| Huzzah! It is complete

We finished off the Descent: Road to Legend campaign today. Twelve sessions, and we started over a year ago. I'm pretty sure that's the longest campaign (either in sessions, or in time) that I've ever participated in. I think 10th level or bust was only around 8-10 sessions.

Anyway, overall the game was a good experience. The campaign is fun and pretty well put together, and I think everyone gets pretty attached to their characters. It's fun growing the abilities of the characters (and the overlord) at a steady rate, as opposed to the 1st-to-20th level progression you get playing a normal single game of Descent. Also, although the game is obviously much longer, you can break it up into manageable chunks. A successful game of standard Descent usually takes around 5 hours so it's great being able to play for just a few hours and quit when you're starting to fatigue as opposed to a standard game where for the last hour or so, your brain is mush.

The only real downside was we occasionally had some attitude problems. By this I mean, the two other guys playing the campaign are generally good guys, but when the chips were down, they could both have negative attitudes which fed off each other. This was not so great in the Silver level of the campaign, sort of the "Empire Strikes Back" phase of the game, where everything goes against the heroes and they have to work hard not to lose. I was definitely glad to have Enron playing as a balancing factor and to be someone I could always joke around with when the other guys were getting a bit pissy. In many ways it was similar to having Rudy participate in the "Flamer Game" of Basic D&D back in high school.

That said, to be fair this was all of our first time going through this, so nobody really understood that these phases kind of happen and that they don't mean the game is broken or that you can't pull a victory out. And when it came to the final battle against the Overlord, everything really felt like it came together. The battle was pretty lengthy and fairly tactical, and not one-sided. So even though the heroes pulled out a victory, I felt satisfied with the whole experience. I would in fact gladly go through it again!

Yeah, there's two BSG things left. A 2-hour tv movie called "The Plan" which vaguely looks prequel-esque!? I can't tell. It's def not a continuation though of the main story. I might be "concurrently, from the cylons POV" : Trailer

Probably the last BSG thing with the ships, etc because they tore down all the sets after this tv-movie wrapped and auctioned that shit off. So any future movies would have to be different settings.

And then the next series from the same people, "Caprica" which is def set on the colonies before the attack. Trailer
Looks interesting.

| Snowboard Tips

1) Get some waterproof clothes. Don't go for the cool look, because you WILL spend most of the day touching the snow with your body.

2) Since you are a ripper at skating now, snowboarding is kinda reversed. When you skate, you use your back foot as your pivot and your front foot rotates around it, same with surfing. However when you snowboard, you actually use your front foot as the pivot, and swing your back leg around. I never really got this down, so I quit my snowboarding career REALLY early on. I think the last time I snowboarded was in 1987 or '88 possibly? Maybe later?

-------------------- End of Line -----------------

BSG NOTES:

- I was unawares there was another show coming, so I am excited!
- Maybe in 20 years we will be scouring the new YouTube on our iPhone v45.0 for that old episode of BSG where Mrs. Admiral Adama sexually abuses Boxy, like when we were looking for the bike shop episode of Diff'rent Strokes?

Yeah, I kinda know what you're saying Enron about watching movies on the computer versus the television. I actually am sans-tv at the moment, so I have no other option, but I can relate to it feeling different sitting at your monitor vs lounging on the couch. If the dvd/bluray is coming soon, you'll survive. But if you HEAR us spoil anything, you're loss. SO anyways, I wasn't too into the scenes following Adama's sex-change, but Boxey's molestation scene had a certain poetic justice. Damn Klingons.

The spinoff show looks pretty interesting; "Caprica." Sounds like it's the history of how the humans created skin-jobs and from the preview it sorta has a dark-city/bladerunner look to it (well, slightly I guess - but the dudes were rockin' the cool detective coats and hats.)

Eric is apparently the Peggle master because I see him on the leaderboard and he totally smoked me. It's a fun time-waster. It's one of those evil "just one more game" games.

I'm going snowboarding possibly next weekend for my first time ever - any tips so I don't die/break limb?

| Ta.whore.rent

Yeah, I know I should. But I get lazy. I also find when I watch shows at my computer I get distracted and bored too easily. For the most part, watching on the TV mitigates that tendency.

