BirthdayChristmas stuff and an idea. [19 Jan 2009|01:10am] [ mood | contemplative ] [ music | Aya Hirano - Harmonia vita (SIGMA Mix) ] So here I am, as a friend said "at the top of the hill." I'm 30 and right now, I only see it as a number. I'm the same as I was and don't see much out of it. Birthday and Christmas was especially good to me. I spent time with family and friends, got more than a fair share of nice things including the following: A really nice green jacket from Cabellas. Its warm, sturdy, keeps out the elements and I can lose one portion of it to make it a wind break or another to make it a fully functional vest. Black Lagoon's second season Code Geass parts 1&2 The Girl who leaped through Time - a fantastic movie and a damn shame it didn't get a bigger theatrical release) Dresden Files Novels 2-6. I think I'm good on non-game recreational reading for a while. I'm right now going through book 3 when I can and so far I love this series. Xbox points. Because I can always use em. Know any good Xbox live arcade games? Gamestop gift card with a mystery value upon it. When I find time to present it to a store, I hope they don't ask me if I want to take the total on the card or trade it in for whats in the box that the disheveled co-worker is bringing out of the back right now. Castlevania: Order of Eclestia Dead Space - pretty fun, if not derivative. I wish they made better use of the supporting cast than what was laid out. It felt very lazy at points in both story and boss fights. (Hey, lookie... just use the pulse rifle!) Gloves A Nerf heavy machine gun. Perfect for when I decide Metal Slug isn't just enough to play it just on my DS. An RE themed gun housing for my Wii-motes. A friends collection of CCGs and a marble chess board. Seeing how I'm starting up a gaming club at my office, this is well timed and fortuitous. Homemade portable dice tower. The wrapping was great and I almost considered not opening it because of it. I saved the paper and would like to take some pictures of it. It has a swinging green felt gate for easy storage. I can see this baby getting a lot of use. Now to contact a friend to see if he can get vinyl decals made for the thing. Vexille - a CG movie from the guys who brought us those appleseed movies. Freakazoid season 1 Fable 2 Kings Blood - plays like UNO if you wanted real strategy in the thing. The Elements of Style - A practical gift I never knew existed. With my career choices, this is gonna come in handy. Threw me off with the Basset Hound cover though. I also got a few checks from family members and was considering buying a PSP- first a PSP 2000 model for the ability to modify the system to how I wanted, then a PSP 3000 because it looks more crisp and I doubt I'd really play any emulation on the thing. And then it hit me. I have a LOT of stuff. I got a large backlog of games I barely stem off and while a PSP now fits my rule of five at least twice and it could fit that role of a portable MP3 player due to my loathing of iPods, there are plenty of things I want to do besides just play games and read stories. I want to make them. So, I'm going to work on a new concept: Start working out stories and parts of systems. When I get a good milestone into something, I earn the right to purchase a new game. I think this could work as a nice carrot. RE 5 and Star Ocean 4 are coming very very soon after all. My friends and I finished our long campaign "The Divine Machine" and while it didn't quite work out all the time, I recall there was talk of a side story sometime down the line using another system and had a perfect character for it who could best well add in things I wanted while removing what I didn't care of the story. So here's hoping I'd some time be able to use Halley Preston- protector and guide. Drift Away

