Well, my friend talked me into starting Icewind Dale II again as a slight diversion. Fortunately, I don't have to start from scratch: I managed to find my old saved games. Anyway, I am basically taking the rest of the day off to play a few hours of Icewind Dale II before I decide that I'm wasting my time. The upshot of all this is that this is going to be a shorter than average VFB, but as Neal Boortz says on Nealz Nuze (one of my favorite internet destinations): it's not like you're paying for my blog (nor would anyone...)
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Ross
At the moment, I'm looking for a game to play. I don't actually have the time to play any games, and certainly not one of the length I played in years previously, a la anything by BioWare, which sort of rules out Neverwinter Nights. But something in me is convinced that I do have a couple of hours in there somewhere to recreate and all of my old games just don't hold any appeal for me anymore. So I went to the local GameStop, and nothing leaped off the shelves, so I decided to try a nearby Media Play and even though their selection was greater than Gamestop's (which always surprises me) I still found nothing.
Of course, the danger is that you will find something, and that it will consume your every waking moment, that 40 hours will pass and still you desire to play the game will be unslaked. I don't worry about that so much any more. Now, maybe it's the recent crop of games I've picked up, but nothing has really done that to me in at least two years and probably longer. Maybe I've grown out of video games (I know my wife would be happy to hear that). Maybe I'm too stressed to enjoy the mindless entertainment. Maybe when I went in for nose surgery last year they accidentally gave me a partial lobotomy, and no one noticed any difference...
One game looked vaguely promising, but since they wanted $50 for it I thought I would at least check out some reviews before I bought it. The game was called "Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader. I guess the premise is that in 1588 the third crusade opened this breach to another world and that from that point forward history diverged. Not a bad little concept but none of the reviews were stellar, so I probably won't get it. Of course I guess I could download the demo, that might be just enough to fill the two imaginary hours I might have to play. If any of the three people reading the blog have any recommendations feel free to post them in the comments or e-mail them to me, and I'll let you know if my game-playing ever gets beyond playing Snake II on my cell phone.
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Ross
While I was at GenCon, I realized I needed to start DM'ing again. There were a few reasons: first off, I missed it; secondly, I thought it would be something to take my mind of the pressures of running a business while still being useful to that business; and finally because I felt like I was losing my edge, i.e. my rules knowledge, my sense of what was balanced, my ability to kill characters without remorse, etc. The problem was, I still am very short on free time, so I wanted to try a format with less of a time commitment. Eventually I decided to try a play by post campaign set in the world of Midnight. So far, we're still in the character creation phase of the campaign, though I've set Labor Day evening as the time the campaign will kick off. You're welcome to check out the campaign -- I'm hosting it in the same forums as General Discussion forum.
I had two ideas going into the PbP campaign. The first was that, as a format, it could handle more people. So rather than going with six people I decided to initially invite twelve. Second: that it would be easier to split the party up. There's an old saying in D&D that you should never split the party up. It's not that it's a bad idea, it's more that the other players (and the DM for that matter) get very restless when one or two players take two hours of a session to go out on their own while everyone else sits and twiddles their thumbs. I haven't really had a chance to test out either of these two ideas, but I can tell you that trying to get 12 people to generate characters is like herding cats.
ENWorld, as with most things of this sort, is a Mecca of PbP gaming, and I've read the FAQ and tried to follow some of the other campaigns to get a feel for the "genre." In general, it's made me more excited to start running, because it's obvious that there's a fair amount of fantasy writing involved, which is another thing that I haven't been able to do for quite awhile. I've mentioned it before in the blog, but I actually got about 100 pages into a fantasy novel at one point, and for many years I dreamed of nothing else than being the next Tolkien, but alas, I had no talent. Fortunately PDF publishing seems custom made for the talentless so I was able to find a home. In any case the big project I've been working on at my real job seems to finally be oozing its way towards a conclusion so maybe I'll finally have the energy to start playing Neverwinter Nights.
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Ross
I guess this is a good as time as any to elaborate on the big dump truck full of goodness that I backed up and emptied yesterday. First, the forums (don't worry, that's the last time I'll link to them) seem to be off to a good start. I'll probably be running an ad over on ENWorld (and maybe a couple of other places) to let people know about things, but feel free to send people in this direction. I noticed someone mentioned the blog over at the Midnight Yahoo Group. This is unusual mostly because he mentioned the blog without any reference to how poorly written it is.
Anyway, as long as we're on the subject of Midnight, I thought I'd add some additional information. It looks like it is going to be written by Wil with cartography by Ed Bourelle. With a setting as specialized as Midnight, I think it's going to be great to have someone who really knows the setting like the back of his hand. At this point, we're talking about a fairly high level adventure (double digit levels at least) but I, at least, am interested in any input you might have. Wil, on the other hand, isn't interested in input, and keeps talking about fiendish dire gully dwarves, but I'll do what I can. I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but I would like to have it out by the end of the year.
