Well he is a Sith Lord. . .

The weather this last weekend was most uncooperative so I ran my BESM campaign remotely. All-in-all it went just fine I couldn't get my firewall to allow my computer to act as a server for any of the various programs we made use of, but other people were able to handle that so it was only a minor annoyance. We did have one "major" technological outage, but I cannot really complain about it as it luckily happened just when I was ready to call a short break so I could fix myself some food, and was resolved a minute or two before I was finished eating the food I had just made myself.

I received an e-mail from an old friend of mine today. It consisted of a link to an amusing video on YouTube. I give you Dark Vader being a jerk:

Way too much Haruhi

Tomorrow, weather permitting (and if not technology permitting), I'll be running my BESM campaign. Tomorrow I will also be making the official decision about what to run for my next campaign. That particular decision is approximately 99% made at this point so baring a last minute strenuous objection by one of my players (or some late night epiphany) I'll be running a sci-fi campaign featuring independent mecha pilots in a Firefly/Serenity inspired setting. The second place idea was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya inspired campaign. In honor of the campaign that might have been (and I guess clings to a 1% chance of still being) I give you this post which happened when happy chance lead me to YouTube, YouTube -like it usually does- lead me to more YouTube, and that inspired me to see how many of these Haruhi Suzumiya videos I could embed in this post.

I'll start with the original video I ran across. It's your basic anime music video featuring the end credits of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and a song from the Namco game Mojipittan. I found it delightfully amusing and immediately began looking for more.


Next I'll move on to the clean versions of the opening and end credits (see here for song titles and artist info).


With the original versions out of the way I give you the all dance version of the end credits.


I was very happy to find this edited together version of Haruhi's surprising rock concert at her school's cultural festival. Kyon's face when he realizes Haruhi is on stage just kills me.


Sticking with the rock theme I move on to this AMV featuring The White Stripes song "Fell In Love with a Girl."


There is a veritable cornucopia of Haruhi Suzumiya themed AMVs to be found on YouTube (and doubtless even more on the Internet in general). To represent those countless numbers I chose this one because it featured Nagato Yuki who may just be my favorite character in the anime.


Finally I leave you with the Gundam version. The fact that a Gundam version exists is proof that people with far too much time on their hands make wacky things and post them to the Internet, and other people with far to much time on their hands (like me) find those things and blog about them.

A little light reading

No earth shattering updates in my life this last week to report which overall is probably a good thing. The Eberron campaign on Monday was fun, and we'll be meeting again tomorrow. We should probably wrap up the current adventure (or so our DM has estimated). The process of remote gaming is proving surprisingly workable, even if the occasional technological issues are still somewhat annoying. All-in-all I'm quite happy with the experience thus far, and I am really enjoying being a player again. My own BESM campaign should meet again this coming Saturday an event I eagerly anticipate. I estimate my current BESM campaign will be concluded in another three to five sessions, and while I’m more then a little sad to see it end, I’m also filled with a fair amount of satisfaction over how it’s developed.

I’ve spent the majority of my free time this last week rereading many of David Weber’s Honor Harrington books. I also ran across LibriVox.org and its collection of public domain audio books, and promptly making use of its services I’ve enjoyed having Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars read to me these last two days. I should start in on the The Gods of Mars in the next few days.

I also found time to watch some anime. I’m still keeping current with Bleach (episodes 114 and 115) and Busou Renkin (episodes 18 and 19). My research into the picture I used to end my post on 2/9 peaked my interest a bit so I’ve since watched the first six episodes of Blood+ (I’ll probably get around to watching a little of Fate/stay Night as well). Since I’ve only watched a few episodes I don’t have much to say about it yet, but I did find those six episodes to be pretty interesting. Over the last two weeks or so I’ve watched the first four episodes of Sumomomo Momomo mainly because I wanted to do a little investigation into martial arts comedy anime with an eye towards some future BESM campaign (I’ll probably get around to checking out Shijou Saikyou no Deshi Kenichi at some point for the same reason). I’ve found it to be enjoyable enough that I imagine I’ll continue watching it. Last night I watched the first episode of Tokimeki Memorial Only Love and I find myself at a loss for what to say about it. I enjoyed it to be sure, but I don’t think I could describe it other then to say I have no idea what to expect from episode two (I will say that assuming the remaining episodes follow in the footsteps of the first episode I could be in for quite an enjoyable parody of high school romance anime).

