MOUNTAIN FRUSTRATION

So, to add to a nice laundry list of fresh computer issues, my XP profile corrupted and wiped a bunch of my user settings, including my Poser UI and Photoshop settings.  Yay.  I created a new profile tonight, and we'll see how that works.  As it stands, I've just about had it with this computer recently.  The best system in the world does me no good if every time I log on I have to start fresh.  I had a friend who is also a computer guru, and he spent all day yesterday trying to track down what exactly the problem was, all to no avail.

At this point, we're leaning toward the major issue being either the motherboard or the processor.  He ran a buttload of tests last night to see if the problem would be the hard drives, but the problems continued cropping up even after he cloned the C: drive onto a 400G drive and switched it out as the master drive.  He flashed and updated the bios and chipsets, and that didn't work, either.  If the problem is, in fact, the processor/mobo, it'll be tax time before I can get a fix.  Until then, I'll continue nursing this system along, rendering with the affinity settings on, and running checkdisks anytime a blue screen flashes.

Of course that's immensely frustrating, but at least I still have my laptop.  (Knock on wood)

RANDOM THOUGHTAGE

Last weekened, I turned off the light on my big aquarium and started siphoning out the water to clean the tank.  I was repulsed when I suddenly noticed what I assumed was the largest freaking parasite I had ever seen in my life swimming around in the back plants, and nearly lost hold of my siphon.  But when I looked closer, I thought to myself, "That's odd, usually parasites are attached to other fish, not swimming free." And then I had a total WTF moment when I realized that it looked like a little fish!

See, I was under the impression that all the fish in my larger tank were male.  I had three male platies, a pair of cory cats, and Piddles-- a dwarf gourami.  Apparently, one of the platies I thought was male.... actually sorta wasn't, and what's more, (s)he had two babies.  So now there are two tiny little platies who look just like their mother swimming around and growing bit by bit in my 30-gallon tank.  And yes, I know livebearers like platies pretty much could breed in a vacuum, but I couldn't be more thrilled, as this is the first time I've had any fish have offspring.  

Maybe it's just me, but if you're tabletop gaming, you kinda owe it to your fellow players and GM (all of whom are taking time out of their own schedules to play) to actually focus a little on the game.  If you're going to sit around the table, tweet on Twitter with your laptop and just halfheartedly roll a die when it's your turn in combat, then don't bother coming.  If you've had a shat day at work and you're exhausted to the point of not being able to keep your eyes open, then don't come.  No one ever put a gun to someone's head and said that they have to play a game.  Except maybe the Aztecs.  And then it was a club, most likely.

At any rate, this sort of situation happened to me over the weekend, and while I wasn't going to make a big deal about it, the more the night went on, the more it pissed me off.  I'd rather run a game with three players who want to play and are into the game than eight players with two, three or four who are there for social networking.  It's not fair to the other players, it's not fair to the GM.

I recently got myself upgraded to a Blackberry cellwise, and have been ecstatic about it.  I don't text a whole lot, but on the occasions I do, I much prefer the keyboard I have with the BB than I did any cell I've tried using before... on top of that, I like the number of apps it runs; I listen to Pandora on it at work, use the GPS every so often, and have a couple other small things that are cool but not overblown.  It's kinda like having an iPhone without the ridiculous price tag, the constant fingerprints on the touch screen, and the overall stigma of having something with an Apple logo on it.

It's dark right now... at 6 pm.  I f**king hate winter coming.

To those of you whom I fairly regularly get those sordid petrificative commissions from, I cannot thank you enough for the awesome work you've done for me recently.  Thaaaaaank you!  You guys and gals rock like no one's business, and I have some of the best artists I know doing that weirdness for me and never once saying "You're a freak.  Go away now." I'll probably be looking into the lot of ya again once the Christmas rush is over, especially if my overtime schedule continues the way it has!

Also, to all of you who have faved my work, thank you very much.  I don't generally have the time to tell you singly, the way I try to respond to each response on my pics, but I really do appreciate it!

TOTAL GEEKDOM RANT ALERT The first flaw in the Pathfinder RPG came up when I got my new Bestiary, with one of my (naturally) fave creatures.  The Cockatrice entry has its special attack look pretty much as follows:

Petrification (Su) A cockatrice's bite causes flesh to calcify and harden -- multiple bites can cause a living creature to turn into stone.  Each time a creature is damaged by a cockatrice's bite, it must succeed on a DC 12 Fort save or take 1d4 points of Dexterity damage as its flesh and bones stiffen and harden.  A creature reduced to 0 Dex immediately turns completely to stone... BUT, every day a creature petrified in this manner can attempt a new DC 12 Fort save to recover from the petrification, which returns the character to 1 Dex (until healed).  If a petrified character fails three of these Fort saves in a row, the petrification is permanent.

