Category: Nerdiness

On the topic of D&D, I’ve been playing Icewind Dale II on my computer, which is fun and addictive. I should be working on my one art job instead but I’ll start that this weekend if things go as planned. I made up versions of the characters from my regular D&D group (as noted earlier, the now-defunct one) and that’s fun and also educational. I get to play my players’ characters and I can see tactical angles they haven’t used (for example, the monk/rogue can use her stunning fist and then get sneak attacks in on the stunned target). Last night, after getting all the characters up to about ninth level, I decided to swap out the wizard. My original wizard specialized in summoning. My tactic in most of these games (Baldur’s Gate etc) is to send the rogue scouting ahead invisibly (maxing out her sneak skills) and then summon a line of creatures/undead in between the rest of the party and the enemies. I typically stand behind the line of summoned fodder and unleash with ranged attacks and spells. There are two down sides to this. 1. In Icewind Dale the monsters are very focused – once they see one character they will generally attack just that one guy, moving around everyone else even if it means taking a long way around. 2. If a wizard specializes in summoning spells, they can’t cast evocation spells, which are old favourites like fireball and magic missile. So that was getting me down and I realized that since my bard and my cleric can both cast lots of summoning spells, I figured it was time to get rid of the wizard and get another one – one that specializes in evocation! The bad news is, the new guy starts at 1st level while the others are 9th. So I just have to keep him in the back and see how that works out for now. Wish me luck!

I learned some things about running a D&D campaign. If you run a game for too long, people get tired and cranky about it. My regular gaming group broke up last night. We’ve been having trouble for a couple months. Originally I expected the game to last about a year but it’s been over two years now. Some of the chapters were received well by some and others were not (by some). Some went way longer than I had planned. Plus some of the players have conflicting styles (some love to hack and slash, others like to roleplay) which is always difficult for a DM to balance. I felt that enthusiasm has been waning for a little while now, and I’ve tried to salvage the campaign using different methods but when the most recent player dropped out I initiated a discussion about whether or not we should continue playing. We won’t – at least not as we have been. As Paul said, it seems we’ve been playing just to keep the momentum going after having invested so much into the story and characters…not because we were actually looking forward to the game itself. So the end result is that we’ve decided to take a couple weeks hiatus and decide if we want to run some other kind of campaign or even a whole different game altogether for a month or two. And if not, that’s okay too. But I have been daydreaming about Dragon Fist/Oriental Adventures in between my Mutants & Masterminds and Spaceship Zero schemes.

Narnia was terrible. Awful. I felt closer to walking out on that film than I have for a long time. Drippy. Pointless. Infantile. Trite. Plus, the music was bad. The acting was uninspired and I felt sorry for the kids who were given the joyless task of being forced to speak the lacklustre dialogue. The only inspired thing in the film was some of the monsters.

King Kong however, was great, as I mentioned. It too was overly dramatic at times, but for a monster-fighting-monster flick it met my expectations. You could really see that they put a lot of time and attention into studying the natural movements and expressions of a gorilla (it seemed to me). There were some problems, which I will delineate below.

I still want to see Capote. Has anyone seen it yet? And Syriana? Anything else?

(if you haven’t seen King Kong, you may want to stop reading):

There was too much humans outrunning animals. Of all the animals in the world, humans are pretty slow. And many dinosaurs are built for speed, just like birds. Look at the ostrich. Same deal with velociraptor-type dinosaurs. And for the dinosaurs that aren’t built for speed, they often have incredible stride (brontosaur-types). Even quicker are insects (generally). If you have ever watched a nature documentary on predatory insects, they strike faster than the eye can see. Granted in the film they are giant bugs that in real life wouldn’t be able to walk under their own weight, but if they’re going to move exactly like small bugs in every other respect, they should be able to kill with lightning speed.

There were some other things but I guess I’ll add them when I remember them.

