Baseball: Best Game Ever, or Greatest Game of all Time?

Few things make me think of spring here in Minnesota quite like late-March/early-April snow, and baseball. I like only one of those things, but got both today. Happily the Twins won their season opener, which does take some of the sting out of the snow.

My activities this last weekend will be a likely topic of a future post (hopefully tomorrow, or maybe even later tonight). Not for any particular notable event, but mostly to serve as a cautionary tale of continued foolish behavior on my part (and further evidence of my complete lack of willpower).

Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax died on Tuesday. The world is a less interesting place without him in it. I think had I ever met Mr. Gygax I'd have liked to say something like this to him:

Thank you. Thank you for D&D, and thank you for role-playing. Thank you for the hours of enjoyment this hobby has given, and will continue to give me. Well played sir, well played.

If I were feeling particularly fanboyish I'd probably have added something about how much I love the Greyhawk campaign setting.

A Second Confession About My Job

Every time I look up a name that happens to be the same as a character from a comic book, I have to fight off the desire to do a dance of joy right on the spot. Tonight I looked up Jimmy Olsen.

I am a very big geek.

I took a mighty tumble

My knees hurt today. Not as much as I was afraid they were going to hurt yesterday, but they still hurt. The reason they hurt, as the title of this post suggests, is because I took a mighty tumble yesterday. Picture yourself walking out my front door, you’ll see in front of you the street on which I live, and down and to your right is a sidewalk. In one direction this sidewalk heads out to the public sidewalk running along my street, and in the other direction it runs along the side of my house to the steps leading to my side door. At the corner where the front of my house meets this little sidewalk is a relatively low spot in my yard. So this last weekend and early this week when the temperature was above freezing it was a natural place for the water from the melting snow to collect. The temperature has since dipped back below freezing, and this pool of water has become a patch of ice. A fact I failed to take into account as I was walking to my car on my way to work yesterday morning.

I was at the point where I wasn’t going to be late for work, as long as I did nothing but walk briskly to my car, and drive straight to work without any stops or detours. When I hit the ice at the corner of my house my feet slipped out from under me, and I feel forward. My knees took the brunt of the impact, followed pretty closely by my hands, and finally the rest of me. I am somewhat amazed that when I landed on my knees I slide forward into what I can only assume was the one exposed bit of dirt and grass in my entire town resulting in dirt and grass stains on my pants. My first reaction was to roll over onto my back and think, “ouch.” The second thing I did was check to see if I could bend my knees without an unreasonable amount of pain - I could. Then I noticed the stains on my pants at which point I knew I was going to be late for work - I was. So I got back up, hobbled my way back inside, changed my pants, and made attempt number two at walking to my car. This time I avoided the ice, and arrived at my car without further incident.

This was not the mightiest tumble I’ve ever taken. A few years back I slipped on some ice and sprained my ankle. Now that really hurt. While that fall would be my mightiest tumble, it certainly isn’t the worst fall in my immediate family. That distinction goes to one of my younger brothers, the middle child, for those who’ve heard the story this would be the one whose butt I shot with an arrow. However that is a story for another time. Anyway again a few years ago (although not as far back as my ankle) this brother of mine managed to fall off a second story landing outside of an apartment above one of the bars in my hometown (yes alcohol was a contributing factor). That he a) isn’t dead, and b) has proved to be basically physically unaltered I’m going to chalk up to a miracle. He certainly did sustain some serious injuries, was hospitalized, and it is only years later that I can look back on this and find it kind of funny (rest assured I found no humor in it at the time).

Physical injuries both minor and major aside, I was considering WoW a bit this last week and I realized that for the first time I have a main character. This is the first time in a MMORPG that I can point to a single character and say this is who I’m focusing the majority of my attention on. I cannot say that about any of my characters in City of Heroes/Villains, and prior to Chipple hitting level 70 I couldn’t say that about any of my characters in WoW. I've certainly had characters I spent more time with, but I never before in my mind differentiated between Chipple, my warlock Cominius, and my hunter Steinthror. In honor of her main character status I give you a picture of her on her flying mount (as well as pictures of her on her other land mounts).

