Sub-Power!

So I'm sick at home and the wife is out at her folks. Gives me a chance to finally watch Lord of the Rings with the subwoofer turned up a little.

Best disc to try it out with? Well, my favorite of course...
Fellowship of the Ring, Extended Edition, Disc 2

Awesome videos

Just posted some awesome videos to my web site. Check 'em out.

Dead Poets Society

I don't remember seeing this movie the year it came out, although I know I did. It was 1989, a year after I started high school and the first time I took a chance and started a D&D group.

I had been a player in a campaign run by a friend's boyfriend, and it was a great experience learning the ins and outs of playing D&D.

What I see now in this movie is a group of boys playing D&D. Even if they're only reading poetry to each other, they're engaged in the spirit of D&D. The movie's theme, "Carpe diem", is a bit of a cliche now, but at the time I started playing D&D it meant something to me, even if I didn't know it.

Taking the leadership to get a group together for storytelling and adventure-having was the best decision I ever made in my life.

I don't play Dungeons & Dragons

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I guess reading the in-print Beta finally made me come out with it.

As I read these pages and look over even the small changes, I realize what the OGL's effect on my hobby really is. Rather than have people ask "Do you play Dungeons & Dragons?" and me responding "Yes", I can now answer "I play Pathfinder". Even if I have to explain it's another roleplaying game like Dungeons & Dragons, for the first time in a long while, seems like forever, my roleplaying game system of choice is not Dungeons & Dragons.

Long live the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game!

Today was the day!

GOT THAT BETA! SUCK IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today's the day

I can feel it. Today I shall receive my Pathfinder Beta print copy. I just know it.

The voices told me to do it

Ok, for all you roleplaying podlings out there, here's a handy tip for being a great DM...

Use distinct voices for NPCs. Use 'em a lot. It really helps PCs identify with different personalities they meet in the game. If it's a random NPC and you're not sure what to do, go for a neutral voice.

Otherwise, specific NPCs deserve specific voices. Try to immitate people from real life. Is the NPC a government leader? Use the voice of someone from Congress or the White House. Is the NPC a rogue? Use the voice of a notable rogue or someone you liked from the movies.

And always, PRACTICE your voices before you game. It helps. A LOT!

The intuhnet sux...

Ok, so I'm searching on YouTube for classical music and I run across this comment. It was made in response to a video of Mozart's oboe concerto.

Whats with all these videos of performances of Mozart wind concertos that start only when the soloist starts?They're skipping over the whole intro...which DOES have a purpose;it lays the ground work for the whole piece...whoever posted this piece of crap should be crucified...youre basically leading us into the piece blind;and its a slap in the face to Mozart. You REALLY make me sick.

I just have to laugh. I could have been reading this kind of comment on a D&D board! LOL.

ASP.NET Triumph

So, I'm a big ASP.NET guy. I feel like I've worked in the realm of ASP.NET for a while and I've struggled a little bit with learning the object-oriented side of things... until now!

I've reworked a small app at work that confirms to myself that I DO know the OOP concepts in C# to a degree. I still have more to learn, but my confidence in my abilities to demonstrate my knowledge is significantly higher.

Awesome.

Excalibur Movie Quote

I thought I'd share one of my all-time favorite movie quotes:

Merlin: What are you afraid of?
Arthur: I... I don't know.
Merlin: Shall I tell you what's out there?
Arthur: Yes please.
Merlin: The Dragon! A beast of such power that if you were to see it whole and all complete in a single glance it would burn you to cinders!
Arthur: Where is it?
Merlin: It is everywhere! It is everything! It's scales glisten in the bark of trees. It's roar is heard in the wind. And it's forked tongue strikes like... (lightning bolt) Whoah like lightning, yes that's it!
Arthur: How can I...? What shall I...? Must I...?
Merlin: Do nothing. ... Be still. ... Sleep. Rest in the arms of the Dragon. ... Dream!

Awesome post somewhere else

Check this post out.

Oh, and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beta is being released today. Go play it. NOW!

1980-1982, Years That Changed Everything

A lot of what has formed my interests and tastes in pop culture can be traced back to the formative years of 1980-1982. Even if I didn't see the movies listed below at the time, the tone and style of the movies produced at that time very much entertains me still. Bold movies lie in my favorites for fantasy/sci-fi.

Movies
Airplane! (1980)
Altered States (1980)
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) (don't ask)
Flash Gordon (1980)
The Fog (1980)
Shining, The (1980)
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Boot, Das (1981)
Caveman (1981)
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Dragonslayer (1981)
Escape from New York (1981)
Excalibur (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Scanners (1981)
Stripes (1981)
Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)
Blade Runner (1982)
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Creepshow (1982)
Dark Crystal, The (1982)
Firefox (1982)
Megaforce (1982) (again... don't ask, but if you're looking for a cheesy performance by Spin City's Barry Bostwick, look no further!)
The Thing (1982)
TRON (1982)
Secret of NIMH, The (1982)
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (arguably the best Star Trek movie)

Some of my other interests at the time were in roleplaying games (which I didn't play until 1988) and computer games.

