Redwolf's Journal (continued)

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,...

While I still pondering if there's any interesting directions to go with existing characters, I found myself creating a new one of late that's been rather interesting to think about. Pull an existing character into a new group of people to play with? Possible, but... risks being pulled in too many directions at once, and that's not particularly good. Make a new character? Maaaybe, but what? Plenty of possible family members as characters, though that might be overdone. Hmm. One of the other players is a big anime fan. Hmm. So the idea that came to mind was an alternate-timeline characters. Chiaruscuro Kala S'yalin was born to Dove and Kyn'Elwynn in a world where they got together. She's a family member, but the rosters of her family and the existing S'yalin clan are very, very different. The heritage gives her an affinity for life, light, and shadow. A tiger-striped white vixen is fairly striking in appearance. Add on Tyrael-style "wings" of s...

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...

Snowdown week, I guess I's appropriate to have it snowing at least a little out, though it's mostly amounting to wet and gray rather than prettily snowy. And with a birthday coming up, I feel like I should find something special to do (that's usually my recommendation to others), but I've got nothin'. Not even a movie in theaters I want to go see. Mind you, I've already received more gifts than I would have asked for, which is nice, but still I find myself mostly wanting to just rest and relax at home - which isn't particularly unusual. And work has been a subtle drag lately. It's not that anything truly bad or stressful is going on, but... my boss/co-tech's procrastination is wearing on me. I try to be understanding, but I think it's been three days in the last week that he's taken off with only last minute notification and even when he hasn't, it has felt like he went home right after I did, with nothing being accomplished. That print...

I'm in sort of a gray haze of "bleh" at present. On the up side, I can be pretty sure that a year ago this exact same situation would have put me in a downward spiral of black. Huzzah for medication! I had a conversation online which, while kind of a bummer, is something I've been saying (or trying to, and perhaps being unclear) for a looong time now. I'm not wholly unappreciative of one-off roleplay scenes, but at their best they tend to be 'a reasonably entertaining few hours.' In cases where they don't really align with my mood, they're more like 'difficult to pay attention to, but maybe better than nothing, I guess?' And just hanging out online without any actual playing has some social interaction value, but not much beyond that, especially when fumbling for shared interests to discuss or catch up on. All of that's at least a very minor positive. The problem is, when I'm sitting through any of that, I'm generally want...

Always a question of what to say... Work's work, but not bad. I really should get off my duff and do some cleaning around the house at home, though it's hard to find the time and motivate for my own sake. I've gotten out for some weekend hikes, which is good, though the abrupt veering of the weather this last weekend blocked me on that. I'm a couple weeks away from vacation time, so that's on my mind as I try to get ducks in a row. Guild Wars 2 is about the same. We shifted ARIN play nights to Saturdays, but the last couple weeks I've logged on to no one there. Perhaps my timing is off. Not that there's a lot to do with that guild anyway when it amounts to a group of two or three people running around. AW still does Sunday afternoon missions. I actually made my first piece of ascended armor - ooo, ahhh - and I'm not sure if I'll keep the look or not, longer-term. Apparently we get some rebuilding of Lion's Arch content next week. I know it h...

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...

Ramblings upon roleplayings... Let's see... Offline, our Aeranos fantasy game reached a break point, so we've shifted gears elsewhere for a while and the Order of the Swan is on hiatus with some loose plans to pick up ten in-game years, give or take, down the line. The overall mission rates a success, though we lost of the the NPCs we were trying to save along the way, and out last-minute desperate manuever rendered both party healers unconscious and one very nearly dead. Woo! So we've turned out attention there back to our modern urban fantasy Northport game. Considering we haven't played that in quite a while, there's been some catching up. We re-converted out of Dresden Files RPG to, more or less, the same system as in use for Aeranos. That took some sort for all the characters. Mine was easy enough translating stats over from the original Unisystem, but he's gone from having a handful of invocations in Unisystem to high caster stats in DFRPG to a really...

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...

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...

I'm tired. Not in a "I should get another couple hours a sleep a night" sense, though that may well be a good idea. Rather, experiences that are positive or invigorating to me have been... rare, this last week. Dwelling on the past left me moody over the weekend. A couple nights ago, someone blew up on the MUCK over "lies" and miscommunication, the whole situation there still leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I'm having continuing trouble connecting with one of my longest-standing friends online just because of this sense of sameness - that everything's been said and done - and because, more and more, I feel like his interests and preferences diverge from my own. The WoW daily grind and my inability to find a comfortable niche in GW2 don't help. And that's the "fun" part of my life. Work... hasn't been as bad as it could be. I've only really been in full crisis mode one afternoon. But I also feel the impending awkwardness a...

Even (if not especially) in gaming. That's the conclusion that comes to mind thinking about recent (and old) games. Certainly, it's more widely applicable than that, and the relationship is not a simple 1:1 thing, but I'm convinced it's there. WoW this weekend was less productive than, perhaps, I expected. About three hours of hanging out among guildmates resulted in one hastily-formed, chaotic kill of the Sha of Anger (with a whole bunch of non-guild, naturally), two heroic dungeons, and two non-heroic dungeons. I have to say I dislike the Sha fight, though it could go a lot more smoothly if people were coordinated and had an idea what was going on - still, I'm glad to have done it and even if I didn't luck out and get tier pants like someone else did, I'm happy to have gotten the quest boots out of it. The heroics were done with a couple "gogogo, do this for the achievement" types whose attitude does not aggrevate me as much as it does some...

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...

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...