A Quick Post

Saturday morning, I took care of Christmas cards, under the watchful eye of the boy. He divided his attention between the television and myself, until it was time to wake up mommy (one of his favorite activities, right up there with waking up daddy). All in all, it took me a long time to get the cards done, and even then, I didn't get them mailed until Sunday night (which really equates to mailing them on Monday, anyway).

About three years ago, we started writing a holiday letter (thanks to Lynn for the inspiration) to include in our cards. The letter only goes to people who might have some interest in our family life. Further, close friends, who already know the details, might also be spared the letter. After all, they see us all the time, so I don't think they need a recap of our boring lives.

The holiday letter, printed and folded into quarters, was done. But wait, there's more. I am one of those people who can't just put a blank card with a holiday letter into an envelope. No, I have to sign and inscribe a message into each individual card, tailored to whomever the recipient(s) happen to be. This, of course, takes even more time.

So, yeah, they're mailed. If you don't get one and you think that you should, send me your address (because I probably don't have it!).

Saturday evening was Amy's company Christmas party. We ate at a place called "When In Rome," which is in Encinitas. It's a somewhat upscale Italian restaurant, very good food. I had an Italian beer (can't recall the name) and a glass (or two) of Merlot. I'm not normally a wine person, and I immediately understood why when I'd taken a sip of the stuff. Dinner consisted of four choices (lamb shank, sea bass, stuffed chicken breast, or filet mignon), plus a salad course, a pasta course, and dessert.

It was a good night, even though we had to leave early to rescue my parents from my son (who is well into the swing of the terrible twos).

Sunday. I had plans for Sunday, but none of them came to fruition. Instead, I ran errands. Grocery shopping, primarily, since the cupboards were bare and we needed supplies for baking. We'll be making cookies this week, though I don't know how many we'll bake, or if we'll even ship any out. I'll also be making banana bread tonight or tomorrow night. It's a big hit with my co-workers, so I reckon I shouldn't disappoint.

It's well past time for me to ready myself for work. More later...

Getting to Know Your Friends (Holiday Edition)

Holiday Edition of Getting to Know Your Friends
Welcome to the 2006 Holiday Edition of Getting to Know Your Friends! You know the drill. Highlight, copy, and paste and change my answers to your answers.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
(Mexican) Hot chocolate. With bourbon.

2. Does Santa wrap presents, or just sit them under the tree?
He wraps them. Or, rather, we wrap them. I can't imagine having unwrapped presents under the tree.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
Nope. It's poisonous to cats, AFAIK.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
As soon as we get the tree, usually mid-December.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Ham.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child:
Getting a bunch of plastic machine guns and military gear from Santa, and then (make-believe) shooting my friends with them. We were all army brats, so violence came naturally to us.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I don’t remember, but we never had a chimney anyway until we moved to California.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
At my grandparents’ house, yes. At home, no.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
White lights, ornaments.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
Love it, but haven't had to live with it for a quarter of a century.

12. Can you ice skate?
Sort of. I'm much better at sprawling.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
I got a big, black trenchcoat one year that I wore almost daily throughout high school.

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
My son.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
Pecan pie, though we make these peanut butter/chocolate cookies that are wicked good.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Decorating the tree.

17. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving?
Both are nice.

18. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
"Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg..."

19. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
Yum.

Happy Holidays!!

Ord Vaxal Revisited

My first paid publication was Ord Vaxal: Prison Planet of the Empire, which appeared in the Polyhedron portion of Dungeon #106. I was doing a little vanity searching today, with "Ord Vaxal" as the search item, and I came up with a couple of cool links that I wanted to share.

The first is Jeff Carlisle's site. Jeff did some of the art for the article, including the map of Tof Soren (which must've been based on the hand-scribbled map I'd originally submitted with the article). He's got some of that art posted on his site (including the aforementioned map). Check it out.

The second site that came up belongs to a fellow who goes by the moniker Jedime, and he creates custom Star Wars action figures. One of those figures, viewable here, is one of Tof Soren's peacekeepers. I am quite amused.

Latest Player Type Quiz

JD asked us to take this test, so I went ahead and did it. This isn't the same one I took back in July, and my ratings between the two show a little variation.

So here goes...

