Fantastic nerdy birthday haul!

I would've posted on Friday if it wasn't for me having a joint my birthday slash my mother's CPA party.  Oh yeah, by the way my mother is a CPA!  She passed every test!

Since Friday was the party I didn't get some  of my awesome nerdy swag until later.  It includes:

-A poster of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Super-Heroes! comic, when they first fought Loki, God of Evil.  I need to frame it.

-A couple of puny That's What She Said beer glasses.  If you know me in person you know it's one of my favorite jokes to pull.  Granted not every five seconds like a teenager.

-A bottle of Stark Raving Red, which looks like it has a picture of a mad steampunk scientist on it.  I love me some red wine.

-A Twilight card from friends who were amused to annoy me.

-Dice from Mystic, because he knows that d20s are a girl's best friend.

A very decent nerdy hall this year.

Once Upon A Time: Something I should've written about months ago

Around the same time I was giving Grimm a chance was the same time that Once Upon a Time came out on the scene.  I was more excited about Grimm just because of how one friend had described the premises of both shows.  I was also afraid that it would be too close to Fable, the comic book series that I read a bit of when a friend lent it to me in college.  By the way, what I read was also pretty good if you're into non-superhero based comic series.

But then you may remember when I decided not to go back to Grimm, and at that point a different friend was telling me about how amazing Once Upon a Time is.  I went on hulu and I decided to catch up.

The first season is probably one of the best written dramas on television I have ever seen.  I sincerely mean that, as someone who appreciates a lot of great shows from the past and present.  Recently comedies have been getting a lot of the writing talent, with a few dramas surviving the test of time.  Lost and a couple others have been able to survive, but very few have been able to.  Oh my god, I don't  remember if I ever told you about the time I tried to keep up with The Event, but that was painful.  Very painful!

Once Upon a Time's first season revolves around the strange happenings in Storybrooke, which happen around the time Emma, our hero who is unaware of her fate, turns 28.  Henry, her son she gave up for adoption ten years before, finds her and lures her back.  He is convinced that the people of Storybrooke are fairy-tale characters that have been cursed to this little town, and that his adoptive mother, Regina, is the evil queen that sent them there.  Emma writes this off as a child who's very attached to this book he just read.

But Henry is right.  And as the child of Snow White and Prince Charming, Emma is the only way to break the curse.

Through season one you don't only see the fairy-tale characters coping with these new lives they don't realize they've been stuck in for the last 28 years, you see who they were before and the kinds of characters they were.  And because ABC is able to play with the Disney universe, you see references to  your favorite interpretations to the lore you grew up with.  Each episode shows the background of a character and their present situation.  I was so impressed that almost every episode had a twist that I did not see coming.  You get totally invested in the characters you love and the characters you hate.  Both are written with great depth and thought.  Hearkening back to Grimm, there was not a "Hitler is a Werewolf" moment. The cast is also fantastic.  They are definitely great at portraying their characters consistently through the show, which is vital.  My personal favorite is Rumpelstiltskin as played by Robert Carlyle.  He gets down the mischief concealing his power plays pretty well.   All around it was a great package.

Here is my suggestion to you if you haven't done so already: watch all of Season One.  Netflix has it now, and if you have hulu plus you may be able to get it there too.  Watch it IN ORDER because the season is soooo well written that you have to watch it in order to appreciate the universe in it's entirety.

I just saw the first episode of season two, and it has taken the show into some dark places pretty fast.  I am sure they've got an idea on how they want to do this, it's just not where I expected it to go.  After you're caught up on season one, watch season two.  Please feel free to let me know what you think of it.  Seriously, shoot me an email about it!  It's the kind of show that's great watching it on your own, but even better if you have someone to chat about.

Guild Wars 2: Yes you should play it.

My asura had a tree climbing phase. 

It's really hard to write anything when you have a game as well made as Guild Wars 2 waiting for you to play.  I didn't get a chance to play it's predecessor, but Mystic liked it so he convinced me to try Guild Wars 2.  I never did the MMO thing before (other than a brief foray into Star Trek: Online that didn't impress me) so I promised Mystic I would give Guild Wars 2 a try.  I have to say, I'm glad I've waited until this game to get into them.

Let me go over the basics.

Of course you start with character creation, which has some fantastic options.  The face and hair choices for each race are a little limited right now, but that's something I'm sure they'll expand upon later.  It's pretty easy to get a character you think looks awesome and that you'd like to play.  You choose a race (human, norn, sylvari, charr, and asura) and a profession (necromancer, mesmer, elementalist, ranger, engineer, thief  guardian and warrior) and the get to customizing.  Again, not the best range in choices for some things but you are able to make a choice in every facet of your character's look.  Your first set of armor is selected for you and you have a base set of colors, but over time you are able to collect dyes that will help you personalize the colors of your armor even more.