Agreed, I'm totally biased.  I understand.  But WTF... how 4E/Gimpy/No-Child-Left-Behind is that!?  Let's look at that empirically.  The average character will have a 12 Dex... no one but an absolute moron uses Dex as a dump stat because it affects AC, and pretty much everyone uses point buy instead of a much more random die-roll creation matrix.  So they most likely will need to fail at least 6 saves, assuming that more than half of them are rolls of 3 or 4, before they're petrified, temporarily.

And then, on top of that, the DC of the Save is 12?!?  A first-level non-bard has a +2 to their Fort save out of the gate, and by the Cockatrice's CR (3), everyone should have at least a +1 to their Fort save regardless of race/class.  So for a cockatrice to be anything close to an effective deterrent, it will need to hit the same character enough for him or her to fail a more-or-less 50/50 save between 6 and 10 times, at which point, for three straight days, the character can then make a more-or-less 50/50 save for it not to be permanent.  What. The. F**k.

Hello, f**king houserule.  The people who went crying about Save or Die/Save or Suck ("Oh Noooooes, just make everything with any history of causing an instant effect to a PC mass damage, because when my character's out of the game for more than five minutes my little ADD brain can't handle it!") are totally responsible for this BS.  I have no problem with trying to make the game more accessible for the attention-impaired whiner rules lawyers, but taking classic creatures (the Gorgon, I believe, has a similar 'Save till Make' mechanic; I'm looking at others now.) and classic spells and giving them an effective vasectomy is ridiculous.

If a character dying/being put out of play for a while because you missed a roll is too traumatic, and your GM is so cutthroat that he won't allow any sort of workaround to bring the character back, then go play with a good imaginative GM... or just boot up your computer and run a MMO, where they get the large majority of their money from people with short attention spans. </rant>

STAMP PIMPING

[Reserved for Pathfinder RPG Stamp]

<sub>"So you were born, and that's a good thing,
So you will die, and that's a shame.
But somewhere in the between, is a life of which we all dream
and nothing and no one will ever take it away."
- Streetlight Manifesto, Somwhere In the Between</sub>

FANGASM...  ISM...  OR SOMETHING

Those of you who know me at all know that I am an avid tabletop-- and to a degree, Play by Post-- RPG gamer.  

Those of you who know that very likely also know that I've been outspoken in my touting of the Pathfinder Role Playing Game by Paizo Publishing.  Not only does their game continue the tradition and feel of D&D version 3.5 (as opposed to what I feel is the more videogamey, MMORPish feel of Wizards of the Coasts'... er... Hasbro's 4th Edition), but Paizo's Pathfinder line-- from the PFRPG book to the Adventure Paths and Chronicles products-- seems to have a cleaner, more professional look; feels as though it is better edited, and in cases where necessary, quicker with web-available addenda; and has far better quality overall-- ask some people about the smudgery in recent WOTC products.  When I've met the people from Paizo at Gen-Con, there is a genuine "aw shucks" feel to them, too.  They're not full of themselves, they're people like you and me who love the game they created adventures for before WOTC cleaned house, and took control of Dungeon and Dragon magazine... and now love the work they do for the PFRPG.  So at any rate, I've become a pretty hardcore Paizo-ite in the last few months.

So imagine my surprise and glee when, on Friday, I hit the front page of Paizo.com (which I do quite often to see the daily blog of what cool new thing's for sale, much to my wallet's chagrin) and found this little gem, Mega Feats Revisited by Otherverse Productions and Scorched Urf Studios.  Check that link out; you may have to scroll down to where it says "Feats Don't Fail Me Now!".  I'll wait.

Now, in case that graphic doesn't look familiar, here's the original:



That's right, a piece of my very own artwork was not only featured on the cover of a Pathfinder-Compatible Book (okay, okay, PDF, but still!), but it was featured on the front page of the Paizo Store Site! And some of my art is also used for interior illustrations, too!

I have sold off some of my fantasy art pieces under the banner of Darker Age Press, specifically for royalty-free use by FRPG supplement creators.   The fine folks at Otherverse/Scorched Urf bought one of those packs and gave my pic of Keylyn the cover, and Paizo decided to feature it for their storefront blog, and overall, the whole thing has made my freaking month.  (If you buy the PDF-- which natch, I highly recommend-- you'll notice that an editorial goof listed the cover artist as Kenshin, although I got interior art credit.   I've contacted the publishers to tell them, but I'm not frothing about it... Kenshin does some phenomenal Poser work, too, and I know my art when I see it, and I don't know if the decision to put my piece on the cover was a last-minute decision by the editors.   Either way, I'm still in the middle of a fangasm.   )

FINDING GREATER AFFINITY

I know a lot of you follow me for my statue art, and are probably sitting there wondering where the hell all the hottie statuification victims have gotten off to...  after all, since now I have my computer back, shouldn't I be chomping at the bit to put some Poser models into some sort of petrificative peril?

