Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Indeed. Though not bad in my view. We tackled Flame Leviathan and Razorscale for the weekly quest quickly enough. Instead of hitting the Lich King, missing a couple regulars or somesuch, we went to see the Ruby Sanctum. It looks pretty, but is sort of disappointing to me. The mini-bosses were tough, but went down in one-two attempts, which some casualties along the way. Halion himself cleaned our clock. I was sitting in the physical realm, so I missed where things went bad. We reshuffled and took and under-staffed, alt-heavy group into ICC from the beginning, leaving Kyn to hold the lockout on the Lich King. And... I saw myself losing aggro a lot to our DK alt-tank. That's a bit frustrating in and of itself. It's something I've seen before with them, and so I was looking more closely. I wondered if there were taunts involved in the rotation, but after comparing armory sheets, I think it comes from a simple higher damage output. According to the armor, almost 30% more at

So... a busy, but pretty nice day taken off work to do family stuff. We met up at a mountain pass at about 10:15, and I was introduced to a bunch of people I'm sure I won't clearly remember. >.> There wasn't anything too formal, but some things were said, and ashes were poured in a little clearing. We adjourned as clouds were building up, but the weather was nice. With an evening dinner get-together planned, I decided to contribute with a couple pecan pies. So once I got back home, I got cooking pretty much right away and that was my afternoon. It rained pretty hard for a couple hours. Then I drove over to get there a little before 5:30. The rain had stopped, but things were nicely cooled off. Burgers and such were cooked up, dinner was had a bit after six, with everyone there. The pies were widely appreciated come dessert time, I got many compliments. It was after eight and starting to get dark when I said my fairwells and made my way back home. Pleasant enough,

So we're playing and things are going a little stutteringly here and there, with people finishing up characters and GM inexperience. But it's been entertaining. We've been running into issues with self-compelling, though... Some of the self-initiated compels really seem... weak to me. But I can't help but wonder if things would be going differently with a less scattered plot. Example 1: Spiritual toughs start showing up. Two group members veil from view. Two remain in sight to assess/talk. Talk doesn't last long as the native spirit-types are just pissy. Bear shifter charges! One veiled characters steps out to intercept and attack, quoting their 'Got your back!' aspect. Question arises whether this actually complicates things enough to qualify as a compel. In a lot of ways, it seems like just taking advantage of the situation, as the 'enemies' have already committed to attacking. Example 2: Bear is clubbed unconscious, fight gets more complic

Work's been nuts the last couple days. Scrambling to get things done, then... stuck waiting for something to... scramble to get things done. Tiring and draining. Things have been rescheduled, so all my family stuff will get crammed into tomorrow. That works out better for me, saving me the trouble of making a decision.

But not that one. Heck, if Starcraft is one word, why would it be abbreviated that way anyhow? No, I mean Star Control 2 . I was introduced to the first one in the computer lab at high school - a "dueling" game with space craft of different sorts and a neat little campaign mode. I got quite good at the relatively balance Yehat ships. Then Star Control 2 came out and it was a valid sequel with more ships and such, but it also had a single player game. And what a game. The races were colorful and varied. There were mis-programmed probes sent by a curious race, a coulple religion-heavy races, merchants willing to barter artifacts and people for fuel, mysterious beings from alternate dimensions, and many more. The plot kept moving at a certain pace. Literally, the bad guys would start wiping other civilizations out by a certain in-game date if left unhindered. You get to slowly rebuild an alliance while discovering just what is really going on. In some places, you can broker

I came in on a discussion yesterday about magic. In part, it was about certain applications looking too technological for a fantasy setting, but it got me thinking well beyond that. My comments at the time: The good/bad of magic is that it's magic . By definition (or lack thereof) it can accomplish anything you can think of, unless there are some sort of hard limits in place. So the inventor spends his years learning aerodynamics and says to his mage pal 'I've had a contraption that lets a person fly like a bird!' The mage takes a few minutes with all his arcane knowledge and whips up a spell that... makes someone fly like a bird. The mage doesn't need to understand the technical points because magic itself is a shortcut/plot point/fiat that makes it possible. Unless, of course, the setting's magic has some other requirements, but it usually doesn't. I'd also add that the only way I see to keep magic from doing certain things or looking a certain wa

One quick downing of Patchwerk for the weekly quest (and one person didn't have it, for shame!) and a little shuffling of raid lockouts put us back before Sindragosa. We wiped once (a warm-up!) before pulling it together and beating down the frost wyrm. I think I was the only one dead at the end. Heh. I'll take it. That left us to head on up and face the Lich King himself. It's... a complicated fight. We've seen phase one and the first transition. We need to actually survive through another transition as well as phase two and three, and deal with the different abilities therein. I think we have an understanding of necrotic plague management at this point, which is key to the beginning, but our timing is a bit off. The last few attempts, we actually cleared out the horrors (leaving me with the plague to dump off completely), but it was happening when the boss' health was at about 74%, which leave enough time for him to summon another horror before hitting the tr

I'll keep this short: very good movie and worth going to see. No further qualifications are really needed.

