainly made for a nice brisk ride in this morning. I was quite awake by the time I got in. We could use a few more crisp days like this.
Despite the fact the holiday is at a silly time of the year, I did not argue with the well-needed two days off last week. I headed over to Vicki's place on thursday, where we made a quite fine Duck a l'Orange (after a frantic email to my mother for the recepie), accompanied with asparagus, wild rice and an excellent salad with pommegranite seeds, mandarins, and a few other goodies. Wine, cheese, and, of course, tasty deserts were had all around. It was a low-key affair, and very relaxing, very fun. As I said, well-needed.
Saturday saw my "Music Introduction Extravaganza!" come to fruition. I headed over to Wendy2's place, where she, her husband Jeff and myself each took a turn introducing each other to new music/groups/artists. My original plan was to have 1h per person but -- as can be guessed -- that was just plain impossible. Even limiting myself to 1-2 songs per artist I wished to introduced, I would've had six hours of music (!) to play. Thus did the eve run much later than originally intended, but I think we were all entranced by the music to worry about it. It was quite fun, and I certainly have a few new picks I need to look more into and add to my collection. In addition, just reflecting on my music selections allowed me to discover some common threads on music I liked, and Wendy2 and Jeff both commented and added more insight. Music can be one of those very evocative mediums (I imagine especially so for them, given they are in a band) and the melodies brought back many memories for everyone, spawning a varied range of stories, topics and discussion. If I said the evening rocked, would everyone forgive me for the pun?
The rest of the weekend was dedicated to being on vacation. With that in mind, I played an ashamed-ly way to much WoW. For someone who averages .75 computer games per year normally, who would have thought that I would have been so caught up in this one? No surprise, I created 2 of my 3 characters on the RP server, and have been rewarded with what I feel has been at least a moderately more immersive game than during the closed beta as a whole -- but even on the non-RP server some of my group have managed to RPspeak quite well, so it's been good all-around. I've been taking my time, re-taking in all the sights, the game, talking and interacting, reading, and just enjoying the game with no treadmill in mind. It's been fun. Then again, I'm addicted it seems, so take the word 'fun' and apply appropriately.
I've also bought tickets for my xmas vacation. Dec 17th to the 27th will be the time I'll be back in Ontario, and I am already dancing to the snow gods.
IotD: http://www.casarch.com/oliver/WoWScrnShot_110704_002300.jpg
Evan hosted a get together with a twist on Saturday -- a creative twist. Bring something creative to do, to teach or to share. Many people also brought food and things to bake. Food, wine, and talk was had by all, and various little projects got done. Maybe a little less on the creating side as originally planned (everyone's been so busy lately, that a sudden get together easily devolved into socializing) it was still great, and could see the beginning of a semi-regular event...
Saw the Increadibles on sunday, and well, Pixar can do no wrong, can they? Very amusing and great visuals. Maybe not quite as 'deep' as some previous releases, but still some thematic gems hidden within. My main suggestion would simply be to have not had Edna give the example of a caped hero being digested by an engine -- let the audience use some brain to make the link to the earlier cape discussion at the climax. Other than that, nicely done guys. Marek made the comment it was a not so-PC movie with a theme that could imply "we're not all equal, some are inherently more gifted than others, and intelligence can't compensate" -- to which Tiff & I responded with " i'm not sure i agree with the later -- they did show that intelligence can compensate, but that without the right attitude/approach/ethics it won't always win" and "the 'who you are inside' approach". Go see it.
Sunday's game went off well enough, and I feel they are, for sure, no kidding, this time for real, are maybe getting close to the end of this module. No. Really.
Watched the last three episodes of Mospeada, to catch the difference in themes from the Third Gen or RTech. Somewhat similar, yet somehow different too. Also seemed unbelievably rushed, with some very weird rapid changes in people's actions/attitudes. And damn Stig, you are a harsh case, aren't you?
QotD: "Yes, but the show that leads into mine is a couple of puppets making crank phone calls!"
Sunday's game went off relatively well, which continues the binary pattern.
We had a new camera w/ new built-in sound and it made a world of difference for our telepresence (you could see, and clearly too!), plus I switched to the other end of the table (not in front of window, no backlighting) and we moved the camera so that I and most of the table was in view during non combat -- all with the intent of making it seem more 'live'. I think it worked (but then, he was also working on a UPS problem, so :P). The team did not progress quite as far as I thought they might, and things will have to remain fluid on my end (without giving too much away), and the endgame is definitively fluid, but it seemed fine. Mainly one combat again (whee) though. Real details will be provided to those whom I owe them too.
So, I got my first real QA back today on a set I did basically on my own -- I'm a bit unsure as to whether it was a good QA, a bad QA, or an average QA (as I said, my first). The worst was the graphic issues, seeing that I'm the CAD guy and all so it counts as a major @#$#! up for me, but a some of those I did knowingly due to time contraints. The rest are still painful, since those are the genuine mistakes or oversights. It will take me a few days to fully realize how I feel about it, and hopefully to get some other idea/feedback.
