Because I’ve apparently mistaken my blog for Twitter

As I sit here and admire my (and my coworkers’) handiwork I have to reflect that nothing says “competent professional” quite like a computer held together with packing tape (and just to be safe a fair amount of black electrical tape). If I ever figure out how to move pictures from my cell phone to a computer I’ll be sure to show you. . .

Playground Fun Now Coming to an Office Near You

I had planned on posting about something today. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to talk about but it was probably going to be either WoW (because both Chipple and Cominius are over 40 and I have pictures of them on their mounts), or BESM (because we gamed again on Labor Day). Instead you are getting a rare post about work.

This morning I took a call that has to rank in my top ten most ridiculous calls I’ve ever handled. I’ve mentioned before (last September in fact) that one of the things my company does is provide an after hours repair service for various telephone and cable companies. In general these companies are all pretty small (as compared to a Qwest or AT&T) and generally have a pretty limited number of exchanges that they serve. Now with the advent of local number portability things aren’t completely as cut and dry as all that, but for the most part if a caller’s exchange isn’t on the list provided to me by the phone company s/he is trying to call it is a pretty safe bet s/he is calling the wrong phone company.

So this morning I got a call from John Customer calling Fake Name Telephone Company (henceforth I’ll be calling it FNT). He told me he had no dial tone, and gave me the phone number and as soon as I heard it I knew two things, the city and state he was calling from (and FNT does indeed have customers there), and that he probably didn’t get telephone service from FNT (because his exchange was XYY instead of XYZ). Still with number portability it is possible he was a FNT customer (he would be the first one I’ve ever had for that company in that city with that exchange, but that doesn’t guarantee he was wrong), so I asked the all important “cover-my-company’s-butt” question, “and you get this phone service through FNT?” He answered yes, so I moved on. After gathering up all the relevant information and ending the call, I called up the on call technician for FNT and told him what I had. The tech responded with, “Yeah, he’s not our customer, but give me the information and I’ll check it out to be sure.”

About 30 minutes later I get second call from John Customer. He told me that he’d reported no dial tone a little bit earlier, and a tech had called him back, but the tech told him he wasn’t a customer of FNT, and John Customer knows he is a customer of FNT. That’s right John Customer didn’t believe the tech, and despite not being found by the tech on the FNT customer rolls, he knows he’s a customer. I did a quick run down in my head of my options at this point. I could try and convince the caller that no he probably isn’t a customer of FNT, I could call the tech back as say guess what that caller is back and he says he is too a customer of FNT, or I could try and slam by head through my computer’s monitor. I opted to call the tech back. I offer up the fact a reached his answering machine as proof of a benevolent God.

I, of course, made it sound as professional as I could, but the message I left on the tech’s machine still boiled down to, “am too!” John Customer called back a third time, no doubt to say, “am too plus infinity*,” but blessedly he was interrupted by the tech calling him back. Either the tech had discovered he was in fact wrong, or he was able to convince John Customer that he really wasn’t a customer of FNT, but in any event that ended the whole ridiculous exchange.

I cannot resist making this analogy, even though there is only one known reader of this blog who will fully understand and appreciate it, so Dan this is for you. This call was like Staghmar and Carthris having one of their “No U!” fights, but with private messages instead of in /gchat and naturally one of them would have to use me as an intermediary. So basically it would start with Stag sending Chipple a PM saying tell Carthris, “NO U!” I would send Carthris a PM saying, “Stag says no u.” Carthris would reply to Stag with a hardy, “NO U!” Staghmar would come back to Chipple. . . I think you get the picture. And sadly in the exchange this morning there was no Zilpah around to fop or /gkick the involved parties.

*He might also have been calling back to say, “am too, I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off of me, and sticks to you!” In actuality he was probably calling back to say, “Hey the tech hasn’t called me back, and I want my phone fixed!” However I think my first two guesses are much more fun.

I leave you with this completely unrelated video that shows German women can be a little weird (but really I don't think weirdness knows either gender or international boundaries). There is nothing inherent to this video identifying the performers as German, but for further information about Lynne & Tessa try here, or here.

