Today Was a Great Day

First a pair of examples. 

How Leadership Works:

Setting: Ye Olde Tavern

Steve The Nondescript Pirate: [To Karrak] "Hey, you're kinda pretty and personable and have an above average amount of undead lifeforce. Let's be friends."

Karrak: "Well, I dunno about all that, but do you [pause to drink heavily as a move action] want to come hang out with me? There's no booze, women, or money in it for you, and you'll have to share a 20 x 20 x 10 room with thirty other dudes, and you might die and we're not going to arm you with anything more than some chain mail with bloodstains on it and a spear, and you could be keel hauled for desertion."

STNP: "Where do I sign up?"

Karrak: "On my dick."

STNP: "Yes sir!"

How Thrallherding Works

Setting: The Depths of Cantellen Forest

Steve The Nodescript Cant: [to himself] "I sure do like this forest and the Cant race, and I sure do hate everyone else."

Subtle Psionic Call For Servants: Bzzzt.

Setting: Fort Jagged Tooth [close to 200 miles away]

Donovan: [to STNC] "You should work against your people because I want you to."

Setting: The Depths of the Cantellen Forest

STNC: "Yes sir!"

So yeah, it was a pretty awesome day today. I played Pathfinder's Carrion Crown adventure path with a level 2 Ratfolk Alchemist. I was leery going in because I wasn't completely sold on the character. But fucking a. It was like being MacGyver with explosives. I was nominated the MVP of the group and had a super fun time with the character's personality and capabilities. I have so many potions and alchemical weapons. It's fucking awesome. So much fucking fun. So many ways to influence events and encounters. I busted out of jail twice, was brought up on murder charges, juggled explosives, made friends, was rude to lawmen, maybe fell in love a little, and befriended the local barkeep (I mention it separately from making friends in general because it got me out of jail legitimately). I did all of this and I didn't even use any of my extracts. Oh, I murdered six townsfolk as well, and I'm thinking of taking up alchemical necromancy just to spite the inbred fuckheads of Ravensgro, Ravengro, whatever the name of the fucking town is. Oh, and I broken into a crypt and stole from a church and killed some bugs. I also taught people the mechanics of poison use in Pathfinder. 

Then I texted my ex-wife (who divorced me because I don't like Sol, summer, water, or give two shits where I live beyond whether I have a job and friends and because I felt that spending 50% of my income on supporting her was more than sufficient and was unwilling to spend more on her) in California to ask her what she thought of the new season of Orange is the New Black and she told me that she is broke and may have to come back home to Michigan. I was filled with such evil evil delight that I started cackling. It was grand. I'm not even sorry or ashamed. I'm going to do it again right now.

MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!1!

Earlier today I got to read Cary losing his damn mind based on a post on the blog a month ago that doesn't even apply to him. Which was initially infuriating, but when I realized that he had misinterpreted the post it became extremely entertaining. I thank him deeply for his service. Then Jason and I chatted and he reconfirmed for me that he is in fact an idiot and does not understand how leadership works in Pathfinder. It's always comforting and enjoyable to have your peers confirm your beliefs. I thank him deeply for his service. I'm retroactively going to say that he got to wear the Pretty Pretty Princess tiara made of Nel dicks for two days, rather than the previously discussed one day. Maybe only one and a half days, then Cary got it for twelve hours, and it finally returned to Eric. 

So yeah, it was a great day. Maybe in this campaign I'll be able to game for longer than three consecutive sessions, which is my current record. This includes Eric's attempt at Carrion Crown, Lance's Dark Sun attempt, and Shawn's attempt at the first published 4th Edition adventure. 

Now I'm going to continue watching Orange is the New Black and drink progressively larger amounts of scotch. It's going to be delightful. 

Cartoons

So I kind of had this silly idea for a campaign setting the other day. It has a little bit to do with the whole concept of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen thing I've been intermittently discussing here as well, but only as a kind of inspiration. The gist of it is to basically create a campaign world based around a bunch of 80s cartoons like Transformers, Care Bears, Gummi Bears, the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, He-Man, Thundercats, Silverhawks, and so on.

Now, to make it entertaining for a group of late twenty-somethings/early thirty-somethings I'd use the cartoons as the base idea, rather than copying it perfectly. For instance, the Care Bears might be an empire of humanoid ursines or wearbears gifted with the use of magic or something living in a bunch of floating cities. The Gummi Bears might be similar, but more geared towards alchemy. With cartoons like the Silverhawks and Thunder Cats, I would likely leave them as technologically advanced aliens that had crash landed on the planet long ago and gone native or some such. With the Transformers, I'm not sure as to what I would do beyond make them kind of steampunkish warforged type creatures. I don't know what they would transform into though.

