My thoughts on some shit

1. GenCon: Hooray! Yes, we must roleplay again. I think we should plan on playing twice or even three times. It would be neat to play something that we can finish. I am already haunted by memories of horses never recovered, adventurers stranded in Limbo, nightmare-plagued gentlemen setting off on steamship voyages with no resolution, Skaven never slain, Marvel Super Heroes who have fought no crime, and Top Secret S.I. agents who still remain behind at headquarters, waiting endlessly for an assignment that will never, ever come.

2. I am in the same boat as you Eric in terms of wanting to play and wanting to run. I guess realistically we might not have time for a tag-team RPG experience, but maybe we will! I'll plan a quickie Savage Worlds adventure or something. Something weird like a SW Deadlands or 50 Fathoms pirate fest or something. (SW is the only system I am still very familiar with, and the only one I plan on buying any more supplements for -- I'm just getting stubborn as I get older.) Or maybe I will run that exact same Chill adventure Rudy ran years ago. Oh, man. I sort of want to do that now.

3. D&D is fun, yeah. Does the Monte Cook alternate shit look good? You're talking about the martial campaign book?

Oh yeah. Thanks for the painting tips and the morale boost Eric. I tried washing my Ironclad last night, but the mix proved surprisingly tricky to get right. Basically I managed to murk up the base coat, without actually getting very much of the wash into the cracks. So now he looks like he has to go through the Cygnaran Jackwash. I'll try again in the next day or two and see if I can't improve matters somewhat!

RPG's, Kubla Con and Beyond!!!

- It just dawned on me that I am probably not going to make it to Kubla this year, unless of course it's cool to travel with a two month old baby. Though, I'm pretty sure it isn't so, I think I'm going to be skipping this years SF festivities. Just to let you guys know like 8 months in advance. However, each and every year after that, me and little bugger will be attending!

- RPG's at GenCon. I want to play something, and I kinda want to run something too. I'm going to ask for opinions and preferences from ya'll attending, and will then either make my decision based on some, all, or none of the input.

For some reason, D&D seems really fun right now! I picked up Monte Cooks other new players handbook, as well as the DMG II. Both look neat. Also, WFRP is always in the mix as well as good ole Call of Cthulhu. Infact, I found the game journal from Beyond the Mountains of Madness, but no character sheets. So, maybe the Starkweather - Moore expedition will continue! Alexander Smoxacoc sails again!

I'm not really skilled, or experienced running D&D, but it might be fun to do a dungeon crawl of death. Tomb of Horrors anyone?

Ideas? Opinions?

Nice

That was a pretty funny little commercial Rude. You need to have JP sing "Happy Birthday to me" while the animation draws itself out.

In an unrelated note, I found this blurb at Wikipedia on Caltrops:

In role-playing games, some players refer to 4-sided dice as "caltrops" because they are painful to step on should they fall to the ground.

Students sometimes play practical jokes by twisting staples together to form a mini-caltrop, then placing it on a hard seat where the victim will sit on it. Such devices are often referred to as "ass scorpions."

ELzar: Good having you up in SF. Good times were had. Did the trip back to LA go smoothly?

D>M>

AT COMMERCIAL!

I made a commercial for the action team. Here is the Steve?I'mSteve! character. God artpad is SO friggin fun (watch in higher speed for most fun.)

-XXX

click on to here!

In SF @ 9.15 on Southwest

Also, the game tonight was a blast! Some brutal fights, one time a hockey man didn't want to fight and another hockey man wanted to fight, so he dropped his gloves and attacked the other hockey man. The attacking man punched the other man square in the face as he was trying to fight back and the punched man fell to the ice and covered his face. When he got up, the kids with the shovels had to come on the ice to shovel all the blood off the rink from the man's face.

The offender was Ken Belanger, nicknamed "The Sandman" for obvious reasons. Good times.

Very exciting game, good to be back in a rink buying $10 beers again. Seriously. $10.

On the subject of games: Did someone say AA?

I'm in. I don't play the boardgame anymore since hawking it on ebay for a good 35 dollars!!! Anyways it would be interesting for a quick 2 hour online battle.
Although there's quite a few boardgames available for internet play.

