Time for Plan B

D&D for the boys and I always has the potential to become a rather uneventful gathering. Aaron, our Dungeon Master, is a sparky and works some odd jobs, sometimes out at Gympie until late at night on a saturday, or maybe he'll be down at Melbourne.

So whilst awaiting our conductors arrival one night, trying to occupy ourselves by playing Xbox, or DS, or Laptop, we came to a decision for a Contingency Plan, something to play if he calls in late. We threw a few impotent ideas around until I suggested a Board game.

We didn't really know many board games, so I threw out the Starcraft or Warcraft board games since I had the two games on the brain. But a few weeks later, Scott and I were at Fastbreak and thought now was a good time to pick a board game to play, something that could accept 3 players and take a fair while to actually play.

Talisman is one we knew about since Scotty and I played that when we attended Cancon a few years ago. Disco and some of his friends we were staying with had Talisman and so we played into the wee hours of the morning having Death chase us all around the board. Sadly, we saw Talisman there, but it was only an expansion which doesn't double as a stand-alone.

After I suggesting a few other choices, such at Settlers and Robo-rally, Paul suggested Castle Ravenloft and gave us a Demo of it. To put it simply, it's a Random Dungeon Generator where your heros (there's up to 5 heros) are sent through to complete a quest, such as retrieve an item from an Alter or defeat certain monsters.

It's cool. It's playing D&D when we can't Play D&D! To boot, they have an expansion coming out next year, so we won't get bored with this very quickly. And we can swap between 5 heros as well: Dragonborn Fighter, Eladrin Wizard, Human Ranger, Dwarf Cleric and Tiefling Rogue (I think I actually have this wrong).

Now all I have to do is find/make a Barbarian and I'm set...

Neon and Spandex – You know what I'm talkin 'bout

Now it may be strange that I'm showing a picture of a guy about to fly kick you in the head... or his conveniently inconspicuous crotch bulge, whatever takes your curiosity more... but this is Rinzler, an awesome character (Even if he is a bad guy) for Tron Legacy.

Kel and I saw it last night to still get a bit of nerd on, and it was awesome! The Neon, the Spandex, the Hot babes (Olivia Wilde played the most adorable character) and the Fight Scenes! Even the music! (Apparently the entire score was done by Daft Punk - Who also made a cameo - which made me larf) It's almost good enough for you to make your own costume!



Or Maybe not.

The only real problem I have with the movie is that while they had to CG YOUNG Jeff Bridge's Head for a few scenes, it was still a little off. You know how in comedy shows they replace original clips with someone elses head, and it just doesn't seem right with the body? That's what happened on a small scale. Oh, and I swear his eyebrows never moved.

It wasn't enough to put me off though. I watched the movie, enjoying sights like the Solar Sailor, the new Light Cycles and other Light Vehicles, oh and the Recognisers look very cool with updated graphics.

There's only one thing I have to say to conclude this.

Shut up and go see Tron: Legacy.

Avatars of War

Site Link

Don't really know how I came across this site but the models in here are pretty sweet. My problem is that there's a little too much emphasis on dual weilding. But they're still awesome looking. Though there's mention of game rules, but I can't find them fort he life of me. *Shrug* Google searches later.

http://www.avatars-of-war.com/eng/web/images/minis/aow24/aow24_blister.jpg

12 Months

I'm reading a book at the moment called Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett. It's a wonderful book that plays on the subject of chronology, AKA: Time. The story explains that humans affect time much more than they actually think, quite clumsily at that, but humans make time, lose time, waste time, etc, without even thinking about it until they question it a little later.

Just quickly, I thought I'd better put this quote: Ah, yes. A pune, or a play on words. I see.

I don't know if I've been wasting my time, or just losing it, because the past twelve months have gone so quickly it's like one of my paper aeroplanes which have the flying capabilities of a dodo. This is me being flippant, of course. Truly I make useless planes.

The last 12 months have been wonderful, though they've passed so quickly. I have met many people, made an arse of myself several times, and cruised along happily head over heels with a very special someone. Things could be better, yes, but that's only because we haven't gotten that one way plane ticket yet.

