Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Heavens know why, but someone said something recently that got me thinking about why I'm not involved more on Furryfaire these days. It's not a new, my lethargy there has been ongoing for years now, and there's no singular event. It's just a bunch of stuff building up over time. And any attempt to list points and analyze is sure to miss some things... Setting-based Reluctance I've never felt like Furryfaire was "my" sandbox to shape and play with. Of what influence I have tried to put into the setting over the years, I would say maybe a tenth has actually been included. - I had a small, fallen island nation in mind in the background of a couple early characters, and that never appeared on anyone else's radar - my fault, probably, for not being loud enough. I still envision the crumbled remains of keep and city now beneath the waves. - Threshold came under indirect control of one of my characters before it was made a central location. I had thou

Need more long weekends. Was this was restful because it was three days long, or because it was one more day than usual (ie. would I get accustomed to three-day weekends)? Either way, I didn't do much. Finished repacking the books I moved and slept in some. Not exciting and sometimes even depressing, but restful. Of course, this morning sucked at work, but what can you do? In WoW , we managed more success than expected. Still no druid staff drop from Staghelm for our second druid, but we beat Zon'ozz in Dragon Soul. I'm still not sure whether we improved any or it was a matter of blind luck with the "ball." I lean toward the latter. Hagara was a little confusing at points, but ultimately wasn't a problem for us. At least one person expressed a desire to hold the lock and progress, but I'm wary. I think Ultraxion is going to involve more wipes than the fight should simply because people won't press their encounter-specific button at the right time. T

Played it. Beat it (once, on Normal). It pretty much met my expectations. That is to say it's an okay action game. I might have been a little more fun to play through than I would have guessed, but only a little. If I'd had to pay, I probably would have skipped it without regret. Gameplay is exactly what you expect. Lots of clicking and lot of collecting. Some usage of half a dozen abilities. The town portal ability is more convenient now, which makes me wonder why the bother with having to spend a few seconds identifying rare items before you can use them. Companions seem reasonably useful. Visuals aren't stunning, but they're in the realm of pretty good at least. I love the music and the audio in general except for the overdone "ka-chunk" of those hand crossbows and the faint vocal lore entries (I should see if there's a way to boost those). The story is... passable in that the plot always gives you something to do, but it's also got enough large h

I try to expose myself a little more to political news than I used to. Admittedly, some tidbits come filtered through comedy faux-news shows, but I have CNN on sometimes too. And one thing that's bugged me a lot recently is the utter inflexibility shown by both Republicans and Democrats of late. So, while driving back from Arizona, I turned to one of the few people in the world who I truly respect and trust to being able to look at US politics from a realtively objective standpoint and I said basically: Okay, I see all this, with both sides refusing to give ground even if it means grinding the government's ability to do anything to a standstill. This feels so extreme, but is that just perspective? Is this just a part of the cycle, or is it really worse than usual now? My father was silent for a few moments before giving a very careful and measured answer: It is as bad now as I have seen in my adult life. He went on to point out some periods where the two parties have be

Well... we're managed to raid a couple weeks in a row in WoW , though attendances is sketchy and timing questionable. We had to wait a while Saturday before getting enough people to fill a raid. I don't mind that so much if I know in advance that we won't be starting until an hour or two later than usual - my Saturday nights are reasonable fluid - but the not knowing is a little wearying. If only it weren't so hard to communicate and schedule with people. We're still doing what I would call "okay," given we've got some people with little experience involved. Our numbers are fine for current content. We can down Morchok easy and Yor'sahj without any particular trouble. But boss mechanics trip us up. Predictably, fighting Baleroc with healers who are new to the fight involves a few wipes. Rhyolith annoys me, though we didn't try it this week and I'm still not sure what to blame last week's failure on. Zon'ozz is a huge roadblock beca

Strange dreams last night after a long day. We went down to Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, which is a fair drive, and drove around to the various overlooks. The guy my dad was expecting to meet at one of the campgrounds had already left, so we set up somewhere else - a relatively popular spot with a good view to the horizon, lots of rock, and some shade. Then it was a matter of setting up our camp chairs and telescope and waiting. Lots of driving and lots of waiting for an event that really wasn't very long. With a solar filter or the relatively cheap glasses to block out most of the light, we could see the sun as it was slowly covered by the moon until, at the peak, only the trademark "ring of fire" (due to the moon being far enough away from the earth to not totally block out the sun) was visible, and then they proceeded the other way. The ring was only complete for a few minutes. It was neat to watch, but I was sort of amazed at how little actual ef

Over the last several years, I've had leaks in my storage unit fixed three or four times. After the most recent, I've decided to start moving things out of there (now that I have room in the house). The room there is sort of a mess. There's some drywall and insulation that should be taken out and replaced due to molding and similar stuff. I don't want to write off the room entirely, but today I moved out many of my boxes, leaving a few of VCR tapes (which apparently I don't miss much as I haven't even looked at them in years) and some miscellaneous things like shovels. I had totally forgotten how many comic books (and novels for that matter) I actually own. Just... wow. It's going to take me longer to "store" everything again in the spare bedroom, as I want to get them out of the boxes they've been in, some having gotten wet and such, before tucking them away again. And while I don't have enough new boxes to do it all, I've done som

So, Sunday I'm actually planning to join my parents on a day trip to a good vantage point for the upcoming annular solar eclipse . My dad's fairly into astronomy. And while I'm not, exactly, I recognize it's a rare, neat occurance and it's a chance to visit while getting out of my routine, even if it will eat up most of the day. There was some mental weighing involved, but I deemed it worthwhile. Barring bad weather, we should be pretty well in line to get a clear view of the antumbra "ring of fire" of the sunlight framing the moon.

