impeccablesimon

[	Tags	|	family, memories	]
[	Current Location	|	In a Trailer at Work	]
[	Current Mood	|	nostalgic	]
[	Current Music	|	Mother Freedom Band--Beautiful Summer Day	]

This morning I awoke the one of the brightest 6:18 AMs I have ever seen.  Outside the morning’s main characters were ready for my arrival; the azure sky; the chilly breeze; and the warm, inviting sun all greeted me with enthusiasm. 

I left the house smiling and whistling a tune of my own invention.  Yes this morning took me back in time almost twenty years…

A slight mist hangs over the ground at 6:30 in the morning.  My parents and I are fixing bowls of cereal for breakfast, while my brother sleeps late.  My mother and I are putting freshly picked blackberries into our respective bowels of Grape Nuts; while my father is putting sugar on his Wheaties.  My mother chastises my father over ruining the sanctity of a bowl of “healthy” cereal, but I’m paying them no attention.  I must cram as many blackberries into my bowl of cereal as possible.  My goal is to crush them against the crunchy cereal until the milk turns purple…then I can pretend I’m Luke Skywalker eating breakfast on Tatooine. 

We ate breakfast as a family in those days.  My brother would often sleep through breakfast; but when he joined us, he always fought with me over who had the “right” to read the back of the cereal box.  The four of us would all sit at out picnic table in our back yard, with dogs and cats rubbing up against our legs; hoping our bowls were filled with bacon or some other tasty treat.  Discussions were kept light; and at breakfast’s conclusion, my father would head off for his daily chores, leaving us to the chores at home.  The orchard would come to life by seven AM with the buzz of bees, the dashing, careful movements of squirrels, and often times the jerky movements of one or more of us picking fruit. 

We also had a vegetable garden to attend to, and seeing as how there was no school in the summer back in those days, my brother and I spent a good chunk of time working for the family each day.  (I’d say at least an hour or two, which is a lifetime to a young child in the summertime.)  Around lunchtime, the sound of the tractor coming up the old county road signaled my father’s return.  My mother would set the table inside for lunch to keep the heat and the insects away from our food.

Oh to return to those summer days; even if only for a moment. 

*shrug*

Guess I should get back to work.

http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2008/05/13/go-tk-its-your-birthday-go-tk-its-your-birthday/

Blue Beetle knows that nothing slams evil like well-coordinated J-hops.

Blue Beetle knows that scimitars are wiggidy-wiggidy-wiggidy-wack.

Blue Beetle knows that the 6-step is foundational to any anti-villain martial arts program, but has progressed to the legendary fourteenth step.

Blue Beetle knows that masked goons have never been part of the four elements of hip-hop and never will be.

Blue Beetle’s suicides don’t shiv, bro.

arist_one_eye

I've got a few things to accomplish here...

Finally this evening (morning?), this is a question for you old school MMORPG fans out there. I was browsing Gamelife today, and came across a story that stated Sony is saying that MMOs will be the big thing to help Sony stay a long time game console. That's not a big surprise, that's been said by everyone for forever. No, the thing that got my attention was the man who said it: John Smedley. Remember him? Everquest dude? Now I could swear, having been a fan of Lum the Mad and /gu comics, wasn't there a "John Smedley is a sock puppet" joke? I was trying to insinuate as much on the comment page, but when I went to look for a reference, there's nothing there.

Tell me I'm not going crazy internet friends - tell me I'm not crazy.

he_who_hunts

1. Charisma. He has for-real rock star charisma and that's rare. He has honed his cadences and language to seem both powerful and genuine.
2. Organization. Obama worked the caucus states--those where Hillary was both weak (her demographic will rarely take a night off to caucus) and un-concerned (Bill didn't need the caucus states). He understood the game better along a huge number of axis. Everything from the "Texas two-step" (the combination of primary and caucus that makes Texas a tough state to win) to his hiring of a marketing manager to do his campaign strategy instead of a political strategist.

1. The ability of a party to hold the white-house is most prominently based on the economy. The economy is in the toilet: that hurts McCain.
2. The approval ratings of the incumbent effect their candidate. All-time-low. Advantage: Democrat.
3. Two term party-control tends to lead to change elections. Bush has (somehow) held on for two terms. Advantage: Democrat.
4. Directionally 80% of voters think the country is headed "in the wrong direction." That isn't good for McCain who, although a 'maverick' is still pretty Bush-like in some major ways.

http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0100.html

robin_d_laws

Sunday — The day kicks off with the ever-reliable GM Troubleshooting seminar. Tentacles offers a powerful incentive to ten a.m. seminar attendance. If you’re not in the cafeteria by 9:45 you miss breakfast. As always for this topic the bulk of the discussion revolves around the difficult trade-offs involved in balancing the action in your game to varying sets of player tastes.

Tentacles sells lottery tickets to game events run by its guests. My initial idea was to run Ad Hoc HeroQuest, an event where we’d pick the genre at the table and go from there. Then when Greg Stafford couldn’t make it I also offered to also run a second game of the new HQ set in Glorantha. I was too tightly scheduled to actually fit in two contributions to the lottery, so winners were given the choice of either of the two ideas. I thought for sure they’d leap at the Glorantha. By the time I arrived for the game the players were not only assembled but had come to a consensus with no prompting required from me. They wanted to play retired superheroes.

I asked each player to pick a superhero name, which would operate as the character’s highest ability. (A cool and ambiguous reference, in HQ parlance.) So the group had such abilities as Starlight, Dr. Shadow, and the Chief. Their next-highest abilities were civilian identity descriptors: native American beer truck driver, bad shoe salesman, pushy claims adjuster, et al. Then, explaining that the PCs were all ex-members of a super group called the Mighty Squad, I had each player specify the thing about the character to his right that he held responsible for its breakup. So each got further defined by another player with ability/flaws including control freak, collateral damage, and sell-out. In three hours the characters were reunited by crisis, confronted by a weird mystery, and brought to a series of personal epiphanies leading to a strange return for the Mighty Squad.

The set-up offered opportunities aplenty for fun discoveries and creative action descriptions. I allowed more rules discussion than I normally would in a demo. My usual rule (copped long ago from Jose Garcia) is that it’s not really about teaching the game but rather showing the players a good time. Here though everyone knew the current HQ and was there to get a taste of the new nuts and bolts.

The first ever Tentacles wine tasting followed shortly thereafter. I don’t at all mind a sweet white, so the five selections from the local Dur Fledermaus winery were right up my alley. It was late starting, so I had to try the last of them during the final Ask Robin seminar, which kept going with nary a lull for two hours. The almost exclusive topic was HQ new and old.

All told, I had a fabulous time, even though my brain was mush by the end of it. It was a three day visit to an alternate universe where the most popular RPGs in the world are Call Of Cthulhu and HeroQuest. Naturally this would be a happy place for me. In this dimension, it’s only the latter game that has an eagerly anticipated new edition on the way. There’s some other thing called 4E but that’s barely on the radar.

Monday — The traditional post-game dinner with the guests of honor takes place at the Alte Burg in Dreieich, which serves German fare with an emphasis on regional Hessian dishes. As is the case at many international cons, the guest is expected to consume something local and appalling that the organizers masochistically adore. Here it’s the infamous handkäse, a.k.a. musical cheese. And yes, it’s affectionately named after the explosive flatulence it is meant to provoke.



( Read more... )

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/289241232/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-05-13/

http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20080513

archive | primer | blog | purchase print | send to a friend