Vizionstudios

Kindle App Update

2011-12-07T13:30:00.001-07:00

My Kindle App on my Android Device informed me last night that there was a new update available.There was a note in the whats new screen that caught my attention. It reads PDF files now. I had to check it out.

First of all, I had to copy the pdf that I wanted to view into the Kindle App Folder. I'm not a fan of that. I have literally thousands of books in PDF format that I keep on a micro SD in my Android Device. (Notion Ink Adam, thanks for asking, I've been meaning to write up a review of it ever since I bought it) Making a copy of one or two that I'm currently reading wouldn't be too bad, but if I was browsing through files I would definitely use a different program.

The File I decided to go with is a Monstrous beast of a thing: 196 pages, two columned text, and Illustrations; it has crashed every single PDF reading App I own (there's a caveat to this I'll get back to in a minute.) I think the PDF is just not optimized, it's a fairly slow document to deal with, even on my PC.Kindle Handled it Like a Dream. My only complaint is that it doesn't have a cover in the Kindle App, but I can probably figure out how to resolve that on my own.

Now to the Caveat. I was reading an article today from someone about getting past the jpeg2000 problems that iPad's Acrobat reading applications have, and I realized that I have the Android version of the Adobe PDF viewer that the author was referring to. So I tried my Monstrous beast of a file in eZPDF Viewer, and it handled it just fine; it must have had an update, because last time I tried it in the program it crashed. Kindle does have an Advantage over the eZPDF viewer...it's free and saves your position in the book automatically, but ezPDF Viewer handles Outlines.

Quick Update, this morning I was looking at some files and noticed that when I select a PDF file it now asks me if I want to Open it with Kindle, It opens but does not add the Book to your Library or remember the last page you were on. I did a little Test, and ezPDF Viewer does remember the last page you were on. (There are probably limits to this—I didn't test it extensively). I think I'm going to be reading using ezPDF Viewer for a while now. I was not using it before, because it turned pages slower than Adobe's Viewer, but that seems to have changed.

Another Update. I discovered a functionality in ezPDF Viewer that could be useful—it can read the PDF file to you in a Simulated Voice. It's not perfect, but I've heard worse.

Moleskine vs. Leuchtturm1917

2011-11-03T23:42:00.000-07:00

I know I said I was getting back to blogging. I wrote this a while back, my server where I host all my pictures was undergoing some maintenance, and now I have finally posted it. --Enjoy--

My brother introduced me to the Moleskine. Let me quote from their website.

Moleskine® was created as a brand in 1997, bringing back to life the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin. A trusted and handy travel companion, the nameless black notebook held invaluable sketches, notes, stories, and ideas that would one day become famous paintings or the pages of beloved books.

These notebooks are based on notebooks made by small bookbinders and sold in stationary shops in Paris in the late 19th–early 20th century, Moleskine was a nickname that Bruce Chatwin called his notebooks by.

Here is a picture of a couple of my Moleskines:

I have Several, and after trying out a number of different ones, I decided that I liked the quadrille (gridded) paper the best. I purchased and carried several of the smaller ones before I ever considered buying a mid-sized one. As it turns out I really like the mid sized one, and I carry it almost everywhere.

As my last Moleskine was nearing completion, I happened upon a Leuchtturm1917. From what I can tell, Leuchtturm1917 is the notebook that Moleskine thinks it is (I stole that line from another blogger). Leuchtturm was founded in 1917, which seems to be the time period that Moleskine bases their books on.

But let's talk about what differentiates the two. A common practice among Moleskine users is to set aside a page or more to be used as an index/table of contents, which requires that you go through the book and number the pages. Leuchtturm has pages set aside particularly for this purpose and the pages are pre-numbered.

I've never had a problem with the paper in the Moleskine, it seems to handle the ink from my favorite pens without problem—but I guess fountain pen ink doesn't work very well with them. The Leuchtturm paper apparently alleviates this problem (except in the case of very wet inks). I can't really speak for that, but it's nice to know they have thought of it.

The Leuchtturm I have is the same height as the Moleskine I have, but the Leuchtturm is slightly wider without being unwieldy.

Moleskine and Leuchtturm come in a variety of types. Sketch (No Lines), Quadrille (Graph Paper), Ruled (Lines). The Leuchtturm has one up on the Moleskine though—they have a dotted grid. There is a grid of Dots on the paper, giving you the functionality of the Grid or lined paper; yet the dots are so lightly printed that the paper also works quite well for sketching. Speaking of lightly printed, the other Leuchtturm options (Grid and Ruled) are printed lighter that their Moleskine brethren. The patterns are not difficult to see, but they are very unobtrusive and get out of the way when scanning.

The Leuchtturm has tear out pages in the back, Moleskine does not.

They both have a convenient pocket in the back of the notebook.

They both have a ribbon bookmark. My last Moleskine bookmark frayed almost immediately after I purchased it. I thought it was made of a synthetic material, and tried to seal it using a flame, and nearly had a more serious fire on my hands. The glue came loose literally when I was moving the bookmark out of the way so I could write on the last page of the notebook.

The Leuchtturm bookmark appears to be synthetic and feels like it could take more abuse.

Moleskine wins in the elastic band category. The band on Moleskine is tighter, and feels more substantial than the one on my Leuchtturm.

The Leuchtturm1917 comes with Labels. It's my understanding that the intended purpose of these, is that they are to be placed on the notebook once it is full.and you are storing it on the shelf. They come with Spine and cover Labels.

So far I'm really liking the Leuchtturm better. I have the quadrille variety, I was hoping to get a dot grid—but the university book store (where I discovered the Leuchtturm1917) did not have that particular flavor. I'll have to order one online.

A Pic of My Leuchtturm1917:

I'm returning to Blogging

2011-10-18T12:37:00.003-07:00

Aaaaaaaand, I'm Back. It's been quite a while since I posted anything of significance.

Unemployment is one of the most time consuming things I've ever had to deal with and I'm happy to say that I am once again Employed.

Today I'm in a class I had scheduled before I was Employed—learning Javascript

2011-08-26T20:53:00.001-07:00

I updated the Graphic Design Page of My Portfolio Website.

http://www.VizionStudios.com

2011-08-24T17:17:00.001-07:00

Check out my newly re-launched website, share it with your friends, hire me , leave comments, whatever you want =D
http://www.VizionStudios.com

Show Reel

2011-03-29T20:04:00.001-07:00

This is some of the work I have done in animation. I decided to try uploading to YouTube for the first time since it launched in 2005.

Low Key—Instead of High Adventure

2011-03-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

Episodes like our Session of Deadlands: Reloaded last night, remind me that I am not terribly great at improvisation. I don't look forward to the sessions that rely a little too much on what the party might decide to do with information that you (as game master) have given them in a previous session.

Every time I tried to prepare myself for this session, I didn't know what to prepare. Once the session started, I realized that it should have been a pretty easy choice. For some reason though, some of the obvious things just weren't standing out in my mind's eye. I think because, I was mentally staring at the Big Picture, instead of the most immediately available information. I was using my mental telescope, instead of my mental microscope.

This led to a session that was very unfocused—because I was lacking mental clarity. The posse used information that they had at hand to make a decision on where to go next. I rolled for an encounter and sent a Giant Salt Water Crocodile after them, which they defeated handily. (The previous session's monster—a giant squid—took an very appropriate number of combat rounds to dispatch; I thought the Crocodile, being so much tougher would be very difficult for them to resolve. . . it sadly was not)

I realized, after they got headed in this direction that there were two things I should have done for the session prep.. Two things that I can do for every session of this game and be successful. One: Look at the direction they most likely will travel, and taking into account method of travel, devise a number of encounters (and check if there are any Plot Point related Adventures geographically on the way). Two: figure out what their contacts will want them to do. (i.e. Mr. White or the Explorer's Society, etc.)

I felt I was really off my game—I even forgot about shaken status, momentarily, when calculating damage from a monster. Next session should be better. I always worry that people aren't having fun, and try to keep the game the focus of the evening, but I was having focus problems myself, so I didn't succeed in keeping the game the focus of the evening. I don't think I've had a game with that much Out of Character Chatter, since the time I had Nine people show up for a session.

Three Posts in One

2011-03-05T14:09:00.001-07:00

I've had three sessions of Deadlands since I posted last, so I'll be writing about all of them.

The posse had a severed finger that had given them directions that pointed them in a south easterly direction. I had no plans for what would occur between their current location and the location the finger was leading them toward. I decided to try out the tables in the book designed for creating adventures on the fly.

I have to admit that it was very fun rolling that big, over-sized, D20 over and over again—while my players watched on in horror. I didn't tell them what I was up to and they seemed to grow more nervous each time the die rolled.

What's fun about tables, is that they give you very basic and specific information, but really it's not enough to go on. I ended up having them rowing their canoes, running into a Tugboat (that may or may not be haunted—which was fun to run). They then spent some time lost in the maze, following a mystical compass and then had to travel across land to get to their location.

The next session was a fairly straight forward following of the information in the book. By straightforward, I mean that they solve all the problems in completely different ways than what the writers of the book seem to intend. They broke into the facility in a round about way, they took out a number of guards in an unintentional way, using something that was intended to be an obstacle to the players, but ended up not being an obstacle to them. (Thank You Bad GM Die Roll—I chose to roll the dice to determine that outcome, so I had to go with it.)

Then the next gaming session was the reverse trip through the maze, to complete the mission that they were running. This time, I did all the dice rolling ahead of time. (During a break at a 4E Dungeons and Dragons game earlier that day) They were to encounter a Mexican Ship that was sinking, being fought over by two other Mexican Ships (the reason this was happening was there for back-story but it never came up in game)—there was to be a Giant Octopus, and a Whirlpool.

P's character ended up jumping in the water to take on the cephalopod (No Swimming skill, but he aced the roll) and ended up taking it out almost singlehandedly. I'm sure there were some rules about running that particular encounter, that I missed, but it sure made for an exciting time had by all so it doesn't matter—I'm the sheriff and that's how I run my game.

There was a lot of box text that I just read straight out of the book at the end of the session, it made for a rather dramatic end to the evening, and I think a good time was had by all.

Facebook

2010-12-21T18:38:00.001-07:00

I've been without Employment for Seven Months and I went to a workshop today. I need to work on my networking and for that purpose I have swallowed my pride and Joined Facebook—Though I kept my personal details at a minimum; Facebook does not instill confidence in me as far as security and privacy are concerned.

TRON: Legacy

2010-12-19T22:52:00.004-07:00

Loved it, Loved it, Loved it.

I loved the original from the moment I saw it. I didn't understand all of it when I was six, but my Dad is a Computer programmer and explained some of the Geek Speak to me.

I love that in the original, there was large touch based flat panel technology—which is just now starting to be commercially available.

Everything that needed to be in the new movie, was in it—except living bits, though there were some mantle ornaments.

We saw it in IMAX 3D. Not all of the movie was in 3D, so it gives your eyes some rest. The only problem here is that some of the 3D Trailers were Headache inducing (particularly the Morgan Freeman Voice Over IMAX Orphan Animals Hippie Movie). Also, some of the hand-to-hand combat action was so crazy that it became hard to read in 3D on such a gigantic screen, so I'm expecting a Transformers experience (I Liked it on the big screen, but what looked like a lot of flying metal at the theater was actually separate characters doing really cool things once I saw it at home on DVD [i.e. Optimus Prime Sword Hand vs. Megatron Mace Hand]).

Everything was a nod to the old film, and treated the original material with respect, while building on it in amazing ways.

This Movie Excited me in the Same way the original did. The original sparked my imagination about a Glowing Digital World inside computers where video game death-matches took place and Frisbees were the coolest weapon imaginable, and light Cycles the greatest form of transportation. Those same ideas are updated and if I were a six year old today, I think this movie would hit me the same way the original did back then.

When a movie is over, and I just want to sit through it again—I consider it a success.

One last thought, You do not have to be a fan of the original to enjoy the new film—it is written as it's own thing. Familiarity with the original just adds to an already good movie.

Another Non-Game

2010-12-19T16:31:00.001-07:00

Saturday I was invited to play some Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. The Players started Arriving around Nine in the morning and we started actually playing around Ten. There was a break around Noon for Lunch and then we continued play until Four.

One of my Deadlands players was also at the game, and when I asked him if he was coming to the Deadlands Game he flat out told me that he didn't like the game anymore since it became so easy for him to take out the Villains.

I told him, "Here's an Idea, don't maximize your bolt spell." To which he was somewhat speechless.

At that point, based on the people that were going to be able to make it to the game, I was going to Cancel it. Players that I wanted there for the more important Plot Points were missing from the list of people that were coming—but I called one of the players I hadn't heard from as of yet, and he was planning to be there, so I planned to run a game.

I read through the Plot Point during the slower portions of the D&D game.

When the time for my game arrived later that evening, the first person to show up, was the player who was at the D&D game and told me he didn't like Savage Worlds anymore and that he didn't feel like playing. (He's decided that he doesn't like it because of its lack of hit points—I think because he's a walking human calculator he has issues with that, I tried to explain to him that the effect is basically the same [i.e. you hit them over and over and over and eventually they go down, but the lack of a tangible numbering is currently bothering him])

So, I got the game ready and I was about to start, but in the back of my head I was thinking that I really didn't want to play with him there, and so many of my enthusiastic players missing. Also, having Role played for the better part of the day at that point, I wasn't sure I was mentally there enough so we bailed at the last minute (Literally. The Battle Map was on the table, Fate Chips were Handed Out, Everyone had their Character Sheets ready to go) and we played Betrayal at House on the Hill instead.

The Non-games seem to pile up at this time of the year. However, I think that the way I run the game, and my determination to play, prevents my games from suffering the Holiday Death that I've heard so much about on blogs and podcasts.

New Role Players

2010-12-14T18:33:00.001-07:00

I'm assistant Scout Master.

Some of the Scouts showed some interest in playing Savage Worlds—so I told them to Schedule a time and come over and that I would run a game for them. They voted and the consensus was a Pirate themed game.

They came over, we spend about an hour creating characters—a couple of the boys couldn't come until later so I created characters for them real quick and let the two that were there use them using the Allies rules, until the players showed up (one of them actually died—we brought him back when the characters player arrived).

I used the "Dead Men Tell No Tales" One Sheet Adventure that is available at the Pinnacle Website.

It was very fun playing with them. None of them know the rules, so there are no rules lawyers. When I do forget a rule and then remember it, they didn't get upset; they were having so much fun that they just rolled with it.

I spent a little more time than I usually do in drawing the map—then I forgot to take time to take pictures. I had them bring Lego Mini-figs, and when it came time to Put Figs on the map and play there was much rejoicing. Similarly, when I placed my Skeleton Figs on the Table the was much nervousness.

I made the Mine in the story a lot bigger and threw a few non combat problems at them as well. They were creative in coming up with solutions—and when it was time to stop playing they were not ready to end the session, and they definitely want to play again.

I Want a Mulligan

2010-12-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

The game seemed to go okay (mostly), but the more I think about it—I'm just not happy with the session.

My wife disappeared for most of the session to feed the baby. This led to some weirdness—should this happen again, the Figure of the Missing Player will be removed from the table until their return.

My player that I thought would not be back for a very long time, was back—everything was fine until the last scene, and he started acting odd, I can't even figure out what happened.

From now on I'm doubling all toughness numbers in the Campaign. Fanning the hammer, and Maximized Bolt Spells are really bugging me.

I was so distracted by the attitude weirdnesses that sneaked into the players during the endgame, that I forgot to use a Villain and I forgot to describe something important.

Maybe I will mulligan the last scene in a couple weeks, I really wasn't happy with how it turned out.

One Point of XP to all the players present.

Stops Speaking Mid Sentence and Just Stares Off.....

2010-11-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

Posting a Little Late this Week about Our Deadland's Game Saturday.

But first. . .

I have the best wife in the world. We've been participating in the Marriage and Family relations class for Sunday School. This is a class that the leadership of the church wants everyone to have an opportunity to attend. This is the third time the class has been offered this year, and my wife and I finally get to attend. In one of the recent classes it was discussed how a husband and wife should support each other's interests, it's nice taking the class and feeling that we've already got certain things going right with our relationship. I have to say that I feel very blessed to have a wife that supports the enjoyment that I get out of "Nerdy" stuff. I feel like we don't really have that confrontational man vs. woman thing in our relationship, that seems to be so prevalent in our society.

On a related note, I was listening to a Gaming Podcast recently, and the hosts of the show were commenting on some of the things that they hear on gaming forums, etc.—one of them that they hear more often than not is the: I would like to X but my wife won't let me... (where X is the playing of certain games, or spending time doing a certain hobby). They went on and on about how this is such a detriment to the relationship and such behavior is a sign of an unhealthy relationship.

When I hear these sort of things I realize how blessed I am. My wife is not against my playing of games, and in fact—more often than not she will participate. She enjoys crafty things like, making beaded watch bands, or flower hair clips—I don't necessarily participates, but I don't ban her from it entirely. She's not into the whole Zombie Apocalypse thing, but doesn't try to stop me from enjoying it. Just being around each other as we enjoy our various personal likes is enriching; for instance, I would never in a million years have voluntarily exposed myself to Pride and Prejudice, however it is one of Emily's great joys, when she is feeling under the weather, she Watches one of the Four Movie Versions that she owns and she reads it once or twice a year.

It took some time, but I am now familiar with the story, I can enjoy it, and yes—I have a favorite part. What's really great about this exposure, is that I have learned to enjoy something that I normally wouldn't have even given the time of day. (It's also really cool that there is a book, soon to be a movie that collides with one of the things I enjoy: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I still haven't had a chance to read it, but I'm definitely looking forward to it, and I can guarantee that I will probably enjoy it more than the people that are just checking it out for the Zombies, because I'm already so familiar with the original source material.)

So what does all this have to do with the game Saturday?

There was a Family party taking place that very night, and my Wife didn't even consider asking me to cancel the game (How Great is That?!). I still attended the party, so it wasn't like I was skipping out on the family (actively participating in-fact, I cooked the Steaks and the Potatoes), I just took the kids home and put them to bed like I normally would and then ran the game. My wife skipped the game for the family party (first time she's missed getting XP since the campaign began) and all is well.

So let's talk about the game. This session was supposed to take place last time, but I didn't have enough people. I had read through the material two weeks previous, but I had not looked at it again since—I wasn't exactly prepared.

The way the previous session left off was a bit of a loose end. The characters could choose to immediately follow up on the information given them (snagging the plot hook so to speak), or they could choose to go a completely different way.

The players that had shown up were an interesting mix. There was one person that is very out-spoken, there were two that don't speak up much. This made the deciding-where-to-go part of the evening really fun since I got to hear from the more quiet players in the decision making process.

The other interesting thing about this session, was that the Plot Point book was a little vague on one of the details concerning how the characters could get from point A to point B. In fact the general vicinity of point B was mentioned, but not how to find the exact location of point B. I went with a prospector, a prospector that was not all there in the head, and I played up his personality quite a bit—it was really fun making that character up on the spot.

It was a very heavy RP (Role Play) evening, with very few dice rolls. The dice rolls that were made were fun though. They at one point were pushing boulders off a cliff trying to hit a boat-full of pirates. I had them make a throwing roll for it, it made sense at the time.

I heard something great during the game. One of the players told me that if he could, he would have given me a Benny. Good Times.

Buried Alive!!

2010-11-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

My Saturday Savage Worlds Game did not take place. I only had My Wife and three others R.S.V.P. and one of them was unable to make it. I was not upset by this, since I was only marginally prepared for the evening.

We had a little Holiday recently, you may have heard of it. . . Halloween.

I had some birthday money, and wanted to get a new game for Halloween, but the game I wanted to get was sold out, I tried my favorite game store, the discount game store (Which looked to be closed for good), and the game store that's practically around the corner. None of them had a copy of The Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game.

Seven years ago, when we first lived here, we had a Halloween Party. I wanted to play a Halloween appropriate game at said party. The game I ultimately chose was Betrayal at House on the Hill. It took me a while to make that decision and when I went to get the game. . . no one had a copy—it had gone out of print and used copies were going for a premium.

So, I decided to go with another game that had piqued my curiosity, Zombies!!! I had seen some pictures of games in progress with hundreds of zombie figures on the table. I had heard it said that there can never be too many Zombies, and I had noticed that they sell Extra Zombies in bags of one hundred for a ten spot, and that they had Glow-in-the-Dark Zombies as well.

I was pretty new to the specialty board game scene at the time, I had not yet played a game, and then not wanted the expansion or expansions—and of course, I can never do anything half way. I found an E-bay auction that had Zombies!!! and two of its expansions (Zombies!!! 2: Zombie Corps(e), and Zombies!!! 3: Mall Walkers) for just a little more than the base game would cost. Could I stop there? No. I also picked up a bag of Extra Zombies (100 Glow-in-the-Dark—I'm kind of a sucker for Glow-in-the-Dark, I'm not sure why) and the other two available expansions, Zombies!!! 3.5: Not Dead Yet and Zombies!!! 4: The End?.

I really like the Zombies!!! games, but the people I generally game with are rarely in the mood to play it. I've still picked up Zombies!!! 5: Schools Out Forever, Zombies!!! 6: Six Feet Under, Zombies!!! 7: Send in the Clowns, Zombies!!! 8: Jailbreak, Zombies!!! 9: Ashes to Ashes, Humans!!!, Humans!!! 2: Sea Food, Martians!!!, Zombietown, Zombietown 2: Road Rage, Zombietown 3: Big Boom Theory, MidEvil!!!, MidEvil!!! 2: Castle Chaos, & MidEvil!!! 3: Subterranean Homesick Blues, plus extra Zombies in Standard and Glowing Varieties of the Following Types—Zombies, Zombie Babes, Zombie Dogs, & Zombie Clowns, Plus Extra Skeletons (MidEvil!!! Uses Skeletons instead of Zombies—Skeletons are just like Zombies with no flesh right?)

Zombies!!! is pretty much reviled in the Board Game Community, ranking only 5.65 out of 10 on Board Game Geek. I've yet to see a very positive review of it, nothing down right bad, nothing truly positive either. The Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game however, has ratings in the High seven to low eight range and I've heard reviews of even non-gamers really enjoying it. Which is why I really wanted it—if the game I love seems to be almost universally hated (I mean, come on, someone has to be enjoying it enough and buying enough copies for them to keep pumping out expansions) then the game that has the same thematic elements, but is beloved in comparison has to be fun, right?

Of course, when I have birthday money, and it's Halloween, and I'm in the mood for a new Zombie game, it's nowhere to be found (one of the game stores told me it was out of print)

So what do I do?

Save my money and buy it online of course. . . no. I ended up getting Betrayal at House on the Hill. It had recently come back to print.

If you've read this far, I'm impressed—I've been rambling.

Still wondering about the Blog Title up there? Since we didn't have enough people for me to want to run the game session, we played Betrayal at House on the Hill.

So, here's how Betrayal at House on the Hill works. You are exploring a haunted house. There are Six pre-painted explorer mini-figures and each figure has a corresponding character card; the cards are double-sided and have a different character on each side. The Character Cards are pentagons and have four character attributes, two physical and two mental. There are little plastic arrow clips that slide onto the card, and as your attributes are effected you slide them up and down.

