RIP Gary Gygax
It’s going around the Internet that E. Gary Gygax, co-creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, has passed away at age 69.
The man’s work certainly made a major impact in my life. I spent hours of my early teenaged years rolling odd dice at the kitchen table with my friends, and designing ridiculously labyrinthine dungeons for our overpowered characters to run through. I moved on in the 90s to more story-based RPG systems, but my First Edition Advanced D&D books remain on my game shelves, just in case.
Certainly, the World of Warcraft owes a great deal to the man, as does the Munchkin card game. Because of his work, many game stores have seen a fine profit from me over the years.
I think I should dig out an old module or two of his, and see about hosting a run in memoriam. I’ve always wanted to try “Expedition to the Barrier Peaks” again in a setting such as Earthdawn, Hercules & Xena, or perhaps even Deadlands (where it would fit awfully nicely, with certain tweaks. Hmm…)
Thanks for many lovely evenings, Mr. Gygax.
Clouds thinning by morning
Feeling much much better this morning. I have been trying to find an explanation for feeling so lousy last night… less caffeine, lingering crud from the weekend, full moon, etc etc… but I think that there’s no special explanation: I just felt bad. This is not satisfying to the logical part of my mind, but all the other possibilities just don’t ring true.
I think it helps that I did again wake before the alarm, though I had a bout of chills about 1/2 hour into my morning. I’m hoping that garbage goes away as the weather gets a little warmer.
My WoW backpack has 16 “item slots”, each of which holds anything from a rabbit’s foot to a 6-foot mage’s staff to an armored chestplate. These slots fill up insanely quickly – collecting additional bags ASAP is practically mandatory – so I’m disinclined to believe the “upcoming patch notes” that claim we’ll be seeing a “scaling” pack which starts at 10 slots and gets to 24 slots at level 70. 10 slots isn’t even enough for a newbie character.
(I love how, in loot-based fantasy gaming, the same pair of armored trousers somehow fit both a 3.5-foot tall gnome male, and an 8.5-foot tall tailed alien female. Imagine how easy clothes shopping would be if all clothing fit the moment you put it on!)
Since I’m WoW-gabbing this morning, here’s a great post on the official forums by a player who’s compiled a short history of Azeroth, giving players some background for a lot of those quests where something more seems to be going on. WoW lore’s pretty darn rich and full, even for a series of 4 video games. It may be no Silmarillion, but that’s a plus for some folks.
Weekend on Mars
Started off the weekend with a fever on Friday, caused probably by having to run around in the cold cold rain on Thursday. But I medicated the heck out of myself, and was well enough to travel with Starr to Williamsburg on Friday for MarsCon.
Most conventions are, for me, opportunities to socialize with friends I don’t often get to see. southernsinger, kittykatya, impink, geckoman, and stori_lundi were all there, as well as folks I get to see a little more often such as ptownhiker, fixitup, and torn757. Got to spend some quality time with Jesse and Dwight too!
Convention loot: a Devil’s Panties graphic novel (Jennie Breeden remembered me from Dragon*Con), character sketches from an artist in the dealer’s room, a Carcassonne expansion and an book of Paranoia XP modules, two White Plectrum CDs and a Coyote Run CD, some erotica from Helen Madden‘s table, and a couple of buttons. After spending the weekend avoiding the purchase of T-shirts, Starr and I were handed free ones by a local game store – now I have to get rid of more old ones to make space!
Next year, the con is supposed to move to a bigger location, and it really needs the space. MarsCon completely overflowed its host hotel, which is a shame, as I think it’s a nice place to hold the weekend. I got to hear some other VA con politics I didn’t want to hear about, but that’s the down side of having friends who are so heavily involved in things.
Speaking of being involved, this was the first time I can recall having my con badge paid for as a “Guest” presenter. I have to say I found it very cool, though somehow I had always imagined it would be for my Great American Science Fiction Novel. Still, the panels (which I talk a bit more about in the Lifestyle filter) were great fun, and I can’t wait to do them again next year.
We’d really intended to stay longer on Sunday, but despite finally getting the MarsCon Charity Chair Massage I’d been wanting to try for years, we had a bad case of burnout. Excitement, dancing, endorphins, and little sleep all hit at once, and Starr and I headed home around 1:30 to veg for the rest of the day. Still haven’t quite come down though. How long ’till T-Con?
Oh, by the way, for people who didn’t go see Cloverfield, or restrained themselves from visiting YouTube this weekend, here’s the new Trek movie trailer. Total geekgasm.
Tweets for Today
- 09:17 Memo to me… you will need clean laundry for MarsCon, including any costumes you plan to wear. #
- 10:03 No “Star Trek Online” MMORPG from Perpetual Entertainment. I wish I could say I was surprised. #
- 11:47 Half the office here eagerly awaits the Stevenote and the list of Apple toys we’ll be drooling over in 2008. #
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Games under the tree
Definitely a traditional Christmas for me… History and Science channels on the tube, wrapping presents for others while being unable to wait to unwrap ours 🙂
My Munchkin collection is looking healthier! Starr gave me Munchkin Impossible and Munchkin Cthulhu I & II… now we have to invite someone over to play them with us. 2-handed Munchkin is much less fun.
