The Sky Has Limits

4th Edition, FTW

After only two sessions with the new system, I can safely say I'm in lust with it.  Perhaps when I get my virtual sandbox in place over the next couple of weeks, I can convert that lust to love.

The stories my troupe has already begun to tell are crafting a strange kind of infamy in my soul.  I was delighted and shocked when our Mage sent a missile across the arena to spring a trap set for the party back onto it's instigators!  Later, our Goliath dared her to surround him with scorching flames in an attempt to end several foes in fiery ruin; he shrugged it off as if he were from hell itself, whilst his enemies were regretting their flanking position.  Watching our Bard knock my monstrous children around as if he were playing some god's game of croquet was providing me with endless humor.  And our Warlock, well... when he isn't cooking up his trademark, "Explosive Monster Surprise", he's discovering new forms of vampiricly drained jerky.  Eww.

Watching them learn to dance is amazing, and it's teaching me so much!  My own malevolent tactics are starting to improve, especially when I'm provided with a creative arsenal of monster roles, which are more varied and diverse than the long list of possible characters.  Closing with my Artillery creature to do a devastating area attack left him vulnerable to their defender, allowing him to work his hypnotic "marking" which nullified the effectiveness of my distance strikes.  I suddenly realized that while the opportunity was there--and it was effective--the move was a last resort, and its slightly premature use meant that it very quickly became one of the last things my poor monster ever did.  What a waltz!

Furthermore, combat is becoming more streamlined, which means there's opportunity for more creative encounters, and less time is being spent on checking the rules.  The game starts out so simple, and gradually, as you become accustomed to the basics, you realize there are many more things you can do.  I'm starting to get a little bit more into my NPCs and monsters, so roleplaying and flavor are manifesting more often.

All of this equals fun.  Heaps of it.  I eagerly await each Monday, and I am sad when I know the game must be suspended.  However, it has put a mighty grin on my face and I think much more joy is to be had.

Lost Planet 2

I just saw this trailer and it kinda blew me away.  Maybe I need to go rent Lost Planet 1 and give it a whirl....

End of Innocence

When  I was 10 and lusting after my high school math teacher--her name was Mrs. Wise, I shit you not--I thought that "putting the meat in the taco" was a rite of passage and innocence was lost.  Never could I have been more wrong.

I recount the loss of my virginity with mirth, because I'm pretty sure that no boy is ever a virgin in his mind from the first moment he discovered those magazines in the back of his dad's closet.  These days, "magazines" = "low-loss compressed full motion video" and "closet" = "PC in my room", but my point is, boys like boobs, and as soon as we know they are there, our purity is no longer in question: it is obliterated.

That being said, I find that forum posts and YouTube comments sever a tween's ties to youth far earlier than parents probably expect, and others agree with me.  The sheer multitude of adult education a young person can experience with a mere 30 minutes of high-speed Internet is staggering.  It, paired with the screaming children at my job, is one of the reasons I have not yet chosen to procreate.  Something is broken, and we should probably fix that first.

But I had an epiphany only moments ago.

It might have been prepped by a rather lascivious chat conversation (web-cam included!) I had with one of my prospective dates from OkCupid.  Or maybe it was earlier in the evening when my D&D troupe devolved the name of their grouping into "4Chan & Glory", and ridiculous adult jokes poured forth (at one point Sarah was laughing so hard she couldn't participate).

Whatever the case, when I read on Evil Avatar that "Party PIgs Farmyard Games" was releasing this week for Wii, I let out such a guffaw that I'm certain my neighbors heard it.  And it was not because I think pigs are funny.

That was when I realized that I had ascended to a new level of impurity.  The game's title doesn't seem like it should convey anything unsavory, but it does.  In so many circles, it does.  I almost guarantee that within a week, FailBlog will have some incarnation derived from the poor marketing department of that software.

I lost my mental moral cherry tonight.  While I wasn't a "virgin" by any sense, this definitely marked a milestone of sin.

Bastard of the Nentir Vale

The man who swore he would pursue every vile/evil choice in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is finally finished with his tale.  Parts one and two were captivating and very entertaining, but I enjoyed his last chapter the most.

It is not terribly deep, but deep enough that I'm glad I had the chance to read about what being a true douche-bag is like.  I tried to be bad in KOTOR, and arrived at the same sentiment:  I liked being good too much.  In Fable, my tyranny was limited because I found divinity so much more satisfying, and in Black & White... well, I couldn't get far enough in B&W to really make any particular judgment (I encountered a point where the in-line tutorial was so unclear, I literally couldn't figure out what to do), but I like to think I would have been a benevolent God.

Enter Dungeons & Dragons.

You may think this paints a rosy picture for my group, but I am warm to Tycho's school of antagonism.  Cross that with the wisdom of Dungeon Masters past: friends around me who have already taken the reigns, including Kathie--who has been speaking with Scott Lockhorn, my former master.  Add to that, James Ahlschwede, who taught me more in a 3 page e-mail and an afternoon of chatting than I had gleaned from the Dungeon Master's Guide in a week.

But I do not intend to crush them immediately.  I have learned from the chronicles of a Star Wars Bastard that true cruelty is much more easily manifest when initial trust has been earned.  So I shall play "their game" tomorrow night, and the first tendrils of my creeping destruction will take hold in the cracks of their psyche.

OkCupid's Arrow

Aaron recently turned me on to the on-line dating/social-networking site, OkCupid.com, and I'm beginning to like it.  Unlike my very negative experiences with Chemistry.com/eHarmony, and Facebook/MySpace, so far it seems to bridge the gap between the two types of sites quite well.

Gone are the ridiculous layouts and over-stylized visual explosions that the social networks forced upon me.  My Internet-driven career made me think that I should at least try them out, if only to see what they were about.  I was hoping to meet people, and I ended up hating their tastes instead.

The fact that eHarmony only matched me with one person in the Omaha/Lincoln area showed me that I'm not what their site seems interested in.  And while Chemistry.com matched me with one really good match (she seemed attractive to me) and five so-so ones (they were interesting, but I was not jumping at the chance to meet), it only caused me to cough up $50 (for one month!) and then didn't find another match for me until my membership expired.  Needless to say, I feel taken.

OkCupid is free!  And instead of bombarding me with variations of the Myers-Briggs test I have already seen 100 times, it asked a few short-answer questions about who I am and what I like to do.  The tests are there, but the few I have taken are more playful and entertaining than anything.  The site encourages you to take them because which tests you take reveals to others more about your personality than the tests themselves.

I'm also suspicious that they use these tests and a variety of other tools to group you with others of similar interest.  I can use a simple markup in my personal descriptions for words like "Sudoku" or "Techno Music".  I'm not sure exactly what that does yet, but I intend to find out.