Game Masters

It's never too late to develop your babies into game-prodigys!

By age 18, they'll be winning all the tournaments in Strategicon then regional tournaments in Kubla and finally the prize in Gencon! (something we all have failed miserably to do)

I would generally advise to stay away from D&D and others regimen which I attribute to atrophy of the caustic brain. From years of experience, we only

1) consumed obsene quantities of chips and coke - gaining precious pounds. Have to remain slim and fit to run around the dealer room and the game rooms
2) Mind waster - spending 3 months figuring out how to build my castle and equip my followers of my legendary 40th level paladin wasn't good.
3) make you do crazy shit - Like kill your friends, and slay innocents and kill 213214135 gagillion orcs and goblins.

So the following is my formulated regimen

AGE
5 - ROBORALLY - never too early to start em off with cards. Cards is key.
6 - Battlemasters - Not a great game, but lots of large miniatures to prevent ingestion. Easy to see the pieces and really get them into miniatures
7 - TIKAL, SETTLERS (european games in general) - Starting them in dice and counting is crucial at this age of development. Increases the capacity to strategize
8 - WWII stuff - This is when you start breaking them into hard core war games to develop their tendencies for that killer instinct, death, and mayhem without giving them nightmares
9 -

more to come.. I'm hungry.

EDIT\: RuDAY: I got bored and d/l'd eveonline. So far, the graphics are nice, but really it's a bunch of stars and a cool looking ship. What gets me though is it seems the game is a bigger grinder than WOW ever was? I'm mining 5000 isks worth of stuff and it takes 30 min to do it in my dinky ship. one courier mission gives me 30k. I'm thinking missions are much better. But then again if you have mining gear and a decked out ship i can see mining can be ultra profitable (assuming you have that huge ass cargo hold) IDK. it's kinda boring, like watching paint dry, mining that is.

anyhow, i'll dick around with it alittle more, but I don't see it yet.

johnny

Nevar Forget: 8/11!

I'm pretty much up for everything on your list. I'm especially interested in trying out Battlestations. Never played T&E either, and I really liked Caylus. RPGing will definitely be in effect. I'll run whatevuh!

I don't think Superiority is due out until August 30th. Those lucky bastards at GenCon are the only ones that have it so far. Bastards! I believe that the new epic Warcasters will release on the same day as the book, so it should be a jolly day at EndGame.

Yo Myke, do you live in the town where I live yet?

OMFG

I would absolutely love to play DnD or CoC. Love it, never get to play it.

Warmachine and Epic would be good. I hear Tigrus and Euphrates iz good. Never had the chance to play it. I definely would like to play eLzar the gozarian in some ASL and Twilight. I really liked the dynamics of twilight. Ill play most anything else anyway.

Prostitution aside, Last con reminded me of the greatness of bang for your buck. jr0n and I didnt get much time at the con, but what time we did was jammed packed full of gamin' fun. Those guys were 'core. Man they were even EpiCon core. Rule. ElZar we will do it. Anyone else wanna join the gamin' bauston ha'dcore stylie, you are totally invited. Rule!

Minimum number of dorks has been acheived. 3! Anyone else is gravy the way I see'z it. David should be an easy prey, I know he is good for it. Ja -El is probably out. Maybe motobyke is in. Dennis... Tell him they are giving away minitures and elven blow jobs. Get him hooked, let him down easy once we get there. Rude and Ry, maybe can give us a cameo or two.

One potential issue: Nov 16-19 is kind of a wierd date. I will make it. Besides I dont think I will be in LA for T-Day so it all works out nicely for me, but others (read: Jon and Myke) may have issues with the timing, depending on work schedules, other travel plans, etc... Ill be spending good old T-Day in SF. First T-Day away from home well, I dont think I have ever been away from the family on T-day before. Wierd.

D>M>

PS They updated the GenCon site. The GenCon or bust index page is kinda looking like a bad blog.

Dear Enron,

Best. Post. Evar.