Finally I watched the debut episode of Naruto Shippūden. I was surprised how easy it was for me to follow the action and guess what had transpired from where I left off watching Naruto and where Naruto had ended prior to the new series. The short (and somewhat unfair) description of those events would be not much. For the record I watched 82 episodes of Naruto prior to stopping leaving 138 episodes before the events of Naruto Shippūden, of course the last episode of Naruto based on the manga was 135 (and remember episode 101 is an omake and episodes 102-106 comprise the first of the anime only filler arcs) so I’ve watched a bit shy of two-thirds of the anime based on the manga, but still I think I should have had a few more questions about what was going on when I watched the new Naruto series. All that said I really did like Naruto Shippūden and look forward to watching some more of it.

It did not escape my notice that pitchers and catchers reported to spring training this week. Obviously there is still awhile to go until the season opens, but never-the-less the phrase spring training always makes me happy.

I leave you with the following video I ran across on YouTube:

Previous misadventures in plumbing

It occurs to me that recent events aside I’ve never really shared any of my various plumbing related stories of ill luck (well at least I haven’t done so here). I’ll spare you the minute details of every single instance where water ended up on my floor, or my things. Sufficed to say the place I lived before I moved to my wee little house was the ground floor of a duplex, and before that I lived in a basement apartment so I’ve grown used to water occasionally falling from my ceiling (and once in the basement apartment seeping up through my carpet). Come to think of it in the place I lived at before the basement apartment when water was drained out of the kitchen sink (such as after doing dishes) it would backup into the bathtub. However all those minor annoyances pale in comparison to the following.

Towards the end of my stay in the duplex the sewer backed up in a most spectacular fashion. The problem first became evident while running the washing machine (I seem to have bad luck with those as well); a little tip – when the water draining out of your washing machine comes rushing out of your toilet its probably time to call in a plumber. On the plus side that particular incident got me a nice set of new bath towels as I had to go buy several new ones to soak up the water on the bathroom floor since almost all of mine happened to be in the washing machine at the time.

My favorite tale of plumbing woe happened shortly after I moved into my wee little house. It was a Sunday morning, and I was taking a shower before work. I was at best half awake when I attempted the incredibly difficult procedure known as turning off the water and I did manage to turn off the cold water, however when I went to repeat the process with the hot water all knowledge of “righty tighty, lefty loosey” completely deserted me. I grabbed the knob with my left hand and turned, unfortunately I turned the wrong way, and instead of the water shutting off the knob came off in my hand. Imagine my surprise as I stood dumbly in my shower holding the broken knob while a jet of hot water was streaming out of my wall. I stumbled out of my shower wet, naked, and just a little bit confused and stared forlornly at the vertical geyser of water that was slamming into the far wall of my bathroom. A disconcertingly large amount of that water was being deflected down onto my floor and draining into the bathroom heating vent.

It occurred to me that I was probably going to be late to work, so my first action was to call there and advice them of the situation. The coworker I spoke to was very understanding of the situation when I explained it to him, it probably didn’t hurt my case that he could hear the water striking my bathroom wall over the phone. With that out of my way I set about trying to get the water turned off. I reasoned that since there was an access panel on the other side of the wall where the water was coming out that might be a good place to start. I looked around for a hammer or some other tool that would allow me to open that panel (it being conveniently nailed shut), and after a bit of a mad scramble around my house I did locate my hammer. Unfortunately upon opening the access panel I found no shut off valve. I set off on a second mad scramble to find a pair of shoes, and then quickly descended into my basement to search for the shut off valve. Naturally its location was surrounded by a rapidly expanding pool of water, and directly underneath the rather impressive shower being caused dually by the water leaking out of heating ducts and by the water running down the outsides of the water pipes leading back up to by bathroom.

