Stress Eating Brain

I'm getting married in 5 days, and the stress is wearing me down. I can't wait until it's over.



This seems appropriate, and entertains the hell out of me.

We now interupt our hiatus for roboerotic violence.

Ravage! SQEEEE!

I know, I'm a proponent of the laws of robotics, I shouldn't like this stuff. But come on, giant construction equipment that turns into killer robots? I'm there.

Update: The bastards took it off line. I shall attempt to find it again.

Next update. Go here to see it in all it's 'splodey glory

Paizo: The Golem's Got It (Right)

Over at Paizo, they haven't given up on Dungeons & Dragons 3.5.

They used to be the publisher of Dragon and Dungeon Magazines before Wizards pulled the license and moved them to online only (as I griped about last year), although thankfully they had expanded to selling all manner of games and accessories online, as well as some publishing of their own.

When the magazines folded their tents, Paizo announced the Pathfinder monthly supplement, and while it was too rich for my blood ($20 a month), I was glad to see them doing something with their staff rather than laying them off. I was also pleased that they did not immediately jump on to the 4E bandwagon, and said they would bide their time and make their decision on which way to go later.

They've made their call, and they've decided to stick with their 3.5 guns. They've announced the Pathfinder RPG, which is a backwards compatible tweak of 3.5, rather than the complete overhaul that is 4E.

The really good thing about this though, is they're showing their hand. They've released a free PDF of their alpha, invited the public to play test it, and give feedback. The final release date is a full year and a half off (August 09), so lots of time to play around before the final hits the street.

I hope our group decides to use the new Pathfinder rules. That fighter I've been wanting to play suddenly seems a lot more playable...

Bad Mike Myers, Bad!

In the course of my busy day, I stopped to think about Mike Myers, and how much I hate his movies. The Wayne's World movies and How I Married An Axe Murderer were okay, but all the Austin Powers movies and the abomination that was Cat In The Hat overshadow those. The AP movies are just a long series of shit jokes that show a shocking level of sexism and cruelty, while The Cat In The Hat suffers from being a movie based on a Dr. Seuss, which suffer from a perfect fail rate.

I thought about how he had not haunted our land with bad movies in awhile (I'm not counting the Shrek movies here, his voice work is fine), so I popped over to IMDB to see what he was up to. While he has a few things in the works, he has this coming later in the year. Click through, look at the premise and the cast list. You should most likely shudder in horror

I now have an early pick for what the worst movie in the year is! Although to be fair, I haven't checked on what Eddie Murphy is up to yet.

Update:
Eddie Murphy will be in this sure to be classic. The Love Guru now seems slightly less bad, but still pretty awful none the less

The Good Doctor(s)

I am a fairly big Doctor Who geek. My Ipod has random tracks of the Tardis engine noise, K9, Daleks, the scream effect and various versions of the theme song. The Think Geek (birthday in April: hint hint) catalog we have is particularly worn on the Sonic Screwdriver page (it WILL be mine), and the pair of glasses I'm going to get are the spitting image of the ones that the 10th Doctor wears.

All that's stopped me from building a Tardis in the back yard is lack of carpentry skill (idea: ask if I can paint the shed), and the only thing that keeps me from buying crazy things like the Tardis USB hub and remote control Dalek is a lack of funds.

The new season starts soon, and I am as giddy as a very nerdy school girl over it. Battlestar Galactica also starts soon (April 4th), so I'm going to have a very geeky April. Oh, how I love it.

Short Sick List

So the flu came to our house. Sadimac caught it first a few days before Orycon, and it looked like it was going to be a really quick cold when it faded in time for the Con.

A few days later it hit her again and she stayed sick for nearly two weeks after that. I held out until last Sunday, then the walls came tumbling down. We lived off of OJ, Nyquil and hot fluids for the most part, and neither one of us thought it would ever end.

