Geek of the Week

A very quick note: Lowell Francis is officially the Geek of the Week. No, really.

Hint: If you go to RPG Geek / GeekDo and post questions on that thread, I'm pretty sure he's legally required to answer them. Several of his players have already joined the RPGG regulars in attempting to whittle his typing fingers down to nubs.

And now ... back to impossible deadlines.

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New SMT on the horizon

/Squee!



What is that, you say? Why is this cause for glee?

Why, it is a new Shin Megami Tensei game for the DS. It comes out in February 2010. And the writeup compares it to SMT: Nocturne, which is officially The Best Game Ever Made. And really, that's all I needed to know.

It will be mine. Oh yes. I am counting the days already.

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Why Does It Feel Like Monday?

I know it's Friday. So by all rights it should feel like Friday. And yet ...

I'm going to blame the weather. The Indiana Shroud is in full force, despite a couple of short-lived glimpses of brilliant blue sky and sun today. I got a face full of sunbeam for exactly one minute while I was waiting for the shuttle after lunch. It was a nice change, if too-too brief.

I'm also still a little grumpy that I had to cancel a boba tea date with Cher Mere last night so I could go home and sleep after work. That's right, no boba tea. Didn't even sound good. That's a sure sign something's off. That and sleeping for 11 hours on a Thursday night. That's weekend sleep, that is.

Today I did go in to work, but I'm still feeling a bit punky, and not in the good way. It takes a lot to make me skip a game, but ... I just want to curl up on my comfy couch tonight with some a bowl of ice cream or Cambert tea. Will will just have to put up with me crashing his territory tonight. I hope he's feeling entertaining.

Also, he found an amusing new anime on Hulu.com: Baccano! I've only watched the first episode so far, and I don't know quite how to describe it. It seems to have an odd roundabout storytelling motif in the tradition of Boogiepop Phantom, involves immortal '30s-era gangsters and lots of violence, and is stranger and funnier than I can do justice.

Have a good weekend.

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Abhoth and Azathoth and the Dunwich Horror, Oh My!

I have played Arkham Horror + the Dunwich Horror expansion two nights in a row. Once with Cher Mere and her husband (we won, yay!), and once with Will, running two characters each (we got nommed, boo!).

Both were unusually long games. The first night, we faced off against Abhoth, and despite Nurse Heather making life rough for Cher Mere at the asylum (hee), it went fairly well over all. The second night was a slow but inevitable trainwreck. A series of tragedies, if you will. There was some amusement -- I ran into Nurse Sharon at the hospital, and good old Carolyn Fern-the-Psychologist (sanest woman you'll ever meet, but OMG is she slow) ended up as a super-prepared monster hunter -- but Azathoth feasted well that night, nonetheless. To give you an idea of how the entire game went, Will got poor Bob Jenkins unceremoniously gacked by pulling an Abyss encounter that sent everyone's favorite salesman to visit cranky, cranky Azathoth, who, as it turns out, was feeling rather peckish.

That card only takes effect if Azathoth is the Ancient One in play, by the way. /sigh

We also woke up the Dunwich Horror, who is a jerk. You can quote me on that. When you face him, you pull randomly from a small stack of possible configurations. The one I chose was immune to physical damage, I believe, and required five successful hits to take him down. Argh.

In other news, there were pastries from West End Bakery at work this morning. So delicious...

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Randomosity: Good things, past and future

GenCon provided a good excuse for a marathon gaming weekend, since several of us skipped the con this year. Beginning Thursday, we had two back-to-back sessions of Changeling (with pizza and delicious BLTs, respectively), a night off (for W. and I, anyway -- Edige had a third game to run), and then the Sunday 3rd continent game.

Saturday evening, W. and I stopped in at my aunt and uncle's to drop off some football tickets. We stayed and chatted for a bit, since they'd never met W. before; it was a pretty relaxed visit. My aunt restrained herself from asking too many questions (which she commented on proudly as we were leaving) and offered to take us to Red Lobster next week. So there's that to look forward to.

Afterward, we kept driving north and went to dinner in St. Joe. (There was lots of driving this weekend, as the weather was particularly good for it, for the first time in weeks.) Re: St. Joe, though -- there's a fine line, for me, between pleasant people-watching and claustrophobia, and the crowds up there this weekend were right on that border. Dinner was excellent, but even at 10 pm, the line at the ice cream shop was far too long.

Also, we decided during the course of the evening that our host at the Pumphouse Grill really needed to be an evil mage of some kind. He was perfectly polite, with perfectly manicured nails, and thick, shoulder-length stark white hair; a pure white Van Dyke, slightly hawkish nose, and dark-dark eyes. He needs to be a character, somewhere. In fact, I can't help but wonder if he didn't perhaps walk off the page of a book at some point.

I was supposed to make some zucchini bread this weekend with this amazingly huge zucchini Cher Mere gave me on Thursday, but it was so hot I have't gotten around to baking anything. Hopefully Tuesday will give me a chance if it cools off a little in the evening. I'm thinking I might be able to get three loaves out of this puppy. If it works out, I may have to drop off a loaf for them as a thank-you. Assuming they're edible, of course. ;)

Game-wise, I'm almost done with SMT: Devil Survivor. Unfortunately I hit a lull for a bit there; because I've been tearing through story points and haven't been taking on as much in the way of build-battles as I normally do in a MegaTen game, I ended up having to farm a fairly boring free battle over and over to get past the Belial fight because I didn't have enough ice in my arsenal. Once I went back and took a second stab at Belial with the revised strategy and updated fusions, it was a cake walk. I have now made it to the last "day" of the game, though, and I chose Gin's path -- but that's a subject for a whole post in itself. I've got my fingers crossed for a good ending, which is never a guarantee in these games. However ... I think I've played enough of them to figure out which ending leads to the "right" path for me.