With my basement safe from any further deluge I was free to see if I possessed any skill at plumbing. Sadly I met with only limited success. I was able reattach the knob to the water pipe in such a fashion that when the shut off valve was opened water didn't shoot out of my wall. Instead it ran out of the bath tub's faucet like you'd expect it to, however further turning of the knob didn’t cause the flow of water to diminish in any way, and worse yet turning the knob actually ran the risk of breaking the connection with the pipe leading to a resumption of the bathroom geyser, and the basement flooding. With no other way of stopping the running water in my bathroom I once again threw the main water shut off valve. As best as I can recall I was only ten minutes late to work. It was Tuesday before I was able to get anybody out to fix it, and much to my general annoyance the only thing that needed to be done to rectify the situation was the replacement of a small rubber washer that was likely washed down the drain when the knob originally came off the wall.

I do have an update to my chess match with Erik (I'm white, he's black):

Move  White   Black

32.     Rac1    RxR

33.     RxR     c5

34.     b5      . . .

Tomorrow will be the third meeting of the online Eberron campaign I'm taking part in. I leave you with the following picture depicting an event that I hope won't be inflicted upon any of the characters in the party (although it would be a better outcome then dying). I believe the picture is of Momochi Zabuza from Naruto.

Unpleasantness

I just finished an especially unpleasant job. Wednesday night after I got home from work I decided to wash a load of clothes. So I threw some in my washing machine in my basement and basically forgot about them. The rest of the night was pretty typical, and included a number of otherwise mundane happenings like running some water in the kitchen sink to wash a few dishes, running some water in the bathroom to brush my teeth, flushing the toilet, and other normal water usage activities. Eventually I went to bed. The next day I awoke and continued on with my normal before work routine washed a few more dishes, brushed my teeth, showered, the toilet got flushed another time or two. Shortly before I needed to leave for work I remembered my laundry and gathered up another load to be washed, and ventured downstairs. . .

And well crap. . . sadly quite literally. Seems the sewer backed up while the washing machine was running the night before, and all that water I'd been running since was now on my basement floor. Well the plumber came today and took care of the sewer, but that left me with the unpleasant job of cleaning up the aftermath. Not a happy day. Ah well things could be far worse.

Still I'm pretty sure that if I were to ever try to build me as a role-playing character I'd need to give myself some sort of flaw like nemesis: plumbing, or bad luck: plumbing. I wonder how many points I'd get for that?

I leave you with another picture I find amusing. The characters are from Fate/Stay Night, that's Tōsaka Rin on the left and Saber on the right. As for what they are doing it is a parody of the credits (the second opening credits I think, but I haven't seen the series so I don't actually know) of Blood+.

Thoughts on a future campaign - part three

For part three of this brainstorming experiment I'll start with Samurai 7. This anime is based on Akira Kurosawa's movie Seven Samurai. What I'm interested in here isn't the plot (it's a good plot, but it's also pretty basic role-playing game fare), but the anime's interesting setting. For a campaign inspired by this anime I'd be shooting for samurai versus mecha, and since the mecha in Samurai 7 have a decent steampunk feel to them, I'd likely play that angle up. So we could really call this setting Steampunk Samurai. A few things are worth noting here - one there is nothing saying the samurai have to be the "good guys," and there is plenty of room for blending after all the bandits in Samurai 7 were samurai before they turned themselves into giant mecha and Kikuchiyo (who may be my favorite samurai in both the anime and the movie) is a cyborg.

A number of different themes could be pursued from this setting. One of the anime's themes is what does a warrior do when there is no war to fight. If I stick with the idea of the samurai being the protagonists that theme meshes nicely the idea of traditional samurai trying to find a purpose when war has been taken over by giant mecha. On the other hand going with the idea of Samurai as the antagonists I could shoot for capturing the feeling of a civil war breaking out as mecha warriors struggle to overthrow their samurai oppressors. The idea of combining mecha (steampunk style or otherwise) with samurai appeals to me, so even if I don't end up using this for my next campaign it's an idea I'd like to continue kicking around and develop for future use.