I find this funny because Chipple was never intended to be a permanent character much less a main. Chipple was created during the fairly brief period of time after I signed up for the 10 day free trial, but before I decided that I was indeed going to buy this game (two or maybe three days later). I wanted to try out a mage, and I wanted to try grouping with a friend (which my time on City of Heroes had taught was much more fun than soloing). I had mentioned to Dan and Paul that I was giving the WoW trial a go (at a BESM gaming session) and I still remember they both looked at me, Paul looked over at Dan, and then looked back at me and said, “he’s got better guild connections.” At some point around this same time Dan also sent me an e-mail mentioning that he’d just started a warrior alt who I would be able to quickly catch up to in level.

So I rolled a mage on Dark Iron, but since I was still in the, “oh I’m only going to use the free trial, I’m not going to buy this game phase” I wasn’t thinking terribly seriously about naming this character. I hadn’t tried rolling a female toon yet, I wasn’t impressed with any of the names being generated randomly, and then I thought of Chipple. I will only say it is a personal reference that amuses me greatly. As a brief aside I just went and googled Chipple and on the very first page of results I learned that there was a professional baseball player named Walter Chipple whose entire career spanned 18 games for the Washington Senators in 1945. I also learned that chipple is a sexual slang for something you can go look up yourself if you really want to know. Both of those facts amused me, neither is what Chipple is referencing. Now as to why I didn’t delete Chipple and reroll a mage named Cominius (the name I’ve been using for most online activities ever since I played that character in college) I have to blame Dan. Right around the time I was hitting level ten, he mailed Chipple four netherweave bags. I hadn’t yet gotten around to rolling another character on Dark Iron, and I wasn’t really familiar with the implications of the bind of equip mechanic as yet. And since having lots of bag space is just so damn convenient for a new character I never replaced Chipple, and instead used Cominius as the name of my warlock.

That is enough for today. Hopefully sometime this weekend I’ll post my thoughts on Oh! Edo Rocket, and Lucky Star both of which I’ve finished off, and both of which I enjoyed greatly. I’ve also received move three from Erik, so I need to get him my response and I should toss the moves up here for everyone’s personal kibitzing pleasure. I leave you with one final picture of Chipple - an oldie of her in her mid 40s on her original land mount. Also woot for post 80.

I've got the sound, but do I have the fury?

I feel like there are about a hundred different things I'd like to talk about, and no way that I'm going to fit them all in. So let me mention a few things in passing with the (probably in vain) idea of addressing at least some of them in more detail in a later post (it could actually happen).

I finished off Sky Girls last week. I found it to be a solid, enjoyable mecha series. While nothing about it really grabbed me, made me want to run out, wrestle people to the ground, and shout "WATCH THIS" at them, I still have no problem encouraging people to give it a try. "Refreshingly straightforward" probably sums up my thoughts on Sky Girls more than anything else. There are no genre altering plot twists, no surprise villains, no secret organizations pulling the strings - just enjoyable mecha action. The fact these mecha were piloted by cute girls instead of angst-filed boys probably didn't hurt my opinion of it either.

I'm through the first story arc of Spice and Wolf. This series certainly started off slowly, but as the first arc progressed things did pick up nicely. Craft and Horo are very interesting characters in their own right, and watching their relationship develop has been quite enjoyable. My impression of Craft is he's a skilled merchant who is just a touch too cautious for his own good, but his dealings with Horo seem to be putting just the right amount of daring in him. As for Horo, she is a wonderful character. For a wolf spirit/harvest deity she is surprisingly human - very wise yes but also very fallible, confident and powerful but also emotionally vulnerable and even painfully lonely.