I've been a big Christopher Guest fan every since I saw "This is Spinal Tap". "Best in Show" just about made me wet my pants (especially since my mom does dog training), but somehow I'd never gotten around to seeing "Waiting for Guffman". It was on Bravo the other night so I had my wife record it and I'm watching it now. To be honest I'm not sure what it is about really quirky movies, but sometimes just the eccentricity of the whole thing is enough to make it enjoyable for me. I have no idea what this has to do with anything, especially anything I've already mentioned but I thought I'd just toss it out there.
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Ross
There's a ton of cool things to announce today, so without further ado: We're pleased to announce that we've reached an agreement with Fantasy Flight Games to publish a Xenogenic Adventure set in the dark and foreboding heroic campaign setting of Midnight. You cannot imagine how cool this is for us. Midnight is currently my favorite setting, and I'm not the only one -- it won the best setting at the Ennies. To have a chance to take the setting and really do it justice with a Xenogenic Adventure is awesome, and exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to be able to do as part of the restructuring.
Speaking of the restructuring, I have put up a DireKobold General Discussion Forum so you can offer input on what sort of features you would like me to implement, what kind of level range you're looking for out of a Midnight adventure, and anything else you might want to talk about. Obviously it always takes awhile to get a forum community going so if you could wander over there and tell me that I'm a talentless hack I would appreciate it. In addition to the General Discussion Forum there are the forums for my PbP game (set in Midnight coincidently enough), so you can take a look at those as well.
So head on over and speak your mind in the Forum. Keep checking back here for further details on the Midnight adventure. Check out "Doomtown Curse" if you haven't already. I just posted the snippet of it, so even those of you who only have a demo subscription can get a look at Wil's latest masterpiece and Chad's amazing art (sorry but Ed's maps are for paying customers only *grin*). Great things are happening, stay tuned.
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Ross
I've been sick the last couple of days. It's the kind of sickness not fit to discuss in polite company, so we'll leave it at that. The adventure is done, it's up, it's available, the whole burrito. However, I was going to make a broad announcement about the restructuring and set up a place for comments, complaints, criticism and insults. That's going to have to wait until tomorrow. My back has been bothering me and the pain has been waking me up early so maybe I'll be able to whip everything together first thing tomorrow morning, we'll have to see. I guess the moral of this paragraph is that I'm an old, feeble man with a host of health problems, but we'll end there without delving into a discussion of gout, because you want to hear about the adventure.
"Doomtown Curse" is a dark fantasy adventure from the co-author of the award winning Midnight setting, Wil Upchurch. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. It was originally designed for four 3rd-level characters, but it can be dynamically scaled for yada-yada-yada. You know the drill by now. If you don't, I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. In any case, the adventure starts in a town under the rule of an evil cleric and his legions of orcs. The town holds a dark secret, and the characters must board a mysterious ship manned by a cursed crew in order to uncover it.
Well, in order to not further exacerbate my sundry infirmities I better go to bed. Like I said, I'll put something together so that you can vent all your frustration, anger and hate. But don't spend all your time talking about the blog, save some of your venom for the way I run things, and for those who've actually met me in person don't hesitate to make fun of the way I look.
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Ross
I just got back from running to the local Albertson's. As it turns out, the route to Albertson's takes me by a gaming store, or as it appeared this afternoon, it takes me by what used to be a gaming store. In part, this is my fault because rather than going to Table Top Games (the game store in question), which is within spitting distance of my house, I would go to Hastur Hobbies. So it's not like I wasn't supporting an independent game store (though I order a lot of stuff from the ENWorld store) -- I just wasn't supporting the closest independent game store. But of course, the question remains: why? Why didn't I go to the one that was within walking distance? Well, it was all because of the mother.
You see, Table Top Games was owned by, or at least run by a mother and son team. Before I moved out to this area, I had friends tell me horror stories about the mother. Certainly I believed the stories, but I figured that it was a rare occurance; that you had to go by the store a dozen or more times before you might have a bad experience. It wasn't until I bought a house in the area that I had the occasion to swing by. I was looking for Relics and Rituals, so I thought I would try there. To begin with, they had never heard of it, and there were insinuations that I didn't know what I was talking about. There wasn't a smoking gun. They didn't swear at me, but there was just this attitude. What can I say, I never went back.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't make me a little sad to drive by the store and see a real estate sign on the outside. In general, I would like the game market to be as huge as possible, and to a certain extent when you include computer games it is already really big, but obviously as much as DireKobold relies on quite a bit of programming, it's not exactly the same thing. I'm hoping for an expansion of the D20 market. In reality there is some expansion, but mostly it's just gettin' crowded. Anyway, on that somewhat depressing note I'll end here.