At the time of this writing, about 2 weeks beforehand, I plan to have this schedule to post in the evening of our anniversary in the USA, which will be the morning after on AUS time. By that time, she should have received a bouquet of Roses at her workplace.

I love you Jennicki.

I keep on Wondering. See what I did there?

So with more thinking about the player characters and their encounters, I was thinking of having an Anti-party which the players would come up against every so often. And because the campaign is themed around killing Dragons, when I came across this I figured it to be an awesome figure for the anti-party leader.

It's a pretty sweet model, I reckon. I may change the shield, but the sword is awesome!

But there's also NPC's that are part of the story. The Players get to run around with a Paladin. So after a little bit of searching for a Sword and Shield Warrior, i found this one: http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/paladin/sku-down/14508

Game on!

Plan de Scion En détail

So the thoughts of a Physical World map made of Hexagon pieces has just flowed through my mind with awesome and I got descripts after descripts. So far it's down to either 13 pieces with detachables, or 18 pieces to alternate other pieces.

Lets start with the Lake, where the players start and attend quite a few times. Its story is that over the lake itself is a cloud that never goes away. It just rains and rains and just doesn't stop. Secretly on top, there's a castle where hides a dragon and a small village. And secretly the castle and cloud are a veil to cover the actual castle and the village, which are on an island in the middle of the lake.

So I could have 3 alternate pieces: Lake with Cloud; Lake with Castle on Cloud; Castle on lake. Or I can have detachable pieces on top of the base: Raining Cloud; The castle on the cloud; the Real castle on the island.

Then there's the main city and the tunnel. They could have two pieces each, or I can have the city itself and the tunnel be replacable on the base. There's the castle as well which the players visit at least twice, which I can keep a wide fortress on the base itself, and get an extension to make it taller for the next time the players attend it.

Otherwise pieces are a one time thing. The labyrinth, the pagoda, the pirate ship, the seafaring town, the Desert (How can one change the desert short of destroying a freakin pyramid?), the mountains, the caves, and the island. Oh and the Swamp, can't forget the swamp. That'll be an awesome level.

Hey Look!

I found the original map for "Wonder Boy in Monsterland".

I can say now, I'm not going to use that as a reference.

It's that time.

Is it that time of the year again? Why yes, yes it is. It's time to play “lets pick on Playstation!”

I had a laugh the other day as I was going through Kotaku.com.au. They had an article about an old Playstation 3 Console that had a letter to the next purchaser of the second hand model. The note wrote how the console was a massive waste of time and that the current purchaser should by an Xbox360.

It's times like these that I larf to myself. The Playstation 3 isn't all bad though. It's more buck for your bang, that's true. But I am always finding uses for it. Like playing movies and tv shows from my laptop to it. A network setup and some shared media and BAM! We have TV on the PS3.

It's easy to do and there are few reasons it won't work. You can even download a free program to your computer that will allow you to play, what would be normally, unrecognised file formats.

You can even access the internet on the PS3 because it has its own Web Browser! You can check your favourite Youtube videos; check your facebook or twitter; Heck, if I plugged a mouse and keyboard in I could type up this blog from it.

My only problem? Well, the visual display format. You see, I have poor eyesight. I suffer from Myopia (Short Sight for those at home) and so from the distance of more than about half a metre from my face things get to be a bit blurry. But that's not the problem.

It's the TV. The TV I have access to is a CRT from about four or 5 year ago. I can't complain about it because 1: It's not my TV; 2: It's better than my TV; 3: I tossed out my TV because it was killing my eyes.

So having a nice crisp picture would be nice to have. So why not use my monitor?

To Summarise: “Nup”. I tried a few different methods. HDMI to DVI, being the first. It's supposed to work, but no. Then there wasHDMI to VGA. Apparently that was a Scam. Then I tried Composite to VGA. That was a scam too. I only lost about $15 out of it, so I have a strangling cord now and something to use as tentacles for something. Next attempt is going to be a Component to VGA. After some research, it should work. SHOULD.