You scored as Storyteller. The Storyteller is in it for the plot: the sense of mystery and the fun of participating in a narrative that has the satisfying arc of a good book or movie. He enjoys interacting with well-defined NPCs, even preferring antagonists who have genuine motivations and personality to mere monsters. To the Storyteller, the greatest reward of the game is participating in a compelling story with interesting and unpredictable plot threads, in which his actions and those of his fellow characters determine the resolution.

With apologies to Robin Laws.

Storyteller		75%
Character Player		75%
Tactician		65%
Casual Gamer		50%
Weekend Warrior		40%
Power Gamer		25%
Specialist		10%

What RPG Player (Not Character) Type Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

Cyberpunk Triggertime

We had the crew over on Saturday evening for Cyberpunk, but we didn't play. Two of the PCs had to be finished, and the other two needed to finalize equipment. We mostly BS'd and prepped for the next session, which (God willing) will be the 17th. Yeah, a Sunday, I know, but with the holidays approaching, gaming is going to take a back seat to Christmas carols, Yule logs, and eggnog.

I finally got to play out a game of War of the Ring, too. We overlooked a couple of rules here or there which might have contributed to Sauron's victory over the free peoples, but we'll know better next time. Overall impression: it's a good, good game. The event cards really add a lot to the game's mood, while at the same time being useful.

At first blush, it seems that the Free Peoples have the crap end of the stick. For the most part, their forces are scattered and underpowered, they have fewer action dice, and the Shadow has a lot of units. As I played (as Sauron), I began to realize that I had a few distinct problems. For one, aside from the four Nazgul I started with, I didn't have any leaders. Between the members of the Fellowship and numerous leader figures, the Free Peoples have a lot of leadership to spread around.

What leaders do is allow for re-rolls after combat. Say you roll your dice to attack, and you have two leaders in your army. This means you get to re-roll two (or more, in the case of some of the companions) of your failed combat dice. Aside from the Nazgul (each of which has a Leadership of 1), the Shadow only has three other figures with any sort of Leadership: Saruman (who can't leave Orthanc at all), the Witch King (who activates all Free People nations when he comes out), and the Mouth of Sauron (who only appears if all the Free People nations are At War).

This means that you have to use action dice to juggle the Nazgul around if you want one or more leader re-rolls, which takes time away from actually moving and attacking. Plus, a lot of the Shadow's combat cards require one or more Nazgul to be present in the combat before you can use them.

There are a bunch of event cards that the Free Peoples' player can get that are a real kick in the goonies, too. For instance, Robert pulled a card that had the Ents tearing down Orthanc. I didn't expect it, and since I only had a single unit there in reserve (along with Saruman), the day ended with Saruman dead. Quite a blow, indeed, especially when combined with my losing Dol Guldur due to an invasion of dwarves from the north.

The victory was purely military on my part. I pressed the advantage of numbers, which is pretty much all I had past a certain point. I massed a lot of forces around Minas Tirith, but that was more of a decoy meant to keep Robert busy reinforcing the city while I set my sites on Rivendell (the defeat of which ultimately won me the game).

Next time, I want to try my hand at the Free Peoples. I see some potential in one or two military strategies, but they're risky and will require a lot of luck.

Anyway, time to go back to work.

Weekend Report

The long week has passed me by, and it's finally Saturday morning.

My big box came from Fantasy Flight on Thursday, but I didn't pick it up until yesterday. One of the games I ordered was missing, but I contacted FFG and they're sending me a replacement.

I don't know when we'll get around to trying these games out, but they all seem to be pretty nifty. Going over what I picked up...

The three Horizon books that I was missing. For those of you who don't know, Horizon was a line of mini-RPGs released by FFG using the d20 mechanics. They're all of them pretty neat, and easily mined for cool ideas if you don't intend to use them as games unto themselves. I already had Grimm and Redline. The three I was missing include MechaMorphosis, Spellslinger, and Virtual.

MechaMorphosis is a thinly-veiled adaptation of the Transformers. It's pretty cool. It's a bit mechanics-heavy, but seems playable nonetheless.

Spellslinger is fantasy meets Old West. It's not historical (or even quasi-historical, like Deadlands), and is more akin to a fantasy setting that is derivative of Western cliches. Overall, I like it, though there are only three character classes available.