From here my thoughts turn to the country of Ōto from the CLAMP manga Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (and of course the anime Tsubasa Chronicle). The country of Ōto is based partly on Japan's Taishō era (1912-1926 during the reign of Emperor Taishō) an interesting time with traditional Japanese customs coexisting with westernized elements. That is all great from both a literary and historic point-of-view, but for the role-playing perspective the country of Ōto also features Oni hunters (and naturally Oni for them to hunt). In the manga/anime Ōto turns out to be a giant virtual reality video game which while I won't completely rule that out as an option, I am pretty unlikely to implement that particular detail. Sufficed to say I wouldn't set a campaign directly in CLAMP's country of Ōto, but I would draw heavy inspiration from that story arc for this hypothetical campaign.

The logical evolution from the country of Ōto is to ponder Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle itself. Using this as an inspiration yields probably the most wide open campaign of all the ideas I've floated to my players. If my idea to base a campaign on Suzumiya Haruhi is an opportunity to parody every genre, this campaign would be an excuse to play in every genre, and visit any world I'm familiar with be it from my own imagination, a book, manga, comic, anime, movie, or any other source of media under the sun. The keys to doing this right would be preparation (I'd want to have a few different worlds at the ready when going into this), and character creation (the player characters would greatly benefit from compelling reasons to be traipsing all over the multiverse). I'd almost guarantee that ×××HOLiC's Yūko would be the NPC responsible for sending the player characters on their merry way across the dimensions so it would be interesting to work out how I'd enforce the give-up-that-which-is-most-important-to-you cost she'd charge for giving them the ability to travel the multi-universe (and an example of why character creation would be so important for this campaign, the player characters would need to have a good reason for paying such a steep cost).

With that I think I'm ready to bring this experiment to a close. I certainly have more ideas for possible campaigns, but BESM 3rd edition wouldn't be my first choice to run any of them and since I'm operating under the assumption that my players want to do a BESM 3e campaign there isn't a lot of point in pondering them at this time (fun though it would be).

On a completely different note this talk of Tsubasa Chronicle and ×××HOLiC reminded my that not too long after I first posted descriptions of those two anime I ran across a brilliantly succinct description of them both on the message boards at HERO Games. When I read them I thought them so perfect I was actually mad I didn't think of them myself, and jealous because I wasn't sure I could ever write so clearly. With a little more thought on the matter I realized that while they were the perfect description to give to me, they perhaps were not universally useful to all people. I still think them brilliant, but admit they require knowledge of CLAMP and Doctor Who to get the full effect. Anyway from the HERO Games Discussion Boards I give you Michael Hopcroft's (one of the two big anime guys on the HERO Games Discussion Boards) descriptions of Tsubasa Chronicle and ×××HOLiC:

Tsubasa Chronicle: What Doctor Who would look like had CLAMP created it. A young man travels from world to world, recovering the "feathers" that signify the lost memories of the girl he loves, knowing the one he can never recover is her love for him. He is accompanied by the girl, a sorcerer who has given up his magic and a ninja warrior with serious anger management issues, and their means of travel a marshmallow-bunny-thing with a very perky personality and an enormous ego.

×××HOLiC, on the other hand, features a character who is what [the character of] The Doctor would be like if created by CLAMP. Yūko Ichihara, an enigmatic sorceress with a unique reach in time and space, runs a Tokyo shop that grants wishes for a price. She has taken a schoolboy with spiritual powers under her wing, subjecting him to a humiliating and dangerous indentured servitude. Yūko is amusing, witty and whimsical -- frequently alarmingly so (she created two little girls to keep her company and gave them obscene names) and drives Watanuki just as crazy as the Sixth Doctor drove poor Peri.

I leave you with some advice courtesy of Roy Focker of Macross Zero and Super Dimension Fortress Macross fame:

A brief interlude for Chess

I pause my campaign brainstorming for this update on Chess. As you may recall I am white, and Erik is black.

Move  White  Black

31.     Bc4     Rc2

32.     Rac1   RxR

33.     RxR    . . .

With that out of the way we can now return to our regularly scheduled blog.

Oh yes - w00t for post number thirty.

I leave you with another picture I find amusing. It also accurately describes why I won't be using Higurashi no Naku Koro ni as inspiration for a future campaign even though I think the anime is highly enjoyable (and delightfully freaky).

Thoughts on a future campaign - part two

My bare bones description of the possible science fiction campaign has generated an impressive amount of e-mail traffic. This makes me a happy Game Master, which in turn makes for happy players. However as I am not yet prepared to commit to a single plan for a future campaign this little experiment in campaign brainstorming continues.