This type of campaign idea wouldn't require too much work for the majority of it. I mean, with He-Man, the DnD cartoon, and Thunder Cats there is already a lot of fantasy to the cartoons themselves. The Silverhawks wouldn't necessarily fit into it though, unless we want to make them some manner of silver skinned flying warforged.  The Dungeons and Dragons cartoon obviously fits in perfectly with such a world and it would likely be the main continent with the other cartoon areas being nearby smaller continents or islands or some such.

I dunno, these are just the initial ideas, I'd probably have to do more research. The bad guys from the cartoon the Inhumanoids seems like they might have some fun potential to act as underground evil guys. Like I said, this is just a bare bones campaign idea that might be some silly fun in the vein of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen campaign. 

Updatery

Now that I'm working twelve hour shifts at work, I'm finding it harder and harder to find time at home to write out posts. I think what I'm going to do is switch it up and start posting on Mondays and Fridays, if I end up getting a large backlog of posts stored on here I'll switch back to three posts a week. We'll see.

Also, turns out, Futurama is pretty neat, and slightly more accessible than the Simpsons, seeing as how it isn't like fourteen hundred seasons long.

Also: this http://io9.com/5615539/show-some-team-spirit-dd-style and this http://io9.com/5615023/fuck-me-ray-bradbury-is-the-best-scifi-pop-song-of-the-year (both from the glorious www.io9.com) are glorious.

Meandering Thoughts

Man, hit kind of a wall with writing this week. I've been plodding along with Shawn's notes and have been making some progress. I've been working on some Pathfinder conversions as well, and I've got most of the upcoming scenarios complete. I'm kind of feeling like I hit a wall today though. I can't bring myself to pull up my Pathfinder notes, and I've got my tenth scenario right on the cusp of being finished, but I can't bring myself to pull it up and put words to paper. I'm just feeling really burned out and lazy. I think I just need to take a break from writing my balls off on a daily basis.

In that vein, I Gesso-ed up Kethranmeer today and he looks alright. I tried to greenstuff in his face area to give him that flat metal, eyeless, face that is kind of iconic to him and it didn't go well. I just can't get the bits of greenstuff small enough to fit in the helmet eyeslits in a way that doesn't cause the greenstuff to go every where. I think if I carefully apply Gesso to the slits with a toothpick or skinny ass brush in thin layers, it will do that same job. I just have to be real careful and apply it in several layers. Once I get a good smooth coat of chainmail or gunmetal paint over it, it should be fine. If not, I've got a dozen other helmets I can play with to make it work on. I think if I focus on making Kethranmeer, it'll be a nice break from writing and will allow me to kind of take it easy with the creative muscles.

I've also got a book about characters and viewpoints that I've been reading, so I can focus on that while I'm taking this break or whatever.

Moving along, I recently listened to a podcast from a website called Critical Hits (www.critical-hits.com), and learned about something called campaign planning with the 5x5 method. I'm not going to wax philosophical about how ingenious and awesome it is, but I would like to type about it for a bit. Its awesome, brilliant, I love it, and I'll be using it next campaign. Enough said.

Anyway, the podcast taught me a little about scenarios. The gist of the 5x5 method is that you break shit down into pieces. Our sessions are lengthy, each of them exceeding eight or nine hours. I would like to cut that in have and game once or twice a month, rather than once every three or four months. I've crafted the next three scenarios with that in mind, kind of taking a page from the 5x5 method as best I can.

As an example, our last scenario where the group ousted Phineus the Formerly Fat from power. Instead of one massive scenario, I should have anticipated that there would be a lot of discussion without decision in a group with no centralized leadership. What I should have done was make a scenario based around them figuring out how to bring the district under control. That would have cut the scenario quite literally in half (if we cut out the Lost talk), then we could have called it a day and come back in two weeks and fully implemented those plans. It would have made the sessions more fun and less about endurance, and I could have had more time to implement what went on in the planning stage in the let's do this stage. I've made the ninth and tenth scenarios very focused in their content and purpose, hopefully this will make them quicker to play through and a little more relaxed with less emphasis on "let's get this done!"

I've been thinking about it, I'm totally over GURPS. I can't even think about the GURPS wiki and my Reich-5 stable of characters without sighing and my mind becoming this void of blahness. Reich-5 doesn't interest me anymore, and the initial immense appeal of GURPS' general universal standpoint that allows for easy use has just faded to nothing for me. If Eric called me up and said we were playing GURPS next weekend, I would say "Cool, have fun. See you when we play my campaign."

Sad I suppose, but I'm just sick of thinking and wondering about GURPS and not having it go anywhere. Who knows, maybe Eric will make an impassioned speech about the gloriousness of GURPS when we all discuss what system we want to use next once the 4th Edition campaign is done, and maybe it will re-inspire me. We'll see.