When exploring the house you move through the number of rooms that equal your speed, when you encounter a room with an item, you pick a card from the item deck, read it aloud and keep it. When you encounter a room with an event, you pull the event card and read it aloud, follow the instructions and discard the card. When you encounter a room with an omen, you pull an omen card read it aloud keep it in front of you and then make a haunt roll. When making a haunt roll if you roll a number lower than the number of omen cards on the table, the haunt begins.

There is a chart in the Traitor's Tome that tells you which haunt to play (based on the room and omen card) and which player is the traitor (hence The Betrayal at House on the Hill). The Traitor then takes the Traitor's Tome and Reads the Haunt. The rest of the players take the Secrets of Survival book and read the corresponding Haunt.

The Haunt we played was called Buried Alive. The Survivors had to find their missing friend that was buried alive and dig her up before she dies. The Traitor's goal was to kill the survivors before they could dig up their missing friend.

It's a fun game.

I played again with some other friends on Monday, and the Haunt had no traitor, we had to fight our Evil doppelgängers.

Again, a very fun game. I've played two of fifty scenarios, and due to the house being modular in design, even if I played the same scenario again, it would be different. I highly recommend playing it—a great alternate since Savage Worlds didn't work out.

King Brian's Antics

2010-11-09T22:44:00.000-07:00

In March I tried to Purchase Darby O'Gill and the Little People on DVD, but it was sold out. I found it a month later and picked it up. I was looking at the DVD Case and noticed immediately that there was something wrong.

Still Don't See It? Try taking a look at it on the shelf.

King Brian is Definitely Up to His Tricks Again!

What Was I Thinking?

2010-10-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

I had a good time Saturday running the Deadlands game. Last session we were running an adventure that had nothing to do with The Flood, but right after I ended the game I figured out how to tie it in.

The Posse spent a lot of time trying to destroy a sort of MacGuffin (Not a true MacGuffin I guess, okay not really a MacGuffin, but I didn't really want to let them destroy it...yet) and I had a lot of fun creatively not allowing them to do so. Normally this is a type of behavior I frown upon, and in hindsight, I should have let them blow it up and then try to use it after the fact—that probably would have been more fun. Ah, Hindsight.

Then they got onto the next section of the plot. They had fun storming the most notorious prison in California. It was really fun for me to spend Bennies on a non-important extra that just happened to be a Wild Card. The only thing I regret is sticking to the map as far as what prisoner was in what cell. They found who they were looking for in the first cell they looked in. I fixed it though when I realized that the people in the cells would notice what was going on in the cell block and could in fact talk.

The mistake I made was having the Magic Dispelling Runes wear off while they were in the boat in the bay. The prisoner that was a Werewolf changed in the light of the Full moon and I didn't want to randomly attack certain extras quite yet (two of them were wounded pretty bad already) so I dealt cards. My wife needed to step away from the game (to feed the new baby), and since her character had been keeping an eye on the werewolf (not trusting him) I let her take her action, and she shook it.

I couldn't get unshaken and the rest of the players tossed him into the drink—and I still couldn't unshake.

I should have waited until they were on the shore.

Support Pakistan Flood VictimsDoctors Without Borders RPG Bundle (and Comic Bundle)

2010-10-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Back in January, Gamers Donated to Help Haiti. Now there is an opportunity to Donate via the same Organization, but this time in support of Pakistan Flood Victims. I must admit, I had not even heard of a Flood in Pakistan, I've really been out of the News Loop since I've been unemployed.

There are Two Bundles available via donation. An RPG bundle $25, and a Comic Bundle $10.

There were several things that Caught my Eye in the bundle, I'll Highlight them for the Curious.

4-Color: Super Teams Super Bases
@ctiv8
Accent Your Character: Standard British English
Adventures in OZ: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road
Alien Planets
American Artifacts
Age of Volondor: Midlands Map Set
Apocalypse Prevention Incorporated Worldwide: Europe
Autopsy
Avalon Design Elements: Asian Elements Set 5
Behind the Spells: Permanency
Blessed By Poison
Caltrops
Character, Infiltrator
Church & State
Contenders
Covenant
d66 Spaceport City Names
Dark Waters
Dhanurvidya & Varman: The Arms and Armor of India (4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons)
Disposable Heroes Cyberpunk Statix 1 (Anime 203X)
Divine Foes
Don't Rest Your Head
Dragon Warriors RPG
Exalted 2nd Edition
Fear Itself
Feudal Characters: Noble
Firepower Pass
Fort Triside
FSpaceRPG Air Grid 1 board maps basic
Gaslight Victorian Fantasy (OGL Version)
HarnMaster: Third Edition
Himmelveil Streets / WorldWorksGames / TerrainlinX
Hot War
House in the Hills
Hyperlite: The Sirius Treaty
Icons
Karmic Places: Revelation
Kingdom Builder Generator Pack
Kingdoms of Legend: World Guide
Legacy of Maela: Campaign Setting
Legendary Blades [PFRPG]
MADS: Quickstart Rules
Objective Interim Modern Combat System
Open Game Table: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, Vol. 2
OWG: The Original Witch Girls
Phaethos RPG: Core Rulebook
Pnumadesi Player's Companion
Scaldcrow Generic: Goron'Talteth
Spycraft 2.0 Rulebook - Second Printing
Starblazer Adventures
Sufficiently Advanced
Supplement I: National
The Cursed Chateau
The Pine Ridge Horror (Savage Worlds)
The Sanctuary Ruin (Blackmarch: Module 1)
The Sensitive [PFRPG]
The Ultimate GM Screen 2
The War of the Goblin King
The WatchGuard Sourcebook (Preview Edition)
Time & Temp: Paperless Office Edition
Undiscovered: The Quest for Adventure (Core Rulebook)
Unnamed Heroes #2
Unsung: Deluxe
Wild Talents 2nd Edition
Wrack & Rune
Zombie Death Town
[PFRPG] PaperCraft Legions: Titanic Clash!
[PFRPG] Player's Aid II: Monster Summoning Cards

Total Value $724.46

Then there's the Comic Bundle, which I wouldn't normally be interested in—except for the fact that they included some RPG Goodies in it.

2000 AD: Prog 1610
Alpha Gods OGN
Art of Vampire: The Masquerade
Cadre #1
Cwen's Quest Vol. 1
Dark Champions (Hero System)
Deadlands: One Shot
Descended From Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol. I
Equinox #1
Exalted Comic #1
Fana The Jungle Girl
Grumlahk's Troll Tales
Hawaii Star Manga Project #4
Heist
Jon Pay P.I. vs. Machine Gun Kelly
Livin' La Vida Dorka
Memoranda #1
Mouse Guard #1
Mutants & Masterminds, Second Edition
Roll Them Bones Unabridged Audiobook
Samhain
The Gunfighters of Korv Nikul : Sorcerers and Six-Shooters
The Uniques #2
Wombat Rue - Chapter 1: After Armageddon

Total Value $173.91

At the Hospital

2010-10-12T08:27:00.000-07:00

My Wife is in Labor—third Girl is on her way.

A Dungeon Crawl..............and Cheating!—Five Times!!

2010-10-11T09:20:00.001-07:00

Saturday's game went very well, with only one casualty (it's not what you think).

When we last saw our intrepid Posse they had been sent by their mysterious benefactor (Mr. White) to a small, nameless, mining town north of Virginia city to investigate the reason there had been no contact with the Silver operation. This was also my way of using an adventure in the Supplement book, Saddle Sore.

What I liked about this particular adventure, was that it had a system in place for generating a "Dungeon." The mine that the Posse is investigating is not mapped out completely, but each section of the mine/cavern system is abstracted; what the Posse encounters is determined by a card drawn from the deck of cards used for initiative.

In essence they were doing a dungeon crawl. Unusual for the setting, which made it a fun and unique experience. When we entered a new section of the Mine\Caverns, I would draw out the section in which the encounter took place, but I tried to make sure that everyone understood that this was just the part of the mine that they actually encountered something, in a half hour to an hour of in-game-time. When we got to the room that became the final encounter of the evening I had one of the players draw the cavern; he drew a bat-o-lantern, which turned out to be a very fun environment to deal with.

I think I need to be a little more mindful of the descriptions. I feel like I need to paint better mental pictures, particularly when it comes to environments. There's a lot to keep track of when being a game master, so I find there's always something I wish I had done a little better.

We started late, about 7:45pm if I recall correctly, and we played until 10:45pm. A three hour session, in which we had a total of four encounters, and about thirty monsters (Have I mentioned that I love this game?). Speaking of the monsters, I kept doing damage on the monsters incorrectly most of the evening, but when we got to the final cavern, I realized this and tried to rectify the situation—nothing wrong with the monsters in the final room of the night being stronger.

Truth be told, I think I get the math wrong a lot when playing this game. In my haste to keep things rolling, I might gloss over the arithmetic a little, I never really claimed to be strong in math. I think this caused some consternation with one of my players, who gets math the way I get art— instinctualy.

One of the things you do as GM, is try to make sure that there is a sense of danger; some actual challenge. If every encounter involved the posse just mowing over everything with no resistance, that wouldn't be very fun. So, if I feel the party is walking all over the monsters, I do things to ramp up the monsters. Flexibility like that, being able to adjust on the fly, is just one of many GM tools that every GM has to learn. Something that I might do, is roll one of the monsters as if it were a Wild card, instead of an extra. This gives them an extra d6 when rolling skill and attribute rolls (and you pick whichever die rolled highest).

I did that very thing last night, I had been doing the damage wrong all night, giving the Posse an incredible advantage, so it was getting near the end of the evening and I finally figured out I had been doing it wrong (it had been pointed out to me earlier, but it took me some time to put two and two together in my mind—yes sometimes I'm very slow), and started doing it right. I also rolled two of the extras as wild cards. On one of those two occasions, the dice exploded and I got a good damage hit on the character played by my friend that had drawn the environment.

He got up and left the room, mumbled something to my wife, and then left. My wife was playing also, but she is nine months pregnant and has trouble sitting on a kitchen chair with her feet not up for the duration of the game and thus was spending time between her turns on the couch; my wife was also playing Dr. Mario with the wife of the person that left, since she had just arrived, but felt the table was too crowded to join (also, she's not a huge fan of the game).
[Was that confusing enough?]

I overheard the word cheating, and I couldn't resist asking who had left and why. Apparently he had caught me cheating five times, and if I did it again he was going to murder everyone (his exact words) and he wasn't having fun anymore, so he was leaving.

Now, I may be bad at math, and I may forget or misinterpret rules from time to time (remember there are 157 pages of rules), and I may adjust difficulty on the fly—but one thing I am not, is a cheater. The only thing that is important, is that people are having fun. If I have to sacrifice the fun of a single rules lawyer for the benefit of the crowd, Mr. Math Wizz\Expert at Everything will probably walk out of my game again in the future.

I'm glad he didn't make too much of a scene. My wife wishes he'd taken his stuff with him, so it was a good thing he and his wife arrived in separate vehicles. Yes....yes, we mocked him heartily after he left. Yes, I hope he can come next time and have fun.

No Game

2010-09-26T00:01:00.001-07:00

Due to Lack of RSVP and RSVP in the negative, I called off the game for Saturday and went to Inception. It was every bit as good as people were saying it was. The funny thing about movies like this (well twisted plot with lots of room for unanswered questions) there's alway the people that think they're too cool to think it was good and think they understood the whole thing after 15 minutes into the movie. The friend that I went with and a group of people I overheard after the fact fall into that category. These people have forgotten how to have fun.

I think I missed a few things, and will need to see it again. I was certainly on edge for a good portion of the film.

I definitely recommend it.

Savage Cake

2010-09-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

The Cub Scouts have a Cake Auction/Pot Luck Soup Dinner every year as a Fund Raiser. This year, I had an Idea for a cake.

My wife covered the cake with orange (because that's what we had on hand), then I put on a one inch grid. Dropped some Dice and figures on and viola. The Zombie vs Robot vs Pirate vs Ninja Cake was born.

I had the Zombie and the Pirate and the Ninja on Hand, but I had to be a little creative for the Robot; I had a generic cake topper Soccer guy and spray painted him silver.

We included with the cake a copy of the Savage Worlds Test Drive Rules, and Character Sheets for a Zombie, Robot, Pirate, and Ninja.

Dicecreator's Dice Update

2010-09-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

I've had these dice on my person, almost since I received them. Yesterday I pulled them out of my pocket because I was playing with Handful of Heroes Figures with my daughter and wanted to give some structure to the play. I noticed that the Gear Die had developed a problem, the #2 Gear's edge has popped up.

Now to be fair, I have been very hard on these Dice. They have been in my pocket since April. They've been in my pocked at scout camp, they've been in my pocket in 100+ degree weather, they've been in my pocket when I've been fishing, they've been in my pocket at church. They bounce around with other things in my pocket, and deal with extreme temperature changes, I think they've done very well. The Halo Die is still in perfect condition.

Older Movies

2010-09-16T07:56:00.002-07:00

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am a fan of movies. I have a rather large DVD collection—some would say it borders on the ridiculous in sheer size, some would say that my taste is ridiculous. The oldest film in my collection was made in 1911, the newest 2010. Many people mock me because of the way my collection is arranged on the shelf—alphabetical by distribution company (My wife makes sure that her movies are in her own section so she can find them). This, of course, was so I could keep all my Disney movies together. Yes, I owned all the princess movies before I had kids...even before I was married.

I had a birthday recently, I never expect gifts, but I am always appreciative of them. I got a stack of old Disney movies, also I've been spending a lot more time at the library during my unemployment, and the library has movies. As a result, I've been watching a lot of older movies, and I've noticed something. The Pre-Computer Graphic era of Film has a certain reality, and grittiness that the newer stuff just can't hold a candle to.

I'll start with something newer to provide contrast. We got 2012 at the Red Box, since I still had not seen it. Yes, I recognize that 2012 is not great cinema, and I enjoy it for the same reason I enjoy (and own) The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno: I like Cheezy disaster movies. It is fun to watch things get destroyed, it's fun to watch ordinary people overcome the extrordinary. I don't know how they are ever going to top 2012—they destroyed everything in that movie.

We watched Flight of the Navigator the other night, and I was very impressed by the interior of the Space Ship. First of all, it had to be a nightmare for the crew to keep that clean during filming. Every surface was mirrored, which also had to be a problem; when you film mirrors you have to be extra careful, because the filming crew can be seen in them, but not once during the watching of the movie, did I even think to look for that detail. I was worried that that movie wouldn't hold up—but it did.

Flight of the Navigator vs. 2012: The Space Ship in Flight of the Navigator seemed more real than the Arcs in 2012, because there were so many exterior and interior shots that used real props and sets.

I watched The Final Countdown today. First off, how is it possible that I have never seen this movie? It was great!! Not only were the characters great, and the concept great, but watching all the Aircraft Carrier stuff was Amazing! It was all real, there was one major special effect in the movie (used twice) and a few models used for explosions. All the shots of the airplanes, the loading of missiles, etc.—it was all real. When you see the same sort of shots in newer movies, it's all too perfect—even the stuff that isn't animated is all slick and perfected.

The Final Countdown vs 2012: The Final Countdown was shot on a real ship, with real planes. It was gritty and real, it was imperfect, it was wonderful. 2012 was shot with chroma key. The planes were fake, the ships were fake, even the ocean was fake, I believed it during the movie since the visual language all jived, but watching The Final Countdown made me realize how fake it was.

I got some Gumby stuff for my kids (and Myself) at the library. We've watched Episodes from the 50's, 60's, and 80's; as well as the Move made in the 80's (Gumby Fights an Evil, Robot, Clone with a Light Saber!). Is it hokey? Yes. Do I Love It? Yes! Frankly, I find it refreshing to watch entertainment that is honest, and not sterilized by political correctness. Occasionally, there's a statement that is "political" but nothing that preaches to me and tells me that my way of thinking is wrong.

Gumby vs 2012: Gumby's animation is all jittery and you can see the fingerprints in the clay, the people barely look like people, and I love every minute of it. 2012s animation is perfect, they destroy everything, with so much detail that you don't realize how unreal it is, unless your one of those people that don't understand how to have fun watching movies anymore.

The other thing I've noticed about older movies, is that they don't try to shove as much into the plots. They keep them simple, the camera movement is simpler, the effects are simpler, but they don't necessarily feel that way. We watched the entire planet of the Apes series recently. My wife pointed out to me how they dragged out certain scenes. Taylor running from the Apes went on and on in her mind and after a while she was saying (out loud) "Ok, we get the point. Can we continue on with the plot?" Watching those movies felt like watching an Epic Bible movie, in terms of pace—yet not one of them is longer than two hours, and most are closer to 90 minutes (a length reserved for Children's movies and comedies in modern cinema).

But I like modern movies as well. I did in fact enjoy 2012. It wasn't any better or worse in terms of story than the slew of disaster movies from the 60's and 70's. It just looks slicker.

Fire Wire

2010-09-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

So I had a birthday recently, and my Mom gave me these Fire Wire things. I'd seen them on Woot! occasionally, but I was still a little unclear as to what they were. They are skewers for doing shish kebab, made of flexible surgical stainless steel. We used them the next day.

Thanks Mom!

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine...Nine Players Ah Ah Ah!

2010-09-12T22:39:00.000-07:00

My players have been increasingly bad at the RSVP thing as of late (again)—I guess it's time to start offering an incentive to those that do. I hold my games on Saturday. I send out an Invite e-mail for every game usually a week prior, sometimes earlier—as of Friday I had one RSVP, on Saturday I received another that was for two players, and Justin came over earlier in the day. This means that as of Game Time I was expecting four people. Game Time is seven, players are invited to show up as early as 6:30, however Justin and I had gone out to eat and were not back until a quarter to—P was sitting on my porch waiting. (up to Five)

By the time we got started (a very late start, which was okay) there were Eight players. After playing for a while one person had to go, but another had arrived, so in the aggregate I had Nine. This is by far the largest group I have ever Game Mastered.

One of the problems you get with large groups is Off topic/ Out of Game chatter—there was a lot of this. Despite that, I felt we did pretty good. Looking back at the session, this is what was accomplished: Three Combat Encounters, A Social Encounter, and an Environmental Encounter in a three and a half hour session. Have I mentioned how much I love Savage Worlds? One of the first Dungeons and Dragons games I ever played in had just as many players and after playing around six or seven hours I only remember two combat encounters and it didn't seem like we had gotten to do much.

The first combat encounter was my favorite. I was using something out of the Saddle Sore adventure book, and tweaking it to my own devices. Here's your peek behind the GM Screen for this weeks session. I threw one of the creatures from the encounter at them early, just for kicks. Something that I did when I started this Campaign, was to carry XP from the previous game—I should not have done this, because The Flood is written for novice characters. This has led to some combat encounters that just end too fast, and I've been trying to learn how to adjust.

Now the first encounter of the evening was something I just came up with on the fly. The first person to hit the creature, threw a lot of power points in and the damage roll was ridiculous. However, I wasn't ready for it to die, so I gave a creative description that the giant millipede-like creature was ripped in half; the back half skittered off into the forest, and the front half was angry. I continued to fudge it a little like that for the rest of the encounter—It still died before everyone had a chance to take a turn, which I wasn't too keen about, so I tried to be a little more careful about that in the combat that was to come.

Another issue with large groups is decision making. I think I stumbled upon a solution (or perhaps I've just absorbed it from all the Gaming Blogs and Podcasts I consume). Allow everyone to chat it out, but not for too long because, honestly, most have made their mind up pretty early on in the "discussion," and then just call for a vote by show of hands. The adventure I'm using has an abstract representation of the mine/cave system that they are exploring—after allowing a little bit of discussion I just called for a vote on the cardinal directions available. Things moved along nicely.

In conclusion, I felt I handled the large group fairly well—which surprised me, I anticipated a little more trouble. I should also point out that my 12–13 year old Scouts are easier to keep on-task than a rambunctious group of Gamers.

Snow?

2010-08-31T21:35:00.000-07:00

This was on my porch August 30, 2010 7:38 am

Does this qualify as Early Snow, or Late Snow? It's Madness I tell you! However, I'm extremely happy for the cooler weather. Have I mentioned that I HATE Summer? It's true.

Deadlands Session Photos August 28, 2010

2010-08-29T18:21:00.001-07:00

I'm always forgetting to post the photos that are taken at the session. The figures we use always amuse me. P tends to bring his own Hero Clix, and had some Jonah Hex figs this evening. Everyone else generally uses what I have on hand, which is currently figs from the Deadlands Board Game. This session they were in Shan Fan and were fighting Martial Artists, and I used some Colorful Ninjas that I got at a Party Favor Store some time ago. I apologized for the scale mismatch and Back to the Future was quoted, "Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn't have time to build it to scale or to paint it."

I'm still laughing about that, just thinking about it.

Using Salt Water Taffy as Rubble.

It's inevitable, if P and I are both taking pictures, we will take pictures of each other taking a picture.

See? I told you.

How Absent Characters Can Simplify Things

2010-08-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

Our latest session of Deadlands was great. I had a really good time as Game Master.

One of the players has missed a couple sessions. Now my normal take on this is to just pretend that everyone has been there all the time—kind of like Lost I suppose, there were characters that were present since the Plane crashed, but only featured prominently on one episode, when it was convenient to the plot to focus on them. I wonder if there is a T.V. Trope name for that? Absentee Actor almost fits the bill, but there's probably another, however, after a few hours on the site, I've been unable to locate what it might be (Seriously, that site should come with a warning!—Danger! one article will lead to many more, leave now if you do not have several hours available). Moving on.

Some of my most regular players were unable to make it to the game, and one of the players that has missed a few sessions as of late was able to come. I used this to get things going in the right direction, after the possible derailment of last session—which I allowed, just so I could see what would happen. Before P came to the game I told him why his character had not been with the rest of the posse, he had been gathering information on his own that the rest of the posse had spend a good chunk of the previous session trying to gather, but coming up short.

I didn't give them too much information, and they almost walked away from the exact location they needed to be, due to a miscommunication on my part—a notice check nudged them in the right direction. We were able to complete two combat encounters, and a fun time was had by all.

I love Savage Worlds, and this session made apparent one more reason why it's such a fun system. There were four players; two Novice level, one Heroic, and I think a Veteran—and I don't think that the novices were having any less fun, or feeling like they weren't part of the action just because their characters are of a lower Rank. I've played D&D where my character was lower than the rest of the party by a large gap, and frankly, I couldn't do anything, The monsters were too tough for me to handle, so I could get killed or hide behind the more experienced characters while they took multiple attacks and dealt high damage; in hindsight, letting my character get killed so I could go home would have been the better decision.

Part of that was due to my handing an NPC (that the posse rescued) over to one of the players that has a novice character, and partially due to the player of the Novice Mad Scientist having so much fun with his one invention (even using it when possibly detrimental to the posse; not because it's detrimental, but because his character just didn't think of it that way—Hijinks Ensue).

One final thing. We all owe S a big thanks. Without P, there would not have been a session, and it was a really fun session.

So thank you, Thank you, Thank You.

Thrift Store Score

2010-08-25T20:27:00.005-07:00

My second daughter had a birthday recently. We had looked for a cheap Ken Doll at the Walmart, but the only cheap one they had was Identical to the one that my four year old has—since we were trying to remedy a source of argument between them, my Wife wanted it to be different.