This is not your typical fantasy story, as stated Craft is not some stock fantasy archetype like a warrior, but rather a simple merchant; his big dream is to amass enough money to buy a shop in a city so he can settle down and stop being a traveling peddler. Outside of Horo's existence magic has been nowhere to be found, and even with Horo the flashiest bit of magic we've seen is her transformation into her wolf form - and that has only happened twice or perhaps more accurately once and a half since the first time we only got to see Craft's reaction to the transformation (it scared him witless). The main story arc revolves around economics with nobles, kingdoms, and rival merchant houses plotting and scheming to make money off a pending alteration to the purity of one kingdom's silver coins. For an anime the depiction of the economics gets pretty in depth maybe not quite "Moby-Dick's descriptions of 19th Century whaling" level in depth, but still I feel at times like I should be taking notes.

Oh what else: I've started in on Oh! Edo Rocket and it is ridiculously fun. When I try and think of a way to describe it I keep coming back to the fact it reminds me of Excel Saga, but only coherent with an actual plot. I'm not entirely happy with that comparison as I am at best ambivalent towards Excel Saga, while I am loving Oh! Edo Rocket. I would have to say that in every way that being silly is a good thing - Oh! Edo Rocket is just as silly as Excel Saga, and in every way that I found being silly a detriment to Excel Saga - Oh! Edo Rocket is actually logical and serious. The setting is Edo in 1842 (as the anime is quick to tell you Edo in 1842 was in the midst of numerous onerous restrictions on things deemed frivolous - like say fireworks), and the basic premise is a woman asks a fireworks maker to make some fireworks capable of reaching the moon for her. Anyone familiar with the anime will understand the magnitude of the understatement I’m about to engage in - there is more going on in this anime than I’ve just mentioned. I doubt I could do it justice were I to try and describe everything going on there, I think this is clearly a case of experiencing it for oneself as being the best policy.

I’m still watching Rosario+Vampire, I’m not sure I could even explain why. I know I haven’t made it through an episode yet where I haven’t thought, “now that is an excessive amount of fan service.” For some reason it actually makes me think of History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi. There are some similarities: Kenichi is the last anime I watched to feature a truly noteworthy amount of fan service (although nowhere near the level of Rosario+Vampire), many of the defeated foes in both go on to become staunch allies of the main characters, the female leads in both could kick the male leads’ collective asses, and while I wouldn’t really call Kenichi a harem anime the main character does pick up more than one female admirer over the course of the series. Where Kenichi differs from Rosario+Vampire (and most harem anime/manga I’m familiar with) is Kenichi (the character) actual grows and becomes more competent and mature (and since it is a martial arts comedy I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention stronger and more skilled). I doubt Tsukune is going to be much different at the end of Rosario+Vampire from how he was at the beginning.

Clannad and Shion no Ou both continue to be among my favorite anime I’m watching. I’ve been periodically pestering Dan to start watching Shion no Ou so I’d have somebody to talk about it with. Dan if you are reading this be warned I’m going to add Oh! Edo Rocket, and Spice and Wolf to the list of things I periodically pester you to start watching. I continue to make my way through Pretty Cure Max Heart, and I have only a few episodes left of Lucky Star. Sadly I haven’t gotten back to Dennou Coil yet. On that front I think it is actually an attempt by me to be responsible. I have a strong feeling that once I start watching it again I won’t stop until I’ve finished it, and because I’m only through 14 of the 26 episodes I’ve been hesitant to start watching it again since I haven’t had a window were I could comfortably devote the nearly five hours it will take to finish the series off.

I could continue on about anime for awhile yet, but time for a new topic instead. Despite what it must look like given the above paragraphs, my assessment last month that I’m making a transition away from WoW towards anime may have been premature. I’m starting to get the hang of being a level 70 character with Chipple. I’ve got my flying mount (sorry still no pictures), and I’m making slow, but measurable progress towards better gear. Assuming I keep up with the necessary farming of elemental motes, I should be making myself some Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders this weekend. I still need to get Chipple into some level 70 instances, and get her keyed for Karazhan (although given my current work schedule I just don’t see myself becoming a regular raider), but the tasks before me seem slightly less daunting.