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Ross
One of my "pet" interests is situations where a staggering number of people die with very little fanfare. As evidence check out my April 28th entry. The latest incident of this sort to come to my attention is the death of an estimated ten thousand French during the heat wave. Now that's not to say that it hasn't gotten any "fanfare", but take a look at the websites of several major news organizations. CNN has at the moment of this writing the story of the Alabama judge who refusing to remove the Ten Commandments. No where on the front page is there anything about the death toll from the heat wave.
FOX News is basically the same story. Lead story is the same, and nothing on the front page. Perhaps it's just the myopia of the american media, so I went across the pond to check The Guardian their lead story seems to concern a bank holiday, and once again nothing on the front page. Surely the leading french papers would have something so I checked out Le Monde. Now my French is not what it could be but I'm certain that it wasn't one of the top three stories, and there didn't seem to be anything about it anywhere on the front page.
Doing a little research it appears that the AP story which quantified the death toll came out yesterday. Now I understand that the actual death's took place a while ago, but am I the only one who thinks it's odd that so little fuss is being made about this? I agree that unlike many of the stories that are being extensively covered there was no malice involved in these deaths, but it still seems like a lot to brush under the rug as it were. In any case the next adventure will be out on Monday and by that point I'll figure out some place for every body to tell me everything the would like to see changed here at DireKobold.
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Ross
Checking the comments from yesterday's blog it appears that in general people are excited about the improvements (though I guess two is hardly a statistically valid sample). I was going to post something on ENWorld today, but it appears to have been down all day, and on reflection I think rather than making an announcement of the restructuring on Thursday and an announcement about the new adventure on Monday, it might just work out best to announce both at the same time. If anyone's really curious about what's going on over here all they have to do is come over and read the blog. Though I suppose that's like saying anyone who's really curious about the war can go visit the Western Front and sleep in the trenches for a couple of days. I imagine most people would prefer to say in Paris and read about Verdun rather than hear the artillery shells whistle overhead.
To a certain extent with that last paragraph I violated a rule that many people have a pet peeve about. Many people (myself included on occasion) get upset when you compare something truly evil or tragic with something that is merely mildly annoying. For example: in one of the classic episodes of Seinfeld the plot revolves around someone called the Soup Nazi. Now they guy is mean and demanding, but he can hardly be compared in any realistic fashion with the horror that was Nazi Germany. Nor can my blog (or more particularly my writing) as boring, senseless, and un-inspired as it might be, in any sense be compared to the longest battle of World War One. Except perhaps during July when all I talk about is the Tour de France, maybe then.
Every so often a movie will strike my fancy, not as a work of art, but more as like a stock, or in this latest case a train wreck. The movie I'm talking about of course is "Gigli". Good and even great movies come along with reasonable frequency, but it's somewhat more rare for a truly unwatchable movie to show up. As a result I'm very curious about how the movie is reviewed and how it does at the box office. As far as reviews it apparently got 10 good reviews out of 121 total. In terms of the box office, movie theaters are apparently required to run movies in a certain number of pre-designated theaters for at least two weeks. As a result on the weekend of the 8-10 Gigli ran on 2,215 screens, with a per screen average of $306. You had to drop all the way down to movie 113 before you found something with as dismal a per screen average. Once the first two weeks were over and the number of screens was no longer mandated, Gigli was dropped off of 2,142 screens down to 73 and it's per screen average was $256 lower than any other movie on the list except for the very bottom one at 124. Now ask yourself where else are you going to get this kind of detailed breakdown on truly awful movies?
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Ross
Since I started the DireKobold beta test back in December of last year I've had quite a few ideas for improvements, additions, upgrades and expansions. After talking to probably 100's of people at GenCon I have dozens more, and these ideas are not just my own twisted fantasies these are the sorts of things that my customers actually want. Stuff that would be in my best interest to implement. The current schedule of putting out a new adventure every ten days is too tight to give me the time to implement more than a couple of these ideas. Now if DireKobold had turned out to be a run-a-way success, fulfilled my wildest dreams of avarice and allowed me to quit my day it would be a different story, but since the day job is the one that's paying the bills if I want to implement all these great features and give the public what it wants I have to slow my DireKobold publishing schedule down a little bit.
In the short term this means that the adventure I promised to have out this evening won't be out until the 25th. Long term this means that DireKobold is going to go through an overhaul, with the goal of implementing a bunch of new features, changing some of the ways I do adventures, and in general increasing the value. And even though I already have some of my own twisted ideas, and dozens of ideas other people have given me I'm still interested in as much input on this overhaul as I can get. I'll probably post a poll over in the ENWorld forum, but I've also recently installed my own forums so I may open those up and see if I can't get some discussion going. Meanwhile adventures will still be released but there will only be two this month and two in September and October while we overhaul things.