My Mom mentioned the Thrift Store at the Birthday party and frankly, I don't know why I didn't think of that—I love buying toys at the Thrift Store. So, we planned a trip to the store of thrift.

Now, I have my particular brand of Thrift Store Shopping down to a science. First, go straight to the Toys. What I look for is small scale plastic figurines, not necessarily articulated. When I was a Kid (and to this day) my favorite toys are the ones that are small, make no noise, and inspire imagination. Examples: Action Figures in General, Fisher Price Action People, Muscle Men, Fisher Price Little People (I don't like the new ones as much as the ones they made in the 70's–80's), Playmobil, Little Green Army guys (anything made in the manner of Green Army men), but my favorites are the small PVC plastic figures like the ones featured on my Savage Worlds Character Blog.

After I dig through the Toys, I check the Games (looking for games with interesting dice or components), I give the electronics a cursory glance, I check the CD's and Vinyl Albums (generally finding some really good stuff in vinyl), the books, the Good Stuff (a.k.a. the things kept locked behind glass), and finally the Ties (it has become increasingly difficult to find the good ties [I like ties that are stiff, thick, made in the 70's, polyester, with outlandish non-repeating patterns])

I started rambling didn't I?

My find this week? An Almost Complete, Dungeons and Dragons—Dragons Quest "Board" Game. The only thing missing was The Cover to the Rule Book (a.k.a. the Dungeon Masters Screen, of which I found a scan online), and the Adventure Book—which is kind of a bummer; but for two dollars I got six metal fantasy figurines and six polyhedral dice (1d10 was missing), 14 paper doors, and 48 varieties of paper monsters (only 2 missing).

Notice there are three Zombies...any day you can get Zombies and Dice at the Thrift store is a Good Day.

One Monkey Off My Back

2010-08-18T13:45:00.001-07:00

I thought I may have gotten myself in trouble.

Tuesday (the 16th) Emily called to schedule the City Code Officer to come out and inspect our property, he said he couldn't come next Monday, so he planned to come the 31st. I called him back and talked to him I wanted him to come this week (I had Friday in mind). I wanted him to come earlier, in case I had to have him come again, I wanted to have time to be in compliance before the fine started on September First. He stated that the fine didn't really start on the 1st, but when he filed the paperwork.

I had a little chat with him about the papers I received containing deceptive and incorrect information, he said he would look into having that changed (I've said that a time or two myself on the phone—I understand that that is highly unlikely)

Turns out he was going to be out that day and he stated that he would stop by, I asked him to come to the Door and talk to me so I could make sure that I understood his requirements. Oops, he's coming today instead of Friday was all I could think after I hung up.

Turns out he didn't come...but he did this morning, and he told me that he was going to close the case. Just a lot o' bit of stress off my back. Hopefully I didn't exceed the normal limit of water consumption and incur a higher than normal water bill.

Finally!!!

2010-08-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

I just approved a comment on my blog, and Google Finally made it say who was commenting and what Post they were commenting on part of the approval page.

I've wanted this for a long time. The only workaround I had was to enable the e-mail notifications, because in the e-mail notification it would actually tell me what blog post they commented upon. This means I can finally stop spamming myself every time I approve a comment just to avoid confusion for those rare moments that someone comments on an old blog post.

Huzzah!!

A Little Bit of Action—A Lot o' Bit of Social Interaction

2010-08-15T21:32:00.001-07:00

Interesting Game Last Night.

In the previous session, Mathias removed an object and killed a creature. This session, the Creature returned, got the drop on a sleeping Mathias and got a pretty good damaging blow in before the object was destroyed.

I'm glad the creature didn't kill him, but I would be lying if I said I didn't get a little bit of pleasure out of hurting a character. (I only hurt him a little, and he soaked the damage, so really he was just shaken—but it was a very satisfying shaken.)

Then play moved to Shan Fan. This is an interesting part of the plot point, I can't say a lot about the details, but what it caused to transpire, was a lot more of the non-combat type of play. My wife gets a little frustrated with these parts of the game because she's not sure what to do.

Recently I've read some advice that says skip the boring parts; which makes me wonder if I should have just railroaded it a bit...but I wanted to see what happened. The plot point book assumes that the party will go about obtaining the needed information a certain way, of course my players never do things the way the book assumes. In many cases when there are alternate ways to go about obtaining information the book at least gives you some idea as to how it might play out, this time it did not. The book also assumes someone in the group has a d4 skill in Chinese (any dialect) and still makes them roll streetwise at -4; so...Big Ears Tam speaks English now, and streetwise rolls are still at -4.

When I have to come up with things off the cuff, I generally inject a little humor—whether purposefully or not. Shan Fan is a city almost entirely comprised of Chinese immigrants, but I still made the Mafioso meetup take place in an Italian restaurant (though Sesame Chicken was still on the menu).

The posse finally got together and made a plan, and in the middle of the plan, a certain someone decided to not follow it. So things got a little weird, I didn't know exactly what to do, it was eleven o'clock (my preferred ending time that I'm always shooting for, but missing)—so I ended things for the night.

I have no idea how this is all going to play out, but I know where it's supposed to go.

Yard Work

2010-08-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

The More Yard-work I do, the more I see problems with the yard. Under normal situations, I would see that as a sign that I need to cut back.

Ah, Memories

2010-08-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

This is not the kind of post I normally make—i.e. embedding a video, or pointing to another blog post sans commentary, etc..

However, I know a lot of my cousins visit the site, and I know that we used to play Oregon Trail on grandma's computer. I didn't like it or play it that much, I found it to be repetitive, still I played it enough to understand the humor in this fake movie trailer. So I though I would share...

Seeking Employment

2010-08-09T22:10:00.000-07:00

My Temp Position ended.

For the past week—and this week as well... I've spent 3–4 hours working on my yard every morning (and sometimes some time in the evening as well), trying to get it acceptable for the impending inspection.

Some time ago, I was talking to a friend of mine and he had mentioned to me that when you own your own house, there is a certain desire to do yard work that you never had when you were a kid and taking care of your parent's house. —I tried to feel that when we first bought this place, but I have to respectfully disagree, I still hate it. Perhaps it's that I dislike the desert, or maybe it's my allergies, perhaps my aversion to temperatures that rise above 68° Fahrenheit.

There is a certain satisfaction when I'm done—but I've always had that, be it an art project, or just cleaning the kitchen really really well. In fact, I don't mind cleaning every square inch of the kitchen or bathroom, but I'm really not fond of yard-work.

It has been a blessing to be unemployed at this time, in a weird way. There is no way I would have been able to get the yard looking as good as it is currently, had I been working. So, I think we'll be able to pass the inspection when it comes due. (Speaking of which, I should probably schedule that...)

On the other hand though, I have spent a lot more money than I really can afford, being unemployed, trying to get things looking decent.

I've been tempted to post my resumé here, but something keeps telling me that's not the best idea. If you're interested in seeing it, let me know and I will consider your request (How Conceited of me...).

Speaking of employment, I have an incredible opportunity waiting in the wings—but I'm in the midst of a waiting game, and it's probably two or three months out. Some of the lawyerly stuff went through on Friday, so things are looking great...I've got to last until then however.

Anyone out there need someone with skills in Animation, Video Editing, Photoshop, Illustrator, Traditional Illustration, 3DS Max, or Desktop Support? . . . Anyone?

DJ Hero House Party

2010-08-05T20:56:00.001-07:00

So, not everyone that said they would come was able to make it.

I never borrowed the Fog Machine from P. No one offered a disco ball. I've been working so hard to get the yard cleaned up to avoid a $25 a day fine from the city that I never put up any lights.

I did however manage to build a Daft Punk Helmet, but the Visor was lacking in both tinting and lighting effects, and I never did complete the costume, but I think what I did was pretty decent considering I'm unemployed.

The game was fun, and I think everyone that came had a good time.

Here are some Photoshopped Pictures:

I Have Not Blogged Enough Recently

2010-08-04T21:31:00.000-07:00

Then again, I've had other things on my mind. My Blogger Dashboard is always there when I open my browser, I look at it every day thinking that I need to click the new post button, but I just haven't had anything that truly made me want to post.

We received a courtesy note from the city that our yard is not up to code. No big deal, I've gotten one of those every other year since I moved in. I do not have a green thumb, nor do I have a sprinkling system, so my lawn tends to be on the yellow end of the spectrum. Partially that has to do with my knowing that I live in a desert—why do I need a green lawn? Then there was a little something I learned in Geology Class.

Groundwater related subsidence is when the ground level drops as a result of removing too much groundwater, and it's something that must be closely regulated, because once the ground level has dropped, nature can no longer return the ground water levels to what they once were—very important thing to keep track of when you live in a Desert.

The thing that stuck in my mind is a picture of a Fire-hydrant that is high up in the air. I recall the picture being from Mexico City which, like the city I live in, is built on a dry lake bed—I couldn't find the picture that my Geology class was shown, but I found a similar one from Southern California.

I prefer that water goes to Crops and Drinking instead of keeping grass in the desert green—and if we use too much then we lose our ability to store as much. Also, I think it's a very communistic law telling me what to do with my property. People keep arguing about property values, but my wife is a Realtor, and she has never seen an ugly lawn effect the value of property.

So there's stress from needing to green up my lawn during the worst time of the year to be trying to green up a lawn (What a Brilliant Law—please note that statement is dripping with sarcasm). On top of that I'm unemployed, and I've already sunk way more money into the yard than I want, I don't need to be spending money on grass right now.

We are expecting a third little girl in October. My wife has entered the Nesting stage, so we've been trying to get the house ready for that, since we really don't have enough space.

We also got the opportunity to Host a DJ Hero House party. So we've been cleaning up for that.

Busy, Unemployed, Stressed, Wife Expecting—so blogging has suffered.

Schilling for contest Entries

2010-07-26T21:53:00.000-07:00

Troll in the Corner is Having a Contest.

Like they used to say in the 80's—You may have already Won the Pathfinder Core Rulebooks or Various PDF files.

Here's How to Enter.

Being Off the Rails is Hard

2010-07-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

We met for another exciting adventure in California. This marked the first session of Deadlands that was truly off the rails. Back when we started, I began in Colorado and used the adventure module Coffin Rock as an introduction to Deadlands. I did this because I was still reading The Flood, and I wasn’t ready to start. In hindsight, that was probably backwards. It would have made more sense to start The Flood and Throw in Coffin Rock as a Savage Tale (Savage Tales are Smaller Stories that happen between the main plot points).

So, the beginning of this evening was to finish off the plot point that was started last time. In prepping for the game, I really didn’t know what to prepare ahead of time. The Posse had a number of ways they could possibly go—they could choose to go to Virginia City, the destination they were headed toward when they were literally railroaded to California; or they could follow the plot point and head to Shan Fan; or they could decide to do something completely different.

I read half of the Shan Fan plot point. I had decided what to do if they went to Virginia City and read that Savage Tale (but apparently I skimmed a little too much—more on that later.) When the game started, I felt half prepared—which is more than I can usually expect for an off the rails session.

When the Posse was deciding what to do, I looked at the Map and realized that Virginia City was a lot further north than I thought it was. Which kind of messed with the way I connected Coffin Rock and The Flood. . . but I didn’t mention that to my players. However, it did solve their question of where to go due to the fact that Shan Fan was closer than Virginia City, and they could take a train from Shan Fan to Virginia City.

Looking at the Distance between where they were, and where they were headed made me think about the way that other people must run these games. There were charts and tables in Zombie Run for traveling, and the book assumed that you would make the use of a map, choose the way to go, roll to determine what happens every ten mile stretch of road, or some nonsense like that. Old D&D has similar charts and tables for wilderness travel. Similarly, The Flood also has rules for traveling in California, which differ a bit from the charts in the base Deadlands book. I simplified a bit and tried the random encounter table.

Due to the Great Quake that occurred in the canon of Deadlands, California is an even harsher wilderness to travel than in other parts of Deadlands America. It’s supposed to take longer to get from point A to point B. The tables indicated that the Posse should encounter nothing—I ascribe to right of Game Master Fiat and moved the encounter planned for Virginia City to middle of nowhere California. I grabbed Saddle Sore and I was running one of the Savage Tales found in that Volume, but I definitely didn’t read it thoroughly enough. I had to retcon several times throughout the evening, and when I got lost, I found myself sitting there a little confounded—just reading. I feel bad about that, because it just leaves my players in limbo, so the conversation wanders to extra-game topics.

I have to apologize to P the most, since he had to leave before there were any mini-fig-on-battle-mat encounters. A creature did attack, during the day this time, in broad daylight, in the travelling show. I’ll have to think about how I’m going to use the outcome to my advantage.

Speaking of the encounter, I pulled the low card, and Brandon’s character is overpowered (for this part of the Plot Point) I don’t know what to do about that. It’s not that my creatures keep feeling the wrath of his “razor sharp cloud of card shuriken” (Bolt), it’s that I had to finagle things just to give the group the clue that the encounter was to provide. How many power points do you have Brandon?—I think I need to look at your character sheet again.

All in all, it wasn't a bad session—but it wasn’t the greatest either. I think the person that gets the most impatient with me when I’m trying to figure out what’s going on, is my wife. . . that’s stressful to me.

I have to admit though, that the actions of certain Posse members have set in motion some very interesting possibilities. Mwa–ha–ha–ha–ha.

House Party July 31

2010-07-08T23:40:00.001-07:00

So, my Wife applied to be the host of a House Party that Activision is using to promote their rhythm game DJ Hero.

We're big fans of the rhythm game genre at our house. We have Three Rock Band Games and Six Guitar Hero Games—still I was pretty skeptical about the announcement of DJ Hero. I'm not as much into the DJ style music, and though I played around with a real turntable setup once, I never really got into it.

However, I saw the Game setup at Best Buy once and gave it a Spin (Ha Ha). It was not easy, my mediocre Guitar Hero skills didn't transfer directly to the turntable controller and I scored an abysmal, one star...It didn't help that the guy that was playing with it before me had chosen the Hard skill level.

It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be, and I've sort of wanted to get it since then...

Our home was picked as a location for one of the House Parties. We'll be provided with a copy of the game and Two Turntables. We're going to put up some Christmas Lights, and have a Daft Punk costume contest.

If you've received an invite from my wife please RSVP, it's a real thing and we would love for you to come, it's going to be fun. Set aside July 31... the more the merrier. (This conflicts with a Deadlands Game so all My Deadlands players are invited) More invites will be going out shortly...

More Details Here.

Bluetooth + Wii Remote + Classic Controller + Glovepie + Joy to Key =

2010-07-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

A Nostalgic Journey with a twist (For those the grew up playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System).

Bluetooth Dongles can be obtained for Pennies plus Shipping from Amazon.

Wii Remotes and Classic Controllers cost a bit more ($40 and $20 respectively)—But we already had those.

Glovepie can be found Here. (Free)

Joy to Key can be obtained Here. (Also Free)

Connect the Wii Remote to the Computer using Bluetooth (skipping the authentication number bit). Then connect the classic controller. Open Glovepie and apply the zSNES Script found here. Then Run Joy to key and map the arrow keys to the directional pad, and z, x, and c to buttons.

Then You Go Here for Squeee (You may have to setup the controls in the game options for it to work right)

I Finally Got to Play 4th EditionDungeons and Dragons

2010-07-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

Thoughts?

Well, I still like Savage Worlds Better. Part of that is probably the fault of the Character Sheet I was given, and another part of the fault may be Dungeon Master that was running the game, and part of that may be the rules system...but I'm not completely sure about the rules system part of the equation.

The game took place in the home of the same person that introduced me to the game back when Third edition was making the transition to three dot five. Their group has grown too big, and so they have decided that the thing to do, was to split the group and run two games. Both groups would be playing the same adventure and have the same encounters planned. The plan was for it to be a competition, and allow both groups to compare notes afterward for camaraderie.

I've been wanting to try 4th edition since its inception two years ago (2008), but that was about the time our regular D&D group stopped being regular, and then stopped altogether. I was actually excited about the game, and I talked it up with our Dungeon Master—He got the books and we never played (I felt bad about that, since they aren't exactly cheap, and he was having some employment issues at the time.).

I eventually got the books (Heavily discounted—a lot of people disliked the new edition so much that it became easy to find them cheap in the second hand market), and I finally got to bust them out Monday.

I didn't go into this completely blind. Granted, I haven't really had a chance to read the books, but I have listened to/watched several actual play recordings/videos that I found on the internet. It didn't seem terribly different—roll d20 to determine success or failure, roll other dice to determine damage, and every one has specialized skills that they can use with varying frequencies.

Having played 3rd edition and 3.5 edition, I should have been able to understand the character sheet, but I couldn't. Some of the acronyms made no sense to me, even after seven hours I still didn't get it. This is not the fault of the system, this character sheet was a custom one, created by the host for their regular group. The Regulars all seemed to understand the formulas. That was my first frustration.

The second thing that I found frustrating, was that the Dungeon Master was not terribly descriptive. For an example, in our first encounter we found ourselves in an arena being attacked by creatures. When I asked for a description, all I got was, "Green Humanoids." According to the Tournament Rules anyone could ask to do a Lore roll to see what they know about the creatures encountered, and when someone did that, depending on a measure of success he would read a portion of the description directly out of the Monster Manual. I just wasn't feeling terribly immersed in the world, it felt like the focus was more on the Game portion, rather than a balance of Game and Role Play. It went something like this:

Game Master Reads Some Story, then an encounter that was just an exercise in die rolling. No descriptions of the action. These figures on the Grid Surround these figures on the Grid, and every one just roll dice until the Game Masters figures are removed from the table. Role a die for loot and move on to the next encounter—which goes down in pretty much the same way, starting with the reading of some story.

I'm pretty sure that could mostly be attributed to the Game Masters abilities, and I'll cut him some slack, because I know from experience how difficult it is to run a game. I've done it quite frequently in the past year.

The part I will put more blame on the rules for, is the seeming lack of room for creativity. The encounters seemed to be an exercise in picking the Rule off of the Character sheet that would allow you to create the most damage with your die roll. It felt stifling and uncreative, and I was bored with it after two encounters. In the third encounter I wanted to do something that wasn't, "I hit it with my short sword."

My trying to do something creative with the rules at hand made me think of a line from Galaxy Quest:
"I know! You'll need to make a weapon. Look around; can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?"

In the second encounter I had picked up a bag of nails and a small hammer, and I was trying to come up with something creative when we were attacked by Giant Spiders. I decided to do something different than just hit it with my sword, I tried to jump on the spider's back. I failed, but I was close. When it came around to my turn again I had decided to tie my rope to one of the legs and then weave myself in and out of the legs and tie it to a tree. I succeeded, but it was dead as soon as I started to drag it toward a tree. I felt much more satisfaction from that than the previous encounters, and I continued to look for opportunities to pull off such maneuvers in the remaining encounters, but the rules don't seem to award that sort of thinking.

To me it felt as though you'd be less likely to pull that sort of creative move off (one of the other players in the upstairs game tried to use the bag of nails in a creative way and the Game Master disallowed such an action), and you'll be less likely to take an enemy down through creative tactics, than if you just pick one of your encounter powers and roll the dice accordingly; I fully admit it might just be my lack of familiarity with the rules that make it seem so, it also could be that the lack of description made it feel like we were playing with figs in an empty space, just us versus the monsters in a board game sort of way—rather than feeling like we were adventurers battling for our life in a fantastic and strange land—which made it difficult for me to creatively use the space tactically.

Don't get me wrong, I had fun, and the game wasn't that bad—I think I just have different expectations than this group of players.

I think I Handled the New Player a Little Better This Time. . . Maybe

2010-07-02T00:11:00.019-07:00

It's been a month and I finally got to play Savage Worlds again.

We have a neighbor who expressed curiosity in playing with us some time ago, so I've been inviting him since then and Saturday he was able to come to the game. Brandon helped him to create a character (So I could read a One Sheet that he has written to give him some feedback), but I handle character creation differently—so I'm kind of regretting that (just a little bit).

It took longer than anticipated, but I finally got the game going. This was a high box-text part of the adventure, and rather than paraphrase like I normally do, I decided to just read the text, as is, from the book. We're still in the highly railroady part of The Flood. My wife constantly mocked me during the reading portions.

Then Finally, they got to the encounter. The whole thing felt forced and inorganic. When they started fighting the bad guys, I finally remembered something that I've been wanting to do for a long time. The technique is called: yes...but...

I think I heard about this Technique from Sean Patrick Fannon on one or more of the Gaming Podcasts to which I subscribe. I believe he stated that it is an old improvisation exercise. It works like this: If someone asks a question, the answer is yes...but there is some caveat .

I.e.—"Is there a Garbage Can I can Hide Behind?"

—Absolutely, but it's across the street, you could probably make it past the crossfire to take cover. . .

This, added to the fact that this game marked the first use of a Battle Mat owned by myself, made for an interesting encounter. My wife was holding the Wet Erase Marker, and was using the Yes...But... technique to her advantage, drawing in all the fiddly bits.

What I thought would turn into a shootout in the street, ended up with the Posse holing up inside: throwing tables in front of the windows, locking the proprietor of the establishment in a closet, Molotov cocktails. The most creative maneuver by a Player Character of the night, happened because of the Yes...But... technique. He asked if there was a Sign hanging from the Balcony above, that he could shoot the supporting ropes of, and have it fall on the guys below. The answer of course was yes...but it's going to be a difficult shot to do so. Essentially, he had to roll a six on a six sided die to be successful. He rolled, and because of the exploding dice mechanic he got a fifteen on his six sided die, that's a very solid hit, which means that he gets to roll an extra six sided dice for damage.

In this case that meant 3d6 for damage—He rolled a one a one and a two for a grand total of four. Which was the lowest number he could get and be successful in breaking the rope. Then the damage the sign caused didn't even phase one of the guys, but the other guy was out of the fight because of it.

At this point it was late and all they had to do was get out of Lost Angels. I threw one more group of bad guys on the table, just for some dramatic flair—make them feel like they were being chased and there was danger around every corner. They were on the opposite side of the Map, all they had to do was run around a corner and make a stealth check and they were safe—so of course they took cover and proceeded to take them all out.

My conclusions for the evening:
Players never do what you think or hope they will—luckily that's a big part of the fun. I'm starting to enjoy the Behind the Screen part of the game a little better. Molotov cocktails need to be less easy to create. I love it when players are more creative about the encounters, now if I could get them to be more creative with the use of the game mechanics (Taunts, and Ganging Up, and getting the Drop...that sort of thing). I need to use the awesome weapons that my wild cards have, instead of forgetting that they have them until after they are incapacitated—this game was not the first (and probably not the last) example of this happening.

As for the new player thing. I ruined someones enjoyment of RPGs during one of the first sessions I ran. I feel bad, because they still won't play with us and have no desire to do so at all. I completely recognize that I ruined their enjoyment of the game, and their view of role playing games in general. I also recognize that I was so new to the Game Mastering side of the hobby that I had no way of recognizing that I was creating a negative experience.

This time went much better, he had played D&D once before, but I think allowing him to come up with this plan concerning the hanging sign really added to his enjoyment of the game. (I overheard him telling his Dad about it in Church between meetings the following day) Yes...But... is a tool that every Game Master Should be using. It allows people to come up with crazy things, and go away with an amazing cinematic experience.