Goodbye, So Long, Farewell, Long Live the New Edition

My first impression of using BESM 3e was quite positive, and I’ve been thinking about the differences between the new BESM and the previous edition. I’ve mentioned, briefly, the basics of the BESM 2nd Edition mechanics before. The characters are defined numerically by three stats: body, mind, and soul (quantifying the physical, mental, and metaphysical/supernatural). The success of non-combat actions are determined by rolling two six-sided dice (or as those of us in the hobby would say 2d6) and comparing the number to the relevant stat (body for physical actions, mind for mental actions, and soul for basically everything else), if the result is equal or less then the stat the action succeeded. Various skills and abilities can be taken to make success more likely (for both combat and non-combat actions), but those are the basics.

Combat itself is slightly more complicated, but only slightly. If one of the PCs in my campaign were to try and put the hurt on a hapless NPC it would have gone something like this. First the player would have tried to hit NPC (probably with a sword, they all seemed to like their swords); the player would roll 2d6 hoping to get a result equal to or under his attack combat value (which starts out as the average of all three stats). If the result was over the combat value the attack was a miss and we moved on, but if the player succeeded then I’d make a defense roll for said hapless NPC. I’d roll 2d6 and hope to get under the NPC’s defense combat value (which starts out as the average of the NPC’s three stats minus two). If the defense roll succeeds then the NPC managed to block, dodge, parry, soak, or otherwise some how avoid what would have been a successful attack. Should the roll fail the player would gleefully announce how much damage his attack just dealt.

Different variations on the “roll this number or less” mechanic have been with role playing games since the very beginning of the hobby. It is certainly a serviceable mechanic and I’ve played many fine game systems that make use of it (GURPS and the Hero System come to mind, but they hardly scratch the surface). It can have some drawbacks however. Depending on exactly how it gets implemented it can be counterintuitive – for example in BESM 2nd Edition bonuses are expressed as negative numbers, while positive numbers are penalties. It can also start to break down when a character has enough skill, bonuses, or other modifiers to raise the target number above whatever the highest possible number you can roll on the dice the game is using making it basically impossible to fail. In BESM 2e, which uses 2d6, that number is 12 (while in GURPS and Hero that number is 18 because both systems use 3d6). This point can be reached pretty quickly and easily in BESM 2e even by starting characters.

With BESM 2e in particular another problem that could arise during combat is the characters that go first in a combat round tend to do nothing but burn through the opponents defenses allowing the slower acting characters to actually damage them. First off combat rounds - almost every role playing game divides combat time into discrete units generally called rounds, turns, or phases which usually represent a few seconds of time (I’ve seen systems where a round was as fast as one second, and others where it was as long as one minute). Now as for burning through defenses – the simple combat example I gave above covers one person making one attack, but there are various abilities that allow for multiple attacks during a round (alternatively more then one person can attack the same target in a round). BESM handles this by making the target’s defense combat value decrease by two for each use after the first in the round. If the target also has multiple actions during a round the penalties start once all of those actions are used up. I tended to throw one powerful opponent backed up by some cannon fodder at my players so I tried to design them to be able to fight multiple opponents. Since for most of my campaign the PCs had two actions a round, their opposition usually had three.

All of the above added up to make most fights look something like this (in a very simplified sense): the first PC would attack twice (almost certainly succeeding both times), the villain would defend twice (again almost certainly succeeding both times), the second PC would attack twice, the villain would successfully defend the first attack and have about a 50% chance of succeeding at the second attack, the third PC would attack twice, the villain would try to defend but at this point had only a minute chance of succeeding, and this was repeated until the villain was defeated. Fortunately creative players can go a long way to alleviating this problem, and my players were nothing if not creative. Seriously how many players would think to have their characters use Ethernet cable to first lasso an attacking dragon, and then use it as reigns to ride said dragon while fighting other dragons? And the great thing about BESM 2e is it is flexible enough that when aforementioned player announced his plans regarding Ethernet cable and attacking dragon, or any of the other countless wild/crazy stunts they all pulled I didn’t need to grab the rule book and start madly flipping pages to try and find a relevant rule, I just had them roll their attack and applied whatever seemed relevant as a modifier and adjudicated the results.

