Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Well, starting the morning off with a frustrating, looping software issue is one way to feel something other than ongoing malaise, right? A flickering ember of undirected anger instead... It's definitely not been a great week for me on the mental-emotional front. Though "alone" at work (ie. the other IT person has been out), things haven't been much busier than usual. Of late, the "usual" has been more boring than anything. I know enough to acknowledge that's not overall a bad thing, especially in any job that involves supporting others. It takes a different sort of psychological toll than being busy, however, rather than none at all. I've been thinking a lot about the not-MUCK of Faire lately and I seem to have reached the conclusion that playing "there" isn't really for me. That is sad and frustrating and a bunch of other muddled emotions that I seem to be moving toward acceptance of. I'm just not there yet. I've said pr...

Ugh. I don't want to single people out or be negative. Yet a person has to vent, I guess? Disclaimers: I usually try to be at least somewhat objective when I look at goings on, but ultimately I'm just a person. My own perspective and experiences bias what I see. Things that bother me may not bother others. That's life. I at least acknowledge this. Lots of recently-annoying events revolve around someone who evokes an emotional response from me. I am simultaneously envious of their drive and the ensuing attention this generates as well as dismayed by other aspects of behavior. So it's entirely possible that person's mere involvement makes me picky in ways I wouldn't otherwise be. Gotta acknowledge that too. Re-ugh... Furryfaire is not my sandbox. For as much as I may have contributed to the setting through actions of my characters over the years/decades, I have never really felt I had much say in things since... hmm... since about the time a map was made a...

Let's see... what entertainments to talk about of late? I started back up Battletech (rather than looking at the recent, Epic-exclusive Mechwarrior 5 ) and loaded in a 3062-based mod which introduces a lot more complexity to the game by making more mech components available for damage/replacement as well as putting in many later technologies and a crapload of new mechs and variants. I did not foresee quite the impact that I got. The strategic game radically slowed down for me. Getting enough components to get a new mech is much more difficult - part of that I think I had control over at the start of the career-mode play by selecting 5 rather than 3 to complete a mech, but also partly because the huge variety means getting enough of a specific mech (and not all mech variants are compatible in that way) requires luck. It's actually been kind of new to upgrade my starter mechs, so they have lasted longer, but I've run a lot of missions and only have one complete mech I didn...

"War never changes." That line from the Fallout games is oft-quoted. In the process, I'm reminded that another game (Metal Gear Solid 4) pitched the counterpoint: "War has changed." Last night, the question game up of whether the group of FurryFaire players playing on Discord would want to see a world war play out. One player pointed out this would likely fracture the PCs who are only sort of starting to come together now. For simplicity, I probably should have backed that position (which I find to be true) or just simply answered "no." Instead, I fell back on other thoughts and reasoning against it. Ah well. I've considered the impacts of magic on warfare before - at least since I read and did a book report on Pools of Darkness, a Forgotten Realms-based D&D novel. I've long since forgotten many of the details, but at the time that was a facet of the story that struck me. "Simple" things like being able to march an undead unit...

I sort of have to talk about the two together, I think. So, Kit started gearing up to run a little plot in the future of FurryFaire via Discord. Frankly, I'm not so enamored with Discord as a venue for roleplaying, but I see it's got ups and downs so... meh to that part. While Godbound is based on playing growing divine characters, it does have rules for mortals/heroic mortals, and the pitch involved making characters as the latter. As usual, I was fairly slow to really sit down and take a look, though as the game design has a high degree of overlap with d20 D&D the shock wasn't too great. There are a few inherent "problems" in applying it to Faire, though. Now, in fairness, that would be true of virtually any RPG system. The MUCK's reality has been shaped by the systems used before, and any new one introduces things that suddenly can or cannot be done or simply function differently. The Gifts appear to fit in Godbound as a major component of what divine...

Ah, what to say? I seem to be suffering a seasonally-enhanced melancholy. Less daylight has an effect. So do the holidays. As much as I am an introvert and find gatherings of people to be wearying, I have to acknowledge there's a sort of validation to it. Without interaction with others, life rapidly starts to feel pointless - or at least not rewarding. It's difficult to feel connected and involved in anything when you have trouble finding someone to even share thoughts and experiences with. And while holiday visits are often burdensome in my experience, they are enjoyable at the time and make such days feel special. And I do seem to have some psychological expectation for certain days being "special" in some way. When they aren't, even if they aren't bad , it makes them incredibly disappointing. That sucks. My WoW play has tapered off some, though I still like Legion and I'm occasionally surprised by the new Suramar content being released every week,...