Welcome to 2009, the present. [04 Jan 2009|11:59pm] [ mood | exhausted ] [ music | Shoji Meguro - Pursuing My True Self ] I haven't written a post in some time, so I think I'll keep it short because I have lots of ground to cover... I quickly got let go from my previous position in early summer. Too much drama and unrealistic goals for what they were paying me. Good riddance. I went to GenCon last year, to which I ended up do a little freebie editing work for the fine folks at Adventure Planning Service after playing their very awesome RPG Meikyu Kingdom. It's funny when you try to be polite and not correct the work, and yet they ask you to do it anyways. Maid RPG got released! Huzzah! I got a new job, which isn't testing for a change. The hours are nice, pay isn't horrible and I'm "not another cog"(tm). My birthday is coming up. Some people are making a big deal about it since it's my 30th. I think it's just another year and I feel pretty much the same without Death's icy grip looming behind me. I'm planning on doing something fun on the 17th-18th, the weekend after the date (the 13th). For those interested in hunting down a present, there's some ideas to be found at my Amazon.com gift list. You can access it by putting in my "first" name and last, or my hotmail e-mail account. Star Wars: Clone Wars tv series is more awesome than it really should be. Yeah, Jar Jar is in it too, but he's not that bad and tries to do the right thing instead of simply running around screaming. Anikin is actually likable instead of being a self centered Wahmbulance driver. A couple interviews to look at- (1) and (2) These guys are punks. Persona 4 is fantastic, even though you wouldn't think so when the setting is a small town being eaten alive by a Walmart styled shop. Well, I think I'll post more later on when I'm not so dang tired. Drift Away

On the road again [12 Aug 2008|11:15pm] [ mood | anxious ] [ music | The din of the airport ] So, I'm going off for Gencon. I'm right now at the airport, typing this up. I'll be arriving there about 7am Eastern, which is going to be horrendous and on top of that, I'm absolutely clueless on what to do Wed after I get to the hotel and check in. Show doesn't start until thursday. Still, it should be fun. Get to show off a great game to people, finish off the final part of the True Dungeon adventure (I want to know how they top that life sized functional beholder puppet.) and check out a few more wild RPGs I wouldn't have the chance to before hand. Drift Away

If you're reading this after Sunday, don't bother [19 Jul 2008|09:05am] [ mood | complacent ] I've heard a little ranting about this, but the whole thing is rather entertaining with a completely misleading title: Doctor Horrible's Sing A Long Blog It's short musical film about a super villain, his blog, the girl he ogles at the laundromat and his super hero nemesis. With a title like that, I figured it would be some sort of mangled karaoke site. So if you're reading this by Sunday night, give it a listen, because they're taking it down after that. If you read this after the fact, go hunt it down online. Something that isn't as time sensitive is I've been watching this odd little anime, Soul Eater which so far is pretty colorful. In more serious news, Job hunting is going slow, but well. Drift Away

RPG character musings... [30 May 2008|09:13am] [ mood | contemplative ] [ music | Hanaeryca - Make or Break ] Kublacon came and went, and I had a very good time overall. Not much to take home with me, but lately I've felt very little of the urge to buy everything that catches my attention, which is good for my bank accounts, because I gotta stop that. ( The rest is doofus character introspection, so if you don't dig that, don't bother. ) Drift Away

Fun things I learned at Kublacon [26 May 2008|09:54am] [ mood | sore ] - The new Hunter RPG is not like the silly action rpgs on the PS2. Take that as you will. - MURPHY! A house rule at a game was "Murphy" where each player got one free re-roll per session. Murphies could be donated to another player (which may be handy for some folks in my group) - A nice way to get players to not be so damn insular with their character interactions is to have the player introduce his character and then tell a short story of your guy and the next character to your left. - I can do pretty good off-the cuff Tick speeches. At least thats what the people at the Tick D6 adventure game felt, where I wasn't sure if I could do the guy justice. - The Tick isn't too kind on my vocal cords. I'm still paying for it today. - I wanna play more Bliss Stage. It can be explained without everyone reading the book in 15 minutes, a big worry for our group, but handouts of the charts (and keeping character sheets on hand) is a must. - ANIMA IS FINALLY COMING OUT SOON! It finished the editing process and is in that fun "greenlight/print stage" of production. It sounded like an editor's nightmare... who puts 5 different fonts on a single page for rules? - Not too many things worth getting, or I might be becoming a little more frugal... oh well, I'm in it for the fun. Drift Away

An interesting quote I found today... [05 May 2008|07:18pm] [ mood | hopeful ] "With the boundless infinites available in our imaginations, there is no way a problem between two characters can not be overcome." Drift Away