The last one, Virtual, is a lot line Tron, where the PCs portray programs. My first impression of the game is favorable, but I have yet to delve too deeply into the rules and setting.

The rest of the games I bought were board games. I've wanted to pick up the Lord of the Rings Trivia Game for a long time, but I was somewhat hesitant to spend the full retail price on a game I doubt I'd ever get to play. You see, I'm not exactly a LotR expert, but I'm probably a little more knowledgable than the average Joe. Still, for $10, I couldn't say no.

The rest of the games I bought were in FFG's "Silver Line." They're small format board games, which is nice -- they don't take up the same kind of space as a full-sized game.

The first of these is Arena Maximus, which is a game about chariot racing. The track is laid out randomly using tiles, with segments being revealed as the players race their chariots. This is probably the one I'd like to try out first.

The second was Kingdoms. I'm not sure if this is going to be a good game or not, but given that it was written by Reiner Knizia, I figure it's got to be decent.

Number three is Magdar. The premise is similar to the tale of Moria from Lord of the Rings. The players are miners (dwarves, I think) who are digging for Mithril. If they dig too deeply, they end up disturbing Magdar, a demon. I reckon all bets are off once this occurs.

Scarab Lords is the fourth title, and it's also the one that wasn't in the box. Can't say too much about it, in that case, other than it sounded neat (which is why I bought it).

The fifth is Senator, which I picked up mostly for my wife. She likes all things Imperial Rome, and this one sounded right up her alley. Each player is a Roman senator who wants to become emperor. After Arena Maximus, this is probably the next on my list of games to try out.

Last of all, we've got Wreckage. The game pits players, who are driving Road Warrior-esque cars to destroy one another in an attempt to get all the gasoline. It seems to me that it's a bit closer to Car Wars, since you actually move your car around, and use an included ruler to measure range, etc. I'm interested in trying it out, but I don't know if anyone else I game with will be interested or not.

So that's my haul from the FFG sale. It's still going on, too.

Okay, what else for the weekend..? Cyberpunk tonight, for one. Which reminds me, I need to get some work done on that before the players show up tonight. Between the errands I need to run, I have a feeling it's going to be a busy day.

Seduction Quiz

This one seems to be floating around the internet at the moment. It's amusing.





I didn't think I was such a push-over. Maybe I should ask my wife to confirm...

Dirty Laundry

No, no. I'm not about to make any sort of spectacular confession. Not without a lawyer present, anyway. I'm talking about dirty laundry, literally. Clothes so filthy and mired with grime and sweat that, given the right climate and a couple more weeks, they'd be able to walk (or slither) about by themselves.

Tonight's the night for dirty laundry. The magic trick, as you might know, is sometimes referred to as washing. This involves water, and a miraculous substance known as either soap or detergent. Where I live, washing takes place in a facility that houses about twenty mechanical washers and dryers. The washers wash, the dryers dry. Funny how that works, hm?

In order to get these contraptions to wash your clothes, you have to feed them hard currency. It costs $1.25 to wash a load of clothes, and another $0.75 to dry them. The entire process, from start to finish, probably takes about 90 minutes. It may seem like a monumental waste of time, but believe me: clean clothes are a necessity.

All joking aside, tonight is Tuesday. A small assignment has landed in my lap, due by the end of the week. Something to occupy my mind, finally. It doesn't pay, but it might lead to grander things in my future if I do it well enough to get noticed. Wish me luck.

I'm having the crew over to play Cyberpunk this weekend. I hope we can manage to get a little trigger time in. I've got the outline for the introductory session ready, but I need to get down to brass tacks. This means writing up NPC stats, all manner of descriptions, that sort of thing. Typical GM stuff.

It's been a long time since I've GMed anything. It feels like it's been forever, in fact. I know that it's like riding a bike, and that you never quite forget how it's done, but I still get to wondering if everything will click. Will the game bloom, or die?

Oh, and one more bit of news: Wizards has announced the impending release of Complete Champion on their web site. This is the one that I contributed to, the one I've been keeping under my hat this whole time. If you're feeling particularly generous, go to Amazon.com and pre-order a copy today.

Perceptive readers will notice that my name is not on the cover of the book. There is, I assure you, an explanation for this. Generally speaking, only four names fit on a book cover. I happen to be the fifth author, and my contribution was also the smallest. As this is a mere mock-up of the final product, there is a chance that my name will grace the exterior of the book with the rest of those talented folks. If not, I'll still have interior credit, for which I'm quite pleased.