I've been telling people for a long time that as we get more adventures in the archive the price is inevitably going to go up. And so beginning in November with the overhaul the price of DireKobold is going to go up, unless you're already a subscriber or subscribe in the next little while. If you're already a subscriber or become a subscriber you'll essentially lock in the lower rate. (I sound like mortgage broker or something.) So despite the overhaul this is actually a pretty good time to subscribe because the prices will be going up in the near future. In any case the next adventure, which will be out Monday, is by Wil Upchurch and it's quite good, and as usual the cartography by Ed Bourelle is excellent but the art, holy cow! Chad Sergesketter really outdid himself. In fact just because I'm in a good mood here's a sneak peek at the cover. Stay tuned to this channel for up to the minute reports as events happen...
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Ross
One of the quirks of the blog software is that if you happen to leave the page you're composing on to go to another page. Say by clicking on a link in an e-mail or something equally stupid (to be honest I can't remember what stupid thing I did) then everything you typed is gone. Now perhaps it isn't the blog software, perhaps it's Microsoft's fault. Given the number of other things which are being blamed on them. I can't imagine that they don't bear some responsibilty. In any event I had everything all typed out and then I lost it. In any case my "real" job has me at the end of a very large, very complicated project which has sapped my will to live, but more on that tommorrow.
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Ross
Some of the people I work with at my "real" job have come across this great idea called "Mortgage Cancellation". There are apparently several Companies who for a small fee (somewhere between 2000 and 7000 dollars up front) will point out the immorality of the traditional mortgage. The banks shocked to realize that the are not really lending to you but borrowing from you. Will promptly fall over play dead. Annual your mortgage and that pesky 250k you used to owe on your home? No more. You'll own it free clear and without the tiniest amount of debt. Okay they do charge you 15% of the annulled mortgage, but they've figured a way around that as well.
So continuing with the example of the 250k house you would owe 37.5k after the mortgage has been annulled. But you also have 250k asset which is entirely in you name (seems a little contradictory but it gets worse) so you use your house to get a home equity loan (they recommend for 80%) so you would then have another loan in this case for 200k you would use 37.5k of that to pay of the original debt and then you would cancel this mortgage as well. (Apparently these lenders are really slow learners). This leaves you with another 15% liability plus the $4000 you've spent up front for both cancellations. so deduct another 34k leaving you 138.5k which you can do with as you please. So under this great system you get a 250k house for free, plus somewhere in there someone gives you an additional 138,000 dollars just for being you.
Sounds to good to be true? You're probably thinking well why don't I do this forever until I have all the money in the great state of Utah. Sorry there is a cap you can only do it twice per house. So as you can see it's not to good to be true it's a perfectly foolproof ethical way of scamming someone (they never say who) of a third of a million dollars. My guess is that the scamee in this particular scenario is you. But who knows, all of my co-workers look at me in disbelief when I suggest that this can't possibly work like they say it does. When I mention the collapse of the world economy they just give me a blank look and tell me I'll be sorry when they own 10 houses and have a million dollars in the bank.
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Ross
One of the sites I mentioned over and over again in my blog is ENWorld.org it used to be run by a great guy by the name of Eric Noah. He ran it for two years before he decided that it was taking up to much of his time, and turned it over to a guy by the name of Russell Morrissey or Morrus for short. Morrus has run it ever since and it's definitely the best D20 website out there. If you're at all interested in D&D or even role-playing in general you should check it out. Besides someone interested in the Cycling I can't imagine who else would read my blog, except my family who I force to read it.
Recently he became interested in seeing what he could do to help the PDF industry and decided to start a sister site to ENWorld devoted solely to PDFs. It's at www.enworld.org/pdf. Obviously I'm interested in the success of PDFs as well so if you haven't already been to that site head on over and check it out, bookmark it, tell your friends. Of course I'm particularly interested in having you head over right now because he's starting this thing called a "Publisher Spotlight" and he picked me as his first subject. It's a nice little story and it's at the top of the page so head on over and give it a read.
Well once again I'm watching Iron Chef. This time it's the 2000th dish special. There's an all French team and an all Chinese team. It's just barely started but it should be pretty exciting. Other than that I guess I'm all done for this evening. I seem to remember having something else to say, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was, probably something insipid.
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Ross
Tonight is the company picnic. I've never been to one before even though this will be my fifth opportunity, because (at least for the three years before this) it was always the same weekend as GenCon. This year it's a little bit later in the year and GenCon was a bit earlier so it works out. It used to be that my company would have two annual company-wide get togethers. The summer picnic and the Christmas party. This year they decided to get rid of the Christmas party and just do the picnic in order to save a little bit of money. As a result the picnic is pretty impressive.