After you know your character looks great, a quick introduction story gets you a easy to follow tutorial where you start already playing with people.  From there you're dropped off at a starting place for your race and free reign to explore!

The tasks that you can pick to gain experience are scattered all throughout the map, indicated with gold hearts.  As you get close it'll let you know what you can do to help with the task, which is usually one of several things.  Yes you can get significant XP without having to kill everything in site, and you don't get punished severely if you do just want to kill everything you can.  You also get rewarded for reviving other players and NPCs, and for crafting.

Oh man crafting.  You can cook, sew, build, smith, and smelt a ton of items that you'll find around the Guild Wars 2 world.  Cooking is popular for helping you level up fast, and jewelry is a craft people like to take to they can make some serious coin.  I personally like being able to make my own armor.  It's also super easy to pick up and learn how to make new things.  You'll be given some basic recipes but soon you'll be able to discover a ton more.  Not sure what to do with that new shimmering dust you got?  See what ingredients you can mix with it!  You can only practice two crafts at a time but if you leave one for a while and pick it back up, you'll start where you left off.

The best thing is that this is an MMO where you don't need to go out of your way to play with people you know.  Your story line is a well written plot where your choices matter, sometimes more than other popular games that used to advertise how much your choices matter.  No one story will be exactly the same unless you go out of your way to imitates someone's preferences.  It also makes it more interesting to go back and play as a different character, you know you're not repeating a lot of the same stuff.   Along with a well written story to keep you playing when your friends are not, you also have loot that is individualized and incentives for working with people.  Again, revives give you XP, so why not help your fellow gamer?  And if a stranger helps you with a kill, you both get XP for trying to kill the same thing.  It's like the looked at all the annoying things in MMOs that frustrate people and improved upon them. A gaming company that listens?  The world's ending!

And if none of that convinced you, I will leave you with a video of all the different dances of Tyria.  There is no shame in buying a video game merely to have your character dance.  No shame I tell you!

Belated Birthday Wish for the future

Yesterday I celebrated turning 26 years of age.  Woot!  I did make a wish off my birthday cake that I did not share with anyone and refuse to until it comes true.  But it's not the only wish I make.

The news that warp drives may actually be possible returned a hope in me that I didn't remember since I was a child.  Space was a place that was magical and fun.  You could float!  You would discover new things!  You may even meet aliens!  Why wouldn't a child want to go?  Many of us were taught to reach the stars.  Why not reach literal stars?

As you get older you realize the reality of that dream.  Space is cold.  You need a lot of fuel.  You need food.  And you have to build an efficient shelter to sustain yourself.  Space travel is hard work!  How are you supposed to do it?  They make it look so easy on Star Trek!

Now it can be easy like Star Trek.

So I wish out loud a long term wish, which is part of the reason I feel safe saying it.  Because it's not a wish you can put a little hope out in the universe and pray to yourself it hooks on to something good.  It's a wish that's going to take a lot of dedication, a lot of work from the right people.

I wish that my grandchildren will be able to comfortably live on Mars.

The Art of Video Games: Why you should see it.

Part of the reason I haven't posted in what seems like forever (have you missed me?) is because I was getting ready for a trip to the D.C. area to see family there with Mystic.  He met some family there for the first time and it went great!  But we also wanted to go to D.C. to see The Art of Video Games, which is only at the American Art  Museum until September 30th.  And it was amazing.

Above is the screen you could see on your way in.  A video which showed a bunch of the video games featured in the section.  It was a small three room exhibit the power of it was immediate. 

The artwork that helped with development was in the first room, with some great quotes from developers talking about it's artistic qualities.  You see here we saw some great art from the first days of Starcraft.  There was also some comparisons to the animation process.

After that you went into a room where five legendary games were available to play: Pacman, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and Flower.  You could only play a little bit of each, but it was still a great way to understand what those games were about and to get a taste as to what people saw in them.  

Finally you were able to see the history of the games and their types from console to console.  The genres were divided into adventure, action, target and tactics.  Each console would show an example of each genre and how it changed and evolved as a visual and tactile storytelling device with artistic choices in development made all throughout the way.  

