Robust McManlyPants on Average Display

I’m getting prepped to run my first game of White Wolf’s Vampire in… eight years? Ten? Something like that, anyway, as the last game I ran was the Dark Ages game and was played at Dixie Lane. I ran a short intro to a long-running, rotating D&D game after that and a one shot here and there but this is the first time in basically a decade since I’ve sat down with the real world and the World of Darkness and picked a place where I wanted them to overlap.

The new game is to be set in Nashville. After making a few off-hand remarks to my players, things such as “oh, let’s say Elysium is in the basement of a church around the corner from the Ryman Auditorium,” and, later, “I’ll go ahead and say the church has a pretty serious homeless outreach mission so there’s a steady supply of mortals around,” things like that, I hit the Googles to do some research and I pinged KJ for some suggestions.

Here is what I have learned: planning a World of Darkness game in the era of Google Maps is a completely different experience from what it was ten years ago.

KJ suggested a specific bar, The Red Door, as a good game location. A little searching and mapping later, I’d found out that if I typed ‘bar’ into the ’search nearby’ box I got little arcs following the general curve of the city in those areas so, tah-dah, I had defined The Rack for Nashville’s undead inhabitants. Some zooming and street view and ’search nearby’ turned up a church that is around the corner from the Ryman with an extensive outreach mission for homeless and borderline people in Nashville. I turned up a cemetery with public Masonic rituals for The Boyf to research towards his Masonic character. Katastrophes identified a specific historic plantation as the place where her character worked as a reenactor. I was able to send Mr. Pink Eyes a link to a fansite for Opryland USA that had a map, pictures and video of the rides in action when the park was still open. Katastrophes made a Google Calendar for us to schedule games and Mr. Pink Eyes made a Google Map we can all edit with all the places we’ve identified thus far as major landmarks or important to the game and the characters. Bascha is writing her character background in Google Docs so I can read it right away when she’s done. I put up an in-game blog with links to everything and Steven has commented on it in-character using his character’s shiny new Gmail address.

I’ve now seen ground-level, from-the-sidewalk pictures of basically every place I know is immediately important at the start of the game.

This beats the shit out of a big pile of notes on paper I would have to keep track of for the next year.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1 is hell of fun if you like adventure games and RPGs. I’ve only played it for about an hour but that seems to be the two genres it most heavily samples in producing its unique mix. The art is eye-poppingly bright, the cel-shaded look gives everything the enthusiasm and fun of a cartoon and the writing thus far is very good. It’s a joyous thing to play. It’s not crazy complicated; it’s fun, which is what I’m told games are meant to be.

36,530 words. I had 37,000 as today’s goal but I ended after a chapter I really enjoyed writing and decided it was better to stop there than squeeze out 500 words I might not enjoy or that might keep me writing past the start of tonight’s Karazhan raid.

Oh, World of Warcraft, my dark tempter.

The lesson I have to re-learn every year: Cup a Joe’s on Hillsborough Street is a never-ending freak show where no one has any respect for personal space. Also, I aged seventy five years in a moment when my first thought upon seeing the hottie barrista with his jeans sagging down was, He should pull his pants up.

This post is going to stand a chance only with those people who have gamed with me and even then most likely only the half-dozen or so folks from one specific game. Take that, general public.

This weekend I wrote the background for my next D&D character, Jonathan Vaz. For folks who knew him, this is the adopted human brother of my old character, Leeritan Vaz. I’ve retooled and fleshed out some of his back story and come up with a way for Jonathan to turn out to be a Tiefling. I know, I know, but here is the thing: I am addicted to playing enormous freaks.

If for some reason you don’t know anything about Faerun or Thay or Tieflings and you’re still reading, a brief primer: Thay is a nation ruled by aggressive and malicious wizards who worship Kossuth, the god of fire. They are continually trying to invade everyone around them. Lee and the rest of the gang (Dyson, Trover, Pele, El, Abdul, etc.) were in Thay to rescue El and Pele and in the process rescued two “human” street urchins. As an act of contrition for using fire magic (Lee is a druid of Meilikki), Lee took them to be adopted by his parents and give them a better life in Amn. Lee’s parents live in Athkatla, the capital of Amn, a city in which arcane magic is borderline taboo due to a long history of evil wizards trying to blow up the place. If you’ve played Baldur’s Gate II then you’ve spent a lot of time in Athkatla, actually.