Additional Conversion Rates (Among Other Things)

I effing hate me some Derf the Swordmage. The Swordmage concept is so hard to fit into anything other than 4th Edition DnD. Derf is expensive in GURPS, but impossible to fit into 3.5 Edition or Pathfinder. Psychic warriors have some elemental attacks, but Derf is magic, not psionic. Swordsage would work, they're kind of mystical warriors that master pseudo-magical blade arts. Both of those classes lack teleportation effects similar to the Swordmage. There is a third option of a Fighter/Wizard multiclass with the appropriate feats and prestige classes to alter it. That might work, but I don't have much knowledge about spells and whether or not they are any that can lightning-ify swords and whatnot, or if Fred would have to settle for fireballs and lightning bolts and whatnot, heh.

I've been toying with both GURPS and Pathfinder conversion stuff, and it has been getting to me. I would really like us to settle on what system we will eventually be using, but I don't want to bring up the issue before it needs to be addressed. I don't want to focus too much on what is to come and distract myself from what is going on at the moment.

I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender lately. I actually just started the third season. Jeremy and Laura recommended it to me a while ago, and I kind of added it to my Netflix Instant Watch on a whim. It is surprisingly enjoyable for being a cartoon based on a manga. I have watch a fair amount of anime and cartoons in my life, I was a big Naruto fan for many years in fact. Eventually I get sick of the comical faces and goofy crap though. Anyway, Avatar is a pretty decent show with some surprisingly mature themes scattered throughout it. I mean, a lot of the plot is just blatantly obvious, but it is after all a kids cartoon on Nickelodeon. Or it was at least. I find myself really wanting to reach the final conclusion of the show. Appa is also amusing. I really enjoy the animals of the world, boarcupines, sabertooth moose cats, turtleducks. I find them cute and entertaining.

More DnD. In an email a while ago, John told me he would like more battles that have consequences based on the actions of the party. I have a hard time dealing with this question because I feel like the consequences are fairly obvious. I think I understand what John is saying now, but the players so rarely come near to failure that it feels like any sort of consequence for their actions would be wasted effort on my part, and deliberately causing them to fail feels like hardcore railroading. I mean, you can't win every battle, and you are bound to come up against something that whoops you at some point, but the players are so underpowered already that actually making them fight a difficult battle feels like picking on them. John still doesn't really understand the way attacks per round work (one, always one, unless your powers say otherwise), or saving throws. Does anyone know what a bull rush is? Charge? The benefits to each action? I have to tailor the fights to their capabilities, because this is a learning the ropes campaign. What is the sense in making a bunch of tactical options for combat, if they're just going to use their at-wills the entire fight? Is this a chicken and the egg situation though? Are my fairly straight forward fights the result of their less then rock hard understanding of their options, or is it the other way around? I'm guessing the former, rather than the latter, but I eagerly hope to be wrong.

The question remains, should I be more proactive and frequently tell them their options? No. I am an adult, just like they are adults. If they have a rules question, I will answer it, or if they ask "can I do this?" I will tell them how, but I will not hand hold more than I already am. They have all the information at their fingertips and in the books that they have. Their understanding of the rules, or complete lack thereof, is on them. Kind of like whether the scenario sucks or not is on me. Maybe that makes me a grognard, or a hardass, or just a bad GM. It is my stance though and I stand by it. On the ground. In an earth bending stance. With a rock ready to be flip kicked into someone's face or some such.

The handholding will however cease once we get to the next campaign. Heh.

Edit After The Fact: Completely got sidetracked about combat. I mention John's email because I think I may make a post about how the player's have affected the world around them with their choices and actions during game time, just to kind of show that they are affecting the world around them and shaping it as they pass through it.

Robust!

Robust is an adjective, right? Yeah, I think so. Someone should make it a verb, like robustivity. The act of making something robust. Robust is a good word, I like to wield it like a bright blade of silver as much as possible in my goofier writing and conversations.

I've finally started watching Lost again, I'm just now finishing up the eighteenth episode of season one. I honestly don't give two shits about any of these characters. Sayid and Locke are alright, but other than that I find the survivors boring. I like the island, it is my favorite character. Screw everything else. I find myself really torn at the moment. Do I really want to watch six seasons of hour after hour of Hurley being fat and Jack being the good guy, and Sawyer being so mean and "badass" that it borders on laughable? Or do I just want to read the Wikipedia articles and learn everything I want to know in an afternoon? Watching it does offer the joy of hanging out with Jeremy, and that is pretty cool. So I guess for now I will refrain from the easy route. I'm actually watching a Locke background episode at the moment, they did a fairly good job of making the actor look like he is younger than he is in real life.

