Fantastic Settings
The other day Starr picked up a book for me, one that I’ve been meaning to read for years: Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle In the Dark. I’m enjoying it, but he’s preaching to the choir, and I’ve not yet gained any new insights from the book. On the other hand, I also finally have a copy of tltrent‘s In the Serpent’s Coils waiting in line, and I’m looking forward to reading that one. In my opinion, “Young Adult” fantasy and science fiction is where much of the good stuff is happening right now. Say what you want about Harry Potter, but Sorcerer’s Stone was a better read than many of the transcribed D&D adventures that pass for fantasy novels these days.
Speaking of transcribed D&D, Gary Gygax’s recent death caused me to drag out some of the old adventures I’d saved since the mists of First Edition, with an eye to running them again. In particular, I’m looking at the old S-series: “Tomb of Horrors”, “White Plume Mountain”, and “Expedition to the Barrier Peaks” (a particular favorite).
Now, I know these were convention tournament modules, but I was struck by the lack of role-playing, or even much of a plot besides “collect loot and survive to the end”. The adventures are full of unfair puzzles, insta-deaths, and places where the GM will have to do some blatant railroading if the party’s not going to wipe (no running back from the graveyard to rez!)
If I were to run them now, and the basic concepts are juicy enough to make the idea interesting, I’d have to do some major re-writing for my audience. I’d want map revisions, monster changes, and some serious story integration. It wouldn’t be a trivial task, even discounting the problem that the adventures were designed for experienced First Edition AD&D characters. What game system do I want to use – a D&D version, Earthdawn, Herc & Xena, an alternate-universe Shadowrun? (And in most of those cases, which edition?)
Yeah. This is kinda turning into a campaign, which is too bad; I’m not sure I can spare the time right now, fun as it sounds. The urge to run “Barrier Peaks” near Roswell using the Deadlands setting may have to wait.
Addendum: The sentence “the chest contains 10,000 gold pieces” was obviously written by someone who had never counted out 10,000 quarters, say, and then tried to carry them around for any length of time.
Brief updates
- 08:14 Parking a block farther from the office building to make myself get more walking in. #
- 08:44 We are role-playing a flame war on a discussion forum. “I cast Straw Man!” “I cast Ad Hominem!” #
- 09:15 Three-week-old kitten having breakfast: tinyurl.com/6grpcq #
- 12:34 “Keep Track Of Equipment” poster has picture of Space Shuttle Main Engines. Are we misplacing those often? #
Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter
All is foggy to me
This morning brought a bank of that 30-meter visibility fog, and the “bridge from nowhere to nowhere” effect on the Monitor-Merrimac. Already, though, it’s turned clear, mild, and sunny with a cool breeze: I suddenly want to skip work tomorrow and go to Busch Gardens. Won’t, of course, but still.
Yes, “I can’t support your virtualization software at this time” means I can’t troubleshoot the apps you’re running in it, either.
I finally have the free Pirates of the Carribean MMO running correctly on my laptop. I’m likely to play it about as often as I launch Second Life – which is to say, almost never – but it’s amusing nevertheless to get “FedEx” quests* from Johnny Depp. None yet from Orlando or Kiera, but then, those are probably saved for people who actually play.
Starr went to her mom’s on Tuesday to plant the irises I retrieved. Turns out there were about two dozen, so with the other plants she’d brought, she spent most of an afternoon digging. Add that to her hospital shifts for Wednesday and today, and I’ve got a still-tired lady on my hands!
Happy WoW stuff: thanks to shrewlet, I got all the materials to finish building Mirandala’s epic quality Destruction Holo-Gogs. Among other materials necessary were 206 chunks of difficult-to-mine ore… I can only assume that a LOT of refining is done to turn that into a single pair of goggles.
Also, my polymorph quest issue was resolved while I was offline, so Mir can now turn people into pigs. Thank you, GMs! Too bad that the spell’s unavailable to my warlock, since I named her Circy.
And thank you ranchonmars for the postcard! I have too aged since the Pathfinder days, but it’s dang nice of you to say otherwise 🙂
*Game character A gives you item to take to character B, who will reward you with money, loot, XP, or often as not another FedEx quest. Perversely amusing when characters A and B are less than 20 gameworld yards from one another.