Well, not just yet... which requires a little 'splaining.  And no, it's not because I've suddenly become a eunuch.  

I've got my rendering computer back, yes, but it's still not completely up to snuff.   Apparently, when I do really busy renders in any program (and I should note, most of my renders qualify as busy unless I do them piecemeal), the computer has been really overworking the processor... to the point that it will shut the computer down in the middle of a render.  ossibly an overheat or power management problem, although the fans, power supply and heat sinks are all working fine.  

At any rate, considering that I prefer to use procedural materials for my statues rather than image textures to give my statues what I feel is a much more realistic and visually impressive look, and considering that procedural mats are more memory/processor intensive than wrapping an image texture around the model, that would be what we call a "problem."  Hell, the bikini elves pic, which is a less busy one than many I've done, shut the computer down 5 times in the middle of renders before I figured a way around it, simply because of the procedural sand mat.  That simply won't work.

While waiting to put the computer back into the shop-- actually, giving it off to one of my gaming buddies who does stellar computer work and has specifically asked me if he could work on it to get the bad boy back up to specs-- I've found a workaround to at least get some work done.  I have a dual core processor, so I can go into the task manager and tell XP to only use one core for certain processes in the Affinity Settings.  It makes a render obviously take a MUCH longer time, but for the time being, that's keeping me from being back to square one, and it'll do.

So the statue pics will come, certainly.   But it may be a little while.   Just keep your eyes open.

STAMP PIMPING

[Reserved for Pathfinder RPG Stamp]

<sub>"So you were born, and that's a good thing,
So you will die, and that's a shame.
But somewhere in the between, is a life of which we all dream
and nothing and no one will ever take it away."
- Streetlight Manifesto, Somwhere In the Between</sub>

Reports of my demise have been greatly underestimated.

Working on a couple things, here and there. Hoping to have my 3D programs back up and running at some point soon.



<sub>"Ah, perhaps your mouth says no, my dear lady, but your eyes..... well, okay, your eyes sort of say no, too. And that sword you're pointing at me is looking pretty negative, as well."
- Around the table again at Gen Con.</sub>

FIRST AND FOREMOST...

HELP A COUPLE FELLOW ARTISTS TODAY!!!

~RogueRider and =mookyvet are good dA friends of mine who have done some really amazing commissions for me and others, some of which can be seen below.  Both of them are in bad need of some help and a little money to help out their financial straits, and both do some absolutely awesome artwork... so this should be a natural fit to anyone.  I can vouch for their ability and their friendly attitudes, and tell you that your money will go to a damned good cause.  So if you have a little extra spending money, go now.  Commission them.   Details can be found in their deve journals!

-

-

---

PREVIOUS DAYS
Thursday

(Quick note, y'all!  I'd really planned to have this churned out much faster than this, but 10 hour shifts and general post Gen-Con sleeplessness has made that a bit difficult... sorry about that!)

FRIDAY!

9:00 AMish:    I've noticed something about myself: the longer Gen Con goes on, the less likely I am to want to wake up godawful early.  Today my alarm went off at 8:15 and I still hit the snooze twice.  I made it a point this year not to pick up any 8 AM gaming timeslots like I did last year, because I was absolutely freaking useless when I was waking up at 6 am to go to them.  This year, it's a nice trade-off: I get to stay up a little later, and still not wake up so ridiculous monkeyfuckin' early but that means I don't go to as many games as I otherwise would like.  Still, I can take my time, get to the convention center about 10:45, and still have a little time to roam the Exhibition Halls before my first game.

10:35 AMish:    I'm taking notes now.  I didn't bring Tom today, and my parking space is the same one I've had the last couple years... namely, about a half to three-quarters of a mile away.  However... it's $5 event parking, not so much by the hour or every two hours.  Im happy about that, at least!

11 AMish:    Started in the Artists' Alley this time around while I was just browsing around, looking to shamelessly cadge some tips from the masters.  Many of the masters, I find out, have a significant other that covers their booth while they go out and hobnob with bigger name publishers.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  If I could draw a ridiculously desirable woman curled around a dragon whose scales look real enough to touch, I'd damned well be telling the big name publishers that they could have me for the right price and a small harem of devoted followers.

