Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Well, what to say? The holiday weekend wasn't a total bust, though it felt a bit lonely. Playing Dust: AET provided sufficient distraction and relaxation, I guess. I have, for the moment, dropped any efforts at putting together a campaign to GM. We almost roleplayed Tuesday night, but it was too last-minute to pull together everyone we wanted there, seeing how we're getting into the closing sessions of a major plotline. That's probably just as well from my perspective, as I was also in Tuesday to get a couple fillings. Whee. At least I wasn't shy in getting in the next morning to get those adjusted to fit my bite this time. Work's been pretty crazy, though it seems to be easing up today. We have a couple big projects looming, though there's only so much to be done in advance. It's been leaving me pretty weary by the time I get home, and I've even crashed early a couple nights. Activity levels seem to be up on the MUCK, which seems odd. I'm se

Last August I mentioned exposure to this game. I lamented that I wouldn't get a chance to play it, being Xbox-only. Well, imagine my surprise when I saw it was to be released on PC via Steam. Heck, I had to look up how to use my PS3 controller specifically for this. And I wasn't at all disappointed. Admittedly, the actiony gameplay is a bit repetitive and it's not a long game (I think I clocked about 13 hours with a fairly, but not completely, thorough run). It feels good, though. The characters were generally good. And I absolutely loved the story. It isn't perfect , as there are some unexplained elements and I almost want to fanfic-in a scene to expound upon a couple things, but it's good. It's heroic, funny, joyful, tragic... touching. I was a little dissatisfied with the scene in Zeplich village, with Dust's fully origin revealed. It raises so many deeper questions. In my mind, I see sort of an extended version, in which Dust passes off the Sword o

Odd. Yesterday, it was MLP: Friendship is Dragons (yes, actually roleplaying as ponies). Today things started out as some sort of Justice League incident with Brainiac nanomachines taking people over and a few of us breaking free then trying to get others out. Then it become a Judge Dredd scenario fighting through corrupt judges and enemies toward an enemy in a penthouse. I haven't particularly seen any of these things recently. o.o;

This has got to be one of my least productive weeks at work in a long time. Granted, I took Monday and Tuesday off, but... sheesh. I came back Wednesday to find my co-tech was out sick. I did a little prep/installation work on a couple laptops, but can't finish those until we get some specific software. While he was the one to realize we needed that software, he didn't pursue it, so I had to ask about it and get the ball rolling on that to find out it might be a week before we can get it. We have another computer to put out, but it's in an office I don't have a key to and haven't had access to the last few days... Yesterday, I think I replaced the paper in our large format printer. Whee. Our department head left before I came in things were so very quiet that I actually left early myself and wasn't called. I also heard about a couple things that needed to be done, but either 1) was left wondering if my still-sick partner had done them or 2) didn't have t

... the feeling that I've wasted my time. And I just came off a four-day weekend (because I keep running up toward my vacation time limit) without any real feeling of accomplishment. I guess I did manage to get out and get an oil change. But I didn't even really sink time into any particular video game, read a book, or RP any real major scenes online. Basically, I feel like I had extra time and was totally unproductive with it, and that upsets me on some level. Rambling engaged... I did watch a movie over the weekend, but even that left me feeling somewhat disappointed afterward - increasingly so the more I thought about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about RPG systems and the potential campaign idea in my mind. On that front, I came to the conclusion that no system I've seen is good for what I want. Pathfinder/d20 is... eh... about as good as anything, but it's still a clunky fit and would require me to draft up a detail-laden template and to artificially l

So in the span of two weeks, I've seen two major summer movies: Iron Man 3 and Star Trek: Into Darkness . Both were generally good and enjoyable. One only ever took me out of the movie once in a minor way and even upon leaving the theater, while I could ask further questions, nothing struck me as a disruptive "plot hole." The other charmed me with some parallels to the past, but had me thinking "wait, what?" and "why?" several times during the movie. I felt like the movie was trying so hard to be non-stop action and tension that it actually ended up feeling uneven to me. And as events occurred, the stakes actually felt like they were lessening rather than increasing. Scrutinizing afterward makes these details look even larger, but these days I think I feel the disruption while watching is the greater failing. The opening away mission was a little over the top, but served fine in a number of regards. "Harrison's" introduction, howe

Send this to my offline gaming group recently. Figured there's a couple brains to pick that read here, too... Well, let me share what I've been thinking. I've let myself get way rusty as a GM and, frankly, I'm concerned that my ability to focus on a game/setting/whatever seems easily shaken by a busy day at work, so I may not be able to pursue this to a workable state. I have, however, had a campaign idea bouncing around in the back of my mind for a few years now. Setting-wise, it was envisioned as more of high fantasy with a dark/gothic touch, inspired by manga like (and I'll be mildly impressed if anyone is familiar with them) Berserk and Ubel Blatt. It wouldn't really disrupt anything to "steampunk-ize" it to some extent. I already had the losing/enemy side of a recent war as having used a particular form of technology and it fits well enough in my mind for that to be coming into some popularity among society. It was an angle I hadn't reall