Baaaaaa.
My WoW mage can (briefly) turn people into sheep.
This amuses me, so when I was reminded by a website that she can quest for an alternate spell that turns people into pigs, I rushed to the griffin taxi for the land of Azshara, home of a titanic magical apocalypse once upon a time. Finished the two quests, NPC quest giver says, “Let me teach you this spell” … and nothing happens.
Looked several times in my spellbook and bags, and tried talking to the NPC repeatedly – nothing. So I filed a bug report with the GMs, explaining the situation carefully. This morning I woke to an e-mail that politely says, “We may possibly be able to restore your lost item, though we can’t do this often because you should be more careful. File another ticket if you want us to go ahead.”
So when I get home, I have to explain that a restore will do nothing, as I never got the spell, and it wasn’t my daggone fault, because it’s a bug, one also seen by other players according to the big WoW info sites.
*sigh*
I know from experience that it’s not an easy job at all being a GM, but please actually read my ticket.
The Last Days of Technicon 25
My Sunday Technicon experience was brief and poignant. Reluctantly awake by 10:00, and out of the Microtel by 11:00, I headed back to McBryde for a final time.
My plan was to leave Blacksburg by 1:00, thereby getting home around 6:30-7:00 and having time for dinner and decompression, so my time was brief and rushed. I got to catch up briefly with nanoreid, had my picture taken with ranchonmars‘ Skull plush, and won an awesome Thunderchild print from rattrap. (It’s based on a plastic model I designed and we built many years ago.)
I finally had a few seconds to stop into Spiel, where I talked to jsciv for the only time during actual con hours. Touched base with rubinpdf, too; I hear ashoemaker was there, but I didn’t see him, though I did see markush on the way out. Since auction pickup hadn’t yet started, shrewlet offered to collect the print for me so that I could get on the road, and as I left the auditorium where the auctions were held, it seemed like half the con called out goodbyes. Just a little tiny bit verklempt, I was.
I drove home on 460 rather than battle the interstates; I got a far more peaceful drive for my trouble. Faint rain misted my windshield most of the way back, but posed no driving hazard, though I more than once encountered the damned “I refuse to be passed by a Hyundai, even if I was 15 miles under the speed limit!” attitude. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was so bushed that I sat a couple inches lower in the car seat, making the hood seem to disappear behind the dash.
Finally, I made it home. Starr and Midori were most pleased to see me. I presented Starr with the custom art I commissioned from rainbowsaber, and heard happy squees for the rest of the evening.
Sleep came upon me with no trouble at all, that night; and thus endeth the story of a happy Technicon. I’m already looking forward to next year’s: Jerry’s a good man who knows a thing or two about making a con happen, and I’m already tagged to do my shtick again. And this time, I’m bringing Starr!
(Say, who’s FanGOH for 26? And who’s got pics online?)
WoW news for today
The latest from our masters at Blizzard:
The new playable character class in World of Warcaft… Bard!
And, coming soon to game consoles: The Molten Core! (For once I have the right system to play it!)
The weekend officially begins
I drove back to Blacksburg in a much happier car. On the way, jsciv called and set up a meet, wherein I found that for $10 more a night I could have had a suite twice the size (not that I would have used it for much). We hit Christiansburg’s new Panera with Lucy, and talked a lot of game industry shop. Joe seems to be doing quite well for himself these days, which is great; we made hyper-flimsy plans for a Disney run out there sometime in the hazy future. (Flying. Not driving.)
Made it to the con, and picked up my Staff badge. I think I’m permanent TCon staff now… not that I mind, it’s a pleasure every year, but it amuses me nevertheless. I did not recognize tltrent at first, gomen, gomen! But I traded a lot of greetings with lots of great folk in those first minutes. I remember yubbie looking quite distracted, for reasons I would later discover…
I spent most of Friday re-learning my way around McBryde Hall on the Virginia Tech campus, location of many VTSFFC and USS McKay events. I socialized quite a bit, catching up with long-time fandom friends. In a lot of ways, Technicon for me is like getting to be 25 again, and getting to spend time with all these fun, intelligent people without being a broke, know-it-all slacker fanboy. I don’t miss that aspect of myself much!
