Yesterday afternoon, I was driving my aunt and uncle home from the grocery store. When we turned onto 72nd Street, we were right behind a new Jaguar with a hand-written sign in the rear window condemning health care reform.

I don't want this to turn into a political blog, which is why I'm turning on comment screening ... but can we all agree that someone driving a new Jag can probably afford his/her own health insurance?

Well, a little over two weeks, but it's at "light at the end of the tunnel" status :) .

Does anyone know of a costume generator other than HeroMachine? (http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heroMachine2/ , if you want to see what I'm talking about.) One of my vacation projects is making the miniature figures for my GenCon games, and since I can't draw .... Some of my genres just aren't working out in HeroMachine.

I dropped the Monday game, and will be talking with the Thursday game about turning the GM chair over to someone else for the summer. This should let me concentrate all my gaming energy on GenCon prep work.

I also need to see what I did with the heavy interfacing I bought for pattern drafting. I went over the Folkwear choli pattern with a tape measure, and I think I've found why the body fit like an oversized t-shirt. That'll be my next resizing project.

I think I've figured out why I'm having to force myself to work on the GenCon games this year.

I'm in three games -- one game every Sunday afternoon (player), a second game every other Monday (player), and the third game every other Thursday (GM). The Thursday game has never been fun. Being treated as irrelevant isn't enjoyable under any circumstances, but when you're the one RUNNING THE GAME and you're considered irrelevant by the players.... The Monday game is rapidly heading into not-fun territory. The GM in that one isn't bad at running D&D, but he really doesn't know how to run four-color superheroics. Half the group would prefer he not bother, and go back to dark-and-gritty. I suspect that half has been WoW-chatting with the GM about doing so. I'll play dark, but I don't like bait-and-switch gaming, and I don't like the growing impression I'm getting that I'm being punished for choosing to run a four-color character in what's supposed to be a four-color world.

The only game I'm in that's actually fun is the Sunday game. And there isn't a lot of gaming going on there. It's more socializing with some gaming.

Maybe if I can line up some fun, it'll recharge my batteries?

GenCon registration starts Sunday, but an Excel version of the event guide is up now. It looks like all five of my games have been accepted (though one of them doesn't list me as the GM -- I sent an e-mail off to check on that).

Should anyone be in Indianapolis the middle of August, here's what my schedule looks like at the moment:

8-13 8 AM-noon: The Clockwork Emperor
8-13 noon-4 PM: Heaven and Hell
8-14 8 AM-noon: Scavenger Hunt
8-14 noon-4 PM: Libertad!
8-15 8 AM-noon: Enemy of my Enemy

All my games are scheduled for the Hyatt, table 6 in the Theory room.

I deliberately set the schedule up to give me Sunday free. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try to get some play time in, or volunteer at the Hero booth. They may need the help, two of their normal crew won't be attending this year because she's expecting her first child during GenCon, and he's the daddy ;) .

Aaron Allston, SF/Fantasy/game author, had quadruple bypass surgery on April 2. Some of his friends set up an update blog here on LJ -- http://community.livejournal.com/allston_info .

I was talking with Mom earlier. If they were still with us, her parents/my grandparents would have been celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary today.

No, they didn't pick the date as a joke. Not that Grandpa didn't have an odd sense of humor, but that wasn't the reasoning. They decided to be married on Easter Sunday, and that year Easter happened to fall on April first.

We can't get together tonight due to scheduling issues and two family members being out of town, but we may put together some sort of party for Easter. Grandma always considered that her "real" anniversary anyway.

If you haven't gotten your Henry Doorly Zoo membership for 2009 yet, head to Hy-Vee and get one of the "Skyfari" chocolate bars -- they're at customer service, cost a $10 donation to the zoo.

Normally I would say a 4 ounce Hershey bar isn't worth ten bucks ... but there are three coupons printed on the inside of the wrapper. One (which expires on April 4) is good for $5 off your membership if you buy it at Hy-Vee customer service. They've got the cards there, so you don't have to wait for it to be mailed. (Cash or check only, though.) The other two are good till September -- a 2 for 1 coupon for IMAX admission and a free one-way trip on the Skyfari.

I haven't heard yet what Skyfari tickets are going to cost, but IMAX tickets run 7-8 dollars with the zoo member discount. So if you use the membership coupon and will see an IMAX film at some point during the summer, you've made back more than your initial donation. If Skyfari is priced on the same lines as the train, the IMAX/Skyfari coupons will probably be worth more than the donation even if you miss out on the membership coupon.

And you have chocolate.

Let me put it this way -- when my brother and I were growing up, our family cat was named Midnight. Friday the 13th (the day, not the movie series) is good for joking around, but no one I know is actually afraid of it.