Comicking Chameleon [03 May 2008|08:06am] [ mood | energetic ] So, today is the first Saturday of May, which means FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! This kind of event is a great barometer for judging if your local comic shop is the friendly type- If you go in and can take one of each, that store rocks. If you can grab a couple, then it's pretty good. If they start charging you for these things,then it's time to just give up your pull box subscription and look somewhere else. While we're on the subject of Comics, I've been digging the latest Spidey cartoon: Spectacular Spiderman. The art style kinda reminds me of a mesh between "Scott Pilgrim" and the Bruce Timm DC Animated series stuff, Is unsurprisingly well written (much thanks to Greg Weisman who was one of the head writers for Gargoyles) and for once- theres not a single "intro" episode. Peter Parker is still a dorky teenager going to high school, and a few months ago started up the webslinging, still hangs out with now nerd girl Gwen Stacy, always dweebish Harry Osborn and uses webshooters (no natural web powers here). While some might not care for the odd look of the series, I feel this is one of the best Spiderman cartoons so far as they work in alot of cameos perfectly, easily explain the immediate influx of super-villains and he often uses scientific reasoning to take down the bad guys (which before, his science skills was just an excuse for him to be a Jr. Reed Richards and build some deus ex machina to fix the problem). And yes, J Jonah Jamison is still a scene stealer like in the movies. It's on at 10am on Saturday Mornings, or anytime courtesy of torrent sites. Drift Away

Of games and schedules [02 May 2008|12:37pm] [ mood | bouncy ] So the past couple of days have been challenging as I've been trying to make a schedule around my new job and getting into good habits. Wed morning I couldn't get any sleep until 3am, not for a lack of trying and then early this morning I woke up to feel an intense pain in my abdomen and couldn't get back to sleep. Still, things are going well, I got my first book that I edited in the mail on tuesday and Gamestop, a store I rarely visit nowadays was offering a "Buy 2, get 1 free" for used titles and there happened to be two stores close by to my office. I picked up the following: Phantasy Star Universe (360) Shining Force EXA (PS2) Wild Arms 4 (PS2) and at the second shop, I found... Steambot Chronicles (an awesome open ended warm hearted steampunk mecha game for PS2) King of Fighters 11 (PS2) Neo Geo Battle Colosseum. (PS2- SNK's answer to how Capcom threw in non-fighter characters in the MvC series, plays like a mesh of that and KoF.) One thing I noticed at both shops was that at no time was I ever bugged to pre-order or trade in games, Unfortunately, when I was gonna buy a copy of Arcana Heart, both stores had only the store floor copy which is a used game under a new game price tag. (They tried talking me into that it was actually new but I'm well aware of how employees borrow the games.) I'm planning on seeing Iron Man this weekend, and Speed Racer with the possibility of the documentary "Monster Camp" (about a weekend at a NERO group) next week if it's playing in the area. Also, if anyone wants my PS2 copy of Phantasy Star Universe, lemme know. Drift Away

Random items... [24 Apr 2008|11:08pm] [ mood | calm ] Well, as I may have mentioned, I got a new job and one week in, I'm enjoying it. They don't watch me like a hawk, my hours are reasonably flexable and I get EVERYTHING I need to do my job. I just finished reading Zombie Calling, a nifty one shot graphic novel and enjoyed every minute of it to the degree where I can see when nekoewen decided to recommend it to me.("FAST ZOMBIES SUCK!" followed by a near perfect mirror of my zombie movie diatribes.) Also been watching Higurashi No Koro Ni- but it should honestly be called "BAD END". And I'm going to Gencon this summer. woo!!! Drift Away

Sick [14 Feb 2008|06:34pm] [ mood | sick ] The past couple of days I've gone through a cavalcade of illness symptoms. Tuesday I was showing a few signs but I could deal with it, yesterday I was so damn achy and lethargic, and while I'm getting better today, it's an uphill battle. I've been sleeping almost all day only to be getting up to pray to the porcelain gods. My coughing fits have pretty much stopped so maybe I can get some sleep this evening without being woken up at 4 in the morning. Here's hoping I can fight this thing off by Saturday. Drift Away