When it comes to running a role playing game I'm a big believer in theft. I steal ideas, adventures, characters, plot, names, and settings with abandon. My current campaign is a perfect example of this behavior. With that in mind I present a number of possible campaigns all which have been heavily inspired by (or if you prefer stolen from) the anime I've been watching, and the manga I've been reading (okay truthfully there are going to be a few examples that have nothing to do with anime or manga).

First up a campaign inspired heavily by Hunter × Hunter, so inspired in fact I might just go ahead and set it in the Hunter × Hunter world. One of the features of Hunter × Hunter that I find so interesting is the different reasons the characters have for wanting to become hunters (for example Gon wants to become a hunter to track down his father who is also a hunter, while Kurapika wants to become a hunter to bring those responsible for the destruction of his tribe to justice). I would strongly encourage the players to come up with interesting reasons for their characters to wish to become a hunter. If we did a short version the campaign it would feature the player characters going through the Hunter examinations. The longer version would continue on with stories focusing on and tying into the reasons the player characters became hunters. The hunter organization and the status and benefits it confers in the Hunter × Hunter world are pretty unique, and creating my own version without just copying wholesale from the anime would be a little tricky. Which is why I'd consider just setting the campaign in the Hunter × Hunter world to begin with; the downside to that is I haven't read any of the manga, and thus far have only watched 17 episodes of the anime so I'm not really all that familiar with the world of Hunter × Hunter.

For something in a similar vein I could go with a campaign drawing inspiration from Naruto. Here the campaign would focus around a team of young ninja and their more experienced sensei (in other words just like the early Naruto). The largely endless possibilities for adventure with this set up should be pretty obvious. I'd be much more apt to go ahead and create my own world for this (even though I do find the setting in Naruto to be pretty interesting); in fact I can all but guarantee that I would create my own world and ninja organizations for this campaign.

Stripping more and more of Naruto away from the last example leaves me with a core idea of a squad of operatives. Thinking about that quickly brings Ghost in the Shell in all its incarnations to mind. Which does make me think that while I've run Shadowrun on a number of occasions, I've never run a straight up cyberpunk campaign. The obvious choice here is to run a campaign featuring criminals committing crimes for money (that is the standard set up for a Shadowrun campaign and describes the action that takes place in William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer). A fine choice to be sure, but keeping Ghost in the Shell in mind I don't want to rule out creating a governmental organization like Ghost in the Shell's Section 9. All of this means I might be looking to do a covert-ops campaign as much as I'm looking to do a cyberpunk campaign.

With Shadowrun still in my thoughts I turn my attention to the other half of Shadowrun's cross-genre makeup - namely fantasy, and specifically urban fantasy. The urban fantasy most currently occupying my thoughts is The Dresden Files on the Sci-Fi channel (I've also read the first two books in the series and I'd happily recommend them), although Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the works of Laurell K. Hamilton isn't far behind. Whatever the source of inspiration the first question that would need to be answered is does the world-at-large know magic and the supernatural exists. Either choice presents a fine number of options, and a number additional questions to answer (such as why hasn't the world noticed magic, or how would world history be different if magic was real and known).

Pondering magic in the modern world brings me back to anime - namely The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya which is actually a little odd, because of all the bizarre people Haruhi collects around her a magic-user isn't one of them (maybe she does in the novels, but since I don't read Japanese I've only got the anime to go by). So what would I steal from this anime to create a campaign? Well to start with the Japanese High School setting, because that would be really fun. Also this hypothetical campaign would feature a club very much in the vein of Haruhi's SOS Brigade complete with searches for aliens and time-travelers, investigations of the paranormal, the creation of bad student films, competing in the local baseball tournament, and anything else the club founder thinks is a good idea at the time.More importantly this campaign would feature an NPC in the mold of Suzumiya Haruhi, perhaps not in personality, but certainly in ability. If you are familiar with the anime (or the novels I assume) should understand where I'm going with this, however for those not familiar with the anime I'm sure some explanation is required. To put this in terms my current players would understand Suzumiya Haruhi has the GURPS disadvantage Weirdness Magnet except increase its potency about threefold. Even that doesn't really begin to cover it, because Haruhi has the power to alter reality to suit her whims. However she doesn't have a clue that she possesses such a power, and thus uses it only subconsciously and only when she's bored. Enter the SOS Brigade composed almost entirely of the people Haruhi is searching for (namely aliens, espers, and time-travelers), and possibly owning their very existence to her reality warping powers, they strive to keep an eye on her, and above all keep her from becoming bored.