Of course, the fact reviews are upcoming fast doesn't help the feeling of malaise in any way.
I'd post some random musings, but been so busy at work (City Submittal) and at play (cv earlier post) that there's been almost no time for musing.
Poignantly, I had a conversation about the power of words, as I do want to note that some may have misinterpreted what I was trying to convey with 'alternative' a couple of posts ago. In this case, I was using the word to convey the idea that I consider all my friends to be special and unique in their ways and their characters. Out of the ordinary and cool. Unconventional. That's the direction I was aiming for, not as a diss to any of my friends or their respective weddings. Silly blog, getting me in trouble.
Otherwise, started up a new campaign last Friday (the DnD Friday game was put on hold) and it's a Cyberpunk romp, which should be fun as it's been ages since I've played a good CP game (and fantasy is closing on burnout). Should be running my game this weekend.
It can be amazingly hard to keep one's own blog-post rules when one of the shan'ts is running rampant all around you…
Wrist, still borked. Computer, still borked.
Saturday night, I went to Vicki's with a boxfull of organic vegetables given to me by Mike and Bernadette before they took off for their 2 week vacation to Rome and Greece. We managed to use all the vegetables in one giant Salade Nicoise, which was uber-tasty, very colourful, and had plenty of leftovers.
Game past sunday: Was kind of slow, proceeded somewhat aimlessly, and saw the surprising death of two of the partymembers from what should have been a reasonable encounter (EL 12ish for 6 15th levels). That sank the game for more time as they were raised and adjusted their characters. However, it did provide one of the players with some good character-specific action(s), so at least it was positive on that side.
In the major geek link department, nonetheless fun: Deutsche Welle's site in a new language. Here and Here. Click English to discover what is being said.
An amusing statement of reality: When a guy's parents found out about him working in a porn store, they were OK with it. Quote he: "They're Republicans. As long as I'm making money, they don't care."
On the new Smithsonian Native American Museum: "It was Cardinal, a Blackfoot, who won the original commision ... only to be dismissed from the project five years later... A number of other firms and consultants were eventually brought in to revise and complete Cardinal's scheme, but in its essential outlines the museum still bears his stamp, which is why, for all the turmoil of the design process, it's a superior addition to a mall that has more than its share of Beurocratic Modern."
Missed this past weekend: Jousting. Next year, must remember to go see this.
This area ignored hard summer this year, but we're definitively been getting our hard-fall-summer. Nothing like 30 deg in the apartment!
I had an amazing RP experience this past weekend. Interestingly it wasn't in my regular games. It was in WoW.
Computer RPG games are, by their very nature, different animals than the around-the-table in-person type. I can easily recognize this and my mind adjusts as necessary; I don't expect the usual interaction and my RPgination (RP imagination) can fill in many details, nay, flesh out many details into a more full experience.
World of Warcraft is my first MMORPG - a CRPG where you are in a virtual world with thousands of others all running about and ostensibly working on similar tasks. This presents some interesting hindrances to furthering the RP-nature of a CRPG, of which two are prominent. First, a lack of world persistence, or rather, the fact the world IS persistent to itself no matter what you do. If you wipe out a major foe, wait a few minutes, he will return. If you complete a quest to eliminate the trogg invasion, no matter how many you kill, if you go back later they will be there again, diminishing the sense of accomplishment. I guess I could tag onto this category then the nature of some of the quests: if you must go out and kill X of Y, you are broken from your immersion by having to camp the spawning grounds, waiting for the creatures to return.
Interestingly, though, the second major problem is actually the whole raison-d'etre of an MM, and something you'd think could be a boon: the other people. On the base level, people naming their characters SweetMamaCakes or UbErMaXX or JebusWaffle doesn't exactly create an environment of fantasy. On another level, dialogue like "GP plz u kp 4 trogg k?" may seem like an ancient language, but...
Now, this is beta, so it is a more hardcore MM crowd who are mainly involved, and most of those see and play the Game part of the equation, while the RP is not something they have been exposed to nor understand or want to be involved with. Most of whom I have grouped with in the game fall into the range of total Meta-gamer (run here, do this, run there, do that, get XP, get drops, grind to level, etc) to the lightly-immersed. It is harder, but still possible for my mind to take that kind of input and create a suitable fantasy experience out of it. Only on one occasion have I been jolted continually out by total out of character meta constantness of TXT-messaging speak, calls of "Don't you know how to play your class?", meta thinking, and the like.
But back to yesterday, the day that proves that a like-mind can create an amazing environment.
Khyborr was on a quest to investigate a band of assassins that had taken residence at a farm... investigate and eliminate a number of them. This kind of quest is not uncommon. Once there, I came across a fellow dwarf, and asked if he too was investigating the area (not uncommon) and if he would like to team up (definitively not uncommon). Up to this point, it was fairly typical.