I've been talking more and more with Shawn and his friend and it seems like we're on our way to gaming. We're working under the assumption that we'll play some of the published DnD adventures and possibly switch to some Dark Sun stuff once that all comes out. I'll be interested to see how this all works out, I've never used a webcam or videochat or anything like that before. If the whole webcam thing doesn't work out, we should be able to find alternate means. There are a few programs I found last night and this morning that allow for a group to link up via some servers and kind of run a campaign. The main thing I'm concerned about is us all having something to represent a map and where we are on it. All the slides and pushes and whatnot in 4th Edition make maps and miniatures pretty mandatory to play the game. If we can get a couple hours of play time in at least once a month, I think it will be swell. I don't think the three of us will have the stamina for a ten hours sit down session, but finishing adventures and whatnot shouldn't be too big of a problem if we get into a regular schedule. Seeing as how it is just the three of us, it shouldn't be too big of a problem to contact each other and set up an impromptu session when we all happen to be bored at the same time, though that will very likely be a rare occurrence. Regardless of the details, I am pretty psyched to play some shit with Herr Kloha. His friend is a cool individual as well, and I can only assume that his wife is as well, and she might play too.

The question becomes, what should I play? I like complicated classes, and no class in 4th Edition is terribly complicated. Strikers have additional damage mechanics, Defenders have ways to get close to enemies and keep them there, Controllers have ways of managing multiple enemies at once and either taking them out or debuffing them, and Leaders have a lot of ways to buff folks. I find myself partial to Strikers and Defenders though. I've been toying with a variety of stuff in my character builder and haven't really come up with anything I dig. I mean, I'd love to play that Thri-kreen monk, but I have no data for thri-kreen, or Dark Sun. There is a thri-kreen fighter in the Dark Sun Encounters stuff, maybe I can kind of deconstruct him and figure out their abilities...

Edit After The Fact: Wow, that was actually pretty easy. With the character builder as a reference point, it took like ten minutes.

The eighth scenario is complete, fully complete, not just done-ish with a few minor details left to do, and hopefully we'll be able to complete the mandatory portions of it in a one day session. If not, the extra stuff can be tossed in with another later scenario. This excess stuff that can be put aside is going to sort of be Spineplate's background scenario, if they choose to look into it. Spineplate is going to randomly be MIA for the scenario, I've already rolled the Stealth vs. Perception checks necessary for him to sneak away in the night without anyone noticing. The mission is pretty straightforward and pretty combat focused, and I'm hoping that those individuals that find combat boring will enjoy the more skill and investigation focused Spineplate bits and pieces. I'm trying to strike a balance in the scenarios because the group seems pretty divided in what they enjoy. John seems to enjoy fights, and little else. Other individuals have said that fights bore them. Fred seems like he prefers fights, but he gets into the whole map making thing and can come up with some solid plans, even though he professes to not want to be leader of the group. I think Eric and Jeremy like a mix, but I could be wrong. I should actually write these things down somewhere so I can keep track of everyone's likes and dislikes...

Anyway, the ninth scenario is done too.

Yeah, I'm that good. The first chunk of the campaign kind of had the appearance of haphazardness where the group kind of went wherever and did whatever they happened across. This was because I was kind of trying to figure out what they wanted to do. When we eventually settled on joining a rebellion, I had them meander their way down to where the rebellion was happening. This gave me time to plot out the scenarios, I was also able to seed a few things in the previous scenarios that will come back into play in the end game. The campaign is done in my head and it is crazy straightforward. Go here, do this, return, go there, do something else. Etc. Because the players opted to join a rebellion, and not start their own, their part to play is usually small and sort of off to the side of the big names like Cenn and Nakamander. If they had said, "We want to start a rebellion." we'd have had a lot more planning missions that kind of resembled The Heist and Of Course That Wasn't The End Of It, and they would be the big names associated with shit.

Man, I am literally giddy with delight that we have reached this point in the campaign. I'm not happy for it to be almost over. Heh, with our schedule of gaming we probably won't be there until like 2011. I'm excited and giddy because this is where the big deal stuff starts happening. Events in the world around the player's are conspiring to move the rebellion into its final stages, things that happened in the past are about to become very important to the current affairs of the group. Everything is coming together, and because I've been thinking about this stuff for a long time, the scenarios are going to come out a lot faster than they have been. Its only going to be our schedules conflicting that slow us down. Because of my upcoming possible schedule change, that could be a very real and difficult impediment though. If I can get a buffer of one or two scenarios that are ready to go, we can kind of get into the practice of gaming once a month and not necessarily have to stop completely when we finish one scenario, if we still have the energy to keep going that is.

Also, I've never fucking finished a campaign and the fact that we're at the eighth scenario and I can barely contain my excitement over getting to the conclusion is a great sign of my dedication to the campaign. Sixteen years of gaming and this will be the first campaign I finally completed. Amusing.