A Little Job to Tide Me Over

2010-06-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

I'm signed up with a temp agency, that belongs to a contractor that my previous employer utilizes. My previous employer is going to contract me to finish the video project I was in the middle of, when my position was eliminated by a third party efficiency audit.

Free RPG Day 2010—Oddly Successful

2010-06-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

In a strange sort of way, Free RPG Day was a weird success.

As I Chronicled Previously. I found that I was going to be in Boise on Free RPG Day 2010. I had found the closest participating store to be in Mountain Home (A smallish city [population aprox. 13,000] about an hour drive from Boise). The store seemed odd on the internet—and it was odd when I got there.

Picture a normal hobby game store. Then Randomly pick a place in the middle and put a shelf up that has collectible statues on it—not the kind of collectible statues that you normally find at a game store like superheroes and nerdy movie properties. No, there were no Star Trek Crew Members, No Star Wars Heroes, no Marvel or DC properties, not even a Cthulhu Idol. There were tiger busts, fairy figurines, cowboys and indians, Precious Moments, and Hallmark type stuff. Then another wall and two random aisles get stocked with Model Airplanes and Model Airplane Parts (The Kinds of Models that you actually fly). Add 2 Cats and one Rather Large Dog into the Mix; put Grandma and Grandpa (who know nothing about hobby gaming) behind the counter to run the cash register.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself. If you recall, I had called around to all the game stores that I could find in Boise, and none were participating. When we got to Boise, I spent some time going to different game stores when I had nothing else to do—it filled the time nicely and I enjoyed it, but I still was unable to find a store participating in Boise Proper.

I had planned to run down to Mountain Home on Saturday morning, and one of my Wife's cousins (Jacob, Age 14) opted to tag along—I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce him to the role playing scene; unfortunately it turned out badly.

We couldn't communicate very well due to the road noise while driving there. I arrived a few minutes early and we waited for the store to open. We were the first non-employees in the store, and when asked if they could help me find anything particular, I indicated that we were there for Free RPG Day. The woman behind the counter told me that the person in charge of that would arrive soon ("the boys" had gone for a food run to the McDonalds down the street). So I browsed the merchandise, and took in the sights.

Fist thing I noticed was the complete and utter lack of cool dice—all they really had were the opaque flat colors from Koplow. With the board games, they had a lot of expansions for games that I want, but not the base games (Cut Throat Caverns for instance, three expansions but not the base game). They had a lots of figures to paint, for every table top war game I've ever heard of, and more variety than my game store has in many cases (Malifaux had not only starter sets and cards, but single figures as well). I looked for Savage Worlds product and only found one, it was an Adventure for Savage Worlds, published by one of Pinnacle's Licencee's, which is a really strange thing to have in your store if you don't carry the core product.

So a few minutes later someone came in and the woman told him what we were there for, so I walked over to talk to him and he informed me that they were starting Free RPG day at Noon. I plead may case...that I was from Utah, that I drove an hour from where I was staying just to get Free RPG day stuff, that we were in town for family and we had things going on to which we needed to return. My pleas fell upon deaf ears, he just reiterated that they would be starting at noon.(He was the epitome of the Role Player Stereotype: awkward, quiet, could use a little more attention to personal hygiene) So I browsed the store, my compatriot was less than thrilled (read: bored) but there was enough there to keep me busy for an hour, but not two.

After about half an hour the guy running free RPG day told me they would be starting soon, this excited me because soon in my mind was early.

Their prices really were good, so I picked up some new things for myself: Zombie Dice Game, Cthulhu Dice Game, Warhammer Fantasy Role Play Dice (I'll probably never play this RPG—but it has cool dice). I wanted to get a Chessex Battle Mat (I noticed that they had a good price online), but they only had the ones with 1½ inch squares, and I wanted the one with 1 inch squares. At this point Jacob borrowed 4¢ and went down the street to the McDonald's, and I entered the Gaming Table Section of the Store to open my new stuff.

When Jake got back we played Zombie Dice, no they had not started and it was about a 11:30. Shortly thereafter, they got a box out from under the counter and laid out the Six free adventures, did they tell me it was okay to pick up the free stuff? No. It's not like I had been there since they opened, waiting specifically to pick that stuff up. I thought to myself that perhaps they would make some announcement to the store that the festivities would begin. (And I guess when he told me they would be starting soon, he meant on time. . . weird.)

Then this other guy walked in ans asked about Free RPG Day and they let him take some adventures. So I got up and took the two I knew I wanted, Jake picked up two that were a maybe (He didn't want any so he was just going to give them to me anyway). I didn't want to be greedy, and my game store puts up signs that says two only please.

We left immediately. I think the reason they were waiting, was that they had people scheduled to run the adventures that were available. There were supposed to be some Dice and a Dice Tower as part of the give away; I didn't see the Dice, and it looked like they only had one dice tower, and it looked like they were going to raffle it off. Perhaps they were saving the dice for people who played, but I didn't have time for that.

On the way back I ran into one of the game stores I had been to earlier in the week and grabbed a Formula D dice set (I wanted a set of these a long time ago and when I went to get them the store no longer had them and the game was out of print), I quickly checked if they had Battle Mats and I was glad that I did, it was even cheaper than the Mountain Home Store (and a dollar less than it would have been to buy a factory second directly from the manufacturer).

Our story doesn't quite end there however. I was in the neighborhood of my Local Gaming Store this week and I stopped in and found they still had copies of the two adventures I had not picked up (and of the four adventures I had picked up, they only had copies of one), so I got all six adventures, and a bunch of stuff I've wanted at discounted prices.

I would call Free RPG Day 2010 a Success.

Free RPG Day 2010—The Pre-game

2010-06-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

I was planning to hit my Local Game Store first thing in the morning, so I could pick up some goodies on Free RPG Day (June 19).

I know I want to pick up the D&D Dark Sun 4th Edition Adventure. There's supposed to be some cool Dice Paraphernalia, and Some other Free Adventure things.

I got the Eberron Adventure, and the Hollow Earth Expedition Adventure last year—and recently I scrounged around the internet and managed to get my hands on the Paranoia Quick Start Rules for a price that was just a little bit more than free.

When I got to the Game Store last Year there was a sign that said please only take two, and it was all Adventures. I'm guessing all the cool dice stuff was gone, I didn't even know there was Dice Stuff until I looked up everything that was available at a later time.

It seems we're going to be in Boise, ID on the 19th. So I called a bunch of game stores in Boise—no one seems to be participating in Free RPG Game Day 2010. I checked the web site and there appears to be a game store in Mountain Home, ID—about an hour away from Boise, that is participating in the event, so I guess I'm going to try and make the trip.

I suppose, I could have someone who isn't into gaming here at home go to the Local Gaming Store for me and pick some things up. Any Volunteers? You have to go when they open—the good stuff goes fast.

Onyx Dice

2010-06-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

I love it when people feed my obsessive collecting behavior.

The most recent example of this comes from my Wife's Aunt. She picked these up in Seattle, and I love them. Now, that I've finally had a chance to talk to her and thank her, I can post a picture here.

I thought Onyx was black, but apparently that is just one of the more common varieties—however, it is not The most common variety.

Laugh Out Loud—I Can't See My Dice Through the Tears in My Eyes

2010-06-01T22:44:00.001-07:00

Saturday's game was one of my favorites. None of the Regulars came (except my wife). The group consisted of my Wife, Two of my friends that I've known since Jr. High and the daughter of one of those friends.

I've only been running games for a year, and I only started running because I wanted to play Savage Worlds and I had a feeling, if I didn't run the game it wasn't going to happen. In that time I have never run a game that was a setting or adventure that I created myself. I just haven't really felt that I have the time to do so, and there are so many great settings for Savage Worlds. So I started Deadlands: Reloaded with the Coffin Rock adventure and then moved it into The Flood plot point campaign—the transition was a little ugly, but the shoehorn seems to be working.

The beginning of The Flood is a little Railroady. I couldn't believe the amount of "box text" that was part of the first few sessions. I try not to read verbatim out of the book, and paraphrase, and say things so they fit the characters—at least in my mind that's what I want to do. I don't know how well it goes, but the session seemed pretty good.

The combat involved fifteen villains, and three extra allies. I'm glad how easy it went, but I feel like I need to come up with a way to make combat a little more interesting. Justin (a.k.a. "Bruce") was reminiscing on a GURPS game he had played and reminded me of something that I've been wanting to do since almost day one of the Zombie Run game, and that is to relinquish a certain amount of narrative control to the players.

I've written a reminder down to do so and pinned it to the back of my Game Master screen multiple times, and then I get caught up in franticly trying to keep a step ahead of the players, but last night it became almost second nature to say, "you killed him, describe what happened." Now I have to relinquish even more responsibility to the players. I keep meaning to tell them the numbers required to hit at the beginning of combat so they can determine their dice rolls ahead of time.

The other thing I need to do is use the more creative combat maneuvers that the non-player characters have at their disposal, so the combat isn't just group A shooting at Group B, or Group A pounding on Group B. I have gotten better at actually remembering to use my Game Master Bennies, so the Wild Card Villains come off more villainous.

I'm pretty sure there were some rules that I was getting a little off. I thought that once I had been running a game for a year that I would have sessions in which I didn't have rules questions—though I think I'm getting a little better at breezing past and looking things up later (For instance, I didn't do the Fear spell right the first time, but I did get it right the second time it was cast).

Joshua had me laughing so hard at one point in the game, that my eyes were literally streaming tears, and I was having trouble breathing. Every time I get together with friends that I have known since Jr. High and High School is a good time (Even when those times are bitter sweet).

I'm looking forward to the next session.

Seriously—Everyone Need To Play Portal

2010-05-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

Back when I was High School a little game came out: Wolfenstein 3D

This little game changed the face of Electronic Gaming. It wasn't the first first-person-shooter, but every first person shooter since has pretty much been the same (Except for some six degrees of freedom games: Descent, Forsaken). The next big one after that was Doom, and I haven't really played a First-person-shooter (FPS) since then. I played Halo and Halo 2 a few times, but frankly they seemed about the same to me.

When I first started playing Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, it gave me headaches, but the play style was so new I just played through it and eventually got used to it and didn't have the problem any more. Then I stopped playing because every new FPS game was just more of the same, and now if I play FPS games the headaches and nausea manifest themselves almost immediately.

Some time ago, a game called Half Life came out. I don't know much about Half Life. What I understand, is that it introduced some puzzle elements to the FPS. Then Half Life 2 Came out, and my understanding is that it had really great modification tools available, and people were building completely new games based on Half Life 2. In fact, I think I knew people that bought it so they could play the Modified versions rather than the actual published game.

Then this thing called The Orange Box came out. It was a compilation of games all based on the same engine. (Half Life 2: Episode One and Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal) I think that Most People Bought it for the Cartoony Team Fortress 2, and were surprised at the awesomeness of the new puzzle game Portal.

I don't play as many video games as I would like to, but I try to keep up with the news. Portal was all over the place for a while. Since it was first person I read about it (Since I knew I would most likely never play it, and I wanted to understand the jokes).

In the game you wake up in a cell and shortly thereafter a portal opens to let you out, then you are challenged with a puzzle to exit the area. For the most part there is nothing that directly threatens your life and you are just challenged with passing obstacles and opening doors to get to the next challenge. During your travels from level to level, a computer voice speaks to you and you feel as though you are being watched by some Big Brother Entity. Frankly, I felt like a rat in a maze—there are frosted glass areas that are high up and give you the impression that you are being watched.

The Puzzles all involve the use of portals that are linked (Walking through the Orange Portal, you exit at the location of the Blue portal and vice versa). For the first couple levels, the portals open and shut for you. Then you are able to obtain a portal generator that generates the blue portal, while the Orange portal is stable and cannot be manipulated. Then later your Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device is upgraded to allow you to create both the Blue and Orange Portals, this is where the game gets interesting.

As the computer continued to announce things, I started to get the impression that this was an experiment gone horribly horribly wrong. The computer voice would short/cut out right as it was about to give vital information. It started lying about its monitoring of the tests, and eventually was offering me cake to just give up.

This game was a short, but brilliant ride. It consists of nineteen levels. Eighteen of them, I would consider to be tutorials that teach you all the concepts that you need to know in order to get through the last level.

It's a good story. I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot because I get the impression that it takes place in the Half Life Universe, which I know nothing about. Still, I think it stands on its own quite well.

What prompted me to actually play this game?

I certainly wasn't going to buy it, given my history of physical illness when playing first person games. There is a service called Steam from which you can purchase and download full retail versions of games. May 12–24 they had Portal as a FREE download. (Apologies, I meant to get this written before the deal was over—now it's $20, which is a fair deal if you ask me.)

My daughter loves playing this. She makes no attempt to do what the game asks you to, but she gets a kick out of putting a portal in the floor and the ceiling and falling infinitely; she also likes making portals in corners so she can see herself.

I'm excited that there is a sequel planned, and I'm planning to get it.
In fact, I've wanted to play new content enough that I've downloaded some fan built levels, but they aren't as fun as the real deal, if anyone knows of any pro quality MODs for portal, let me know.

I know I'm late to the party on this one—the game came out in 2007—but for anyone that missed this, you really need to try it out.

Dicecreator's Dice

2010-05-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

Anyone that follows my ramblings should know I have a wee obsession with Dice.

Which leads me to looking for unique dice once in a while. A while ago, I stumbled across someone that manufactures unique and custom dice—and sells them on e-Bay, through his store: Unconventional Dice.

Shortly thereafter, I learned about his blog: Dicecreator's Blog, and I've been following it ever since. I have planned to purchase some of his carbon fiber and unusually numbered dice when I get the chance.

Then there was a contest in which I participated—and won. So here we are. I won the opportunity to review some of the dice created by the Dicecreator. FULL DISCLOSURE: I was sent a pair of dice free, for review purposes.

Let's start with a picture of the dice.

We have here a Halo Die and a Steam-punk Die.

The Symbols are inlaid brass, and they look very nice. I thought I read somewhere care instructions for the dice so that the patina they develop is nice and even, but I can't seem to locate that. With brass in there you would wonder about the fairness. I know that is a real concern of the Dicecreator and he has made a commitment to never sell an unfair dice.

I'm no statistician, but they do seem to roll just like every other d6 I own—they roll all over the place: high, low, and medium. They roll low when I want them to roll high and high when I want them to roll low.

Now here's the funny thing, I just described the way they roll as fair, just like all the other dice I own—and now I'm going to describe the way they roll as just like the loaded dice that I own. What could I possibly mean by that? It's because of the brass. The added weight makes them skittle across the table low, i.e. they don't bounce as high as standard dice, but they do roll as far.

It was kind of weird to see at first, and I couldn't quite figure it out until I watched it a few times.

Let's talk quality. These dice have been in my pocket since I received them. Here is a picture of the contents of said pocket.

You may not think a pocket is a rough place to travel, but look at the phone and the pen. All that damage happened in my pocket. The dice are durable enough to take the abuse. In fact, I found myself rather clumsy the week I received them and dropped them from about four feet on multiple occasions.

I must say, I really enjoy these dice. They look great, they're easy to read, they're fun to use at the game table, they're durable, high quality.

I give them A+, 4 Stars, Two Thumbs Up, and every other Appropriate Superlative Available.

Someone At The Library Loves Me

2010-05-18T16:39:00.001-07:00

My Wife asked me to pick some things up for her at the Library recently. It had probably been over a year since I was last in that building—I love reading, but I just have been involved in so many other things, that I hadn't taken the time to go to the Library; and my Wife usually goes with the kids when I'm at work.

So I perused the DVDs briefly. It's hard to get a quick look at all the DVDs because of the way they have them shelved. I only saw a fraction of what was available, and I didn't see anything that jumped out at me as a must watch now title. So I decided to check out the Instructional Art books, see if there was anything worth taking a look into, or something that might Jog my creativity.

I found that they had completely rearranged the library and what was once a Non-fiction, Dewey Decimal section, was now young adult fiction. I couldn't remember the number of the section the art books were in, which means a trip to the computer. While looking that up at the computer system, I got curious as to whether they had any Role Playing Game books in the system. I made a note of the section they were in and headed over to find them.

This is when I discovered that someone at the Library loves me. I spotted 3 full shelves—top to bottom—of Graphic Novels & Comic Books. Last time I had gotten comic books at the library, there was only about half of a single shelf; and most of that was newspaper stuff (Garfield, The Far Side, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Dilbert, Garfield...Garfield). One full shelve and a third of the second shelve was Manga, which I'm not really in to. The rest however, was Superhero and Independent stuff—Titles that I've wanted to read for years. Things I haven't read because I lack the funds to justify purchasing such things.

I don't know who is doing the purchasing for the library, but they seem to know their stuff. There was a small, independently published, obscure, title on the shelf that I've wanted to read ever since I heard about it—Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer. Think about it...it's a Brilliant idea, and well executed, I only had one complaint about it, and that was the use of the slang "Cool" it felt out of place.

A Short Game This Week

2010-05-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

I moved the Deadlands: Reloaded game to Friday this week, people had fewer conflicts—all week I've been working hard at getting my Resume and Portfolio in order, and I hadn't really had a chance to prepare for the game properly.

Friday before the game I was trying to read through the material for the game and my 1.5 year old came to sit on the couch next to me, and threw up. So, I cleaned that up. Just as I finished taking care of that, my four year old wet her pants.

When people showed up, I still had not finished prepping the game. The couple that came have a child who has problems with seizures, so we warned them about the state of heath in our home (their child was with them) and they made a quick trip to the grandparents. The other person that had planned on coming sent a message that she wasn't feeling well. I felt like calling the game, but everyone wanted to play.

So we started late and I was under prepared.

When we got to the end of the only encounter I had planned, I let the small group know that we had reached the end of what I prepared, and called the game an hour earlier than I generally plan.

I generally like to run games completely analog. Part of what I like about Role Playing Games, is that they are low tech. I often use the computer to prepare the game, but I like the table to be free of Electronics. (The Exception being that I do want to get an e-reader) Since I wasn't completely ready for the game, I used a laptop as GM Screen, and Books.

Running a game out of PDF versions of the books seems a little slow. I had managed to get all the stat blocks for the evening copied into Word, I found that to be very convenient.

Halfway into the encounter my wife was mocking me for closing the notebook computer's screen every time I wanted to look at the battle mat—suggesting that I use the webcam. Frankly that was brilliant!!!

You can see from this screenshot (click for full size) that I had Deadlands, and The Flood open in PDF as well as a word file for my Encounters. If you look close you'll see that all the figures we were using were Zombies—I need to get some more appropriate figures for this game. I have the Deadlands board game; the figures in that are appropriate for the player characters, but I need to look at all my little toys and see what I have for the Monsters. The Encounter from last nights game was our player characters versus tunnel critters—mostly represented by Zombies on the map.

We didn't get a lot of story covered, so I would have awarded 1 XP. However, I was impressed that nobody took the "bait" and acted impulsively versus some of the things leading up to the final encounter of the evening or attacked inappropriately—so 2 XP for the night.

Let the Job Search Begin

2010-05-14T07:15:00.003-07:00

So, officially my last day was a week ago though I left Thursday and did not return. I've spent the week updating my resume and pulling together all the graphic design I did in the past two years to update my portfolio.

I'm tempted to post my resume here, but I try to Keep information about where I live vague on this site. Though I think that that may not have been the case when I first started the blog, so It might be a moot point, I haven't gone back and looked.

Monday they told us to apply for unemployment now, and by now they meant before June first. Today I tried twice to do so and the website crashed on me. The second time I decided to call as instructed, because I had gotten much further into the process and didn't want to type all that stuff in again.

I forgot that it was Friday, and our local government doesn't do Fridays. Perhaps I'll try again later today...or wait until Monday.

Laid Off

2010-05-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

That is all for now.

Ummm—Tell Me Again Why We're Going In the Dark Creepy Hole?

2010-05-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

I am not happy with the way last night's session of Deadlands went. It was my fault. I felt as direction-less as my players were probably feeling. I had decided that they would probably end up going back to Denver. Brandon decided to Retcon the Head Chopping action from the last game, and I was perfectly happy to allow that. What I wanted to do was feel out what the players wanted to do when they got to Denver. I had 3–4 things that I could take the players through after feeling out what they wanted to do in Denver—and most likely ended up headed to Mexico.

Things were very direction-less however, so I had to make a decision. I felt like I was forcing things, and I messed up part of the description that I'm going to have to fix.

I felt a little flustered every time Brandon would "loot" the scene. It was pulling me out of the narrative, but it wasn't out of character for him to be doing that. I also think I need to read up on how spell-casting works; I trust Brandon, but I would feel more comfortable if I understood the mechanics of it better.

We started the Flood last night, and I found it a little tricky to get the characters to go where they needed to go. I guess if they had decided to not go down into the scary hole, they would have met some sharply dressed businessmen back in Denver.

I had also planned to run an interlude session on the Train, but I forgot to print out the interludes document. I wanted to run the interlude, because part of the issues I have as Marshall (Game Master) seem to be rooted in the fact that the posse doesn't feel compelled to be together. So they decided to role play it out sans interlude card drawing. I think that went ok, but I feel it cemented the fact that there's not a lot of cohesion in the group.

I guess I just didn't feel connected to the game last night. I was pretty upset about it, it was stressing me and I even snapped at Justin when he questioned part of the narrative.

The only part that seemed to go okay was the combat. I threw a lot more villains at them than the scenario called for, and it seemed to work out okay, I was rolling lousy—but I was using Fate chips, so was everyone else, so that went well—but there wasn't a lot of description (another failure on my part) so it was the ROLL play portion of the evening.

I feel that overall I did a lousy job last night. I hope I can run a better game in two weeks.

Free Comic Book Day 2010

2010-05-01T13:45:00.001-07:00

The trick is to take your family along with you. Limit 10 per person—so I took 4 persons (Including Myself). There weren't even 40 comics that I wanted. I think we ended up with three copies of the Toy Story Comic, which is good; one for each kid and an extra when one inevitably gets destroyed.

They didn't seem to be handing these out to everyone—but I got one. A War Machine Hero Clix. Probably because Iron Man 2 released yesterday.

Yes, that's a picture of me in a Batman T-Shirt With Guy Gardner. COME ON!! I was at free comic book day—you have to be nerdy and pose with Guy Gardner!! At least I wasn't dressed up like Rorschach (Yes there was a customer there dressed as Rorschach). Funny thing—Green Lantern has always been my favorite, but back when I was actually collecting comics they weren't doing much with Green Lantern. Now it's Green Lantern this and Green Lantern that and I just peripherally experience it because I don't have disposable income to spend on comics these days.

Then there were these, I was pretty Excited to see them. I know, you're saying to yourself—but you already have a set of those! Well, these are the Mini Versions. See...

Emily was making fun of me for being so excited—then she spotted the mini version of her Toxic Orange Set and insisted that I pick them up before they were all gone.

I also got a standard size set of Pink/Purple Sparkly Dice for my four year old Daughter.

It was a good Free Comic Book Day. Now it's time to prepare for my Deadland's Game Tonight.

In A Word—AMAZING!!!

2010-04-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's right. French Toasted Pancakes!!

