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....

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.

Brutal Legend

While I never quite caught the bug for Tim Schafer's games that Aaron did, I do recognize all of the titles:  The Secret of Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and even Psychonauts.  I am intrigued by his latest project (which features Jack Black) and I would imagine that means Aaron is jizzing in his pants.

Isn't it Ironic?

A little too ironic...

Irony is probably second only to sarcasm in humorous use, and I see it all around me.  The most recent manifestation is my thorough enjoyment of writing a story that reflects my own despondent view of life.  Deeper still, the story could not have been born without first having utter frustration at existence, and at this particular moment, I find myself pretty damn pleased with life.

Among other ironies, I have one in particular happening with Dungeons & Dragons.  My whole life, I've found it difficult to play role-playing games, because I love being told a story and socializing with others, but I always felt like I was not playing my "role" very well, be it the character, or the player.  Participation always seemed to get in my way of enjoying what was going on around me, yet I wanted to be a part of it.  After reading the newest edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide, I realized that I have always been the "observer" or "storyteller" type of role-player, who enjoys watching things unfold and creating new tales to relate, respectively.  A light-bulb switched on over my head, and I realized that makes me the perfect candidate for a Dungeon Master, which I had simply never thought of before.

Now, to enjoy participating in the storytelling and socialization, all I needed were some friends willing to play.  Sure enough, the time was ripe, and as I mentioned it casually at dinner the other night, everyone seemed "game".  Hopefully, in a few week's time I can be up and running a campaign of my own.  Perhaps someday I'll be comfortable enough to put something together myself, as I'm bursting at the seems with ideas for neat NPCs and strange environs.

As the irony treads ever deeper, I have never been much for fantasy fiction, preferring it's smarter, older brother, science fiction.  Yet here I am, contemplating several swords and sorcery scenarios, eager to see them brought forth.

Will it ever stop?!  I love meat, in every form, barely pausing to consider the implications of veal or foie gras.  Tonight, I plan to try and ask my almost-vegan out on a second date.  While I'm not sure it would ever work out in the end, who is to say?  I find her opposites very attractive, and I intend to find out.

Perhaps I simply like melodrama, or maybe my life has become so stagnant that I court irony as if it were some fleeting romance.  I suppose only time (and my blog) will tell.

Pride cometh before the falleth

I shouldn't have said anything; God, I just couldn't keep my fucking mouth shut.

Of course, as soon as I gave voice to the great things Vista is, it betrayed me.  Fortunately, I have not had to re-install it (yet), but as I just broke down and ordered that 1TB internal drive, it's only a matter of time.

Yesterday, I left the Cylon running to see how it fared with BitTorrent.  It went to sleep--and did not wake up.  Okay, so we turn off the auto-sleep feature.  I've still got my manual sleep, which is cool, because now I can finish all those programs that don't take too well to Leoben's narcolepsy, and give him a controlled dose of valium myself.  Which I did at the end of the night as I went to bed.

When I woke up, I wanted my Cylon buddy with me, so I again attempted ressucitation.  This time, he awoke, but seemed very sluggish and confused.  So much so that my previously lauded sidebar crashed and would not restart.  Then Windows Explorer crashed, and although it claims to have restarted, nothing I was clicking on was doing anything, and the task manager would not present itself, despite my vain attempts.

*sigh* We were doing so well, Leoben.

I assume the new thing that is causing the sleep function to not work properly is the anti-virus and spy ware.  Avast and Spybot like to run system monitoring processes all the time, if you let them, and I bet this, "Wait!  We're stopping everything for minute!" concept doesn't jive well with them.  I'll have to play around and see if I can get it worked out.

I also received The Witcher: Enhanced Edition in the mail yesterday.  I was so excited I locked my keys in my car--with the engine running.  As it turns out, The Witcher is completely surrounded by disfunctionality, and I had merely moved into it's aura of influence.

While I bought it on eBay, for cheap, the buyer claims it was new and it had all the usual seals that mark software as such (though having worked in the games industry, I know all too well how to circumvent and re-inscribe these).  Upon opening the case, I immediately saw that the design of the interior plastic had mauled my manual.  Nothing too drastic, but it has cuts through most of the pages on three sides.  This is "enhanced"?  Okay, no biggie.  I'll probably read it once, then put it away forever anyway.  As I began reading it, I discovered it is not a manual at all, but a brick of a strategy guide, complete with spoiler warnings.  Also included is the obligatory "put the DVD in your PC" document, as well as a brief excerpt from one of the Witcher books, which is so horribly edited that whatever atmosphere they were trying to create was shattered after the 12th mis-hyphenated word and improperly placed punctuation.  I know we're going for gobal guys, but pay a local who is well versed to look things over.

In anticipation of the many technical problems I had heard of, I ran up the official website to see if there was a newer patch, and sure enough, version 1.4 is ready to go.  The website redirects to a native Polish website (as CD Projekt is a Polish dev team) which has rough English and poor navigation, but I eventually found the download.  Low and behold, the patch is a mighty 989MB (!) and even at the impressive 300k/sec rate they were pushing it out, it still took me over 30 minutes to get the whole damn thing.

As space was starting to become a premium on the Vista partition, I started poking around to figure out WTF was taking up so much space.  Apparently, 8GB of RAM was not enough and the system had allocated another 8GB from the drive for a swap file.  Christ, if I ever need that much memory, I'm betting my PC is having more problems than simply needing a swap file.  I was tempted to turn it off, but all the warnings made me nervous, so I gave it a gig, but now I finally had adequate space to install the game.