11:15 AMish:    Met Alina Pete, the creator and artist of the Weregeek web comic, which is a fun read (the first ep is a little on the hokey side, but after a couple weeks, it is laugh-out-loud funny!), and talked to her a bit about being at the cons.  I always feel bad for the artists, game designers and volunteers who have to spend the four best gaming days ever cooped up behind tables, selling themselves and their products by being nice to everyone they meet, and missing out on half the fun of Gen Con when most of them are game enthusiasts themselves.  She said, honestly, it didn't bother her nearly that much, and I believe her.  Some of the people have such a full extended weekend that adding gaming to it would probably be slightly akin to committing seppuku with a barbecue fork, but I couldn't not enjoy gaming at Gen Con, even if was a business owner.  I'd have to buy me some slaves to run the booth or something while I hit the Pathfinder Society or an SG-1 Play-in.

Also met and talked with Jason Banditt Adams, aka Rogue-Artist, whose work is somewhere along the lines of melted-caramel tasty.  His prices are really reasonable, too, for the quality of his work, quite unlike many of the published artists here (I would not be able to afford to have Wayne Reynolds lodge a pen in my temple for his own enjoyment, for instance, unless me and the lottery suddenly found a mutual understanding. To say nothing about a real piece of art.) I'm likely gonna commission him a couple times, and maybe even see about getting him to do some b/w/tonal linework for a project I have on the somewhere-just-south-of-front-burner.

11:47 AMish:    Sweet Mother of Fuck, I'm late getting out of here for my noon game!  Which direction is the Omni Severen hotel?  And why in the name of any god you care to name do people in conventions hold standing (i.e., not moving) discussions in the middle of the aisles?  It's like Ignorant Wal-Mart Talker Syndrome, where two people meet one another in Wal-Mart and decide to have a long conversation right in the middle of the f**king aisle that is only two persons wide to begin with! I don't mind getting stuck behind someone in a wheelchair or someone with a broken foot or a particularly slow gait at Gen Con... hell, I have some basic shreds of compassion (somewhere, I'm sure.  They were here yesterday, dammit!) for my fellow gamer.  But in an exhibition hall with 23,000+ people milling almost shoulder to shoulder in it, don't you think that you might decide "Hey, I should maybe find an area they're not all trying to walk before stopping and blocking traffic to discuss the particulars of my allergic reaction to tomato sauce"?

11:58 AMish:    FOUND it.  The Omni Severen must be the furthest out of the so-called 'satellite hotels' around the Convention Center, being about a half-block away from the Maryland Street entrance.  Made it to my mustering place for the Gamebase 7 group's "Dream Whisperings" D&D 3.5 game with less than five minutes to spare, only to find I was at table 13... and according to the room map, where table 13 was supposed to be was a gaping lack of table.  Another gamer (and his sons, who were also scheduled at table 13) vented to me every few seconds about it, demanding answers, and was stalking over to the table next to 13's empty space and growling that they stole the table and they weren't leaving.  He seemed surprised that I didn't seem heavily concerned about it.  I've been to Gen Con a couple years now.  These things tend to work themselves out.

12:05 PMish:    They did.  A Gamebase 7 GM came over and asked if we were there for Dream Whisperings or another game title whose name escaped me, and then explained that they had been moved to the four tables out in the hall.  Pulsing Temple Vein Gamer and his sons were at the other table, and I joined an already fairly full table, where the GM (Scott) gave me the choice of a half-elf bard pregen or a half-elf bard pregen.  I was surprised and pleased, because I'd spent the last few free hours before Thursday throwing together a 3.5 character I didn't much care for, and then printing copies of him advancing at 1st, 5th, and 10th level, just to be on the safe side.  I like bards, though.  They have personality.  And I was bound and determined to make mine an obssessively arrogant and showily-dressed fop and flirt.

4:15 PMish:    Okay, my group officially rocks.  That was absolutely the most fun I've ever had outside of a Pathfinder Society RPG scenario.  I played with a table with a wide range of ages and styles, all of whom were mature players, and we had an utter blast.  Scott, our GM, saw how much fun we were having, and like a good GM often does, he adapted the game on the fly from the base written scenario.  We never ended up finishing our pre-written 'quest', but everyone had a blast, and that was the point.  I was sad to have to leave, and one of the gamers at the table said he picked up tickets for all three sessions at that table, but wouldn't be able to make the last one, which started at 9.  Scott asked if I'd be interested in the spot, maybe even playing the bard again.  I didn't hesitate, and said that I'd stop by after my PFS interactive game, which ended about 10, and join in with generic tickets, if he thought he'd have an opening, but I wasn't sure I'd make the 9 pm start.  He was fine with it.  Suddenly, I have a three-game night!  Oh, HELLZ yes.