I think that is a good plenty for part two of this exercise. I certainly have more, but you'll have to come back for that in a later post. I leave you with this: I find it comforting to know that no matter what campaign I end up running the only thing able to compete with its awesomeness is the following picture.

Thoughts on a future campaign - part one

Lately I've been spending some time thinking about what sort of campaign I'd like to run once my current BESM campaign wraps us. My initial thoughts were I'd like to do a non-anime campaign. I was thinking a science fiction campaign in general would be fun, and I was particularly excited about the idea of a Star Trek campaign. I've been wanting to do one of those for quite awhile. To be fair it's not as though I'd completely ruled out doing another anime campaign (I love both BESM and anime), I just thought my players may want a change. The arrival of BESM 3rd edition, and a few comments from my players has made me rethink this a bit.

I have sent out two different e-mail questionnaires to my players trying to gage their thoughts and desires on a future campaign. My initial missive to my players presented them with no fewer then 17 options (several of which had 3 or 4 sub-options). Confronted with such an overabundance of choices it isn't surprising my players where slow in responding. My second attempt focused entirely on sci-fi cutting down the number of options to a manageable level, and produced better, but still not entirely satisfactory results. Although one of my players did interpret his own answers thusly, "In otherwords if you could somehow cook up a way to get a group of independent/merc mecha pilots (with mecha) cruising around in a barely holding together dropship plying the space lanes in a Firefly-esque setting I'd be a happy camper for a sci-fi setting."

Well that did get the creative juices flowing. I started focusing first on the Firefly-esque part. Joss Whedon drew a lot of inspiration for Firefly from the book The Killer Angels (a side note here - it is an extremely good book - read it) which is about the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. The Civil War brought the north versus the south to my mind which started me thinking this potential campaign could feature two separate solar systems that had recently fought a war. The first solar system, the side that won the war, would be analogous to the north (and to the central planets in Firefly) more industrialized and populated than the second solar system (the losing side in the war and naturally analogous to the south). For these two solar systems to be able to fight a war this campaign is going to need FTL travel (this is also especially true if this war is going to have been a civil war/war of independence - depending on your point-of-view).

While pondering the need for FTL I went off on a little tangent. I recalled Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Fremantle a British observer of Lee's army during the Battle of Gettysburg (or at least I recalled Michael Shaara's depiction of him in The Killer Angels). This made my mind wander to thoughts of the British Empire, which called to mind Napoleon, which got me thinking about the Horatio Hornblower books by C. S. Forester, all of which reminded me of the Honor Harrington books by David Weber. Weber's books occasionally mention a wormhole connecting his Manticore Star Kingdom to various other interstellar nations. It dawns on me that something like this is precisely what I need to tie these two solar systems together and give a plausible reason they could both be run by one government (not to mention why one solar system would be willing and able to fight a war to prevent the other solar system from declaring its independence).

A brief side note: if you are interested in reading some free science fiction, and fantasy novels head over to Baen Books and check out their free library featuring a fair number of the books they publish; including the first two novels in David Weber's Honor Harrington series.

The independent mercenary mecha pilots part shouldn't be to hard to work in; especially if I throw in one or more frontier solar systems not connected to the two main solar systems by any wormhole (and thus only accessible by FTL ships - which are presumably much slower than the basically instantaneous travel through a wormhole). The obvious choice is the PCs will be former soldiers from the losing solar system. Obviously there are still plenty of decisions to make, and questions to be answered, but for some initial brainstorming I'm pretty happy with these results.