What emerged, though, was that the person on the other end was a fellow-RPer, and what followed was an amazing near-two hours as we completed that quest and proceeded onto another. Nearly everything that was exchanged between us was in character. Meta-game events (lag on the server, needing to do a quick phone call, drinking to restore mana) was translated on the way to the keyboard into in-game explanations, lore and speak. Speaking was not limited to "let's go here, there's one, etc," but was full of musings, sayings and dialogue that evoked the world and our characters and race - flavour text if you want to call it that. But it was more than background fluff, it became part of the story, the experience, the characters.
OOC: In short, it rocked.
Before this, I wondered if an MMORPG could ever contain such an experience. Some filtering still needs to be done with regards to the way the 'world' works, but with an RP-specific server (finding someone with similar intent) the experience can come through. Even something as simple as instituting a naming policy and calling it an RP server with a Writ of Suggested Behaviour may be enough to make RPers congregate there (and others not); tweaking XP in favour of quests and away from mob-killing would probably set it well in stone. The world itself need not change much (nor can't in too many ways, for such is the nature of catering to 1000s rather than the 5 at your gaming group), it is just finding like-minded people to keep the illusion propelled.
And that remains true in all RPG environments, even traditional (ie, non computer) RP gaming. Both 'mediums' provide challenges and oddities and OOC interruptions. Both attract different people (Heck, even some of my current gaming groups experience as much if not more meta-gaming and OOC comments as the usual MMORPG day). I don't think there are necessarily more or less obstacles in either type of game.
It is the shared desire and participation of everyone to create the immersive environment. Everything else fades into the background.
Here's this week's scoop. I actually managed to take it easy and stay out of conditioning this week, hopefully giving my heel some time to rest. It felt better some days, not quite as good on others; I'm hopefull it recovers by next week. I still went to class, though, and practiced my weapon sets a bunch, and taught my individual classes. Meanwhile, I was amazed at the perpetuation of ignorance and untruth by some prominant speeches. I also rolled up my character for the Eberron campaign (whenever it may begin), with the idea of capturing the die rolls as the GM watched others roll their characters. The result is rather funny to watch, mainly because it has the feel of watching something very dirty! I also worked on a new character sheet design (I will post soon), and also worked on some stuff for DP9. Bought a nice teapot today, and some other things to tweak the appartment.
Also, we seemed to have skipped summer but second summer is here, with the high high high temps. I've been wanting to move my server box onto new and less-heat-prone hardware since July, but until I re-get access to the backup box on my MX record I can't, as I'll lose some mail. Seeing the temp in the box, though, aiya.
Well, I will have to say that the game went much better this past sunday; the encounter was finally completed, it felt less heavy, and there was less griping. Mind you, most of the players were also drinking, so maybe that had something to do with it.
No one died, though battle itself left the PC's exhausted by the end in terms of spells, HP, etc. I'm a bit less fearful about the campaign surviving, but I have a long way to go. I talked it over with one of the players after the game and they confirmed what I had espoused last week: the game lacks flavour. The characters (players) have no attachment to the NPCs because the NPCs have nothing behind them -- for someone who is such an RP hound as I am, this is the most dissapointing thing to me about how I've ruined my game.
How has this come to pass? I have a few theories -- certainly one would be that if the player's are finding it hard to run one 15th level character, to run an octet of high-level enemies tends to suck back too many processor cycles for interactivity. I didn't even describe one of the big bads when it showed up on sunday. That is just inexcusable. I've already commented on how I keep forgetting about NPCs in the town and the interactions with them, so when something happens to them, no one thinks much about it. Much contention leaves me spending extra time on CYA. Having that first fight turn into the schlog it did despite the RP heavy opening (first session) set the tone, perhaps. Those kind of things.
The hardest thing now is, of course, how to rectify it?
An interesting report on NPR, complete with game session recording, which is always funny to listen to: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3858560.
QotD: "So, now that I am happily equipped with what is undoubtedly my cooking tool with the most history (not to mention the heaviest, try riding the metro on a Saturday afternoon dragging 8 pounds of marble, it's fun)."
Saturday was, as indicated, mostly good. Workout began with another private look-over by Sifu, who watched me perform #1 quite poorly (cv dead legs) but didn't riducule me too much for being winded, and just had a few little tucks and suggestions. We also got into talking about power generation and began talking about 'generating power from the ligaments'. I querried him on this, as it seemed a little strange (it had been brought up at the party a few weeks ago) and it turns out there is only one word in Chinese for tendon and ligament. So when he says ligament, he actually means tendon (since ligaments really don't move on their own). More discussion ensued, and then I went to working on what he had taught me. Skipped the full-mile run and just did the stairs, which was killer enough. Worked on #1, #9, Double Daggers and Cane. Of course, by the time I started to get my energy level up, it was time to head to lunch.