As is pretty common for me, I'm starting to think about the next campaign and what it might be. Honestly, I would really like to run a sandbox. I don't know that the players are motivated enough to be interested in seeing what is around that next corner, and I don't know if they have the kind of gamer sense that tells you "Hey, we're out of our league. We need to head back the way we've come."

In my previous open ended scenarios, there has been some..." What the fuck are we supposed to be doing?" sentiment, so I don't know if sandbox is the right way to go. Also, a sandbox is hard. Eric thinks the way I make scenarios is hard and time consuming, I guess he thinks you can just make it up as you go along in a sandbox, which is stupid. There has to be a lot there to entice the players. You have to be able to give them a lot of options, and have ways for them to know what they can do and what would be a waste of time. You also have to have a way to say "Hey, get the fuck out of there, this is a fight you can't handle. This is a higher level area." That is one of the aspects I like about a "true" sandbox, in a "real" world, not every threat is going to be properly balanced against the strength of the players. The trick would be letting the players know they're outclassed without saying it directly and pulling them out of the sandbox. They might run into bigger stuff in such a sandbox, and they might die, or they might get through it by the skin of their teeth, and they might like the sensation of taking on something that was truly tough and not balanced against their power level. I'd certainly find it cool if I were in their shoes.

I could go on, but this is long enough. Crimany.

Music: Two Kids - Priestess

Music: I Am The Night, Color Me Black - Priestess

Music: Radio Radio - Elvis Costello

Music: Pills and Soap - Elvis Costello

Music: Sabotage - Beastie Boys

Too Many Dogdamn Distractions and Some Relevant Resolutions

Ok, so I have a lot of stupid little hobbies that I spend money on. TV shows, writing, video games, P&P RPGs, reading, 40k, etc. That's six, but each of them is so massively large scale that the whole lot of them is rather unwieldy. On top of this there are several hobbies I want to begin: beer brewing and firearm shooting. If I was an idiot I'd add fencing and/or martial arts and learning German onto the pile of things I someday want to do.

The point is that I have too much stupid shit on my plate and I need to analyze and trim the fat if I can. We'll start with TV shows.

Currently I "watch" 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, Bones, Californication, Cougartown, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Dexter, Doctor Who, Flight of the Conchords, Grey's Anatomy, House M.D., How I Met Your Mother, Metalocalypse, Modern Family, The Office, Star Trek: TNG (with the intent to go back to TOS and then to Deep Space Nine and Voyager), and Supernatural. If I watch one episode of each of those in a week, that's like fourteen hours of television. Last year I quit watching CSI: Las Vegas because of a lack of Grissom. Before that I cut CSI: Miami because no show based on a lab/science should have that many explosions and expert marksmen. I think it might be time to cut a bit more. There are other things I can be doing with my time and looking at this list there are only six shows that I feel like I love enough to absolutely under no circumstances give up (30 Rock, Californication, Dexter, Doctor Who, How I Met Your Mother, and The Office). Another seven I watch because Heather watches them (The Big Bang Theory, Cougartown, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Modern Family [which I think I could grow to like enough to add to the previous list], and Supernatural. So there are Bones, Flight of the Conchords, House M.D., Metalocalypse, and Star Trek that I watch because they're there to watch, but to be fair I am really starting to like Star Trek: TNG and it will probably move to my must watch list. Anyway, its not a good enough reason to watch a show just because its there. House was great, as was Bones, but I just don't feel it anymore. I haven't even thought about them since they took the Christmas break or whatever, so why continue watching them? There's no good reason for it, so I guess I'll stop. Metalocalypse is stupid funny and you barely have to pay attention to it, but why waste my time in the first place if its not riveting television? As far as tv and movies are concerned, I can pretty much enjoy anything if the acting is halfway decent and the story is ok, but why keep wasting my time and subjecting myself to sub-par stuff on such a willing and regular basis?

Edit: Add Burn Notice and Eureka to the must watch list, those two shows are great.

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #1: Watch less stupid/uninteresting television. By that I mean, if something isn't riveting enough that I can watch it without doing a bunch of other stuff at the same time, turn it off and focus completely on something that is worth my time.

Next hobby on the list, 40k. Look, I'll be honest, this was a dumb idea. I enjoy the game and I enjoy painting, but the enjoyment I get out of the game isn't worth the time and expense required to get good at it and field a respectable army. On top of this Eric and Tony seem to have no inclination whatsoever to work on their armies and Shawn doesn't have enough time. I haven't been fired up about 40k in a LONG time as well. I do find painting to be fun, but I get frustrated and daunted by the prospect of six gazillion models to put together and paint. Lately I've found myself wondering if my time and money might be better spent buying a model or two (not necessarily 40k models) that I find striking and painting them or perhaps buying a twenty dollar multi-part plastic car model from a hobby store or something and decking the thing out with plasticard armor and weaponry ala Mad Max and giving it a custom paint job. I wonder if they make kits for 89' Dodge caravans...