So in dedication to the horrible illness that had befallen us, I present a list of films and shows that really hit the spot when I'm sick

• Bloodsport (which as fate would have it, I was watching when the idea for this entry popped into my head): Probably the ultimate Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Complete with violence, multiple bad 80's music montages, the feisty piece of ass romantic interest, that guy who played Ogre in Revenge of the Nerds, and for some reason Forrest Whitaker. As an added bonus, Sadimac loves this movie, and enjoys most fight movies (although I don't think she's seen Street Fighter *shudder*)
  

• Pitch Black: I like SciFi, and when I'm sick I especially like violence. What I don't want is exposition. Pitch Black starts with bang, has a nice lull as the characters find out just how screwed they are, then continues with another series of bangs. Vin Diesel is a guilty pleasure of mine, Claudia Black's a Farscape vet so that's always good, and you can not go wrong with Keith David.

• The Venture Brothers: Violence? Check. SciFi? Check. David Bowie references? Check. Funny? Check.
  

• Tombstone: Violent Kurt Russel infused western. Long, but with so few pauses in the action it holds the sick and drug addled attention well. Raimi's The Quick in the Dead, with it's trick camera work, frenetic pace, and Keith David presence works well too.

• Princes Bride: a movie I know word for word, and familiarity is a comforting thing when you're coughing up a lung.

Any other favorite sick time entertainment out there?

D&D 4E, or why I stopped giving WoTC my money

As I mentioned previously, D&D 4th Edition is coming out next year. Now that I know a little bit more about it, I feel comfortable putting some of my concerns/bitter hatred in a more cogent form.

It seems that the mechanics of the new Star Wars RPG is pretty close to what we can expect from 4E, and I've reviewed some of that material in the last couple of weeks. I am not impressed.

Some of the ideas are fine and good, and might even find themselves house ruled into our game (Combining all of the sneaking skills into a single skill is okay, being able to spend skill points to improve initiative is long overdue in my mind, and nobody can argue with more stat bumps), a lot of them are just a mess (starting first level with 30+ hit points is excessive, I think the combining of skills went to far: Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate are not the same thing, neither are Spot and Sense Motive, and eliminating Saving Throws in favor of three different AC's is just going to breed confusion).

These things could have been released as an alternate rule book (Unearthed Arcana II or whatever) and priced at $25 to $30 bucks. About 50 to 80% of players would pick it up and use about 20 to 30% of the book. Everyone would use a different 20 to 30% (except for the initiative as a skill and extra Stat bumps: everyone would use those), and we'd all be happy.

But no, they have to make 4E to try and sell us three $40 dollar books, and render the rest of our collection obsolete. Frak that.

Then there is the online component. Not so long ago D&D had an ad campaign encouraging gamers to leave their basements and play in a social setting. The new business model trashes that and tries to chase everyone back to their computers. You can play entirely on line (if you pay the ridiculous $10 to $15 a month fee) if you like, there fore crippling the vital social interaction aspect of the game. WotC claims that the game will still primarily meant to be played at the kitchen table, but this is largely bullshit. So much of the game is now tied up with the online aspect that it just encourages people to stay locked up in their homes. They are trying to emulate the WoW model, and they will fail.

Oh, and if you have a Mac you're apparently not part of WotC's glorious vision of the future. The key elements of the online D&D experience will only run on a PC, with the informational stuff being all that a Mac user can access. More short sighted mistakes that will cost them a lot of players in the future.

I will continue to enjoy my 3.5 D&D, thank you very much. I won't cry too much when this grand experiment that WotC is embarking on fails.

WotC:Why are you doing this?

Oh, look a new Dungeons & Dragons product release.

It's to bad they don't, say, have an inexpensive monthly publication that people subscribed to that some one who was mildly interested in could read these essays in. Something, say around 100 pages that they charged about $35 a year for?

Oh wait, they had that. It was popular and people liked it, but it wasn't fitting in with their "new product model"

So now, all these essays (which I'm thinking might have been written with this "magazine" in mind, have to make some money, so they'll publish them in an expensive book no one will buy!

Isn't this kind of like the death of TSR?

Look in the rear view WotC. That bump was he other end of the ramp, and you can probably see still see the shark.

WGA on strike. Solidarity Baby!

So the talks failed, and WGA has taken up the picket line. Good on them.

The writer gets about 4 cents for each DVD package sold in residuals, be it a 9.95 bargain disc by the register at Fred Meyer, or a $60 six disc set of a TV show. No difference between the two at all. The writers aren't even asking to fix that. They basically want 8 cents per unit instead, and considering how the current numbers were devised in 1984 when VHS and Beta were still slugging it out, I think that a 4 cent raise is a reasonable request.

