Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Feeling better in general than I have in a few weeks, though I still can't say I'm highly motivated to creative roleplay. Slowly accumulating more fantasy world thoughts to record, though. Longevity I mentioned it in passing before and had a little follow-up discussion. So why is such a small point in a setting worthy of such consideration? Well, in the case of a book or campaign, it absolutely isn't. Unless there are supernatural aging effects floating around (2nd Edition AD&D ghosts, for example), it generally doesn't matter if a character is 20 or 60. Adventurers aren't likely to live to a ripe old age anyway. But in a persistent/ongoing world, such things do have an effect. The phrase "long term plans" doesn't even start to cover it. Plus, I think a mechanical enforcement actually works along with reality - or believability rather. As I said, I see someone who extends their life through magic as losing their "humanity" (for la

Perhaps the least "materially" rewarding raid night in a while. Knocked out Flame Leviathan, then Ignis for the weekly, which amounts to 5 Emblems of Frost, then spent a lot of time on the Lich King himself, but without success. I did see some signs of improvement, which is good. We don't have the Phase 1 wipes completely beat, but we got past that several times. If we do wipe there, it's almost certainly due to a Necrotic Plague that wasn't cleared off fast enough. Our timing on pushing into the first transition is usually pretty good, we don't usually have horrors up. The transition phase is hectic, but we're doing better in general. And we got into Phase 2 a few times - enough to wipe to a Defile and to know we need to kill those raging spirits faster. Alas, I can claim responsibility for one wipe where we were doing well, as I didn't quite make it off the outer ring in time and fell to my demise, resetting two raging spirits on everyone else. N

Some comments about offline gaming. It's interesting as now the group is a blend of the old Saturday regulars and the mid-week group that I go into. Our Dresden Files game is on hold, it seems. The GM didn't make one session and wasn't up to another. In some ways, I like that. Probably that whole "jaded gamer" thing is preventing me from enjoying it as much as others, but I don't really want to discourage a budding GM either with criticism. Instead, we've played a couple one-off games of Warrior, Rogue, & Mage. 'tis a small game, free (at least at the time) to download in PDF. Rules are fairly light and straightforward. Three main stats. Pick three skills that give a flat +2. Rolls use d6. Secondary stats include HP, Mana, Defense, and Fate (used to avoid certain death for the most part). It works fine for the "classic dungeon crawl" style in which we've used it, where you have a band of characters that may not know each other

Realism, or Not One article I recently glanced at summed up an aspect of fantasy for me in a way that resonates pretty strongly. "Internal Consistency, not Realism, is the benchmark of a believable fantasy world." If you made things realistic, it wouldn't be fantasy. No, what the audience and/or players want is to be able to make the initial leap of logic and then not have their suspension of disbelief shaken further. You're already accepting magic (in some form and measure), historical variances, and whatever else. Being given cause to question "well, why doesn't the archmage next door take five minutes out of his day to solve this problem?" takes you out of the illusion of a working world. The world doesn't have to work/grow/develop/look like the real world, it just has to be believable within its own confines. Well, that and be at least somewhat relateable in most cases - it's hard to roleplay something/someone that is completely alien.

In the past few weeks, I've replayed Deus Ex 2, Deus Ex, and restarted Neverwinter Nights 2. DE2 reminded me how "meh" it is. The levels between loading screens are annoying small. The "choice" you get in which factions you support is weak at best, as it still comes down to what you do at the very end to decide the epilogue. The graphics are certainly improved over the first one, but that's about the only good point to it, really. Deus Ex on the other hand, remains a friggin' masterpiece. The graphics are looking very dated, but don't distract (me anyway) as much as I would have thought. The game plays well. The levels are interesting for the most part. And while there isn't much branching to the plot, the storyline is good . It's also a heck of a lot longer than I remembered. I recalled the locations you visit and roughly the order, but I had forgotten some of the small "in between" parts and the times you revisit places. It

I wondered a few weeks back, after watching Salt , if a movie was predictable because of its own construction or because of my own experience. Well, that was actually answered somewhat unwittingly when a friend and fellow roleplayer in our weekly game commented something along the lines of "You thought it was predictable?" So, okay, I'm jaded. I can attribute a lot to that simple descriptor. Disinterest with play on Furryfaire? Yep, I feel like I've done it all hundreds of times before. I feel much the same about other games, it seems, where I'm just not as into it as others (or as I feel I should be). It's not always true, but it appears so to me more often than not. I don't have much desire to go see plain old "action movies" because... you guessed it, I feel like I've seen it all before. So what is a jaded roleplay/sci-fi/fantasy-fan to do? Is the only answer to turn to other sources of entertainment, or is there some way to make thi

I want to see a "Raid Camp" guild. Experienced raiders who could take newer people through the fundamentals of raiding. Communication, movement, adapting to phased encounters, etc. All non-BoP loot and gold would go to the guild to support repairs and such. "Graduates" could use that as a reference when applying to other guilds. Suppose it'd be a thankless job, but... I really like the idea.