NEWS FLASH- Monster Hybrid preys on High School Girl, SOS brigade denies any wrong doing. [11 Feb 2008|10:17pm] [ mood | distressed ] [ music | Metamorphosis Jazz Band - Naruhodou Ryuuichi - Objection! ] Unearthly assault alleged Man, 19, convinced girl, 15, that he was vampire-werewolf hybrid before they had sex. By Chris Parker | Of The Morning Call February 9, 2008 A Pottsville man convinced a 15-year-old girl he was part werewolf and part vampire before sexually assaulting her, police say. Kristian Allen Carl, 19, also believed he was a supernatural mixed breed, police say. "He convinced himself he was a hybrid -- a combination werewolf and vampire," Pottsville police Sgt. James Joos said. "He had convinced the girl he was, too." To prove to police he was indeed a genuine vampire/werewolf, Carl "showed me his canine teeth," Joos said. "I let him know that all mammals, including humans, have canine teeth." Joos said Carl also told police he had a "guardian dragon that protected him from evildoers." Carl was charged with statutory sexual assault after admitting he had sexual intercourse with the girl, who told police he was her boyfriend, on Nov. 14, 2007, according to an affidavit Joos filed with District Judge Charles Moran of Pottsville. Carl knew the girl's age and was aware he could "get in trouble" for having sex with a girl under age 16, Joos wrote. Carl told police he had met the girl the previous night and the two went to a friend's apartment to spend the night. Moran on Jan. 29 found sufficient evidence to order Carl to face Schuylkill County Court on the charges. Carl remains free on $25,000 unsecured bail, Joos said. "He's being held culpable for his actions," Joos said. ---- I really wish I was making this up. 1 Dream ~*~ Drift Away

Enter the garden of MADNESS! [02 Feb 2008|09:16am] [ mood | happy ] [ music | Masafumi Takada - Steel Python ] I completed No More Heroes the other day, and it has been the most satisfying game I've played on the Wii console. It may be because it doesn't rely on gimmicky motion controls for the basic functions of moving or attacking, the whacked out world of Santa Destroy, Ca, or that the game's hero comes from the "Coop Cooplowski School of Martial Arts"- playing video games and watching pro-wrestling could make you into a walking killing machine! It's probably all of those combined. The ending made just as much sense as the game did, and I'd love to see a sequel continuing the adventures of dorky Travis Touchdown and his over the top Grindhouse antics. After returning an extra copy of "The Orange Box" and "Assassins Creed" on moral grounds, which I both got for my birthday, to Amazon.com, I ordered both seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender and had 30 bucks credit left over. nekoewen and sirsanjiyan suggested I get CthulhuTech, and so I have. The shipping date says it will be here on the 5th, and so I give a word of warning if you're in my gaming group as I did for both of them: Once I look over this book, I will pester the entire lot of you to play the game. It will not stop, No sir, until we actually get a session or two into this mash-up marvel. That is, unless all the stellar reviews were baldfaced lies. But just get your character concept ready just in case. Which also reminds me, I need to continue on my music RPG before that book comes in... Drift Away