They also want a piece of internet revenue. The studios say "it's to new, untested, and not yet profitable" which is basically the same line they used to give as little as possible to the writers on home video in the first place.

This isn't just one group of rich assholes picketing another for spite. A lot of these guys are the working stiffs of the industry, pulling in $30,000 to $45,000 a year (which in LA will allow you to afford a lovely one bedroom apartment in Compton). These negotiations will also affect the director's and actor's union negotiations next year: they get the same cut from home video as the writers, and they'll rightfully want their share.

The studios will make noise about how this is "irresponsible", which every company being striked against says any how. They'll also try to tell us that this will force the price of DVDs to go up, which is most likely bullshit. They've found a price point that works, and they know it will substantially hurt their bottom line if they add $2 to the price of every DVD.

There's not much we as consumers can do to help right now, aside from not buying DVDs (Doctor Who is okay, as it's BBC) or internet content until the strike is over. We can however, write about it, and spread the word. The studios make 150 billion + off of the home video market, which is more than what they pull in off of theatres nowadays. It's time they paid their fair share.

A brief thought for the day

Elia Kazan would have been 99 today, but instead, he's rotting in hell.

While I do feel a slight blip of sympathy for his plight, the flood gates he opened destroyed hundreds of lives.

You should have taken one for the team Elia. You could have helped stop what happened to Dalton Trumbo from happening to so many others.

Session one part two, The Plague at Falcon's Hollow

The three of them journeyed out to Falcon's Hollow, and when they arrived they found a town striken with disease.

An infected well and sickened 40 of the townfolk a lung fungus called Blackscore Taint, and while the local herbalist had a cure for it listed in her impressive book of herbal cures, some of the ingredients were hard to come by, and no one was about that could make the journey into nearby Darkwood. Soren volinteered the group for the task immedietly, and huddled over the book with Laurel, the Herbalist, to see exactly what was needed.

The three ingredients that were to be gathered were:

Elderwood Moss: A moss that grows only on the oldest tree in the forest

Rat's Tail: A specially pickled root that took a good deal of time to prepair. The old witch of the forest Umazila would likely have some, but she was notorious for driving a hard (in fact, cruel) bargain.

7 Iron Blooms: a rare mushroom that would only grow in dark places thick with metal. Laurel stated that there was an abandoned Dwarven monastery at the foot of the mountains on the opposite side of Darkwood that would be a likely place to find them.

Soren, enamored with the book, asked if he could copy it when they returned. Laurel agreed, and Kalvik saw that as an opportunity to seek payment for the journey. A fee was negotiated, and they were off.

There first stop was to find the woodsman Millan Rollen, who would know the best routes to get where they needed to go. What was a nice walk was slowly spoiled as they saw how agressivly the local lumber baron had been logging the forest. Rossthaylock, her people having been brought into the world was particularly upset by the devastation. They began discussing what could be done about the abuse of the land, and walked on to find Rollen.

The woodsman did indeed know the way to the oldest tree, the witches hut, and the monastery. Eager to help in any way he could to cure the taint, he drew a simple map to all three. He warned the group of some of the dangers that they faced in the woods (Hobgoblins, snakemonsters, etc.), and bade them good luck.

The first stop was to the oldest tree in the woods. On the way there, the group came upon a small fox stuck in a metal jawed trap. We freed the little guy, and then got attacked by a Hobgoblin, which was a really bad idea on his part, as he was outnumbered 3 to 1.

After the Hobgoblin was killed, the fox, now named Foxyfen, came with them.

They found the oldest tree early the next day, and was attacked by a snake monster while gathering the moss. It was a short battle, with the snake being quickly dispatched.

Next was the Rat's Tail, at the witch Umazila's hut. A day later the group found that the place was booth creepy and seemingly abandoned. The door was forced open, and we found what looked like a body in a chair, an old cauldron, and hundreds of jars of roots and herbs.

Kalvik went in first to check the body, and as soon as he touched it, the cauldron sprang to life and attacked him. A brief battle followed, the animated cauldron was soon defeated, and the rat's tail was found.