So Saturday might have been destined to be a slow raid night, given some people were away, but we still had 13-or-so level 80 characters on come normal raid time. We attempted to 13-man the 25-man version of Noth in Naxx, but it didn't go so well. I think we got him about a quarter of the way down before debuff removal slipped and we lost almost everyone to a burst of Curse of the Plaguebringer. I think it might have been doable if we had our normal crew on their mains (or if we'd drawn Patchwerk for the weekly), but that spell is rough. So we reorganized and sent a group through the 10-man version, beating him easily, then put together a mostly-alt run into ICC. It was slow and rough. There were lots of pauses. It took three tries (I believe) to down Lady Deathwhisper. It was later than usual when Saurfang spanked us and we wrapped for the night. Low DPS output was a hinderance. We had a few people still sporting dungeon blues (not bad for Naxx, but pretty bad for ICC), and

I finished Changeless last week easily enough after the first book. Again, a "lighter" feeling novel, reasonably entertaining and fun. I definitely liked one of the new characters and the others played to form. Mostly. The twist at the end, which is really more of a hook for the next book, felt out of place and forced to me. Okay, Alexia's pregnant. Sure. And Connall is... immediately accusing her of infidelity? Wait... what? The supernaturals of the world are considered "dead" from their metamorphosis. Okay. Ghosts are obviously such. Vampires and werewolves less so, but that's commonly accepted. They can't have children, for one. Except that you have the rare preternatural, too. They can, by mere touch, cancel out supernaturalism. Ghosts are exorcised. Vampires and werewolves become human while in contact with a preternatural. No fangs, no fur, no sun vulnerability, no super-regeneration, no moon-influenced berserking... just as if they were to

I've always liked that word. It has a neat look and sound. And to mean "peaceful" ... It has a certain beauty to it. For myself, being at peace seems a rare occurance - probably more often than I realize, but still not so often as I like. It happens when I am in the moment. Whether that means I'm pausing and looking out on the scenery here that is truly lovely, clicking through a rotation of buttons against digital foes, letting myself be drawn in to a tale via text or visuals, digging through files to find the source of a problem, or following a line of conversation or thinking... All of these things focus me on the present in some way. When my attention isn't held, however, my thoughts are more scattered and I tend to be anything but serene of mind. There are always traces of worry over finances, or work, or HOA responsibilities. I start noticing little details of how inconsiderate people are en masse. I berate myself for failure to stick to one productive

Picked up Soulless upon recommendation. It definitely felt a lighter read compared to the 700+ page epic fantasy tales I feel like I've been reading. Instead, Victorian England with supernaturals. Reasonably cute, entertaining, and a pretty quick read. It's a little odd to have characters going on so much about gossip and appearances, fashion and marriage prospects. All that with vampires that are, if anything, more territorial and pack-ish than there werewolves, ghosts that haven't been discussed much, and the rare "preternaturals." The take on super/preternatural souls is an interesting one, though I can't help but wonder if that's the "reality" of the world, or simply the best understanding of the time. And I think the book does contain the most fabulous vampire character I've ever seen. The whole Victorian era is somewhat interesting to me because it all but didn't exist in my studies. World history classes sort of glossed over/

So today is my step-mom's 60th birthday. That's odd to think about on its own. She wanted to have dinner up at the Matate Room at Mesa Verde, so I took an exxxxxtended lunch from work and met them at the gate. That's about a forty-minute drive. Then it's close to that long driving on the winding road up to the park at the top. And a little time waiting. Then dinner - which was good. They had a prickly pear creme brulee that I had to try. While I still like my own better, this might have been the first since I started making it that I didn't consider inferior , I just found the subtle fruitiness to be less to my taste than "pure" cream and vanilla. And a long drive back that I usually don't make in the dark. Whee. Now I need to actually get some work done.