An old friend of mine recently asked me if I'd ever like to write a novel. This question is not uncommon, coming from other people as well. The answer, plain and simple, is, "I don't know."

I'm sure that, someday, I'll be hit by a bolt of figurative lightning, and I'll leap up and shout, "Eureka!" Until then I'm happy to freelance, contributing my own thoughts and ideas to existing properties and product lines. If I decide to write a novel, and pursue its publication, I can only hope that my list of freelance publishing credits will help me to get my foot in the door, and lend some air of credibility to my work.

So that's it for now, folks. I've pontificated enough for one night. As always, I'm sure there will be more later on...

Adios, Long Weekend

Wednesday afternoon, I sat on the cusp of a long-anticipated four-day weekend and thought, "Come Sunday night, I'm going to wonder where the weekend went."

Self-fulfilling prophecy, maybe?

It's Monday morning (or should that be "mourning"?), and I'm up at the crack of dawn to start another glorious week. You never realize how long a five-day stretch of work is until you've spent more than two or three days in a row off. The length of the week seems magnified, somehow, stretching off into an infinity of monotonous tasks. Tuesday arrives an eternity later, and you wonder, "Shouldn't it be Thursday by now?"

Another self-fulfilling prophecy, I reckon.

The long weekend, in retrospect, feels correspondingly long. Thursday including the usual turkey-gobbling with family. Friday was a day of errands, following by listless sloth on my part. Saturday, we drove about, spent a little bit of money, and enjoyed a meal out. Sunday, we cooked our own turkey after what seemed to be days of prep time, and shared it (as well as stuffing and mashed potatoes) with friends.

Having friends over last night, we decided to play some games. I finally got to give War of the Ring a shot; our pal Robert helped me on that account. It seems to take a long while to set up, and we had a few fits and starts as we read the rules between moves. I sat myself in the inimitable role of Sauron, while Rob played the miserable Free Peoples. My evil plans came to naught, however, because by the time we'd gotten the hang of things, it was time to clear the table for dinner.

Curse those meddling kids.

After dinner (which turned out quite well, thanks), my brother in law, Adam, as well as Rob and myself, tried out Cthulhu 500. We played that until my son went to bed, after which we pulled out the Lord of the Rings boardgame. With my wife included, we managed to account for four hobbits. The first two boards seemed easy, but Shelob's Lair messed us up good. By the time we'd made it to Mordor, it was a forgone conclusion that we were all going to die. A series of very bad tiles destroyed Sam (me), Pippin, and Merry, leaving Frodo to witness Sauron's ultimate victory first hand.

I've actually played in a game of Lord of the Rings where we made it to the end and destroyed the ring. I think this must've been a stroke of luck, because I can't imagine ever doing so again. As much as I enjoy the game, I have to wonder what the statistical odds of success are. They can't be high.

After the game ended, we kicked everyone out, cleaned up house, and went to bed. It was a late night, and here I am some six hours later, tired and somewhat maudlin about the long weekend that passed me by. Another two hours in a warm bed next to my wife sounds like some approximation of Heaven, but I'm too responsible to call in and make a half-assed excuse in order to delay the inevitable.

To the shower with me, and then to the orthodontic salt mine I go.

The Blues

I'm feeling incredibly glum today. It's little secret that I've been feeling glum a lot lately. There are a number of things on my mind, and while no single one can be blamed for my gloomy mood, taken together they present a formidable host.

I suppose I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and make things happen. It's increasingly obvious that my problems aren't likely to solve themselves. Half of them, though, involve waiting for something that I am unable to otherwise hurry along. The other half might be solved by quick (or, at the least, imminent) action on my part.

Forgive me for not making a list of these issues. Some of the things on it will appear far too trivial to the average joe, I'm sure. It hardly helps that I'm tired. I must not be sleeping enough, or perhaps I'm getting old. I've come to appreciate a late morning or afternoon nap on the weekends. I fear that I will eventually find myself nodding off in movie theaters.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. We're feasting with my family, as is the norm for this holiday. I look forward to four days away from the office, though I'm sure they will pass by all too quickly. I have little planned, aside from attending tomorrow's meal.