I’ve also been spending some time working on a Tauren druid named Berenek on the server Zuluhed, because that is where my friend Erik plays (I’m sure I’m not spending nearly enough time there in Erik’s estimation). Speaking of Erik, I continue to wait patiently for move number three in our latest e-mail chess match.

Matt’s BESM campaign continues to go well. He’s seems quite happy to sit back and see where we (the players) take it, and speaking for myself I’m quite happy to see where we can get it to go. In my last post I mentioned that my character Cynthia had managed to retrieve a surprising amount of data from the memory banks/brain of our apparent main foe. It turns out this info is more memories and personality and less raw data, so Cynthia threw together a small robot to attach this personality to so we’d have something to interact with while obtaining what we’d like to know. Matt has portrayed the partial copy of our foe’s memories as being a bit morose, and more than a little bitter over the loss of its magical abilities. Its complaints on the latter topic lead Cynthia to retort something to the effect of (and I mention this mainly because Matt found it amusing), “I just grabbed the information we needed, it’s not my fault you don’t keep your magic in your brain.”

My character Kell continues to survive Ellery’s Eberron campaign, although after our last session, mostly by the grace of some amazing dice rolling. D&D has long had the idea of the “natural 20," meaning you roll a 20 on a 20 sided die, as being the best thing to hope for during combat. This has been true regardless of the version of D&D you happen to be playing (and outside of a few skill systems in the pre 3.x /d20 era rolling high on a d20 in any situation has generally been a good thing). I picked a very opportune time to get one during our recent combat with a mind flayer (technically a vampiric mind flayer but whose keeping score). Had I not rolled that 20 on my grapple check, my character was about 99% likely to have his brain eaten (just a little something mind flayers like to do). Near character death experiences notwithstanding I continue to have fun with Kell.

With that I think I've touched on most things I’ve been kicking around. So it is now time for me to go knock out a few dailies and farm some motes of water.

Once More unto the Breach

To say I've thought of nothing else but singing monkeys since Saturday would be hyperbole, but it has been in the back of my mind. Yesterday I heard the radio advertisement for a second time. I listened to it with palpable anticipation. My original recollection was slightly inaccurate, the commercial ended, ". . . order your flowers by the 10th, and receive a free CD of romantic piano music, and a chance to win a singing monkey."

At least I think that is what it said, it's not like I had any trouble understanding anything else this lady on the radio was saying, but I just cannot completely wrap my mind around the idea of winning a singing monkey. Some part of me just refuses to believe that is what she said, despite having twice heard her say it. That said, I find myself a little sad I don't currently have a significant other, because I think I'd like to present her with a singing monkey (whatever that is) on Valentine's Day. I fully realize such an act would likely result in my hypothetical lover becoming my hypothetical ex-lover, but damn would the bar story be worth it.

In addition to pondering silly advertisements, I devoted most of my free time this last weekend to role playing. On Saturday Matt ran his BESM campaign. Cynthia very nearly went down the dark path of torturing a prisoner, thankfully Paul's Jedi stopped her. That aside, Cynthia did have a few moments I was pretty proud of: hacking a 24th century military grade computer system on an abandoned moon base was rather awesome, as was the invention of a shrink ray to facilitate the transportation back to their home world of the numerous D&D monsters we kept finding in stasis as we explored the interdimensional portal network our enemies seem to be using.