From there, it was off to the monastery. An assortment of undead, Darkmantles, and a Worg (a large, evil wolf with the power of speech) awaited us within, but we defeated them and gathered the Iron Blooms.

We returned to Falcon's Hollow with the ingredients, and stayed for a couple of days to rest and make sure the plague was truly at an end. Our job done, we collected our rewards, accepted the people's gratatude, and went back to the big city

Next, session 2

In (good) Red Sox News....

Thank the gods

My one complaint about Boston's trade deadline moves has been nullified.

Session one, part one: In which our heros meet, and prepare to journey to Falcon's Hollow

How We saved the World will be concluded early next week, It's partially written, but trying to sort out all the time travel details from memory has been a bear.

Rossthaylock and Pony walked onto the grass, seemingly from inside the tree. The young Killoren stopped to marvel at it all, and then began to walk down an odd path lined with seats and strange metal baskets that were locked in place. She found some fruit in one of the baskets, and picked it out to give to Pony. Music filled the air, so she set off to find it.

Soren Ashwind was finishing his prayers on the bank of a small pond. It was the closet thing to a natural setting he could find in this city, this park. It was far too orderly, as if nature was trying to be tamed by ambitious city planners who thought that everything should have its place. The only thing he could come close to appreciating was the trash bins: at least that way the place wasn't strewn with garbage.

Kalvik Goldenmane was sitting on a park bench, quietly eating his dinner. Huddled in a cloak, he was just trying to remain unnoticed. While he had freed himself, the identification glyph burned into his arm still held the magic that could spell his doom if any one checked it. He would just lay low (as low as a 7 foot + Bugbear could), and try and find a way to get rid of the glyph.

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Soren caught a glimpse in the corner of his peripheral vision or a young woman walking out of a tree. He did a double take and then began to watch her. Was she a Dryad? An elemental? He couldn't tell, but the one thing he could was that she was armed to the teeth. His curiosity piqued, he picked up his staff and began to follow her.

Rossthaylock was walking down the path saying hello to people as they passed by, when a well dressed man greeted her back in a language she didn't know. After some verbal fumbling in different tongues, the two fond a common language, and began to talk. He offered his arm, and Rossthaylock, thinking it an opening dance move, mimicked the action and started dancing to the distant music.

The stranger offered to take her to the music, and buy her dinner. Soren, suspicious of the man's motives, drew nearer and observed him fondling a small green pouch while stroking Rossthaylock's arm with his other hand.

Seeing this, Soren suspected that the strange man was up to no good. He approached and summoned a small air elemental to snatch the bag away and bring it to him.

The elemental did as was bidden, and Soren stared the man down while opening the bag to reveal its powdery, poisonous contents. Rossthaylock backed off and asked Soren to return the bag, but Soren pressed on, intimidating the man with hard questions as to his intentions, and berating him for being foolish enough to target the very well armed Rossthaylock.

Soren told the man to leave. Rossthaylock, bewildered at the sudden spike in testosterone, bade Soren once again to return the bag. Being a gentleman, he bowed slightly, said "but of course", then proceeded to turn the bag inside out, then threw it back to the stranger, then told him to leave again.

From his bench, Kalvik saw and heard a fight brewing. A thin fellow with a staff (could be a wizard maybe?) looked to be about to come to blows with a big guy who was packing a rapier. Deciding that the big one had the upper hand, and needing a spell caster to try and get rid of his brand, he decided to help the thin guy. He slid behind the bigger guy, placed his blade on the fellow's shoulder, and recommended that he listen to the thin man's advice. Doing just that, the well dressed fellow (who as it turns out was a “talent scout” for a brothel) ran off into the dusk.

And so, the three of them were drawn together. They took Rossthaylock to see the music, and she danced while the others discussed the brand, and how they might remove it. Later, the three went to Soren's small room, where it was determined that the brand was removable, but beyond Soren's current abilities. Since removing such a brand is a dangerous thing to ask another (Kalvik took a great risk in showing it to his new compatriots), the two decided to stick together until such time as it could be removed.

Rossthaylock decided to stick with them as well. They were awfully nice to her, and Soren had promised to get her some special papers she apparently needed to travel from place to place with out hassle. Poor Kalvik could not have them, but the brand and the chain collar & lead he had on made him looked like Soren "owned" him, which was odd, because you can't own anyone.

