Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Kong

Wow -- we just saw most of the new Jackson King Kong movie.  Wow.

I didn't expect it to be as good as it was.  The dino battle scene was one of the
neatest dinosaur scene I've ever watched -- I expected relatively tame action,
and it just kept getting wilder and wilder.  The scene with two T-rexes suspended by vines
snapping at the girl, while King Kong desperately tries to ward them off -- it was so
wacky that it really worked.

We're at the scene now where Kong escapes from his bonds in New York -- but it got too
late.  So we'll watch the end another night.

Nice change from watching Lost.  :-)

Lots more taxonomy tree madness at work today.  I imagine it'll be done soon (the
next couple of days for sure).  Then I can work on something new and exciting!

Not much else today.  Lots of work, then lots of monkey action!

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

New Furnace!


Our new Lennox high efficiency furnace was installed today.  The guys did a great job -- the work is neat and competant looking (although I wouldn't know if there was some leak or something -- but it *looks* good).

The dogs stayed upstairs with Lisa while Lisa primed the butterfly room -- the painting was irritating.  The Benjamin Moore primer we had didn't adhere to the exposed drywall compound that was there, and the Behr topcoat wouldn't adhere to the Benjamin Moore primer!  Wierd.  It's like the BM stuff isn't any good -- which may even be true, but at $50 a gallon, one would think it'd work better.

We ate at Angel's Diner again tonight.  Jessica is at the theater doing coop, so Lisa and I took advantage of the Souvlaki special.  Mmmm.....

But now House will be on in a few minutes, need to go watch it.

Monday, April 03, 2006

More and more events

Let's see...

Since last time, lots has happened.

We had a quiet weekend, Lisa got meds for her pneumonia (they seem to be taking hold), and we kept it kindof low key (neither of us felt particularly good).  Jessica started to get sick, too -- hopefully it doesn't get worse.

Jessica is still enjoying her coop term -- she got to play with the lighting.  They've got some cool computerized lighting panel.  She's also got to sort color gels.  :-)  Brings back memories, eh, Christian?

We put some mulch down in the backyard, to try to combat the ever-growing mud problem.  It works well.  Hopefully it's a reasonable long-term fix.  Irritating clay soil.

I got my new glasses tonight (two pairs), I'm wearing mine now.  Lisa's aren't in yet -- probably over the next couple of days.  They're nice: it's been a long time since new glasses, I like being able to see out of both eyes equally (actually, my prescription didn't change that much).

We got the King Kong DVD -- haven't watched it yet, but looking forward to it.

We saw the new Grey's Anatomy:  I'm beginning to really really like that show.  The bit with the little warren in the hospital -- that's what did it for me.

Lisa and I played a session with my new Fudge rules.  I learned a few things.

First, the Fudge rules are awesome.  Basically, everything I've ever wanted in a game.  Easy and fun.

Second, I'm a terrible GM.  :-)  I probably ran the worst session in Kitchener.  Only kidding -- but Fudge makes it much more important to provide interesting plots and characters, and have good GM style.  In d20, you can set up a fight, and blow 10 minutes.  In Fudge, it don't work that way.  If you want to have a fight, it's gotta be interesting, and the rest of the content has to hold its own.

I also learned that I'm incapable of reading notes during a game.  So I'm making index cards, to see if they'll work.  I'll run another session soon, using lessons from the first session -- I think it will be dramatically more fun than the first one.  :-)

Tomorrow I'm working from home, cuz they're installing our new furnace -- more occupation tree madness.  I love them occupation trees!

Lots of good meals -- always delicious food around here!




Friday, March 31, 2006

Sick

And, today we're all sick.

Wonderful morning, Pixie woke up very early in the morning crying to
go out. Where she promptly voided herself in every way. Poor dog.
She was quite pathetic looking afterwards (although she didn't lose
her appetite -- stupid labs)

I've come down with whatever Lisa had -- fast onset some sort of
cold-flu thing. Achey, hacking, headache. I'm at home today. Pleah.

Lisa's still sick, too. <sigh>...

Sad to be sick when the weather's nice.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Fudge Zeta: Gaming should be fun.

A couple of things need to be said before I start this.

First, I've been gaming since 1983, and I've had a real Dungeons & Dragons bias since the beginning.  Well, of course, in the very beginning there wasn't much else.  But then I grew up in a small town, and gaming was hardly tolerated at all.  There weren't book stores, let alone gaming stores.  I introduced nearly everybody I knew to gaming.  Over time, I did branch out a bit:  I played in a really fun West End Games Star Wars campaign, toyed with Vampire, Paranoia and Deadlands, but mostly I've been a D&D geek my whole life.