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #2: Give up the 40k army dream for the moment, but not the fun and relaxing painting dream. Pack away the 40k shit but not the paints and files and such. Buy a twenty dollar model car kit and see if I still enjoy it like I did as a kid, and also a regular pewter miniature and paint it up. After all, miniatures will always be of use to DnD. Also, stop frequenting 40k sites every day, I don't need to and there's rarely much going on.

Next, video games. Video games are a hard thing to value and discuss because its so very hard to know what you're purchasing. I've bought some amazing games (Planescape: Torment) and some damn stupid ones (Qix++, Prototype, etc). Too often, I find myself buying on a whim because Tony or a podcast I listen to was talking up the game in question and I just don't do my own research. At the very least, I need to stop buying so many damn video games. I have plenty of stuff to do, and plenty of games already on my 360 and PC that need playing.

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #3: Be more discerning in my video game purchases and stop buying them on whims like I have been lately. Think hard about my money and the games I have at home before laying down money, whether its virtual (i.e. Microsoft points) or otherwise. If I do decide I need to have a game, give it a day or two and play something else and see if I still "need" the game. Also, borrow shit from Tony and Mark once in a while.

Writing. I love writing, its swell and I like bringing characters and worlds to life, even if no one will read about them. This one is staying around in its entirety.

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #4: Write more stuff, keep varying it up and don't sink completely into writing fantasy so much that I can never get free of it, try different point of views and styles as well. Finish writing the story of Keroen Skathos for the second time and get my friends to finally read it like they all have said they would. If they don't like reading stuff on monitors, they shouldn't have offered to read or agreed to do so, no one twisted their arms. Kudos to Eric for being the only motherfucker around here that said he'd do something and did.

Reading. I don't read as much as I should. I love reading and have a stack of a dozen or so books backlogged on my shelf and I can never seem to catch up because I only read a couple times a week. I'm ok with reading slower nowadays because it means I'm doing more than reading with myself and if I string a book out over the course of two weeks I seem to retain more information from it. I can still burn through something awesome like Sanderson's stuff in a weekend though, heh.

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #4: Stay the course, or perhaps read a little bit more regularly. Maybe even just set aside five or ten minutes before bedtime every night. I like to read and exposing myself to more books can only broaden my knowledge of writing and plots in general, so reading more often than I have been lately seems like a pretty good idea.

Finally, the beast, P&P RPGs. A lot of my life is taken up by this stuff recently. Heather can attest to the fact that I focus a lot of my free time on this stuff. I'm always posting and yammering on in real life about this stuff and I'm sure everyone has just about had it with my intensity. Sorry. I've got a lot of things going on in DnD that I'm really really excited about and I really really like GURPS and am itching to use it. There's no real resolutions here because I've posted them before, they're part one of my hobby related resolutions. I guess as an update I'll take another look at my resolutions.

The post is from December eighth and it is titled Of Impressive Length. My first gaming resolution was to find and use an audio mixer program. I've got it and I've played with it a bit and it seems to be working. We'll see what everyone thinks when we game on this sixteenth though. The second one is about learning to let go of my frustration and not be so irritable about shit: FAIL, but there is progress. The third is about really sticking it to the guys in combat and letting the dice have their way with the group in a fair and balanced combat, haven't gamed since the resolution so we have yet to make progress on this one. Number four is about plots and finishing campaigns, I've got this campaign planned out to fifteen scenarios and this includes the final conclusion of the campaign and how it effects the world at large. First time that has every happened, so definitely making some progress. Number five is about input from the guys and after an email last week, I've definitely been getting some productive feedback and it is swell. Six, seven, and eight are about a larger mini collection, recording our sessions, and shorter more frequent gaming. No progress on any of those fronts.

So there's an update on my gaming resolutions and a few new ones as well.

I Pine To Die In The Forest

Something about yesterday's Penny Arcade struck a chord in me. I really like the Lookouts and the whole strip stuck with me, I hope that the "metamind" will choose to pursue the Lookouts story. Unless something more awesome appears. I just really liked the strip and I am convinced that the expanded storyline involves one of those little kids dying in some horrific, yet noble, fashion.

Also, if they could throw in a deep crow, that would be the shit.

Burn Notice is back and I am giddy with delight. It is a glorious show and season two was quite epic. The first episode of the new season delivered decent entertainment value and I think it shows what we can expect for most of the season. The beauty of Burn Notice is that it has shorter seasons (I believe season two had like fourteen or something around that, could be wrong) so there are less stupid filler episodes that you get on twenty plus episode seasons. Supernatural has like twenty-two episode seasons and I think Grey's Anatomy had like twenty-six or something and both of those had idiotic filler episodes where really only the bare minimum of plot-related stuff happens. Dexter and Doctor Who both have really short twelve or thirteen episode season and they always deliver. Doctor Who does have some filler episodes, but they are for comedic effect I think and generally involve a lot of running, which the Doctor does fairly often and to my great amusement.