Rossthaylock and Kalvik proceeded to get fight each other to see who was the best warrior. Kalvik won, but Rossthaylock did get quite a few good hits in.

The next day Soren went to find someone who could forge papers (getting then the legal way would take weeks, and besides, he resented the very idea of using papers to qualify one's right to exist, so fake ones were even better). He found a source for the papers, and took an offer to check out an outbreak of a sickness in nearby Falcon's Hollow (the forger's nephew was sheriff there) in lieu of payment.

While he was gone, Kalvik had began to teach Rossthaylock goblinese, and doing so very loudly (such language lessons involve lots of hitting and shouting).

Soren asked if they were willing to come to Falcon's Hollow with him, and both enthusiastically agreed. They picked up some supplies, and left the next morning, stopping to pick up Rossthaylocks papers of course.

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To be continued tomorrow. (edited for spelling)

Meet the New Guys: Now with added bonus footage!

Work has been well, work so I haven't been able to finish up the wrap up of our last campaign yet. I'll finish that up on Sunday morning with one more grand post, and then the first session of the new campaign recap should go up Monday afternoon.

In the meantime...

The new characters for our D&D group will be starting their grand adventure on Saturday, so I'm going to go ahead and give a primer on the who is who and what is what.

First we have my character, Soren Ashwind an Aasimar (Human with angelic ancestry) Cleric devoted to the elemental forces of the universe. He had a rough childhood, with a mother killed by dragon fire and a father who's reaction to that tragedy was to become a drunkard. After bouncing around a bit (and his father died from a fire at the jail he was being held in for theft), he found himself in a small seminary in a remote village. He learned the ways of the priesthood, married, and settled down to start a family.

Then his wife gave birth to a son that was definitely not his. The marriage quickly dissolved, and Soren, not able to bear the sight of his ex-wife living with the biological father of what was supposed to be his child, decided to take up a spear and become a wandering priest.


Next, there is Erich's character Kalvik, a Bugbear gladiatorial slave who is fresh off of gaining his freedom by killing his master and guard after he over heard them discussing how he was to be traded to a notoriously cruel slave master for a Minotaur.

Kalvik's life has also been hard, much harder than Soren's in fact. Gnolls slaughtered his tribe and dragged the survivors off to sell into slavery, stopping to eat one of them when they got hungry. Kalvik was sold to a Halfling (Hobbit) slave master who trained him to fight. That same slave master's daughter taught him to read, write, and speak the Halfling language, which is how he learned of his impending trade, which caused him to fight for his freedom.

Then we have Sadimac's Rossthaylock. She's a Killoren, which is a type of faerie that the world made in a fit of grief over the extinction of a fragile plant species. They are a young people, and are just now sending the their first members out to the world at large. She is impetuous, affectionate, and a bit naive. The defining trait of her people is that each day they can take on a different personality aspect: either the Ancient, the Hunter, or the Destroyer.

She has been teleported to "civilization" with all her gear, and her beloved pony, Pony. She is meeting her first people outside of her own kind, and she's already found a bit of trouble...

and now, a the tale of how the Kelorian came to be (by Sadimac):

The Lost Elves

In the year we were born, the wood elves left this island and this is why.

The young of the elven village had a talent for sorcery. When their mainland kinsmen warned of a horrible war and called all the elves to give aid, the village elders sent the youths out of the village to hone their arcane battle skills.

"Prepare to fight," they said. And "take care you do not harm the birds or the worms or the delicate young vines. Be wary of infecting any babes still in womb or egg with unnatural power."

And so the group of mages found a desolate scrub. They saw no tails or leaves. They heard no songs. They could not smell even the smallest hint of turning earth. Being sylvan elves, they were certain The World had given them the keenest senses. Cry for the pride of the elves, who sent not a single druid to temper youthful determination. Laugh with The World for She always has the final word.

All day they blasted, and took notes, and argued, and made plans.

"When the foul army does this, we shall do that. The greatest wizards of the cities will be stunned by our precision, by our deadly force."

Through the starlight they developed secret signals, thinking themselves subtle. But they never saw the seedlings.