I think the only thing that could have made this dinner any better is Bacon Syrup.

Not a First That I Wanted to Experience

2010-04-25T12:21:00.001-07:00

Friday I woke up with a sore throat. Not an unusual thing for me, especially during that time of the year that the seasons can't make up their minds about whose turn it is. I have some issues with my sinuses that stem (I believe) from a car accident and a broken nose. This leads to mouth breathing, and occasionally waking up with a dry and sore throat. That's probably more than anyone wanted to know.

The point is, though it hurt a little more than usual—I got up and went to work as is the norm. By noon, I could tell that this was not a normal sore throat. It was the worst sore throat I had ever experienced in my life. Around eleven o'clock I had gone down to my car and dug through the pockets on the back of the front seats, I vaguely recalled having some throat lozenges. YES!!! I found them. After sucking down three to no effect, I started to suspect this was not a typical sore throat. Shortly thereafter I started to feel cold and a little sick—so I went home.

On the way home I stopped at the Drug store and picked up the real deal throat lozenges. Did you know they sell two kinds? For about the same price you can buy a bag of one hundred or a box of eighteen. Those available in bulk have an active ingredient of Menthol. Those that come in a box of eighteen have an actual oral anesthetic; it's like sucking on Orajel—it literally numbs your mouth/throat. After sucking down two of those, and noticing that my mouth was numb, but my throat still hurt—I suspected, but didn't want to admit what illness I had.

Saturday, when I woke up with the same sore throat (and had been dealing with Chills and Fever), I decided it was time to go to the doctor and get diagnosed for what I suspected was Streptococcal Pharyngitis. All my life, and all around me I've heard of people getting Strep Throat, but I've never had it. Until now. If I don't get it again for another 33 years I'll be okay with that.

Going to the Doctor was weird. I didn't know where to go or how to fill out the insurance information and what not. It's literally been over twenty years since I've gone to the Doctor for an illness.(Unless you count that one time when I was on my mission that I just remembered; that's a little different though, since it was the emergency room at one in the morning, and suspected Appendicitis, and I didn't take myself in, I just sat there in pain—the Dr. told me he was 95% sure it was appendicitis, but that he wouldn't operate until he was 98% sure. I had a priesthood blessing. I spent the night in the hospital alone [very strange for a missionary of my faith]. In the morning all symptoms were gone.)

For what it's worth, the throat culture confirmed what I suspected...At least I get a couple days off of work.

The Junk In My Trunk

2010-04-24T10:29:00.006-07:00

We've been trying to sell our house. The house we wanted has gone under contract, we cannot find anything comparable. Ours is no longer on the market as a result.

Now when your house is for sale, people come to see it. In an effort to make the house more presentable, I moved some things to the trunk of my car.

I know I have a tendency to hoard things, and I find it necessary to occasionally take a moment to laugh at myself.

Visible in this picture: (Click for Full Size)

RPG Books

Replica of the Original Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) White Box
D&D Basic Rules (Red Box Rulebook)
D&D Expert Rules (Blue Box Rulebooks)
D&D Rules Cyclopedia
D&D Immortal Rules (Gold Box Rulebooks)
D&D Wrath of the Immortals
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) Player's Handbook
AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide
AD&D Monster Manual
AD&D Monster Manual II
AD&D Fiend Folio
AD&D Unearthed Arcana
AD&D Oriental Adventures
AD&D Dieties and Demigods
AD&D Dungeoneers Survival Guide
AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide
AD&D Manual of the Planes
AD&D 2nd Edition (2E) Player's Handbook
AD&D 2E Dungeon Master's Guide
AD&D 2E Monstrous Compendium Vol 1
AD&D 2E Monstrous Compendium Vol 2
AD&D 2E Monstrous Manual
D&D 3E Player's Handbook
D&D 3E Dungeon Master's Guide
D&D 3E Monster Manual
D&D 3E Revised (3.5E) Player's Handbook
D&D 3.5E Dungeon Master's Guide
D&D 3.5E Monster Manual
D&D 4E Player's Handbook
D&D 4E Dungeon Master's Guide
D&D 4E Monster Manual
D&D 4E Player's handbook II
GURPS 3E Basic Set (1st Print)
GURPS Deadlands: Weird West
GURPS Cliffhangers
Toon Deluxe RPG
Toon Tales
Tooniversal Tour Guide
Toon ACE Catalog
The Edge of Midnight RPG
Theatrix The Core Rules
Savage Worlds (SW)
Savage Worlds Revised (SW)
Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition 2nd Printing (SWEX)
Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition 3rd Printing
Realms of Cthulhu (SWEX)
Low Life (SW)
Mars (SWEX)
Runepunk (SW)
Fantasy Companion (SWEX)
Super Powers Companion (SWEX)
Paranoia 25th Anniversary Edition
Ring Wielder

Board Games

Red November
Advance To Boardwalk
Deadlands: The Battle For Slaughter Gulch
Don't Go To Jail
Ticket to Ride
Cranium Cadoo
Dicecapades
MidEVIL Deluxe (Includes MidEVIL, MidEVIL 2: Castle Chaos, & MidEVIL 3: Subteranian Homesick Blues)

Lots and Lots of Dice

In the Filing Box to the Right are the Following:

Zombies!!!
Zombies!!! 2: Zombie Corps(e)
Zombies!!! 3: Mall Walkers
Zombies!!! 4: The End?
Zombies!!! 5: School's Out Forever
Zombies!!! 6: Six Feet Under
Zombies!!! 7: Send In The Clowns
Zombies!!! 8: Jailbreak
Zombie Town
Zombie Town 2: Road Rage
Humans!!!
Humans!!! 2: Seafood

In the Back Pack:

Carcassonne
Carcassonne The River
Carcassonne The River II
Carcassonne The Count of Carcassonne
Carcassonne King & Scout
Carcassonne Abbey & Mayor
Carcassonne Cult Siege & Creativity
Carcassonne Games Quarterly Mini Expansion
Carcassonne Inns & Cathedrals
Carcassonne Princess and the Dragon
Carcassonne The Tower
Carcassonne Traders & Builders
Bang!
Bang! A Fistfull of Cards
Bang! Dodge City
Cranium Zigity
Zombie Fluxx
Martian Fluxx
Guillotine
Lord of the Fries
Battle Cattle
Are You a Werewolf
Lupus in Tabula
Trax
Ticket To Ride USA 1910 Expansion
Settlers of Catan: The Card Game
Settlers of Catan: The Card Game Expansions

In the Backpack under the Back Pack:

Pirates of the Spanish Main (SWEX)
Day After Ragnarok (SWEX)
Slipstream (SWEX)

Not Visible, But Definitely In There:

Deadlands: Reloaded (SWEX)
Necessary Evil Explorer's Edition (SWEX)
Zombie Run (SWEX)
Deadlands: Murder on the Helstromme Express (SWEX)
Deadlands: Don't Drink the Water
Deadlands: Saddle Sore
Deadlands: Marshalls Screen
Green's Guide to Ghosts (SWEX)
Fear Effects (SWEX)
Gaslight (SWEX)
Advanced Dungeons & Savages (SW)
The Making of Savage Worlds
Wizards & Warriors (SWEX)
Savage Beasts (SWEX)
Boot Hill Replica
Chainmail Replica
FUDGE
Villains and Vigilantes (V&V) DNAgents Sourcebook
V&V Most Wanted Volume 1
V&V Most Wanted Volume 3
Marvel Super Heroes Deluxe City Campaign Set (Adventure Book Only)
Hollow Earth Expedition—

Kidnapped in the Hollow Eart

(Free RPG Day Adventure 2009)

D&D 4E—Khyber's Harvest (Free RPG Day Adventure 2009)

Martians!!!
Give Me the Brains
The World According to Ubi
Agricola
Bump in the Night
Shut the Box

Lots and Lots More Dice

A Set of Juggling Balls
A Set of Juggling Clubs

Not in the Trunk Currently—Because It's In My Back Pack that I Take Everywhere:
(I.e. What I'm Currently Running/Using Actively)

Deadlands: The Flood
Deadlands: Coffin Rock
Savage Worlds: Explorer's Edition 1st Printing
Lots and Lots More Dice
Lots and Lots of Mini Poker Chips (For Bennys/Fate Chips)
Two Decks of Face Cards With Jokers (For Savage Worlds)

This Quiz Amused Me

2010-04-21T09:09:00.001-07:00

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

You are a d100: You're a bit odd, to put it mildly. We're not sure whether you're socially inept, brain damaged, or just trying to be funny. We've given up on trying to figure it out, and have to accept that it might be all three. For you, non-sequitur are the most common form of non-communication. You are given to great flashes brilliance, but don't have the attention span to carry out any of your most ingenious plans. We don't know what color the sky is in your world, and frankly, we're afraid to ask.

Your Marshall Presents—A sandbox Game

2010-04-18T16:48:00.001-07:00

Last time the posse defeated a wolf in priests clothing and the demon he summoned and dispelled much of the fear that was leading to some strange happenings in town. Leaving me in a difficult situation. What are they going to do next session. I'm trying to let this game be a little more open ended than the last game I ran—but I don't want it to be so open ended that the players feel lost.

I read through two alternate adventure modules and boned up on some portions of the adventure module they've been going through and I planned to try and direct the players toward one of them. They decided to hook onto something else however and went somewhere I wasn't planning to take them.

I apologize for the stalling. Sometimes I'm just not good at improvising. I had to work two new players into the game. One opportunity worked a little better than the other, if Justin starts coming regularly again, I'll either need to get him hired by Mr. White, or just retcon his induction into the group.

The shoot first ask questions later attitude is going to cause problems in the future if it doesn't get curbed. In this game it worked out, but only because I happened to remember that there was a gang hanging out south of town—so they did happen to be shooting at people that are wanted by the law, but it very easily could have been a Sheriff and a posse, or a Marshall, or Just a bunch of Ranch Hands.

I'm still a little confused by the way the character Mathias has been acting. I guess in my mind he's a gentleman of refinement, who happens to have some skill in the arcane arts. He just seems too eager to do things that are extreme (Chopping heads off, Burning Down a Church). I guess what's bugging me about it (because frankly, I've been having a hard time putting it into words) is that this isn't the character I was sold on. I thought that this guy would be more concerned about keeping his shirt clean and pressed, and less eager to remove the heads of dead gang members trying to turn them in for some supposed bounty.

Overall, I think the night went well. I think everyone had fun (and that's my goal). I think if I could get the group to be more group minded then things could progress a little better.

Mystery Express—

2010-04-14T17:47:00.000-07:00

Let me start off by stating that Days of Wonder is one of my Favorite Game Publishers. Everything they do is top notch.

The first Days of Wonder game I played was Ticket to Ride—at the time, it was the new hotness that all the game stores were pushing. I'd seen it a few times and it evoked a big "meh" from me. Then it was given to us as a gift for Christmas. It's still one of my favorite games—I like most of the expansions/sequels as well.

After we discovered Ticket to Ride, we get into quite a number of games published by Days of Wonder: Shadows Over Camelot, Mystery of the Abbey, Pirate's Cove, Colosseum, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, Battlelore (Now owned by Fantasy Flight), and Small World.

Fun fact: We liked Shadows over Camelot and Mystery of the Abbey better when We were playing them wrong.

So their newest game is Mystery Express. It's like Clue, but on a train.

Good things about the game: Think about the last time that you played Clue. Remember when you kept rolling ones and you couldn't get to a room to make an accusation? That mechanic is gone. You can move to any car on the train at any time. When you're in the different cars, you don't make accusations like you do in Clue—each car has its own game mechanic. To explain the mechanic of the cars, I guess I need to explain the trip that the train is making. The train is making its way from Paris to Istanbul. The trip has five stops, and each leg of the trip takes a determined number of hours. Each car has a certain action that you can do in that car, and each action takes a certain amount of time.

The first leg of the trip is from Paris to Strasbourgh, and it takes 4 hours. In the dining car you can ask players to show you a card that is in their hand. You also get to determine the type of card (Motive, Weapon, Location, or Person). If you ask two people it uses two hours. In the lounge car you can have all the players reveal to everyone a card of a chosen color simultaneously, which takes two hours.

During certain legs of the trip there are extra passengers that board the train that you can get information from (i.e. trade a card for a new card), and if you do an action in the car that the conductor is in, you can get information from him.

Unlike Clue, there are two of every card—so you cannot eliminate anything until you know you have seen both cards. Also there are five things you are tasked with discovering. The Guilty Party, The Weapon, The Location, The Motive and the Time.

Determining the time of the murder is a pain in the brain. There is a deck of cards that has the eight possible times on cards, three of each card, on analog clocks, with no numbers on the faces. After each leg of the trip is over, there is some method of viewing the time deck: For instance, after the fist leg of the trip, the player that went first flips all the cards over one at a time in rapid succession while everyone tries to remember what they see. No note taking is allowed until the last card has been flipped. After the second leg of the trip all the cards are dealt and you get to look at one hand at a time and then everyone rotates hands until you have seen all the hands—again, no note taking is allowed during the viewing of the time cards.

So, what did I think of this game?

I knew I was either going to hate it or love it. I'm not a big fan of clue, I thought that this might overcome some of the things that I hate about Clue. It did, while simultaneously introducing a greater number of things that I hated.

First of all, the game took way too long—admittedly, part of that was due to our learning as we were going—but it took three hours to play a game advertised at 90 minutes. During that three hours, There were things that I had easily taken care of early on in the game. I knew who and where. However, by the end I had to guess on motive and weapon (and I had neither one of those narrowed by much—there are a LOT of cards flying around in this game and it becomes fairly easy to conceal one if you have a lot of a particular category).
The time was a cruel joke—only those gifted with a photographic memory will enjoy that mechanic.

Did I mention that I won, well co-won. In then end I guessed properly the weapon and the motive, making me correct in every category but the time. Another player had done the same. As a tie breaker, the game has you you write down all your premature guesses at the penultimate stop. I had three of five correct, so did the the other player—so we both won.

That's right, I hate a game that I won. It happens. The win was pointless, because I guessed so much vs players that had used skill and deduction and gotten more things wrong than I had.

I don't want to play this game again.

I still think Days of Wonder is a fine game publisher.

Blood Men and Demons and Fires—Oh My!

2010-04-03T23:33:00.002-07:00

Have I used that meme in my title before? Yes, I believe I have, oh well.

So we played a rousing game of Deadlands: Reloaded. People will always surprise you, especially when they actually role play what they wrote into their character.

A friend of mine I have known since Jr. High was in town, so he came and brought his daughter, and another player was able to finally come. Adding those three to the regular players brought the posse to seven—a decent sized group.

The first matter of business (which could have been handled better by myself) was to shoehorn the new players into the posse. Which was easy when I thought that I only had one extra player coming. She's planning on being a regular now that certain events on her calendar have cleared, so I already had a story written up for her. I ended up tacking on the other two, but I didn't handle the "meetup" description as well as I thought. On top of that Josh played his character's distrust of new acquaintances and the game started with players shooting at each other—however, later in the game this also meant that he was prepared to defend himself in a situation that most other people would have not handled so irrationally albeit appropriately.

Personally, I'm still torn on how I feel about that (the players gunning for one another). On the one hand, I like that people were playing their characters the way they were written. On the other hand I see that as a violation of the unwritten social contract between players and GM that players will not deliberately try to break the game.

I find that I still don't know how to read the difficulty of Villains vs Players. I read the stat blocks and I think to myself that they're going to get killed; then they take out my monsters one by one. While my monsters barely get any hits in. I also feel like the combat isn't coming across as terribly exciting or tactical. I think I need to concentrate on being more descriptive and trying to make the locations a little more fleshed out, so as to force more tactical combat. (i.e. more stuff in combat areas, so people can duck behind things or use the environment more)

I was prepared for the game, but not the combat—I hadn't prepared a map. I was contemplating trying a map free combat—but I could tell my description of the room they were in was already getting lost in translation. Brandon had his battle mat, so we tossed that down on the table—I sketched what I had in mind for the room. I grabbed my Deadlands: The Battle for Slaughter Gulch board game and tried to give appropriate figures to everyone. Half of them worked really well, the other half just had to pretend, and my wife got a mini figurine we got at Disneyland of Cinderella, because she's playing a southern belle. . . we used Gummy Bears for the Monsters.

Coffin Rock Spoilers Ahead...

After that fight they entered a portal which scattered them all over town. I randomly distributed the figures on the map and then described where people had landed. Unintentionally, I dropped one of the more impulsive players near the location everyone else wanted to be, and he did something impulsive.

There was another fight, and this one actually went fairly well without the battle mat.

Things I feel I need to work on:

1) Keeping track of Details (More than once we had to backtrack a little because I forgot something).
2) Being more descriptive as far as action.
3) Fleshing out locations more fully to encourage creative tactics.
4) Remembering to Give out XP before people have left. (The Answer is 3—You accomplished a lot!)
5) The Fate Chips weren't going out as much this time, consequently they weren't being used as much.

Questions for my players.

1) Was this session fun? Why or why not?
2) What can I do as Game Master to improve the Game?
3) Any other Questions or Comments? . . . Ugly Rumors?

Now—Where Did I Put That Mine?

2010-03-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday's game went well, I think.

I've been running this game a little more open than the last one I ran. Apparently only one of the story hooks that I've thrown out managed to latch onto the minds of the players. Now, If I could only figure out why that latched on and the others did not, so I could throw some of the others out again in the manner of the one they decided to bite, then I'd really be in business. (Did you manage to follow that thought?) [I really want to say something here, but that would spoil things for my players.]

I managed to actually remember to hand out Fate Chips for once—but there wasn't really much of a chance to use them in game. P ended up asking for a retcon at the end of the session, which I allowed—so he did use a fate chip to fix a bad roll that kept him out of a vision quest.

My wife is really into her character, she speaks in-character a lot. I however am not speaking in character for most of the NPCs at the moment which caused her a little confusion. I need to work on some of my descriptive skills.

Two of the characters are very mistrusting of each other at the moment, which completely fits their characters, and the situation I've placed them in, and the back story intertwining that I asked everyone to create. I just hope it doesn't tear the party apart.

I missed an opportunity Saturday, and it just occurred to me, unfortunately I can't say what it was. I'll just point out that what happened when the Posse slipped into town after dark should have been interrupted by something that would probably have distracted them from the task at hand.

They spent a good portion of the game trying to track down the Cooked Earth Mine. I changed the story a little from what it is in the book. This posse is good. That's all I'm going to say. That and I think my Indian Shaman came off a little crazier than I intended. That's okay, Yoda acted pretty crazy when Luke first showed up in Dagobah.

My last comment will be this—this game is headed precisely where it was intended to go, but this Posse paid for Express tickets. I guess I need to start reading through the Flood a Lot faster.

Oops, I guess I had another comment in me. When I first started reading The Flood, I didn't think that it was going to fit the concept I had in mind for the party—but I just read a little snippet that leads me to believe that it's actually going to fit like a glove. Time to bust out the old speed reading skills...or just take a break from Barsoom.

Drunken Gnomes—Russian Sub

2010-03-21T21:19:00.000-07:00

A Few Months ago I picked up Rзd Novзmbзr.

In this game you play a crew member of a sinking Russian submarine (The Red November). A Submarine Crewed by Gnomes. Gnomes that are getting Drunk.

Turn order is determined with a time track. You have to keep the Submarine from getting destroyed in a "60 minute" time period, each action takes a certain amount of time—and as time passes, bad things happen.

There is a fairly new phenomenon in the world of board games called the Cooperative Game. There may have been cooperative games in the past, but we are literally in the middle of a Cooperative Game Renaissance. I think that what a lot of people like about cooperative games is the lack of competition, it's you and your friends against the game.

We were doing pretty good, for a first time play through. Most cooperative games are pretty brutal (they have to be a challenge or else they would get boring pretty fast) and this was seeming to be tough, but not impossible, and then everything hit the figurative fan and we lost with a mere ten minutes left to go. Half the Sub was on fire and the other half was flooded.

The rulebook even had variations to make the game more challenging. Crazy!! (To be fair it also had a variation that would seem to make it easier, called Less Deadly Death)

We've only had a chance to play it once, but I'm itching to play again. I would recommend this game to anyone.

Cinderella: Space Ranger

2010-03-18T10:33:00.083-07:00

So my daughter wanted to stay up late and read a book the other night, but it was already far past her bedtime, so I told her we could play a dice game tomorrow.

The Dice Game indicates that we play a little improvised role playing game using her jumbo, over sized, plush dice.

The Game generally starts with the traditional, "once upon a time..."

Usually we end up sending a princess on some mad cap adventure—okay, this time was no different. She wanted the story to be about Cinderella. She was wearing Buzz Lightyear pajamas. Let the Mash-up begin!

Granted, I didn't take it as far as I could have. I didn't make her step-relatives show up to aid Emperor Zurg. The story ended up pretty good, due mostly to the both of us rolling badly.

I use a very simple system derived from Savage Worlds—(are you surprised?)

• She picks a single Die (She started with the d12, but I had her switch when I realized it was giving us d2 results [plush dice aren't exactly precision random number generators])
• Every character has every attribute and skill represented by that die, the target number for success is four.
• Dice explode (re-roll and add the result if the highest number on the die is rolled)
• I take raises into account when narrating the story (Raises being every result that is +4 over the target number of 4 [i.e. 8 is one raise 12 is two etc.]). Raises make the results even better.

She doesn't know all this, she knows that anything over four is a success and she loves it!

Cinderella and Buzz Lightyear of Space Command went to face the Evil Emperor Zurg. They fired on his ship and missed, he fired back and missed, they fired again and missed, he fired back and got them. They crashed into a cargo bay and then deployed the wings on their Space Suits and flew out to face Zurg. There was a fist fight, Cinderella had the upper hand and was about to put hand cuffs on him when Zurg managed to land a desperate punch which knocked her out. Then Buzz Stepped in and kept Zurg occupied while Cinderella tried to regain consciousness, once she was up again they tag teamed him and managed to get him into hand cuffs and then took him to the space dungeon.

Good times!

Crystal Caste—A Dice Company With Class

2010-03-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

My Dice "Problem" Is Well Established.

I purchased a new set recently. I just couldn't say no to their Lime-Green siren call.
However, my set of seven was slightly flawed. I had two d10's with numbers indicating the tens place.

So I dropped them an e-mail letting them know—I wasn't even looking for a replacement, I can use a tens place d10 just as easily as the ones place variety. I just thought that if there was some sort of production problem on their assembly line, I would let them know.

They responded by sending not only a replacement, but some extra, pipped, d6's to boot.

I Just Found A Way To Take My Dice Obsession To A Whole New Level

2010-03-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

I've been searching for a way to design some customized dice for myself for quite some time now. I found a way to do it today. The Site is called Shapeways and they bring Fast Prototyping to the masses, they have a variety of materials available and only charge a one time setup fee (for new models only), materials (per cubic centimeter), and shipping. The only downside I can see is that they are located in the Netherlands, meaning possible Import Duties or Taxes involved.

I'm definitely going to be designing some specialized dice. Most likely d18, d22, d26, and d28.

There are already some dice on the Site—Check it out!

Disneyland: The Magic is Back

2010-03-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I went to Disneyland and I was saddened by the state of things. This was back when Michael Eisner was still head honcho, and he had started cutting corners in the park and it showed.

