Redwolf's Journal (continued)

As I just got finished relating to our General Manager, we seem to have a couple people sleeping on the property at work. At one side of the building, we have some space between the next with some unkept trees and a couple large air conditioning units. Since the circuit breaker on one occasionally trips (leaving my area in the building getting unduly warm), I was out there yesterday to turn it back on and I saw boots. Upon looking a little closer, someone was curled up behind one of the AC units under a jacket, presumably asleep. That bothered me a little, but I let it go the once. Well, this morning I notice what seem to be the same boots and person, and someone else, curled up very close to that spot, just out of normal view. Now, I don't want to be heartless. If these people don't have anywhere better they can go, I don't want to kick them out of a reasonably safe spot. On the other hand, I've found trash back there periodically, which annoys me to no end, and I

Kyn has a lot of negative things to say about Furryfaire. He's also not the most restrained or tactful person I know. This leads to the occasional rant on pubchat, which I always hate to see. As much as I dislike the negativity, I frequently (though not always) agree with the underlying point. General Statement 1 : "Just because we don't agree does not mean we aren't listening." This is often poorly conveyed, but if someone responds to your rant, they're probably at least listening. They may agree. They may disagree. But they're listening. Sometimes, even if they don't reply, they're still listening. There's no point in getting all in a tizzy over it on either side, really. The more emotionally-charged a statement or concern is, the more likely any responses that come back will be likewise, and hostility escalates. If you want to actually have a productive discussion, try to be calm and rational. If someone has conflicting views, try to

Fortune Cookie of the Day: "A long time admirer thinks highly of you." Gosh. Really? I guess that's good. I'd hate for a long time admirer to not think well of me, they might stop admiring me. So I'm finally testing the waters in the whole New Creation/god campaign on Furryfaire. At the request of one of the players involved, I've made up a new character to act as their mortal "chosen." That should keep me below the firing line of divine ego clashes, I hope, and gives another option of what to do on the MUCK, as things have been often quiet with so much attention diverted to that game. The campaign started with a bunch of characters getting shunted/pulled/whatever to an infant world and shortly thereafter giving divine power. They started shaping the world and defining the rules of reality there. Then the Elohim were "found" by someone and made their appearance. I thought it was the sense of "well, you're gods, but there a

I guess poor sleep is better than no sleep? Ugh. Tossed and turned for quite a while last night, and then still didn't sleep well up to and including the mutant-backcountry-murderer-family-horror-movie-style nightmare. Ah well, what can you do? A couple WoW observations (and I finally have my Valor Medal of the First War trinket I've been putting off): 1) The guild has grown recently, with some people joining from the MUCK and some coworkers signing up. None of them are level 80 yet, but if they don't peter out by the time they get there, we might actually need to start thinking about raid scheduling. 2) Group composition really matters - and I'm not just talking about having a tank, healer, and DPS. We ran heroic Nexus last night with 2 of or usual engame characters, 1 alt, and 2 players not usually a part of our heroic runs. I am not, in any way, saying we did badly, but it wasn't nearly as smooth as our usual group. A bit of that might have been less familia

Whee. So it's now officially against policy for our little ol' department to be involved in any practical jokes. Heh. I would have thought that common sense. The last people you want playing jokes would probably be the IT personnel. We could give people heart attacks. >.> Otherwise, I mentioned metagaming in a previous post and felt a need to ramble on some about it. So what is metagaming? Well, it's playing the game outside the game - using things that are not technically a part of a game to influence what is. In Magic this would be making design/play decisions based on not what you see in play, but things like how you know your friends tend to play or what decks are popular at tournaments. In a tabletop RPG, it's taking action based on things your character wouldn't know, like having your character poke the first chest they come across with a spear because the DM used a mimic to ambush people in a previous campaign. It's not exactly "fair,

Database replication is working again this morning. Monday night would probably not have been such a flop if I'd remembered a step, but alas. At least my notes are updated now, and things are back to normal pretty much. It's a load of stress off my mind. And... does anyone know where I can find a good, expansive gallery of RPG character designs? I'm mostly thinking JRPGs, the home pages of which tend to have a "characters" page with images - nothing fancy, but it dawned on me that some of the costume designs are pretty neat and good for borrowing/inspiration. The problem, of course, being I'm not aware of any site that has these images from multiple games in anything approaching a convenient manner. I remember, long ago, a gallery site that compiled images of video game characters, but most of those were from more popular fighting games. Sadly, my Google-fu has not turned any such things up immediately and such a thing may simply not exist in a form I want

Yeah, continued... Work from last night stretched on past midnight - not continuous, but me waiting for files to transfer so I could complete the process. I was up well past 3 am hoping it'd be done. It wasn't. I set my alarm for 5:30, and it was ready for the next step then at least. Of course, uncompressing the file took a long time, too. In the end, it's just shy of 8 am, I've had maybe three hours of scattered sleep between alarms, and it's finally done. And for all that, if anyone got in and accessed that database early, the whole process would be screwed, but I may not even know until later. ... scratch that. I can see already that it's not working. *sigh*

We watched the new Harry Potter movie Sunday. It was pretty good. I probably wouldn't be my favorite of the bunch, but I'd have to watch them all again to decide on one. I can't help but think there should be a crap-ton more warding and spell shielding in what is basically a high school where love potions and death curses are real, and you'd think giving away a luck potion would be cause for expulsion from staff, but nooo. The movie (I haven't read the books, still) doesn't explain the "Half-Blood Prince" title, though it is revealed to whom it refers. I'd expect some meaning there... Luna is a character who amuses me muchly, in spite of being second-(or third-)tier to the story at best. She comes across as eccentric/off-kilter, but cute and nice. I have the feeling this is sorta what one fellow player goes for with their characters, yet they always end up so far out there that we have to try for extra suspension of disbelief and suck up their w