In considering Jonathan as a character, I couldn’t decide whether Jonathan was going to be a Warlock or a Hexblade. Eventually I decided he’s to be a Hexblade (with a few Rogue levels as they make everything tastier) because I have spent years wanting to play a Hexblade and his sister will be the Warlock. That makes his incredibly kind, good-natured elven parents, who really are just ordinary merchants living in a human city, the proud parents of a sarcastic and destructive Druid/Rogue (Leeritan), a tiefling Hexblade/Rogue (Jonathan) and a tiefling Warlock/Rogue.

This is a family that has one very interesting Midwinter feast when they all get together.

At 5:30am on a Sunday, all activities are specialized activities. No one is just up and about for the sake of being up and about. I played blackjack at Katastrophes’ and Mr. Pink Eyes’ place last night, rustled Pants Wilder and The Boyf into the car around 3:30am and drove them home; The Boyf started a pot of coffee for me when we arrived at 4am and then trundled off to bed. At 5:10 I took a shower and changed clothes and at 5:30 I was driving down 55 wondering if the other cars were people up early or up late and further wondering which would apply to me.

I hit the Bojangles drive-through and noticed something interesting: every other vehicle in their parking lot was a truck pulling a fishing boat.

Every single one.

A chicken biscuit and a large Diet Coke later, I was noticing that there was no one else on 54 West as I headed towards Target. I pulled up in their parking lot by 5:50 and thus was there just in time for the morning shift folks to start pulling up and the night stockers to start heading out. I sat in the car and played Gameboy and smoked a cigarette and watched the sky start to get purple around the eastern edge.

At 6:00am a guy who looked completely cracked out strolled up to the doors of Target, pulled out an aqua-green Gameboy and sat down on the ground. I got out of my car and walked over near him and did the same. “Oh, I guess you’re #1 in line,” he said. “I saw you parked over there when I came in and wondered if you were here for a Wii.”

“Yep,” I nodded. I’d had coffee and now soda but I was feeling the pull of the long night. “I can’t believe I’m here this early. I went to a party last night and I’ve not slept.”

“Me neither,” he said. “I went to a party and just stayed up.” We chatted briefly, then a friend or roommate or something of his showed up and joined us.

“I don’t want a Wii,” the friend said. “I’m just here for moral support.”

A few minutes after, a middle-aged dumpy guy rolled up in a pick-up. He was there to buy one for his son’s college graduation present. A man and his twelve-year-old daughter showed up shortly after. Then a woman in her 50’s who expressed stunned surprise that she was doing this to get a video game system for her 20-year-old son. Then a guy and a girl in their pajamas. Then a woman who said her boyfriend couldn’t believe she was doing this for a videogame. Then a well-dressed young woman whose boyfriend had clearly only shown up with her because he was going to catch hell if he didn’t. Then more people. Then more.

By 8am, when the manager had handed out numbers and we’d formed a more-or-less orderly line, there were sixteen people there to get a Wii and the store had eighteen Wii’s to sell. “Those last two,” the manager said with a shake of his head, “They’ll be gone in thirty minutes.”

Today, by chance, is the release day for some new model of the Xbox 360, somehow fancier than the normal one. “Anyone here for the Xbox?” the manager asked. One guy put up his hand, then looked around and asked of the rest of us, “Am I the only idiot who thought there’d be a line for the Xbox? Shit.” That got a laugh.

“A friend of mine who works at Best Buy said he thought people might be showing up early for it there,” one of my linemates replied.

On my way out of Target I drove past the Best Buy and there were two people in front of it. They were employees.

I got a Wii. I just finished running all the system updates on it. Now I’m going to try some games. When I got home this morning at 8:30, The Boyf called out as I climbed the stairs to our bedroom. “How’d it go?” he asked.