I might have run the video signal from my computer to my receiver in the past, but I ran out of HDMI inputs and swapping them back and forth is a bitch. The receiver weighs 60 pounds and some of the cords are too short and they often get disconnected when I pull it out to swap. Bad planning on my part. I'll have to get an HDMI switch one of these days.

EDIT: I guess I could be less of a Turd "Ferguson" Burglar and burn the torrents to DVD and then play them on my DVD player...

D>M>

| Tor.rent

isohunt.com > search for 'Battlestar"

bittorrent.exe > download and install

Set it up before you leave for work, watch all of 4.0 and 4.5 when you get home.

Or so I have heard.

| 4.oh boy, Oberto

I have not seen any of the forth season yet. I have been waiting for the 4.5 season disc to come out. That way I can just push through the rest of the series without waiting. Hopefully they will release it soon.

D>M>

| I Can't Not Not Get No Satisfaction.

Which means I can, and did?

I am completely satisfied with the BSG ending. It was exciting, sad, honest, large, and well paced. It tied things together mostly, left some room for hope, and was a nice way to leave all the remaining characters with a fun twist.

Good show. Who has left to see it that still wants to, and is actually going to do so?

Yeah, I don't even have a TV let alone cable so I'm all about Hulu and Torrothio's, etc. So, when I do end up renting these shows I'm all surprised "wow, it's not all blurry!" Hah. I imagine the blueray ver gonna be AWESOME.

So, no expectations or nothing, but the ending is not for everyone and the internet is totally split between like and dislike, but f-'em. I'm a pretty laid back dude and I don't know, I don't hold these crazy grudge's some ppl get over their favorite shows. So go into the end with an open mind and you'll have fun. Asimo...

| 4.5

Yeah, I know it is split up, so run my previous post through a find/replace engine to find and replace 4.0 with 4.0/4.5 and the gist will remain the same.

I agree, 10 episodes for $50 bucks is a little silly and cost prohibitive as well as almost purposefully driving traffic to torrent sites vs. making legit sales... but I am not going to continue to beat into a bloody pulp this horse...

| BS... G Marketing

Elzar: Unfortunately the available 4.0 DVD set is only a half season, in the same manner as season two was split. It really irks me that they split the seasons like that. Its not really clearly displayed on the box. What's worse is that the half seasons retail for $50 each while a full seasons retails at $60. Even better is that they stuffed Razor into the 4.0 set, so if you bought Razor separate, you have been burned once again. I really like the show, but, I think the packaging methods are a bit of a turn off. Still, I am a sucker for the show. It really is one of the best TV shows around.

j0rn: I felt really bad after laughing so hard about the 22 year old at your work. That's just tragicomedy. I feel dirty now.

Pump: Eclipse, eh? Well, at least your first character wasn't Sinep or Mantiev. As much as I have a soft spot for good old D&D 1.0 and it's quaint beauty, I just feel like I would rather play a more modern system. I don't know, it just leaves me wanting more, especially since we play so little anymore. Once you've gone black, you can never go back?

D>M>

| My Gods....

When they sell the DVD's for season 4 of BSG they should title it "BSG 4.0: Anything Frakking Goes".

I am catching up on all the season 4 episodes and just finished episode 17, only 3 more to go then I am as caught up as the rest of America!

The show has pretty much pushed the envelope as far as story, twists, turns, etc. for it's duration, but with an absolute end of the series in sight, the writers just went off and the show is bonkers. just bonkers.

Anything goes, no taboos, kill everyone, everyone is evil, everyone is up for redemption, everyone is trying to be good, everyone is weak, everyone is a badass, everyone gets used, everyone plays someone. Intense.

I should finish up tonight and possibly tomorrow and could not be happier! I delayed the ending of Buffy for over a year because I really, really like the show and the characters, and the story because it was a good balance of light, serious, fun, and interesting. BSG is just so heavy ALL THE TIME I am looking forward to experiencing the end, seeing how it all ties together (possibly), and moving on.

BSG really was a fantastic show and one of the best things ever on the boob tube.

Eclipse sounds shit-hot. Just hope you roll that 9 Intelligence!