At lunch, we had a new inductee it seems. Evan says, "I'm not sure you've met R**lf before, he works with us." Who in turn looks at me and says, "You look very familliar." The name and its pronounciation clicks. "Not that Rolf?" I ask, "The climbing Rolf? From Ottawa? And MediaAge?" Sure enough, it was that Rolf, who has been hiding out at MS for a couple of years. I knew he'd moved to Cali, but never really knew where and had lost touch with him. Turns out he worked about 500m from where I do.
Of course, this does nothing to disprove the "Oh, you're a Canadian, you must know ______" stereotype.
Rest of day was good, even though an item didn't show up in my inventory as it should have, so I couldn't complete a quest and will have to re-do the Stockades instance dungeon. Not too much of a biggee.
Sunday was a different story.
Gaming that night was to be a resumption of my campaign. We'd left the game at a semi-cliffhanger, in the middle of a large battle the previous session, some month+ ago, and it was high time to pick it up again. By now, those who have read this blog before are seeing the warning lights. For whatever reason, combat in this campaign brings whatever happens to a terminal bout of cold molasses. Maybe it's the high-levelness, maybe it's more simply the unfamiliarity with high-level abilities, maybe it's their size, maybe it's this group in this situation. Looking up things, arguing things, fretting (even by my the most trustworthy of my players! gah!) or challenging things... it just goes to poo.
Minutae ends up overwealming the flavour.
Instead of an intense battle of characters it instead felt like an intense battle of effort. This group's combats have often felt flat, but this brings new meaning to the words "pool of mercury flat". (Actually, I just made that up) If this campaign survives into the next module, I'm going to have to make some changes (and some changes are inherrent) to the scale and types of encounters/combat.
Granted, this is an odd module flow-wise (now I see why many groups just play the 4th module of the series), and I guess I wasn't explicit enough in detailing the types of chars appropriate. It's also setting up a nasty task for myself, GMing a high level game right off, with players who take time to get into things in many ways, and with the players not fully versed in their character's abilities. I keep hoping once this turns more narrow in focus things will rectify themselves into a more workable feel, but...
While much of what the author does on their site is irreverent, Monkey Sphere is an interesting essay. Fear not, for it is still quite written in a humourous style, and still contains satire, irony and reverse psychology, but the basic premise and the points argued I think hold some weight. Mike pointed us to it on the weekend, now I point it to you (and probably back to him, if he reads this page).
Tiff pointed out two other good sites: The Fool's World Map, and the Terra Nova Blog. The former is an excellent harnessing of the collective internet 'intelligence', the latter contains links to various essays and thoughts on MMORPGs in all directions, including their development, style, impact, etc.
More on the environment, our place in the universe, Art Renewal Centre, The Dwell Home, and a very tasty recepie for a type of pesto:
1 cup dry roasted cashews
1 cup fresh basil
2-4 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Two heaping spoons of fresh grated parmisan
Food processor, chop nuts. Add garlic. Add basil -- as the material starts to bind, add olive oil as necessary. Add salt/pepper if desired, add cheese as last step, adding more olive oil if necessary.
QotD: "... hit them with the internet sex hose."
Is it me, or does that conjure up a pretty interesting image? Either way, a new week is here. Good weekend, with a surprisingly productive Spycraft game (very well after the movie), a saturday spent at a good practice followed by rollerblading (to quote Michael 'to do something with you guys that doesn't involve food or TV' -- after the blading we found ourselves out to dinner (Korean) followed by TV (Futurama DVDs). Second time only on rollerblades for me, but I did quite well and didn't try to stop like I was on ice. That, I learned the first time, is a no no.
Sunday's game went well, and I think every time we're improving on the telepresence. It'll be my campaign again next weekend, w00t, and I'm already all prepared so things should go hopefully relatively smoothly. 1st ed feel ratchets up quickly at this point. Farrel also wants to run an Eberron campaign, and I have some 4+ characters I'd be interested in playing, but trying to juggle 4 games (if we include Rev's Spycraft game) on the one day?
Oy, messy it would be.
In celebration of the resumption of gaming tonight, I thought I'd post a gaming observation (plus, it'll be a nice switch from negativity and it has been a while for a gaming post). For those of you who have not gamed out there this may not make much sense.
Ever notice how different groups view, handle and react to unusual in-game events? It's something I've become aware of recently. This is most prevalent in fantasy RPGs, but applies accross the board. Something weird happens, something obviously abnormal, or even some really bad stuff goes down. Group 1 will look at it and go "Holy, that is some serious magic at work! Woah..." Group 2 looks at it and goes "Wait, what spell in the book does that? The guy must be really high level. Or else I think the GM is trying to screw with us! That worked out to well." IE, one group approaches it from the character, one approaches it from the player.