One of Walt's visions when creating Disneyland was the exact opposite of all the other amusement parks he had attended with his children. They were usually run down, sad places. He hated the midway and he hated the general lack of cleanliness.

Eisner built the California Adventure and put in a Midway, he also cut the budget for Upkeep and Cleaning of the park. I saw amounts of trash that I never would have seen before, I saw places where the construction of the attractions needed repair, I saw animatronics that were in need of cleaning and repair, I saw attractions that were not in use, that were not kept clean and an eye sore.

Eisner was run out of the company on a rail due to his poor treatment of the Disney Legacy, and Roy (Walt's Nephew that wanted the former glory of the company to return) came back as a member of the Board.

Roy left the world a few months ago, but the Legacy of the Disney Company and the Quality that the Disney Name should always stand for has returned to the park. The Crass commercialism that Eisner's cronies introduced was gone and the Fun was back.

Friday, I found that there was no longer trash around the park. The Chicken Wire foundation of the Matterhorn was no longer showing through making it look like a mountain (instead of a paper-maché approximation), all the animatronics in Splash Mountain were working and clean, Mr. Lincoln shared the great words he used to inspire all people—regardless of nationality, attractions not in use were hidden from sight or in good repair and pleasing to the eye.

No longer were all the stores the same vanilla Disney Store meets the Gap flavor, and there was once more that feeling that the stores in Adventure Land were different from those found in Tomorrow Land.

I think Walt would be happy with the way the park is being run now.

It Must Be a GM Thing

2010-02-26T15:55:00.000-07:00

So, back when I was playing Dungeons and Dragons, I would laugh a little inside every time our Game Master (GM) would drag this big giant bag full of books through my front door. Usually only four or five of the books would even be referenced; The Player's Guide, The Game Master's Guide, The Monster Manual (occasionally), A Guide to Faerûn since we were playing in the Forgotton Realms, and a Psionics Guide (since we had one mental player, hehe).

But now I'm running Savage Worlds and even though I rarely need to reference a Book that is not the Core Rulebook or the Setting Rulebook. I find myself wanting to always have all those other books available—you know, just in case.

Though I've always wanted all my information to be close at hand.

I remember when I was a kid, I had this Astronaut action figure that was my favorite and I took that thing everywhere. I imagined how cool it would be, if inside the domed helmet there was a tiny little bookcase that had all my books and records on it—and a little tiny astronaut that could load said records onto a little tiny record player for me so I could listen to them. (I don't think I ever thought about how I could read the little books...)

It's no wonder that I carry an MP3 Player (80 G Zune for the Curious) with close to forty gigabytes of Music and just under forty gigabytes of Movies stored on it—I even have ten novels stored on it in picture format (it's not an e-reader, but I was bound and determined to use it as one).

I'll be glad when I have a Notion Ink Adam and can more easily carry all the books around that I want.

Sometimes I feel like I have the brain of a Dragon—I have all this stuff that I hoard (Music, Movies, Books), I may not use it all, but I want access to it at any given moment, so I must have my collection within reach at all times.

So maybe it's not a GM thing.

Deadlands: Reloaded—Coffin Rock—First Play Session

2010-02-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

Saturday marked our first session of Deadlands: Reloaded. Seeing myself as a greenhorn Marshall (That's Game Master in Deadlands Speech), I've chosen to start the Campaign using the Adventure Module Coffin Rock.

This is my second campaign and the first thing that is different, is not the fact that I'm running a Western instead of a Modern Day setting. The first thing that became apparent to me, was that I had pre-game jitters again. The reasons are two-fold: First, this is a new setting. Yes, I ran what I felt to be a successful Savage Worlds game last year—Yes, Deadlands: Reloaded is a Savage Wolrds Game; but there are parts of the setting that are just different enough that I'm nervous about running them (High Noon Style Gunfights for instance [and fear levels]). Second, the adventure/setting is much more open ended.

Zombie Run was a very linear tale, each session consisted of a fairly self contained story, and I probably could have run them all out of order if I wanted to and it wouldn't have made a difference. I only really had to have one chapter in mind for each session.

Coffin Rock is a very different creature indeed. It's a thirty page adventure, with multiple plot hooks that are all intertwined. I have to keep track of everything going on in and around the town of Coffin Rock (thankfully it's a small town).

I feel that the session went fairly well. Most of the things that I had pre-game jitters about, were non issues when it came right down to it. [Though I'm still a little shaky on handling Fear Levels]. Right now my biggest concern is that I didn't give the players enough direction. I know one of the things that my wife doesn't like when playing Role Playing Games is feeling directionless—this is a little tricky when there is a level of investigation involved.

Investigation in Role Playing is a sore spot for some, because in a lot of games it is handled in such a way that the players may not obtain the clues. This is something that the Gumshoe system has tried to change by making it so that players always find the clues—making the game about what they do with the clues obtained. I haven't read my Gumshoe book yet, so I don't know exactly how that system accomplishes that particular task—this is something I wanted to integrate into my Savage Worlds games. I think I faltered on it a little bit, but not enough to say I failed (as a whole they were rolling well enough that it was a non issue).

They hit upon about a dozen of the intertwined clues in the course of the evening, but none of them went to conclusion. There are quite a few subplots in the adventure as well and I hope we get to explore some of them.

One of the changes I made for this campaign, was to do character creation as a full session. We didn't quite finish that night, so we tied up the loose ends before jumping into play. I didn't do that when I ran Zombie Run, because I thought it was going to be so deadly that character creation would be a regular part of the game. It didn't turn out that way, and I think it suffered a little because of it—but not enough for it to be a game breaker.

With Deadlands: Reloaded, I'm hoping that people really get to explore their characters and develop them on a deeper level, which is why I took a whole evening for character creation—an evening augmented by conversations on Google Wave. I feel that we have some really nicely fleshed out backgrounds and it showed in-game. My wife really got into her character and was channeling someone else completely when speaking in-character.

What I learned:

My Improv skills are a little rusty.

A Year Of Traffic

2010-02-18T12:59:00.069-07:00

So, I started monitoring traffic with Google Analytics one year ago. Feb 18, 2009—Let's look at the traffic stats.

Feb18, 2009–Feb 18, 2010

I've had 1,660 visits, 697 unique visitors

2,567 page views

1,257 of the page views were to The Blog's main page
The page visited the most excluding the main page with a total of 389 page views:
Guess What?! I've Got a Fever, and the Only Prescription... is More Dice!
Perhaps I need to blog about dice more often, though none of my other Dice Posts have been quite that popular.

Most of my traffic comes from a direct hits.
Though, in very close competition are referrals from my cousin's blog.
The next three sources are Google related and then things drop to double digits.

The Browser Usage I find interesting

	Firefox			38.55%
	Internet Explorer			32.59%
	Safari			19.88%
	Chrome			6.51%
	Opera			1.45%
	(not set)			0.42%
	Googlebot			0.36%
	Camino			0.06%
	Mozilla			0.06%
	Mozilla Compatible Agent			0.06%
	SeaMonkey			0.06%

Sea Monkey? I'd never heard of that one. (not set) makes me curious.

Browsers is also an interesting Stat.

	Windows			73.07%
	Macintosh			24.70%
	(not set)			0.96%
	Linux			0.84%
	Android			0.18%
	iPhone			0.18%
	iPod			0.06%

Hmmmm? (not set) again?

That's everything that caught my eye that I found interesting.

Google Buzz

2010-02-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

I know you can link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to Buzz—but does it work in reverse? If it does I MIGHT consider signing up to the social networks I've been shunning.

I Think I've Developed An Obsession

2010-02-10T11:43:00.001-07:00

I mentioned a while ago, that I was looking to get an e-reader. I think I've decided which one I want. Funny thing about it—it's not a dedicated e-reader, and it's the fault of a Mac rumor that led me to its discovery.

Before the iPad was announced there were rumors a plenty. I happened across a diagram that detailed the rumors vs. their likelihood of turning out to be true. One of the technologies that was very unlikely to be true was the implementation of Screen Qi technology. (Pronounced Chee)

This was something that I had never heard of before—so I looked it up.

Part of what makes e-readers so great for reading, is the screen technology. Most e-readers use e-ink. What you have is these tiny little capsules with even tinier capsules inside. The tiniest capsules are half black and half white. Depending on the polarity and amount of electrical charge a number of those capsules "rise" and "fall." So for a pixel to be all black, a charge tells all the black particles to rise, for white (or blank space) all the black particles fall, for shades of gray only some black particles rise. (Here is an Illustration from Wikipedia for those that need a visual explanation.) The reason it's easy to read is that they pack about 200 of these per inch—which is comparable to print. The other reason this is so great for a reader is that it only requires power to change the image, not to maintain it.

That's e-ink, it's a great technology, but has limitations. I.e. Color is only experimental at the moment, and it changes slow.

Back to Screen Qi. The difference is that it is a modified LCD technology. In order to see a normal LCD screen, it must be back lit, and that demands a lot of power. Screen Qi is a flexible technology. When backlit, it looks almost like a normal LCD (maybe a fraction of a fraction dimmer), where it differs is a reflective layer that allows it to use the ambient lighting of the environment to light the screen. In other words the back light can be turned off and you can still see the screen. This makes it easier to view than normal LCD screens in an office environment or in direct sunlight (as you have probably noticed your cell phone screen is difficult to read in direct sunlight). This is not the only innovation of Screen Qi.

Color in LCD, CRT, Four Color Printing, Etc. is created by the eye's ability to blend colors. Each pixel is actually comprised of Three Components; and by varying the intensity of red, green, and blue in each of those components the colors of the visible spectrum can be created. In Screen Qi the red, green, and blue filters that make those components can be turned off, changing each pixel into three gray scale pixels. Screen Resolution is around 72 dots per inch—turning the color filters off would then give us around 216 dpi which is equivalent to print and looks a lot like e-ink. The difference here is that it's still LCD technology, so it still requires constant power to maintain the screen, however the amount of power required is significantly reduced. So I think the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

I immediately started searching for a device that uses this technology. The only one I can find presently is the Notion Ink Adam, a tablet "PC" slated to be released around June of this year. I think this thing will be the device for me.

Multi-touch interface (up to 6 fingers), Accelerometer, back side track pad for on screen control without your hand being in the way, NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, 3 megapixel camera, HD video output via HDMI port, three USB2 ports, 3G, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, Digital Compass, headphone jack, microphone, speakers, SD card support, 32 gig flash drive, water sensor, and all running on a customized Google Android platform in a convenient 6.3" x 9.8" x 0.5" package. (It may even end up a little slimmer.)

Cost estimates are $300–$400 and I'm saving up now. The only thing more I could ask for is Stylus input in the style of a Wacom tablet.

Just Check out the Video Here. Keep in mind that the case it's being demoed in is a mock up hand carved out of wood and not the final.

Next week there is a Mobile World Congress Convention in Barcelona, and Notion Ink is preparing to announce more details about this device. I'll probably Geek-Out even more.

New Campaign—Character Creation Thoughts

2010-02-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

We held our character creation session for the upcoming Deadlands: Reloaded Campaign this weekend. P's wife and kids were sick, so he was unable to attend. I think things went relatively well, but we didn't get to the portion of the character creation that I wanted to make sure happened.

So we have: Matthias Wilkinson, a Gambler that got caught up in some women troubles in New Orleans and took a slow boat to Shan Fan; Ada Pearl, southern belle with a nasty case of wanderlust; I didn't get Tiffany's Character's name (I don't think she chose it yet) a Bounty Hunter, and ... Not exactly fleshed out, but the numbers are on the character sheet; and P's character (He's probably got a great name picked out—but I don't know it yet), a Law Dog that had a Falling out with the Texas-Rangers and is now working as a free agent.

The one thing I wanted to get to was finding some connections between the character's past lives—before they were hired by their mysterious benefactor. I have an Idea for a connection between my wife's and Tiffany's characters that I need to run by them.

I'm looking forward to playing a game with more fleshed out characters. I think Tiffany's would be further along, if we could talk her into hopping onto Google Wave with the rest of us.

I'm a little torn now about the invitations that I send out for each session. During Zombie Run I had a group of fifteen people and no more than five ever actually showed up. Characters were a little more two dimensional, but I think that was okay for the setting, and for my first campaign as Game Master. I was hoping this game could be a little more fleshed out, so at this point I'm considering changing the invite to only people that have fleshed out a character, however, I'm of the opinion that the more the merrier (even though I think I'd panic if fifteen people showed up to a session). I don't want to Exclude anyone that just wants to show up some random week—but throwing together a character in 5–10 minutes like we did for Zombie Run is not what I had in mind for this campaign. I'm not sure what to do...any thoughts?

I Was Asleep—I Was Dreaming

2010-02-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

I don't recall dreams as much as I once did. I think it's because a) I don't get enough sleep, and b) I wake up using an alarm and therefore I'm waking up during the wrong cycle required to remember.

Saturday last, I woke up during the right cycle, after being afforded the opportunity to sleep in for a change.

I found myself being flown into (via Helicopter) what appeared to be a post Apocalyptic city. It was mile upon mile of midrise apartment buildings that were burned on the outside. They weren't falling down, some glass was missing. It was if they all caught fire, but the fires burnt out before the fire reached the interior.

Once I was on the ground though, it appeared that the buildings were scorched inside and out, but not enough to compromise the structural integrity (for the most part). Every surface was charcoal black—and fractured. Some interiors seemed to be more in tact than others.

This is when I noticed I was in a Suit and Tie—and a name badge was fastened to my pocket (It's been a long time since I had a missionary dream). A name badge much like this one. There were quite a few of us that exited the chopper. My wife was among the crowd, but we were not paired up as a companionship which struck me as odd only after I woke up.

We scattered in different directions, and we were moving fast as if our lives depended on it.

After a time I was able to ask a uniformed person (soldier, or peace officer—I'm unsure which), "What caused all this?"

He rattled off a list, "Death, destruction, corruption, prostitution, drugs, crime...you name it."

The next thing I remember was going door to door. For some time there was no answer. When someone did answer, we found ourselves surrounded by a gang and guns were involved. No shots were fired, and I stood boldly—they believed we were there to help.

I recall teaching a discussion in a building that was severely scorched on the exterior, but was relatively unscathed inside. The lesson was taught to a large group of men and women. One woman in particular was interested, but scared—at some point I was speaking to her as she bussed tables in an empty ballroom next to a swimming pool.

I meant to write about this days ago—you know how details of dreams fade over time unless you make note of them. Perhaps my wife can remind us of any details that I've forgotten since I told her about this dream.

My Journey to the Game Master's Chair (or: How I Ended Up Behind the Screen)

2010-01-31T16:02:00.003-07:00

[I actually posted this on a Forum of one of the podcasts that I listen to. Predictably, it ended up being ridiculously long, and no one read it—so I'm posting it here where an equal number of people won't read it. Changes or comments made for the sake of the blog format to be denoted by brackets.]

Buckle Up, this is going to be a long one!

Again I feel compelled to comment [referring to the content of the podcast]—this does not happen often, but this episode hit close to home, and I just feel compelled to share my experience.

To begin, I want to point out that I have only Game Mastered [Fifteen] sessions (Technically a few more than that, but we'll get to that later) and as such I still consider myself a beginner.

Let me start at the beginning.

Growing up I was into all the same pop culture as my peers (Transformers, G.I. Joe, Thundercats, He-Man, etc. etc. etc.) At the same time I've always been a bit of an old codger since birth—I also enjoy the pop culture of my Father's and Grandfather's Generations. Even as a kid I used out dated catch phrases.

Back to the point, I was not the kid that was into sports. I was the small kid everyone teased, I lived in my own little world inside my head, I watched educational programming of my own accord, I was a Geek in Embryo...

By all accounts I should have gotten into Role Playing back when the Red Box Dungeons and Dragons burst onto the scene in the late 70's/early 80's. I was intrigued by the advertisements for it in my Smurf and Goofy Comic books, I watched the Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon every Saturday Morning; granted I was a little on the young side, but I always had a longer attention span than my friends of the same age. My reading comprehension was above where it "should" have been. I enjoyed full length movies as a kid, I was excited when certain movies were to be broadcast on television, and I would try to get my friends to watch them with me, but they never lasted more than probably half an hour and had wandered off to play elsewhere by the time it got to the really good parts.

The reason I never got into it back then was because my mother bought into the D&D is Evil Vibe.

I come from a religious family—I won't get into religion here [they avoid religion and politics on the podcast and on the related forum], I just want to point out that that is part of the reason I never tried D&D. I honored my mother by listening to her instruction that D&D was something to be avoided.

I only really encountered D&D once as a Kid. I went to the next door neighbors house to play one day and they were sitting on the porch of the house with paper and pencils and being kind of secretive about what they were doing. When I asked what they were doing, they said they were playing a game—but that I would probably not be interested. They said they were playing D&D—so I went home.

Looking back on that I think they thought they were playing D&D, but were probably just trying to emulate someone that they had observed playing. I remember they had lined paper and pencils only. No Dice. I only came to that recently as I was reflecting on things and applied what I know now of D&D. At the time I was just obeying my mother's instruction to avoid that game.

My next encounter with Role Playing Games didn't happen until Junior High School. An English teacher of mine used a d20 and some tables to give us random items to incorporate into a story, for a creative writing assignment. Understanding that D&D had a bad reputation, the teacher explained that it was a Role Playing Game, and that it was only as good or as bad as you made it. I think a book was even passed around class. [Which I found very intriguing.]

I came to be good friends with this teacher, but as interested as I was in this Role Playing Game thing, I never broached the subject.

In High School, I was friends with quite a few people that I knew played Role Playing Games—I was interested in the concept—I wanted to play, but I was never invited (probably because I never asked). My friends played Rifts, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Heroes.

Interested, but too timid to ask I researched it a little, but as the internet was just fledgling I was limited in resources. I liked the Idea of the game GURPS [Generic Universal Role Playing System] because it is "universal" and could cover any possibility.

On a Bulletin Board System I found a free RPG called Ringwielder. (Which I managed to find Here, if you're curious)

Here is my first attempt to GM. I read the text file, I liked the concept and wanted to play. I talked my parents into taking me to the local Comic Book Store, I had seen the special dice needed when I was there. Thus my obsession with dice was born (but that's another story). [Actually, I think the obsession truly started when my Jr. High English teacher showed us a die with more than six sides—I wanted one immediately.]

Here's how I attempted to run a game. I explained the concept to a friend of mine and got him interested. Then, we sat in the back of Math class and passed notes. I wrote what was happening and he wrote what he wanted to do. We rolled dice and what not. We never got very far because I still had no real Idea what I was supposed to be doing, I was trying to do it all on the fly. I didn't understand the concept of Preparation, story, etc..

That died after just a few classes—and I didn't include it in my count of sessions run above.

After High School I went on a proselytizing mission for my church for a couple years. While on that mission I picked up GURPS in a used bookstore [on a preparation day]. It was in good condition, but it was kind of Old, and it started falling apart shortly after I brought it home. I put it aside, because it wasn't the sort of thing I needed to be focusing on while I was doing God's work.

I had one more attempt at this Role Playing thing on my own accord.

I was attending the local community college. I had a large group of friends, and I convinced a bunch of them to try role playing. We got together and created characters, and again I was trying to do things on the fly. Our Characters were very random. The Universal in GURPS said to me that it was a game where anything could happen.

My Girlfriend at the time (Now My Wife) Created a Fairy in the vein of Tinkerbell, one person created himself, I created a creature that I had been making comics about since High School. I remember that when we "played" the game, the guy that created himself got up in the morning and was brushing his teeth, wearing a bathrobe and suddenly found himself standing in the middle of a field between two opposing armies (medieval fantasy—cavalry) charging each other. I'm not sure what exactly I had in mind, I was winging it based on the characters that they made. Making characters had taken so long that we didn't get much play time in.

And we never got together to play again. I didn't count this in the sessions at the top either.

So I graduated from Community College (Three associate Degrees!—LOL), got married, got a job in a field completely unrelated to what I studied in school—and was introduced to the Widening World of Board Games. We play all kinds of Board Games and this is what led me to my first Real experience with a Role Playing Game.

Our church held a night of Games for an activity; everyone was to bring their favorite games. I brought unique games no one had heard of before, while every body else brought the usual.

Talking to a member of the Bishopric he asked if I had ever played D&D. I told him no, but I wanted to. He invited me to his game. His group (mostly made up of his family) played once a month. Thus I was introduced to 3rd Edition D&D.

Shortly thereafter I met someone at work that played and I went to one of his sessions. It had fewer people and they played more often (weekly, for the most part)—so I dropped out of the original campaign that I attended.

The new group stopped playing, understandably, when the wife of the GM delivered a premature baby.

I still had a desire to play, but I'm not the sort of person to go down to the game store and look for a group. I still have no desire to do that, it doesn't interest me at all.

Some time later I ended up talking to an acquaintance from High School via a social networking site (not Facebook—I'm still being stubborn about joining Facebook). We knew each other and had some of the same classes, but that's about it.

He invited me to a GURPS Supers game. Which fell apart after a few sessions. [Not his fault, but that of some of the other players.]

He also introduced me to Fear the Boot. In some of the earlier shows one of the hosts was going on and on about Savage Worlds, and I was intrigued. I picked up the book.

After reading the Book, I was dying to play—but really had no one to play with, or any Idea what kind of game to play, if I chose to run a game.

Then Necessary Evil Explorers Edition came out and I bought it with the intention of running the plot point campaign. Then my Wife planned to go out of town one weekend, and I saw an opportunity to invite some people over for a test run of the system. I didn't want to Run Necessary Evil because I knew that my wife would want to join in if I ran a full on campaign. I get a kick out of zombies, so I was thinking maybe a zombie game.

That very week, Zombie Run was released updated for Savage Worlds Explorers Edition. I picked it up thinking it was just a few sessions type of adventure.

I run a game every two weeks. There are approximately fifteen players invited. I've never had more than five actually show up. I've only had two sessions where I didn't have enough show up to actually play. I have one player that is a very experienced GM. I have seven people that are familiar with playing Role Playing Games, and to the other seven this is a completely new experience.

So here I am, [eight] months later. [Just Finished] the Explosive [unfortunately Anti-climatic] Conclusion to Zombie Run. My first Real Experience as a GM.

What I think of your discussion topic. [Referring to the particular episode of podcast. Topic: pros and cons of using Adventure Modules]

I've never been really good at improvisation. I'm creative, but not really quick about it—so running an adventure has been good and bad.

Good because there was a lot of stuff there for me that I didn't have to think up on the fly.

Bad because the players almost derailed me a few times—which made me feel like a deer in the headlights.

I think running Necessary Evil would have been better because of the Plot Point Campaign rather than Scripted Adventure model.

Listening to your podcast has helped, but nothing truly prepares you for the GM chair.

I think you need to play in a Role Playing Game (any game) before trying out the GM seat, just so you have an Idea about how Role Playing Games work—no book really explains it well enough. I can sort of imagine what it was like for first timers back when D&D originally came out.

Also, when you decide to GM, make sure your story is prepared, make sure the world is fleshed out in your mind. Knowing the Rules is good, but I've found looking a rule up slows things down less than when I'm stalling and trying to figure out what to do story wise. This may just be part of my improvisation deficiency.