Sure, Blizzard staff make a lot of comments I agree with at times, but rarely do they strike home so much as these, especially the first part (emphasis mine): "There is a group of players that wants to do group raiding, but they aren't well served by the current difficulty choices. This would include the friends and family type guilds that don't remove players because they aren't performing at their best. In Wrath of the Lich King, 10 player normal difficulty raiding served these players well, but there is now a gap between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty. When 10 and 25 player had separate lockouts and different loot, they were really different difficulty levels as well. Things were somewhat easier in 10 player difficulty, as it had the lower tier of loot and should be more accessible. Now that both 10 and 25 player difficulty offer the same loot and have a shared lockout, there is a need to ensure the difficulty is similar for both raid sizes. This eliminated t

Started off the week busy at work, and we're finally finishing out the review process in the department - something we really haven't done in years. Reverse evaluations (employee reviews of managers) and self-evaluations always make me a little nervous, moreso than the normal evaluations because I actually have to say something. Thankfully, they don't actually ask "what are your weak points?" That would feel too much like shooting oneself in the foot. My manager's review of my performance? Glowing. Above "meets expectations" in all categories, and generally a nice little ego bump. And yet, I was wiped by the time I got home. Around 7, I very nearly passed out in bed, but managed to drag myself up and make some dinner instead. And for all that, I wasn't able to actually sleep well a few hours later. Plus I spent time worrying over a friend still, and second-guessing myself there. Bleh.

Groggy. Didn't sleep well. Though I did have a pretty amusing dream in which I was a Venture kid just unraveling some super villain's plot only to find out it was actually masterminded by his dog as some sort of plan involving time travel to set dogs above humans. So we went to stop that, and it finished out with me picking up a handgun and shooting baddies alongside Brock Samson. Heh.

It's a pretty neat development come from our ever-more-interconnected society. While I don't pay much attention to the personal projects, I find it fascinating that we're at a point where creative types can turn to their fans (or would-be fans) and raise money rather than going to a company or investors that might offer the funds with strings attached. Frankly, if you're giving someone a million dollars, you really ought to have the right to attach some strings, but this way each "investor" can toss in what they're comfortable with sans that control and it can pile up pretty quickly in some cases. Of course, to be really successful there, you need to already have an audience and you need to be able to reach them. Me, I'm pretty conservative when it comes to such things. I don't even like signing up on new web sites, and I'm not going to do so to toss a couple bucks at a project that strikes my fancy. I see risk in these funding projects, so

Let's see... what to talk about with GW2? I did finally get a story run through the final "personal story" dungeon of the game - something I'd been annoyed about lacking for the months since I finished the otherwise-soloable personal story. The experience was actually sort of lackluster. The first part is a lot of running around fighting risen, which is boring after any time spent in the last two or three plot-related zones of the game. The latter part gets higher marks for 1) being a little different and 2) being more cinematic, as you defend/assault from an airship, with some use of cannons. Unfortunately, the novelty really only just balanced the awkwardness of it for me. And the final fight with Zhaitan, again from the airship, felt more like watching than doing. You get some closure to the Destiny's Edge storyline, and the post-dungeon celebration is sort of nice (not unlike in GW), but the battle didn't have any of the emotional impact of a narrative

What can I say, I love Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark. He's a genius tinkerer who has a massive ego, but is also extremely self-aware of his faults. He can't always avoid then, and sometimes even embraces them, but he's in no way blind to what he is. The movie was good to the point that I'm having trouble pointing at anything as a flaw. It kept me drawn in throughout, provided plenty of action and some solid emotion here and there. The only "con" that comes to mind may be the treatment of the Mandarin, but even that I'm on the fence about. Sticking to the comic version of him might have been too culturally offensive. The direction they went worked perfectly well for the movie, but left me a little disappointed for legacy reasons. Plenty of Iron Man armor shown on screen in all its physics-defying awesomeness. The use of the Extremis storyline seemed well handled, though I've only read about that story in the comics. The end credits were amusin

I suppose I should add to the earlier comments on the game, since I have finished the campaign. I'm not a big fan of first person shooter games in general, but I have to acknowledge that it can sometimes be made to work. After years of Doom clones/evolution, I found Half Life to be surprisingly immersive and interesting, for example. So I have some bias in the genre. Thus, when I say Far Cry 3 seems a cut above most FPS games, one must understand that I am very critical, but also haven't experienced them all by any means. There's strength to the story conveyed in the game, and I really like that. The specifics of the story vary greatly, though. The premise is fine. Vaas, the antagonist for the first chunk of the game is awesomely demented, and manages to act as a foil of sorts. There's a good back-and-forth rivalry between him and the main character... then Vaas gets killed in a drug-haze quasi-dream sequence. And that's about where the story takes a turn for the