Starfleet 101
I suppose this had to happen eventually.
A new friend down here in Virginia Beach and I speak much of the same fan dialects: anime, gaming, even art and writing. But she’s never seen a single episode of Classic Trek, or even any of the movies. (Yes, I can hear joints creaking all over my flist from here.)
She’s interested, though, and will get a dose of Khan’s Wrath as soon as we have two hours to set aside. But, she wants to see some episodes too, and I’ve never sat down and watched the show with a complete newbie; I’m not even sure where to start. We all know the legendary episodes: City on the Edge, Doomsday Machine, Tribbles, and more. But I’m not sure any of those is right for her first experience. On the other hand, “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” might not be the best, either.
So, I’m turning to you, Friends List. With which Classic Trek episode would you start a noob, someone who doesn’t know Balok from Sarek, impulse drive from warp?
Grace me with your input!
You can’t make stir-fry without breaking a few chickens
Catchup gaming session last night to get back on our two-week schedule. I had the first episode of the new adventure plotted out, so of course we spent the evening copying characters to the new sheets and spending karma and nuyen. Still, the socializing was good as always, so it wasn’t a wasted evening. Must remember to give fixitup and/or ptownhiker ‘gamemaster bribery’ karma for bringing the Oreos.
The new sheets went over pretty well. I still have to fix the cyberdeck section before I’m at the 1.0 version, but since none of the players physically present are deckers, I can finish that before I send a copy to Amy. Celia came over with her guy Rip to get character descriptions from folks; she wants to do portraits of our runners to get back into her art groove. Looks like she’ll start with Jesse and unit_9. She may play some NPCs for me or do ‘special guest star’ duties when we’re missing a player.
Inspired by a comment of rattrap‘s, I ran the old “Gentleman’s Agreement” Shadowrun short film to close the evening. People were exclaming, “That’s Kim Green! That’s James Dunson!” The Video Toaster CGI received compliments as well. Sadly, the copy I showed is overly dark and heavily compressed; if I can find a cleaner one, and no one involved in the project objects, I’ll try to put it up on YouTube.
We still need a team name for this group. Maybe we can come up with one in the next two weeks.
Play them off, keyboard dragon.
Finally finished running “Maria Mercurial” for the new Shadowrun group Monday night. I have learned many things doing this. For example, the adventure plotline fit the old TeeFivers better than they fit the new group. Frankly, I think this group had the most fun when I threw out the last remnants of the old plot and wrapped it all up my way.
They did get to kill a dragon (well, were involved in its death) and scored some nice boomsticks, nuyen, and Karma. I think I need to give them fewer, but more epic combats, and definitely more role-playing opportunities. (I know, gamers role-playing. What an idea!)
We definitely need new character sheets, though, and backup copies of the characters too. I’ve given up resurrecting the file with the old TeeFive Shadowrun four-page character dossier I constructed, and I’m rebuilding it from the hardcopy. This means of course that it’s not coming out quite the same, as I’m using Quark instead of PageMaker, and not quite the same fonts. But I did the first page and it looks pretty good so far.
Yeah, that was probably the best night of GMing I’ve had in half a decade. I just got a reference book for the next little adventure I’m sending them on, which hopefully will be even more fun…
One major event
Okay! I’m tanned, rested, and ready. Well, not tanned, and after the weekend I can’t say I’m rested. But I’m ready to catch up a bit!
On June 13th, Starr and I got married in the atrium of Senara Obici Hospital in Suffolk, Virginia. yubbie was kind enough to officiate for us, and we had a gathering of blood relatives and a few friends.
I think Starr and I may have been under more strain than we’ve been since we met. I was behind in nearly everything I needed to do for the day, and Starr of course was in charge of a million things. Had it not been for kind, generous folks who pitched in, this would never ever have happened. But it did indeed, and we have proof:
Here we see a mind-bendingly stunning bride, standing next to her doofus groom. Of course, we see Starr in fashionable cat ears in nearly every published picture, and this is no exception: Owen presented them to the two of us at the end of the ceremony.
I especially want to thank sir_alf and faekitty here: with practically no notice at all, they volunteered to pick up my mom from Roanoke, bring her to the ceremony, and give her a ride back. As well, they helped her with many things during the weekend that I hadn’t even put in the job description: they were two of many that went over and above the call. I cannot thank you both enough, nor tell you how much that meant to both my mother and I.