Being sick sucks. I'd almost forgotten, as I don't get sick all that often. But in this case, I missed out on a trip to Albuquerque Comic Con (which I think was still the correct choice) and I'm still trying to shake the last vestiges of illness almost two weeks later. I'm still not sure if I should chalk it up to cold or flu, but either way the symptoms have ranged from sore throat and feeling feverish to runny nose and nausea. Whee. I've also sort of stopped taking my antidepressants during this period of illness. That's something I'll have to monitor and keep in mind. If I can get by without, fine. If I find myself in an emotional spiral, that's not so fine. A few dreams of late, though I can't claim to remember much of them. One stood out at the time that involved a group of scifi thief-types breaking into a facility only to have things go wrong and damage the space-time continuum. This leads to them going their separate ways until one of the...

Now this is work Jezra would enjoy and be capable of...

Blargh. Heating system at work on the fritz. Was toasty during the nights last week, and now during the morning. Seems to be overcompensating for cooling weather outside, but one really shouldn't be sitting at an office desk and sweating. A couple weeks in and in FFXIV I've got a level 41 (of 50) dragoon. It's definitely becoming slower to level, which is fairly predictable, but I find the pacing to be a little annoying in availability of quests. At this point, I can do the most recent story quests and the side quests that are unlocked in the area, and still have half a level to go before reaching the next. It seems there's greater expectation of gaining experience from dungeons and the like. That seems to me a poor design choice, personally. Amusingly, there are a fair number of in-game comments about how you keep getting sidetracked as people require you to prove yourself in some fashion before rendering needed aid so you can continue your actual quest. I've be...

Tired. Brain's fuzzy. Wanna go back to sleep. Mmmf. It may be a smart thing to try to get to bed earlier on day-shift weeks. Feh. I've had a few thoughts rattling around in my head. Mostly, I blame recent reading. I'm not sure they're fully developed, though... Character Mistakes Characters in The Broken Eye make a lot of mistakes in the area of social interactions and conversations. Maybe they can't speak freely because of an invisible assassin the other person doesn't know about, or maybe they're just too uncertain or embarrassed. Most of the time, however, it seems it either doesn't occur to them to say something or they don't fully trust the other person with the information. That might be the biggest hindrance among the "good guys" of the story - they don't always trust one another to share. On the other hand, given the various allegiances revealed over the books so far, maybe they're right in some cases. But it got me...

Okay, the family lines on Furryfaire are pretty screwy. That's what happens when you get a relatively small set of players playing multiple characters over several generations and many of those characters range from "long-lived" to effectively immortal. I never really planned on the conception of Wren (via Arion and Dove) and Ashley (via Shaden and Fireheart), but it had at least a few interesting possibilities. Given Arion's a deity and Fireheart is an avatar, it made sense that the pair would be raised by Shaden and Dove in Drachenkeep. It was a stretch from my current baseline hybrid philosophy, wherein I generally take the physical species/form of one parent and fur patterns or specific minor traits from the other. I had a little image in my head when I started thinking about it of a pair of princesses with enough of a mischievous streak to occasionally impersonate one another. So I split the difference, went with the mothers' vulpine species and settled on...

So, I've mentioned lately thinking about what to do with Jezra, one of my more active-in-recent-memory MUCK characters. Plus, someone keeps encouraging me to talk about characters, so... some specifics, I guess... I said recently: "... she seems to have hit a pretty static point that's not real inspiring either. Relationship drama has died down as she found a niche with Orion and Tash that (so far, at least) seems to be working fairly well. Business is fine and dandy. I find myself thinking 'something' needs to happen to shake things up a bit. Life without conflict is realistically nice, but narratively kinda boring. ;)" Also, the character itself doesn't have a lot of excitement built in, which seems to be a frequent character creation flaw on my part. She's fairly well adjusted and perhaps disturbingly smart. I envisioned her as sort of like the movie portrayal of Tony Stark in creative brilliance, but she doesn't have the ego. That has a lot...

It's not new, per se, but I recently had a discussion with a couple other players - definitely some "old school vs. new school" sentiments going on. I don't want to call the situation "hopeless," but I'm also not idealistic enough to think setting up a forum, encouraging people to use the board system, or updating the Wiki (all of which have been done at one time or another) will be a simple and solid fix. So much existing lore resides entirely in a couple people's heads, meaning any effort to gather it all requires a non-trivial effort on their part - effort that cannot simply be put in by anyone who has the time and desire. So there's sort of an atmosphere that discourages any major roleplay, which isn't particularly healthy for a roleplay-based MUCK. Anyway, I include the conversation I had here for those few who might read it. I hope it might make the point without being offensive - certainly none of it was intended as a personal att...

Years ago... sheesh, over a decade now, I think... an online friend shared this D&D-system world he used in some campaigns, Rym. He put up a web site with a lot of information, though there are still a lot of gaps, too. He also tied this in with Furryfaire MUCK. That had ups and downs, and there are still compatibility issues that we sort of skirt around, but I've always liked the magic/tech "vibe" of the setting even if I've interpreted it differently than others. One of the races of this world is the hoomiku. Now, when it comes to roleplaying them, there really isn't all that much information set out by their creator. There's a race page with some basics and D&D 3E-ish stat modifiers, there is a glimpse at their technology on the weapons page , and then there are some scattered references in images and map sites such as Haizat and Southwind Cove . When you put it all together, you get a picture, but it's a bit sketchy in places. To date, I...