Second, I haven't actually run Fudge in a game yet -- maybe it'll all fall down flat.  I'm still in the "wow, this is really cool" phase.

Third, this is kind of a long post.  Now, on to the meat.

I've been aware of Fudge for a long time now.  I printed out the rules a few years ago, bound them, read them, stuck them on a shelf, along with all the other unused and unloved gaming manuals I've acquired over the years.  It seemed fun enough, but why bother switching?

At the same time, over the years I've felt a growing dissatisfaction with Dungeons & Dragons.  "Of course," I can hear all of you fancy-pants gamers out there saying, "D&D is lame and old and stupid."  That said, I have a real fondness for D&D.  Class/Level based advancement seems OK (skill-based systems seemed OK, but often really complicated).  The shaky realism seems good (I like jumping off a cliff and surviving).  The wide support from Wizards and third party companies is really exciting.  The OGL and the d20 license seem like Good Ideas, in my naive, non-informed opinion.

On the other hand, I'm pathetic at arithmetic and have a really hard time remembering things.  So imagine the horror when I have to (often on the fly) come up with a challenging encounter between my player's PCs and some set of monsters.  Choosing appropriate monsters, considering the interaction of dozens of rules.  I dread new rules, rather than enjoy them: they just complicate the game.  I can't take advantage of rules I can't remember.

Character creation is, of course, a nightmare.  I've hated this so long that I've started two or three character generator projects.  And not just little dinky ones either -- the sort that use constraint engines to reverse engineer rules, so that you can specify your character's HP range and attack bonus, give a broad idea of the class, and have the program randomly generate the rest...  But this was stupid!  Why do we care about all those numbers anyway?

Introducing new players to the game embarrasses me.  "Yes, we have six different kind of dice".  "No, now you roll percentiles".  "Roll a saving throw -- that's this section here on your character sheet", "I know, it seems kind of weird".  "I'm sorry -- that's just the way it works".  Don't even get me started on character creation with new players.  This is supposed to be a game!? It's no wonder our hobby is marginalized.

This is one of the factors contributing to my gaming burnout a few years ago.  A game that's so hard isn't fun anymore.

So, I was sitting at work talking to my friend David Ziegler a week or so ago, and was discussing this very issue.  David's beef is that he never knows the rules well enough -- he figures he's always at a disadvantage because he doesn't choose the appropriate Feats and Skills, or is unable to apply all the appropriate bonuses.  Again, it's a GAME!  Why should it be so hard?

So I went back to look at Fudge, in a new light.  Some things, like the death spiral (the default wound system), objective character creation, and the attributes/gifts/faults/skills menagerie seemed to be bringing back much of the complexity that I was trying to escape from.  But some things, like the universal mechanic, the extremely coarse Trait Latter (Terrible-Poor-Mediocre-Fair-Good-Great-Superb), and Steffan O'Sullivan's extremely laid back approach to the game in general seemed really promising.

So I read further.  I found Sherpa and IPFudge, which were much closer to my original vision.  I found a cinematic combat system, a simple magic system, and numerous wealth mechanics that fit the bill.  I began to see the possibilities.

Fudge could be the game I've always wanted.  You can read my current, work-in-progress rules set.

Basically, the philosophy of the rules I've put together can be summed up with:  it's a game , don't get hung up on the small stuff.  The game should let the characters do fun things, and not spend a lot of energy adjudicating things that don't really matter.

If you want to set up a combat with a half dozen thugs, and you want it to be easy, call them Thugs(Poor), give them a victory point each, and watch the fur fly.  You want an epic combat?  Make a Fire Mage (Superb) with 10 Victory Points, and a handful of Good Bodyguards.  Simple.

Create a character?  Well -- I created a half dozen in the previous paragraph, but a player character could be... I want to play a grim street warrior with the ability to use anything nearby as a weapon.  Grim Street Warrior (Good), Fight With Anything Nearby (Good).  Done.  Say what you want to say, get it over with.

No need to worry about being marginalized by the rules -- there aren't any rules (to speak of)You want to try something?  Look up an appropriate skill on your character sheet, roll it.  The Gamemaster'll tell you the difficulty.  You don't have an appropriate skill?  Talk it over with the GM -- decide how good you figure your character is, and write it down on your character sheet.  Or not.  It's just a game.