Why am I going through this instead of simply getting the “PS3/Wii VGA” cord, like I did my Xbox with it's “360 VGA Cord”? Well I want to hook my PSP and PS2 as well. Mostly the PSP, because I have games on it I want to play but my neck doesn't like looking down at my lap for too long and I get headaches. I still have to upgrade my PSP, but that isn't too much of a hassle.

I also want to play my PS2 games as well, because I miss them so much. I want to play Ratchet and Clank again. I want to try and finish GT4 and FFXII. I want to play Sonic 3 and Knuckles again. And I can't do this with my PS3 because the ponces haven't done anything about it except this:



Click here for more info

Seriously. I'd love this. But FUCK knows when it'll come around. I still have my really old PS2 sitting next to my computer waiting to be used, to be enjoyed like the old days.

But time will tell whether Playstation will do it. I have hope, but it's about knee high to my nephew.

Globe of Conflict Design – Disaster

You know? If you put that into Acronym, you get GoCD. Go Card. I see a pattern emerging.

Yes, I am back into WoW. It's been a good... two years?... since I majorly got into WoW. Last time was around Xmas time again, and for a whole week I just went ahead and played my little heart out and got myself to 79. Since then, it hasn't been too... appealing.

But secretly, I have been waiting for Cataclysm to happen. The world gets a change and it's all for the better. The game before was wide spread, and it would take such a long time just to get to level 20. You were proud to get to 20! But now after a few nights, I got to level 25 and the quests just haven't stopped. Half the game is played FOR you by travelling to destinations for you, especially if they're across the map.

This is a good idea. And to top of it off, you get your first mount at level 20. This is awesome. That's old hat, I know, but this is still awesome because it gets those quests done a little quicker. Not to mention, if you're levelling through dungeons, then you've got a quick way of getting to the dungeons. Especially for higher levels since you can just fly around now!

The worst, and what I believe to be the stupidest, thing I've had happen in WoW was quite a while ago when I was running up a new character and I was about level 35 and going through Scarlet Monastary, going off to take on the bigger bosses to get some gear. We killed off the pair of them, as hard as it was, and it came to picking up the special gear they had dropped.

Now for those who don't know, there's a Need/Greed system that the game opts for rare items. You click on Need if you do actually Need it, and Greed if you don't need it. Then when everyone's done, the computer does an automatic % roll to see who gets it, highest number wins. If there's anyone who Needs it, they roll off and the Greed people don't get a chance. It's a group effort as well to say if you need the item or not.

Now this is usually aimed at small dungeon crawls, when there's about 5 people in the party. It'll end up being a easy discussion and you can always run the dungeon again almost straight afterwards and try again. And if you don't get it? Well you were only going to keep that weapon for 5 or 10 levels before you found something better.

At raid level, the Raid Leader can set the system to only give an item to a particular person at his/her discretion. Before it was integrated into the game, the system was that everyone cancelled the Need/Greed and just discuss it. There was no control and some people would just nick it anyway. So now that the Raid Leader has control, it's a new ball game.

This wasn't the case. We weren't in a raid. And the Party Leader didn't turn on the Leader's discretion system (It has a name, fucked if I remember what it is). So out of habit, I rolled Greed. I figured the priest would roll Need and get priority, and he'd need it more than me because it was somewhat designed for him.

But everyone opted out. They wanted to discuss who got the item, and when I won the roll (Because I was the only one rolling), they kicked up a huge stink about how I was being inappropriate and how they were going to spread word about how I was rude to other players. I tried explaining to them that they should've just rolled Need, but nooo, they couldn't do that. That'd just be silly. So they buggered off, /ignored me and I turned off my computer. It was late anyway.

Otherwise it's been fun. And now in this reformed world, I'm doing the Protection Warrior again and enjoying every moment of it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Azshara has been remade into an awesome early-levellng zone and includes a Goblin Rocket Road!

Oh my little Orc with a Weapon and Shield. How much fun we shall have.

It's a Wonder

So i caught myself thinking about a Dnd campaign which i'm basing off of Wonder boy "in monster land" and "the dragons trap", and ghouls and ghosts. I've got it all basically figured out, where the characters have to progress and how the world interacts with them. I even figured out how to solve the transformation connundrum i had going for a while.

