Surprise Post after a "Brief" Hiatus

 

Hello from 2022.  So been awhile hasn’t it?

 

I make no promises of any future posts, but really quickly here’s what I’ve been up to.

 

I moved from Saint Louis Park to Eden Prairie, and from Eden Prairie to Saint Paul.  I’m still at that job I had just started back in September of 2011.  I greatly enjoy it.  After working eight years as a telephone operator in rural Minnesota (which wasn’t a bad job at all), and spending however long I spent working for CPP (a company that doesn’t even exist in the US any longer) trying to convince people to not quit their identity theft memberships they signed up for on their random credit cards, I find working for a company that manufactures actual useful physical products to be amazing. 

 

We mainly manufacture and sell variable-frequency drives and related products.  I started in customer service and a few years back moved to technical support of all things.  It’s great.

 

I still play WoW off and on (I tend to come back for an expansion, play a bit at the start and again a bit at the end).  I still play City of Heroes (thank you Homecoming) off and on.  I play the odd other video game off and on (Final Fantasy XIV for example) as well.

 

Still role-playing.  Ran a second BESM campaign set in Nayado using BESM 3^rd edition that ran for five years.  Enjoying D&D 5^th edition quite a bit, trying to DM when I can, and playing in a campaign as well.

 

I still watch the odd anime here and there.  Still read the odd comic book.  Still do most of the same things as before really.

Totally lost that game of chess back in 2011, but I'm far to lazy to go digging around in old Facebook posts to find the moves.

 

Until next time.

Happy Beatles Day

I’ve spent the last half hour or so flipping back and forth between a few different pages on Amazon.com trying to decide if I should buy all the reissued Beatles music separately, or if I should just buy the box set. I’m waffling a bit. Do I really need to buy this music again? I mean I already own it. And do I even have stereo equipment good enough to be able to hear the difference between the original CDs and the remastered ones?

As for the answers to these pressing questions - no I don’t, strictly speaking, need to buy them again, however I really, really want too. Also, technically speaking here, I don’t actually own all of the original versions of the CDs that have been remastered (just most of them). The final point is perhaps the most valid concern. The audio equipment I own, while by no means horrible, is still a far, far cry from anything that would of even moderate interest to a true audiophile. So I am a bit concerned that I wouldn’t actually notice any real improvement in sound quality if I were to buy these again.

The other, perhaps even more ridiculous, purchase I’ve been pondering is The Beatles Rock Band. Now the last time I bought a gaming console it was a PlayStation, so I’d first have to buy either an Xbox 360, a PS3, or a Wii, and then buy the game version that came with the instruments (using the term instruments pretty loosely here - specialized controls might be more correct). I could get by with just buying the Wii version (again the version with the instrument like controls) since my roommate already owns a Wii - a workable and less expensive midterm solution. Sadly it has an obvious flaw, it is unlikely that my roommate and I will continuing living together for the rest of my life (not that we have any immediate plans to stop being roommates, but at some point I imagine one of us will do something like get married or get a job in another state or some such thing). This would create a future source of awkwardness when I’m eventually forced to steal his Wii when he stops being my roommate (admittedly I could at that point just buy my own, but that is less dramatic, and thus less fun to ponder scenario).

Decisions, decisions. I suspect there is about a 50-50 chance I’ll be the part reluctant, part proud owner of an Xbox 360 by the end of the month.

"You even grill geeky" - Matt

This last Saturday I gathered with my gaming buddies for more role playing geekery. We added a bit to the usual mix this time around. Paul acquired a portable grill. In his e-mail informing us of the purchase he mentioned it had about the same grilling area as a hibachi, which I mistakenly took to mean he’d be bringing something similar to an actual hibachi. In retrospect I should have known better.

While I was expecting something like this:
Instead we ended up with the Grilliput (this is picture is taken from ThinkGeek and sadly isn't an actual action shot of us using the grill):
The Grilliput consists of two parts. The actual grill (assembled on the left, and in its storage mode on the right):And the optional fire bowl (fully open on the left, and again in storage mode on the right):
We cooked hamburgers, brats, and corn on the cob. It was all very delicious.

With food out of the way we settled down for a rousing game of Super Munchkin.
We also couldn't pass up the opportunity to play some four person Mario Strikers Charged. As a general note, I really ought to get a Wii.

Amazingly after all that we still found time to actually role play. Matt wrapped up the Shadowrun portion of his BESM campaign. I found it pretty amusing how quickly our dimension hopping characters started thinking like stereotypical shadowrunners. We may be on a mission to save the universe, but when we found ourselves in need of money we pretty quickly hatched a plan to rob a few of Seattle's local mafiosi to obtain it (we had some fun with Jedi mind tricks).