5:20 PMish:    I keep having these little niggles of temptation about various rules systems, since I'm a terrible rules system whore: things like, "You waaaaaant the Anima RPG ," or "Hackmaster might be niiiiiiice to try," or "Take piiiiictures of the half-naked Rikku cosplayer.  Oh, no wait.  Hold on, do that, but also buyyyyyyy Runequest." (And as a side note, yes, the costumes are in force today. No, I did not shoot pics of them.  I brought my camera all four days and got something like 6 photos.) I'm worried that sooner or later, those little voices in my head are going to cause me to have a momentary aneurism, and the next thing I know I'll be spasmodically putting my credit card in the hands of a dealer and picking up something like The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG or some shit and then spending the next year wondering what the hell I smoked when I was thinking that was a good idea.

6:00 PMish:    GAME ON, BABY!  I'm slated for tonight's Pathfinder Society Event, Betrayal in Absalom.  I know this is going to be different than my usual PFS games, simply because A) this is labeled in the guide as an "event" (as opposed, I guess, to a "session" or a "thang", and B) because there were twice as many ticket slots for this than any other PFS game before the preorders started (and of course, because of that, it sold out twice as fast.  BOOYEAH, PREORDERING TICKETS!!!  *FISTPUMP*) I really don't know what to expect, but the program lists it as "an interactive event for all levels of Pathfinder Society ... that turns Indianapolis into an interactive City at the Center of the World for players to run an RP and combat-laden scavenger hunt.  Prizes will be awarded to the winning teams each night." Oh, hellz yes.  RP, Pathfinder, AND prizes?  I'm sold.  Kierdan's ready to kick some Taldoran ass.  Or Qadiran ass.  Or...well, pretty much anyone.

9:45 PMish:    Well, I had fun, anyway.  I will admit, I've never taken part in an interactive event before, and this was pretty damned cool, even if I was a bit confused.  I got invited to a table with a threesome of players, and we soon added a fifth.  Out of my group, two, IIRC, had played very little outside of MMO's, and the latecomer was role playing a snake-oil salesman with a chicken familiar, which was hilarious.  The other guy had some PFS experience, but once the event got started, he almost got belligerent when we didn't have a GM.  Which was part of the point, actually, but we didn't know that.  As a result, we didn't come close to winning, and in fact, had no idea how to even find our first GM... and for a long time, there was a general surprise from a lot of the people at tables (ours included) that we weren't just supposed to sit there and game.  The problem was that A) this was Paizo's first real interactive, and while they had a great idea, it was telling that a few of their GM's dragged their feet on the scenarios; B) a lot of people didn't read the program, ticket description, or anything describing it and therefore didn't realize it was an interactive event, C) many of us who knew it was interactive had never before been in an interactive and weren't sure what was expected of us, and D) All of the Above.  

The gist of the interactive was that we were supposed to use clues to figure out our next destination, where we would meet a GM and RP a quick scenario and battle, the result of which would lead us to our next destination, and so on down the line until we reached the denouement.  Great fun, right?  Well, it is, unless you're clueless about what's going on, defensive because you don't know what's happening, or out of breath because in your mind RPG's mean 'Not getting off your ass until the game's over.' I think next year, this event will be the best thing since sliced bread, especially if the attendees realize what they're supposed to do... but this year, it suffered from birthing pains.  (AFTER THE FACT NOTE: I talked to one of the organizers at the Paizo booth Sunday, and he said much the same thing.  Friday night there were a lot of communication snarls, and the PFS GM's didn't all know exactly what was expected of them for this... nor did the gamers.  He also said that everything was ironed out for the Saturday night event, which turned out to be really, really great.  That led to a Big D'oh Forehead Slapping Moment: due to me fouling up the dates I read on my tickets, I went to the Friday Event, when in actuality, I was supposed to go to the PFS event on Saturday.  That'll teach me to learn to check the date on my watch.

9:55 PMish:    Random Thought While On My Way to the Gamebase 7 session: There are a tragically large amount of RPers who think that getting up from their seats and actually moving in a somewhat rapid speed somehow lessens the fun.  Of course, there are a tragically large amount of RPers who don't realize that the best RPGs happen off a computer screen, too, because AI will never be able to supplant good ol' human imagination.  Life is just filled with tragedy, dammit.