Upon installing, I chose "Custom" to discover that the game wants to install voice-overs for every single one of nine the languages.  Untoggling these almost halved the install size down to just shy of 9GB (though the box claims 8) and away we go.  Once installed, I fired up the patch to discover it only needed 3.44MB of space.  Then it dawned on me that the link only leads you to a site hosting the entire "Enhanced" package (which I already installed) for download with the most recent patch.  I almost feel sorry for the guy looking at the bandwidth bills when he simply could have given me an English site with two different patches, one of which would cost him a few cents per download.

And by then, it was time for me to go to work, so I haven't even fired the game up yet.  >_<

Game revision production FAIL.

Contra, rebooted.

This...  this is just unreal:

For those not aware, that is a game for the PS3 called Little Big Planet, which is basically Tinker-Toys for world-building.  While I have seen some impressive things done with the tools, that is by far the most complete project.  I'm sure it will get censored soon for copyright violation, but still.  Wow.

Puzzle Quest

...is a type of crack, made from crack.  Call it "Cræck", if you will.  It is fucking my world up so thoroughly that when Puzzle Quest:  Galctrix touches down on February 24th, I'm concerned I may loose my friends and/or job.  Actually, I was initially exposed to this second version via a web demo, then played the (much better) PC demo, which prompted me to spend four dollars on eBay for the original, Challenge of the Warlords.  While this game does not tax the new rig in any way (couldn't even get it to load up in XP), I have been playing for hours, and I'm fairly sure I haven't even cracked the seal yet.

If you like Bejeweled but thought it was a tad plain, this is the game for you.  Incredibly addictive ("...just one... more... quest/puzzle...") and just compelling enough to see where it goes.  I can't seem to put it down until it is waaaaay past my bedtime.  They then took the same basic principle, added hexes instead of squares, mixed in a ridiculous number of iterations to the game engine, and came up with Galaxtrix.

If Bejeweled is vanilla ice cream, and Challenge of the Warlords is Rocky Road, that must mean Galactrix is Death by Chocolate.  I strongly encourage you to try the aforementioned demo out for yourself.  But beware--you are stepping far beyond the realm of heroin.  I played it through about 5 times.

Ricer-Roni

It is a wonder I get anything done.  When I turn on my TV (which is always set to display my PC monitor), I start browsing the net and a few hours later I realize my day is gone.

As I was poking around Evil Avatar today, I saw a post discussing the original Metal Gear Solid, and since it was a pretty cool game, I realized I could probably get a copy fairly cheap on eBay.  Then, I put a bid on a low auction for Final Fantasy XII.  I discovered the the seller was offering up his 3rd Gen iPod (just like mine!) for ridiculously cheap, so I bid on that to get one for my bedroom.

He also had a 2000 Toyota Celica GT-S for sale.

I thought for sure it was a model until the page came up and I saw the price.  I did some research and found out that it was not an unreasonable price, considering all the aftermarket parts and the mileage, and I was tempted, road-trip to Rhode Island and bank loan approval not withstanding.

I have always craved a sporty little thing to zoom around in, if only because I have testicles.  My '92 Honda Accord had a spoiler, was in excellent condition, and was my pride and joy--until the timing belt snapped and turned the engine into a worthless piece of junk.  It was still a four door sedan, but the spoiler and nice paint job satisfied my craving for a little visual respect.  God bless my father for coming to the rescue by giving me his old car (since he just bought a Smart ForTwo), but I have realized that its high mileage and age means it may not make it through another winter.

There were two things that stopped me from buying aftermarket equipment for my car.  The first was practicality--I have a very hard time justifying spending hundreds of dollars on something that isn't broke, particularly if it just makes the thing look spiffy.  The second was a local newspaper article with a picture of a Civic wedged mid-air between someone's house and the SUV parked in their driveway.  The article estimated they were traveling from 60-90 mph when they struck the curb and went air-born.

Now, I'm not THAT dumb, but it reminds you that there's an atmosphere that surrounds a tricked-out "ricer" vehicle.  The street challenges, with some dumbass revving his motor at you; the break-ins to steal your (possibly) awesome stereo; the cops looking for your car first whenever they think something bad is going on.  The only thing my ex had on her Civic were aftermarket tail-lights, and she had all three of these problems.  Plus, looking at that eBay auction, I know only the basics about engines and I wouldn't have the foggiest concept of how concerned I should be that this part has been upgraded but that part wasn't.

This calls into question the whole concept of using eBay to buy a car.  Craig'sList, sure--I can call the d00d up, go see the vehicle, drive it around, or even take it to my mechanic and have him look it over.  But if I'm buying a car from some guy in Rhode Island, I have no idea if what I'm seeing/expecting/wanting is what I'm getting.  I would assume that eBay-ing for cars is mostly for dealers who have a shop where they can fix things up.

Still, the thought of a deal on a spiffy car makes me want to look around...

A hero is born

While I'm sad to see another electronics company in the rough, discovering that Circuit City was selling the 360 wired X-Plorer guitar controller for ten dollars was an amazing find.  I ran out and bought Guitar Hero II used for $20, and I will soon be able to rock out with my {guitar} out.  I chose the second iteration because I have heard from many (including Scott) that having Activision's in charge of the note application instead of Red Octane has been a boon for the game.

Since this is a budget purchase (I didn't buy the even better deal of the 360 wireless guitar controller), I opted for the cheapest shipping available: $4 to get it to me by 1/21/09 at the latest--almost 3 weeks after I bought it.  Turns out, I'll probably have the thing in less than 5 business days.  Now, when I go over to Aaron's to Rock in Band form, I can hopefully put up a better showing, stealing some of Scott's expert (and I do mean "expert" difficulty!) lead-guitar thunder.  While bassist is an incredibly important role, it does become a tad stale unless you are playing Police or Red Hot Chili Pepper songs.