My Bad Mood

I am in a cranky, bitchy, and altogether bad mood this morning. I'm doing my absolute best not to take it out on the ones I love, which pretty much means I'm being very quiet and keeping to myself as much as possible.

Reasons?

Family tensions originating back home. Given we live in VA now, these occasional incidents are even more annoying than they used to be.

I had a series of horrible dreams last night.

The kids got me up at 6:30am.

I'm horribly behind on a freelance project that will likely see some sort of love this weekend, if I've got enough bandwidth to get to it.

I turned 35 on Tuesday.

I'm being loaned to another team at work for three weeks, starting next Tuesday.

I've played in one game session this year. ONE.

I have a doctor's appointment today that I need to reschedule. I tried to call them yesterday, just after 1pm, but they were closed for the day. What sort of doctor's office closes that early?

The cats are being especially bad lately. They jump onto the dinner table and the kitchen counter whenever they please. They attempt to snake food from our plates. They drink out of our cups and glasses. They are rude, rotten beasts.

I've got to write up a document for something special, and I think I've figured out how to handle the formatting. Only thing is, I don't know what in the hell I'm going to write about.

All in all, I'm feeling like I want to crawl into a hole and hide today. There is plenty to do at work today, though. PLENTY.

If the way I feel this morning is indicative of the way my day is going to pan out, maybe I should find a nice burrow to sleep in.

Hazards of Dark Sun

My Dragon article is up and available for you here.

I attended Origins over this past weekend with some co-workers from EA Mythic. We were there to demonstrate how far Warhammer: Age of Reckoning has come. It was a great show in that regard, and I enjoyed meeting the folks who will eventually be playing WAR.

Origins was a bit smaller than I expected it to be. There was some thought that the convention is on the decline; I'm not sure, honestly, having never been. I don't have any past experience with Origins, so I can't make a solid judgement in that regard. Compared to Gen Con Indy, any convention -- even Origins -- is small.

While there, I got to see Henry Lopez from Paradigm Concepts, as well as my pals Hal Mangold, Christopher McGlothlin, and Steve Kenson from Green Ronin.

Super Genius Games

By the way, here's a bit of news from my friends Stan! and Hyrum. I'm not usually one for putting ads on my blogs, but I want to see these fellows succeed. Keep your eyes on Super Genius Games!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Escondido, CA (June 14, 2008) – Super Genius Games (SGG) proudly announces the upcoming release of its first One Night Stand, a new line of adventures, standees, and full-scale map tiles suitable for use with any edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game or other fantasy RPGs. Each product in the One Night Stand line will offer a complete package of everything a game group needs for an evening of adventure.

"This publication model fits squarely in the Super Genius philosophy of providing an entire evening's worth of gaming fun in a single, complete, reasonably-priced package," said Stan!, Creative Director for Super Genius Games and co-designer of the first two One Night Stand products.

Each One Night Stand will feature an original, fully rendered map in both a single-page GM version and full-scale map tiles that can be used as a battle mat at the gaming table.

"We’re working with some of the best cartographers in the business to create fun, exciting maps for use in any fantasy roleplaying game, especially those that focus on tactical play using miniatures and maps," said Hyrum Savage, President of Super Genius Games. "There will be traps, monsters, and lots of cool surprises for GMs to spring on their players."

One Night Stand adventures will also contain printable standee figures for all of the creatures and monsters encountered in the scenario. These standees are provided through a partnership with Interactive Design Adventures (IDA), who are the creators of the wildly popular Stand-Ins line of printable standees.

The first two One Night Stand products will be released in mid-June 2008 with one being available as a free download in honor of the upcoming Free RPG Day. The entire One Night Stand line will be published in PDF format at RPGNow.com and DriveThruRPG.com for the low price of $6.99 each. Additional products will be released on a regular basis so GM's will always have something available for their games.

About Super Genius Games
Super Genius Games is an imprint of OtherWorld Creations. Founded in fall 2007, SGG is dedicated to publishing quality print and PDF products for a wide range of games and game systems.

Co-founders Hyrum Savage and Stan! between them have more than 22 years experience working professionally in the hobby games industry. They have done projects with and created products for Wizards of the Coast, Upper Deck Entertainment, TSR Inc., Paizo Publishing, Malhavoc Press, West End Games, Steve Jackson Games, The Game Mechanics, Guardians of Order, and many other industry-leading companies. Their work has been nominated for 10 major game industry awards.

Still Alive

I'm still breathing, though some days I feel like I'm on life support. It's hard to keep up with work (which is demanding in a lot of ways), my freelance projects (which are just as demanding as I've come to expect), and my family obligations (which make the day job and the freelance writing look like child's play by comparison).

So, yeah. I'm here, I'm just busy busy busy. There are never enough hours in the day.

In the news:

D&D 4E is in the house. I haven't had a chance to play it, and I don't know when I will. I've got the core books and I've breezed through them. Overall, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm sure the game plays well, but I'm not sure that it's got the sorts of character options I've come to expect.