I didn't have a mentor GM to help me. I could have, if I had taken the initiative to talk to a few of the people that I know that GM. However that didn't occur to me. Also, as much as I enjoy the social aspect of gaming—I'm kind of an introvert and would not feel justified in making someone take time to hold my hand along the way. In this case I just wanted to branch out on my own and see what happens.

So Having an adventure module, in my mind, became essential. In essence the module became my mentor. It does take a lot of creativity at times to railroad your players without them feeling railroaded.

When we finish this campaign, we're going to take a break from RPG. Have a couple weeks where we play Board Games or Video Games [Video Games almost always refers to the advanced version of Karaoke known as Rock Band and Guitar Hero, we have most of them and they are great party games]... and then Jump into Deadlands: Reloaded. [My wife changed her mind and we're no longer taking a break—next session is character creation for Deadlands: Reloaded]

I've read the Book Cover to cover it's taken me a while to get through it (due to time constraints)[okay, mostly because I read it on the bus and I fall asleep on the bus a lot—actually, I fall asleep every time I read lately, I don't think I'm getting enough sleep]—I'm planning to read The Flood, Murder on the Hellstromme Express, Coffin Rock, and Don't Drink the Water [all Deadlands: Reloaded Supplements and Adventure modules] before I start. Hopefully I can run a less railroaded campaign this time, but not make it so much of an open sand box that the players feel lost and directionless—I know my wife has felt that way in other games she's played.

Catching Up While Remaining Stubborn

2010-01-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Thus far, I still don't have a Face Book account or a Twitter Account.

My sister invited me to Twitter ages ago—I stubbornly wouldn't join because she wouldn't join Plaxo. Since then I've stopped using Plaxo and replaced it's functionality with the far more useful tool: Google Reader (people don't have to be subscribed to Google Reader for me to get updated from their sites).

I still don't care about the minutiae that twitter puts forth.

I remember trying to log into Face Book back when it was first launching and opening up. I had just graduated from community college and back then it was just a college thing, and apparently my community college wasn't in it's database—so I gave up.

About a year later, Face Book was starting to really explode. I swear I had one, because I vaguely recall signing up just so I could see some pictures a Family Member had posted. I think I logged in once to see the pictures and never logged in again. I tried logging in recently, and if I did have an account, it's long since been purged from the system.

Now it's a worldwide phenomenon—and I'm refusing to join.

I know there are benefits, my wife keeps pestering me to join so I can keep up with all my Friends from High School—she mocks me that she's friends with all my high school friends. At this point, I think it would be nice to keep up with everyone, but I don't want to deal with the inane aspects. The people you don't know requesting you join their list of friends that they don't know—a list they will continue to grow until it rivals the population of China. The post X in your status notes. The people that post moronic things on your wall, or things best dealt with privately on your public wall. The Games, the games, and the Games.

I prefer Blogs paired with an RSS reader. It's a control issue to be sure, and it definitely lacks in the networking department. I was happy that a friend from back then messaged me on Yahoo messenger when I was logged in the other day.

She questioned the fact that I was even using that account. I don't really—but a certain eCommerce site won't let me change my e-mail address to Google, because the name matches my login name (Never mind the fact that it also matches my yahoo account, but apparently they've changed policy and I'm grandfathered in as far as that email goes. I'd have to change my login on their site in order to change my email address to my Google account it's not worth it). I've Digressed.

So we chatted momentarily. I remembered to get her blog and now I've read through some posts and caught up a bit. From there I was able to link to to some other friends blogs and find out what they're up to (Including a Teacher of mine that I always considered a good friend). There's still a few people I'd like to keep up with a little more—maybe I'll remember to ask them if they have blogs someday—I'm still being stubborn about Face Book.

Geek/Nerd Law

2010-01-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

One of the Blogs I read that keeps me up to date on Geeky and Nerdy things, recently held a contest. To enter the contest, people were encouraged to sent in their Nerd Laws—twenty of which were assembled into a list of Nerd Commandments.

The Winner wrote a "Law" that Truly Spoke to me. The Blog is Topless Robot, the author of this Law/Commandment Identified him/herself as Chapka.

The Law is as Follows:

"Thou must obey the Law of the Golden Mean.
What is it? Glad you asked:
• Any thing that can be purchased, achieved or obtained that consists of a discrete number of individual parts, issues, episodes, or location; such as issues of a comic book, trading cards in a set, or action figures in a line is subject to the Law of the Golden Mean.
• Any nerd in possession of more than 61.8% of the individual items in such a series must, if at all possible, either proceed to acquire each of the remaining items so as to complete the set, or sell one or more items on eBay until the nerd again owns less than 61.8% of the total series.
• If the items owned make up a complete set of a more specific series, the law is satisfied.

Example 1:
Peter owns seasons one, two, three and four of Babylon 5 on DVD. Peter owns 4 of 5 (80%) of Babylon 5 on DVD, and so must also purchase Season 5 to complete the set, even though it kind of sucked.

Example 2:
Clark owns the first nine of sixteen collected volumes of Dave Sim's "Cerebus the Aardvark." Clark owns only 56.25% of the Cerebus books, and therefore may stop purchasing them without violating this Law once he realizes that they've gotten longwinded, incomprehensible, and obnoxious.

Example 3:
Logan owns all of issues 27 through 860 of Detective Comics except for Issue #449 ("Midnight Rustler of Gotham City"). Logan owns 96.7% of all Detective Comics issues and would ordinarily be required to complete the set. However, by buying Issue #449, Logan can complete the more specific set of all Detective Comics issues published since the introduction of Batman, after which he does not need to purchase issues 1 through 26.

Example 4:
Reed has photographs of himself with William Shatner, Majel Barrett, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and Walter Koenig. His photographs comprise only 55.6% of the original nine-member regular cast of Star Trek: The Original Series, and it is unnecessary for him to stalk either Nichelle Nichols or Grace Lee Whitney, although I bet that won't stop him.

Example 5:
Bruce has 300 issues of Fantastic Four from the 1960s through the 1980s in plastic storage tubs under his bed. Because Bruce owns less than 61.8% of the 500-plus Fantastic Four issues, he is not required to purchase the entire set. However, Bruce's collection likely includes more than 61.8% of those Fantastic Four issues inked by Joe Sinnott, and if Bruce is aware of this, he will be required to complete that subset.

For most nerds, failure to abide by the Law of the Golden Mean will result in madness, obsession, and eventually a [hazy, sleep deprived] late-night sale of the entire remaining collection on eBay."

I don't know what it is about being Geeky, but there is an obsessive need to collect and categorize stuff. Reading over this Law, I realized that I've been living that way instinctively. My They Might Be Giants music collection, at one time was 100%. Then we had a falling out (i.e. they were donating money from album sales to a cause that I cannot support). Since then I've learned that it was only money from a particular Album (a compilation with other artists for the express intent of raising money for that cause) and it drives me a little insane that I'm missing Nine of their Albums.

This is the precise reason that I do not purchase T.V. Series on DVD (That and the fact that I would never sit down and watch through them). Though recently I purchased Seasons one and two of Zorro because it was necessary to keep complete my selection of Walt Disney Treasures DVD sets.

Anticlimatic Ending—An Apolgy and Explanation for my Players

2010-01-25T10:36:00.000-07:00

The Final Session of Zombie Run was Anti-climatic. I had a suspicious, little, nagging, thought in my head that led me to believe that the potential for an anti-climatic resolution was possible.

I had read through the mass battle rules multiple times last week—and I still didn't feel like I had a grasp on them. I had read a post on the Pinnacle Entertainment Group forums that talked about some house rules that would help to alleviate the mass battle rule letdown of the finale to Zombie Run, but I felt that they were too complex and had come up with a house rule of my own (a house rule that I forgot to use when it came right down to it—I'm still kicking myself over that one).

I had decided to run the mass battle rules as written, but between rounds, draw cards and have each character play out exactly what they were doing on the battle field. What happened? The player characters rolled so well (and I simultaneously rolled poorly) that my army should have cut and run after the first round. I made the decision on the spot that my army was so bent on misplaced loyalty that they were going to fight to the end—and I forgot to have everyone draw cards at that point and describe their heroic actions (grumble, grumble, grumble)—to which they again rolled ridiculously well, obliterating the army of non-player characters that was me.

I was hoping that the setup period for the battle would elicit a little more Role Play than it did. Also, I had a feeling the Mass Battle rules would end it too quickly, but I decided to roll with them anyway, since I was curious as to how they worked and reading through the rules 7–8 times didn't seem to help. When I find I don't understand a gaming concept on paper, I know I have to actually play it out to gain understanding. I even came up with that house rule so that people would actually have an opportunity to do something heroic or cool during the battle and then I dropped the ball and forgot to follow through when I got flustered about the battle technically being over in one round.

If I was to call a mulligan, the following changes would be made.

1—Remember to actually use the house rule I had come up with.
2—Use more battle tokens. (70 to 100, instead of 7 to 10)
3—Have their General roll the correct dice. The player with the highest smarts was acting as General and I was having her roll her smarts since no one actually had knowledge(battle). It would have made a difference if they had been rolling a d4 -2 (unskilled attempt) and then adding the cooperative rolls and situational modifiers into the mix.
4—Preparing for the battle should have involved Zombies. Zombies should have wandered into the Mine Field and destroyed some of the Zombie-Bus-Melting, Tactical-Nuke-Land-Mines. Zombies should have attacked when they were putting up the Tank Traps, and the Mines (technically, there probably should have been potential to mess up when arming each of the mines—that could have been sad and very unheroic).
5—Also, Random Zombie Attacks from Zombies Drawn to the Battle by whatever senses they posses.
6—The Dead Rising During the After Battle Clean up.

I don't know why I can't come up with these things before or during the game. Chalk it up to my inexperience as a Game Master.

So I apologize to everyone for a pretty lackluster game. Particularly to S, since she doesn't come often and this explosive finale that I had been hyping up ended up being kind of lame—and to Brian, who showed up after the battle was over already.

On a more positive note. My wife wants to do character creation for Deadlands: Reloaded next session whereas before she had requested that we take a Role Playing Break and have a couple Board/Card/Video Gaming Nights.

Also, she just called me and informed me that the flowers she received from her parents for her birthday tipped over and my Deadlands: Reloaded book narrowly escaped The Flood.

To The Players of My Upcoming Deadlands Reloaded Campaign

2010-01-21T21:34:00.002-07:00

The Following Are Some notes that I recently made about things that I want to introduce into our game-play experience.

Part of the Character creation in Deadlands Reloaded requires that you make note of your character's greatest fear. I also want to know each Character's greatest weakness, and greatest vice.

I want to use a group template for this campaign, and I'm hoping for more consistency of players.

I want to try having Players describe their own Character's failures.
I want to try having Players describe what their Characters see (Expanding on a basic description that I feed them).

I want to encourage note passing character to character, and characters to GM

I want to use some advice that I read, and pay attention to the player's character sheets to help me in planning sessions.

I need to ask a lot of Why questions.

I need to make things happen to the characters that cannot be ignored.

I need to Read Gumshoe and Implement the Investigative theory of that game into any investigatory plot points of the campaign.

I know there are other things as well—I'll Amend the list when I remember them.

For instance—I remember some talk on one of the pod-casts I listen to about a three by three thing—wherein character back stories are tied together from the beginning by three things of one type and three things of another type, or something like that, but I can't recall the details.

Gamers Donate to Help Haiti

2010-01-20T14:43:00.001-07:00

This morning I got a notice from one of the bloggers whose RSS feed I subscribe to, that OneBookShelf was running a promotion through their sites RPGnow.com and DriveThruRPG.com wherein you could donate money that would go to Doctors without Borders to assist in the Aide for the victims in Haiti.

To create an incentive for donations they asked their various publishers if there was a product that could be offered up for those that donated, and by the time all was said and done—for a $20 donation you could Download a bundle package worth $1,481.31.

I'd been thinking of a way to donate to the relief effort—thinking that I would do it through my church. So I donated and started downloading PDF books. The response was huge and within a couple hours the site went down. A couple hours later the site was back up and they are asking those that have donated to wait a couple days before downloading. As of this writing a total of $23,040 has been donated through RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.

Also, OneBookShelf has it set up for people to danate $5 or $10 with no incentive, this offer appears to be available through their other sites DriveThruComics and WarGameVault, and as of this writing $3,480 has been donated through those sites.

For the Curious, The Game Products You May Download for a $20 donation are the Following: (I'll Highlight the ones that caught my eye).

17 Archer Feats
17 Bard Spells
17 Magic Shields
17 Monk Feats
17 Plants
17 Rogue Feats
43 Space Opera Adventure Seeds - Space Opera Support #6
90 Phenomena in the City of Copenhagen
Advanced Fleet Designs: Titan Class Scout
Adventurer Essentials: Holy Water
Adventurer Essentials: Rope
Afterpeak Systemless Setting
Albenistan: Election Day (Modern Dispatch 113)
API Demon Codex: Lochs
API Demon Pack 01
API Worldwide: Canada
Apocalypse Prevention, Inc.
Ápocrypha - Myths of the World
Barbarians Versus
BASH! Basic Action Super Heroes (New and Improved)
Basic poker playing cards 1
Beast Hunters RPG
Behind the Monsters: Skeleton
Behind the Spells: Sanctuary
Best of The Rifter
Bits of Darkness: Dungeons
Bits of Magicka: Pocket Items
Black Book The
Blood Games II
Blood of the Innocent: A Savage Worlds mission set in the jungles of Evil
Book of Dumb Tables The
Book of Races
Book of The Dead The
Book of the Faithful: Power of Prayer
Brandy's by the Bay
Breathe Life Into #1
C&C Arms and Armor
C&C Shadows of the Halfling Hall
Castlemourn Campaign Setting
Character, Hero
Chronica Feudalis
Class options volume II: Paladins Prevail!
Classic Spycraft: Shadowforce Archer Worldbook
Classic Spycraft: Shadowforce Archer Worldbook
Classic Spycraft: Spycraft Espionage Handbook
Colonial Gothic: Secrets
COPPER DRAGON: Basic Dungeons 1
Cortex System Role Playing Game
Counter Collection 4th Edition Paragon 1
Creatures of the Wastelands: A Menagerie of Mutants and Mutations (Revised Edition)
Creatures of the Wastelands: Habitats
Creatures of the Wastelands: The Thrasher Gang
d66 Ship Names 2
Damnation Decade
Dark Raiders of Misty Ridge
Degenerate Seaside Town
Demimonde
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Bar Room Berserker
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Gravity Slinger
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Lucky Bastard
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: NeoWitch Guardian
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: The Innocent
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: The Prince of Doggs
Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: The S.L.A.M. Soldier
Dept. 7 Technology Update: AAP/CPR Med Kit
Destinations: Spaceport Trident Vespa
Diana: Warrior Princess
Divine Homelands
Divine Quests
Dork Covenant
DRAGONSHIRE: City Interiors (Fantasy Paper Terrain)
DRAGONSHIRE: City Ruins (Fantasy Paper Terrain)
Earth Space Marines
eCollapse
Ephemeris
F-211 Copperhead
Fantastic Maps: The Dragon's Lair
Fantasy Firearms
Fantasy Women Clipart JPEG 7
Fate of Inglemia The - Superlink Edition
For the Love of Dungeons
Forlakh's Tower - CR 4 D20 Module
Full Light, Full Steam
Future Firearms Pack One
Gravitic Thrust Vehicles
Grumlahk's Troll Tales
Hollow Earth Expedition Earth Drill
Instant Antagonist: The Selfish Succubus
Interface Zero: Modern20 edition
Items Evolved Rituals
Karma Roleplaying System Core Rules Book
Kerberos Club The
Kiddy counters
Kids, Castles & Caves
Kobold Quarterly 11
Labyrinths & Lycanthropes
Lady's Rock
Lazy GM: Lizardfolk The
Liber Sodalitas: The Dream Healers (Pathfinder edition)
London Fires module A101 for Fellowship of the White Star
Lunar Scrolls The
MADS Role Playing Game
Magpie Codex 2
MARS: Savage Worlds Edition
Martial Cultures: Arytis
MegaCity Sector Maps
Mini Nuclear Plant
Modern Dispatch (#104): Line Zero
Modern Dispatch 120: Cyber-state Avatar Toolkit
MonkeyGod Presents: From Stone to Steel
MonkeyGod Presents: Frost & Fur
More Mighty Than Steel
NEO MONKS: The Dragonlord
NEO RANGERS: The Spider King
No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides
Objective Interim Modern Combat System
One Shot Adventures! Days of Knights
Open Game Table - The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, Vol. 1
Open Source Role Playing Game Collectible Card Game - Card Template 1
Otherworld The
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GM's Aid VII: Condition Cards
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Loot 4 Less Vol. 1: Armor and Weapons
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game The Book of Arcane Magic
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game The Book of Arcane Magic
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Wyrd of Questhaven
Piledrivers and Powerbombs: Chokeslam of Darkness Edition
Pimp My Paladin
Police Precinct
Portrait of a Villain - The Desire
Power Pics Heroes 1 -Female Speedster
Power Pics Villains 1 -Male Cyborg
Privateers and Pirates
QAGS Second Edition
Qalidar
Quirin Encounter #3: Healing Device
Quirin Maps #14: Bandit's Territory
Reign of Discordia (Traveller Edition)
RIO DRACO: Base Set (Western Paper Terrain)
Rise Of a Legend:NEW Issue #1
Roma Imperious
Rugged Adventures
S.C.A.R.E. Vol. 2-Viesca Melin Aella
Scenes of Space Hex Battle Maps
Serenity Role Playing Game
Seven Leagues roleplaying game of Faerie
Shambles
Shaolin Squirrels : Nuts of Fury
Shrouded Agendas for D&D 4E: The Purifiers
Slivers of Dawn
Special Vehicles
Spirit of the Season
Squared Circle:Wrestling RPG The
Squirrel Attack! Operation: Get Mr. Jones' Nuts
Stolen Blood
Strike Force 7 - Savaged! - [Savage Worlds]
Summerland Revised and Expanded Edition
Tales of Wyn D'mere Role Playing Game!
Tendril's Oak Inn
Thousand Suns: Foundation Transmissions
Thousand Suns: Transmissions from Piper
Threat Record Vol. I, Issue #2
Three Sixteen
Thrilling Tales 2nd Edition (Savage Worlds)
Torn Apart by Radiation Wraiths
Trail of Cthulhu Player's Guide
Treasure Chests: Volume 2
Turris Lemurum : Tower of Ghosts
Unorthodox Sorcerers
Valherjar: The Chosen Slain Core Rulebook
Vampire Castle
Veggie Patch The
Wayfarers
WorldWorksGames / Deadly Encounters Combo (Fantasy Paper Terrain)
WorldWorksGames / DungeonLinX: Dragon God (Fantasy Paper Terrain)
WorldWorksGames / Uncharted Space: Sathrican Homeworld (Space Paper Terrain?)
WorldWorksGames / UrbanMayhem: Streets of Mayhem (Urban Paper Terrain)
WorldWorksGames / Wormhole
Zombacalypse
Zombie Apocalypse
Zombie Bytes: The Anthology

Deadlands: The Battle For Slaughter Gulch

2010-01-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've played some complicated games in my time, and this one is right up there. The deceptive thing about it, is that's it's not as complicated as is appears to be—yes it took us about four hours to play a game that (according to the box) should only take one to two—but it was the first time we had played it.

This game has a LOT of components. I started setting it up on the table and was worried that we weren't going to have room if we didn't put a leaf in; shifting the modular board to run diagonally solved that problem, but it was by a very narrow margin.

There are cards, and tokens, and player screens, and miniatures, and counters, and cards, and tokens, and miniatures, and card, and cards. . . there's a lot on the table. I should have taken a picture, maybe I'll set up a game and snap a picture...maybe.

Even though there's a lot going on, the actual game play is pretty simple; after a couple rounds we had it down and the game moves pretty quick. I'm not sure how to win this game as far as tactics go. It's a "victory point" game, but those victory points come from so many different places that I found it difficult the first go around, to come up with a strategy.

In a way this game reminded me of Agricola, there was so much to do, that I found it difficult to decide what was important while playing. After seeing the end game, I had a better Idea of what I should have been doing throughout the game. Unlike Agricola, I never really felt my options were limited (except by movement). Unlike Agricola, I don't simultaneously hate the game and yet still feel compelled to play it—I actually really liked Deadlands: The Battle For Slaughter Gulch and look forward to playing it again. Observing that I pre-ordered this game; that it was released October/November of 2009; and that Jan 2010 is the first time I've gotten to play it—who knows when it will make it to the table again?

The Penultimate Session of Zombie Run

2010-01-11T15:35:00.001-07:00

===For Those Not In My Gaming Group===
===Possible Zombie Run Spoilers Ahead===

I ran the penultimate session of Zombie Run Saturday night.

I had three players. They finished exploring the underground military base. I had promised those that RSVP a bonus of some sort that would help them out in the Explosive Finale of Zombie run. My wife is playing a "perky goth chick," so I came up with a funny bonus for her; a metallic dog collar/choker, that grants a -2 bonus versus Bite Attacks. I thought that was funny and appropriate for her character. But I wasn't sure what to give the other two characters that were coming. One character is a UFC fighter (he's a bit of a Munchkin) and the other character, she is a plastic surgeon.

I really didn't know what to give them, I'm Sure he would be happy with some sort of weapon, but I really wasn't sure what she would want. So I copped out—In the underground base there is a large room that represents the Commisary/PX—I pretty much let them find whatever they wanted that could be found in such a place (Knives, Bayonet, Flashlight/Laser Sight for guns, Sweaters/Sweatpants, New Underwear (I'll spare you the details), generator, batteries, portable surgery tool kit...) the book describes this room as undisturbed. When I stated that it disturbed the UFC fighter—that bothered him for some reason.

I was talking to another player that wasn't there that night, and told him that he would have been really angry with me had he shown up. I explained that their ability to find things in the commissary was directly related to their having sent an RSVP. I explained that the following situation could have taken place.

Player that Didn't RSVP: Hey can I find a flashlight?

GM: No, you don't find any flashlights.

Player that did RSVP: Can I find a flashlight?

GM: Sure, you find a display that has the exact type flashlight you're looking to possess in a variety of colors.

Player that Didn't RSVP: Can I have one of them.

GM: No, there was only the one that player that did RSVP took.

That would have been a bad situation socially, but hilarious. The whole looting of the store would have turned into a comedy.

The looting was taking quite a while, so at a certain point I had a loud buzzer echo throughout the installation, and half the lights turn off. Then as they were exploring the rest of the "maze" I read the descriptions of the remaining rooms to make sure I wasn't missing any details (It was a busy day and I hadn't taken the time to read through the notes beforehand) and realized that I had invented a situation that was already written into the story—with my own flavor text that was not included in the Adventure Book. That was cool.

While exploring this space my wife realized that they were experiencing a modern dungeon craw; and for a moment she flipped into dungeons and dragons mode as far as play goes, it was amusing.

The best part, was that they were looking for the Armory, and it was behind the last door they opened in the main hallway. It was great, I couldn't have planned it that way if I wanted.

I had to use my poker face during this session—I can't elaborate until later.