As described this campaign could be run with any number of systems, and shoot for any number of different tones and themes. As an example for a more gritty and realistic approach I'd consider using GURPS; while for a much more cinematic feel I'd strongly consider using West End Games' D6 System (D6 Space being the obvious choice). Since my players seem to be looking for some more anime action, and because we'd all like to give it a try BESM 3rd edition seems to be a strong possibility for this potential campaign. For inspirational viewing for an anime version of this campaign I'd suggest Crest of the Stars, followed by Banner of the Stars (I, II, and III), maybe Outlaw Star for a lighter take on things, and Martian Successor Nadesico also seems like some excellent source material.

While this isn't the only idea for an anime campaign I've been kicking around, it is the only one you are getting in this post. However if you come back in a day or two I'm sure I'll have a few more up for perusal. But for now I leave you with another picture that amuses me. The picture comes from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the commentary comes from some creative person with too much time on his hands.

New month, new post

I don’t imagine it will surprise anyone to learn that I found BloodRayne to be a truly awful movie. It was painfully bad. While I cannot say I’ll never watch another Uwe Boll film, it is going to be a very long time before I do, and even then I’ll have to be in a really odd mood before I’d willingly submit to that particular activity.

The last two weeks have been pretty good. No one event really defines just what was so good about them, but all in all I’ve had a good two weeks. I’ve slowed down a little in my anime watching. I did watch another seven episodes of Hunter × Hunter. The series continues to be really entertaining, but with so much of it left I still don’t have too much more to say about it. I also watched another four episodes of The Twelve Kingdoms. The current story arc was rapped up resulting in Yōko taking her thrown as the Queen of Kei, and Sugimoto being returned home to Japan. I’ve also been keeping current more or less with Bleach (through episode 113) and Busou Renkin (through episode 17).

I’ve done a fair amount of role-playing during the last two weeks. I’ve joined a D&D Eberron campaign being played entirely over the Internet. For those who care about such things I’m playing a changeling named Kell (he’s currently a 2nd level character Rogue 1/Fighter 1). It has been really nice being a player again (I only rarely get to be one). Playing over the Internet is interesting. For our first session we used Skype to provide a voice chat client. It worked alright, but we had periodic problems with voice quality, and we needed to restart our conference call several times over the course of the evening. For our second session we tried out Ventrilo. Ventrilo wasn’t as user friendly to set up as Skype, but we had far fewer problems with voice quality. We’ve also tried two different mapping programs. For our first session we used Gametable; a very solid program that I have no problem recommending to people for use in remote gaming. For our second session we tried out MapTool. Using MapTool isn’t anywhere as intuitive as Gametable, but it has a lot more features. I don’t really have any problem recommending MapTool for use in remote gaming either (just read the manual).

Also I got to run my BESM campaign this weekend. As an added treat Dan joined us in person for this session instead of remotely (usually via iChat) as he usually does. Once again we started the evening off with some Wii action (Excite Truck, and Rayman Raving Rabbids mainly). I continue to find this BESM campaign to be highly satisfactory. What started out as a short little 2 maybe 3 month campaign where the players were supposed to track down four pieces of a magic item, and then use that to defeat the bad guy has taken on a life of its own. The characters have developed in interesting ways, and a number of very entertaining side stories have developed. The next session should be on 2/24.



In related BESM news I got both my PDF, and dead-tree version of BESM 3rd Edition during the last two weeks. It looks really good. I haven’t had a chance to really tear into it yet, but from what I have looked at I’m pretty happy. It is definitely changed from the 2nd edition. The basic resolution mechanic has changed from rolling a stat score or less on 2d6, to rolling a target number or higher on 2d6 (in both cases often modified by skills). The cost of everything has been rebalanced, and characters are now built on a lot more character points. For example under BESM 2nd Edition 25-45 points was a pretty common range for starting characters (and those characters would be pretty powerful), under 3rd Edition basic normal humans are built on 100 character points (I imagine I’ll likely be starting characters in the 250 – 350 point range).

As a little side note one of my players in the BESM campaign (and also a fellow gamer in the Eberron campaign) has started a blog.

I leave you with another picture that amuses me. This particular screen capture comes from The Twelve Kingdoms. I laughed really hard when I watched this scene, and I laughed even harder when I made this screen capture. Yes Rakushun is naked in this picture, but nothing sexual is going on. I swear to you, The Twelve Kingdoms isn't hentai.