So how does BESM 3e differ? Well it does away with the “roll under” mechanic in favor of roll 2d6, add your relevant skills and other modifiers (or subtract relevant penalties), and total your result - if it is equal to or higher then a target number set by the GM you succeed. These types of systems tend to be a bit more intuitive for people to grasp, although the need to judge what an appropriate target number is can be annoying for the GM. As for combat both sides roll 2d6 and add their combat values (plus other relevant modifiers) and the higher total succeeds (ties go to the attacker iirc). Character creation is more complicated then it was under 2e. Characters in BESM 2e where built on fairly small point totals as compared to most point based role playing games. I favored 25-35 points for starting characters, whereas GURPS 3rd edition suggested 100 points for most of their starting characters (really 145 points since it was 100 points + 40 points in disadvantages + 5 points in quirks), while HERO 5th edition suggests 150 points for their starting characters (at the heroic level for super heroes it suggests 350 points). Granted each of these games uses a completely different system so you cannot really just compare point totals, but in general the more points you have to create a character the more complex your options are going to be and the more powerful (or diverse) your character is going to be. The characters we created for Matt's campaign were built on 300 points and I'd estimate are about on par with a 2e character of 30 or 35 points. So obviously the costs of the various abilities in BESM have been completely reworked for 3e, and the number of options available to you has increased significantly. This certainly doesn't hurt BESM, character creation was extremely flexible under 2e, and it only becomes more so under 3e. While I have to reiterate that character creation has become more complex, I'd still say it is far easier than say Hero 5th edition or Shadowrun 4th edition.

Anyway to sum up, my first taste of BESM 3e was positive and I look forward to playing some more. I believe we are getting together again on Labor Day for round two of the Mattoverse, so I'll probably have some more to say about it after that.

Before I go I'd like to point out I've been blogging for one year. Woohoo! I'm a little surprised I've kept it up, all previous attempts at anything resembling a journal have failed quite miserably. By my count I've been blogging for 381 days and with this being post 54 I'm averaging just over one post every seven days; which is pretty much exactly what I wanted to do. So huzzah for me! In celebration I leave you with this amusing picture that has nothing to do with BESM, or anything else I've talked about in this post.

Well Played Matthew, Well Played

A month has already passed since the end of my BESM campaign. I remain extremely satisfied with how the BESM campaign turned out, easily one of the best I’ve ever run under any role playing system. My players remained true to form, coming up with interesting and completely unexpected things to do right up until the end. I was particularly impressed with their decision to try and remove every soul in the Hell of Hungry Dragons before they sealed it up forever. Dan’s character was the driving force behind this little decision, apparently he felt infinite suffering for finite sins was terribly unfair, and he was able to convince Matt’s character that something needed to be done about this. For the record they succeeded (probably a testament to how ridiculously overpowered I let them become, and also to how as a GM I’ll allow almost everything that amuses me).

As (parenthetically) noted in my last post we got together on Saturday for BESM 3rd edition, which was also Matt’s first attempt at GMing. Matt has been talking about his multi-genre, anything goes, chaos campaign for as least as long as I ran my BESM campaign (quite probably longer). The general idea is any sort of humanoid character we could come up with (and build on 300 points) was basically fair game (there were a few restrictions, mainly don’t build a character whose abilities are completely derived from his social standing since he won’t be staying in his original world). Matt ended up with a Jedi (courtesy of Paul), an elven wizard (Dan’s contribution), and a steampunk tech genius (my character - heavily inspired by the Girl Genius webcomic). Interestingly Matt informed us that our characters had all died, and had us come up with the circumstances of their deaths.

The campaign opened with our characters waking up on a hill after being pulled away from their own worlds at the moment of what would have been their deaths. We don’t actually know who did this, or exactly for what reason. We’ve been told it was to save the universe, but the person who presumably did the summoning is currently in a vegetative state due to an accident during the complex magic ritual used to snatch our characters away from the jaws of death (or more precisely his soul had been sundered from his body and is currently lost). Just as we were getting a handle on our situation (we were on earth, but apparently the only humans in the world live in a village protected by a magic bubble that keeps the dinosaurs from coming to eat them), and hot on the trail of a clue to return the architect of our situation to consciousness, we suddenly found ourselves sucked into another alternate earth.

For me this is where the night was made (I suspect Paul probably harbors similar sentiments). We found ourselves in a convenience store staring face to face with a troll who was doing a little shopping. For numerous reasons that mostly have to do with shared gaming experience, and knowledge of the GM, I very quickly suspected (I imagine Paul did as well), and Matt soon confirmed that we were in a Stuffer Shack. If you’ve played Shadowrun, you almost certainly know what that is. Matt continued to delight by running us through Food Fight which is a classic Shadowrun introductory adventure (at least from 3rd Edition, and I think from 2nd as well, but I don’t know if it made the jump to 4th edition). After trouncing the thrill gang that was trying to rob the place we made good our escape, and Matt brought the evening to a close.

OMG!! ONOZ!!

WoW has made me a tool of the Devil!!