Dwight’s Friday night dance was short and unfortunately-scheduled, turning more into an excuse to play exotic cuts really loud in a University auditorium while the iTunes Visualizer hypnotized the small crowd. nius‘s quote, “We’re rocking McBryde 100, bitches!” ended up on buttons for him and Dwight and me.
Shut down con and move to the Microtel conference room, where I snagged ursulav, Meche, and Bert for Saturday night’s panels, and finally caught up to shrewlet. First, colleenk and I got some long-awaited personal chat time – let’s not make it so long before the next one! – and then Cindy and I got a little conversation in before she had to take a guest home for the evening.
An excellent Technicon Friday! Saturday would be a bit rougher…
My brain hurts
Eight hours of sleep…
… didn’t help a bit last night. I woke up this morning with a thickly fogged, achy head, which only a lot of liquid did anything for. I also had a bad dream last night that I threw panels for Technicon and nobody came 🙁 Or maybe they just sucked, I can’t remember the dream that well.
Starr has jumped right back into her work. Her co-workers attempts to take it easy on her first day back failed miserably – such is the nursing profession, I guess. We had a nice couple of hours last night before she succumbed to the lure of sleep.
I found a nice sentence on a link from Tobold’s blog about certain types of gamers, WoW hardcore raiders especially, that relates to my ‘poker deck’ post: “For some people it isn’t enough to have achieved something first, they must also make sure that nobody else gets there, or it tarnishes their leet shine.”
Catching up
Good morning, all.
My apologies for leaving everyone in suspense about Starr. I’ve pretty much had no Internet access since my last post. (It wasn’t down, I have just had higher-priority matters to handle. Given how high-priority I usually make the Internet, that’s saying something. But anyway.)
Starr is back from the hospital and is doing quite well – well enough to wear me out this weekend staying up late and getting up early. She’ll probably be back at work tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest – I think she’s pretty excited about it. Her doctors say that her condition has probably been present since she was little and masked by other issues, so her treatment might actually leave her healthier than ever. Part of the priority issues from the last week was me being a bit of a jerk – I’ve not been handling events too well the last fortnight, and I needed a bit of a talking-to – but I think I have it under control now. Saturday night we were having a good time together, and she looked happier than she has in a long time. (The hew haircut’s darn nice too!)
I’m preparing for Technicon – as I’ve said, I refuse to do seat-of-the-pants this year – but just last night got a new schedule change, and am trying to adjust for that. (I actually agree with the reasoning behind it – I’m just laughing at Murphy.) There will be a post with further discussion of the TCon panels under my Lifestyle filter. I’m kinda hoping to get a little gaming in this year with jsciv – last year I was so busy, I barely laid eyes on the man. It’ll be awesome getting to see everyone who can attend.
Nerf the Knight of Pentacles!
Imagine you have a poker deck. But this one only has four suits numbered 2-9. That’s okay, because all the poker decks are like that. However, after you’ve played with this deck for six months, and started getting good, the poker deck manufacturers announce sealed packs of 10 cards each, with new graphic designs for the four suits. Get this – every 20th pack will have the new “10” card in it!
If you play poker seriously, you’ll be buying at least 20 packs. Probably a lot more if you’re determined to get a “10” in each of the four suits. Hey, they’re having a special tournament in California where the winner gets a “Joker”! And there are rumors on the Web of a “Jack” coming out in six months…
This is how the Collectible Game folks make their money. (Actually, it’s how almost all modern game companies do.) And I’ve always been amused by the people who crow, “I’ve got a complete set of Kings! I am the best player!” when a) it just means you have more resources to put towards the game, and b) it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that you’ll be chasing the “Emperor” soon, and the “DemiLord” after that, etc., etc.
I’m also repeatedly annoyed by these gamers. The worst part is their screams of outraged entitlement when, after the fact, the game companies announce that having four Jokers turned out to be too many, and the official rules will now limit you to two; or, conversely, having a single Ace in the game wasn’t working right, and there will now be four Aces, one of each suit, making it slightly easier for players to get one. They’ll scream that the game company is spitting on all the hard work they put out to get that Ace, and that they deserve the “honor” and “prestige” of their Ace of Spades.
Thankfully, the rest of us can just get on with our games – and since we’re not on eBay all night trying to buy an Ace for $1000, we can get out of the house more often to boot.