Now I just need to plan something cool for the Explosive conclusion. If everyone that has played at least one session shows up there will be thirteen in attendance for the finale. There are three people on the invite list, then never played a session. One never came, one came one night and then didn't play, and one came on a night that we were playing other games.

What I got out of this session was fun. There was a moment when I was questioned about a bonus for having a laser sight on a gun, I consulted the Rulebook but I didn't see anything, and so he said—well you're the GM make a ruling. I would have, right then and there—but I knew they probably wouldn't encounter a reason to use that during this session, so I just told him I would make a ruling when the need arises. This banter meant a lot to me, because it meant that my authority as the games referee is in tact.

I have sort of made up my mind on the answer. I did some research on the use of a laser sight and developed a house rule. Then I searched all my Savage Worlds supplements and found a laser sight in Necessary Evil. Mine is more detailed and "realistic"—but the Necessary Evil version is simplified, which makes it more FFF as they like to say at Pinnacle Entertainment Group (That stands for Fast Furious Fun). So I haven't made my final decision yet—but I'm informed enough to make the decision now. (Also, my gut instinct, i.e. what I would have said in-game if they had decided to run down the hall and enter the Barracks and force me to make the ruling then and there, matches the rule in Necessary Evil)

I need to go read the Mass Battle Rules about fifteen times now...

Google Blogger Suggestions, Wherefore Art Thou?

2009-12-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

I seem to be unable to find where I can make suggestions to Blogger concerning functionality.

My beef is thus—I have comment moderation turned on. This means that when you place a comment on my blog, I have to say, "yeah, that's okay to say on my blog," before it is visible to the general public.

On the page where I read and approve or decline comments it only lists the comments. It does not tell me what post to which the comment is linked. So, a lot of the time, the meaning of the comment is lost, and occasionally it's difficult to tell if it is SPAM or not.

By default the only way to find what post a comment is linked to, is to go back and see if you can find the comment. The only way I've found around this, is to enable comment notification e-mails. The e-mail that tells me a comment has been posted, tells me what post the comment is linked to; what I can't seem to fathom is why that is not the case on the comment moderation page.

I've wanted to tell Google about this for a few months now, but every time I try to find the place to give feedback, I find it elusive as a snipe.

Can someone enlighten me?

Need Help Making A Resolutiuon?

2009-12-31T11:48:00.001-07:00

New Years Resolution Time

Cinnamon

2009-12-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Generally I don't like the stuff; but I apparently do Like Cinnamon Buns, Cinnamon Bears, and Cinnamon Bear Flavored Salt Water Taffy.

—Oh and those cinnamon roasted almonds.

Unexplained Juxtapostion

2009-12-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

I don't understand this phenomenon exactly, but It came to my attention again today, so I thought I'd see if people had any insight.

My job is Desktop Support. I answer the call when someone is having a problem with their computer. I help my co-workers when they are having trouble with their computers—regardless of the issue. I've been doing this type of work for about seven years. There are two categories of people I help. People I like to help, and People I don't like to help.

This has been focused into higher contrast due to the nature of my current position. For the past two years I have been off the phone. I am in an office environment, and so I have a lot of repeat customers. Some of them I enjoy helping and some of them I do not, and I can't quite put my finger on the difference.

I thought it might be that some of them actually try to help themselves, and try to learn and grow in their computer prowess. I thought that they were the people I didn't mind helping and those that acted as though they were completely helpless were the people I couldn't stand to help; but then I realized there are a handful of people that are completely helpless that I don't mind helping at all.

I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm just judging individuals based on their own apparent merits. Does this make me a judgmental person? I treat them all equally. I help them all. I'm friendly. But I find that with some people, when I get an e-mail indicating they have an issue, or they walk over to ask me a question—I groan a little inside.

More Role Playing With a Three Year Old

2009-12-28T16:24:00.002-07:00

When I was putting her to bed the other night, she asked for a story.

This is not unusual. She Desperately wants to delay bedtime. I will only read her a book at bedtime if she's been fast and gotten ready on time. If it's past bedtime due to dawdling, I tell her that we'll have to read a book at another time.

Well she was actually a good fifteen minutes early, so a story was definitely in order. I started to tease her by making up a story (she doesn't always like that for some reason)—"Once upon a time..."

But she interrupted me, and surprised me by saying, "Nooo, a Story with Dice!"

I grabbed the top die in her giant tube of Plush Dice (a d10) and handed it to her.

She was wearing her new Buzz Light-year Footie Jammies and so I told a Buzz Light-year story wherein Buzz was attempting to escape from the neighbors house and trying to get home. Unlike previous foray's into the wonderful world of Dice Story, she was a little lack luster in creativity. I'm wondering if that is due to the fact that I was using a character she knows from a movie. Though she generally gets very creative with her "mini-figs" most of which are from movies she knows; so, I don't know what it was—I think that mostly she wanted a reason to toss a die around (That's My Girl!) and read to me the numbers (because she recognizes the numbers now).

I was roughly using Savage Worlds rules (4 as a Target Number) and she was rolling very, very well.

Dicey Christmas

2009-12-28T14:50:00.001-07:00

New Orange and Green Dice For My Wife.

My Second Daughter's First Dice—
As you can see she takes her gaming very seriously. As you cannot see (Because My Timing is Bad) She gets Absolute Joy from throwing the dice.

How Deep?—Two Hundred Feet! That's Like a 20 Storey Building!!

2009-12-28T11:09:00.003-07:00

===For Those Not In My Gaming Group===
===Possible Zombie Run Spoilers Ahead===

Zombie Run is Still going on, and we actually had a great game the day after Christmas. I expected no one (except my wife of course) and I got four players, and it was good group.

I worry about Brandon running the game off the rails. Mostly because I like the prepared material that is laid out in the Zombie Run Book; but also because of the ramifications of running the game off the rails. I could see the plan that Brandon was formulating—and frankly, If I let him take it that way, I could sense a Total Party Kill. I don't really want that.

I always think of a better way to railroad the party when it's too late. In game, I handled it clumsily. After the fact I realized that the answer was right in front of me and I missed it. They mentioned the library project that the city was working on, I could have shoehorned that in a little better. Oh Well. Hindsight I guess.

What I did for this session was an elaborate map exploration activity. The Zombie Run book has a lot of maps in it. but they aren't really suitable for printing to scale. So in the past I have printed the maps on a large format printer. This time I wanted to do something a little different. I didn't want to reveal the map all at once. So I printed it in pieces and as they explored the map I stuck them to the table using sticky-tack. I was meticulous in the manner in which I placed the pieces as well. If a hallway turned a corner, I didn't place the hallway down all at once. I had separate pieces for what was visible at the time. It was a little time consuming, but I think most of the players enjoyed it.

I admit to not ending the evening at 11 like I normally would do. Although there was some fun troubleshooting, decision making (they weren't really sure they wanted to go down that massive elevator shaft they discovered on the first floor—it was awfully deep), and exploration—there had not been an encounter. Just when I thought that they would skip the barracks, they barreled in. I admit that I botched the storytelling at this point as well because I forgot to wake the Zombies up when I was supposed to.

My wife cracks me up every time we have an encounter. I think she remembers the beginning of the Adventure vividly—back before any of them had decent weapons or skills to use such weapons. At this point, the only way I'm going to cause a character death with these Zombie is if I overwhelm them with numbers. When the encounter started, my wife desperately wanted to undo the opening of the door she opened—but when it got down to brass tacks she was the last one to jump in the hummer, she just had to run back and shoot a couple more before retreating to relative safety.

I should probably read the rulebook through again. There were some rules questions, and I just didn't want to take the time to check last night. Brandon was correct about holding action into the next round—but I can't find anything in the book that says one mini per square when using a grid.

I remembered that when we were playing the mall I certainly had multiple zombies in a square, I had decided that four would fit. Then in the previous session when I had zombies trying to beat down a door to reach a Spy (a spy our resilient survivors were trying to extract from enemy territory) I wasn't thinking about it and I had one zombie per square; after the fact when I was reflecting upon the session I realized that the zombies were unable to beat down the door as a result of one zombie per square. So I was going to move zombies in a manner that placed more than one zombie in a square and Brandon made up a rule (or rather—probably remembered a rule from some other game) about one fig per square. I relented—but I think I should have played the Game Master card in this case.

They still haven't explored the entire facility—so next session will pick up where we left off. I'm going to print a map of what they have explored thus far and then glue explored rooms to the map.

What I learned:

I need to instill into the players a sense of trust in me (as far as my rules knowledge goes) so that when a rule question arises, I can just make a ruling and we can go on. Even if I'm wrong, if we can avoid Rules Discussions and just continue with a ruling and keep things going, that would be the Ideal way to play in my mind.

One more thing. I brought up the fact that we will be playing Deadlands Reloaded after Zombie Run has come to an end. Brandon plans to buy Deadlands Reloaded. I asked him to not read the Marshall's (Game Master's) Section and he pretty much refused, and plans to read it. He says he can play like he hasn't read it—but honestly, the more I think about this, the more it bothers me. I really don't want him to read that section. I know he has Game Mastering in his blood, but I really want the secrets to be secrets. The Marshall's Section in Deadlands Reloaded is more than just Mechanics like in other Games and Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition. It's probably 95% Setting Information. There are things about the world of Deadlands that Most folks don't know, and I really don't want players knowing that information.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

2009-12-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

—Luke 2: 1–20

And it came to pass that in this year there was one Samuel, a Lamanite, came into the land of Zarahemla, and began to preach unto the people.

And behold, he said unto them: Behold, I give unto you a sign; for five years more cometh, and behold, then cometh the Son of God to redeem all those who shall believe on his name. And behold, this will I give unto you for a sign at the time of his coming; for behold, there shall be great lights in heaven, insomuch that in the night before he cometh there shall be no darkness, insomuch that it shall appear unto man as if it was day. Therefore, there shall be one day and a night and a day, as if it were one day and there were no night; and this shall be unto you for a sign; for ye shall know of the rising of the sun and also of its setting; therefore they shall know of a surety that there shall be two days and a night; nevertheless the night shall not be darkened; and it shall be the night before he is born. And behold, there shall a new star arise, such an one as ye never have beheld; and this also shall be a sign unto you.

And behold this is not all, there shall be many signs and wonders in heaven. And it shall come to pass that ye shall all be amazed, and wonder, insomuch that ye shall fall to the earth. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall believe on the Son of God, the same shall have everlasting life. And behold, thus hath the Lord commanded me, by his angel, that I should come and tell this thing unto you; yea, he hath commanded that I should prophesy these things unto you; yea, he hath said unto me: Cry unto this people, repent and prepare the way of the Lord.

And now, because I am a Lamanite, and have spoken unto you the words which the Lord hath commanded me, and because it was hard against you, ye are angry with me and do seek to destroy me, and have cast me out from among you. And ye shall hear my words, for, for this intent have I come up upon the walls of this city, that ye might hear and know of the judgments of God which do await you because of your iniquities, and also that ye might know the conditions of repentance; And also that ye might know of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and of earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and that ye might know of the signs of his coming, to the intent that ye might believe on his name. And if ye believe on his name ye will repent of all your sins, that thereby ye may have a remission of them through his merits.

—Helaman 13:2, 14:2–13

And it came to pass that in the commencement of the ninety and second year, behold, the prophecies of the prophets began to be fulfilled more fully; for there began to be greater signs and greater miracles wrought among the people. But there were some who began to say that the time was past for the words to be fulfilled, which were spoken by Samuel, the Lamanite. And they began to rejoice over their brethren, saying: Behold the time is past, and the words of Samuel are not fulfilled; therefore, your joy and your faith concerning this thing hath been vain. And it came to pass that they did make a great uproar throughout the land; and the people who believed began to be very sorrowful, lest by any means those things which had been spoken might not come to pass. But behold, they did watch steadfastly for that day and that night and that day which should be as one day as if there were no night, that they might know that their faith had not been vain.

Now it came to pass that there was a day set apart by the unbelievers, that all those who believed in those traditions should be put to death except the sign should come to pass, which had been given by Samuel the prophet. Now it came to pass that when Nephi, the son of Nephi, saw this wickedness of his people, his heart was exceedingly sorrowful. And it came to pass that he went out and bowed himself down upon the earth, and cried mightily to his God in behalf of his people, yea, those who were about to be destroyed because of their faith in the tradition of their fathers.

And it came to pass that he cried mightily unto the Lord all that day; and behold, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying: Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfil all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets. Behold, I come unto my own, to fulfil all things which I have made known unto the children of men from the foundation of the world, and to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son—of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh. And behold, the time is at hand, and this night shall the sign be given.

And it came to pass that the words which came unto Nephi were fulfilled, according as they had been spoken; for behold, at the going down of the sun there was no darkness; and the people began to be astonished because there was no darkness when the night came. And there were many, who had not believed the words of the prophets, who fell to the earth and became as if they were dead, for they knew that the great plan of destruction which they had laid for those who believed in the words of the prophets had been frustrated; for the sign which had been given was already at hand. And they began to know that the Son of God must shortly appear; yea, in fine, all the people upon the face of the whole earth from the west to the east, both in the land north and in the land south, were so exceedingly astonished that they fell to the earth. For they knew that the prophets had testified of these things for many years, and that the sign which had been given was already at hand; and they began to fear because of their iniquity and their unbelief.

And it came to pass that there was no darkness in all that night, but it was as light as though it was mid-day. And it came to pass that the sun did rise in the morning again, according to its proper order; and they knew that it was the day that the Lord should be born, because of the sign which had been given.And it had come to pass, yea, all things, every whit, according to the words of the prophets. And it came to pass also that a new star did appear, according to the word.

—3 Nephi 1:4–21

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

—Matthew 2:1–12

Engineer Graffiti

2009-12-14T15:41:00.001-07:00

This appeared on the wall of a stall where I work.

Enhanced to show detail.

FYI

2009-12-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Natalie Portman will Star in and Produce: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Podcasts I Listen To—As Requested

2009-12-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

For a long time the only "Podcast" I listened to, was Coast to Coast AM. Which really isn't a Podcast, since it is a syndicated Radio program, and to download the "Podcast" requires a subscription.

I really got into listening to Podcasts because of P. On an online Social Network—not Facebook (I'm still resisting Facebook)—I reconnected with P, someone I knew in High School. Funny thing, in High School I wouldn't Necessarily say that P and I were friends, we knew each other and had some classes together, but that was it. I find it somewhat odd that we weren't better friends back then, we were and continue to enjoy a lot of the same interests...

That observation, in and of itself, is another post entirely.

P and I had a nice casual conversation about Tabletop Role Playing Games, and he told me that he satiates the lack of opportunity to play more often, by listening to podcasts about gaming and recommended one called: Fear the Boot.

The funny thing about all this, is the reason I listen to so many podcasts. It can be summed up in two things. Savage Worlds and Board Games.

In one of the Earlier Shows of Fear the Boot, one of the Hosts was very enthusiastic about a Role Playing Game called Savage Worlds. His Enthusiasm transferred to me, and now I run a Game twice a month.

When I was getting into Savage World, I wanted to find out everything I could about the System and its associated settings. I found a Podcast called: The Game's the Thing. (The Website Sucks, and I have a Love Hate Relationship with the Podcast because of the hosts)

As much as Ron and Veronica annoy me, they have the best information about Savage Worlds so I listen to The Game's the Thing.

It was downhill from there. Fear the Boot shortly after I started listening joined a network of Podcasts about gaming called Pulp Gamer. (Pulp, as in the stuff that becomes Cardboard and Paper...the stuff Board Games are printed on)

Shortly after I caught up on the shows for Fear the Boot—The Game's the Thing also joined the Pulp Gamer Media Network.

I noticed that a lot of shows on the Pulp Gamer Network talked extensively about Board Games, and since we play a lot of Board Games (that is to say non-traditional board games—i.e. mostly not published by Hasbro and Subsidiaries) at our house and I like hearing about the New Shiny in the world of board games I started trying out the different Podcasts at the network.

I should mention that I have a little thing inside me, that makes me want to devour things in their entirety. I could not just listen to these podcasts in their current state as I would a live broadcast show. Since the Libraries of the Show go back to the beginning (for the most part) I have this thing inside me that compels me to start at the beginning.

I now listen to the Following parts of the Pulp Gamer Network:

Fear the Boot—Advice on Playing and Running Role Playing Games

The Game's the Thing—Information about Board and Role Playing Games particularly Savage Worlds

Pulp Gamer out of Character—Members of the Pulp Gamer Network talk about various game related topics.

The Game Kennel—Brief overviews about different Games.

Family Night—Like the Game Kennel, but geared toward Family Games.

Game On! With Cody and John—Reviews of Games and some Gaming News (Extremely Professional From The Beginning—most podcasts are a little rough in the first episodes as they figure out who they are—The Website is also Very Professional)

Pulp Gamer Inside Track—Interviews with people in the Game Industry

Pulp Gamer Special Presentations—I think this is stuff they did that doesn't fit into any of the other podcasts.

The D6 Generation—Gaming News, Detailed...Very Detailed Reviews of Games—Geared Particularly toward Tabletop War Gaming (a type of gaming I'm not really in to, but I find I have to keep listening because they increasingly do cover other topics) If you try this one out, the show starts with a parody of the McGlaughlin Group that can be a little jarring the first time you hear it, in fact I turned it off the first time I listened to it, because there was no way I was going to listen to that for 3 hours (also I has Scouts in the Car) But it's generally only about five minutes—and has become one of my favorite segments of the show.

They're pretty much all about gaming. I'm caught up on all of them from the beginning, except The D6 Generation—it's a three to four hour show so it's taking me much longer to catch up than the others did. I'm on episode thirty-eight of forty-five.

Also, Ron and Veronica have a new podcast, and as much as they annoy me, and as much as I think the theme song is pretty lame—I'm going to listen to every episode, because it is exclusively about Savage Worlds. Smiling Jack's Bar and Grill.

I don't get why the hosts that annoy me the most are the ones that get all the interviews with the Savage Worlds people, and talk the most about Savage Worlds, and get all the good scoops on Savage Worlds. As much as they annoy me, they have the content that is most interesting to me.

I also listen to the Dungeons and Dragons podcast when they put out series of shows that are recordings of Dungeons and Dragons sessions; Dungeon Mastered by Chris Perkins from Research and Development at Wizards of the Coast, and played by Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade (a Webcomic), Scott Kurtz of PVP (another Webcomic), and now Wil Wheaton famous geek. —This Podcast contains some strong Language, it's not for everyone, I just started listening because I was curious about 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.

Speaking of Wil Wheaton, I recently started listening to Memories of the Futurecast. I don't recall how I found it, but here's the skinny. Wil Wheaton played Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek the Next Generation. He recently wrote a book, Memories of the Future, about his memories of being on the cast. He does some readings from the book in Memories of the Futurecast—really interesting if you were a fan of the show. —Again, there's some language in this one. He does some other podcasts as well, but I haven't listened yet.

I've wanted to start listening to some other Podcasts, but I have to catch up to the ones I'm listening to currently first.

What Podcasts do You listen to?

Supers Companion

2009-12-08T15:28:00.001-07:00

The Savage Worlds Supers Companion Should Be Available in print April 2010. I'll be putting money aside for this.

Expanding the Possibilities of Necessary Evil, or trying to run your own Supers Campaign with Savage Worlds.

Google Wave Invitations

2009-12-08T14:27:00.001-07:00

I have some now.

Brandon, I sent you one. It can take a couple of days.

What a Commute

2009-12-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

Generally I take the Bus.

Today, I was more than happy to take the bus. With the Snow accumulating like that, and the roads generally not clean, I was glad that I didn't have to drive.

I bundled up. I walked to the Bus Stop.

When the podcast I was listening to ended, it signaled that the Bus was indeed late—not surprising considering the weather and traffic situation. However I was getting cold, and I could not see a bus approaching that was perhaps the one I take. So I went back to the corner and crossed in two directions and looked up the road—I had a better view from this location. I thought I saw my bus coming, and I could definitely see the bus for my alternate route coming. I walked back to the stop (that's crossing the street in two directions again)—but what I thought was my bus, was a School Bus. So I crossed the street (in two directions) again and waited at the other stop.

Making a left hand turn was taking so long that I crossed the street six times and still made the alternate bus.

After boarding the alternate route, I continued to watch in the other direction, and I never did see the Bus that I take.

Two and a half hours after I left the house, I finally made it to the light rail station. The wait there was only about eight minutes, but when the train arrived it was only two cars and it was packed. I've never seen it that packed. Then we picked up more and more people. Then I realized that I was on the wrong route and had to hop off and wait for the next train. The snow was wreaking havoc with one of the doors on the train, it would close—but not enough to let the driver leave. Which had caused a delay at three stations, so when I got off to catch the right route, it was literally right behind us.

So three hours and fifteen minutes after I left the house, I walked in the doors at my place of employment. I'm still glad that I didn't have to drive.

Perhaps the Trick is to Not Expect Anyone to Come??

2009-12-06T14:46:00.001-07:00

I started running Savage Worlds when my wife went out of town. Due to reconnecting with P and some online conversations about Gaming. I had started listening to a Gaming Podcast, and one of the Hosts had been raving about Savage Worlds. My interest was piqued enough to pick the book up, and I had been dying to play. I decided that my wife being out of town was the perfect way to get some people to come over and give it a shot.

Since Savage Worlds is a Generic system, I still had to decide what kind of game to run. I had decided to run a Zombie Survival game and the Tuesday before the Scheduled game, Pinnacle Re-released the adventure module Zombie Run updated for the current revision of the Savage Worlds Rule Set. I thought that it would be easier to run an established story rather than come up with something of my own, since I had never run a game before. Add to that the fact that it was on sale I purchased it.

Mostly I had in mind more of a One Shot adventure. Little did I know, Zombie run was not a One Shot. So here I am, seven months later still running the campaign adventure. Things seem to have fallen off a little as of late, and if there's one thing I know, it's that the Holiday season can kill a campaign.

So, this weeks game was supposed to take place next week—I forgot that we had a Birthday Party to attend next week. So in a desperate bid of last minuteness I updated the invitation to indicate that everyone was invited this weekend to play.

I think one of the things that has kept the campaign alive, is the fact that I've invited so many people to play. The initial invite that I sent out was for seven people. Three Attended. At this point there are eighteen people that are invited. I've never had more than five attend a session. Session to session it's different people. I explain what happened last time, and we always assume everyone is there—but only the people that make the session are kept track of in any given situation.

The last two sessions took place despite the fact that one session was the week of Thanksgiving, and the other session was scheduled a week earlier than normal at short notice.

Maybe the trick is to just not expect anyone to show up. . .

OK probably not (if you don't expect anything out of people, they will live up to your expectations), but that's how the last two sessions have played out for me. I want to remain consistent and not let this thing die on the vine so even though I don't really expect people to come—I plan to run a session. I have one more session that has, I-don't-expect-anyone-to-show-up status. It falls on the day after Christmas. For those of you that are players. It promises to be a good one. If you thought the maps that we've played on before were great. You haven't had an experience like the one I have planned. It is going to be Legen....wait for it....DARY!

So this weeks session went well. We had some scavenging, and zombies did indeed show up. Then there was the extraction of a spy—and plenty of Zombies for flavor. I think that as far as mechanics go, this session was the smoothest. Now I just need to start describing things a little better—spin a yarn as they say.