I ended up reading a lot yesterday, and finally finished Acacia . As said before, it was hard to get into because the writing style 1) bounced around between a lot of characters and 2) did more summarizing than actually showing. It had some interesting themes and setting, but... Well, there were few primary characters that I got into, and only one I actually came to like . And the whole thing felt pretty bleak, even to me. There are a few fascinating glimpses of how the supernatural can utterly change warfare, I suppose. I read through somewhere between a third and half the book before "catching up" with the situation stated on the back cover. So everything to that point was predictable. Is the assassin going to succeed in killing the king? Well, yes. Is the monarchy going to fall? Yep. Are the royal children going to survive the change in rulership? Yeah, one way or another. It wasn't until the nine-year time lapse that there was any sense things may not go as they

Well, I was very glad to finally get Malygos out of the way. The final raid boss from the initial tier of raid content in Wrath had always given us a hard time just because it's so different to fight through the last chunk of the fight on drakes instead of using your own abilities. We wiped a couple times as people got used to that, but on our third attempt, we pulled it off. I was pleased to see my DoT on him stacked to 14 shortly before he went down, too. Then... there was lots of confusion, but we pulled together a group theoretically capable of tackling the Lich King and gave it a try. Sadly, after several attempts, we didn't really do better than before - getting into Phase 2 once I think, with several people down already. I wouldn't say I'm heartbroken or worked up over it, but I am subtly disappointed, mostly because I have no idea what to say or suggest to improve performance. It's very difficult to find points of failure when everyone is (or should be)

I can so picture a pair of Imperial stormtroopers having much the same conversation over their helmet commlinks... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_90aSXkP5Q

I've always maintained - in spite of some movies - that if you find yourself beset by something that is already a biological impossibility and possibly defying physics, probably the last thing you want to do is set it on fire .

So today isn't too bad at work. There've been a few items to take care of, but nothing intensely stressful. And so my mind has been wandering some. Last night I asked myself what I would do if I took an extended hiatus from MUCKing. I didn't have a clear or immediate answer, but the asking and the thinking mean something. I recently looked at some of my earliest LJ entries. Six years ago, I was stressed over moving and complained not infrequently about inter-character relationships. Now, I'm prone to complaining about how often I don't even RP online. Maybe some serious time away would do me some good, though I'm not sure if that now means refreshing me to play more or transitioning my free time to something else. I've also been thinking lately about doing something vaguely vacation-like when all the "upgrade" stuff has fully settled at work. A few days ago, I might have said that was a month or more off. Today, it seems that could be closer.

So I've been urged repeatedly this week to try to focus on the positive. That's hard enough to do with my pessimistic nature even without starting the work week off with a note on my door saying "the virus is back on my computer again, help!" The last couple days haven't been much better, with me working late and struggling to keep up with problems. A good chunk of my job is fixing things that go wrong, so I'm frequently either neck-deep in bad stuff or bored out of my skull. Today, though... today was... good? At least it wasn't bad, and I'm trying to take what I can get. There weren't any major crises today. I got a computer to set up for someone who isn't present yet, which I actually don't mind as long as it isn't with the frantic "this computer died, it needs to be working again ten minutes ago" pace. I'm home early, which is always sort of nice even if it is to try to keep from going into overtime for the week (w

Since tashiro keeps asking me what I think everytime he references a new bit of released information about Guild Wars 2, let me just take a little time to get this off my chest. - I do watch MMO news, mostly via Massively and Kotaku. I don't read every article in full and watch every video, but I am at least moderately aware of most developments. - I am skeptical of all pre-release information. I try not to get excited about what might be, especially based on promotional (and therefore biased) information. I've long held that there are two extremes to MMORPGs. On this particular scale, one extreme has ultimate player influence on the world, while the other has ultimate interaction with your fellow gamers. The former is, at its pinnacle, the realm of the single-player game, where one player's actions affect everything and are reflected everwhere. The latter is, in my opinion, the heart of a MMO. But all my experience and observation leads me to maintain that you ca

Whee. Another just-under-ten-hour day at work. Fun, fun...

I ended up discussing a couple points on story crafting/telling recently... I voiced a thought that occurred to me watching Salt about the time the main character jumped from one moving vehicle to another: Within a single story (movie, book, etc.), exceptions and coincidences are an acceptable norm. After all, there isn't a lot of appeal in reading/watching something about a character that lives out a perfectly normal, mundane, unexciting life. No, our stories are drafted around the one-in-a-million hero, the decendent of a legend, the chosen dragon rider, the... whatever. But in an extended tale, that sort of thing gets old and starts to pain the picture that everyone in the fictional world is blessed with power and luck. That's what makes storytelling in a setting like a MUCK or MMORPG particularly difficult. Having five legendary heroes can be interesting. Having fifty or five thousand makes it almost silly. You either have to tone down the heroes to something more no

Whee. Just under 10 hours of stress at work, also involving malware removal/OS re-isntallation. ... Yeah, shaping up to be another week of suck.

Hmm... sounds like it will be sort of limited to start with. I wonder if you'll be able to do a barrel roll...

Decent action movie with suspense/thriller trappings. Rates higher if you just want to see Angelina Jolie kicking ass or you're not jaded to the twists of movie plotlines. Watching movies like this really make me wonder how much of the "surprises" are transparent or how much of that is just because I've simply seen so many movies/read books/run plotlines that my mind analyzes things too much.