That is all. Come back in a few days for a real post. Possible topics for this post include the end of my BESM campaign (yes it really has ended), the inevitable "OVA" sequel campaign, my thoughts on Matt's "all genre-chaos campaign" (it's BESM Saturday!!!), my reaction to finally using BESM 3e (did I mention it's BESM Saturday!!!), Chipple hitting level 40 (I really need a picture of her on her horse), the anime I've been watching, and maybe even how I feel about my job these days (that last one is a pretty remote possibility).

Before I go I should mention the final Harry Potter (see below) book did not disappoint.

Can't blog too busy reading

I just got back from the local book/music/hobby/Sprint® store with my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I will pause in my reading of it long enough to pass along the finest spoilers ever. The following spoilers were obtained from the US Government by my good friend Paul through judicious use of the Freedom of Information Act.

[Redacted] killed [Redacted] and [Redacted] [Redacted].
[Redacted] kills [Redacted].
[Redacted] is [Redacted].
[Redacted] isn't [Redacted]
[Redacted] dies.
[Redacted] marries [Redacted].

Really after that list of spoilers, I'm not sure why any of us would bother to read the book.

Insubstantial!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Cominius my Warlock has joined the ranks of Exuberance! For a small amount of context consider looking first here, and next here. In any event Exuberance is another of the Penny Arcade Alliance guilds on Dark Iron.

I really don’t have anything else to say at the moment, except I think my Voidwalker in the background makes this a pretty sweet picture. Also w00t for post 50.

Three Unrelated Topics

I’m going to go with reverse-chronological order for this post.

My main character on WoW is a mage on the Dark Iron server named Chipple. She is a member of a guild called the Fancy Lads. The Fancy Lads is one of twelve guilds that comprise the Penny Arcade Alliance; which for those who don’t know is a group of guilds made up of Penny Arcade fans and was originally founded by Penny Arcade co-creator Mike Krahulik. Now I have on any number of occasions been quite happy to have Chipple a member of the Fancy Lads as its members have proved to be both friendly and helpful, but tonight (technically yesterday since it is now after midnight) was the first time I really, really appreciated Chipple being a part of the PAA as a whole.

I was running Chipple around a zone called the Thousand Needles working on some quests when a level 70 orc hunter happened by and killed Chipple in one shot. I panned my camera around to see if I could get a look at what just killed me, and got to witness a level 70 night elf rogue (unguilded and I never did make note of his name) give this hunter a little payback. Happy with the outcome I released my spirit and ran my ghost back from the graveyard to my corpse so I could resurrect and continue on with my quests. Sadly upon reaching my corpse I found the orc hunter wasn’t alone, he had been joined by another orc hunter, a tauren druid, and a forsaken warrior. The helpful night elf rogue was already dead, and these three horde were battling it out with two level 70 members of the PAA guild Kung Foo Roostaz (a gnome rogue and a human mage). With three to two odds the horde prevailed, but then they didn’t leave the area, and with the resurrection of the original orc hunter outnumbered the two KFR members two to one; thus when any of us tried to resurrect the results were predictable - we died. This continued on for around five minutes before the horde finally mounted up and rode off, after waiting a bit longer to make sure they were gone I and the two KFRs resurrected and started the process of healing and reapplying useful buffs. Unfortunately the horde leaving was only a ruse and as they came sweeping back in Chipple was quickly killed, and outnumbered and not fully healed my two PAA companions soon followed suit.

Once again the these four horde camped the area making resurrecting pretty pointless. During this time a few other alliance players (with levels lower than Chipple’s) had the misfortune to wander into the area and found themselves dead and corpse camped right along with the rest of us. Well a call went out to the PAA as a whole regarding our plight and a raid group of 10 or so PAAers was put together (most of whom were level 70, Chipple being one of I think 2 or 3 characters who weren’t). Once enough of the raid group arrived to even out the number of level 70s on both sides we launched our counter attack and emerged most victorious. Granted Chipple and the handful of characters in their 30s in the raid group were pretty much only useful as a distraction, but every attack one of the horde spent killing one of us was an attack not being directed against one of the alliance characters that could actually hurt them. With the horde all dead, and the remainder of the raid group was summoned courtesy of a PAA warlock, we settled down for the revenge portion of the evening. For the 15 - 25 minutes worth of camping they inflicted upon Chipple and the two members of the KFR, we (well not so much Chipple, but I hung around to enjoy the show and act a decoy) returned the favor about two to three fold spending somewhere around 30 - 50 minutes camping them in return as well as the two or three other level 70 horde who showed up to try and help them. It was very therapeutic, although I did feel bad for the three or so low level horde players (levels ranging from 25-37) who had the bad luck of wandering into the area while all this was going on (that I felt bad for our raid group killing them is further proof that I probably shouldn’t be on a PvP server).