I guess if one dissected it, one could say Group 2 is therefore more akin to looking at the whole thing from a 'game' aspect, whereas Group 1 is more immersed and thus, well, doesn't really look at it. They, through their characters, react to it, play off it, and just play. Group 2's characters will probably react, but it comes as a secondary/later thing. It's a different style of playing the game.
What's interesting is that when I'm playing with a Group 2 type, my usually very RP-oriented outlook (I even RP to computer strategy games like Master of Orion) gets dampened somewhat and I too begin to analyze the mechanics of what occured, not the event itself. Bad lynx. But even with that, if I try to understand how the dissection approach arises, I can't grasp it. It feels much more natural and more fun to stay with the character and understand the occurance through the eyes of the character. I don't realize it right off if I think in a meta-way, but it becomes jarring right after the fact and I try to get back into char, and in fact, all those meta-thoughts prevent to a large extent my best RPing.
I'm sure there are plenty of groups out there that have both types of players in the same group, but the main groups I play with right now seem dominated more by one or the other (and that seems to somehow influence my immediate thoughts).
And just to make this post a crazy cross-category one: I don't know excactly why, but something about this csszengarden design intrigues me.
Did I get a cool axe? Or mace? Nope. Armour of the gods? Nope. Something that increased my smiting capacity? Not even that.
But I found not one, but two bags as loot.
And that made me very very happy.
Seems I'm slacking off a bit from my blogging duties. Just been busy. Flight back was uneventful. Busy at work catching up on stuff. Returned to class on thursday with Justin teaching, so that was really good. Learned some new techniques, learned more of #1. Friday, well, it had sorta been 2 weeks off (I practiced one day at home, and some demonstration kicks for a pair of kids at the cottage) so soreness was mine to be had! Muahahaha! Er, ow. Not as bad as it could be though, mainly in the shoulders/arms. The run/stairs was good, didn't work on my sets as much as I would've liked to as there was the instructor meeting/training, where we talked a bit, did some teaching style critiques, and did some training and drills.
What was unusual, and funny, was a rather odd outburst by Jimmy. I'd just finished working on some drill with M, and as I walk over to get a drink he suddenly exclaims "Man Oliver, you are ripped!" -- I'll gladly take any compliments, but it wasn't something I was expecting, it was very amusing.
I realize that I, despite my ATC talk the other day, have neglected to point out some great ATC exchanges/humour: here and here. There are, of course, some repeats between the two (and skip past the first part on the second link, as you've seen it at the bottom of the first link), but spleen-splitting funny.
Gaming this weekend will be of the not-me-as-GM variety, then it's two weeks off as various players are on vacation. Including me as I take off to Yosemite next weekend. Looking forward to it, we're staying at Tuolumne Meadows this year. And, as luck would have it, while my stargazing at the cabin was ruined by the full moon, Yosemite = 2 weeks from cabin = 2 weeks into the lunar cycle from full = new moon = no light. MmmmMMmmmm, soooo looking forward to it. Even niftier is that Su, whom I did attempted the stargazing with at the cabin, took me up on my "you should come down to camp in Yosemite!" invitation and will indeed be joining the gang (30 of us :P) so we'll get our good stargazing in after all. Oh, and we'll do a drive through the valley so she gets a glimse of hard-core climbing.
And just so you know, my machine runs WoW juuuuuuuuuuuuust fine. w00t!
It's kind of funny. On the nights I feel as though I didn't do enough, I end up quite sore... on the nights I think I'll end up sore, due to work or not stretching out afterwords, I end up not sore. Hmmm. Tuesday's class had me not leading and the class didn't feel all that strenuous (though probably working areas I haven't worked in a while) and good for working on some problem areas. But when I got home I decided to wail on the bag for about 20 mins pretty much non-stop. That did it. Back, shoulders, arms, legs = sore. Which means I should do it more often, those muscles obviously need to be worked out more. Now that my shoulder only hurts during excercise, I'll be able to work that in more.
There are interesting differences between gaming groups in their approach to the game/campaign. Some groups I've been with, when something weird happens, take it in context as 'wow, that's powerful magic' or 'yeeps, that was weird, what was that?' Others take it from a slightly different perspective: 'WTF?' 'what spell could possibly have done that?' It seems to be group dynamics at work -- I don't think I know of any group where some of the players did A, while others did B, and I'm pretty sure my take on situations are coloured how the rest of the table speaks about it.
How come is it that some of the most vocal proponents of 'the oil companies are ripping us off' are the same most vocal proponents of 'free market or death!' ? Also, even if ANWR was opened to so-called exploration 3 years ago, a) nothing would be coming out of the ground yet so no price break b) the amount that would come out when it did is so miniscule (2% daily output of the world) as to impact prices by about 1c per gallon, if even. Production != solution, dimwits.
TJ's got their Soba noodles back! Too bad they're Wheat Flour first, then Buckwheat -- dagnabbit. Speaking of asian foods, I should go hunting for a nice shallow-pot tea set again. The kwoon actually sells one, maybe I should see if it suits me...