On WoW, yeah... everytime I see the letters "w""o""w" in sequence or if I say "Wow!" I would immediately associate it with World of Warcraft before any actual intended meaning. It'll take fuckin' years before that ingrained training pops out of my head. I used to have the same correlation with certain games like Ultima IV and "We built this city" by starship. Today, I can say that that association has finally been erased from my mind. Thank god.

So I'm bored this sunday. Normally I spend time visiting my girlfriend in Manila City, but due to poor planning, I couldn't reserve any hotels. So I'm stuck out here in the province near the factory. I'll probably go play a little basketball but that is only the endurance training for my next endeavor: GOLF!
I really want to get good at golfing so I'm dedicating every sunday in going to the driving range and hopefully a game or two here and there. It'll be great.

Speaking of Online Morph games, have you seen Dungeons and Dragons? Looked kinda interesting, except the part about being a "team effort" game. Team effort in Instances *shiver*

You know what I've been playing the hell out of lately?

The PC version of Axis and Allies. Good fun! I think we should get a game going with all of us fellas.. it supports up to five players and takes a SHITLOAD less time to play online because there aren't a million pieces to set up, move, etc.. If you guys are interested, I'll copy/mail the CD rom to you so we can all play. That'd be sweet.

WoW

I remember when Denis, Rudy and I made the trek up to SFCon (aka the weekend we just sort of came up for no reason), we did two things in the car: We listened to the 2nd Mitch Hedberg CD for about 45min, and we talked about WoW for the remaining 4 hours. Straight. It was weird, and I think there were probably some brief "off-topic" items thrown in for good measure, but I think we talked the whole way.

I think the Action Team Guild had been founded by that time, and we were probably like 30th level. Rudy had joined Nature's Vagina, and Johnny was reluctant to play. I think the story of the trip was Dave and his fucking flute.

Also on that trip, Johnny played briefly on the laptop and created Allodin the Paladin, and for him, the rest they say was history. I think Johnny caught up with us (30ish lvl) in like 2 days, maybe less.

The first thing I did when I got home that night was hop on....

Now that I think about it, I think that was the weekend that allowed me a break from WoW and then when I got back, I lost interest in DocNorvell and created some Undead, and then just quit altogether, so that means I was, or was very near to 40th lvl. The whole paying for a steed (me) vs. getting one for free (Jon, Johnny and Rudy's vagina friends paid for his) REALLY put me off the game.

I miss those crazy 4 hour nights occasionally. "must.. finish... instance..." Whenever I eat delicious fruit and nut mix from Costco, which was my staple for late night instancing, I am reminded of the good times.

Anyone still have that posed picture we took after finishing the instance by the beach with the giant turtle?

No more rambling.

Oh yeah, Mike's home. We are going to a Kings game tonight.

That's pretty damn funny....

My boss seriously talks about his World of Warcraft character ALL THE TIME. I mean, in the geekiest possible manner, throwing around words like "proc" and "toon" with reckless abandon. Listening to his constant discussions with random people that come into the room, I have a taste of what it was like for people who didn't play the game listening to us talk about it (like Enron). Oh well. Man, we could talk about that damn game for hours! Still could, probably.

*sigh*

Anyway, tomorow is Hockey Day, huzzah! Yes Aeryk you will have to see my mostly-painted robuts. You can laugh at my efforts, then slowly tear my ticket into pieces. I guess it'd be a hassle for you to bring yours up huh? Too bad 'cause it'd be nice to get into a three-way battle. I suppose we will have to settle for our usual three-way bucoffee.

The minis I ordered online came the other day (free priority shipping = teh awesome), and I spent this morning prepping them. I feel so paternal as I patiently scrub their little metal hides free of grease using an old toothbrush and some soap and water and then gently file down their bases.

Anyway, what I ordered was, I wanted to fill out my Cygnar and Cryx armies to 500 points so that hopefully Enron and I can get in some bigger games and maybe start using the campaign rules. If you order online it's pretty cost-effective to put together an army. You can do a pretty solid 500-point army for about $85, maybe with an extra merc or two. That simultaneously is, and is not, a lot of money.

So, yeah, go me!

LOL! WoW gets the "plague"..

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=10760041


I don't play the game, but still find this immeasurably funny/ironic.. that a medieval game has "the plague".. hehe..

Check it out...

