Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I stumbled across this site today: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/ . It contains a great many little essays and references about roleplaying. Along the way, I found mention of Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering and briefly considered purchasing the PDF version. Yet it was a neutral review of said book that gave me pause. Three stars out of five, and the person said in part: In the beginning the author lays out a few types of players, like the powerplayer, the storyteller, etc. For the most part it pretty obvious (Power gamer likes to have a lot of power and story teller likes a good story... no, really?) After that, everything in this book pretty much boils down to "it depends".   For all that people say and argue about how best to run/play an RPG or what the different "types" of gamers are, it always seems to boil down so much more simply. Comparing degrees of "dramatist" versus "simulationist" may be useful in some cases, but t...

Huh. That's... actually better than I would have thought. They worked the ten-minute episode format pretty well. http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a25059520b3d89e0120b49221340025 Edit: I have long been conflicted about how I saw Snake-Eyes, though I didn't think too hard on it back in the day. Naturally, he was "cool." Commando + Ninja + Black Costume with Mask + Mysterious Past + Tragic Disfigurement = of course this character seemed awesome to a kid back then. Heck, they even packaged him with a wolf in one incarnation. But even in the 80's, I think I resented the character some as being too... special or gimmicky. He was, I might say, the Drizzt Do'Urden of his day - the character so over-the-top-awesome that the target audience wished they could be him. If there were a popular G.I. Joe RPG back in the day, I bet there would have been a ton of special-forces-dude-with-ninja-training, just as there were a swarm of dual-wielding-good-emo-drow ...

I was walking back to work from my evening "lunch" break, and a fellow addressed me. In short order, he was telling me how 1) works for a living as a cook, 2) lives in a tent, and 3) was recently hit by a car. He made note of how the driver was a woman on her cell phone and didn't even seem to notice. I am increasingly frustrated by the number of people on the streets with their attention on their phones. Drivers, walkers, even people on bicycles. It doesn't inherently mean they're oblivious to their surroundings, but it sure seems like there's a connection. He went on to say he wasn't asking for money, but was hoping for something to eat. Funny how getting food usually requires money. Having been drawn in beyond being able to feign ignorance, and not being a completely heartless bastard, I gave him a little money. These encounters always leave me... unsettled, though. I'm always left wondering whether such a person's story was true. It wouldn...

I don't often sweat security in real life. Oh, I weigh risk, there just isn't a lot of it most of the time. I lock the doors at home, sure. I usually don't bother with me truck, as there's little of value in it and I don't see much reason to worry about someone trying to hotwire and steal a 26-year-old pickup here. I run an updated anti-virus program and aggressively pounce on any signs of possible infection, but that happens rarely. And yet I just linked a Blizzard authenticator to my Battle.net account for WoW. I've heard tales of woe from people who've had their account stolen, including one coworker. In general, I suspect they were lax and opened their computers up in other areas, but some people swear they picked up a keylogger through an addon or addon-updating client. And I looked at my characters, which represent a good deal of time and effort, even if they are virtual. And for all that, I decided that $6.50 and the inconvenience of entering a numb...

Construction crews just started working on the main road leading in town from home - a nice little stretch by an intersection that's getting a light put in as I understand. This is a mostly-unrelated precursor to the major improvement project sceduled (that probably won't begin in earnest 'til next year). Still having a chunk of the road down to one lane through most of the day is an inconvenience. Cars backed up in both directions. I left work just a little early yesterday, probably avoiding the worst of it, and it still added about 25 minutes to what's normally a 10-minute drive or less. @whee. Quick WoW note: The guild now has heroic Azjol'Nerub under its collective belt. Considering how we got stomped when we poked at it before, I was surprised. It's still not easy, but it's doable. Having an off-tank baiting the skirmishers are the beginning probably helped a lot. Anub'arak caused some deaths, but not a wipe. And speaking of belts, I got an upgrad...

And my sinuses, apparently. Ugh, allergies. I don't even know if the sleepiness/spaciness is more due to the allergies or the allergy medicine. That stuff is supposed to be non-drowsy, but I'm never sure I believe such claims. The Shadowrun game progresses. Sometimes, it's slow, sometimes not quite so bad. Maybe I need to put bells on my character, as his turn was overlooking in the initiative order once and we spent a painful chunk of one session going nowhere because a pose of mine was missed. Thusfar, lots of dealing with HMHVV-infected people. They're dubbed "vampires" and "loup-garou" and "sasquatches," but I have trouble picturing them as such in fantasy terms. They're vampiric in a sense, but not dead - hence not undead. There's no known cure and the infected tend toward beastial mentally, but it's a retrovirus-style disease. In theory, there should be a way to undo it. So we've been pulling punches to some exten...

Another subject came to mind last night as I considered my previous character retrospectives. Annoyingly, the thoughts aided in keeping me awake until rather later than I would have liked. Jhazza was, in many ways, my "main" character for the revamped FurryFaire with Mika retiring from active play. Daughter of Mika and Khett, she was ICly a deliberate effort of breeding the partly-demonic bloodline strong. With the displacer beast-like tentacles, her supernatural heritage was blatantly obvious. She was a fun character to play - intelligent, but highly favoring direct approaches and dangerously irreverent. She saw herself as a guardian and warrior, not a leader. Rather than being a caster like her mother, she took after her father's shapeshifting. I used Wild Path magic as a way to describe her adaptive and flexible nature, giving her the ability to gain temporary powers almost at will. She gained a lot of them permanently later - after a major ice/winter-related TP, f...