New things [28 Jan 2008|09:48am] [ mood | bouncy ] [ music | Nana Mizuki - Justice to Believe ] The past couple of days I've been running around like an idiot, however two things I got were Grimm, a new full rpg that was originally a small d20 supplement; and No More Heroes, the wacky assassin game featuring an anime nerd and his lightsab- er Beam Katana. I haven't gotten through much of NMH, so I might talk about that later. Instead I'll give a brief explanation and review of Grimm. Grimm is a tabletop RPG where the players are modern day kids stuck in a fairy tale world called "The Grimm Lands". This world was created through a magic book that was discovered by the Brothers Grimm and, you guessed it, used to catalog all the stories they collected. Except many of the things in the world are warped and twisted and just not nice. Humpty Dumpty never got put back together again just right and became the Rotten King (and one of the chief villains of the setting.) Mother Goose is a psychotic bombardier, there are a ton of ginger bread houses (sans expected ant swarms) with the expected occupants and the tooth fairy is tired of waiting for your baby teeth to fall out. The players choose an archetype for their kid (Nerd, Bully, the normal one, the Jock, the popular kid, the Dreamer and the Outcast) and then customizes the archetype with a few points so a player is pretty much good to go in about 10 minutes with a new character. Now here's the part I'm very iffy on- the mechanics of the game, called the "Linear d6 System": You roll a 6 sided die when you need to check to see if your character does okay on a task. If you get a 2-5, you get to use your stat level (called a grade) to the task. If you roll a 6, you get one grade higher and keep rolling, and the same goes for rolling a 1. Except your grade goes down with that one. While there are rules for teamwork and other things to boost your roll, the basic mechanic looks to be like something stolen from an adventure card game/board game. Now while I feel that RPGs could get a lesson on taking some elements from other game styles, I'm not too sure on bringing over near-static stat checks is one of them, especially when a lot of the cool things of the setting demand crazy high grade checks, so having them go up against the big bad wolf in the beginning may be a Total Party Kill. It's like being a little kid at a theme park and seeing the dreaded "You must be this tall" sign. Still, to be fair, the game reinforces the idea of "STICK TOGETHER" with this harsh system and a kid levels up after every adventure (there are no EXP or point do-dads. You just go up a rank and get more points to put in stats and abilities) so at least in a few sessions the kids would be able to survive to a point. Another thing I noticed was that many of the really harsh stuff from the d20 version(The seven dwarfs were sexual predators, Little Red Riding Hood is a vampire) got removed and replaced with less "serious" items or characters that are more apt to trap, trick or puzzle the kids rather than outright slaughter them. For as deadly as the game makes the world to be, character death isn't really a problem. If you lose all your health, you get knocked out with only gm/player consensus saying the kid died unless it's really obvious (a kid being swallowed whole by a dragon and not rescued, for example). Both points are big attractors to me, because there's already Little Fears for the uber creepy Pan's Labyrinth stuff (even though you *could* easily take the horror route) and moreso, foes are more designed to be outsmarted and outwitted than blasted with a shotgun, which is appropriate considering my favorite fairy tales as a kid were the ones with the hero using his head to defeat a clearly dangerous foe (Like Puss n Boots getting rid of a shape shifting giant by debating that it couldn't transform into anything it wanted and tricked it into turning into a mouse.) The game at first glance looked to be depressing, but there's enough things in the game that aren't outright threats that won me over and is more "dark" than "pitch black near parody absurdity" where the answer to everything may as well be "I run away". I wouldn't mind giving the game a try soon to see how it plays. Now I just gotta find Cthulhutech... Drift Away