Welcome to another 'weekend in the life of' post. Well, actually, you've already heard part of the weekend, with the Thunderbirds and all...
Sunday saw the resumption of the Bloodstone campaign. We started our usual time, with the plan on continuing the holiday monday. Sunday went quite well, I think. I was worried that a long pause might cause some problem 'getting back into it' but it didn't take long for the characters, nor I to get into the swing of things. Well, except that I continually and continued to forget about the major town NPCs, such as, oh, the Baron. I'm sure the players think he's not doing anything, when in fact he's been very visible and active in the community. Grrrr. I curse myself for that. The telepresence of Sir Barus also worked rather well, save one computer explosion on saturday night which unfortunetaly cut him off from some good inter-character RP. Other than that, sunday was rather smooth, didn't drag, and the characters were getting puzzled -- a good thing.
Monday we started early but a bit too leasurely, and the game sort of went in fits and starts, paused for dinner, had the characters even more frustrated, caused some party friction, the death of an NPC, and then came the battlesystem battle. With so many participants we doubled up each figure (1=2), and began -- and continued on and on and on until late. I think at this point I'm going to declare the Battlesystem experiment a not-success. Even one of the most enthusiastic 'yeah, we should do that!' players is saying 'maybe not' now. It isn't that the battlesystem rules are bad, its mainly a) the length of time it takes b) the lack of space we have and, most importantly, c) the changes in the abstraction that confuse some players and diminish the directness or the immediate obviousness of their abilities. Plus its different enough that they are unsure what to do in the best way. So, I'm modifying from here on in for the rest of this (first) module. No biggie.
In a rather amusing tie in with this post, after that long long battle, I fell into bed drained and spent the whole night in fitful sleep, dreaming about running large-scale combat. Ugh!
Meanwhile, allergies or a cold (or both) have wracked me hard, leading me to not even doing conditioning at KF last night, leaving me downright miserable and getting bloody noses. Combine that with other frustrating this and thats, and though gaming wasn't bad, and the airshow was good, my spirits aren't doing any aerobatics.
Sometimes the net is an amusing entity.
After last night's game (which we ended up playing, I found out about 5h before the fact(!) I thought to look up for some sort of p2p virtual hexmap. We used the whiteboard in messenger, and while it worked so-so, something a bit more precise, not to mention easier to use and made for the purpose, would be good.
Onto Google I hop, and type in "online hexmap" as my opening blow. Second link: http://theminiaturespage.com/new/rlojun197.html
Wow. June 1997. My RenLeg WWW Repository is still going (strong?) but hasn't been updated in some 5 years+, and the mailing list is now on yahoogroups. Just really funny that this would be the 2nd highest link for that search string...
Gaming Quote of the Day:
H.G.: Just to let our viewers know, Roy and I are from the old school of gaming. In our day, you knew what a dungeon was, and you knew what your job was: to die. If you were a player and you went into a dungeon, you knew you wouldn't be coming out on your own two feet. And if you were a DM, you measured how good your dungeons were by the body counts. On a good day, you could rack up a century before lunch! That's how it was done!
Roy.: Yes, H.G. But see, that's the great thing about modern gamers. The game is so different from our days, when basically all you did was kill things and find treasure. It didn't really matter exactly how six dragons managed to fit into a 10-foot room. The important thing is that you kicked the door in, and you killed everything in sight. Today's gamers want more than that. They demand consistent worlds. They want believable characters, characters who aren't perfect. They want a milieu -- there's some more vigorous tonguing for our Gary -- in which their actions make sense, and enemies who are even more despicable because they're human.
H.G.: Mm-hmm.
Roy: What I'm saying is that instead of senseless violence, today's gamers want carefully crafted, intelligent, sensitive violence. And that's a good thing.
Additional, corollary:
"Good Roleplaying does not preclude fireballing their assses!"
Hmm. I'm starting to wonder if my 'gaming dramatics' may be misread by others, esp. by those who have not RPGed with me before. I know I've had people in RPGs misread my RPing as being me rather than my character, and I know I sometimes RP even in non-RP games (Master of Orion, forex) so... just something to watch out for.
My Sunday game. Hmm. The first of the Battlesystem battles occured, taking the whole session (as predicted), and on the whole from a rules standpoint I think went off relatively well. Considering it was, for most, the player's first experence with the battlesystem rules (and/or mass combat) it was mostly smooth, with just a bit of confusion about unit formations and movement. It was also the character's first experience with mass combat for the most part (even the most experienced fighter in the group mainly did smaller gladitorial combats), so it worked out well that way. Mechanically the evening was well.