Collecting more scattered thoughts... Magic Magic remains a difficult point. On further consideration, I think I'd set the bar for mortal magic at subtle, "alchemical" effects - usually minor effects that take preparation and could in many cases be considered fringe science more than magic. That means anyone tossing a fireball is at least a little bit of a monster, or has somehow bargained with one. That seems like a fair way to keep magic limited and the consequences of magic from spinning the setting wildly out of the realm of what we can even conceive. Geography It's been a long time since I've sat down with colored pencils and drawn out a map, but that's usually my preferred method with some inspiration coming before or during the process. Geographical barriers often define nations and it helps if things make sense. For a "lasting" setting, I'd be inclined to stay away from fantastic features like a desert right next to marshland, tho

Dreams of post-apocalypic, Resident Evil-style, zombies and bleakness. Thoughts of some RP I feel I probably should do on Faire, but really, really don't want to for the sake of others as much as myself. ... Think I'm going to see if I can clear my head a little and go back to bed. This morning just isn't worth being awake.

I did finally finish the borrowed Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood . I still don't like FPS controls on consoles. I found the quick-draw events to be annoying to the last. But I liked the story, at least. And now I'm struggling through reading Acacia , reading a chapter or two here and there. About a quarter of the way through and the story is reaching the point laid out clearly by the back cover - the could events that might have been actually suspenseful were ruined by the blurb there. I'm sort of interested in the political and historical setup of the world, but the writing itself bugs me. For one, it bounces between over half a dozen character-based viewpoints. That always bothers me a little, though this is hardly the first book to do so. I've had trouble finding anything I like in depth about one or more characters because I've only been with each of them from their perspective for a couple chapters each. The other thing that really bugs me is the excessive

I don't like change. It's almost always painful, it's not always better. The news-side software change was a hassle, particularly with stress over internet connection speeds, but the actual change went reasonably well and people were mostly prepared. There are still things being worked out, and whether it's an improvement depends on who you ask. The remotely-hosted environment does have the advantage of being accessible from outside the office along with the disadvantage of being reliant on a connection to servers in another state. We lost 2-3 hours of work just this week due to an outage on the other end. But I think it's an overall improvement to have the work done in InCopy and InDesign rather than Word and QuarkXpress (4) and there's some functionality in the system that's nice, though it may not be used in the long term. The advertising system, however, is seriously tempting me to use the term "nightmare." People were not as well-prepar

Someone recently asked me about worlds/settings of my own, which is interesting as I'd recently been pondering things I would put in a fantasy setting were I to build one up... I've really only had one world that I used over an extended period of time, developed, and expanded on: Makelia. It was spawned largely out of a "vision" of a character (and one big expansion came from another one). It was a world that bucked a few fantasy tropes, but had its fair share still. At the time, I was very interested in a "shades of gray" outlook. The "evil" nation wasn't really evil, wars were motivated as much by differing political views and competition for resources as any crusade of light against dark. There were no true gods, just being who attained greater and greater degrees of magical power - some of whom liked to be viewed as gods. There were two types of magic, differing more on source than capability, and later psionics ("mind magic")

Odd nostalgia and a micro-obsession (I think I'm mostly over it. This morning, I had some unusual line of thinking that went like: I need a vacation > I could take a vacation after all this work stuff is done, maybe just get in the car and drive > I don't really have anywhere to go, though > Maybe I could go to some theme park? > Hmm... road trip to Disneyland? > I used to live in Anaheim, I remember that big apartment complex and the park with the cool raised concrete walkways > I wonder if those are still there? Which led to some Google map searching, but without clear memory of an address or even a main street, I was unable to determine if either the park or the apartments I remember are still there in a recognizable form. Drat.

So a bunch of updates I did last night had to be undone today. Joy, oh joy. I really despise fonts sometimes. There's still a lot of bugs to work out and a lot to get done, not all of which is in my hands, but it's keeping me busy. Urgh. I hate change...

I went in to work a little early today. Seven and a half hours later, I haven't taken a "lunch" break and I'm finally getting a breather. Even with the connection problems we had with the remotely-hosted system for the newsroom, the "go-live" week was not as much a hassle as we're having with the advertising system. Tons of bugs to work out with a system that doesn't even have all the functionality we did before. I'm sure it does some things better, but... ugh. And on top of that, the news system was down for a few hours this afternoon due to a hardware failure at said remote-hosting location. On the up side, that wasn't our problem. On the down side, it wasn't our problem. I'm not sure whether I hate feeling powerless and getting stuck waiting to hear back more or less than being swamped with trying to fix something myself. So... gee... I can go eat something now or linger a little and just go home early. Mrrf.