1:30 AMish:   I got to play the bard again!  It's funny how so many 3.5E players treat the bard class like it has weeping lesions because it's not a "power" class (which I understand-- the bard fights semi-well, casts semi-well, buffs semi-well and slinks around semi-well, but pales in each to the fighter/ranger, wizard/sorcerer, cleric/druid and thief, respectively).  Yeah, tactically, they think the bard's a bit of a wuss... but they totally ignore just how much fun a bard is to play when you have a good roleplaying group!  I might have hit twice while the combats were going on, and it never stopped me from having a blast (and making sure that my perfectly kempt clothing was kept utterly dazzling while I wowed the party females with my daring repartee and dashing elan.  The elfwoman in the party rolled her eyes at me because of my mixed blood, but I know she secretly wanted the bard to accompany her everywhere.   )

Maybe that's part of the reason I have such a problem with 4E and some 3.5E games... everything seems to be pointed at combat, placing your mini on a board, moving X squares, and getting the best tactical advantage.  Srsly.  Tell me a 4E power that's got anything to do with helping a character outside of enemy encounters.  And BTW, that's the only gripe I can see about the Pathfinder RPG, too-- quite a few of the new feats are obviously pointed at combat-- but at least there are some new feats and traits in PFRPG that give bonuses to non-combat skills and situational modifiers outside of encounters.  Maybe it's just me... I've just always enjoyed games where combat filled the void between RP encounters, rather than RP being the string to connect combats.

1:40 AMish:   F**k me running, can you believe Gen Con's already half-over?  Where the hell does the time go?  Tomorrow I have another PFS scenario, and another Gamebase 7 game... and I might look to hit the Marketplace whilst I wait between them!  Or I might just buy a slice of pizza and a coke at the local restaurants.  (Christ.  Is $10 for a fast food lunch that barely qualifies as a snack even legal?) Well, either path will break me, surely.

NEXT: SATURDAY... hopefully before NEXT Gen-Con!

<sub>"Ah, perhaps your mouth says no, my dear lady, but your eyes..... well, okay, your eyes sort of say no, too. And that sword you're pointing at me is looking pretty negative, as well."
- Around the table again at Gen Con.</sub>

FIRST AND FOREMOST...

HELP A COUPLE FELLOW ARTISTS TODAY!!!

~RogueRider and =mookyvet are good dA friends of mine who have done some really amazing commissions for me and others, some of which can be seen below.  Both of them are in bad need of some help and a little money to help out their financial straits, and both do some absolutely awesome artwork... so this should be a natural fit to anyone.  I can vouch for their ability and their friendly attitudes, and tell you that your money will go to a damned good cause.  So if you have a little extra spending money, go now.  Commission them.   Details can be found in their deve journals!

-

-

---

It's HEEEEEERE!

This is just a mishmash of thoughts, opinions and mental ruminations that have struck me whilst having my Christmas away from Christmas here in sunny Indianapolis, which for this weekend is the gaming capital of the world.  I'm a little behind, I know... I was going to actually try to keep a more progressive daily log and update when I could get internet access, but I underestimated the weight of a backpack full of gaming books, and my back wasn't about to stand up to that plus a 17" laptop being carted around for a mile of walking from the parking garage to the convention center.  So I'm afraid everyone will have to deal with the post-coital bliss rather than the... uhm.... mid-coital?   At any rate, I'll add onto this as I finish the days, so if you receive this multiple times, it's just me adding the next day!

Anyway....

THURSDAY!

8:00 AMish:    Welcome to Indy, Gen Con Attendees!   For me, this is my absolute favorite time of the year, even though by the end of it, I'm always worn down and acting only with considerable help from my friends caffeine and barely-legal drugs.  But for now, I'm giddy like a schoolgirl on nitrous and lithium and you couldn't drag me down from this high if you told me my house was on fire.  Not only because it's Gen Con, but it's Gen Con the year the freaking Pathfinder RPG comes out! By that, I mean, of course, The Pathfinder Role Playing Game Core Rulebook, which should be considered a legal weapon.  Seriously, this thing weighs in at 4 lbs, chock full of awesome and has enough heft to brain someone several times over.  It's like a freaking old-fashioned bible, only without the guilty feelings.  (Unless you're habitually short on money.  Then I guess you might be a little guilty you just plopped $50 on a single hardcover book.) I subscribed at Paizo, and lucked into mine coming in on Tuesday, two full days before full release-- for once, I could thank the Post Office for something!-- which worked out well, since I had to upgrade my Pathfinder Society character before Thursday.