The Christmas party was always more of an adult affair. They would hold it at a local hotel (last years was at the Grand America) there would be a fully stocked buffet with everything from desserts to prime rib, a cash bar, a band, dancing, and lots of formalwear. The picnic is much more a family affair, they have a huge inflatable slide, hamburgers, an obstacle course and a rock wall (which is what I want to try). As a father with four children I'm glad that they stuck with the picnic (as long as it doesn't conflict with GenCon every year).
Well I got the art and the maps for the next adventure today and let me tell you Chad and Ed have done it again, every thing is, as usual, insanely good (much better than I deserve). Wil was inspired by three things when he wrote this adventure: The Pirates of the Caribbean, The 13th Warrior, and Midnight the campaign setting (more on that later). I still have to see the first, I've seen the second and it was pretty good, the third is incredible. Unfortunately my FLGS is telling me that it's out of print, ouch!
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Ross
I was talking to one of my friends the other day (the one who took all the GenCon Pictures). He mentioned that of all the things I did the one which impressed him the most was that I was able to post in my blog every day. I'm not sure that this entirely accurate since after all I do take Sunday's off, and I missed all the days I was at GenCon, plus I think I missed the fourth of July, plus lots of people don't want to give me any credit for all the blogs during the Tour de France. Still it's evenings like this when it is actually kind of difficult.
I guess the big problem with posting tonight is that my mind is fixated on 6:50 tommorrow morning. That's the unholy hour when my carpool is going to pick me up. Actually I'm generally up by right about then (yes no matter how tired I am I'm always awake by 6:50 it's a strange disease). However, I doubt that he would let me into his car dressed and smelling like I do then. (I should at least brush my teeth.) In any event I think I whine too much waking up at 6:00 is not that bad. It's not like I'm already sleep deprived. Oh wait I am.
I think it's my kids fault. It's not like the don't sleep, but they sometimes scream. My wife claims that it's night terrors but I think they do it just to be mean. And then there's the "jiggy arm", whenever they get into bed with us (which is frequently we live in a scary neighborhood) they always fling out their arms as far as possible, that's when they're not sleeping perpendicular to the normal direction of the bed. As a result I end up sleeping in something of a horseshoe position on the final six inches. But I don't think that has anything to do with me being tired.
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Ross
In one of the comments someone accused me of being feckless. It's interesting that they should use that word, because just the other day I was wondering about the etymology of that word. At first inspection it doesn't seem to lend itself to an easy answer. I was in the car at the time so I had to wait until I got home before I could checkDictionary.com. It turns out that they speculate that it comes from the Scots and is a corruption of the word effectless. With insightful linguistic commentary like this it's a wonder more people don't read my blog.
Anyway I have to meet someone in a few minutes so I better spit out some of the normal puerile trash I'm so well know for. Someone else posted in the commentary that they wanted scantily clad girls. I guess they missed our GenCon Costume gallery which has quite of few of those already. The costume gallery has been quite popular. Maybe I should switch from being a D20 publisher to an online pornographer. That at least is one internet business model with a proven track record. (Though it is also fiercely competitive and doesn't play well at family reunions.)
Continuing the trend the next adventure is not going to be out on the 15th. If for no other reason then to give the current adventure a chance to find it's legs. It will however be out by the 20th, so that should put me mostly back on schedule. It's another Wil Upchurch adventure, though he's taking a little break from his adventure path, in preparation for a double long installment of the adventure path next month. In any case with the exception of what I said about Wil that's enough puerile trash for one day.
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Ross
Free Lunches by Corey Reid, what can I say about it that hasn't been said before by H.L. Mencken, "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." (Very few people know that Mencken paid a crude form of D&D called Cynics and Puritans.) Okay considering that Mencken died in '56 and I wasn't even able to publish Free Lunches on time let alone nearly 50 years ago he probably wasn't actually talking about this adventure, but that's not to say that the quote isn't germane.
The central story of the adventure is that in the midst of a war between some dwarven mercenaries and some local insurgents, the leader of the locals decides to betray his countrymen and go over to the other side. (See the connection to the quote?) In most adventures I've seen the characters are central to the story, the are equal in importance to all of the other groups in the adventure. And most adventures should be that way, but what about an adventure where the party is thrust into a conflict the don't have a stake in and they just want to seal their deal and get out of Dodge as soon as possible. Unfortunately what was once a simple deal has become a nightmare of double-dealing.