Love,

Eric

In Other News

The games I wanna play at GCSC:

- Tigris and Euphrates
- ASL
- Battlestations
- Commands and Colors: Ancients
- Hammer of the Scots
- Dungeon Twister
- D&D or CoC
- Twilight Struggle
- Wizard, or David and Goliath, or MU, or Tichu, or some other trick taking/ladder card game.
- Samurai
- War of the Ring
- Winner's Circle
- Modern Art
- Maybe even Warmachine/Epic.
- Blood Bowl, but probably not.
- MAYBE Caylus
- A crap load of other stuff I will be thinking about between now and then.

All I know is I need to get the most bang out of my gaming/free time buck I can, so I am relictuant to play mini's and the like, they just seem to take too much time, not that ASL doesn't, but you know what I mean...

What is the minimum number of dorks we need to start making this happen?

Circle Jerking to the Oldies

GenCon SoCal? I'm in. I have been itching for some good KhunVenShun Thyme action for a while.

I would love to roll Epic and/or any WarMachine. I would Love To!

Elzar is probably All chits, All the time! anymore. I guess he even built a chit proxy for wylie and created a grided map of his home so that he can simulate wylie's movements upon the map. I hear he even makes moral check die rolls to see if wylie is successful at rolling over. What a wierdo. By the time GenCon SoCal rolls around he will be fully immersed in Chit heaven.

jr0n: I am pretty excited about the new expansion. What is the official release date?

D>M>

"I hate all games except the most excellent chit based baby simulation hit, 'Advanced Sleep Leader', where you too can watch your favorite child in a real time simulation." -Pliny the Elzar

I am SO in for GenCon this year!

Been looking through the spoilers for the new Warmachine book (I can't help myself) and... Enron, I think you are gonna be a real happy man.

We should bust out a big game at GenCon this year! Aeryk would you be willing to dust off your Khadoran maniacs? Or are you in chit-only mode? :) I STILL haven't ever played you!

We could also get a game of Epic going too. Ub3r 0ld sk00l!

I'll run an RPG too. I haven't played any RPGs in two years. This must be rectumfied.

Oh, I Love Games

I just have no one to play them with, and have little time to play them when the personel are around. I did play 2 games with Heather and her family at her family reunion a few weeks, months, days ago (I lose track). We played Samurai by Knizia, which is a spectacularly fun game of tile placement and area control, and I played her brother Dale at Memoir '44.

Other than that, I am pretty much more than ever into games, game sites, game thoughts, buying games, reading about games, and loving games.

Should this be a good starting point to rally the troops for GenConSoCal? I know Jon expressed interest, what about you Enron? You are usually good for a go, eh? With Denis in tow, and maybe even Dave (pending he gets money somehow again), that sounds like a good group. Any takers?

Wylie will be 8 months by then, which means that he still will be ahandful, so I might miss a day as I assist the Mrs. with baby control, and give her a much needed brak over the weekend. But I would LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE to get the boys together for a con!

I am going to play SO MANY GAMES! Or ASL all weekend long, time will tell....

Man, I'm bummed to not be at GenCon. Not sure why, but following it on my gamer websites is making me sad. Let's go next year!

On the plus side, I am officially shackin' up with my ladyfriend in a month and a half, so hooray that! Let's all go look at the puff dragon tattoo in celebration! (I warn you again: NSFW.)

No board games lately Aeryk? Did the grim spectre of gaming with me kill your love of boardgames again? Shit, that would suck. I've been thinking about giving HeroScape another shot. It's mellow enough that my gf might enjoy it. Plus the bits are so cool. I've got a neat bridge and forest that I've never used, and the new castle set is pretty slick too. Of course I do have a metal miniature hobby that is better-looking, more fun to play, and coming out with a major expansion this month. You know what would be awesome? If I could have 15 more hours in a day. That, and a pony.

Biometric Time card:

Our company just installed a new fingerprint time card machine. It's pretty cool. Fast and looks very neat. I don't know how accurate it is so that's to be seen after 1000 workers punch in daily, time in, lunch, time out, overtime. So it'll be interesting to see if there'll be a lot of problems.

