Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Oh, right. So that is what precipitation looks like. Awesome.

Scattered of mind. Blargh. Eyes have been tending to sting a bit on and off since yesterday. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the haze from regional wild fires (I could barely see the west side of the valley this morning). I've transcribed a few of my RPG campaign thoughts, but haven't really made much progress on writing up setting notes or getting into further rules changes. Work's been busy on and off the last few days. MUCK talk utterly frustrated me straight offline last night. The desire to smack people can get almost overwhelming at times.

So, I didn't get out of town, but I did put myself through a couple tough hikes. Of course "tough" is relative, but a couple hours on a steep trail is enough to feel like a pretty solid push for my current physical state. That first twenty minutes or so is the most intense. I've said that such things work to give myself thinking time similar to long drives. What that really means is that I'm doing something that requires partial concentration, whether that's putting one foot in front of the other on a trail or following a stretch of road in light traffic. Either way, it's as though that occupies just enough mental bandwidth to leave room for one primary conscious thread. With that, I can then sort of focus on one line of thinking reasonably well, putting together thoughts on how an RPG campaign might work, for example. That headspace is hard to come by. It seems I usually exist in either a work-based crisis mode, where I have an urgent issue in front o

My goal was to hike out higher than I had before, and I succeeded there. Almost exactly two hours from out the door to back to it. Not sure about exact distances or anything, but somewhere around a thousand vertical feet. I went through pretty much my entire 2 liter camelback's water supply. It was also long enough to highlight some issues with either my shoes or gait or both, in that my weight seems to be coming down disproportionately on the insides of my feet. Hmm. Edit: And a few hours after, I get to suffer from a sharp headache. Dehydration? Maybe, but I have made an effort to keep drinking extra water, and I've been off to the bathroom enough to prove that. I certainly got some sun, but I'm not feeling sunburnt. Blargle. Put some thought into roleplaying along the way. I think I've shelved my "Price of Power" campaign, as I have come to call it myself, yet again. I started looking at Mutants and Masterminds (possibly with the Warriors and Warlocks su

I've shared at least one of these before with friends this week, but as I love some in-the-trenches/behind-the-scenes perspective, here are a couple things that have caught my eye recently. A presentation by a major Bioware writer on sexism and sexuality in video games and industry perceptions about it. A DC writer's insight into how major comic contracts often work , and the royalties that do and don't exist there. He also speaks some in general about corporations from a perspective that is often overlooked, especially online.

So, I'm about to have a long weekend because... well, being a salaried employee means I have to take full days off to use vacation time, and I have the cap looming over me almost constantly and a manager who believes losing vacation time due to a cap is bad (albeit not as serious as not being around when needed). That leaves with two primary options. I can use the window to leave town, even if just for night or two. I don't have any major goals in mind, but I could drive down to Albuquerque and stay in a hotel. The drive would be positive for me, mentally, and a brief change of scenery wouldn't hurt. I could hit up a restaurant or two we don't have locally, walk a mall, and go to the large book store I like. I could go to the gaming store, but that was horribly disappointing when I found it last time. I could even poke my head into the comic con going on this weekend down there, though there really isn't anytime I'm after. Or I could stay home. I could may

I may be down to a couple roleplayers who regularly read this, but a question came to mind, and I'm curious about feedback... Do you let your characters make mistakes? And I don't mean, "do your characters make mistakes?" I mean, do they make mistakes that you, as a player, see coming and could cause them to avoid. This like choosing a plan that's likely to fail over one with a better chance of success (as opposed to following a bad plan with no real alternative), or entering into a relationship that can't possibly end well, or making a promise the character won't be able to keep even though they'll regret that later... I think, as a player, there's always some drive to play "well" and to "succeed" in a game that pushes us away from inviting failure like that. That very psychology is part of the difficulty I've seen in some people adapting to certain games that move emphasis off "playing the character" and mo

So with a Nexus 7, I finally got introduced to the world of mobile device games. Whee? I picked up Angry Birds: Star Wars quickly enough. Simple, but not very engrossing for me. I also picked up Ayakashi Ghost Guild , a "collectable card" game of sorts to check out, and a bit later Transformers Legends , in the same genre. Difference models and different experiences with those two, though they shared much of the same format - cards of characters with levels of rarity and power, use of cards to level up others, a limited form of PVP against other people's decks, limited-period events with special rules and such in place... With Ayakashi, I sort of got into it for a while, but after a month or two ran into an effective ceiling for free players. Attribute points start out as a limit to your ability to use your best cards at once, but after enough levels, it's more a lack of cards that have high enough requirements to use all your attack/defense spirit. And higher-requ

Good game, though rough time constraints. Still, usually we're scrambling a day or two before to organize a game night. This time, we actually knew enough to settle on a night a week in advance. And everyone in the normal group said they could make it. We even got word that one person who had played in the first part of the campaign (which started back in April of 2010, if our campaign logs at http://aeranos.blogspot.com/ are to be believed), would "be there." A couple of us took that to mean he'd be involved via Skype, which we'd tried once before with him, but found out that he was actually in town. And one group member was going to be out of touch for a while after, as he'd found some people to game with closer to his home. Couple that with coming up on a fairly big moment in the plot, and we had a perfect "season finale" for the campaign. Heck, I even made up some creme brulee the night before to share and make things just a litlte more special.

