My New Favorite Saying, If only I knew how to pronounce it.

Ged tha mi bochd, tha mi uasal –
buidheachas do Dhia, ‘sann de Chlann ‘Illeathain mi!

Translation: Though I Am Poor, I Am Well Born—Thank God I Am A MacLean!

The Key to Sgt. Excerpts

I think that today I shall share the Key to the things found on Sgt. Excepts Only Parts of "Concerts" Grand.

This red doesn't look all that great on screen—but it looks Fantastic when printed.

Sgt. Excerpt's Only Parts of "Concerts" Grand

I took a class called Digital Audio Essentials last semester.
The First Assignment Given (And the Last Assignment Collected) was a "Desert Island" CD
i.e. a collection of our favorite songs.

I never knew how difficult it would be to narrow my favorites down to one CD. (I ended up doing a Double Disc Set and there are still things missing from it.)

I thought that I would share some of the Things that I did for that Assignment.

I'll Start With  the Cover:

As a Teaser of things to come, Here's the e-mail I got from my Professor when he saw the project:
Richard-
Wow. I'm blown away by your CD project. Not only for the coolest project ever, but for the incredible depth of the selections. And you made it a concept concept album to boot.

It is crazy cool, and by far the coolest project ever submitted. Will you be my bff? OMH, Jeff Wayne? Who even know's that piece anymore? Movie Man by the Osmonds is one of the most overlooked Osmond tracks ever. And that album was their Pepper. Weird Al's shows do rock! Peter Gunn - yeah! Freberg as a concept piece bookending the 2nd CD? Brilliant. Art of Noise - forgotten gem. Ballroom Blitz, just crazy 70's rock. And peaches is the best song the Presidents ever did. Seriously, we need to get together this summer, when I get my album shelves made. You will freak over my album collection.

You oughtta consider taking the audio restoration class. I'm teaching it this summer (if I get one more student it will carry), and in the fall. You would literally groove to it. Nice Job, easy A+, I will hold this up to future students and say "try to top This".

I Have Indeed Fallen off the Radar (Though I Have a Wool Hat Just Like Radar)

Just Some Quick Updates.

I'm attending my 2nd Semester back at School—I'm in a Story Boarding class and an Audio class, great hands on stuff.

My Job at Kids Know it is a Blast! I love being a part of something creative. If you have any Ideas about Subject Matter for Animations, let me know. (The Black Holes Video was sort of a request from someone at a trade show.)

Kindle App Update

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

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

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

I updated the Graphic Design Page of My Portfolio Website.

http://www.VizionStudios.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.....

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!!

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

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!