Today I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We underestimated the demand for this movie last night (crowds are the reason I rarely see movies on opening night), so we got tickets for the first show this morning. I was afraid there were going to be screaming children but it worked out fine. I was actually more annoyed by the adult “squee” (as Marlo would say) fans who were to my left. Every time something would happen or a new character would appear on the screen there would be gasps. The movie itself is pretty good. I wouldn’t say it was the best, having had a few hours now to digest it. I still think Azkaban is the best. I’ll add some spoilers in the next paragraph. Chamber of Secrets is actually on in 6 minutes and I’ll watch it while I draw. I am really looking forward to King Kong. I am even more looking forward to Deep Sea 3D, which is a 3D imax pic that comes out next Spring. I saw the trailer in 3D and it looked amazing. We saw a bunch of trailers in front of Goblet of Fire but none of them really interested me (they didn’t show much of Superman), especially not the hiphop-dancing CG penguins.

One thing I’ve noticed about Harry Potter movies (books as well I assume) is that there’s all this stuff that happens, but quite often you don’t know what or why until the very end of the film, and the payoff usually isn’t that great. I would have liked to have seen what the villains were doing behind the scenes. I don’t need all the mysteries handed to me, by any means, but you seem to experience everything through Harry’s eyes and sometimes that can be frustrating. Maybe it’s different in the books. This is exacerbated by the fact that magic is everywhere and basically can negate reality and common sense, so that quite literally anything could be going on despite your best guesses given the clues. Sorcery is the ultimate deus ex machina.

Oddly, in Goblet of Fire, the parts I was most looking forward to were the least interesting, and the bits that sounded the least interesting before seeing the film were in fact the most interesting. For example: you would think a duel with a dragon would make a great transition to the screen, but it was a dull, predictable, and senseless display*. On the other hand, everything leading up to and including the ball was well-done and entertaining, and really gave something (finally) to the characters to display emotion towards that wasn’t Ron making a scared face and whimpering.

*Plus it bugs me how great fierce monsters that look like they’d strike like lightning with millenia-tested predatory instincts are always portrayed as bumbling and ineffectual. They always take forever to size up their opponents and can’t hit the broad side of a barn when they do lash out. Put a mouse in a basket with a snake, or a cricket in a terrarium with a frog, and the prey would be in the predator’s mouth in seconds. Put Harry Potter in a ring with a dragon and he dodges blow after blow and hides in a crevice as the dragon tries to figure out what the hell it’s doing. Yes I know it had a chain on it – but still. If Harry had outsmarted it, that would be one thing, but defeating it with speed and reaction, that just makes this supposedly nasty and terrible dragon look like a pussy.

I almost went into work today. I got up at 7:22 as normal but my email wasn’t working, so that was the last straw. If I can’t email Marlo to tell her why I wasn’t home when she called last night, then I’ll just have to stay home until the internet starts working. I called in sick (which was no lie) and slept for 11 hours (total). It hurts to swallow. But I did manage to play D&D tonight – although now I am paying for it.

On the weekend I met with a gal with whom I had a meeting with about a year and a half ago. She was going to Vancouver Film School and was interested in doing a documentary short film on D&D for her project. Trouble was, her partner in the project was very Christian and vetoed the idea. But now she’s out of school and still wants to do it. So we met at Max’s and had a good long discussion. I brought her back to grab my copy of Mazes & Monsters and Word Wars and she ended up helping me paint some miniatures. It will be pretty cool if this movie turns out – basically I would be the producer. So – who wants to be in a D&D movie?

I’m starting to look for art agents in earnest. I spent several lunch hours (half hours really) at work poring over my Illustrator’s Market book and decided which reps might suit me, and today I started browsing their websites and sending emails. I need to start looking for a better day job too, if I’m to save up for moving in with Marlo, and beyond. So please – any leads please send them my way!