Somethingawful has to be one of teh funniest tings evar.












Full comedy goldmine here:



http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3952

Teh?? The blogger is not so user friendly-like for pictures and linkies and whatnot.

It makes me sad.

/emo

My continued rant/seminar.. (LOL, I'm draining all the humor, FFS!)

This is also why many health insurance companies are trying to change their registration to "for profit" instead of non-profit (which I've always thought was a stupid and outright lie of a title, anyway).. which would basically allow them to be much more dynamic in their ability to keep up with costs vs. premiums. As it is, it takes 12-18 months for a rate change to take effect, and then it takes another 12-18 months for these changes to fully propogate through the system.. so we're talking of a lag time of 3-4 years in a lot of cases from the point at which the request is filed, plus the year or more of analysis before the fact to figure out it is needed in the first place.

I think medical care (and public education, for that matter) should all require people to pay up front for routine services so that there is a tangible interaction and an awareness of cost/benefit. In the public education sector, make it mandatory for people to spend their money (call it a voucher, or whatever), and have it returned to them via tax break or by whatever means works (the voucher system, again, is a decent way of doing this). On top of that, fund schools by county instead of neighborhood so that anyone can send their kid ANYWHERE in the county for the same cost.. and competition ensues to improve the quality of schools to attract the best students because money is no longer a factor.

Anyway, I digress.

Yeah. The big problem over the last 5+ years or so is that while the costs of doing business have been going up for doctors at an alarming rate, their ability to pass those costs on to the consumer has been reduced by the inertia of health insurance companies' rate structures (that must be approved and modified by state commissioners). The process can take 12-18 months after the request is filed, and by then, usually another increase request has to already be filed again. The bureaucracy involved is rediculous. So, what has been happening (very quietly) across the nation is that in many states, doctors simply pull up their stakes and leave. For example, there was a period of about 3 months or so here in Las Vegas where there wasn't a SINGLE emergency room doctor. (No shit, I'm really not kidding). So, if you got shot, run over, or needed emergency care in any way you had to be flown to either Arizona or California by helicopter. The reason was that their malpractice premiums got increased from about $80,000 a year to about triple that.. plus or minus about $300,000 a year. And, without the ability to change their price/rate structure to reflect that change, they had really no choice but to go somewhere else. Some doctors have had to state that they no longer carry malpractice insurance, and that all their patients must sign a waiver acknowledging that fact, and that the patients must all deal directly with their insurance companies. This means no more co-pays or anything like that.. you pay full price at the doctor's office and figure out how much you can get back from your insurance carrier on your own.

As a result of all this, you can actually make a substantially higher income now as a nurse-practicioner or nurse-anesthesiologist because you don't have to pay for malpractice insurance as a nurse.

Roughly 70-90% of every dollar you pay for health insurance is going to pay for malpractice and/or product liability costs. Bullshit, eh? The average cost for "full" health insurance for a family of four is now edging towards $1,000 a month. When compared against the average dual-income family's gross income of $40,000 a year, that represents nearly a THIRD of net income, and that's before a single other expense or bill is paid.

I used to blame the attorneys (and still do to an extent for being enablers), but anymore, I just blame the Sheeple for their willful ignorance and selfish stupidity.

The truth behind the serial murders

Actually rude, I believe they will probably send someone to interview one of your friends or something as a character witness. I'll be sure to tell him about the time when at Strategicon XV or whatever I walked in to the room and caught Eric with his pants down to his ankles and enron giving quite an enthusiastic heave. You can surmise the shock on their faces when I discovered their little dirty secret. I was utterly repulsed by that cuz I'm no homo, despite Eric had said he wasn't, so I had to kill the both of them. The cafeteria stand served the incredibly delicious chicken salad and hot dog that afternoon. I think Jon said it was extra tasty. But shhh no one knows.