In many an ongoing story, there comes a time for a twist. Something accepted as true is proven false. Maybe a trusted friend is shown to be a crafty enemy. Maybe major events in history were rewritten or hidden by someone. Maybe Darth Vader is really Luke Skywalker's father. It shakes things up a little. It puts something new into the familiar, giving the audience something to think about. The real trick to it, though, is making it both surprising and plausible at the same time. Surprising? Not that hard. Imagine a murder mystery where the murderer is someone who was never touched on or even addressed in the course of the story. Sure, no one would suspect that person because there was literally no way to suspect them. Plausible? That's a little bit harder, because it means the creator of the story has to lay some groundwork at some point. The audience has to look back and be able to see hints of the truth. Of course, by itself, this makes for a twist that's not mu

July 14, 2009 9:29 So the "portal TP" is underway and its secret is out. Frankly, I'm surprised it was secret at all. To have missed the whole "the characters who go will become gods of a new world" aspect, one would have to have avoided wizchat, not heard anything second-hand, and not read any of the headwiz's comments elsewhere. Granted, that's possible, but if any MUCK wizard was actually surprised by this, I'm amazed at their obliviousness. I'm avoiding it myself, so everything I know is second-hand. Thusfar, however, it's sounding about like I'd expect. Posts thusfar indicate a clique of darker (slightly-more-evil-than-not, at least?) character setting up shop in one region. The predictably-power-hungry character and friend are going to town making their own personal ideal society. At least one person was strongly annoyed by the "surprise" of the TP. And somewhere around 80% of the logged-on characters last night were

General goings on in games. Guild Wars So... after 14 weeks, at one session per week (actually, I think 13 play sessions, as I believe I missed a Sunday in there), my ritualist now has an elite skill that's actually worth using. Yay. Though, frankly, we blew through the last couple missions so easily that it might not even matter. I seem to remember those as being harder when I took my paragon through with nothing but heroes/henchmen for support. World of Warcraft My flower-picking death knight is up to level 75. 77 is a vague goal, to have Northrend flying, but I might wait until patch 3.2 to purchase that in order to save some money, and it won't have that high a level requirement anymore then. Ah well. I think it was Friday night that I was asked to tank the end of a Culling of Stratholme run in progress. I walked away with a Royal Crest of Lordaeron. It's something of a sidegrade from the Titansteel Shield Wall I'd had since hitting level 80 - trading som

So I finished Elantris . I think that brings me up to date on Sanderson's novels, and it's still a pity I probably won't be reading the stuff he's doing to finish the Wheel of Time series. Another good read, even if it's his first book. Some formulaic elements are becoming apparent: a magic that's unique and more well thought out than most, a nation at the heart of the story with a main city (of the gods), politics, religion, uncertain history... And he ends up blending it all together pretty darn well. I still liked the Mistborn trilogy best, though.

81 degress is just a little much for a (theoretically) air conditioned office.

Can't overdraft your bank account one day? Trying again the next because "sometimes it works?" Wait... what? You're doing it wrong . It's basic finance. Heck, it's basic math that you shouldn't be spending money you don't have. Okay, there are times when it's almost necessary - houses, college, and maybe cars in some circumstances - but for entertainment? Argh! It's not a difficult concept.

So, normally I argue that: 1) Gods in a fantasy world should be somewhat removed from mortals rather than being frequently present and driven by "normal" goals, so as to be something more than "just powerful guys." 2) Technological advancement should still happen in fantasy worlds. But between Warbreaker and Furryfaire, I'm running some mental theory on a different perspective. So... as far as technology goes, I very much believe in the old saying "necessity is the mother of invention." Technology advances a lot in wars because multiple sides are striving to gain an edge over one another. On a smaller scale, you get that when companies or craftsmen compete, too. Then what happens if there isn't a need? In a extended period of peace with little threat, military advancement can halt and stagnate. If the needs of the citizenry are all met, why make something new? Of course, that depends somewhat on what is "need." There may always

As an experiment, I delved into Karazhan tonight (with a little help in making a raid group, but otherwise solo) just to get to Attumen. He has a mount rare drop, and I'm curious how farmable he is for my level 80 paladin. Conclusions? Doable. I died a couple times on the trash due to getting into groups of 4+ at a time. One pull is a group of 5, which makes that... tricky. Killing the horses after the stablehands seems the way to go, and I think that tactic will help things go most smoothly, though it's still slow killing them. The biggest problem were the fears from the horses and the stun/knockdown effects from the stablehands - in both cases, I end up taking a lot more damage because I can't block. Attumen was about the same. The toughest, and longest, stretch was fighting him and Midnight side-by-side. Midnight has a stun that made me a lot more vulernable for its duration, leaving me scrambling to heal afterward (and trying to remember to turn off Divine Plea ma

Should player characters be innovators or indicators? Take a fantasy setting with multiple nations. One may be renown for its schools of magic, and another may be know as "technologically advanced" with the best ships or firearms or whatever. Then add a PC who wants to do something new. He creates a new spell, or technological marvel. What happens? I see two major options: 1) The character is an innovator . His creation is unique. The first mass fireball, or the first airship - it sets the PC ahead and NPCs who see it are inspired, but well behind in development of anything similar. 2) The character is an indicator . This follows the logic "if the character could do it, so could someone else." Suddenly there's someone at those mage schools who teaches the spell, or there are companies in the tech-country who field airships. Maybe they're slipped in as "always having been there" or maybe they're fairly new, but the NPC world is brought up