9:15 AMish:    We're officially off to see the wizard!  I picked up my friend Tom from his house.  It's Tom's first Gen Con, so I'm hoping he's as impressed as I always am; he said he may only be able to make it today.  Together we have every intention of walking all over the Marketplace floor for the first 5 hours of Gen Con.  The good deals don't usually come till Friday/Saturday, but Thursday is a great scout day to find out what books, games, minis and such you'd actually conceive of picking up if you still have money by then.  Unless you're me.  I have a wretched track record of blowing money hand over fist there, which is one reason that this year I put money aside and forced myself to be studious about the books I get.  After all, much of what I get could be on sale any time from any reputable store... it's just much cooler getting it direct from the people who create and playtest it!   I had a hard cap of $450 for everything-- including food (high), parking (higher) and stupid purchases (highest).  Usually, I'd be able to make that last close to two weeks, even with bills.  I'm hoping to make it to 3 PM today.  

9:16 AMish:    Fortunately, I've already got my biggest expense already paid for, so 3 PM is looking more reasonable all the time... did I mention you could beat up a maddened grizzly bear with The Pathfinder Role Playing Game Core Rulebook ?

9:50 AMish:   And here we are.  We actually lucked into vacant parking at Pan Am Plaza, a mere hundred yards from the Convention Center.  Using the last three years as a guide, this is approximately 1860 yards closer than I've ever managed to park for Gen Con on any day but Sunday.   I have come to the conclusion, therefore, that Tom is in actuality a potent good luck charm, and I will make it a point to bring him to every Gen Con I possibly can from now on.

9:53 AMish:    I then remember why I park a mile out, as I see that a 4 hour stay in the Pan Am Parking Garage will cost me $20.  That's like... 4 books from the Titan Games "Buy 1 Get 3 Free" table!!!

1015 AMish: Badges in hand, we make our way into the fray. The Grand Hall of the Marketplace beckons. Tom notes that it's been twenty minutes and there have been no costumes yet. Understandable, as costumes tend to fill out more as the weekend goes on. Come Saturday, everyone with an inkling to cosplay will be out in droves. Right now, everyone's getting settled in, still. We step inside and just inhale. Almost every major RPG company is here, along with the other gaming companies, all showing off their miniature games, wargames, card games, LARP supplies, dice games, board games, and electronic/MMO. And then there are the T-Shirt, Jewelry, anime/manga, theatrical weapon and accessory dealers, the secondhand game dealers, the not-quite-game-related-but-vaguely-close dealers, and the artist alley and self-published writers. All under one roof with thirty thousand gamers. I need a moment to compose myself. It's like I woke up at Christmas and found a lifesize petrified swimsuit model beneath my tree. Sometimes all you can do is sit there with anime-shiny eyes and whisper "it's just so beautiful!" and let your heart settle after a bit.

12:30 PMish:    Some small part of me gets a stab of pride when I see that the Paizo booth (makers of the aforementioned nigh-mythical bludgeoning weapon known as The Pathfinder Role Playing Game Core Rulebook ) has a line that stretches into the next two booths.  It's not like the Paizo booth is a tiny one, either, and the line winds all the way around and back into the used bookstore next door and into the T-shirt booth beyond that.  Tom and I both noted that the Wizards of the Coast booth (whose nixing of 3rd edition and release of 4E honestly helped precipitate the interest in the PFRPG) had a really scanty amount of people in it, and I knew their booth just really didn't seem to look as impressive and have that "OMG Oomph!" as it had in earlier years.  Maybe the economy's just hitting them, same as everyone else.  Maybe they really have PO'd people with 4E and the drop of their original Mini rules, among other things.  Maybe they don't have any big releases this year around Gen Con (I don't know, honestly.  I tried 4E once, I just didn't much like the feel of it; since WOTC does nothing but 4E anymore, I don't keep up with their releases.) Maybe they've sort of stepped aside to let Paizo have the early crowds, and are planning to really step up later in the weekend.  I dunno.

1240 PMish:    Just talked myself out of buying White Wolf's Exalted 2nd edition core book.  The concept seems like it's a cool one, and like Tom points out about himself, I'm a rules-system lover.  

1:05 PMish:    An interesting thing Tom brought up as we passed the WOTC booth again-- for note: it's still a little more dead than I'd expect the industry leader to be, when much of their competition (Paizo, White Wolf, Atlas, Troll Lord, Catalyst, Fantasy Flight, et al) have some positively packed booths: DDI, or whatever WOTC's online D&D 4E content is called, is-- from what he'd learned-- platform-dependent (Again, see above, I have no clue about WOTC's releases).  Mac and Linux users are SOL for Wizards' 4E online content, in other words.  And yet, at their booth, while showing all their Magic: The Card Game and 4E promo stuff, they were running all Macs.  WTF?