Busy day at work, then offline gaming 'til almost 1 am. @.@ Gonna be a caffeine day tomorrow, I can tell...

It's a little strange to me, but several money-related issues have come to my attention and been on my mind over the weekend. Potentially ranty... Commissioned Artists A post over on Furaffinity was pointed out that spoke about commissioned art and prices. Largely, it seemed to be making the points that 1) artists often don't charge enough for their time, and 2) commissioners should understand this and be willing to pay more. Those are some valid points, but the post was horrible narrow in its view. The assumption seemed to be that every piece of commissioned artwork ought to earn at least minimum wage, based on X hours available and so on. It sort of ignores that some percentage (I want to say a majority, but I guess I don't know that) of artists have an actual job as well. If art is one's hobby, then making any money at it is more profitable than how a lot of us spend out time outside work. It also ignores that art is very much a luxury item, the market ruled by

Urgh... Haven't been sleeping well the last few nights. Strange dreams this morning too... One had me as a reluctant ex-war hero in a sci-fi setting chasing down an old friend who was using some advanced mecha to interrupt shipping lanes in space. It wasn't only tougher/stronger/better equipped than the norm, but the control system somehow could instill a sense of terror in enemies, turning it into a sort of super weapon - with the side effect of making the user insane over time. My female companion and I caught up with him and his, and we had a little showdown before I finally outright challenged him. We had a knock-down, drag-out fight in Iron Man-ish powered armor rather than the mecha in question, but he was still using the nasty control interface. Of course, like any good action hero, I was able to push through the fear and with a lot of desperate struggling, ended up victorious. In the end, I set the mecha, control system and all, on a course for the local star and eje

I've not delved too deeply into any game since finishing Dust . In fact, I've started up a round of Minecraft as "background game" recently. I'd sort of like something new to sink my teeth into, but such seems not to be for the moment. My Skyrim play has again tapered off after completing the Dawnguard plot, but before really finishing anything else. I actually got in a heroic scenario in WoW over the weekend, and that was not bad. Reasonably challenging without being overwhelming (for 2 DPS and 1 tank), it wasn't a bad way to spent about half an hour. And I got a ring upgrade out of it, which I take to be luck. It does still require the coordination of a 3-man group, and I worry a little about longevity, but it feels like a decent addition at this point. Unfortunately, my previous assessment still pretty much stands - any major goals I might have (like, say, the legendary quest line) are still gated behind things I don't have the time/patience for (ie

Let's see, what've I read since the last time? There was Kitty Rocks the House , yet another in the urban fantasy Kitty Norville series. The simple review is: it's more of the same, which is to say reasonably enjoyable light reading. I still enjoy watching the characters do their things, and there are a few thoughtful points like seeing how Kitty has been "negelecting" her pack some while juggling job and family and everything else. There's also a thread where the good-gal cop is trying to arrest a vampire from out of town on an Interpol warrant, which raises some questions (more in my mind than the characters') about whether strict legal enforcement against the supernatural is really a good idea. Sometimes, it just isn't. For the most part, though, it's simple and fun reading, with no major surprises or twists along the way. On the other end of that spectrum, perhaps, is a short story that my dad actually pointed me to: Wool . Part one was fre

Odd... Some sort of WoW-based, pseudo-SCA thing with real armor combat. And after watching a couple people failing to defeat a "boss," I sort of sighed and said, "Alright, let me go get my shield" and went to armor up in layers and get into character/outfitted in my tank gear... Also something based on Man of Steel, which I haven't seen and really may not. But there was a Superman, and Zod's big assault force. Though rather than trying to take over the Earth himself, Zod proclaimed he was merely "leveling the playing field" by supplying less advanced nations with high-tech weapons while secretly hoping humans would basically wipe themselves out and leave Earth to his devices. All the while, I'm trying to convince Superman to stand up and be a symbol that Zod can be beaten. This is... not to my knowledge the plot of the movie, per se.

The recent RPG research had me pulling out my d20 Sorcery and Steam book. It certainly didn't have what I was really looking for, but it did have a good section on incorporating steampunk-ish technology into a world. And it brought up a point that, perhaps, hadn't fully clicked in my mind before in the "what's different between magic and technology" debate. Magic (unless deliberately designed otherwise) can exist on its own. Technology, however, requires infrastructure, and that has inherent implications. Oh, a secret inventor/society could create a few prototypes on their own, sure. When you start getting into airships (plural) or mass-produced anything, you need factories. And you need mines. And transport for the parts. And... The making of things en masse almost unavoidably causes a big change in society to support it - something that we have historical evidence of.