Free Lunches was originally designed for 4 sixth level characters but of course with the Xenogenic System you can generate it from third all the way to ninth level parties and from 1-12 characters. The party has a shipment of weapons they're selling to some rebels for gold. The gold has been hidden by traitorous leader of the rebels and it's up to the party to get their money without getting killed by the war that's raging between the locals and the dwarven mercenaries. Give it a shot. The snippet of the adventure is also up for anyone who has a demo subscription and wants to get a taste.
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Ross
Basically the adventure is done, but I had some problems with one of the freelancers I was using, so it's going to be delayed until tommorrow. However it will definitely be up then, and with any luck it will be up fairly early. Though my wife is leaving me with the four kids tommorrow afternoon/evening so I may have to add the last of the art after that. I will also do my normal spiel on how great this latest adventure at that time. Though let me just tell you the premise for this one is actually pretty sweet.
Other than working on the adventure, and old friend of mine is in town today. I managed to break away from DireKobold long enough to have a nice lunch and dinner with him and play a round of my favorite new game Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers. I managed to win by a pretty handy margin by controlling just about the only field in the game. I like the game because it plays fairly quickly once you've figured it out. The whole game could be played by a set of experienced players in 30 minutes.
I guess some of you out there who know me (and is there anyone else who reads this blog?) wonder where I got the time to do all of this. The answer is that I took the day off. I have a pretty nice amount of PTO (paid time off), 17 days to be exact, but a big chunk of it is taken up with conventions I would like to go to (GenCon, Origins, GAMA) and then there's the obligatory family vacations, so what's left is not much, but I'm glad I took today off, it was a much needed break. Now hopefully I won't feel like I'm on the verge of a headache 24 hours a day, and my urge to kill will gradually fade.
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Ross
A while ago I made the controversial decision to get a little TV and put it near my computer. To make reference to my previous blog entry one of the reasons I thought I might be ADD is that I really prefer to have everything going it at once. I feel very comfortable checking my e-mail, instant messaging someone, listening to some music, with the TV playing to my right and a book open on my lap. Maybe it's that I feel I'm not wasting any brain power. I'm not sure what it is, maybe it's the feeling of recreating at the same time that I'm working. In any case the point of telling you all of this was so that I could mention that I'm watching Iron Chef on the food network.
If you've never seen the Iron Chef I would highly recommend it. It's like combining Julia Child with Professional wrestling laid on a bed of wacky Japanese culture. Essentially you get two chefs with maybe a half a dozen assistants and they have one hour to put together as many dishes as they can which best express the them ingrediant. Tonight the theme ingredient was lamb or as people like to say, it was the "Lamb Battle!". I'm a pretty big fan of lamb and some of the dishes they had just looked salubrious (yes I know that word just means healthly but doesn't it sound like it should mean one step better than delicious?)
Anyway I spent most of the day working on the latest adventure. Though my sister had a baby yesterday so I had to take a break to go up to the hospital to visit her and the baby. This kid was born with enough hair to be a hip avant-gard artist with a pony-tail. Looking at him I got the feeling that rather than holding a baby who was less than 24 hours old I was looking at someone who was interviewing for a position as vice-president. He had a better head of "executive hair" then I do. In any case check back on Monday when we'll publish our latest adventure "Free Lunches" by Corey Reid.
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Ross
So there I am. I'm 31 and I've just discovered that according to the doctor I've been dyslexic my whole life. Which, I've got to tell you, is weird. I'd never quite felt comfortable in school. My elementary and junior high years were pretty mediocre. High school was better, and college was pretty much disastrous (though I did eventually graduate). Through it all I couldn't quite figure out what the problem was. Mostly I just figured I was lazy, and I'm sure that that particular quality should get the lion's share of the blame, but even after that was accounted for it seemed like there had to be something else.
Overall, I'm not a big fan of public schools, which opens up a can of worms right there (though I guess we're not as bad as the Germans), so one of my theories was that since they targeted their teaching towards the slowest members of the class that I was just perpetually bored. This still seems pretty solid. Then of course, there was the time that I read up on ADD (or ADHD) and was convinced that was the problem. (Now there's increasing evidence that there's no such thing). However through it all I figured the one thing I could safely eliminate was dyslexia.
So obviously the big question is am I dyslexic and does it even matter? The answer to the last half would probably be "No", which pretty much renders the first point inconsequential, but it is one of those fun things to pull out at parties or tell when I meet someone new. The last time I told the story it was quite clear that the girl I was telling it to, didn't believe a word of it, at least not initially. In any case that's the big head story. In yesterday's comments my mother was mentioned and while I agree that giving birth to someone with a giant head, like me was a significant achievement. I think the award still has to go to my wife. Our second child has a head just as big as mine (if not a little bigger) and he was 10 lbs 14 ounces when he was born...
Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross
Here as promised is the big head story. Like all newborns, when I was born they measured the circumference of my head. Mine was above average, way above average, as in the 99th percentile of head size. I knew this, and I knew that it was tough to find a hat that fit and that because I was so top-heavy that I fell down a lot (I had stitches in my head on seven separate occasions before I turned ten), but I didn't think about it that much until I saw an advertisement for a study over at the University of Utah that was looking for people with head sizes in the 98th percentile (an autism specialist is quoted in this Newsweek article from the University of Utah, I wonder if she was involved in my study?). They were offering $100. I didn't know if my head was still big enough to qualify but it sounded like easy money, how wrong I was...
The study involved about 30 hours of testing. I took probably ten separate IQ tests: they tested my memory, my pattern matching skills, spatial awareness, vocabulary, general knowledge, plus a couple others I can't remember. They did a complete psych work-up on me. There were physical tests: jumping over a string and seeing how many times I could clap, walking backwards heel to toe on a strip of tape, they made photocopies of my hand. In addition to the 30 hours of testing I had to fill out a complete medical workup on everyone from by grandparents all the way down to my first cousins. Which may not sound like much to some of you, but my dad has nine brothers and sisters and I have over 40 first cousins.
Of course, in addition to the $100, part of the pay off was getting the results. I think we're all curious about ourselves and our abilities and we would all like to have some definitive answer as to what our strengths are. Plus, I think everyone secretly hopes that the tests will reveal some hidden super power or some world-class ability we never knew we had. Well, so eventually they gave me a letter which ran two pages (not front and back, you would expect more after 30 hours) and they gave me the results of a lot of the IQ tests and remarked that there was a pattern to my testing. Most of the results were on one level, while three or four were about one standard deviation lower. And those three or four were items that someone with dyslexia would have problems with, so the conclusion was I had Phonological Decoding Dyslexia... (to be continued)
Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross
I don't mention this very often, but I'm the editor of DireKobold.com (I'm also the publisher, webmaster and valet). In many magazines, there is a Letter from the Editor which is then always signed: John Doe, Editor, Chunky Squirrels. You'll notice that I don't do that. I guess it seems somewhat pretentious. But lest anyone thinks otherwise, I really do enjoy editing, which seems odd to say. I know a lot of writers who don't have much problem writing but rewriting sends them into spasms of self-loathing and fear. Obviously it helps to be editing someone else's stuff and I've got some pretty good writers, so it's actually kind of fun.
Of course, as an editor you have to be away of things like "The Chicago Manual of Style". The 15th edition of the manual has just recently been released and Slate did a great article on it. I have not seen the most recent edition, but they did comment on something that I had often wondered about, the complete lack of a grammar section in the manual. The have rectified that in the latest edition, but apparently it only served to point out some inconsistencies in the Manual's own use of grammar. The Slate article is actually a fascinating read if you you like grammar...or are an editor...
My own role as an editor is somewhat interesting. Last year I was diagnosed as having "Phonological-Decoding Dyslexia". My primarily weaknesses seem to be sounding out novel new words (isn't that a great attribute for someone working in fantasy writing), spelling (isn't it great that I'm editing in an age with a spell checker), and grammar (which fortunately my wife ROCKS at, so I have her handle that). I mentioned the "Big-Head Story" in a previous entry of my blog promising to tell it once my readership had gotten bigger, well now that I'm in the low teens it's finally time, so that's what I'll be doing tomorrow and maybe the next day depending on how long it runs.
Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross
Let's have a little talk about tweetle beetles...
What do you know about tweetle beetles? Well...
When tweetle beetles fight,
it's called a tweetle beetle battle.
--Dr. Seuss, Fox in Socks
Okay, I wish we were going to have a little talk about tweetle beetles, but instead we're going to have a talk about SPEWS or the Spam Protection Early Warning System.
I hate spam. I get 75-100 spam messages a day through my two e-mail accounts. But as bad as some spammers are, I'd have to say that there are anti-spammers who are worse. SPEWS is just such a group. Basically, SPEWS maintains a list of "spam-friendly" IP's. You would think that this is a list of IP's where spam has originated that you can block. But that wouldn't be early warning, would it. Let me give an example of how one would get added to the SPEWS list. Let's say 5 or so years ago some high school kid worked for a spammer for a summer. He then (in the present day) registers a domain and hosts it with an ISP. The entire address space of that ISP would then be added to the spews list.
So essentially if you use an ISP which happens to host someone who five years ago had peripheral involvement with a spammer then your address will be blocked. You're probably saying, "well I would just get in touch with them and explain. I'm sure it would be cleared up in no time." That's the problem: you can't get in touch with them. They have absolutely no contact information. No phone number, address, or e-mail. The only suggestion they offer is to post to a newsgroup, where all that will happen is that you'll be mercilessly flamed as a spam-collaborator. Now maybe by some objective standard that's not as bad as an actual porn spammer, but at least the spammer makes no claims to the moral high ground, whereas SPEWS claims to have invented it.
Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross
Well, as evidenced by how late the last adventure was I'm still trying to catch up from the week I spent with/at GenCon. What this means is that the next adventure will almost certainly not be out tommorrow (barring little gnomes coming and working on it while I sleep like the old fairy tale). Ideally, the new adventures come out on the 5th, the 15th and the 25th. In reality what I'm really shooting for is between the 1st and 10th, the 11th and 20th and between the 21st and the end of the month. This next one may slip to the 11th (in other words I may need the weekend), but after that we'll be back on track (more or less). I appreciate your patience.
My Midnight Play by Post campaign continues to move forward, though only by inches. Right now I'm trying to decide where to host it. I love ENWorld and their Play by Post Forum looks pretty good, but this campaign is for all of the people I've gamed with in High School and College and if you play on ENWorld there seems to be an expectation that you'll stage an open invite, which is only fair since it is a community website. There are some other websites I've been checking out when I get a minute here and there.
I guess the point is that I'm open for suggestions, so if you have some experience running a PbP game and would like to smack me upside the head and give me the skinny, I'd appreciate it. Failing that, I can go post on ENWorld and ask for help there; it's just I'd rather not expose my ignorance to too large an audience (something which makes VFB singularly attractive). One of my assumptions is that since everyone isn't trying to take advantage of the same limited time that a PbP campaign can support a larger number of player characters then a normal campaign where everyone is competing for the same limited amount of time and DM attention. In any event, I'm excited to hop back in the saddle, so we'll see how it goes.
Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross
Note: I had this written on Saturday morning, but I wanted to leave the adventure notice up for as long as possible so I didn't post it immediately and then I forgot.
I realize that I have already posted my GenCon report, and even though it was quite long there were still things that I left out. Some were intentional, others were just oversights. One that was an oversight was not mentioning Brannon Hollingsworth (or Ashy), one of the authors of Love of Art. Brannon is something of a DireKobold evangelist. Every time I saw him in the exhibit hall he would yell, "DireKobold Rocks!" You may think he was just trying to get on my good side, but I'm pretty sure he was yelling that even when I wasn't around.
Another potential DireKobold evangelist I forgot to mention is Keith Parkinson. Apparently, Skip Williams talked to him about the idea and he thought that it was insanely cool. I went over to talk to him myself on Saturday afternoon and got the same impression, though he was busy with people trying to make last minute purchases so I didn't get to talk to him for as long as I would have liked. I've been a big fan of Parkinson's art for as long as I can remember so it's great to be able to give something back, as it were.
Most of the stuff I left out of my report I left out for very good editorial reasons. The biggest reason being that giving you short snapshots of the convention can never convey how cool it is to actually be there in person. Nor is it really possible to remember all of the really cool people I talked to. That is perhaps my favorite part of the gaming industry. It's small, everybody knows everybody else, and with a few minor exceptions people are very, very cool, more than willing to take the time to talk to you and helpful to a fault.
Well, after much sloth and even greater procrastination, the latest adventure has been posted. It's a great adventure unworthy of being wired up and published by a schlub like me, but as a full-time freelancer like Luke Johnson, sometimes you have to work with what you've got. Incidentally, Luke lives right here in Salt Lake, not more then ten or fifteen minutes away from where I live. (See the Interview where he was forced to admit that). As such, up until this most recent GenCon he was one of the few freelancers I had met in person, but I'm sure you want to hear about the adventure.
It's called She Loves Me Not. The players stumble onto a lovers' quarrel. Moved by the husband's plight they agree to fetch a truly spectacular gift: a Dark Lily which only grows deep in a dungeon infested with goblins as worse. Perhaps my favorite thing about this adventure is the unique creatures the party encounters including an intelligent ooze familiar, which has to been seen to be appreciated. I think it's our longest adventure, and as such it's chock full with interesting characters, amazing encounters and deadly traps. The demo snippet for the adventure will almost certainly not be up tonight, however with any luck it will be available tommorrow.
In other news, it looks like I'll be going to GenCon SoCal, though I'll probably only be there on Saturday and Sunday and I definitely won't have a booth this time. It will be interesting to see how SoCal does since I think many companies will have blown their booth budget on Indy (certainly I did) and many people will be out of money. Howver with the northwest being a big hub of Wizards' gaming activity, I imagine that they will all be there. One of my old gaming buddies lives not too far away, so I think I'm going to try and talk him into tagging along so I have some company. In any event its late and I'm going to bed, but check out She Loves Me Not. You won't be sorry.
Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross