Bone

It's Gary Gygax's 67th birthday today. The DM Numero Uno, the man who launched a million geeks armed with their polyhedral dice (btw, the chances of getting the highest number of each die in the set by rolling all at once is 1 in 460800.)

Thank you Mr. Gygax. I and millions of other ubergeeks wish you a happy birthday!

Self-Obsessed and Sexxee

OLD SCHOOL: or how I caught the goddamn nostalgia bug

ugh, I recently bought Dungeon #124 and it started a chain reaction of sending my brain back in time to the good old days of my youth when I read all of those classic AD&D modules... which lead me to ebay (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!). SO now I want to run AD&D 1st edition using these modules. This is the classic problem of the "collector" only made worse by my short attention span. I only hope to make it out alive. I've already got three transactions on the way. DISTROY ALL EVIL!!! indeed.

Speaking of D&D, that very issue of Dungeon is sort of the last hurrah for D&D 3.5 for me. I want to give it just ONE more chance before I start running other rpgs. Then, if I stil get that same lack of motivation with other rpgs, then I will have to conclude that perhaps rpgs aren't for me at all. But I do love to read them. Post apocalypse kobold. That's me.

Here's Cate again:

Screaming Skull

I'm getting antsy about not having posted in a bit...


I talked with Mason today. We go back, way back (further) waaay back. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) and I hadn't talked to him in some time, but he's one of those cool cats that no matter how long it's been, you always feel like you just talked to him last week. He recommened some guitar stuff (after my confession about wanting to be a Sonic Youth wannabee (he said, "'they' have one of those boxed sets with a guitar, strap, and amp" and then he referenced Spinal Tap where Christopher Guest talks about the sustain in his guitar (you can go get a bite to eat and come back and WAAAAAH~). I sent him 2 mp3s, Tunic (for Karen) and Bull in the Heather because I wanted him to recommend the type of distortion in an electric guitar that I was looking for. ah, mid life crisis, you are beautiful...

I am beginning to laugh back at work. If I get stressed out about work, then work has won.

Here is a squid, but not unlike any you have seen, unless you have seen this one. All my pics are clickable and related to the photo. - ok, I lied, I think there is one photo way down below that isn't clickable but this one is:













RPG
(if you are not into rpgs, you can skip this part, besides this is really for me anyways)

I am throwing down the proverbial gauntlet (and the 10' pole):

1. reverse Paranoia. A Darwin's World party discovers a vault very similar to the Alpha Complex.

2. concept of having a fixed number of key cities in supplements like Dark Sun.

Skink

"now we tone-soul merge ideas of song forms and freedom - miss seafood, miss cheesecake, a coupla miss donuts - the edge of a blade pressed to the throat of your reflected image"
-Lee Ronaldo, Skip Tracer

THE SONIC YOUTH POST

So... since my blog is named after the band, what's my unhealthy obsession with Sonic Youth?

My first exposure to them was back in Atlanta, 1995. I was watching a music video by them called, "Bull in the Heather" (which I suspect is a name of a fictional horse "bettin' on the Bull in the Heather" - I'm working on what it means, if anything at all) where this girl with pigtails jumps around and is generally annoying the band and I thought, this is so bad but so catchy and unlike the pop/alternative stuff I hear. Somewhere (Mediaplay in Alpharetta, GA probably) I ended up buying the CD (Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star - I no longer have the case) and played it quite a bit.

Flashforward: 10 years. 2005, with the mini-ipod mentioned in the first post, I looked into my old collection of CDs to upload (I was "only" using 1 GB of 4 GBs (which I thought I would never use)) and that pretty much started it all. So I was now looking up all things Sonic Youth on the internet and Yahoo had a few of their videos, including "Bull in the Heather." cool, I watch it and there's that girl again dancing around being obnoxious and...

... the girl is none other than Kathleen Hannah, the lead singer of my previous obsessive band (still top though), Le Tigre! So there it is, somehow she made my obsession from Le Tigre to SY a natural progression.

What makes Sonic Youth so appealing to me? As I mentioned above there is the experiemental/unique factor, but I think it's mostly that I appreciate that genre. In college I was obsessed with They Might Be Giants and I can kind of see a similarity in the two. They both mix genres/styles, have familiar melodies (sorry I have almost no knowledge of music theory, but hopefully that will change), and their lyrics can often times be cryptic or even surreal. And in that sense, they are the post-(post)-modern bands. They use everything: punk, performance, rap, electronica, heavy metal, rock, 60's music, you name it. Some have described their music as the "perfect noise."

The three lead singers all have a distinctive style and yet they never seem to get in the way of others. I suppose Kim Gordon is my favorite becuase of her energy and her "grounded insanity." Thurston is more like a rock and roll guy and Lee Ronaldo has a very interesting commercial announcer like voice and great lyrical style. Then there are the supporting cast: the two guitars clashing and doing all kinds of "riffs" and it all somehow works.

Currently my favorite songs are their "fast" stuff like Purr, Pattern Recognition, Kool Thing, Sugar Kane, Tunic (ok maybe not that fast), Washing Machine, Panty Lies, and on and on. I would love to hear your thoughts/theories on this band, what songs/CDs you like, and your history of listening to them.

Lindsay's new toy

I got my cat one of those carpet trees and it's taller than me. That's cool since I didn't get her anything for her 1st Christmas or her 1st birthday. So far she seems to like it ok. I love how she smells everything new so carefully before deciding if she likes it and so far she is being her adorable self with it.

1776

My copy of Avalon Hill's 1776 arrived this past weekend. It's an interesting game and it's neat to go back in time (in more ways than one) and see a hexboardgame from the early days (2nd ed. published 1975). It has the usual Attack Strength and Movement Points, and it's divided into Basic, Advanced and Optional rules. I can't wait to play it.

Ms. Leah B.

One of my closest friends moved out of the house this past weekend and the house already feels empty and much quieter. She's a wonderful person, one of the funniest people I know and a geniune and decent person. Granted, it takes a while to get to know her (and I guess I'm not sure if she thinks I do (omgwtfbbq?)) and when she opens up, she's that much more amazing. She is one of those characters I never want to lose touch with. Sure, she's only about a mile and a half away, but it still feels far away. :(

Starfield Road

I'm still not getting much out of d20 Apocalypse, probably because I don't have d20 Future.

There are three settings in the book:

1. Earth Inherited - heaven and hell open up on Earth
2. Atomic Sunrise - classic nuclear holocaust
3. Plague World - alien invasion + disease

of course the three are described in about 30 pages... It's all pretty dry, rules heavy and I would recommend it only to the die-hard post-apocalypse fan. There are some rules that will be useful but only bits and pieces (eg. gear and environmental hazards which btw are covered in both GWd20 and DW).

so I decided to go with mostly Darwin's World for the setting materials, and most likely most of the ruleset as well.

The more I read Darwin's World stuff, the more I respect the creator, Dominic Covey. Who is this guy? He doesn't do anything but Darwin's World. He's got a real passion for his game, and I can imagine asking him what factions are at war say, in the Pacific Northwest and he could tell me in an instant not only which tribes/groups and what weapons they use, but also their diets and such. I think I will send him a fanmail.

I'm also getting back into old Avalon Hill wargames. One of my co-worker/friend is really into boardgames and I got him interested in Tac Air, a game of "modern" air-land battles in Germany. It's dated for sure, but it's a fascinating management/tactical game. The players have to consider such things as tanks, air defense, air support, artillery, command, and supply.

Next post I want to rant about why Sonic Youth's "Sugar Kane" sounds so familiar and why they rock in general.

My first car was a 88 Honda CRX:

It looks very similar to the red one above... except it didn't have a sun roof, or the alloy wheels, or the more powerful 1.6 liter si engine, but it was a blast. My father bought it for me in high school. At the time I pleaded him to upgrade it to an si , but he replied, "You have all the power you need." Ah well, it was worth a try. I am so grateful to my parents who encouraged my passion for automobiles and sacrificed quite a bit to get me the CRX.