Kodos and Zuul are pretty funny. They love the teenie bouncer and if I huck it down the hall they’ll both chase it and usually Kodos will get it and Zuul will just sit there almost as if to say “well I was going to get that.” They don’t really get too cozy with one another (although Zuul often smells Kodos’ bum as he walks by) but they play together sometimes and both sleep on the same bed. They were both even sitting on the big black chair as I was DMing tonight. So, that’s the kitty update.

I almost had a total party kill in D&D tonight. So that’s the dungeons AND the dragons update.

I am enjoying the Real Ghostbusters weekend.

Tonight is the night of the big show. And I hope to heck the costumes are ready and that they fit.

Last night I got to see The Veil in its truncated version at Cinemuerte. There were 19 films shown altogether, about 3 or 4 of which were good. Many were so-so. A few were awful. One was worse than awful. Our film probably had the least blood of all of them, which I think says something about staying true to our given subgenre: Lovecraftian. I kind of wish that they didn’t give out the mandatory phrases and weapons. Ours were “This place is driving me batty” and “air.” Almost every film had to include pancakes as well, which made viewing over a dozen films with pancakes in them drudgery. Some of the other weapons were acid/chemicals or power tools. The SFU film club film was about four guys stuck in the woods, who resorted to cannibalism rather than eat the pancakes they had. They also just happened to have a jug of acid for some unexplained reason.

Anyway, we didn’t win any awards (of which I think there were 3 or 4), and I didn’t expect that we would given that there were two very funny films (their subgenre was “after school special”) and as Mike says, comedy often wins. Ours was the only period piece and I think it was among the most evocative and moody. I am really looking forward to seeing it expanded into a length that more suits the subject matter, which Mike says will take at least a couple weeks.

There was a Hallowe’en party at Mike’s later in the evening that Stewie reminded me about, and we brought Carina with us. Mike showed The Veil there and it went over well. Carina had lots of questions for him, and we all (Mike, Carina, Stewie, me) talked about our super secret Ghostbusters fan film project. I ate candy.

Last night I started a D&D adventure with six guys I had never met before. They all came from the Vancouver Gaming Guild website forums. I like to suss out the local nerds. Maybe if things go well with some of them they might find their way into other campaigns/groups I run. I have been having trouble keeping a fifth PC in the Terak campaign. But so far, it’s too early to say with these blokes. They all seem pretty fun and interesting and swell to varying degrees.

This is also a playtest for my Feldsbridge adventure that I hope to have published. Theo is helping me work on it. It’s designed for four 5th-level characters but since I had six people it turned out to be six 4th-level characters – I’m not sure how that will skew the playtest results. I figured if two of them didn’t show, then we’d just bump up the four remaining guys to 5th level. But they did all show, and mostly on time too. One of them was killed in the very first encounter, which was a valuable learning experience for me. Some brought snacks but I am on my mostly-no-junk-food diet until this weekend. One brought his girlfriend who was drilling me about my artwork, which was fine, and keeping the cats occupied.

Marlo’s mom gave me a phone call today asking if I’d heard from her – in true mom fashion! In other mom news my parents head down to Mexico any day now. I thought she had already gone. Hasta luego, whatever that means.

There is a Hallowe’en party at work tomorrow. I’m going in but only for a few hours: I don’t want to miss The Veil showing. The food is pot luck but I’ll be damned if I’m going to go to the trouble. Plus, what the hell would I bring. Costuming is also encouraged, but if I do it will be something light and portable…and likely silly. Like one of my helmets or something. Maybe my lab coat and the brain-helmet that lights up. Sure, that’ll be fun.

I don’t like watching tv shows or movies on my computer because my TV screen is way bigger and the quality (even of VHS) is way better than the divxes and the mpas and the avis and the whatnots. But I do enjoy watching trailers because they’re short and small. But now I can’t do that because I’m running on Windows ME and the new Quicktime doesn’t support that. Can anyone help me install a new operating system? Pretty please with cat drool on top?