Happy Labour Day!

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Sep 082015
 

What does one get when one puts a blogger in front of a computer with an internet connection on a Monday? A Monday Blog! Conversely, if it’s Monday and I’m in front of a computer with an internet connection posting a Monday Blog, I guess that makes me a blogger, right? I think the logic holds up in this case.

This is my last long weekend of the summer. I still have another day off tomorrow and then I’m done until Thanksgiving weekend. It’s been a good summer. I didn’t get quite as much done as I would have liked, but I sure did play a lot of games.

We had our last campfire of the season at Fab’s on Saturday. They’re always nice quiet evenings surrounded by friends telling old stories that I always look forward to. That’s done until next May or so (so far away!)

How many of you went out for Force Friday last week? It’s been one of the talks of the web this past weekend. I didn’t get to any stores so I didn’t see any of the new Star Wars merchandise in person so I can’t say much of anything myself. Apparently the new Star Wars Risk came out so I’m kinda psyched about that. I thought it was going to be a Christmas release. Other than that, I have to say that I’m not a big fan of the timing. Episode VII is still months away. It’s a little overkill to be doing it now. It keeps people talking about the movie I guess so there’s that.

I blitzed through the first season of Titansgrave the Ashes of Valkana on Geek and Sundry over the weekend. It’s another show based around watching a group of friends playing a roleplaying game. This time, it’s in a science fantasy world of Wil Wheaton’s creation (he’s the game master). It’s a much more condensed and edited show than Critical Role, with each episode of Titansgrave lasting about an hour. Both shows feature Laura Bailey as one of the players and she’s just a lot of fun to watch (and listen to). Overall, I applaud Wil Wheaton’s creative efforts, he obviously put in a LOT of work creating his world, but I like Critical Role better because of Matt Mercer’s approach. While Matt definitely spends a lot of time preparing beforehand, his game sessions are a lot looser and feel fresh. Wil Wheaton at times very much felt like he was just reading a module. Granted it was one he wrote himself, but it still came off a little stilted. Both shows have me wanting to get around the table for some roleplaying.

I’m getting to the point in Hearthstone where if I see I’m playing against a priest deck, I just concede the game before it starts. I hate Anduin. It’s like playing against Blue decks in Magic where you feel like there’s very little you can do that won’t be immediately countered (his counter cards are really cheap to play too). Couple that with players who take entirely too much time to play their turns and it can be rage-inducing at times. Sadly, priest seems to be the popular choice for other players based on how often I get matched up against Anduin decks so I’ve been giving other players a lot of quick wins. I’ll only play a priest deck myself if it’s the only way to complete my daily quest.

I guess that just about does it for me today. Have a good seven y’all and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

 

 

I Can Haz Cheezeburger

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Aug 312015
 

Hello folks. Blog time has begun. So read. Or don’t. But it’d be silly to click on the link and NOT read right?

I don’t know if I got the meme right in the title and I don’t wanna look it up so we’ll just say I did even if I didn’t. Why am I discussing cheeseburgers? Because we had a family barbecue on Saturday and we ate cheeseburgers and they were GOOOOOOOOD. Let this spellcheck-fail of a title serve to commemorate the goodness of those cheeseburgers and really all cheeseburgers worthy of the name. Also cheeseburgers.

I’m all caught up with Critical Role…except for last week’s episode that went up today apparently. That’s somewhere in the ballpark of 100 hours of content in less than two weeks. Of course, a lot of that I listened to rather than watched. Given that Critical Role is a group of voice actors sitting around a table playing Dungeons and Dragons, there’s not always that much going on visually. I found that listening to an episode as I draw content for the site works as well as listening to a podcast.

I’ve been playing a lot Hearthstone and Magic these past few weeks. Gotta keep up with the daily quests so I can get new cards without spending any money.

We tried out The World of Smog: On Her Majesty’s Service on Friday. I got my Kickstarter copy last week and I thought it was simple enough that I could teach it on the fly. We (and by we, I mean I) got a few things wrong, but it was still fun. Each player gets dealt a secret combination of ingredients they need to collect and a secret exit location. Once they have all the ingredients and a copy of each of the artifacts, they head to their exit location and use an action to flee and win. The twist? Each location has four possible trade actions, but you can only use the one facing you. Each time a player uses one of the trade actions, that action is covered up (you need to spend an action to uncover it if you want to use it again) and the location rotates so a new trade action is facing them. You can also use actions to rotate the location without using the trade action. It has a puzzle feel to it as you have to maneuver around the board to buy and sell ingredients in the most advantageous yet expedient way to make enough money to buy the artifacts and the ingredients you need to win the game before everybody else. There are also non-player agents that come out and change the dynamic and you can bribe their leader to move them around.  Kayla felt it was a little long for what it was, but I actually thought it played rather quickly. We all agreed the game was gorgeous and I love the steampunk look of it. I’d like to play again as I’d like to explore more of the game’s potential, but I think it’ll get passed over by my group for other games more often than not. Right now, Dice Town seems to be the favorite.

Four more strips to draw for the current storyline. I’ve written a couple of the strips that will follow. They’ll provide a good break between the current storyline and whatever I decide to do next.

That’s all for now. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all next Monday. Carja V.

Missing Role Play

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Aug 242015
 

Huh! If my math is correct (actually, if I’ve labeled each entry properly with the correct tag) this is my 200th blog post. That means 200 weeks of running this site. I’ve decided that warrants a huzzah so HUZZAH!