I'm switching to a once-per-two-week schedule for my campaign. That was always my original plan, but I wanted to get as much playing time in before one of the participants moved (he will telepresence in) and I wanted to get the campaign really moving and the character's engaged. Now that the two have occured (effectively), it'll give me some chance to prepare things a bit slower, though it won't equate to much more free time as the Chi Na seminar starts next week at the kwoon, and that'll suck in a few hours of my monday/wednesday again.
When we do more battlesystem, though, it may have to be a one-two shot for my campaign since the next battle(s) have the potential to be bigger, and hence longer. Hopefully the minis can stay on the table all week.
On other fronts, not much else to report yet.
Ever know the feeling of having to hold your tongue (or fingers as the case may be)?
What a weekend.
Friday evening and saturday began pretty much as usual, with a game and a practice (albeit restrained due to a shoulder I will refer to as stupid), followed by some good friends-hanging-out-with. The divergence from the norm begins saturday evening, with an invite from a student of mine, whom I have recently discovered is a gamer (and, natch, she also learned my game geekness), to a one-shot Call of Cthulhu game to help playtest an adventure for some friends of hers who will be running it at an upcoming convention. (I think that was a bit of a run-on-sentence) Though never having played CoC before I said "oui!" and off I spent the evening. Neither of us knew what to expect (I for not having played CoC, she as she'd never played CoC under the two GMs who were running); in the end, it turned out to be a lighthearted CoC game (not very CoC-ish, from what I've been told later). The adventure needed a bit more opening up, but to pick up a character and run with it with a bunch of others you'd never gamed with (and who were doing the same thing) was quite refreshing and fun -- I guess one could say it was my first taste of 'con'-style playing. I would give some thought to participating at a con...
Sunday dawned with my preparations for my campaign that evening. I had a bunch of stuff already prepared, but wanted to refresh my memory, make a few more notes, get a bit further ahead in preparation. Noon rolls around, and here comes the invite to truck out with people to see Kill Bill Vol 2. Rushing I finish a few more things and head out the door -- movie -- eat -- to the game.
Here's where the weekend caught up with me.
To begin, it was a bit universal, as the recent inclement weather must have sucked all the Chi out of the air. Many of us were having trouble speaking anywhere near cohesively, let alone eloquently, and some were pretty asleep. But, in my rush out of the house I forgot some notes, some references, a GM screen, and all of the initiative cards. Not good. Without having refreshed my memory meant I had to recall what was to come, and wasn't as quick off the draw as I should've been. Granted, this part of the adventure had its own downside as being the lead up to the coming storm, and as such up there was much prep-work and alliance building and the like to go on. The party was split up, some were busy doing 'training the townspeople', some were off, others were rebuilding walls. Attempts to get more townspeople interaction didn't go very far. But even taking those into account the game still dragged too heavily.
Plus, with the weekend packed, I didn't get any further work done on the DP9 material I was going to double-look-over.
Ah well. I realize after every session I've said I may have killed the momentum. Hopefully there's time to re-rail Sunday's tale.
Plenty of time to re-rail sunday's tale.
Well, I'll say one thing: this campaign is going to be an interesting ride, if nothing else. Quite the quirkish party indeed. Should be fun to watch it butt with the first edition modules...
CSS Zen Garden this week has again nothing that'll blow one's virtual socks off, but there are the amusing real-world takeoffs (A and B), this one has architecture and is somewhat slick, this one is a simple but effective, and this one tries to do something interesting but it bothers me.
With that title, you know this is about gaming!
Last weekend, as I began running the campaign, I tried out these initiative cards to, well, keep track of initiative. As a bonus, the cards act as mini-character sheets, so when an opponent's turn comes up you have in front of them their attack values, etc, and you have all the character's relevant stats as well. Problem is, if it isn't that PC/monster/NPC's turn, like when they are being attacked, you have to find them in the stack to mark down damage or to check their relevant stats, and handle the deck in such a way as to not lose the order and thus mess up the initative count.
In one of those "well how about that"-type moments, I noticed that all my recent GMs have not been doing what we used to do for initiative: the GM simply starts calling out initiative numbers and works their way down. Players themselves keep track of their initiative and call out when their turn arises. No GM fuss about gathering Init numbers, going through them, ordering perhaps, keeping track, calling out people. It would have slight implications if two people had the same init (as you wouldn't find out until then) but only the first time, as you'd roll off and be done with it.
I may give that a try again. I can keep using the Init Cards to act as the mini-char sheets, but it would be easier to find everybody as necessary, and require less start-of-combat work on the GM's part to order everything. Maybe it'll end up being the same (six one, half dozen other)....
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
The laws of combat are a wonderful thing, and apply to many situations. Especially in gaming, when you are the GM. Players (nevermind friends you think you know well) just always manage to surprise by, well, surprising with actions you didn't think they'd do.
Heh, ok, I'm making it sound much more ominous than it was. I don't think it went too badly, though its hard to gauge exactly how the others felt about it.
I do need to be cautious (especially with spoilers), as I know at least one person from the group reads this blog...