Like most most role players I love those rare instances where I roll the best possible result on my dice, just when I need to do so the most. Cynthia had one of those joyous occasions on Saturday. Our aforementioned prisoner was more mechanical than biological so Cynthia designed a machine to forcibly download the information stored in his memory. As it was being hooked up, he countered by activating his hitherto unknown self-destruct and total memory wipe ability. I held little hope that Cynthia would be able to use/modify on the fly her invention fast enough to get any information from him. I rolled a twelve (as good as it gets on 2d6) on the electronics test, after applying Cynthia's insanely high mind score and excellent electronics skill the test result added up to 24 (even after the penalty Matt applied to the roll) which is the target number BESM assigns for improbable tasks (BESM's highest difficulty class) . All of this means we got the information we were looking for, and while Cynthia may be a 14 year old girl she is clearly technology's daddy.

Sunday saw the resumption after a nearly year long hiatus of Ellery's Eberron campaign. I'm still trying to remember exactly what character goals I had for my changeling Kell. Still it was a fun session, although it served to really reinforce my preference for point based role playing systems. After two years of BESM (plus some random GURPS and Hero action) I find the game mechanics of character creation and advancement in d20 (and really any level based system) to be incredibly restrictive. Sorting through the seemingly endless number of D&D's core and prestige classes for that magic combination that will approximate the admittedly nebulous character concept I have has been an exercise in extreme frustration. My advice for anyone playing D&D (or any other class based system) is look over the classes, and find one that makes you go, "ooooo," and build your character concept around that. Don't create a character concept, and then try and find a class that fits it.

Wait What?!

Let me preface this by saying my time on WoW (and equally so my time on the Penny Arcade Alliance forums) has not done my vocabulary, grammar, or spelling any good. Not that this story really has any connection to WoW, but I thought I'd just throw that out there.

So at work we usually listen to a radio station out of Watertown, SD. Largely because it is one of the few radio stations that we can actually get reception on inside our call center. That said I find it to be a pretty decent station - for a commercial radio station - they generally (but not exclusively) play a mix of rock running from classic to modern. I have on occasion found their song selection somewhat odd - I've twice heard them play Weird Al's "I Want a New Duck," but today was the first time I've ever done a double take while listening to this station.

The surprising bit of audio was actually an advertisement for one of the grocery stores in Watertown. It started out in a pretty typical manner for local radio advertisement - namely the person reading the script, sounded like she was reading a script. She extolled the virtues of giving your significant other flowers on Valentine's Day, and reminded the listeners of her store's well stocked floral department, then she uttered a phrase that is going to stick in my mind for the rest of my life. . .

". . . and sign up now for your chance to win a singing monkey."

And the only thing I could think to say was, "lolwut?!" Thank you WoW.

Seriously this was a Lewis Black - "if it weren't for my horse. . ." level phrase here. I'm half convinced I misheard it, but I'm not entirely sure I want to hear the advertisement again, because I think I'd be disappointed if it turns out I did hear it wrong.

A Mystery Revealed

It turns out the mysterious package was a very nice chess set sent to me by Erik (thank you again I really like it), along with his opening salvo in a new chess match. He has opened with 1. d4. A Queen's Pawn Opening, a very popular, very solid, and slightly conservative opening staking white's claim to the important center squares. My response to this was 1. ... Nf6. How terribly hypermodern of me, it would appear I'd rather not play a Closed Game, but I instead want to steer this game towards some sort of Indian Defense. In any event, I haven't exactly ceded the middle to Erik, but I've opted to contest it with methods less direct than 1. ... d5.

I was tempted to try out a Dutch Defense, which would make a certain amount of sense for me given my proclivity for both the English Opening, and the Sicilian Defense, but in the end the chance to try my hand at a hypermodern style proved too tempting. Plus I have to think Erik might just be getting a little tired of seeing Semi-Open Games, and Flank Openings from me to start throwing Semi-Closed Games at him as well. Still I am much too enamored with asymmetry in chess for Erik to ever get too many Open or Closed Games from me.