Moving on to topic number two. I went and watched the Transformers movie tonight (again technically yesterday). Seriously what a ridiculous movie, but I mean that in a very good way. I wouldn’t waste time thinking about the plot, while the basics are quite easy to understand, there are some holes big enough to drive Optimus Prime through. However this movie was just too damn much fun for that to matter at all. I started laughing pretty quickly once the movie commenced, and didn’t really stop while it was playing, and continued to laugh about the movie my entire walk home. I know it is cliché to say you were on the edge of your set, but I quite literally found myself perched there on more then one occasion during the movie.

When I first heard about the Transformers movie, I refused to get excited about it. I mean a live action adaptation of the cartoon that existed solely to sell the toys (I knew that fact even as a child watching those cartoons, but that hardly stopped me from loving them), how could that movie be anything but awful? Then I read some reviews for it and they were surprisingly good, and then a few friends went to see it and came back saying it was a pretty good movie, so I started to get a little excited about it. I have to say Transformers is as about as good as you could ever hope to get from a movie based on an 1980s cartoon; which amazingly enough turns out to be a remarkable fun movie. Who knew?

Finally I should say a few things about last Saturday. It was a very fun time, it certainly wasn’t what I expected, as the only role playing that took place the entire evening lasted from 11:30pm until midnight. The vast majority of our time was spent playing the Order of the Stick Adventure Game (probably from about 5:30pm - 10pm). The rest of the time was spent actually working on characters for the anything goes/chaos campaign Matt has been talking about running for something like 2+ years.

For your consideration I leave you with two pictures one is another screen shot of Chipple, the other is a picture of the actor Sarah Chalke who plays Dr. Elliot Reid on Scrubs. I do this because I think Chipple looks a bit like her.

Sweet Tradition

Hazzuh! It’s BESM day! In the cornucopia of geekiness that consists of my hobbies, role playing games are my favorite. If I’m posting about it that can only mean I’ve finished preparing for it (insert evil GM cackle). This could possibly be the final session of the campaign, although I suspect it is far more likely that it will take at least one (if not two) more session after this to wrap everything up. Honestly I find I’m horrible at estimating how many sessions are left, as I’ve been saying only 3-4 more sessions to go for the last 6+ months, but I can safely say the campaign has reached endgame.

Tradition is the reason I’m posting before this afternoon’s session. Well okay maybe superstition would be a more accurate word for it. I’ve just noticed that when I post about gaming before the actual event it tends to go very well. Where some gamers have lucky dice, I seem to have a lucky blog.

With the end of my current campaign rapidly approaching (probably), my thoughts naturally start turning to what I’m going to do next. Fortunately a fair amount of thought has already been put into this (way back in February, admittedly it’s been a bit ignored since then), and one of my players has been making increasingly serious noise about running something himself. I find this latter option pretty appealing, as I rarely get a chance to play, and since somebody has broken down and actually made a pass at creating a character for his hypothetical game I find I have little choice but to follow suit. Since I’ve had steampunk on the brain of late, and since his proposed game would be multi-genre madness, I’ve been thinking a steampunk mechanical genius would be quite fun to play. I’m also thinking this character will likely be female, which is an unusual choice for me (outside of MMORPGs); I blame the Girl Genius web comic (really for both the choice of gender and theme).

The above picture is by Niko Geyer and is one of several he did for Guardians of Order.

Before I go I would like to mention the Twins played a doubleheader against the White Socks yesterday (a rarity in MLB these days). They won both games (not an easy thing to do in a doubleheader), but looking at the scores (especially the first game) you might be tempted to think they opted to play football rather than baseball. Game one ended with the Twins winning 20-14 (a football score if I've ever seen one), and they won the second game 12-0 (admittedly that one would be a bit unusual for a football score but certainly possible).

Also it is Caturday so here is another lolcat I found posted on the Penny Arcade Alliance forum.