I started watching Flight of the Conchords and find it to be hilarious. Heather hates it as much as she hates The Office. The thing about The Office (and Flight of the Conchords too I think) is that all my enjoyment of the show comes from the fact that all the humor is completely deadpan and all the characters are completely serious about the insane and idiotic shit they do. The Dwight character on The Office isn't like "hehe, I'm going to cut of the face off of this dummy and it will be funny" the character completely believes in what he is doing and that it is a valid thing to do in the situation (It helps if the actor is convincing too), and that is part of what makes it hilarious. Plus, the songs on Flight of the Conchords are very amusing.

I finished another review of my story last night (the third, plus all the times I've reread chapters), tightened some things up, deleted other stuff. I need to be careful when I read through the thing, I keep expanding on stuff and fleshing out descriptions, and obviously this increases the word count. I think I should be working on reducing the word count a bit and eliminating irrelevant bullshit. Like towards the end of writing the thing I started adding in some insane thing about sea-folk being possessed by some manner of life devouring presence and that presence...to avoid spoilers I must be vague, the presence and the sea-folk it possessed try to fuck shit up. It was all tacked on towards the tail end of the book (the last three chapters I think) and it really served no purpose other than "oh look, stuff", so I tore it out last night. I think it shows I'm growing as a writer, or that I'm growing as an editor. I noticed The Rise of the Tau had a bunch of kitchen sink syndrome shit and I think that helped me to notice what I should be looking for in my own writing.

So far so good with WoW. I haven't gotten sick of it yet. I managed to put a level and a quarter on Benjamin (my higher level rogue) and about eight onto my low level hunter Akulna. Benjamin is currently wandering around Shadowmoon Valley in the Outlands. The quests are quite thick and I haven't even been into the Razoredge Mountains (which I don't quite know how to get into yet). I think Friday night I might put in an hour or so of mining/engineering work with Benjamin, I took up engineering with him when I saw there were Gyrocopters in the game. Fuck yes is all I have to say to that. Too bad I put so much money and time and effort into alchemy, which was a nice skill. But I have like 40 super mega healing potions in the bank and gyrocopters and explosives are totally worth it.

I think I'll pick up Prototype this weekend, unless I read a terrible review or something of that sort before Saturday. Seems like an interesting game, and it is a sandbox,(or at least it was last time I read about it), and you can morph your limbs into some fucked up shit, which is also a plus.

I find it very hard to believe that the guys chose Spineplate for their NPC in DnD last weekend. They could have chosen Smiling Jack, master of the bardic colleges, or Laram or Bald William, the right and left hands of Cenn the Reaver. But no, they chose Spineplate the bestial and somewhat not-quite-right soulless (which they didn't even question, which is standard procedure for them I suppose, I'm not referring to his intelligence either, which is actually above average. Its his voice, it is one voice and lacks the echo that other soulless possess, seems odd and is definitely something I would want to know about when dealing with a weird animalistic undead robot, but that's just me). I think I played him pretty well though, I managed to stick to one word answers and only had to translate for him the one time because the second scenario relies upon what was translated being made clear to the guys. I guess I just don't know their movitation for Spineplate as a choice, I made a point of saying that he had a big metal plate welded to his face with his citizenry identification etched into it (like the plate of metal with Mythbusters on it when they're about to cut to a commercial or come back from one), but every NPC had one of those behind their ears just like the players do, Spineplate doesn't have ears and is made of metal so he had to be numbered somehow and it is a pretty obvious physicaly feature that needed to be put into his description. The guys latch onto some weird stuff sometimes.

I think I'm going to try and work on the warden's creed, the Lookouts creed kind of inspired me. Plus, I figure it makes sense that an organization like the wardens would have a creed or something to be sworn when they gain their badge.

In other news, Traith has to find a way out of city of bards. Part of the deal that let him into the city was that if he tries to leave, every hand will turn against him. Too bad he didn't find the answers he was looking for down there. For those of you reading this and playing DnD, he meets up with Spineplate (and blows out the back of his skull). The Traith story is set like fifty years before my DnD scenario though.

Music: Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie

Robust (Obviously)

Steve isn't my actual name, but it is something I've always gone by when I don't use my real name. so I guess it is a name I've given myself. Anyway, this isn't really a blog about my life, its about my hobbies. I've recently found myself somewhat daunted be the sheer volume of hobbies I currently possess, plus I work full-time, am engaged, and planning a wedding. The purpose of this blog is to kind of talk to myself, or any who feel like stopping by, and sort of keep myself motivated. So I guess I'll start off with a breakdown of what I occupy my time with.