What seedlings? This all happened before we were made, so we have no name for them. The sprites tell us they smelled a new smell. The rocks sing only an echo of those seedlings' song. Even the birds cannot find just that shade of green in all the world. They were new, the World's latest offspring, our elder brothers. And they were young, still just two birth-leaves each. And then the ice and fire and lightning flying out of the elves struck them down. Every little one killed. Dream of their screams, dance for their short lives.

Now The World is love and loves all the children upon Him, the elves no less than the mightiest waterfall. But the murder of the seedlings turned love to grief. And in Her grief, The World sent Her hunting beasts to kill the sorcerers in their blankets. She called the village's companions back into the forest. Only the magical beasts born of elven wizardry stayed. She blocked their clerics from harnessing any natural domain. She turned their crops and gardens to dust. She let every beast they hunted escape. The dryads say they saw a unicorn kill his paladin maiden. And the druids who were so neglectful of their duty to guide were stripped of every gift She had given them, returned to a child-like innocence with no knowledge or power.

But The World is love and He loves the sylvan elves, with their careful balance of learning and wisdom. He gave them one last gift. He let them find the scorched field of elven corpses. In that field, they saw vines bearing large fruit. The fruit pulsed with life and sang a song even the densest of them heard. The vines burrowed their feeding suckers into the sorcerers' remains and the village fled, pursued by a primal fear.

"Remember the fear," the fruit sang. "Tell all the humanoids - When you needlessly kill a blade of grass, you poison your kingdoms at their roots. The World is making new children to show you how to heed His call."

In less than a sweet-fly's lifespan, the entire village sailed away. The fruit continued to grow and grow and grow. Soon, the first of us broke through the peels. The birds gave us eggs, the trees gave us flowers, the worms came willingly to our mouths, and so we grew. The World has taught us for sixty-four seasons. We shall go out from this island to see if people have learned the lost elves' lesson.

What we did to Save the World part II

Amongst our travels, we came to a spot where we needed to train young James for a period of months. Preparations were made, and we took him to another temple to learn. Jolene was also to seduce him while we were there (which due to her religious vows she did NOT want to do).

He already had received training from Jolene about faith and knowledge of all sorts, particularly the nature of the undead; about combat, sneakiness, and toxins from (a well disguised lest the followers of the Beloved realize that he was "god") Gaerdin; and how to be an arrogant shit (as well as some assorted arcana and more sneaky stuff) from Tobias.

Soon after arriving, Tobias pulled Gaerdin aside to have a private conversation. They had a discussion about how they put the fake church together, with Tobias strongly suggesting that it was mostly Gaerdin's doing.

Gaerdin, while being incredibly selfish, wasn't one to really take credit for other's ideas. Feeling safe in the out of the way corner they were speaking in, Gaerdin did something he usually doesn't: tell the whole truth. He reminded Tobias that while some of the more devious touches were indeed his (such as the secret vault of loot designed specifically as a retirement fund), the idea, and most of the details of the religion were Jolene's doing.

It turns out that James heard all of that because Tobias set it up for him to do just that. He flipped out, found the chest full of the (kind of really evil) equipment we had for him, took it all, and ran off, leaving a note saying "how could you do this to me?" scrawled in a copy of the cult's religious text and left for Jolene to find.

Oh, and he also murdered everyone else at the temple by controlling his "mother" Hope to slit their throats. Fun.

At this point, Tobias comes clean, and Gaerdin nearly kills him for the betrayal. They use some divinations to determine that James/V was on the Abyss (plane of reality where Demons rule) and was therefore out of our reach...

I'm going to part III, and maybe part IV this, so the grand adventure should be done by Thursday or so.

But, as some folk seem to be enjoying this, I'll start doing a recap of our (mostly) weekly sessions on Mondays, with the first one being next Monday the 13th. I'll have a meet the characters post sometime late this week.

For you non D&D fans I'll have a little something in the next couple of days.

An Interlude

Actual posting today or tomorrow I swear.

I leave you with this video, staring various members of my family

The Dresden Dolls

Sadimac and I have discovered The Dresden Dolls. While we've been wondering why the hell this band had escaped our attention up until now, It would be a shame if any of you were to ignore them any longer.

PDX Browncoats: Firefly at the Mission

As is probably obvious from the flight suit I'm wearing in the photo I have up on this blog, I'm a raving Browncoat.