A Tale of Two Horde, or Why I Shouldn't be on a PvP Server

As my experience with WoW continues to accrue, I find it increasingly likely that I am a carebear. I enjoy the battlegrounds, but random world PvP is something else entirely. I initiated my first PvP on Sunday morning, and promptly felt guilty about it. I was using my warlock Cominius (level 24 at the time of this incident) and was headed out of Stonetalon Peak when I ran across a troll shaman named Granfalloon (level 23 at the time) fighting a Twilight Runner. I watched him finish his fight, and decided well why not, so I targeted him, sent my succubus, and rushed after her firing off my various afflictions. Granfalloon opted to make a run for it, made outside of Stonetalon Peak, and nearly got into Ghost Wolf form before I dropped him. Flush with victory I continued about my marry way, but that afternoon started to feel a little guilty that I ran him down when he obviously didn’t want to engage in any PvP activity. Later on that night I was back playing Cominius and I was surprised to see Granfalloon’s body still outside of Stonetalon Peak. Now I started to feel really guilty for killing him. Late Monday night I was again playing Cominius, Granfalloon’s body was still outside of Stonetalon Peak, and I was getting ready to swear off PvP forever as I kept thinking of wildly unlikely scenarios about how my killing this character had caused Granfalloon to give up WoW forever. Happily after work on Tuesday I found Granfalloon’s body gone, replaced by a skeleton (a tell-tale sign of a PC having died and revived at that spot).

However my second foray into initiating PvP didn’t cause me any guilt at all. That is probably because I strongly suspect my victim was either a bot or a gold farmer. While running Cominius around the Stonetalon Mountains I kept encountering this level 25 undead priest killing the stags found in between Mirkfallon Lake and Stonetalon Peak (I didn’t note his name). By Monday night I was pretty sure he was a bot, so I decided I might as well kill him. So I took my level 28 dwarven hunter (whom I was playing at the time I reached this decision) to the area I kept running into him at and sure enough there he was killing stags. I waited for him to finish the mob he was on, targeted him, ordered my pet to attack, and opened fire. I became more confident in my determination that he was a bot when he started attacking my pet instead of me. Between the level difference, and his poor choice of targets the combat was quickly decided in my favor.

On Tuesday night I was back on Cominius still plugging away at a few quests in the Stonetalon Mountains. Just as I was nearing completion and while in the middle of fighting a harpy, a tauren druid named Swifthoof jumped me. Not too surprisingly I pretty quickly died. Now I find the idea of attacking somebody while they are fighting a mob to be pretty bad form, but what really annoyed me about the whole situation was Swifthoof hid and waited for me to revive and then attacked and killed me again. The first time I can understand. We are opposing factions, and given a chance I certainly may have attacked him, but to engage in corpse camping means you are just being a jerk.

Contrast this to the actions of the level 31 Blood Elf paladin, Daloo, that Cominius ran into a bit later that evening. I had completed my quests and was running out of the Charred Vale back to Stonetalon Peak when I met up with Daloo heading the other way. Being five levels higher than my character I wanted nothing to do with her, and headed off to one side hoping she’d ignore me. In doing so I aggroed both a harpy and a basilisk; while my succubus grabbed and kept the attention of the harpy, the basilisk continued to attack my warlock. Now Daloo could have simply ignored me, she could have also attacked and killed me and I would have counted as an honorable kill, but Daloo attacked the basilisk and drew it off my warlock (and at her level easily killed it). Left with only the harpy to deal with my warlock quickly finished it off (honestly without the presence of a level 31 horde occupying my thoughts both mobs at once wouldn’t have been a big deal). Again at this point Daloo could have attacked me and racked up some easy honor, instead she waited to see what I’d do. I gave her a /bow and ran off counting my blessings.

I’m certainly not trying to say this is how all alliance/horde interactions should go. Dark Iron is a PvP server after all; of course the sides should fight each other. If Daloo had attacked me before I aggroed those mobs, I wouldn’t even be posting about it (nor would I have bothered to look up her name in the combat log). I also would have been fine with her attacking me after the mobs were dealt with, and again I probably wouldn't be posting about it had that happened. The same is true if Daloo had ignored me and continued on her way after I aggroed the mobs. I actually would have considered that hypothetical act a great kindness. If events had played out that way I might even have posted about it.

Well enough about WoW.

BESM on Saturday went very well. For the record the players weren’t boned (see previous post). The end of the campaign is actually in sight. That fact makes me both very happy, and very sad. We should game again this coming Saturday.

Harkening back to the peripheral references made to quantum physics in my last post I leave you with this amusing lolcat picture I found posted on the Penny Arcade Alliance forum.