Dungeons and Dragons
This is currently my real joy right now as far as hobbies go. I've been playing this game for...fourteen years on and off now and for the first time ever I am DMing and gaming as a PC at the same time. Two different campaigns are being run in our group right now, there is so much Geek Pheremone in the air that I might choke and die. Eric is running a campaign and it seems interesting. Mixes fantasy with end of the world apocalyptic type shit. I think it has potential but Eric is kind of a beginner when it comes to DMing (he's done it before a few times, but it never goes for very long) and I'm concerned that if it doesn't go perfectly he's going to get discouraged and quit, which would infuriate me. I can count the number of times I've played as a PC in the past fourrteen years on the fingers of one hand, and I can still pick my nose and give a thumbs up with what I have left over. I'm playing a warforged fighter and it should be an interesting time. I am extremely excited about running my own campaign. I have a lot of neat shit stuffed into it that I'm hoping the players will wander around and discover. I'm looking forward to throwing a lot of ridiculously impossible steampunk gadgetry into the game. I just came up with something called a Non-Ferrous Reverse Polarity Field Generator. I think it repels bullets.

Reading
I read quite a bit, mostly fantasy and sci-fi and the occasional foray into regular fiction. My favorite authors would have to be Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, Chuck Palahniuk, Robert E. Howard, Brandon Sanderson, Michael Swanwick, Dan Abnett and apparently Cory Doctorow. I just started listening to the Cory Doctorow podcast in which he read his books and I find them to be quite awesome. Right now I'm reading a Warhammer 40,000 novel that is a collection of stories from the Horus Heresy. So far its decent, nothing particularly awesome has shown up as of yet but it is always an enjoyable experience to read about the Heresy. My next read is going to be The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Should be an interesting read, its about Charles Babbage and his mechanical computers and what if they had actually worked back then and changed the course of the computer industry. After that is a biography of Nikola Tesla. I've been kind of fascinated by this guy and his inventions since I saw him in The Prestige played by David Bowie, who is awesome.

TV/Movies
I suppose everyone likes TV and movies and whatnot, otherwise actors would not make quite so much money I guess. That said, I watch a lot of fucking TV and movies. A list of my favorite movies because lists are apparently the trend of this first post: Alien, The Departed, Die Hard(s), Predator, The Prestige, Zoolander...nevermind. A shorter list would be a list of movies I don't like. I love cinematic adventures. My three favorite TV shows right now (despite the fact that they are all currently between seasons) are Burn Notice, Dexter, and Doctor Who. Glorious stuff. Dexter because the premise is utterly brilliant, as is Michael C. Hall's acting. Burn Notice for too many reasons to list. Doctor Who because its Doctor Who, and David Tennant is just as great an actor as Michael C. Hall.

Video Games
I have a PC (obviously), an Xbox 360, and a PS2. Currently I'm playing Fallout 3 and the Broken Steel DLC. I would say Fallout 3 is just about my favorite game for 360 and probably...my third favorite video game of all time. The first is Planescape: Torment because, shit, because its awesome. You play an undying creature that is basically an indestructible mass of scars. Plus, the game can actually be beaten with words instead of blades. Second favorite is Disgaea for PS2 because of its insane level of overcomplication and its quirky and loveable sense of humor. Plus, demonic knife-wielding penguings.

Warhammer 40k
I play Warhammer 40k, a miniatures wargame. I say "play" when I really mean paint and fiddle with Excel spreadsheets of point values and wargear lists. I have two armies in the works right now, Iron Warriors (Chaos Space Marines) and Lamenters (Loyalist Space Marines). I work on a squad at a time and sort of alternate between each army. I only really work on them once a week, but I think that's ok because I am apparently the only one who paints anything anymore. Not that it matters, I like painting the minis and its kind of a nice way to spend a morning. I'm a fan of the Iron Warriors because they are so bitter and angry and all they have left is the Long War. Plus they're helmets are cool. Lamenters rock because they are badass. Not only did they basically get fed into the face of a Tyranid fleet, but they survived it. Plus they're chapter symbol is a heart and I think that's neat.

Writing
I write. I've finished one story which I've sent out to most of my friends to read. Despite giving it to them over eight months ago, no one has really responded with anything about it which is actually really depressing. Right now I'm working on another one, about 21 thousand words in. The story kind of has, I dunno, have you ever heard the song Identity Crisis by Alice Cooper? Yeah, its kind of like that. It kind of flows back and forth between steampunk and western and definite fantasy elements. Its also set in the world where my DnD campaign is taking place.

Music: Bowie To Bowie - Flight of the Conchords