Incidentally, Fantasy Flight Games is having a holiday sale. Most items are available for $5, and this presents several good deals. I myself have succumbed to the temptation of cheap games. You can even buy the Fireborn books for $5 each, if you so choose. Even though I didn't write them, I must issue a heartfelt recommendation for the books in the Blue Planet line. You can pick up the entire series of Blue Planet books for $5 each, which is practically theft considering the high quality of the title.

Back to work...

Box Office Hobbits

And so it appears that Peter Jackson will not be directing the movie adaptation of The Hobbit, after all. I am somewhat disappointed by this, as a live-action version of The Hobbit would be a spectacle, indeed. I’d be really interested to see a CGI Smaug in action.

I’ve been a fan of Peter Jackson’s for a long, long time, well before he was thrust into the limelight by his adaptation of LotR. Bad Taste was the first movie of his that I’d seen. While Dead Alive (titled Brain Dead everywhere but the USA, AFAIK) wasn’t really my cup of tea, I enjoyed both The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures. Still haven’t seen Meet the Feebles, and King Kong, while pretty to look at, was somewhat long IMO.

I guess I appreciate his low-budget work more than his high-budget films. Don’t get me wrong, I respect his attempts to bring Tolkien’s world to life. He got a lot of it dead to rights, but I also feel that he got an awful lot wrong. I don’t want to go into specifics: this entry isn’t intended as an item-by-item critique of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. We’ll save that for another time.

There’s been a serious lack of good live-action fantasy flicks. I can name but a handful that are, in my estimation, worthy: Conan the Barbarian, Krull, the Harry Potter films, Ladyhawke, Beastmaster, and Excalibur are but a few of my favorites. There are even some movies, such as The Sword and the Sorcerer, that I absolutely adore, but which are admittedly horrible when taken on their own.

Back to the topic of The Hobbit: I guess that New Line will recruit another director for the movie. I wonder who it will be? Will the fact that Jackson isn’t directing it detract from its success? Only time will tell.

On my to-do list: see Casino Royale. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the latest Bond flick, and I’d really like to get to the theater within the next few days and see it.

Oh, by the way, I did get to have breakfast with my friend Dave, and we talked a good deal about many things, especially Cyberpunk. Talking about it with him made me want to play it, dammit. I yearn for the old days. We had some good games back then, I tell you. I don’t know if they’d be good by today’s standards, but they definitely served a purpose, and they continue to live on in my memory.

So, yeah…we have to get Cyberpunk rolling, and soon.

Video Game Quality

It's a good thing I got those XBox games cheap, I tell you.

Don't get me wrong, I've really enjoyed the Brothers in Arms titles (even though I think that they were a bit on the short side), and Midnight Club 3 is a lot of fun (I'd probably've paid full price for it, in fact). In the case of Medal of Honor: European Assault, though...I've played through the first scenario, and I've pretty much had it with the game.

As far as FPS games go, there's always a little bit to get used to. The controls, for instance: there are always minor variations on the way the controller is set up. I can deal with that. I have to say, though, that the Brothers in Arms games have spoiled me in relation to WWII-themed shooters. They're twenty times better than European Assault. Not to mention, European Assault is campy. The squad interface is primitive. The animations fall flat. The level of realism is pre-kindergarten (taking out a tank with a frag grenade? Pah-lease!).

I figured that, even with the silliness of the game, I could probably play through it and enjoy myself. I wasn't expecting much for my $10. The sad truth is, I can't. I'm going to yank the disc out of the XBox when I get home, slap it in its case, and put it up on the media rack to collect dust until I decide to give it or throw it away.

Anyway...

My Amazon order arrived yesterday. Pieces of Eight looks as neat as it looked at Gen Con. I can't wait to try it out, though I am a bit uncertain how I should stack my "deck" (as your coin-comprised "ship" is called). The instructions detail the different coins and their varied effects, but they don't provide any ideas or examples for how one should put a deck together. It's going to take some experimentation on my part to figure out what works.

Cthulhu 500 is going to be entertaining. It's a simple game that will be fun to try out. Maybe tonight.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try and see if I can do something about my radiator leak. I'm no vehicle expert, so I can't rightly say if it's fixable, or if I should just put a bullet in the car and be done with it. More on this mechanical enigma later on. Right now, I've got to clock in from lunch and get back to work. Huzzah.