(My first try at a Writer's Block post, let's see if I did this right)

Not a great computer/tech score, but not too bad. A good chunk of it is due to fooling around with my brother's VIC-20 when he wasn't using it.

It's a week later than they'd originally said, but game registration for GenCon has gone live. I've got 5 games in the queue, all Hero System:

Thursday 8 AM-noon: The Clockwork Emperor (steampunk)
Thursday noon-4PM: Heaven and Hell (Urban Fantasy Hero)
Friday 8 AM-noon: Scavenger Hunt (Dark Champions: The Animated Series)
Friday noon-4 PM: Libertad! (Lucha Hero)
Saturday 8 AM-noon: Enemy of my Enemy (Dark Champions)

I decided to drop my WWII game idea, given that I really can't "card" the table.

We'll see if these get accepted or not, but I've never had a game bounced yet.

I decided to upgrade to a Plus account. A lot of the features are things I'm not going to use, but it might be nice to get a little more variety on the userpics.

I do have one request for those reading my journal. Given any choice in the matter, I use Firefox with the AdAware and NoScript plugins, which means I'm not going to see the ads that come with a Plus account. I tried to pick inoffensive options on my ad settings, but if something pops up that's really out there would you let me know so I can change things? Thanks.

I got an e-mail update from GenCon right before Christmas, and in just under two weeks Event Registration begins for GenCon 2009. I suppose this means I should make a final decision on just what I'm going to run.

I'm maintaining my track record here, two of the games I'm considering running don't have books out for them yet. Hero Games' art director died unexpectedly at the beginning of December. Not only is that terrible for his family, it slammed the brakes on production. However, there are temporary art directors named for both books, so hopefully the books will hit the shelves in time for me to get a playtest session in.

Got this off aurorasong's journal:

Which creature of the night are you? Your Result: Sorceror   Control is the name of your game. You are a studied tactician and scientist and you seek a kingdom where things make sense, damn the morals, even if you have to create it. You are cold, calm and calculating.
Incubus/Succubus
Cthulu Spawn
Demon
Werewolf
Ghost
Vampire
Which creature of the night are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

If I got news like this more often, I'd pay a lot more attention to movie sites.

This past summer, film historians confirmed that an unusually long film in the archives of Argentina's Museo del Cine is the long-lost original cut of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.  It's not in the greatest shape, but restoration is under way.

There's no word yet on just when the restored complete version will be available, but from what I hear Kino Video (the people who brought us the best darn copy of Metropolis ever, until this news) will be releasing it on both regular DVD and Blu-Ray.  I'm glad there will be a standard version available -- buying a Blu-Ray player for one movie is sorta overkill.  Plus, why hook a high definition DVD player up to a TV set that I had to buy a digital converter box for?

I don't normally take two weeks off at once, but I did this year.  I flew out to San Francisco CA on the 7th for a few days of sightseeing followed by BusterCon 2.0, a convention sponsored by the MythBusters Fan Club.  Then, I flew back as far as Denver, met up with my family, and we spent a week in Estes Park CO.

If you're taking your laptop on a trip, there are worse airports to have a layover in than Denver International.  Not only does it have free wifi, there are places to plug in your computer.

If you have the chance to visit Muir Woods (just north of SF), do so.  The coastal redwoods may not be as impressive as the ones further up the Pacific shoreline, but they're still impressive, and the National Park Service is doing a good job of keeping it wild but accessible.  Bring a jacket, though, because the sun has trouble getting through the tree canopy to warm you up.

Fisherman's Wharf is seriously pricey.  However, I do recommend the Musee Mechanique, a collection of working mechanical toys, player pianos, stereoscope views, and similar goodies.  Admission is free, but just about everything in there works so you can easily blow a roll of quarters :) .

It was nice staying in the DoubleTree hotel, but dudes, get your billing system fixed already.  My roommate had to go down to the front desk for a rant because they double-charged her debit card in advance for the full week.  And she was 1) not paying the full week anyway, because I was putting half on _my_ card, and 2) supposed to get at least one day comped for being the convention organizer.  Apparently they screwed up billing last year as well, and there were several other customers complaining about charge messups this year.  If I get out there again for BusterCon 3.0 (and I want to), I think I'll be staying at the Red Roof Inn across the parking lot from the DoubleTree instead.  No one over there complained about billing hassles.

Fall is a nice time to visit Estes Park and the Rocky Mountain National Park, as long as you don't need lots of preplanned activities.  By mid-October, any programs in the park are shut down (as is the visitor center on Trail Ridge Road), and some of the businesses in town are starting to go to winter hours.  OTOH, the businesses that primarily target tourists are running sales -- I got a cat t-shirt for 5 bucks.

Folkwear Pattern 118, Tibetan Panel Coat, hasn’t been resized by the company as of late 2007, when I bought my copy. Currently, sizes only go to a Large (Women’s 14-18). Since I have no idea if they will ever resize this pattern, I decided to work out resizing notes on my own.