So last weekend I was watching the first part of the Tabletop season finale (they played Mice and Mystics which was awesome sauce) and in the comments, one of the viewers mentioned that Wil Wheaton (host of Tabletop) had been on another Geek and Sundry show called Critical Role and much hilarity had ensued regarding his fabled poor dice-rolling skills. I decided to check it out. Wanting to get the full experience, I started with the first episode and figured I’d quickly work my way through the series to the 18th or so episode that was the most recent episode posted and which I figured was the one featuring Wil.

Well ha! Unlike Tabletop which heavily edits the gaming session to a nice 40-or-so minute chunk, Critical Role is a live show that typically runs 3-4 hours each episode as the players and GM (all really cool voice actors) play through their D&D campaign. They really get into it too. It’s great! I’ve binged through the first 12 episodes now (which as I mentioned before are each at least three hours long) and they just reached the climax of the first story arc…well the first shot story arc. The group has been playing for a couple of years and they were approached this year by the good people at Geek and Sundry to do this on the interwebz.

I won’t spoil any of the story in case any of you might be intrigued by this concept. I’ve been entertained but it’s weird because it’s a rare chance to see how other groups play D&D. While I’ve played in a few different groups over the years, my main experiences have been with the same players time and again. I think they’re much more comfortable with the role playing concept (as voice actors, I would expect as much) but they have the same quibbles over rules that I’ve experienced, which is strangely reassuring. We all have a little munchkin in us it seems.

The main thing that got to me as I’ve been watching though is how much I miss playing D&D, both as a player and a DM. I really need to work on that again. In the meantime, I’ve got more episodes of Critical Role to watch. If you want to watch, check them out on Youtube!

That’s all the ramblings I have for this week. Have a good seven all and we’ll do this again next Monday. Carja V.

Sneezes Galore

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Aug 172015
 

Today has been a day of sneezes. Either it was the AC at work, I’m coming down with something, allergies or someone somewhere was talking about me. Was it you? What did you say? Nice things I hope.

My day disappeared yesterday as I was deeply engrossed in the Naxxramas adventure set in HearthStone. That last boss was a killer (hilarious but killer nonetheless). I won’t spoil anything for those of you who may be inclined to try it out. Suffice it to say there were some interesting challenges.

On Friday we tried out one of the board games I backed on Kickstarter: Galaxy of Trian. I’ve never played Carcassonne but it’s a similar experience from what I’m told. There was one huge play that made the difference in the game. As I was teaching my mom and Angie how to play, I didn’t want to seem like I was purposefully holding back info to advantage myself so I pointed it out to my mom who scored 93 points. Considering she won by 91 points, it was a significant move. There’s a lot to keep track of in the game, and it’s a little long for what it is, but it plays well overall. The evening was rounded out with the now requisite games of King of Tokyo and Dice Town.

By my count, I have seven strips left in the current storyline unless the epilogue runs longer than three strips. That’s coincidentally the number of strips before the site’s anniversary. Nice how that works out. The final confrontations is moving along at a brisk pace. I’m not sure how the action is playing out. It’s been challenging to draw.

There hasn’t been much else going on, so I think I’ll leave it at that and wish you all a good seven. We’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

Heheh! I Knew That!

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Aug 102015
 

Howdy folks and how are ya? It’s blogging time again. I’m blogging right now. Of course, when you read this, I’ll be done blogging. Rest assured, I’m blogging up a storm.

So last Friday I forgot to post the new Bandit Baby strip. Vacation days do this to me apparently. Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and afterwards I thought to myself that was a good time to post the strip. A more sane thought would have been to wonder if my pillow was missing me, but I take these thoughts as they occur to me so I sat down at my computer with the intent of posting the strip.

Only, I couldn’t upload the strip. I tried several times to the same result, a message saying WordPress was unable to upload the file. I thought, maybe it’s my browser. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with Firefox lately, so it wouldn’t have surprised me. I switched to Chrome and got the same result. I wondered if there was something about the file, so I tried to upload a different file and again got the same result. I worried that maybe I had reached the limit of files I could upload to my site, so I scoured Bluehost to see what exactly that limit was. As best as I could find, I had unlimited space. Just to be sure, I deleted a picture and tried to upload a new one…nope. It was a real puzzler.

After about an hour of trying to figure everything out, I resigned myself to having to contact Bluehost for some help. I started a chat window and that’s when I saw that due to server maintenance, the response time might be slow. That’s when it clicked. If they were doing server maintenance, it made sense I wouldn’t be able to upload anything. I closed the chat window and logged out to go to bed. The next morning, I tried and lo and behold it worked. Yeah, I didn’t feel silly at all!

Saturday was a big pizza party and campfire at Fab’s. To borrow an old McDonald’s slogan, it was Food, Folks and Fun. A good time was had by all. Fab ordered way too much pizza so as near as I can figure, he’s still eating pizza today, two days later.

A number of games that I backed on Kickstarter are starting to come in. In the past two weeks, I received: Galaxy of Trian, Captain’s Wager, Exploding Kittens, King Down and I got a notice that Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn should be in today (though Ashes was a straight preorder rather than a Kickstarter). They all look great, but I don’t know that some of them are a good fit for game night with my mom and niece. I’ll talk more on them if/when I try them out.

Okay, so that’s all for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

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