Soup Night

It's tortilla chicken soup night here at the Astleford household. I've been hard at work, slaving over a hot stove, since I got home. My wife is chasing my son around, making him laugh hysterically so that he can't stand up on his own. Soft music is playing on the stereo, and the paper cut from this morning's session of filing (at work) is screaming bloody murder because I got jalepeno juice (or salsa or something) in it.

Gen Con SoCal is not in the cards for this weekend. Sorry, folks, I just ain't doing it. My car has a radiator leak which, combined with its general unreliability as of late, precludes me from making the drive. Not that I would have gone were my car in tip-top shape; I'm sure I would've made some other excuse, either due to finances or (most likely) time.

This doesn't stop me from seeing a friend of mine on Sunday, though; a guy that I only see at conventions named Dave. Dave is an Aussie that I met at the very first Gen Con SoCal. He was a player in a massive Cyberpunk 2020 game that I was helping to run, and by chance I ended up moderating for his table towards the end of my evening out. I'm not sure when he noticed my name, but he recognized me instantly as "Ocelot," author of a handful of homebrew Cyberpunk articles from "back in the day."

As neat as it was to be recognized, it was also a bit uncomfortable. Granted, it would've been a heck of lot more uncomfortable if he'd expressed negative opinions about the design work I'd done in my youth. I managed to get over it, though, and he and I have since become friends. In the years following, he moved from Australia to the USA, and now lives a few scant hours away in the Arizona outback. On his way home Sunday, Dave plans to stop by my place, and we're going to head out for breakfast. It'll be good to talk with him again.

Aside from my car acting up, I also got the results of my latest blood test. Don't worry, folks, I'm not dying or anything. At least, not yet. In fact, I guess I'm pretty healthy for a fat guy who does little else but type all day. That is, except for the levels of triglycerides in my bloodstream. Who knew this stuff could kill you? So I'm going to be heading for a low-fat diet in a matter of days, which is pretty much what I've been doing for the past week or two, anyway. Not that I've noticed a difference.

This past weekend, I went to the first movie I've seen since V For Vendetta. I've been a big WWII buff for a while now, and I realized last week that Flags of Our Fathers had been out for a while. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It was a good mixture of grueling battle scenes intermixed with a story that was somewhat removed from the rigors of war. I was especially interested in the film for two reasons. First off, my grandfather was a sailor aboard an LST that landed at Iwo Jima; and secondly, there have been few good "modern" films that center soley on the Pacific campaign.

By "good 'modern' films" exploring the Pacific aspect of the war, the only one I can really think of that I approved of was 1998's The Thin Red Line. I'm probably the only person I know who liked the movie, though, being as it was largely tropical eye-candy interspersed with the self-reflection of the characters and only sparsely populated with combat scenes. There have been other films, sure, but I consider the majority of them (including the banal, Titanicesque Pearl Harbor, and John Woo's overly fiery Windtalkers) to be cinematic crap.

If you can think of other worthy "modern" Pacific theatre WWII flicks, by all means, let me know.

Okay, so past that, what else is up? Hmm. I ordered copies of Atlas Games' Pieces of Eight and Cthulhu 500. I regret not buying Pieces of Eight at Gen Con this past August, and so I'm making up for it now. As for Cthulhu 500, we can always use another light-hearted card game for those occasions when RPing is not on the agenda, but gaming of some kind is.

I also discovered that there's a re-make of Conquest of the Empire, which was the Roman equivalent of Axis and Allies when I was but a lad. The new edition looks damn fine, and along with a rules update (as well as some expansion, from the looks of things), it's definitely on my list of games to buy within the next month or two.

So I'm babbling tonight, yeah. There's very little of consequence for me to say, actually. Schwalb is heading to see Queensryche tonight; I never figured him for a QR fan. I've seen Queensryche live on two occasions, the second of which included a backstage meeting with 3/5ths of the band. They seemed like a great group of guys, and it was a good show to boot.

I've got some stuff to do, so I guess I'll cut this post short. There will be more later, I'm sure.

Okay. So It's Been A Month. So What?

As I sit here, watching the special edition of Aliens while my wife puts my son to bed, I'm trying to think back over the past thirty (or so) days and put everything into perspective. I guess there are some folks who might want to know what's been going on, at least from a gaming and/or writing perspective.