Ort: /signed. That's pretty well thought out actually. Guess that's what being in the insurance biz will do. The malpractice suits does draw some red flags and is a major part of the healthcare industry these days. And then you don't know how much of it is also hyped by insurance companies to hike rates, which also causes rates to go even higher.

Oh my god, a fuller trailer for the Borat movie. Looks SO good. cLacK!

First part of the investigation thingy went down today, and at least my drivers ID is clean... no pending jail time so far!

The confessions from last week are still on my mind... good shit friends.

Healthcare, STFUG!

It's a very complex issue.

I would tend to disagree on your assertion that folks are any less or more sick than they once were on the whole. What I think is going on is that people are sick in new and interesting ways that didn't used to exist, and in ways that don't exist in the third world. Just as sanitation takes care of dysentery and other bacteria-related illness, so does it increase the cases of different bacterial problems such as internal flora imbalance, acid reflux (H. Pylori), and all the other fun intestinal disorders of the 1st world such as intestinal arythmia, IBS, Crone's disease, so on and so forth. For even more added fun, as the richest, most grossly consumeritis-plagued country on the planet, we've more or less turned to a food-supply of total artificial shit. This causes a grotesque disproportionate increase in obesity, heart disease and all the other great symptomatic illnesses like ADD and other brain-imbalance diseases that we're now learning are heavily linked to artificial coloring and flavoring in our foods.

On top of all THAT.. if people have all-encompassing health care, they are much more inclined to use it (especially when it's expensive.. what the fuck am I paying for, if I can't use this shit?). So, you get waiting rooms and emergency rooms filled with people who have non-critical viral problems (i.e., the common cold) but they are sucking up doctor-hours and driving up the cost of services. We really need to move (and are, btw) to a system of huge deductibles and self-met minimum outpayment so that people are less inclined to go to the doctor for every little ache and bullshit cold they have so they can get ineffective antibiotics.

Which brings us to what is really driving the price of healthcare up in this country. Two things:

First, the pharmecuticals are in bed with the politicans and are price-gouging the public.. because they can. This is a many-faced problem, not the least of which is the non-visible and indirect way in which we all eat the costs. It isn't like most anyone has to actually pay the cost of the prescription.. we (or our employer) pay a monthly rate that is established in no small part by the total aggregate costs of these outrageously priced prescriptions. But, because we don't directly have to think about the costs (it's built in to our insurance premiums).. "we" don't give a shit.

Second, the legal atmosphere in this country is such that we sue first and ask questions later.. much like the "first" problem.. people can't see the forest through the trees. The cause and effect are so disconnected and obfuscated that when juries make rediculous punitive awards in legal cases, everyone gets all happy and giddy.. not connecting the dots right back to their own healthcare costs and paycheck. The consumer gets the shit end of the stick in all regards, but because "I GOT MINE, SO FUCK OFF!" seems to be the ruling mentality of "the people" these days, no one gives a damn about the greater effects of their actions. People sue their doctors for all kinds of shit that isn't the doctors faults (this is not to say that things don't happen where people DO deserve awards and damages.. because they do).. it's pretty much automatic that if a baby is born with any kind of defect, a malpractice attorney is talking into their ear before they are even out of the hospital. So, you get situations where the malpractice insurance companies are forced to make huge sums of hush-payments and/or actual damage award payments.. which gets passed on to the doctors in the form of premium increases.. which then is attempted to get passed on to the consumer in the form of increased cost of services.. but, oh.. shit. That means that our insurance premiums are going up, and the costs of all these lawsuits are actually going to be paid by the general public? Fuck that! Time to strike! And, of course the union reps are too happy to stoke the fires of employees vs. employers instead of talking about what the real issues are. Divide and conquer.

Anyway. Man. Don't get me started, eh?


On the plus side.. I just had an old client track me down after me not being in the business for 2+ years just to thank me for talking him into making beneficial changes to his policy. He got t-boned by a cabbie running a red light and due to the changes we made, he hasn't been one dollar out of pocket. It was weird to be "talking shop" after all this time, but I was really glad to have been a help to this guy. Weird to get that call, but good-weird.