I think part of the reason I favor these types of openings and defenses is due in large part to a desire not to surrender the choice of match being played. If you are playing black and respond to 1. d4 with d5, or 1. e4 with e5 your opponent is still free to try and shape to the match towards his preferred opening. So I tend to look towards the Sicilian as a response towards 1. e4, and something other than 1. ... d5 in response to a Queen's Pawn opening. The same logic applies to my choice of the English Opening when I open with 1. c4 that pretty much means that's the game that is getting played; whereas if I'd like to use a King's Gambit or say Ruy Lopez I have to open 1. e4 and hope my opponent complies with me. Obviously this isn't perfect, chess matches do transpose from one opening to another on occasion, but it is my weapon for keeping as much control of the match as I can regardless which color I'm playing.

A Mysterious Package

There is a mysterious package waiting for me at home. I found it left on my doorstep by UPS as I was leaving for work today. I had enough time that I could have opened it up, but if it proved to be something cool I wouldn't have had enough time to properly play with it. So I simply took it inside where it waits for me to return home from work to see what it is, and who sent it to me.

 My behavior of late suggests I'm shifting out of MMORPG mode and into watching anime mode. Which isn't to say I'm in any danger of ceasing to play WoW, I just seem to be spending more time watching anime than I have been in recent months. I suspect it is a result of getting Chipple to 70. It's a nice milestone, and also a good place to rest a bit before getting serious about the grind of improving her gear. 

Misumi Nagisa

As I suspected I would, I've started watching Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart. Just like it's predecessor it is good light hearted, magical girl fun. I've noticed one amusing byproduct (amusing to me anyway) of the magical girl powers the main character's possess. Allow me to illustrate. Please note picture of Misumi Nagisa to the left. As an unrelated aside the cutesy teddy bear looking thing is Mepple, most magical girls have some sort of cute companion (often a talking animal) and he is Nagisa's.

Cure Black

Now compare this to the picture of Cure Black. If you can spot what I'm getting at right away, then good for you. However I'm guessing one example isn't probably enough.










So let me move on to example number two. Next please observe the picture of Yukishiro Honoka, and then the picture of Cure White. Again as an aside the cute companion is Mipple. Honestly the cutesy companion is one of my least favorite tropes of the magical girl genre. I probably wouldn't mind Mipple and Mepple that much if they just didn't end every sentence with "mipo" and "mepo" respectively.

Yukishiro Honoka

Cure White

Some of you may be spotting what I'm talking about, but the final example should
really bring it home. In Pretty Cure Max Heart a new heroine is introduced. So please take a look at the pictures of Kūjō Hikari (to the left), and her alter ego Shiny Luminous (on the right). I believe the amusing power should now be quite apparent. If you are guessing their transformation must include the application of magical hair mousse for increased volume, then we are on the same page. Extremely silly? Yes, but it is still what I think of basically every time I watch these characters transform.

Kūjō Hikari

Shiny Luminous

Aside from pondering the hair care regiment of magical girls, I've started in on a few other anime as well. I am just over halfway through Denno Coil (sometimes written as Dennou Coil). This one is extremely engaging - interesting characters and an interesting plot. I imagine I'll be finishing it up pretty soon. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it once I've finished it. For the curious the girl in the picture is Okonogi Yūko one of the main characters from Denno Coil. The strange looking pink things are called Satchii; they are basically antivirus software that patrol the Augmented Reality environment of the city Denno Coil takes place in.

 I've also started in on Rosario + Vampire (the first four episodes). This seems like a pretty fun series. Nothing really new here; it's a harem anime. The male protagonist is a normal first year high school student who gets mistakenly enrolled in a high school for monsters, and wacky shenanigans ensue. Naturally this includes the unintentional collection of a harem of beautiful supernatural female students (thus far a vampire, succubus, and witch). This anime has more fan service (of the panty shot and other sexual eye candy variety) than anything else I've watched in awhile. That fact isn't really anything either good or bad, but was a bit jarring at first.

A Confession About My Job

Every time I have somebody ask me to find a number for, or I overhear some operator looking for the last name of Underhill, I have to really struggle not to suggest they try looking for the name Baggins instead.

I am a very big geek.