Bull in the Heather

couple of lines from a recent IM with a friend:

"fuckers are bidding on my emerald claw soldiers!"

" i crunched some numbers on some hobgoblins last night"

Winner's Blues

I received my copy of d20 Apocalypse from amazon yesterday and so far, it doesn't look good. The presentation is great, but it sucks that the mutation rule is covered in d20 Future. So far I prefer Darwin's World for mutation rules. oh yeah, I also want to use the Expanded Psionics
Handbook...

.

.

I also got Spawn of Azathoth, a camaign book for Call of Cthulhu. It looks promising. It has the classic not-amazing portraits of NPCs and it looks pretty epic (Dreamworld is involved a few times).





It's weird that the top three rpgs I want to run use very popular systems:

1. d20 (Gamma World)
2. GURPS (Space: 1889)
3. BRP (Call of Cthulhu)

day 2

It's day 2 since I started this blog and I suppose this is the place to inroduce my cat Lindsay. She is named after Lindsay Davenport, one of the great tennis players. Legend has it that I determined her name after the winner of the 2004 Bank of the West Classics (Lindsay (2) d. Venus (1), 7-6 5-7 7-6). At first it was a bit of an ironic name cause as a kitten she was so small, but now she matches her namesake fairly well. I need to weigh her (edit: recently I went to the vet and she is 12.5 pounds. yikes.).

She's a very skittish cat with a Dexterity of about 7 for a cat.

some recent topics from my forums (a mix):

Let us speak of Secrets of Zir'An ( 1 2 )
Durandal

The RPG that everyone should have on her shelf ( 1 2 3 4 5 )
Jim Bob

Poll: Running / Shambling Zombies. ( 1 2 )
x-esiv-4c

Poll: violenceha should be renamed 'Ole VinegarTits ( 1 2 )
violenceha

Attention Troubleshooters ( 1 2 )
Emperor's Light

What the hell is wrong with you people? ( 1 2 3 )
Punk_in_Drublic

*summons Chuck Norris*
violenceha

Gandalf's Cart on Sneak Peek ( 1 2 3 ... Last Page )
rkunisch

[Unisystem] Anyone tried a roll-under mechanic? ( 1 2 )
MadCow

also

a few things to start off:

1. post-apocalypse rpg

based in the western US (starting in San Francisco using Mark Copplestone minis, Foundry's Street Violence series and Rezolution minis - very Shadowrun, Transhuman Space). I would like to run a "limited run campaign," say 4-6 sessions at which there would definitely be an end.

To the west I have Hawaii (Confrontation Goblins and GW Space Orks), to LA I have polluted deadlands (Confrontation Dirz and Dark Age minis), to the Sierras I have duergars (Confrontation Mid-Nor) and barbaric tribes (Confrontation Keltos), Pacific Northwest has steampunk (Portland (Victorian) and Seattle (Warmachine)), etc.

Basically it's a flow chart beginning in San Francisco, and there should be enough depth in the limited amount of sessions if I keep the pace brisk.

Ultimately, I would like to have all the miniatures in the campaign painted to a good standard. I estimated 100 minis, but that's probably on the lower end.

I will use the d20 Modern system and determine campaign starts by rolling on the creating community rules in Gamma World d20.

systems used:
d20 Modern
Gamma World d20
Darwin's World
d20 Apocalypse
Menace Manual
Urban Arcana

backgrounds used:
Gamma World 1st edition
Transhuman Space
Shadowrun
Urban Arcana


2. dioramas:

I'm on it... really.

Merkava
M8
A-7 series


3. things on the backburner:

clan Pestilens
Flames of War
GRE
MSD (that Microsoft desktop crap)
GURPS: Steampunk
Call of Cthulhu (including a lot of Dreamland)


A friend has a gratuitous photo of Cate Blanchett on his blog so here's mine (and to test the attachment thing):