I've managed to get involved with a relatively "new" little set of players on the MUCK. There's definite ups and downs to that. I find the fresher view of things invigorating at times. But I also see behavior that I grew out of years ago. It's a little weird. But from a more objective standpoint, it's also a little fascinating to see the old guard perceptions of the place versus the new. For these newer players, their vision of the setting is based on what's in the Wiki (which is outdated and incomplete in many cases) mingled with their own biases. To those of us of the "old guard" we experienced a lot of the stories directly and (at least in my case) haven't even looked at what the Wiki says for months or years. Of course, it doesn't help that a lot of things existed primarily in one person's head, and getting all that onto a web page is virtually impossible. In some cases, this has led to two (if not more) completely different t...

Feels odd. I was off my last night-shift week, so it's a little strange settling in for one. I also have to pick up my parents late tonight - assuming their flight gets in as scheduled. I have a couple projects I want to bust ass on and get done, but I keep getting roadblocked. My co-tech is taking tomorrow off, so replacing a critical workstation tonight is a bad idea without someone here in the morning, and licenses for another install showed up for his login, but not mine yet. Hrrf. Friend-guild activities last night in GW2 were largely a bust. It's a little frustrating not to be able to get five people together to run a new dungeon, but... this also seems like a bit of a management failure. I had no idea that was even the goal for the night, but if I had, I would have studied some. And I would assume someone who particularly wanted to do that dungeon path would have studied some. So hearing it takes 2 hours or so for a "good" group shouldn't have been a s...

Urgh. Major, wearying drama last night on Faire. All because Orion realized (OOCly even) that Jezra and Jericho have been sexually involved. Now his big hangup, so he says, was less that it happened and more that he felt lied to about it. The generational difference seems to be a minor squicking point with him, but he seemed to be focusing more on how he went out of his way to make his character assume otherwise when he shouldn't have. Urgh. As far as the in-character situation goes, I really don't see how it matters much. While you insist Orion would have done things differently earlier, it hardly seems worth the retcon. Yes, perhaps he would have expressed zero interest in Jezra before sending her to talk to Tash - a conversation which resulted in Jezra writing off any chance of bedding Orion anyway. So whatever "tension" remained between the characters, I /she didn't perceive any real possibility of sex between them since that night. Would it have chang...

Well, let's see... WoW is still in a little bit of a lull overall. We did raid Saturday, and managed a successful run through most of Firelands - even got Elly her firecat-form staff from Staghelm fiiiinally. That puts us approximately 3 FL runs and a Ragnaros kill away from having a Dragonwrath. Well, that's not going to happen before MoP comes out next week, but it's still an attainable goal. Though our last attempts on Rags went poorly, if we can get all the essences from the other bosses out of the way, we can focus just on him, which would help. It'll be interesting to see what effect leveling has if we keep poking Cata raids - numbers will go up, but the conversion from ratings will tank. The Theramore's Fall scenerio was released Monday, a day earlier than I expected. I have mixed feelings. As an introduction to scenerios, it works okay: they're 3-person instances that can have various objectives and can be run without the usual group restrictions,...

Just as being a jaded moviegoer/reader makes it difficult to be surprised at all by "twists" in stories, I sometimes find myself missing the naive exuberance of being a new gamer. Instead, it's hard not to let metagame thoughts seep in and dispel any real sense of atmosphere. Genuine fear or horror in an RPG? Uhh... difficult for me to even fake, honestly. Surprise when the big-bad gets away or is revealed to be someone else? Yeah, not so much. Tension over scenes where the fate of the world hangs in the balance? Meh. And that's in the games that actually have stories. When it comes to MUCK play - which is a far more common opportunity at least - there usually isn't more story than "well, here's a premise for a scene." And with such a... lack of complexity, that's even harder to make feel fresh or unique. It happens once in a while, but not often compared to the amount of time I'm logged in. And considering how rarely I come up with any s...

After stress yesterday at work and more today, I feel run a bit ragged. But, once again, things are functional for the moment, at least. Yay? Probably going to try to see Prometheus this weekend, though I'm not sure where my expectation level is, exactly. I've been reading more Chronicles of Elantra, and plan a post more on the series than the individual books when I finish the latest. Chatted this morning with a coworker who's really into Diablo 3 (though due to distractions like getting married, is still in Nightmare mode). In the process, I'm realizing/admitting/declaring that it's getting less fun not because of the repetition, but because of the frustration. One of his big points was how powerful the game made him feel. Well, that's true in Normal. Even somewhat in Nightmare, though it gets more challenging. I'm about halfway through Hell difficulty and I dread coming across champion packs and rares. They may drop better loot, but at best I'll ha...