There are two issues that people (including myself, until recently) seem to have with this approach:  consistency and balance.

Consistency goes like this: People claim that without rules covering off at least the most common situations, the same situation could be adjudicated one way one week, and an entirely different way the next.  To that, I say: who cares?  It's a game.  If anybody remembers the last week's decision, and notices the difference, they can say something about it, and it can be consistent.  If nobody remembers, nobody's really noticing the inconsistency, so what difference does it make?

Balance goes like this:  Without strict point buys or rigid character creation rules, one character can be much more powerful than another character.  The real problem is not that characters have different powers, but that some characters get to do all the fun things, and other characters get sidelined.  This is not a rules issue.  This is a Gamemaster issue.  Scenes in the game have to be set up so that each character has a chance to shine.   This is true whether or not characters are 'balanced', and it's not particularly harder to balance screen time between unbalanced characters.

In summary (as you can probably tell), I'm very excited about Fudge and what it can do for my game.  I'll write again when I've ironed out the final bugs and given it more play testing.

Until then, take a look at (or another look at) Fudge.  It may have what you're looking for.



Continuing miscellanea

Yesterday I spent more time working on occupation stuff -- we're thinking of changing our occupation tree all around.  Yesterday and today, I've got some of that working.

Watched Lost last night -- actually an episode revealing some stuff:  food is dropped by parachute onto the island, their friend that they had locked up is not who he says he is, the Hatch has blast doors, the back of which have some sort of phosphorescent maps or something on the back, there is a loudspeaker system, and some woman's voice talks over them sometimes.

This is all new information about the island, but of course, it means nothing to us viewers.  Irritating show.  And next week, they'll go back to telling us nothing, I assume.

My Fudge variant is coming together.  I did a bit of graphic design last night, and the rules need a bit of polishing, but it's exciting.  Fudge is making me excited about gaming again, in a way I haven't felt ... well, since high school.

Lisa is still sick -- not as sick as she was, which is promising, but still sick.

Lisa and I ate supper at Angel's Diner last night -- a place I'm growing to quite like.  Nothing fancy, but good food, cheap enough, and a fun enough atmosphere.


Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Yesterday's Adventures...

I am apparently always a day behind when describing my day's events.  So it goes.

Yesterday I played more with occupation taxonomies at work.  Much fun.  We came up with a new scheme for doing mappings that I think will work out well... continuing work on that today.

Lisa tried her new saddle on Monster, and it apparently fits ok.  Big excitement (the saddle search has gone on for a long time now -- to be possibly near the end is big fun).

Lisa is getting sick.  :-(  Hopefully she gets better soon.

We watched the new House episode last night -- for a while, House got worse, but now it's getting better again.  More medical mysteries, less House being a jerk for jerk's sake...

We've been listening to the Grey's Anatomy podcasts on Lisa's iPod at night.  Podcasts are surprisingly fun -- I guess in this day and age, not only can everybody on the earth publish (mostly via blogs), but everybody can be their own radio stars!  :-)  Sometimes the world seems really fun.

That's a lot to happen in a day.  I'm still obsessed with Fudge (the RPG), but that's a story for another time...



Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Yesterday's Adventures...

Yesterday was busy --

I spent the day trying to reconcile occupation taxonomies between MedHunters and another job board (always fun :-).

Lisa spent the day stripping the wallpaper, peeling paint, and baseboard out of the butterfly room.  Wow.  The original builders of our house never primed the drywall, and so the paint usually strips right off the walls -- a big mess.  We bought new baseboard last night (same stuff we put in our bedroom), so we're mostly all set.

Lisa's saddle came yesterday -- she's off today to try it on Monster.

I got to leave early from work, and we talked to a furnace guy from Boehmers.  He was wonderful, and our new Lennox furnace is coming next week.  They're going to replace our broken water softener as well!

After the furnace guy left, and we ate delicious barbecued sausages for supper, I replaced the remaining receptacles in the butterfly room.  (we've replaced nearly every device in our house with Decora devices -- there are a few left that we couldn't get to before, behind furniture and stuff.  We're replacing the final ones as we redo rooms.

After we bought the trim (we tried Rona, and had bad luck, so went to Home Depot), we were pretty much done.  We poked around on our computers, watched some TV (ER), and went to bed.

All in all, a fun day!