Matt ended the session by depositing us in a classic D&D style world where we quickly got to save a halfling cleric from some owlbears. I'm not sure how many campaigns out there have featured vans trying to run down owlbears, however I cannot help but notice I've taken part in a few campaigns now where vehicles have been used as weapons.

All-in-all, a very fun weekend.

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.

Wii and BESM

I got my first taste of the Wii this weekend, and I found it pretty fun. I played around a bit on Wii Sports with a few friends before we got down to the business of role playing. I enjoyed all of the games, but I think golf and bowling were my favorites (with baseball coming in closely behind those two). The games are quite fun to play by yourself, and even more fun to play with friends. None of the Wii Sports games are super detailed, and are all pretty clearly designed to primarily be fun little demonstrations of the Wii’s innovative motion sensing control system, but they really don’t need to be anything more then that. The controls are pretty easy to pick up. For example the instructions for bowling on Wii Sports are as follows: the player starts with the Wiimote held in a vertical fashion in front of the player’s body with the d-pad facing the player. The player should pull the trigger (or b-button) to start his Mii’s approach, at the same time the player should make an arm movement roughly equivalent to what you’d make while actually bowling. In other words pull your arm down and back, and then swing it forward as you release the ball (or in the case of Wii Sports release the b-button). I’m willing to stipulate that may sound complicated, but in actual practice it doesn’t take much to get the hang of it.

I also got to see my first flying Wiimote this weekend. This was not a result of a broken wrist strap, but rather a lack of the wrist strap being used at all. My friend Matt was the responsible party in this little incident (those who know him are likely not surprised). I would never characterize Matt as clumsy, but I would say that at times he moves with such an abundance of over exuberance that his resulting velocity exceeds his sense of balance. The incident in question happened during a game of bowling. In the midst of our second game Paul and I were treated to the sight of Matt’s feet going out from under him while he was in the middle of his delivery. As he was sliding towards his entertainment center the Wiimote left his hand and flew straight and true towards the aforementioned entertainment center. At about the same time Matt was coming to a stop at the foot of his TV stand, the Wiimote struck the front molding running across the top of his entertainment center with enough force to cause the numerous Nintendo video games (from various different systems) setting on top of his TV stand to jump quite noticeably. The Wiimote then arced back over Matt, tumbling through the air in a surprisingly graceful manner, and landed at the foot of his apartment’s front door. After a bit of shocked silence, followed by much hearty laughter we were all relieved to find the Wiimote still functional. We also lamented the fact we weren’t recording ourselves (not that the thought crossed our minds previous to this incident) as this would have been perfect for uploading onto YouTube.

After giving the Wii a nice try out, we settled in for some gaming. The last time we were able to get together for gaming was in November (we did get together in December, but ultimately just played video games), and the last time I was able to run my BESM campaign was in October. The session was pretty typical for us. We started off slowly moving the plot forward at a leisurely pace. Enjoying each other’s company and telling amusing tangential anecdotes was as important as advancing the plot. The need to recap the events of a session that happened 2 ½ months ago certainly contributed to our slow start. However as the evening continued our pace picked up, and if we started slowly we finished quite strong. I was certainly entertained by the evening, and I believe my players were as well.

I’ve mentioned BESM in passing a number of times, but I’ve never really talked about it directly. BESM is of course short for Big Eyes, Small Mouth and is a role playing game designed to recreate the feel of anime and manga (the phrase big eyes, small mouth is a generalization of the overall look of anime and manga characters). The game was created and produced by the now defunct company Guardians of Order. At its base it is a very simple game. Character creation is point based. A character has three main stats: body, mind, and soul. Body covers all things physical, mind covers all things mental, and soul covers all spiritual/supernatural aspects of a character. From these stats a number of secondary stats are derived such as combat value, and health points. The character is further defined by purchasing attributes (or abilities). There are several different attributes governing combat, others that increase movement rate, give the ability to fly, the list goes on and is flexible enough that practically any type of character can be created (from an angst-filled mecha pilot, to a shy schoolgirl, to a powerful elven wizard). To round out the character (and get more character points to purchase attributes or increase stats) a number of defects can be selected.

Non combat actions are resolved by the GM determining which of the three stats the proposed action relates to and having the player try to role that number or lower on two six sided dice (for example trying to avoid throwing a Wiimote across the room would call for a Body stat check). Combat resolution works basically the same way, except a character’s combat value is used in place of the main stats. There is an option skill system that layers on top of this basic resolution system. The skill system basically grants bonuses to the skill role making it easier to succeed at an action.