The weekend in review [21 Jan 2008|12:25pm] [ mood | cheerful ] [ music | Jack Wall and Sam Hulick - M4 Part 2 (Faunts) ] In an attempt to keep posting regularly without just using little internet polls, here we go with the more interesting things I did during the weekend: Rifftrax Live: Thursday afternoon I went with nemuren, nekoewen andjennermech to San Francisco to watch Plan Nine from Outer Space. We had plenty of time, so it allowed us to hang out in the Japantown mall and then get lost around the city before we finally found the Castro Theater. While the theater was absolutely gorgeous once we got in, and there was a Organist playing live music soon after, Parking was a nightmare and Castro felt like some sort of Bizzaro Alabama caracature, with it's own brand of.... bars and rainbow flags hanging instead of the confederate one. We got good seats right up in front. The riff was pretty funny but I could see why MST3K declared the film off limits- It unknowingly makes fun of itself. The sound system also needed work, as I had trouble listening to the jokes as it was drowned out by the movie sound track and while I did have a great deal of fun I was a little disappointed that Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbet took off right after they were done and didn't stick around especially considering they were late by 20 minutes. Friday Night was Cloverfield, and it's about time we got a fun survivor story in the middle of a giant monster attack (the best Zombie movies have been doing that for decades). It felt just a little "MTV generation" with most of cast (who are pretty much unknowns) looking way too good, but it quickly went away when the monster hits. If you're looking for a film that hands you all the answers on a silver platter, this isn't for you. If you also easily suffer under "Cybersickness" this isn't for you either (Jenner got a little sick and dizzy through the film). It's just a piece of evidence, told from one video camera recording of the chaos that ensues, so take that as you will. Saturday, due to miscommunication was spent at home, so I mostly played Wild Arms 5. I'm enjoying the story so far, the main hero is rather likable and the world's setup with a higher technological race that came to the planet 100 years ago and running the show over humans is an interesting set up. Raspberry Heaven: While nekoewen has a really detailed account of our game last night right here, I began to wonder what the game's purpose was. It's a Lucky Star/Azumanga based concept- far flung from stopping mad bombers and zombie invasions from our usual games, the worst that happens in those shows is a girl getting conked by a volleyball or running out of their favorite food at the cafeteria. When we played it, it reminded me more of the free-form Rps on AOL that I used to do except with a little more structure, and I can see it as "the warm up RPG you play when someone is getting food or taking a smoke break". I figure when the mechanics are "gotten" by the players, a game could get quickly wrapped up in 30 minutes (with about 3 scenes) which is about right considering the quick thrill of the 4 panel comics it's based on and I had a good deal of fun. It has its mechanics taken from Uno, however once we played a few games of Uno while waiting for a player, I realized why I haven't played that game since elementary school: it's too damn easy, very little interaction between the players (like Monopoly- el autopilot is in effect) and way too luck based. Rh's rules advanced beyond that so I felt like I was challenged on what I could work into the scene depending on the cards I had, which is why I really enjoyed myself. 1 Dream ~*~ Drift Away

Master of unlocking the pain... [17 Jan 2008|12:18pm] [ mood | amused ] So last night, nekoewen told me about Rifftrax DIY, a site made by former MST3K people for people to work in their own heckled videos, so I couldn't help myself and made this riffed version of beloved video game opening, Resident Evil! Which reminds me, this evening I'm gonna go see a live MST3K by the same fellows. Ed Wood stinker "Plan 9 from outer space" is tonight's target. Drift Away

[31 Dec 2007|05:00pm] I received 85 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you? Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 Drift Away

New Game Project- PodCasters [28 Dec 2007|11:19pm] [ mood | accomplished ] [ music | Meguro Masashi - Burn My Dread ] So about a week ago, nekoewen sent me a post he propped up on a gaming site about the use of music in pen and paper games beyond background music. Almost immediately, I got the idea of game mechanics using music in general to do amazing things and it soon bloomed into a full game concept where players are young people in the modern day who can use music to summon parts of their psyches to fight invisible soul eating monsters. If you played Persona or the other Shin Megami Tensei titles, you should have a good idea where this is going. The tentative title is PodCasters, which I came up with on the spot and has caused a few people to groan. I managed to finish the alpha version of the game- that is where I can have a semblance of a full game to see what worked and what didn't. ( A bunch of rule stuff follows ) I had a test of the game the other day and several things became pretty obvious that I need to fix before I bother putting in new things into the game, but I'm open to suggestions... along with a better name if I can find one. I'm rather happy that this is in some kind of playable phase, and I'd love to get this released and finalized in the not-to-distant future. Drift Away

Merry Christmas- Patrick Swayze style! [25 Dec 2007|09:23pm] [ mood | happy ] This is a tradition of mine to watch this Host Segment from MST3K every Christmas. Hope you all got what you wanted this fine Christmas Day! Drift Away

The real RE movie? [17 Dec 2007|08:40am] [ mood | giddy ] Being a die hard fan of the games, I've been incredibly disappointed with the movies- I never bothered with wasting 2 hours for the third. And then I see this teaser. We just might have a real RE movie on our hands here. Drift Away

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