To me, RPGs are about character options. In a class-based system, especially, character options are king. They are what differentiate Fighter A from Fighter B. This is why I enjoyed kits in AD&D 2nd Edition, and what made feats (and to some extent, Prestige Classes) so valuable in D&D 3.X.

On the surface, D&D 4th Edition looks to me like characters are even more codified. Multiclassing is out, for the most part. Abilities are chosen from a very limited pool (though I'm sure that, with enough time and enough expansions, this will change). This means that one character will be very much like the next of his class. And, of course, there's the 4E/MMO parallel that everyone seems to be drawing. I can see why, and I'm sure it's entirely intentional. As it is, I'm on the fence.

Will I run D&D 4E? Maybe. I need to try it out at least once to make a final determination. As it is, I still like 3.X quite a bit.

My first D&D 4E article will be up on D&D Insider pretty soon. Look for Hazards of Dark Sun to appear very soon in Dragon Magazine.

In other news, I'm probably going to miss GenCon this year. However, I will be at Origins (for the first time) this coming weekend. I'm going with EA Mythic, and we'll be showing our game off. Drop on by and say hello!

The next supplement for the Saga Edition of the Star Wars RPG, Threats of the Galaxy, is coming out next month. See the listing here, and check out a preview here.

Not much else to say at the moment (and not much time to say it, anyway). I'll post a little something later on.

Wanted Dead: Ewoks

I had a dream last night. It was Star Wars-themed, and somewhat kooky.

Somehow, Ewoks had emigrated from Endor to Tatooine. The Ecological branch of the ISB (Imperial Security) had deemed them an invasive species, and granted hunters certain quotas for killing them. Thus, it was permissible for a certain number of Ewoks to be killed by each hunter each week, and bounties were offered for each one.

Hunters could only kill Ewoks of specific colors or fur patterns each week. Ewoks killed that didn't match these guidelines didn't count towards bounties. I guess this is my fevered brain's attempt at including some silly bureaucracy to the Imperial Ecological Agency's methods.

In the dream, I got to tag along with an Imperial Ecological warden as he inspected kills. We were walking around in some back-water desert town. There were large bins filled with dead (and, admittedly, half-dead) Ewoks.

One bin contained non-conforming kills, ie, Ewoks of the wrong color/fur pattern for the week. None of them counted for bounties, they were just there to be tallied.

There was another bin filled to bursting with dark brown Ewoks; I can only assume it was the week for dark brown Ewoks.

The last bin contained a motley assortment of Ewoks of all colors and in all states of decomposition. When I asked the warden about these, he told me they were road casualties: in other words, road kill; unlucky Ewoks who had wandered onto roads and fallen victim to landspeeders.

To make things more interesting, some Ewoks had gone to extreme lengths to maintain comfort in the extreme heat of Tatooine's twin suns. These Ewoks would shave their bodies bare, and had adopted robes similar to those used by Jawas. In effect, they even looked like pudgy Jawas, and had taken to infiltrating Jawa society (with varying degrees of success) in order to avoid the hunts.

That about covers the dream. Thanks for reading.

A World of Warcraft Moment

I call this particular screen cap "Beef Stew" for obvious reasons.
For some reason, a bunch of Tauren folks performed a sort of "Thunder Bluff Jonestown," and drowned themselves in the pond near the bank. They've been floating there for several days now.

I can only imagine what it must smell like.

Geek Chic (or "Revel In Your Geekiness")

A while back, I got some replica patches from Intergalactic Trading Company that emulate the insignia worn by the characters in the movie Aliens. I'd sat on them for a while, but one day I decided to put them to use.

Basically, I bought a flight jacket (an MA-1, to be exact) and put the patches on it. Seeing as it's a flight jacket, I decided to theme it after the drop ship crew in the movie; namely, the characters Ferro and Spunkmeyer. In the movie, the two of them only wear flight suits, not jackets, so it was all an extrapolation. I patterned the insignia lay-out based on how they had their flight suits laid out.

So, this is basically what I have. The only thing that's different is the red "Bug Stomper" patch on the right breast. It's a patch never portrayed in the movie, but it matches the name of the drop ship that the crew pilots down to the surface of LV-426. Everything else (the Colonial Marines rocker w/Regimental Patch, the US Flag, and the blue "Victory by Wings" patch) is positioned just like in the film.

I mentioned I got the patches from Intergalactic. Well, all except for the Victory by Wings patch. For some reason, that one isn't available there, and I ended up getting it on Ebay. According to the Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual, it's the "unofficial unit badge of the 3rd Marine Aerospace Wing."

The jacket isn't an official MA-1. It's a knock-off produced by Tru-Spec, a company in Korea. I bought it from US Cavalry. While the first jacket they sent was the wrong size, they replaced it with a jacket in the correct size that fits well. It's sturdy, warm, and very comfortable.

Problem is, it's going to be too warm come summer. I'd like to find a light all-weather field jacket to put the other patches on, and model it after something the ground troops were wearing. That's a project for another time.

I guess it's pretty geeky, eh? The average person won't know what they're looking at, I reckon; they'll figure it's just a flight jacket with patches on it. So much the better.