Roleplaying Games
1981 (D&D 2nd Revision - Basic, Expert Sets) (first time I read D&D rules)

Computer Games
1981 Castle Wolfenstein by Warner, Muse.
1981 Olympic Decathlon by Smith, Microsoft.
1981 Wizardry by Greenberg & Woodhead, Sir-Tech.
1982 Ultima II by British, Sierra On-Line.
1982 Swashbuckler by Stephenson, DataMost.
1982 Choplifter by Gorlin, Broderbund.

Missing my dad

I remember I was in 3rd Grade when I first sat down in front of a computer and programmed something. It was in the low-res graphics of the Apple IIe and my GT program taught us how to do lines and dots to make an image. Many kids couldn't get it right away, but my program ran the first time with only a couple of mistakes (bugs).

I had lost my dad just a year ago and now a whole new world was opening up to me. Specifically, computer games and D&D. I just wish I had had a chance to share any of that with him.

Wizards comes late

So 4E fans, how're ya likin' the lineup of all that 3rd party 4th Edition content? Huh? What do you mean there isn't that much? GSL? Oh you mean this GSL?

Ok... so they're a bit late. At least in the meantime you have a bunch of cool stuff from D&D Insider. How's that going? Huh? What do you mean it's not ready for prime time? Reduced prices?

Paizo comes through

So I heard back from Paizo regarding the maps. I'm just glad they actually listened and tried to find a solution. That's the best any customer can expect.

XPath is named well...

So, I'm trying to get this blog to show up on my web site. Over there, the look and feel of the site is slightly more archaic so I've written code that "subscribes" to the Blogger feed and displays posts accordingly. To get certain posts, you have to use a query language called XPath.

X usually stands for some unknown quantity. And the "path" to the correct post or set of posts is what I'm after. So, translated, some "unknown path" is the tool you need to use to get the results.

Good thing the boys over at marketing didn't get ahold of this one.

Now introducing "EASYXMLQUERYFINDING", the new programming tool to find exactly the items in an XML data source you're looking for in a sleek, easily customizable way!

CARTOGRAPHY RULES!

In every roleplaying game product that details the locations of an environment, usually a map is provided that will give the DM an accurate assessment of how the players can interact with that environment. For example, the PCs want to travel from Town A to Town B. Well, The DM can see from the map a few things:

1. What type of environments the PCs will travel through and what type of encounters to expect.
2. How long they will be traveling, what the distance is vs what type of ground they have to cover.
3. Any other locations along the way that will influence their travel.

Most maps I've seen in roleplaying game products contain this information and convey it well. I can't say the same thing about Paizo's product Guide to Darkmoon Vale. The maps in the product don't contain two major map conventions that would really help me out: a compass rose (or even direction of north) and a scale. The compass rose is forgiveable as an oversight, but the lack of scale makes things VERY hard to use.

So I post the comment to the publishers and they tell me that the issue would be addressed. So when another product came out without a scale in some of the maps, I took that to mean that the publishing date of the first product was so close to the second that they didn't have time to fix those kinds of things. I also know that the lead time in print publishing is a couple of months at times.

What I didn't expect was when I posted a question on the message boards as to the scale of some of the maps in the second product, I got a snarky response on the boards. Um... WTF?

Get it together people. As follows: What All Good Maps Should Have

I'm in a field where visual representations of information count for a great deal, so I understand the need to make visual information work well. Do I need to do your work for you?

What's this here blog thing anyway?

It may seem like I'm the last guy on the planet to start his own blog, but I don't care. It's more of a personal journal than a blog anyway.

So today, I finally switched to Blogger. It's easier to create posts and keep track of posts.

Go make some snarky comments already.

Preheat to 452 degrees

452 degrees... the temperature at which roleplaying books burn!

Woohoo! Got some promising players for the new Pathfinder campaign.

Sean, Human Fighter
Budget slasher by day, monster slasher by night

Adam, Dwarf Cleric
Excellent player, but a cleric who leaves a sick kid at home for D&D?

Tom, Human Fighter/Rogue
He's got the stories and the experience of a rogue in real life!

James, Elf Wizard
A very promising magician, and he knows C#!

Game is most definitely... ON!

Reading Rules

Here's a quote from "Neithan" from the Paizo.com messageboard:

When you read the rules, it totaly seperates you from the things they are meant to represent. Not a fault of the book, but the presentation greatly encourages you to see actions as applications of the rules, not rules as a way to represent the actions happening in the world.

This, my friends, is what is wrong with 4th Edition. I've been reading more and more posts lately about the debate between 4E and 3.X. There are a couple of people advocating 4E who refuse to see the personal preference of play style for 3rd Edition. They cite examples where the game goes too far into "simulationist" territory, such as a 1st Level Wizard getting creamed in a first encounter. There's nothing wrong with the game. That's the way it was meant to play. You HAVE to protect the wizard at low levels because he's going to be protecting you at high levels. The roles in the party change from level to level.

What is at the core of this debate is how some people see it as a fantasy game, and others see it as a fantasy simulation. This is not new, but 4th Edition chose a side in this conflict and some people see it as a great thing. Others do not.