" You are a seven foot tall, essentially a super human warrior, encased in this armor, with amazing weapons at your disposal" - apparently they forgot Genestealers get 3 dice and space marines are like butter cut by a hot knife.

I'd never even heard of that other Star Wars dude, but it all totally makes sense now. That's crazy.

Check out this new Space Marine 3rd-person shooter they're making (watch the video):
SPACE MARINE Looks like it'll be pretty fun.

| (James Earl Jones voice) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

This confirms Lucas turned to the dark side after Empire.

Ewok Luau

| Some Guy Riding the Harp

http://www.massively.com/2010/08/08/eve-player-destroys-over-1000-worth-of-game-time/

Some guy lost 1300 dollars worth of Eve playtime equating to 6 years of membership fees or 22 billion isks. Let me put this into perspective, when I used to go asteroid mining in a mining ship, i think i made around a 100k of isks (game currency) per hour. Now do the math. I loathed that game so much, even while I played it...

| ghost riding the tarp (!?)

Interesting video. I watched a few minutes of it and I figured that this is the white-people equivilant of "ghost riding the whip." I did like the jab at paddleboarding.


Someone did a quicky write-up on the Ravenloft game from Gen Con over at somethingawful:

Mr Beens posted:
"Anyone here get to try the D&D Ravenloft boardgame at GenCon?"

Karnegal posted:
It seemed like a shitty Descent rip off to me. Clearly Wizards plans to use as another way to cash in on miniatures with a million future expansions (just like Descent). Aside from the inept demo, which was pretty much "imagine you just bought this game. Open it up. Teach yourself; I'm out of here," the game is limited by a set number of scenarios.

Essentially there are missions that you're attempting to complete and when you've run through them all (didn't look like very many in the book), you need to either make up you own or repeat. It's probably not a huge issues, but I think Descent's mechanic of GM vs Party is more interesting. The system is also pretty heavy D&D 4th ed., so if you're not a fan of that, you probably won't be thrilled with this. The game plays a lot like a simplified 4th ed. combat session. If you can grasp basic concepts, like fighter screens the mage or cleric heals, you'll have little problems with anything but the bosses (Strahd or a dracolich, among others).

The balancing feels off too. I played the mage, and the big encounter in our mission, which was a surprise (though it wouldn't be if you played it more than once), was that a bunch of crap spawned in the room with the item we needed to retrieve as soon as someone set foot in it. I'd saved my fireball in case we ran into something like this, and I 1-shotted the whole room with ease. This seems feasible in a lot of scenarios. The roles are pretty set except that the cleric sucks at healing, the mage seems very powerful as most of your spells target entire panels (which have like 25+ squares on them). Meanwhile, the rogue was pretty much reduced to disarming traps, which is worth 0xp and is generally unnecessary.

There is a leveling up system, which seems a bit random. Essentially, when you kill stuff it goes to the communal xp pool. When someone rolls a 20 if there are 5xp in the pool, they can spend it to flip their card and go to level 2 (the cap). It's pretty arbitrary and more than a bit frustrating when you just killed 8xp worth of stuff but can't roll a 20.

The game is OK, but I think Descent is a better buy for what is a pretty similar product. Admittedly, I could be soured to the game because of WotC's awful demo, but it just wasn't that great. The miniatures are pretty decent, but they aren't very clear (what's a ghoul vs what's a ghast for instance). Since almost everything is undead, you'll be turning over a lot of figures to squint at the small type on the bottom that identifies them. The one thing that the game does well is force pacing by making shit continuously happen. If you don't explore (and sometimes when you do) an event occurs, which is usually bad stuff. this forces you to be efficient about combat and not necessarily go for the total clear.

Still sounds interesting to me. I've never played Descent (I don't think) but I'm sure I've heard mention of it by the group before.

| Prolly only RDub

...will have any interest in this video, but check this out:

Tarp Surfing

It's done in a bro kinda way, but man, it looks like fun and if R Dub was still stateside, I'm SURE we would get this going with some of the Old Guard!

I'm game if anyone else is!

Yeah, doctor nina lee-tall is completely stumped on my case. She doesn't deem my nose bad enough for surgery, but not only that, she is perplexed that my nose would be presenting such a problem for me. So she's recommending me to go see a higher authority on this today at UCLA to get another opinion. I'm heading there after lunch. Surgery is definitely the last option as Dr Nina mentioned that a surgery on me right now would obtain that much results (or she thinks) unlike Ryans case where the difference would be like night and day.

So I am in limbo, purgatory hell.

Ruday, yeah, if you can live with CPAP, coolio. Surgery is definitely the more expensive route.

So i had another phone interview today - frigin wierd, lasted about 5 minutes, but made me wonder why the guy even called me in the first place. Seemed like he was completely disinterested.

I left kinda early Jael - like midnight - the guys stayed for awhile at least. They kept announcing "2 for 1, all night!" but I never looked into it. We'll have to ask the boyz off the grid - no evidence moochacho! The "product" was fine - it doesn't really blow my mind like when I was 18, but otherwise, no complaints.