My plan was, I thought, a rather inspired one. As I made everyone create a backstory for their characters, I wrote a one-page 'introductory story' for each of them, which summarized their recent past, how they came to the starting city (none of the characters knew each other) and also hooks to involve them in the story that was about to play out. These pages were handed out (all nicely printed) as the game started, followed by some general text that laid out a scene, and began an encounter that would bring the characters together, introduce them to the adventure, and begin a journey to the adventure's main locale. More would ensue there. The idea was to entrance the players with their introduction story, have them deal the encounter, and have them sucked into the game and story (and into character), leaving a powerful impression that would carry through in this otherwise 1e-style module.
Except that the combat took way longer than I thought, leading to some tediousness, and worse leading to not even beginning the journey to the other locale. So I fear that the 'entrancing' didn't root. And some of the characters didn't quite play/do as I thought they would, or play-off what I'd crafted in their intro as I thought they might , and then I got some timing wrong, and those forced other changes... and then you forget something... and you end up driving home cursing yourself and being worried because, for some reason, you actually care how your players feel. Hee.
At any rate, we'll see how this goes from here. Nothing that went awry was horribly detrimental, just out of order or not as 'elegant' as it may have otherwise been. I'm mostly disappointed that the 'entrancing' didn't go (as) well (as it may have).
One week now to prepare for the next!
As part of their exhibitor status, Dave's company got a few passes to the expo, providing me the opportunity to check things out at the GDC last Friday. It'd been two years since I last saw the expo and four years since I first attended. Biggest changes I noticed this year were three. For start, the rise of professional training programs, be they four-year degree programs or one-year-super-intense-training models. Next was the 'come work here' contingent, for Maryland, for Singapore, for Korea... Lastly was the loss of the big black box of doom, aka Microsoft's rather imposing edifice that anchored one corner of the GDC floor in years past. In fact, ATI was the only booth with two stories this year. Having AMD and Intel's pavilions be literally right next to each other was another interesting touch. Otherwise, nothing too knock-your-socks-off-ish. Next year the GDC is being held at the Moscone centre, which either means they are expecting huge growth or... um. Not sure what else it could mean; it'll certainly cost them more for the space.
Saturday offered us a chance to head out for some climbing, my first time out climbing since I climbed with Dave and co when I visited Ottawa over the holidays. We trucked out to the Belmont Planet Granite gym as he'd never been. Overall the walls there are not quite as bulbous as the ones at the Santa Clara gym, but there is some very good geometry and the walls are on the whole much higher.
To list off the restaurants he is now acquainted with: E&O (Fusion, San Jose), Midori (Japanese, Sunnyvale), Dishdash (Mediterranean, Sunnyvale), Elba's (German, Palo Alto), Hobbies (Breakfast, Mountain View) and Le Petit Bistro (French, Mountain View). I think we covered a good number of the bases...
Back to the regular routine for both of us this week. My shoulder is giving me some problems so I took the week off from class last week; it is still not feeling that great, but we will see how well it does this week. I'm also working on getting ready to start the campaign I plan on GMing this weekend.
Unfortunately, a friend and Kung Fu brother is looking like he may be moving out of the area in the very near future. I haven't seen him much lately due to conflicting schedules and the lack of gaming, but with both of those changing soon that should have rectified itself. It does mean that some netmeeting-type setup may have to be worked out to keep him in the campaign...
Wow, I think I am about done with 95% of the design work I was doing for Dream Pod 9's next book -- a whopping 88 planes, 22-odd ships and 8 ground vehicles. They add up fast. Some rules design/commenting in there too, though not as much as I thought there would be (at least, not yet, though there is still a wee bit of time). Certainly I'll never under-value the work of those doing all the stats for games (especially from scratch, and doing design while the rules are changing), and I think I enjoy the whole thing way to much. If that's possible... (nahhhh)
In a reply to a comment to an earlier post I stated that LEED may have a brighter future as public awareness about Architecture (and architecture, as well) is growing due in part to starchitect projects, but just from a general greater treatment in the media and magazines. But thinking about it some more, that is definitively one area the LEED project may well have failed; it may not be specifically in their mandate (perhaps purposfully, so that they aren't attacked or shut down), but they could have done a much better at PR/awareness/advertising or even promotion and a camapaign. Get the word out! "Does the company you do business with believe in LEED?" "Do you know where your consumer dollars are going? Into the trash!" "Oh no mom... we can't buy that! They aren't LEED certified!" and the like. A particular shoe company had to change its wage practices due to their slavedrivingness -- something similar with LEED? At least something to get the word out -- it is the consumer who changes things if the companies don't want to. Of course, then they'd argue it'd cost more, and the deal may very well be off; its how the auto industry operates after all.
At any rate, something to publicize the issue, PSA done by a good advert firm. That's where LEED could do more, to try to advance its cause.
Lastly... only in...