I have awesome (and work-safe!) stories to tell from the honeymoon, but those will need to wait until I can sit and cull the photos. No one wants the LiveJournal equivalent of 200 vacation slides.
But, woo! Wedding!
Very short vacations
Just to show you what a iron grip WoW holds on my life:
Thursday night, Starr and I signed on together, for the first time in what seems like a couple of months, to attend shrewlet‘s in-game wedding to another player. We didn’t stay long, but another player did us the favor of teleporting us to Dalaran, a city that we’d normally have trouble reaching until we’d gained several more experience levels. We signed right off afterwards, as it was late.
Last night, we signed on again to make the death run from that high-level area to (heh) Star’s Rest, from where we could catch a flying griffon to our regular questing zone. We knocked out a quest chain involving crashed pilots and the recovery of some microfilm from a very unpleasant place, and signed off again for sleep.
So, yeah, counting the couple of hours I spent chasing Nobelgarden eggs, we’re talking maybe six hours of play in the last six-to-eight weeks. Call the deprogrammers. Kinda frustrating, really, ’cause I enjoy the game and wish I could play more. But real life comes first (if you can call my life real), and there’s just been an abundance of reality lately. I’m not exactly complaining, but I kinda miss the old days when I could slack for days on end and get away with it.
Reconfiguring the Final Frontier
The AMC Theater at Lynnhaven Mall in Va. Beach has a new IMAX theater, so last night I loaned some of my Starfleet uniform collection to Starr and our friend Becca, and we went to see the new Star Trek movie there. I have to say, I came out of that film extremely pleased. Oh, I have a dozen tiny nitpicks, and the film wasn’t exactly as deep as some of the previous outings in the series, but when the closing credits rolled, I didn’t care about that at all.
The 10:15 showing we attended sold out of the $15 tickets, and we barely got decent seats showing up twenty minutes early. (I’d bought our tickets online the night before.) I only saw one other person in costume, a local TCC Astronomy professor in a TOS Sciences t-shirt; but we hit the mall and a restaurant before the movie, and got plenty of Vulcan salutes, shouted compliments, and picture requests. I can easily remember when wearing the uniform in public meant taking crap from random passersby. Times have changed! We didn’t get home until 1am, and Starr had a 5:30 wakeup call for work, but she insisted that didn’t matter: we had a movie to watch!
Commentary with spoilers behind the cut
Look who blew into town
Our Shadowrun Game Night rolled around last night. We’d missed the last few due to various logistical issues, but finally we had everyone except Lewis and Amy. So what did we do? Spent the evening catching up with each other.
Heh. Can’t say I minded too much. It’s good to hang with one’s friends for whatever reason.
Of course, the tornado warning last night added a little drama – apparently the center of the ‘red zone’ passed right by Jesse’s house. no damage done, though, and she was able to relax a bit after the worst passed.
Well, we’ll just have to get together again in two weeks!
Unsigned comics
Once upon a time, I did a guest appearance in a panel of the Fragile Gravity webcomic. Today, the circle is complete, as I’ve been privileged to write and draw an episode.
Monday morning, my Twitter client lit with a notice from kittykatya: she and impink needed two guest strips due to a family emergency. Now, I can draw a little, and I have always dreamed of having the fame and respect of a webcomic artist, so I volunteered. To my great surprise, Barb accepted. Oops: looks like I had to draw something. When would it be due? More oops: Wednesday. But it got done.
Take a look, and be sure to let me know what you think, especially if you liked it. And there’s quite a lot more to tell behind the scenes…
Starfleet Vice – 1990
The RoVaCon 15 Starfleet Vice video, as threatened promised…
So, I’ll explain a little of what’s going on. I’m in the wheelchair because I’d been in a life-threatening car accident only weeks ago, but I was too stubborn to miss the con. Heather and Valerie are dressed in costumes from the anime Dirty Pair. Mike Allen represented KODRA, a ruthless Klingon-Orion terrorist organistion out to rule the Alpha Quadrant; while Markus… well, he had a lab coat, so we worked that in. And of course, Tom, Mike, and Beth were solely there to support our blatant swipe of Monty Python material.
I don’t remember the name of the dude working the camera… but he really liked the anime costumes.