Glad you're doing good with the post-surgery stuff Ry. I'm gonna see what the doctors tell me - it sounds like I have major blockage but they'll have to refer me to a specialist to check it out. For now, I'm cool with the machine, and besides, I'm back with my ex who's a nurse and who told me I had sleep apnea in the first place, so she's down with the vadar-mask.

| I feel ya Jael!!!!

Wow. That post was too much...

I have been out of the loop. I just got internet and TV in my place today. It seems it takes like 4 or 5 days to get someone here to install. Plus my place is far from the main street, so the cable guy had to install some amps in order to get a stronger signal to the cable. Boy, I really learned a lot today.

First, congrats on your wedding Mr. Enoto! I wish I could have been there. I went to a different wedding that day, and although it was quite a bit closer to my parents' house, I would have had way more fun with y'all.

Rude, I would call my surgery a complete success. I am still in what my doctor called the "healing phase" so I have to keep squirting salt water up my nose, or I have to swim (she said it has the same effect). I do know I sleep better. My only evidence in this is that I wake up more refreshed. If I don't squirt water up my nose, I still snore a little if I sleep on my back, but it has decreased significantly. As a side effect, food tastes differently. I have noticed that spicy things are more spicy, and, of all things, meat is more flavorful. Weird. My breathing is just way easier all the way around. I dunno, as a single dude, I couldn't see wearing the CPAP machine. This was definitely a better choice for me.

Jael, I am sorry you didn't get a chance to check out my surgery. While I am still not sure what you would have seen, I totally would have let you look. I didn't do a very good job of budgeting my time while I was in Cali. Another time perhaps. What have you decided as far as your fate?

Aloha everyone.

...and the blog has achieved new levels.

| How were the Vixens? Were They Succulent and Robust or Not So?

The cost sounds fair. Did you get any lap dances though and how much were those (40?) ? the cover for 10 plus drinks is alright, quite cheap actually. I wonder why the reviews said 20. I just realized that the reviews were on weekends, so maybe that's Saturdays charge. Yeah, I'm so over looking at just dry titties without any lubricant action. for 40 bucks = 1 hour massage!

| it was free protein shake night

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN! Also, $10 bucks to get in (but $4.50 to park.) Buy 1 $6 water. Then, it's the same ol same ol. It was fun, but I think I'm finally over that stage in my life. I'm ready for swinger clubs.

| Yeah Have Fun in Mejico. so details... how was it?

Spill it!

| No complaints!

Nice seeing you... hope to see you again soon!

| So How Was Big Ed's Home Dinery Last Night???

| J Team pictures are up

For all of you interested, The J team wedding shots are through post-processing and up on the Polychromatic site.

jr0n, yes Limbo is very cool. I really like the black and white, grim, almost sinister feel to the game. It is very innovative in it's stylization and plays well as the moderately challenging platform puzzle game that it is. Not nearly as demanding as say Braid, but enough to be interesting to be sure. Each puzzle is a little different and I have not run into repeat puzzles in my play time. The speacial lady friend really took to the game too.

I am in for GenCon. We all just need to jump at it and purchase tickets as soon as they go on sale. That will be incentive enough for me. It is about time, it will be 10 years since the last trip if we go next year.

With regards to ManCon. Let's rock that shit. As far as I am aware, the only weekend that may not be free for me is the same weekend as Rude-dog, the weekend of 9/9. I may try and go down to LA since my Father's b-day is 9/9. I am not sure I can elect my place for a weekend, unless the lady friend is out of town. So far as I know, she does not have plans that month. We may need to experience the "Manager Special" at the Embassy Suites again.

D>M>

I'm doing Gen Con 2011 and so is Dennis! (At least at the wedding he mentioned it.) Let's DO IT!!!

And ya, whatever kinda Man-Con works for me - I'm always free on weekends, so it wouldn't be too hard to get up there. I MIGHT be out of town for my bday weekend (9/9) but otherwise, let's do it.

Oh yeah, alternative man-cons could be: Camping Man-Con!

I've been meaning to figure out some way to play online, but it's fallen by the wayside with so much else going on. If someone else could take the reins there, there would be a much higher chance of something actually happening....

Let's talk cons! So first of all, we should try and get together for a Man Con weekend. Is there a weekend in September (besides Labor Day) that would work for people? I think they all work for me.

One thought I had was if anyone has their home free for a weekend, maybe we could just do the whole thing at someone's place instead of getting a hotel (although the Embassy Suites is always great too). I'm not sure that the wifey-friend will be out of town any weekends that month, Aeryk or Enron any ideas? If not we can go the hotel route.

Also GenCon. I'm doing it next year. Let's go! I think it's going to be a couple months before tickets go on sale but as soon as they do, I'm going to go ahead and buy tickets and just commit.

Enron I saw you've picked up Limbo for Xbox. That's a creepy little game, isn't it?

-I love this idea for cheap-DIY minis: Link
-Jon needs to run us some weird play-by-email or something Rouge Trader