I do love the SMT; it remains my all-time favorite game line. Once I'm done with this game, it might be worth taking a look at the whys and wherefores of that.

In other news, a group of us are going to see Miyazaki's Ponyo Thursday night. It's apparently an adaptation of the "Little Mermaid," with a Miyazaki twist, so I'm looking forward to that. A fellow gamers' daughters were watching Spirited Away while we played at Edige's last night, and it was hard not to sit down and watch the rest of the movie all the way through.

I'm tired today (far too much Devil Survivor last night after the game), and right now I'm hoping for a slow week. We only have a couple of things planned, so for the moment, I'm looking forward to enjoying the week's impending thunderstorms curled up on our comfy, comfy couch.

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Stupid brain thingy

As I was telling Cher Mere, the brain thingy isn't working so well this morning. Last night I hopped on Sims 3 at 11:00 or 12:00 to finish a house I'd started building, and was quite content to putter around with it until I went to get a drink and realized it was 4 AM.

But the worst part ... the worst part ... is that my tired brain forgot to bring the cream for coffee this morning. Yes, it forgot my stupid lunch, too, but ... cream. For coffee. On a 3-hours-of-sleep Monday.

This cannot end well.

In other news:

• Sheldon points out a fatal flaw in Edige's unnatural fondness for Aquaman



• The copy of Rune Factory 2 I borrowed from him (Edige, not Aquaman ... pft. As if.) is bugged. No matter how many times I try, no matter how many times I double-check the ingredient list, I cannot update the stupid fishing pole. I haven't seen any other reports of this problem, though, and luckily it's not a game-killer, just really obnoxious.



• There was an item three, I'm pretty sure. I think I probably left it in the refrigerator, with the cream and my lunch. /sigh



• Middle brother came back from Cairo on Friday, and we had dinner with him and mom on Saturday. It's still hard for me to wrap my head around, that he got to Egypt before me, and liked it. There are just so many things wrong with that statement. But he saw the pyramids, and the Coptic quarter, and whirling Sufis, and the temples at Luxor and Karnak and the Valley of Kings, and ... and ... I'm jealous. So very, very jealous, but also glad for him, that he went and was willing to try so many new things. Besides, if he made it there, so can I. Eventually.



• Libri Vidicos is still going strong -- man, I love that game. So many delicious twists and turns! And we've started a new Pavis game, on the third continent of Edige's fantasy setting. It uses another modification of his Action Cards! system, which introduces an interesting mechanic for damage. I personally think it's unnecessary, but on the other hand, I also understand the the guys have a weird fixation with "crunch" in their combat. It doesn't really seem to bog things down much, so no harm done. The group is an interesting mix of semi-seriousness and sly goofiness, so it should be fun. I expect this game to be pretty laid back and relaxed, over all.

That's all for now. The Yawns demand I go bum a couple of dollars for a Starbuck's.

Eh. At least they have cream.

/sigh

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Spring? Hello?

Deadline week, now with added arbitrary deadlines! Argh.

We're halfway through April and it feels like we're still peeking around the corner at March. The weather has been cold and dreary, with few exceptions, and I'm caught between equal bouts of cabin fever and just wanting to snuggle up on the couch and write. Or play that horrible Animal Crossing game. Normally by this point I'd be dying for a good drive, but other than this Sunday, the weather just hasn't been very conducive so far this year.

Speaking of Sunday, Easter/Ostara/Bunny Day was pretty laid back and nice this year. Mom went to a banquet with Middle Brother and his girlfriend, so I accompanied Will to his parents' for the first steak cookout of the season. It was the first time I've spent any real time around his family (other than meeting his parents for five minutes or so when he first moved in) and they're pretty funny. Also, there was Jolly Rancher wine, and his brother spoke actual words! Overall, I'd call it a win.

What else...

I'm waiting patiently to begin more Changeling game-related writing with Cher Mere. Are you jealous? Yes, of course you are. She's a lot of fun, and I enjoy our characters immensely. (And I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it to her Passover dinner this year ... hopefully next. I've never been to one before!) Will and I are tentatively working on something for the same game as well, but we'll see where that ends up.

I have discovered MJK of Tool and A Perfect Circle fame has yet another musical effort out: Puscifer. And damned if I'm not addicted to a couple of the songs already. (I'm looking at you, "Momma Sed" and "Queen B"...) Now, I like Tool, but since Opiate and Undertow, they've been a bit too overwrought for my taste. I recognize the talent, like the sound ... but my brain relegates it to the realm of really good background music, and by the time I've reached the end of the CD, it's all bled together into some strange musical miasma. APC is a different story altogether; that was, and is, instant love. The music's much more accessible and insidious in that brain-burrowing way that keeps it in the braintape loop for days after hearing it. I've only heard a few Puscifer songs, so far, and of the ones I was able to pay attention to, one I actively despise, and three have landed squarely in the loop. And soon, very soon, I will give in and buy some MP3s to assist with the burrowing process.

Speaking of adding to the loops, I managed to infect Edige with the Serj Tankian bug. Win.

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Daigotsu Yori

The amazingly awesome Steve Argyle has finally posted the scarily perfect Daigotsu Yori picture I commissioned last year for Will (whom he assumed was my husband, apparently ... heh). The picture is dark, so it's hard to see the depth of the detail to the work in the online version -- she's actually holding a scorpion-tailed sword in one hand. (Yori is a character from a recent L5R game; in this incarnation, she's a former Scorpion courtier turned Spider samurai-ko.)

Steve was incredibly busy with other projects when he took this on, so it did take a while, but it was well worth the wait. I was happy with it, and Will seemed pleased. Now if only AEG would make her into a card for the CCG...

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