In mid-October, we (meaning, myself, the wife, and the boy) flew to Pennsylvania to visit family. Just prior to leaving, I'd posted an entry, complaining of earth-shattering news that I couldn't speak about. Well, I still can't speak about it, but there's even more earth-shattering news that I have already spoken about here.

If you're impatient, skip to the bottom of that entry and read for yourself. That particular news item has more or less eclipsed every other news item that might have arisen before and after.

The future looks bright, insofar as work (writing) is concerned. I'm in a sort of holding pattern at the moment, which allows me to concentrate on other pursuits. That isn't to say that my future, insofar as everything but work (writing) is concerned, looks particularly bleak. It doesn't. Leaner, maybe. Hungrier. But bleak? Naaaah.

Such "pursuits" in recent weeks, thanks to all of the XBox titles at the local Borders being on sale for 75% off, have consisted of a lot of video game playing. Titles such as Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition and the Brothers in Arms series of WWII FPS's have featured prominently. I might feel like a side of beef, sitting there with a video game controller clenched in my sweaty paws, but the price was right. I love a bargain!

I also picked up a copy of Fantasy Flight's War of the Ring boardgame. Haven't played it yet, but dammit! For as much as it cost me, I'm going to, even if it means marching all the way to Mordor.

As for gaming, there hasn't been much. With Thanksgiving (and, after that, Christmas) on the way, I'm sure that scheduling will become a royal PITA. And so it goes.

That's the sound of Newt screaming as her father is revealed to have a facehugger stuck to his mug. It seems to say to me, "Gary, wrap this up and do something else for a while before your laptop battery sputters. So, for now, adieu. I'll get back to the rigors of posting on a more regular scheudule. I promise.

The Earth Shakes

Yes, earth-shattering news on my end, and it's not just North Korea testing a nuke. Nothing I can talk about, either, so I suppose I'll shut the heck up now and go on with my day as usual.

Three days of work this week, prior to our trip. JD's next installment of the Liberty D&D game is tonight, otherwise I'd plan to be out writing. Andrew (one of the other players) and I helped JD and Keri move and assemble their "ultimate gaming table" last night. It's a bit like the HumVee of gaming set-ups. I guess we get to try it out tonight.

I reckon I'll write either tomorrow night or Wednesday night. I've got a lot of things that need to get done before we leave, so my work is going to have to be curtailed for the time being.

Another Day

I'd forgotten how much I like autumn in California. Besides the seasonal transition from "winter" (a subjective term, especially here) to spring, the California fall is the best time of year. There's none of the heat (alternately dry and sticky) that plagues us during the summer time. The current weather report is cool, with a light breeze, somewhat hazy, with only a few clouds here and there.

Of course, the heat of summer bites, especially when living in an upstairs apartment with no central A/C. We've got the crummy window unit, which works, but it's not exactly efficient. There's no A/C in the bedrooms, though, so we end up soaking in our own sweat on summer nights with the windows open and between 2 and 5 fans blowing hot air on us from all directions.

Not exactly a romantic image, eh?

So, back to the present. I'm at the coffee shop, doing my warm-up before I dig in and start on a five hour session of key-tapping. I'm starting to doubt I'll be completely done by the time my self-imposed deadline rears its ugly head.

All Over the Place

I'm all over the place tonight. Three posts in one day is some sort of record for me, at any rate. One of them emotional, the next pondering, and this one...well, this one is just a decompress of sorts.

I went writing tonight, as I mentioned I would be doing. I wore my "Vader was Framed" t-shirt, and one of the girls (Danielle) complimented me on it. I got a good deal of work done, thankfully. If I can keep up this sort of pace, I'll be drinking champagne on Sunday night. After I got done at the coffee shop, I had to put a few dollars into my gas tank, or I'd never make it to work tomorrow. I decided to spent $5 on a touchless car wash, as my Corsica was so embarassingly dirty that I often feel like sneaking out to it after work so that no one sees me driving away in it.

Halloween is coming. It's my wife's favorite holiday, though she has yet to break out her massive collection of decorations. I'll keep bothering her about it until she gets busy. Maybe this weekend she'll feel up to it. I like having those decorations up, as the majority of them are pretty neat. I'll have to get some pictures and post them once she's made the plunge.