Back in my Decipher days, Justin taught me how to play Carcassonne, and I’ve been wanting a copy for the years since. Never managed to pick it up, but I knew it was fun to play, so I picked up a set as a Christmas present for raininva when I heard she was gaming again. Well, guess what other game I got yesterday 🙂 Already broken it in, too. Fun!
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I had a little trouble with some of the older movies I haven’t seen yet…
Clearance, Clarence?
My family moved from my hometown – then back – when I was too little to remember any of it. For the next 18 years or so, I lived in the same place. I moved some of my stuff out before my accident, then moved it all back in, and lived in that same place for another 10 years or so.
Since I finally moved out of my parents’ house, I’ve lived (for more than 6 months) in 4 additional places, and moved all my stuff 4 times. This doesn’t count the stuff that’s still waiting to be collected back in my hometown.
This is why, extremely painful though the very thought is, there are 114 paperback books and a few hardbacks piled on my living room floor, looking for new homes. This is the beginning of a serious ‘stuff’ reduction. I don’t have room for it all, and most of it I haven’t blown the dust off in years. I don’t have the room to enjoy any of it.
(For example, I have an excellent collection of unbuilt plastic model kits. For the last several years, I have not had the workspace to build any of them, nor a place to display them if I did. Yes, a fair proportion of those are going to good homes as well.)
When I realized that composing this year’s Christmas list consisted partially of considering where things might even be put, I realized the time had come. Hello, treasures. Either you’re In… or you’re Out.
Good News and Bad News
Yesterday was a real roller-coaster ride.
I was slammed with tickets at work yesterday, and fell behind despite my best efforts. I’m catching up a little bit today, but what a mess. There is never a lack of things for me to do here, let me tell you!
So, back in April, the driver’s door switch in the Hyundai broke. The car believed that the door was constantly ajar, meaning I couldn’t keep the power locks locked while the car was in motion (BAD), the dome light wanted to stay on all the time (turned it off), and the open-door dinger would chime erratically (psychosis-inducing).
While I still have to take the car by the dealership for several reasons, it finally occurred to me that with three pennies and a bit of duct tape, I could restore proper function to the switch. Now the locks work right, I’ve got my dome light back, and the dinger is no longer suggesting that I go on a three-state murder spree.
Then we headed over to ptownhiker‘s superhero game; and, less than a block away from the venue, someone’s cat darted in front of the car. It was over before I registered the blurred shadow. We pulled over immediately, and found the owners, but it was far too late. The owners thanked us for having the decency to stop and find them… thank goodness I was heading straight to a big gathering of friends, because that was a hell of a downer.
The WWII superhero game, on the other hand, may have been the best session we’ve had in the campaign. All the heroes pulled together as a team and contributed something vital to the rescue of a torpedoed troopship in the North Atlantic, and the evening was full of crazy plans and laughter. One of the heroes has what is basically the Portal super power, and we come up with a new way to abuse it almost every session 🙂
And this morning I found where I’d accidentally hidden my iPod from myself. So, an eventful day-and-a-half.
EDIT: Here’s a Flash version of the Portal game. I wish I hadn’t found this at work 🙂 http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/
Summon Spectral Tigerzord Now!
In World of Warcraft, once you are high enough level, you get to ride around the lands instead of walking and running. At level 40, you can acquire a steed which moves at 160% of your running speed; at level 60, you can get one that moves at 200%. (At higher levels, you can get mounts that fly, but they are only good in certain areas.) When the necessities of the game force you to pass through the same area for the hundredth time, the bonus speed is quite welcome.
My gnome mage rides a large mechanical ostrich, while my warlock summons a demonic horse. Mounts are expensive, but not rare or difficult to acquire. (Poor gnome is still riding her lvl 40 ostrich because she hasn’t yet made enough money for her lvl 60, but that’s purely a matter of time.)
Like anything else in the game, there are rare and valuable steeds found only with the greatest of luck. To mirror this, the trading card game for WoW includes ultra-rare cards with a scratch-off code that can be entered into the game to provide the player’s character with a mount that few in the lands of Azeroth will ever see. This ghostly tiger is pretty keen-looking; the regular tigers of the night elves are nice enough that some players of other races work for the right to them, and this one is certainly cooler than those.
My point here? One of those WoW “loot cards’ just sold on eBay… for TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.
Great C’Thun, people. It’s a CGI tiger. In a game. It doesn’t even go faster than shrewlet‘s armored warhorse or snidegrrl‘s giant rhino-lizard. Someone just paid the cost of my next Mac laptop for this virtual ride.
Arrrrgh.