Work was fine yesterday until one user's hard drive failed. Whee. We also managed to get most of our group together for RP in the evening, continuing the current Aeranos game. Made a little progress and defeated some demony shades, but no major accomplishments. I've been further pondering my lack of any serious doings on Furryfaire in a while. Same old conclusions there, though. I suck. Between doing other stuff and release day emergency server downtime, I was able to get on Diablo 3 long enough to make a character. Heh. Had dreams last night that I don't really remember, but they somehow involved elements from Legend of Korra and the park I used to live near in Anaheim.

Who knew there was so much of it? I went through an article yesterday and was amazed at how much has been added since I last paid attention (which would have been playing the Diablo 2 expansion in 2001 or shortly after). Such an actiony game doesn't need a lot of story, and Blizzard has tacked on a little with each game to cover new additions, but it looks like they've added books and fleshed things out a good bit more in the area of overarching legend and origins at least. I just wish it didn't involve retcons, like recasting the warrior/hero-turned-host/Wanderer as the elder son of King Leoric. I can picture how and why that decision was made, but that sort of thing just bugs me. >.> No new impressions of D3 yet. I wasn't going to stay up to 1 am just to start playing it and my schedule this week is uncertain.

Wrrf. Gold difficulty on ME3 multiplayer is rough. I lucked out last time. Trying for the individual goal to get a commendation pack this weekend, I entered probably half a dozen gold matches before actually succeeding at the goal: a full extraction. Of the others, one was a partial and the others were outright failures at some stage. On the other hand, I feel like I can hold my own pretty well on silver now, though I still find silver/gold matches to be something of a crapshoot. Depending on map, random objectives, and other players, it isn't hard to get into a position that pretty much just isn't winnable by any one factor. After a weekend off, we got back into raiding on WoW. There still seems to be a little tension over who's on the roster, but no bitching was brought to me, at least. We prodded Dragon Soul again. Morchok is straightforward - we've been able to do that fight for a long while. I believe this was our first real attempt at Yor'Sahj, and he went d

Another week of night shifts, another book down? I've started in on a series I started earlier , and... it's a sequel. More of what I like and more of what I didn't. ;) The major focus this time around is on the Barrani, who match many Tolkienesque stereotypes for elves. There's more use of word/name-based magic and the (true) names of the "immortal" races. It gets into more detail with personal character history and some of the setting history. The Barrani aren't the most interesting race to me of those present, but it was still an anjoyable ride overall. I did miss Tiamaris, though, and Kaylin is being pulled into things perhaps quicker than I would like. The latter sort of equates to the power creep you get in series and that's... often bad in my view (Anita Blake), but occasionally seems to work out surprisingly well (Dresden Files), so I'm not quite prepared to render a verdict on that aspect after two books. Amusingly enough, I opened up

I was chattng last night about the current state of movie properties for the two major comic companies. With The Avengers, Marvel's definitely still on a hot streak of movies that are "reasonably good" to "great." The X-Men and Spiderman trilogies started well, but faded as they went on. Still, since about Iron Man, they've all (or nearly so) done really well, especially considering that Iron Man and Thor weren't really (at least in my estimation) flagship characters to the non-comic-reader audience. It's quite impressive. We'll have to see if sequelitis bites Iron Man 3. In contrast, DC has... well, a Batman trilogy coming to a close. Superman Returns did reasonably well. Green Lantern not so much. And what else have they got? Well... Man of Steel next year perhaps, which is another Superman reboot as far as I know. But it seems to me there aren't a lot more big names in the DC universe to put forth. Wonder Woman? The TV series that was in

Okay, that pretty much rocked. When the concept came up, I really wasn't sure how it would work as a movie. The Marvel superhero movies leading up to it were generally well done and worked (though I don't remember any prior Hulk movie being decent), but combining such major figures as Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America without totally overshadowing someone like Black Widow? But it works. It does. It takes some of the best beats from the comic genre source (though the hero vs. hero fights remind me more of cross-overs than team comics) and blends it up in a way that works on the big screen. You could nitpick about who gets the most screen time or makes the most of it, but all the major players do have their times to shine. It's better than I think anyone had a right to expect, even if you're a big Joss Whedon fan. Recommendable to... pretty much everyone. While I've read some people saying the Hulk steals the show - and he does have a few awesome one-liners/m

As a follow up to my last post : Hmmm... so it's acceptable, at least in some cases, to conceal major plot twists. I would have expected at least a little more reservation from those two, just based on what I've perceived as a desire to not cope with major changes in a campaign and/or a desire for full disclosure in advance. Well, I agonize over and over, but... I really cannot imagine any way in which I would run this online. It's not terribly likely offline either (perhaps more due to scheduling and such), and there's really only one offline gamer I know who might read any of this anyway. Kyn, at least, keeps prompting me for more details whenever I post some sort of campaign seed, so here's what I scribbled/fleshed out the other day... Spoilery self-notes: The Empire of Vastyr assaults and is eventually defeated by the Republic the PCs come from. In the process, the PCs (and several NPCs) are exposed to mystical forces that render them more than human w

I have some ideas floating around in my head that I want to tie in with a campaign concept I had in mind some time (years?) ago, but while I'm pretty sure I made a related LJ post back then, I'm unable to find it. Blasted me not tagging things in a useful fashion... Edit: Ah. There we go . So as I write out terrifically spoilery notes while they're in my head, a major question comes up. Mind you, this campaign is still all theoretical. And I think it unlikely still that I'd run it online. But I need opinions on a certain point. How much should a GM disclose to players about a new campaign? I have trouble with the "full disclosure" thing when there's some concept of the campaign that I feel works out well from a narrative perspective as a surprise to the characters. Yet the last time I tried that, in my Midnight game, I think it was far, far more trouble than it was worth. Or maybe I just didn't reveal enough ? I think there's some more