I've been a part of our local fan group since it's inception, and at this point almost all of my friends are as well (a combination of new friends and old friends who have joined the fold). Last night, we once again took over a theater.

Last month we held our wildly successful (we raised at least $10,000) annual charity screening of Serenity, and now the Mission Theater here in town has seen fit to show Firefly in it's entirety over the course of the next several Tuesdays.

We packed the place: 312 people, at ten o'clock on a Tuesday night. It was 100+ degrees yesterday, and well over 70 by the time we wrapped up, and people still came out in droves.

Portland is sort of the epicenter of Firefly fandom, and oh boy did we show it last night.

Dungeons and Dragons, or why I have more dice than the average small town.

I Play D&D, and so, thank the heavens, does Sadimac. It's our bowling, our golf, our heroin, our whatever (except it's not our alcohol, we have alcohol for that).

Warning: I am about to talk about my D&D character. Those of you that are bored senseless by this will want to skip the next paragraph or so.

Last chance to look away...

Through a combination of skill, luck, DM generosity and the party springing for a resurrection that one time, I have a 20th level character. Gaerdin Barradawan, Chaotic Neutral Human (with Gnomish blood) Ninja 18/Fighter 2. Excellent stats, a host of top notch magic items, and the sword: a +4 Keen Flaming Burst Ghost Touch Gromasha Wood Katana. He ate a fruit from the grandmother tree of his people's legends, can see things others can not, as well as other stuff I can't reveal because my DM swore me to secrecy (Sadimac reads the blog). He is a ritualistic cannibal, a cheat, a thief, and is frelling awesome.

There, I'm done you can continue reading.

I've been playing pretty consistently since Jr. High school, although I first played in about sixth grade with some kids that kind of had a tough time grasping the concept, so I got bored and didn't try it again for a couple of years. I've played in great campaigns, lousy campaigns, and through stuff I'd rather forget. Even when I didn't have a game going, I still read the magazines, picked up the occasional book, and constantly made characters that would never be played.

I've been through all 3 and a half editions, dragged kicking and screaming into each new edition, only to admit after a couple of months that it was an improvement each time. I say now that if there is a 4th edition I'll never play it, but I expect that I'll change my tune with in two years, just like every other time.

There are now a total of 6 characters that I've played that are truly memorable(Niche the Halfling Rouge, Sira the Half-Elf Wizard, Voldam the Human Cavalier, Velsos the Elven asshole Archer, Dila the Dwarven Psionic, and Gaerdin), followed by dozens that are half remembered puzzle pieces that have become a jumble in my head.


Now, our current campaign is at end game. Our characters are incredible (If you think mine sounds impressive, you should see Sadimac's Necromancer, Jolene), and next Saturday we'll go and fight something that we'll probably not all survive. It will be immensely satisfying, and it will be over.

But you see, I have this new character...

Transformers

(minor spoilers) So yesterday, I got to be 8 for a two and a half hours or so while watching helicopters, tanks, trucks and other such things turn into giant robots and beat the hell out of each other.

Sure it had a few Bayisms (a little to long, some pained dialog, etc), but he kept himself largely in check (Spielberg's production influence at work I suspect). The story wasn't bad, many of the actors actually acted, and then there's the giant robots.

Both Sadimac and I got a little tingly when Optimus Prime made his big entrance, and then made the big announcement of his name in that great original voice (by Peter Cullen) that resonates through my childhood memories.

It's from a kind of corny childhood cartoon, I know, but it's a voice that I associate with (an admittedly larger than life) integrity, bravery, and self-sacrifice. Only one fictional screen character since then (Maximus form Gladiator) has carried that weight for me, and I've always compared him to Prime anyhow.

The action scenes were great. Blackout's attack on a human army base, Ironhide dodging a barrage of Starscreams missles, Prime fighting Bonecrusher on a freeway, and a badly damaged Bumblebee taking on Brawl really stand out, but everything is just such a thrill your favorites will surely vary.

My last bit of praise goes to the use of strong female characters, with no weak ones to "balance it out." Maybe Bay took a cue from Joss Whedon, maybe he went out on his own, but either way it's a welcome sight that we're seeing more, but not nearly enough.