But i had a bit of trouble figuring out the map. I drew it in different ways but only one form was i actually happy with, and it evolved/devolved into something like a grid. I even had it figured out in Excel, where i just had names and arrows to where they were.

Recently Humph has been making his brother a birthday present. His brothers favourite game is Settlers of Catan and the game is played on a large set of Hexagons.

That got me to thinking. What if i asked humph to show me how he made his pieces and i'll make some up based on my dnd campaign? I know he used some casting resin, but it's what he cast them from that's important.

I also want to get a whiteboard for Dnd. And i don't mean a pissy little thing for putting on the table. I mean one of the roller whiteboards you see at school. So i get some magnets in the bottom of the pieces and i have a map that won't need to be remade every week because it'll be stuck to the whiteboard.

Now we generally use grids for our maps so i sent an enquiry to the local whiteboard people asking if they could bake lines into the boards, and if they could make modifications or not. Yes and no respectively. So when i one day make myself this board, not to mention have room for it, i'll have some awesome plans.

At least i reckon they'd be awesome.

I should buy a cape. And Spandex.

"Lab camilla and stav are at shops ... go and get on radio !"
"I'm on my way"

You'd think nobody would be that excited about getting me anywhere near a public venue, but that's Tim for you. She got excited when i was in the newspaper, twice no less in the "Ask the public" boxes near the front of the newspaper, and i'm pretty sure i told her about how i was on a kids game show when i was 11.

I remember that being hard fought, since one of the other girls thought she was chosen to go on the show. We even had a competition, the teacher (because i can't remember her name for the life of me) had us all answering trivia questions and me, daniel and Cassandra (i think) won the entire thing. Then came game day and Sarah was arguing that she was captain of the team, but i argued with her and eventually won (i think it was another competition) and because sarah was so upset the tv staff gave her a shirt to make up for it.

Then I looked at the prizes and it was either a bunch of CDs or a pair of Sketchers, so i opted to get sketchers. I needed new shoes, and these were better than the dunlop brand mum got all the time. Sadly they were stolen from me when i left them outside the door of the after school care centre for a few minutes one day. Still pissed about that.

The Newspaper however was intimidating to say the least. If it wasn't bad enough that i got caught in a corner, i was caught by a hottie (sorry jen) and her cameraman (who looked a little like Wes Carr). They asked me "what do i do different for winter" and they laughed with me as i attempted a funny joke and had my photo taken.

About 2-4 weeks later, the big boss emails the office a quote about staying at home for lack of confidence issues, and asking who it was. Totally misquoted, but who's going to argue with a brick shithouse?

I can hardly remember the second time i was in the paper but it was the same deal, different rag, worse picture.

Now's my chance to be on radio. But do i want to be on B105?

Lan Oh Lan

It's been a while since i went to a LAN. For those who aren't in the know, a LAN is a set up of a number of computers so that they can play against each other. And there are places in the city that do it too, a place I used to attend on occasion called the Bunker. It's still there too, running strong, with quite a few people playing WoW, or some other game with someone across in another building.

I loved it, and when I did go it wasn't for a piddly hour or something. My mates and I would go and play for 24 hours, give or take half an hour for eating and catching the sunrise. And we would play games all night, and morning until we caught the train or taxi home, only to crash on whatever we landed on. It was exhausting, but it was fun.

One day I may do it again soon. Maybe next year? I'll gather as many people as possible to meet up at the bunker, and game on until the next morning. We'd start at 6pm and end at 6pm over a weekend. We may even jump off for a little while to have a drink or two at the ManaBar.

Actually, that'd be kinda fun. start off at midday, stop around 9 to check out the Manabar and have a few drinks, probably Jagerbombs or B52's (I really want to have another one), and then come back and play some more into the next morning and head home at 12. Or go back to the Manabar, because I think it opens around that time.

I think I may be obsessed with the Manabar. It's a cool digs! It'd be cool if they could expand the size of the actual bar! (If they haven't already that is).

But yes, maybe that'll be my plan for next year.