I got really emotional seeing it.  This is a hobby that is dear to my heart, that I play because of it's artistic merits and great narratives as well as for escapism.  It has been too long compared with other children's toys.  At this point, we took a step ahead in gaming to comparing it was a medium similar to books and film, or dare I say a combination of the two.  It was touching to see a serious take on the art in the medium, and to see people happy to learn about it.  I had to wipe away tears as I was reading serious takes on games I grew up with like Sim City and Star Fox, and finally seeing some of my current favorites being celebrated, including Mass Effect 2.  

The Art of Video Games is only at the American Museum of Art until the 30th, but as you can see it could be coming somewhere closer to you in the next few years.  See it.  Experience it.  As a gamer, it'll make your hobby proud.  As a non-gamer, you can see why adults pursue these virtual stories.  

Some Similar Villainy

Sitting in my car listening to whatever comes up on my iPod, I realized something:

One of my favorite villains from my childhood is extremely similar to one of my favorite villains of today.

Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas has a lot in common with Rumpelstiltskin from Once Upon A Time. 

Let me list my thoughts:

-Both work toward selfish gains

-Both rarely ever take pity

-Both are obsessed with making deals, bargins and gambles

-Both prefer to hide away from normal society, and selectively interact with it to pursue their own goals (Oogie Boogie with his trick-or-treat crew, Rumpelstiltskin with magic)

-Both seem to take a darker, goldish/brown hue

-Both try their best to make sure the odds are entirely in their favor

If you know Rumpelstiltskin's back story from the show, you may know this wasn't always true, but a good chunk of it is when you first met him.

Now that I type it out it doesn't seem that significant, but it shows in my life I've always had a favor toward certain bad guys.  I never could get the whole "I want all the power" or "I'm just merely evil" motives.  It just made more sense you would have bad guys who just do stuff for their own gain, and be clever enough to get away with it.  I think maybe it was easier to relate to--we've all known someone who likes to make sure they're dealt the best hand in life.  And to be honest, who could blame them?

Will have to confirm my hypothesis by watching The Nightmare Before Christmas sometime soon.  Halloween is almost around the corner...

"Fake Empire"--when LARP imitates art. P.S. don't f%@k with Chicago.

My character Ellen Peters was in kind of a slump for a while.  She was serving a prince to Chicago who was kind of a dick and with the Invictus, who by definition in her head are all dicks.

Before one game, a friend of mine sent out music videos to friends that reminded her of their LARP characters.  This one was mine:  Fake Empire by The National.




It definitely hit Ellen's heart strings. She was the only member of the Carthian Movement who could keep any respect in the city, and even though she still aligned with them, she had to play nice with the big boys of the Invictus.  Ellen made her own friends with even more monstrous people that she felt she could trust more, and laid low.

And then came the Prima Invicta from the East, trying to convince everyone to join their empire that continued to grow.  They had met some resistance but nothing too serious.  They came to the Prince of Chicago and offered him Vicerory of several states.  He took it.

Chicago proceeded to say "What the hell?!"  I won't go into the long story, but that character is no longer Prince.  And Chicago has continued to tell the Prima Invicta that they can go choke.

Meanwhile, I think back to when my friend chose this song, and think about all those out East...

"We're wide awake in a fake empire" is what some of them must be thinking to themselves.

Planning Enough

I am so afraid for DnD I do not plan enough.

Part of it is because I like to run my games with a plot line encased in a very open world.  It's like Skyrim (which I've been playing a lot of these days), but I'm hoping a better received main plot line.

The problem with this is that you never know what your players will latch on to and want to pursue.  It's not only the little tidbits you thought would be easy to have your players forget, it's also the players interpretation of the big things.

For example, the last two times I ran a game in my setting, I definitely had players who took the role of working for the King seriously.  They had experience and honor and lineages that they wants to make sure came into play.  They knew that they were the best of the best for a reason, and it was an honor to be serving the King.

These players feel they are not the best of the best.  They have bad habits and not the most impressive histories.  Two of them are from a friendly kingdom, and aren't entirely 100% sworn to the king (they already have one).  One was busy trying to sell potent potables to the public as a druid.  One is busy trying to impregnate every lady he can.  And one is merely amazed that he has a warm bed and food provided to him as a courtesy.  They know they are not the best of the best, and if anything it makes this same setting feel more desperate.  This isn't a position of honor.  This is proof that the Kingdom needs to be pitied.

With the same introduction and the same world, the feelings are entirely different.  Imagine then the difference between the person who knows everything in the world as "God" so the speak, and the difference between the players who only know what I tell them.

Therefore, considering all the unknowns with the decisions made, you cannot plan enough.