No time to play

The move is still kicking my butt. I threw my back out yesterday by twisting when I should have been turning. The cable guy was a no-show on Sunday prompting me to fire Comcast and go with Surewest (at least they have Boomerang), but now I have to wait until Oct 4th to get cable and Internet at home UGH. I'm behind in posts for both the Conan game and the Basher game. I'm starting to get my “Joe area” at the house sorted through. I picked up some great stuff at the last show but no time to play with them. More later…back to work.

We is back! sorta...

Okay, first things first. It’s Wednesday so…




Now, about me… My move is about 90% done. No major injuries except for my pride, a year of sedentary office work has really taken a toll on the old Evil DM. My muscles feel like rubber, my calves and thighs ache so much I'm walking like Gabby Hayes. I can’t believe we packed away so much stuff in a two-bedroom apartment. The new house has tons of space (I even have a cool little work place for my action figure kit bashing). The only other thing I did besides the move this weekend was a ten-minute excursion to the Joe show here in Sac. I only stayed long enough to settle a couple of accounts, but I still managed to snag three Cy Girls and a couple of odds and ends. I came back to the office today to find a small mountain of paper work and a dozen phone calls to return, plus I found I have a test Friday night and a paper due on Saturday, AND we still have to move some more stuff out of the old place and clean it up.
Spock…Help me…Spock!

FYI

GOOD NEWS! we are getting out of our two bedroom apartment and into a real house this weekend. I'm taking monday and tuesday off to finish the move. Now, because of the move we wont have any cable at the house till sunday 25th so I'll have to post from work. So posting here at the Lair will be spotty at best for the next week or so.

2E Gamer in a 3E world

The Dragon and Dungeon magazines have been a staple with me for as long as I’ve been gaming. I’ve been with them through three editions of the game and a couple dozen editors. One thing I find amusing is how folks state that because the magazine doesn’t support their pet version of the game (i.e. 1st, 2nd, or 3rd edition) they no longer find it relevant to them. I'm a die-hard 2nd edition player and I find useful content in just about every issue. Yeah, maybe the mechanics need a bit of tweaking to conform to your mode of play, but to me the importance is in the article itself, the topic, not the statistics. An article on running a Pirate campaign is just as useful to me whether its written for the Eberron setting in 3rd edition or the Spelljammer setting in 2nd edition. I think people who make the argument that the magazine is useless to them because their edition is no longer represented are just lazy. This whole game is based upon imagination and I find it funny that many of its players cant get past the mechanics of a system and see the usefulness of the articles as a whole.

Iron Gauntlets

About a year ago I was at RPGnow and purchased a PDF Roleplaying game called Iron Gauntlets from Politically Incorrect games. It was a solid Fantasy based system at a great price. On Friday I received an email from RPGnow informing me that a new updated version of the game was available.
Now I absolutely hate when I buy something like a DVD for instance only to be told several months down the line that a brand new “special edition” with 7 hours of never –before-seen footage is now available, so seeing the email I immediately became irritated. Here was another game company releasing a page or two of errata and trumpeting it out like it was a whole new edition just to get a few more bucks out of me. Well imagine my surprise when I found that the email contained a FREE copy of the updated version. Cool.
Not only did the email bring me back to the Politically Incorrect games website, but it also left me with a positive feeling about the company, its products, and the way they do business. Iron gauntlets is a fun game (you can find a review of the game here) and worth a second look. So stop by the PIG website and have a look around. There is a lot to see and it’s all priced very reasonably.

A public service announcement

Hey guys,
my name is Amber, I'm a cheerleader at USC I also work part time at Hooters. My roommates- Leah, Kascha, Honey, and Monique, and I love to spend cold rainy nights playing AD&D in our lingerie. Since we love AD&D so much we only date gamer guys who play second edition AD&D (no 3E for us). Sometimes when we're bored we get drunk on wine coolers and roll up characters all night long using our Core Rules software program, other times we just have pillow fights and practice making out with each other. If any of you guys are in the L.A. area and are looking for a game of AD&D send me an email and I'll give you directions to our apartment. Unfortunately, we only have one super king size bed so if it gets late and you stay over I hope you don’t mind sharing...

Amber

Lesson to be learned

I turned on my computer today and went to my yahoo account. I typed in the log in and password-INVALID. Hmmm…I retyped it a bit slower this time-INVALID. I tried again, slowly and with care- INVALID. I make my way to the help section and try again. I'm informed that my account has been deactivated. Huh? Deactivated? I never requested that my account be deactivated. Ok, now I need to talk to somebody.
I call customer support and speak with Melanie, who in a quite pleasant and professional manner informs me that my account has been closed due to a violation of the terms of the agreement in regards to Yahoogroups (Yahoogroups is a forum type service where folks join to discuss anything from quilts to Politics in China. I belong to several groups that discuss Action figures, role-playing games, comic books etc.). Well, I inform her that whatever the violation was it was purely unintentional and if they could just reinstate my account I’ll see to it, I have after all, a premium account which I pay for. Her reply was a pleasant but firm: No.
It seems that Yahoo’s policy is that once a violation occurs on ANY Yahoo service then the ENTIRE account is wiped out. There is no warning or recourse, all of this, she related to me, is clearly stated in the terms of service that you sign at the very inception of the account. Suddenly the realization of what she was saying hit me. Not only did I lose access to the groups I belong to, but my email addresses as well, and all the saved emails that I had filed away in my email folders, and more importantly all of the folders and addresses that my wife had stored there too (to lose my stuff because I was careless is a hit I’ll take, but to lose hers as well is damned embarrassing).
Well I was able to recover about 90% of the groups I was in or had run. But I still seem to have lost all the emails I saved on yahoo. Still working on recovery efforts but it will be awhile before its all back to normal. The coming weeks will probably show the extent of what I’ve lost information-wise. Oh joy.

1,000 hits

Wow, over the weekend the Bllog reached 1,000 posts. I suppose thats probably not all that much in the Blogosphere but I think it's pretty cool. My ego has been appeased for the day. Thanks to all for stopping by, and a special thanks to the four of you who actually visit on a regular basis!

The Dragonslayers

Last night Anthony, Fred, and Brianna earned that most coveted of D&D titles- Dragonslayer! Through a combination of planning, strategy, teamwork, and inventive use of resources- Akira the Mage (Anthony), Katar the desert Ranger (Fred), the warrior Amrios (Brianna) and Brother Stern of St. Cuthbert (NPC)- slew an Undead adult green Dragon. It was a solid win, I pulled no punches and didn’t fudge a single roll. They positioned themselves well, stuck to the plan, and came through. I’ve been playing this game for almost 30 years and I have yet to successfully take on a dragon. Way to go team!

The Hero of Canton

About a year ago I bashed a figure for a now defunct Star Frontiers PBEM. I was just looking at a picture and it struck me as familiar...but I couldn't nail it. then all of a sudden an epiphany!
It's Jayne! kind of...I'm gonna work on it though.