I don't actually mind the rain part so much. It beats mid-90-degree heat regularly, and we can use the water. There was a time I liked and looked forward to Fridays. They mark the functional beginning of the weekend as soon as work ends, and time to do something. Maybe even a day to take off work a couple hours early to enjoy a little more weekend. Today's "TGIF" comment from a coworker made me think about how that's not really the case anymore. Fridays at work tend to be either ruthlessly hectic or painfully boring - either end of the week is usually one extreme or the other. And when home, Fridays seem to be more frequently nights where people I might play with online are either not around, distracted or turning in early. Finished watching Book of Bantorra , and I'm still impressed. It's not the highest quality anime series I've seen, and I can see how some people wouldn't like the pacing or events. But the slow reveals and often tragic st

I'm still a sucker for certain types of stories. Reading the description of The Book of Bantorra , I really didn't know what to make of this anime. But I watched the first four episodes and was pretty well blown away by the story arc therein. It appears that's the conclusion of the particular tale that caught my attention, though I'll probably watch more of the series at some point. The overall tone and setting of the series itself is much different, but the particular sub-story reminds me of threads I've seen in Tenchi Muyo and El Hazard . Once in a while, I can actually be sappy...

Ah, just the sort of decision I hate... At the end of the month, a whole lot of my step-mother's family will be in the area. I have arranged a day off work, in spite of how busy we'll likely be then, to attend the scattering of her mother's ashes on the 30th. It feels right to be there. It sounds, at this point, like the big meal/gathering/social get-together will be the following day. Naturally, I've been invited, perhaps even encouraged, to show up. I only know about three of the eighteen or so people who will be coming, and they feel like pretty distant kin to me. So do I do the "nice" and "social" thing and go visit a bunch of people I'm related to by marriage and will probably only ever see the one time, or not? I can't honestly say I want to go, as I don't typically enjoy spending time with strangers or large groups of people, much less both. And while it's not a big consideration in the decision, it also bugs me a littl

Seven attempts at Sindragosa without success. We just weren't able to pull it together, though we could get to the last phase readily enough. There still seem to be some awareness and positioning issues we need to work on, and I'm not sure what else to say about that. Either it clicks for everyone, or it doesn't. We downed the plague wing without much issue, so it wasn't a total loss of a night. Had one person out-aggro the tank early on Rotface and bite it, has a few deaths on trash going into the wing we probably should have avoided, and we wiped once on Putricide due to a reflexive cleansing of the abomination disease. Everyone present knows those fights, though. So now we really only have Sindragosa and the Lich King up in that instance. If we can't get past the frost wyrm next week, this is going to be very disappointing, I fear. Not that the Lich King himself is easy, but it'd be nice to at least see him...

So last night as one person was making a character for our Dresden Files game, a question came up amidst various conversation. Our newest player, hyper and eager enough to be trying to GM the game, asked some of us what sort of games/systems we prefer. One person vaguely answered that he wasn't sure yet. I really like the idea of the story-heavy, interactive game. DFRPG goes this route to a good degree, Fox Magic and some others probably a bit further. When a game is shaped by everyone's input, they all feel more involved. Theoretically, there's less burden on any one person (usually the GM), and all is good. In this style game, systems are generally closely tied to the setting and theme of the games. There are specific, integral rules that reflect things within the games. The Refresh trait in DFRPG conveys the lure of supernatural power balanced against the freedom of human will. FM is even more tightly focused around kitsune abilities. And yet, I find myself a lot

Semi-suddenly busy. Gaming offline tonight. Off to visit and share dinner with parents tomorrow night, possibly staying over. @.@

So I finally went ahead and got new tires for my car, as I'd been planning for a while. It saves me having to worry about one that was looking low, too. I'd gotten quotes before ranging from $500 (for non-warranted, cheap models) to $900 or so. I sort of settled on the Bridgestone Insignias at $700. So when I stopped by yesterday at the usual tire place I visit, they explained a shortage of those tires and uncertainty when they could get more. I asked about something comparable and they came up with some Uniroyals with a similar warranty that brought the total price down a hundred dollars from what I'd planned on. Suddenly, $600 felt like an amazingly good deal - psychological trickery that I marvelled over at the time. Today they got the ordered tires in and got them on. All appears good so far. No particular worry of wear or underinflation, and I hope I shan't have to worry about tires for some time to come. I'm also somewhat amused by the model name of the ti

I was looking for air conditioning and an action movie. I got all that and better. I would call the original Predator a classic of 80's action/sci-fi. I wouldn't call it a great masterpiece, but it hits the right notes, works in general, and comes out better than what should have been a cheap B-movie. I think Predators is a more worthy sequel than anything that has come in between. There aren't any huge surprises or unpredictability. It probably won't go down as the acting highlight of anyone's career. But it works. The pacing is good, with just enough moments of exposition and characterization. The movie doesn't get bogged down in blatant fanboyisms (AVP) or spend too much time introducing new toys (Predator 2). I probably wouldn't call the characters "fully-realized," but most of them manage to feel they've a touch more depth than cardboard cutouts and that's really all that's required in a movie like this. So definitely not a bad

So this weekend, the Blood Prince Council was still rough - we lost out Keleseth tank toward the end, and I believe two other people before the bosses were put down. Blood Queen Lana'thel, on the other hand, we got down easily on our first attempt before her second air phase in spite of some "errors" in bite transfers. Sindragosa remains the only boss we haven't downed before between us and the Lich King. We made six attempts, but couldn't quite pull it together. We were getting reliably to the last phase and down to 1.5-2.5 million health, but lost people before we could seal the deal. If our pattern holds, we should be able to get it together next weekend and finish her off. We've actually saved our progress this time, which leaves Sindra and the plague wing up. If we can down the frost wyrm, we're pretty sure of being able to get down Festergut, Rotface, and Professor Putridice, which would give us access to the Lich King himself. I think there'

I'm usually pretty good about managing heat. Open the windows at night, keep the sun out, all that... Having the windows painted shut, however, makes it rather difficult. The upstairs was too hot last night for me to sleep in my bed. Bleh. Seeing a movie this afternoon is sounding good just for sitting in air conditioning.

This is starting to get frustrating. Automated messages almost daily for the last three weeks about an Alltel account that I have nothing to do with. At first, I brushed them off as minor errors or confusion. I actually do have an Alltel phone, but it's paid for by and billed to my employer, my home number would have nothing to do with it. Recent messages have included the name Juan Candia (sp?), so that makes me even more certain this is a mistake. Only now I've called two different numbers to be told there's nothing they can do without the cell number associated with the account. So... I have to be subjected to these automated calls that have nothing to do with me and there's nothing I can do about it because they can't correct the mistake? Seriously? Grrrr...

Let's see here... I could use more three-day weekends. Monday was nice and I got to have a most pleasant lunch with northawke , who I've not seen in quite some time (briefly at 2008's almost-disasterous Estrella War). It was good to catch up. Tuesday eve was back to work and crazy. I seem to have about a 15% failure rate with some of the new software going in, and in this case it was on the first of seven laptops, so that roadblocked me for much of the night and left me scrambling when I could make headway. I also managed to kill the company's phone system when I went to replace the batteries in the UPS supplying that computer. Afterward, I was told it wasn't so much my fault as the database would have been saved if the CMOS battery in the computer itself hadn't been virtually dead too. So that was going to happen whenever we replaced the other batteries. Our weekly WoD game was postponed for the second week in a row due to lack of attendance. It gave us a

So, we finally managed to bring things together and get the Blood Prince Council down after running our way up to them. I think having our Keleseth-tanking death knight better prepared for the task helped, though there were a lot of factors involved. I ate far more empowered shock vortices than I would have liked - our ret paladin was slow to notice and try to get away. Still, on our third time we got it. Then we pushed on to Blood Queen Lana'thel, wing-boss. A few attempts to learn the mechanics is almost a give, but we were close from about attempt two. Painfully so. But there was a bit too much damage on us for two healers, it seemed, and not quite enough dps with three. After a few tries, though, we started slipping. Said ret pally bailed with just the shortest of messages, so there was a delay in swapping in someone else. And weariness, and a phone call, and an accidental pull. Our one final attempt for the night really didn't measure up. I know we can do this, and I do