Nintendor released and hands on demo'd the design and functionality of their new console's (Revolution) controllers. I dont know what to think other than I will have to try it to be able to decide whether or not I would be into it. Basically it is like a gyroscopic mouse orother controller. Meaning, interacting with games via the remote can be a simple as physically moving it spatially and it will interpret the movement. I have seen these before for computer UIs, but they never really caught on. Check it out:

Nintendor Revolution Controller

Sorny

They have really dropped the ball the past few years. They used to be a real developmental and innovative powerhouse. Now they just lag. I mean the Walkman and the Playstation were both amazing products. Sony always had a great sense of quality and formulas for design. That all seems to have been forgotten with the PSP and their first two generations of 'iPod killers'/abominations. I mean come on, ATRAK only encoding? What kind of retard thought that was going to sell like an iPod? They just do not get it. How can a company that was so proactive with both R&D and strong marketing research find themselves so far off the beaten path? PSP just seems to be a continuation of the erosion of their marketing research. Shit they have the design, but they seem intent on driving it over a cliff. Moral of the story: “Worry less about mods and a hell of a lot more about giving people a reason to spend cash on their lucrative licensing income machine”, aka games of quality. MS went through all that shit to prevent Xbox mods for Linux. In the end they wasted a shit load of resources on an almost non-existent percentage of the market. And for what? How much did they really lose in sales? Maybe a few hundred to a thousand terminals? On the otherhand how much did they waste in their legal departments? Just damn short sighted. If you are going to sell a product at a loss on the hopes of making up the lost profit on recurring add-on sales, you have to accept the responsability for producing desireable products. Dont' pass the buck. None of this litigation and DRM shit that just mascarades as copyright protection when in fact it is just a disguise for lazy companies unwilling to be competitve and innovative. The number one issue with large companies right now. It’s the whole adage of tripping over a hundred dollar bill to grab a nickel. Read: Music industry. As Joel would say: "ASSHOLES".

Perhaps Magnetbox or Panaphonics should enter the fray

PSP is Pee Pee Again

So, I picked up one of my favorite games of all time, Burnout, for the PSP today, biked home, popped it in, and the fucker required me to upgrade to 1.52 (ie. the firmware I can't play Doom II or any emulation with). Sonsofbitches! So, I promptly biked back to Target, spoke with a manager, and exchanged the game for the XBox version.

Did I mention that no where on EA's website (except for digging in the support section), and no where on the packaging is it mentioned that a firmware update is required? That means that a majority of the people out there that buy Burnout, and refuse to upgrade the firmware, will be stuck with the game because policy at most (if not all stores that sell games) is that you cannot return opened games.

What this tells me is that I have to use the emulation to it's fullest because from here on out, Sorny is going to tell me what I can and can't do with a product that I own. I can play games that they occasionally release, I cannot play emulators.

Agreed. Until there is an emulation hack for version 2.0 of the firmware, I am not buying another PSP game. Sorny is really shooting themselves in the foot here. I know I am not in the majority, but I am certain there are a fair number of people out there that will make the same decision I am making.

As I understand it, Ultimate Doom, and Hexen work as well! I just need to dig those up somewhere...

Rock On

Well, I received the tickets in the mail for the Kings. Good deal. I also received an automated call from TicketMasterThieves that there indeed is a legitimate official double header. Sweet.

I think making our own podcast could be fun. But I bet once we get finished recording it, we would decide it was in the best interest of the world that we did not share our crass minds with everyone. Too many humanity points.

Rude: I think Jon has the old tapes in LA. A little Convynshun Thyme and Full body massages.

Elzar & Pump: You would be proud of Jon. He is hopelessly addicted to minitures. He is even painting them with true desire to have them look good on the table. Sweet.

D>M>

Yeah, I don't get Sony's release-no-games strategy. It's bizarre. If they capitalized on the way people have been using the device, as a sort of multimedia fucking grab bag where you can put your own software and stuff on it, it'd be awesome. Instead they try to kill the one thing that makes the platform interesting.

It's almost like they intentionally wanted to drive people to the DS, which is now finally coming out with some really cool games.

Oh and Jael, to quote the abridged Star Wars III script:

IAN MCDIARMID
So, now that the movie is over,
would you say that the prequel
trilogy was worth making?

DARTH HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!