There was a time, back when I was still living at home, that I used to run a horror scenario just about every single Halloween. At least, that's how it feels. I probably only ran three or four (or maybe even less than that, eh), but they were always a good time. I'm considering doing it again this year, but I have to get up the energy to get past the current project first. I've already got a possible scenario in mind, a very Delta Greenish sort of plot. I'd probably use the Call of Cthulhu system, just because it seems to work well. Or maybe I can brush off my d20 Call of Cthulhu rules and give them the old college try.

Anyway, I'm on my way to bed soon. I went into work late this morning, so I can't really afford to miss too much time. Maybe the gods will smile on me and I can win the lottery or something.

Probably "or something."

Gen Con SoCal?

One of the many things I'm currently mulling over is whether or not I'm going to attend Gen Con SoCal next month. Even if I did go, it'd be for one or two days instead of the usual four. As much as I'd like to support the largest gaming convention that's within 70 miles of my doorstep, I'm thinking that I'll be skipping it.

I may reconsider. For now, I'm thinking I'll spend the weekend prior to Thanksgiving at home.

In other news, I'll be heading out to the coffee shop in about an hour or so to continue my work in progress. With luck I can wrap it up this weekend, just in time to go to PA. Lord knows I won't have a scrap of time to myself over our family vacation to do any sort of writing. Not that a lack of work is a bad thing. This is, after all, a family vacation.

Forgive, Never Forget

Maybe you know who Charles Carl Roberts IV was. He's the fellow who took several Amish girls hostage in their one-room schoolhouse in Paradise, PA on Monday, and then ended up shooting each of them before taking his own miserable life.

When I read reports of this incident on Monday, I was appalled. How can any human being do something like that to ten innocent children? Given the description of the items he'd brought along with him, as well as his admission to molesting children in the past, one can only imagine what he had planned prior to the point that the police arrived.

So you've got the Amish now, and their faith teaches them that they have to forgive those who trespass against them, that they must not think evil of the man who took the lives of five of their children, and critically wounded five more, as they sat bound and helpless at his feet.

While I can respect the thought of forgivness in principle, my perspective on this crime is one buried in emotion. I am still deeply disturbed, and my heart aches for the victims and their families. It's these sorts of inequities that make me grind my teeth in frustration, and they happen every single day, all over the world.

Could I forgive Charles Roberts if my daughter was one of the dead or wounded? The simple answer is "no." Having killed himself, we'll probably never know why he did what he did, exactly, and we'll never, as a society, be able to punish him for it. Part of me feels that we're better off with the fellow cold and stiff, whether he took his own life or not.

I only wish he'd done us the favor of committing suicide before he'd taken the lives of five human beings, wounded five others, and caused depths of grief to their friends and family members that I hope I never experience.

Brain Like a Fried Egg

That's what you get when you sit me in front of my laptop for five hours at a stretch. Right now, my head feels light and empty. It's not particularly euphoric. It's more disturbing than anything. That, combined with the fact that there is still a lot more work to be done, thousands more words to be written, lends to the overall feeling of despair.

Still, there's some feeling of accomplishment to be had. I've done a good deal of work this weekend, some of which I am pretty proud of. It's going to take several more hours of concerted effort on my part to complete what I've started. I only hope that the powers that be can look upon what I've generated and smile, knowing that I'm on the right course.

Gods, I hope I'm on the right course.

This is one of the first times I've written something (at length) from the perspective of someone who is so far removed from my own thought processes that it's similar, in some respects, to my years in high school drama. I was a method actor, and I immersed myself in the roles I played so much that I carried them around with me when I wasn't on stage. To hear my mother tell it, the two months leading up to my first performance as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol were some of the worst she'd ever spent with me. When she saw me on stage, she finally understood why.

I can't say much about the persona I've adopted for the current project. He's not like me in a lot of ways, some of them disturbing. He might be considered a good guy in the grand scheme of things, but I have trouble agreeing with that. There's more depth to him than that, even if it is to one extreme or the other.

Anyway, enough of that. I can't say anything about it, so I might as well shut up. I need to go home, finish what I've got so far, and send it off for review. Tomorrow, I get up at my normal hour and head in to work. Bother.