Coming up for air.

Well. . . I still live.

So I’d like to be able to say that during the interim when I wasn’t posting to this blog I was doing something cool. I’d like to be able to say sorry I didn’t post, but I was spending time with my new lady friend, or I was starting my new fabulous job, or working on my great American novel, or moving to a new exotic location. However if I were to say any of those things, I’d be lying. No what I was up to for the latter half of the month of October was much more mundane (and geeky). For the last 15 days or so I spent nearly every spare not-at-work moment playing City of Heroes. The reason for this MMORPG orgy was simply that the period of time from October 18 until November 1 was the City of Heroes/City of Villains Halloween event.

During this Halloween event there were many special-event-only badges to earn. And earn them I did for more of my numerous characters then I care to think about. So what are these badges I speak of and why would I need any stinking badges? Well if you are familiar with the concept of Boy Scout merit badges you pretty much have the gist of the idea. In CoH/CoV badges are awarded for any number of different in game activities. Two of the main types of badges are exploration badges (get your character to a certain spot on a map and receive a badge), and a achievement badges (as in achieve a predetermined game milestone and receive a badge). All of the Halloween badges were of the achievement variety, and most of them could only be gained by engaging in the game’s version of Trick or Treating. Basically you maneuvered your character up to a door that wasn’t currently assigned as the location of one of your character’s missions and click on it. You would then either receive a treat (usually a temporary stat bonus called an inspiration, but occasionally a temporary power), or a trick and between one and three Halloween monsters (werewolves, vampires, zombies, etc.) would exit the door and attack you. If you defeated enough of each type of monster you’d be awarded a badge. The other reason to engage in the trick or treating is to gain an extra costume slot for a character. Somewhere around one out of three treats would also include one of four costume pieces. Collect all four pieces and you can trade them in for an extra costume slot. I now have many characters with more then one costume.

Enough about CoH. So the World Series wrapped up. Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals not many people (myself included) gave them much of a chance against the Detroit Tigers. They sure proved a lot of people wrong. The World Series aside what I’m really going to remember from this last post season is game seven of the NLCS. A game like that is the reason I love baseball. Top of the 6th inning, one out, and one on. Scott Rolen pulls Oliver Perez’s first pitch deep to left. Endy Chavez races back towards the wall and at the last second leaps and stretches his right hand up and over the 8' wall. With the very tip of his glove he snags the ball and pulls it back into the park Chavez then slams into the wall, lands on his feet, and guns the ball back into 2nd base. The second baseman Jose Valentine relayed the ball to 1st base for a inning ending double play. Baseball at its finest.

I did also find some time for my BESM campaign. I ran two sessions one on October 21, and the second on October 28. Both were great fun, I am very happy with how my BESM campaign is going. I particularly enjoyed the session on the 21st. In that session the party got sent back to the “real” world from the feudal pseudo-Japanese world they are usually in. This was actually the second time this has happened to them. On their 1st trip back to modern Japan one of the player characters went on a date, in subsequent sessions that same PC acquired a girlfriend in the feudal pseudo-Japanese world. On their 2nd trip back I felt compelled to make sure the new girlfriend made the trip to the modern world with the rest of the party. The interactions between the new and old girlfriends were a source of great amusement, as were the uncomfortable situations the PC found himself in. If everything works out the next BESM session should be November 11th.