I'm put in mind of my own grade-school character, Wilhelm von Hurdygurdy the Fighter. What a bad-ass. Over 30 hit points at 4th level, as I recall....

Enron -- the guy was 22 or so, old enough to know better. Apparently he also fell desperately in love with one of my co-workers, who is married. Then he landed some girl who was on the rebound, who he had been in love with for "over a decade" and incessantly talked about that to everyone for a while. After dating for a week he announced they were going to move in together. Then she dumped him. Then he got fired.

Raistlin? I cried when Sturm died. Poor, poor mustachioed Sturm. Shhhhh... shhhhh, it's ok, you can rest now sweet, sweet knight. Sleep... Sleep... {tear} Don't look at me!

Basic D&D would be grand. Wouldn't the encounters run faster than 4th ed since it's not so dependant on absolute measuments and skills? I'm so making an elf! Class and race! I'm gonna bring back my character from 6th grade. His name was "Eclipse"! Ooooh mysterious, yet kick ass! Ask any eleven year old.

Yeah, 4th ed is simpler than 3rd ed in many ways, but not for any ways that would count for the purposes of running a one-shot, I think. Setup/explanation time is still long. But like Enron mentions I was also thinking about the possibility that if everybody we think is coming to the con plays, we could have up to 8 players (!). Fights in 4th ed are a lot of fun but definitely not short.

Well, I just blew a ton of money. I spent my bonus money on a MacBook Pro. Yee-haw! Now I'll have to actually get my hands on a copy of Windows since this thing can actually run it... I predict this expensive piece of hardware will end up being mainly a Planescape: Torment and Thief II machine, and I'm fine with that!

| Gurps Lothario

D&D is great and I think we may get a lot of interest in it just because it is new to many of us. Although, I do agree, it is a bit more complicated than others systems for the uninitiated. It may also be a bit of a handful given the large number of people we will likely have.

jr0n, that is truly sad about your coworker. Please say at least that he was 18 or at least some other half baked excuse.

D>M>

Is 4th ed DND really more complicated? Listening to the podcast of it, doesn't seem that bad and almost seems to simplify things. And I'm not sure, but I thought there was some computer program you can use to make your guys so it prints out all the rolls n shit u gotta make already modified. That's my vote. Let's go forward, not back. Or GURPS Firefly.

I'm willing to run an RPG at Kubla if anybody is interested. The only thing is, thinking back on RPGs at the con that have been either successes or failures, I think the key is that it has to be something both brain-dead simple to run, work well with a variable number of players, be very fast to set up/explain and ideally be somewhat familiar. Things like 4th ed are right out. I'm thinking over the candidates and basically two present themselves - Savage Worlds and old-school, Rules Cyclopedia D&D. I'm leaning towards D&D because I fucking love it, it is great and it takes 3 seconds to make a character, and it's been a long time since I played it. I also kind of like how it's likely to end up with everybody hacked to death by kobolds in the 2nd room after the wizard burns his Sleep spell. But, does anyone have other suggestions/ideas, or wish to dissuade me from my fool's crusade in the first place? Is it simply pure folly to even hope to run a game at Kubla?

| Glad you liked it, p***y

Just kidding. :) I'm actually really excited to hear that the show had such a good cathartic ending. I'm getting more interested in watching the show all the time.

What you said though put me in mind of this dude at a Canadian testing house we hire to pick up extra work sometimes. I was IMing with this dude Kyle and he was like "I feel so emotional. I was just crying during lunchtime." This is, like, the third time I've ever communicated with this guy. I'm like, "Uh, why?" He's like, "I was reading this book, and it was so intense and sad, I just couldn't help it." Hey, I'm game for a good catharsis every now and then, so I ask what he was reading. Turns out, he was reading the fucking new Elminster book. I may have done some extremely geeky things in my time, but have to say that sobbing over a Forgotten Realms book and then telling my employers about it would definitely be a new low.

Although I will say when Raistlin sacrificed himself so that Caramon and Crysania could escape the Abyss, tears did leak all over my hideously acne scarred face.

Just finished the 2-hour finale to Battlestar Galactica. Cried for like the last hour straight - perfect end to the series, what a fantastic show.

Happy birthday Art! (?)