(If you don’t have the pattern, you’ll probably have trouble following this. Sorry, I’m not breaking their copyright to scan in the pattern pieces.)

 

( Lots more here )

Yeah, it's over 11 months till GenCon 2009. But right after the con is a good time for me to think about what games I would like to run next year.

I seem to have a reputation as the go-to GM for Dark Champions. I'm not sure how I got it, but I found out after my DC:The Animated Series game that one of my players had signed up solely on the recommendation of another player, not because he likes the subgenre. In fact, he told me after the game that my game was the first time he'd ever had fun playing DC:TAS. There's no shortage of GMs who run superheroic games, so I think next year, like this, will be all heroic level.

No ideas yet for another DC:TAS game, but it went well enough that I need to do another.

I also want to do a "straight" Dark Champions. I'm thinking about something that will send the LIBRA team into Hudson City's Chinatown. Granted, none of the team members speak Chinese; but since I always prefer a six person table (and LIBRA only has five members in the book) it's easy enough to bring in a new member. I'm trying to decide between just writing another LIBRA member, or writing a Chinese-American vigilante as a "guest-star".

There's another DC idea I have. This one is a cross between DC and Pulp Hero: the PCs would be a mix of OSS, SOE, and Resistance members during the latter half of World War II, and their target would be a secret weird-science Nazi lab. My main concern with this would be keeping it in good taste. If I get "realistic" about the lab, well, most of the SS factories and research facilities had concentration camps nearby to provide slave labor. That's way darker than I want to go. Yes, I always flag my DC games as "Mature", but that's still way darker than I want to go.

The players in the Lucha Hero game had a blast, so I definitely want to do another. And :: crossing fingers :: the Lucha book should be coming out at last.

That's four games. Technically that's enough for my badge reimbursement, but I always prefer to run five to give myself a cushion.

I would love to run a Valdorian Age fantasy game. But, the magic system in that setting is a bit complicated for someone who's just showing up for a four hour game.

Post-Apocalyptic might work; I just need to decide if I want to do another zombie game or try one of the other settings. ("Moonshattered Earth" is basically "How close can we come to Thundarr the Barbarian without paying licensing fees". I'd love to run it as a campaign, I don't know how it would work as a one-shot con game.

While the players in my PS:238 game had fun, I don't know if I can come up with an idea for another. I've already used both of the villains-in-training at the school.

Maybe another Pulp Hero game? If I do the WWII game I mentioned above, I'd want to avoid a Nazi plotline for Pulp. However, everyone seemed to have fun the time I ran a Pulp Science Fiction game, that might be an option.

I got back from GenCon yesterday. For the non-gamers on my friends list, this is a mammoth gaming convention, currently held in Indianapolis IN. By "mammoth", I mean that according to the local newspaper, it brings in over 80,000 people including dealers, demo staff, convention staff, and the like. I haven't heard a paid attendance figure for this year, but it was over 20,000 when the convention left Milwaukee because there wasn't room any more.

Just a few random thoughts:

1) The kitchen staff at Buca di Beppo (did I spell that right?) on Sunday night better have gotten combat pay. The Hero Games people took the Hero GMs out to dinner that night, if my count was right this was a party of 25 ... and we were the _small_ group.

2) I have to remember to get fresh batteries for my pedometer. The Indianapolis Convention Center is in the middle of renovations/expansion, so most of the RPGs were moved to nearby hotels. I know I was doing a lot more walking than I normally do, I'm just not sure how much more walking (and was it enough to make a difference?).

3) The convention center won't be done till 2010, so there's at least one more year of scattered games. I'm tempted to request, next year when I submit my games, that they schedule me in the Union Station. Two of this year's games were there, and it's a nice building. No vending machines that anyone could find, but if I'm running back-to-back games I'd be packing snacks anyway. This year, the one day I had back-to-back they were in two different hotels.

4) Hopefully they won't schedule me back in the Hyatt. I'm certain it's a nice hotel, but the elevators make the ones in the Embassy Suites look like Speedy Gonzales. And over half the elevators aren't available for con-goers anyway. The building is half Hyatt and half office building; the office part got 6 elevators that don't access the Hyatt meeting spaces, the Hyatt got four elevators.

5) Microtel is a nice little hotel. Nothing fancy, if you want a full breakfast buffet and free paper every day go someplace else. But the room was clean and quiet, the biscuits and gravy available as an addition to the continental breakfast were loaded with meat (too many places serving biscuits and gravy just give you flour and water 'white sauce'), free long-distance calls in the US, and free usage of the computer and printer when I discovered I'd left some character sheets at home.

A little overenthusiastic, aren't they? When some of their questions have two blatant joke answers out of the four options, it's a little hard to mess up too badly.