1:25 PMish:    Further happiness: I have my PFRPG Core book thanks to the subscription, so I didn't have to wait in line to pick one up.  The PFRPG Beta sold out last year by Friday (bear in mind, that was a free PDF too!) and it looks like while Paizo came in with a larger stock this year, the PFRPG is moving at a damned good clip.  (A sign on the PFRPG books said "No More Than SIX Per Customer," and there were people picking up nearly that many... I need their jobs, whatever they are!) The other good news: the length of the line dissuades me from just spending an assload of money at the Paizo booth this year.  Last year, I racked up something like a small house payment there.   I'm doing very freaking well this year.  Maybe it's Tom's calming influence, but I'm a solid 3 and a half hours in, and I've spent more on parking than I have on anything in the Marketplace!

1:45 PMish:    D'oh.  So much for that.  One of the used book sellers had the 3.5 Sharn, City of Towers for the Eberron setting, and Tome of Horrors 3 (for the 3.5 system), each for 50% off.  I bit like a largemouth bass on a shiny lure.  Still, $40 in a 4 hour span is pretty damned impressive for me, especially since we're leaving in a couple hours so I can get Tom home in time for class and me back here for my 6 pm Pathfinder Society game.  I know I'm still looking for a couple gifts to pick up while I'm here, so that total will rise, but this is the only day I'll be pulling this much time with this much money, and it feels good to think I may still have some when all is said and done.

2:45 PMish:    Talked myself out of Fantasy Flight's Anima RPG.  Like Exalted, Anima has been on my radar for a while, and not only is it a decent-looking system, I happen to like the work of one of the Anima artists an awful freaking lot.  But I just can't bring myself to swallow the $60(!!!) price tag.  Don't get me wrong: it's beautiful, and I think I'd probably enjoy it, but hell, that's $10 more (and perhaps, what's even worse, over 160 pages less!!!) than the goddamned lethal weapon bible book. And the thing is, I know the high quality of Paizo's stuff, from all sides-- content, writing, detail, and physical product quality... and I know I'll use the PFRPG with my gaming group.  I really don't have anything by Fantasy Flight Games to judge their content by, and a completely new system, especially one that's not so archetypical (while fun for me to learn from) might be a hard sell to the group.  I'm pretty sure I'll get it eventually, but I doubt I'll get it direct.  A game with that kind of price tag really needs to give me a blowjob or something along with its content.

3:00 PMish:    Walked the Artist's Alley, and saw how good I will never be.  It's both awe-inspiring and depressing all at once, although not so much of the latter.  I also met Wayne Reynolds, whose cover work I adore from WOTC, Eberron and Pathfinder.  I was reminded that Tom had two big problems with Paizo (and I think I'd agree they're legitimate-- see, I'm not just a Paizo schill!)... 1) Sometimes their adventures tend to railroad-- although I'd argue that a good GM doesn't have to follow any canned adventures by the letter, and 2) it seems like they have been reusing the same art over and over since forever.  Well, after seeing the prices Wayne Reynolds can command on a single piece, I do not blame them at all for #2.  Hell, I'd freaking use the same art a couple hundred times if I dropped that sort of cash down.  I'd have the freaking stuff stenciled onto my tombstone, hot dammit.

5:30 PMish:    Intermission.  Back after my first game of the night!  My first day total: $92.  Including $20 in parking... NEVER made it out of Marketplace day that well before!

10:00 PMish:    Spent the evening playing in my first Pathfinder RPG-based game ever, and I'd have to say two things.  One, I like it.  Sure, it's generally 3.5E, but there are some better clarifications made of some clunky rules, streamlining of skills (a character doesn't receive as many skill points as in 3.5, but instead of having to put ranks in Search/Spot/Listen, there is an overall perception skill), some (not all) of the classes feel like they're a little better balanced without giving every character a metric assload of special abilities, and there are a lot more feats that make perfect sense.   Most of the changes I've seen in the Conversion Notes are ones I'm pretty happy with.  I think I'll stick with it.  By the way, our characters found the operating place of an evil Rat Cult, killed off its high priest and its huec.... heucv... hecuv... its undead guardian, kicked ass and took names.  And my Pathfinder Society character reached 2nd level!  Woooo!  Not bad for a character that only sees the light of day at Gen Con!

Midnightish:    More later!  Looking forward to my first big FULL day o'gaming tomorrow!

NEXT: FRIDAY!

<sub>"The bard did not just kill that man with a chair leg after I missed him five straight attacks with a magical bow."
- Actually said around my table at Gen Con. And yes, he did.</sub>