“Success,” I said, “But now I’d like to do that thing where I lay down and close my eyes.”

OK, so the title is a joke only gotten by those who knew the phone number of Compound X. Sue me.

I have a hot tip on a place that’s getting a shipment of Wii’s tomorrow morning. I am going to be there at the crack of dawn to try to get one. I’m trying to get Pants Wilder to go with me. Tonight, however, I’ll be playing cards with Busty O’Lipp to send her off right on her big move to Parts West. I will probably have a couple of cocktails in the process of this. All of this is potentially going to make for an unpleasant experience trying to get a Wii - or will it? I’m not sure that being in line at the crack of dawn to buy a Wii can be made worse by the after-effects of a couple of drinks. I think it might help. Heck, I might take a couple of drinks with me.

Also, The Boyf is off at the store getting the last of what he needs to make salsa and I need to try a red velvet cake recipe. Fingers crossed!

So, this week I’ve been on call for work. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to be on call. Lesson learned: I’m a whiny little man-child. I can’t discuss it - and don’t want to discuss it - in tremendous detail but suffice to say I have had moments of sincere displeasure with my customer base. Having gotten the self-critical lesson out of the way, here are some other lessons to learn:

• Four in the effing ay of the em is not a good time to tune your IDS signatures. I don’t care that you’re already up for your day and want to do it while it’s fresh on your mind. I have to go to fucking work in five hours and I’ve already been asleep for three. Guess who’s going to have to have the exact signatures you want tuned repeated several times because he’s mostly asleep? Me, that’s who. Also, fuck you for calling.
• Ten in the evening? Not a great time to call so you can have someone to bitch at about your internal processes. They ain’t mine, jack. They’re yours. I understand the jargon, yes, but I don’t actually care and I can’t change anything. I am an engineer. I am not a therapist. Your need: a therapist.
• Some of my colleagues are just awesome. There is no better time than five in the morning to hear your 3rd shift co-worker say, “OK, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to make sure you do not have to talk to this person. Don’t worry about it.” Then, they do that. It’s really, really amazing. At LastJob there was a lot of fire-and-forget with other people’s problems.

Also, Guitar Hero II: great game or greatest game? On the downside, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a Cheap Trick song stuck in my head and I’m not really ready to revisit those years. Happily, I discovered that my usual antidote - the chorus to Rufus Wainwright’s 11:11 - works even against Surrender. I should write him a letter to thank him.

What in the hell is Surrender about, anyway? Old KISS records? Is the point of this song really that Mommy & Daddy are “alright?” Is this Cheap Trick singing a song about how one’s parents are hip in their own way and one should get over it? Oh, wait, it’s Cheap Trick. They are our parents. Because these are the interwebs I even checked Wikipedia for them and, sure enough, there they are. Upcoming dates: a casino in Lincoln, RI. Honest to the gods, if they came here I’d go see them. I don’t care whether that’s shameful or ironic or whatever.

So, I got the new Mac Pro. Yowza. Can I just say that again? Perhaps with more emphasis?

Yowwwwwwwwwwza.

Highest FPS in WoW so far? Over 200. Average is around 75 or 80, though. In Shattrath. On a Saturday afternoon. In the bank. With every texture, spell effect, etc., maxed out.

OK, I have to stop bragging now. That’s not mature of me. It’s true, though. Every word.

Also, how awesome is this: I cleaned out the shed today and now kind of wonder if it will ever again be safe to use my hands to eat. Ugh. I will never, ever let my shed get like this again. Never. I swear it. But the awesome part is how much of what was in there is able to be recycled by the city. Another awesome thing is that the big recyclables - the mounds of cardboard, the car battery so thoughtfully left by the previous owner of my home (you know, the one sitting out in the yard), that sort of stuff - are all accepted at a city “Convenience Center” about five minutes from my house. I read this and then my heart sank at the realization that it was already after 5pm on a Saturday, no way they’d be open, but I checked the hours just in case: open until 7pm on Saturdays. Fuck yes. I love Durham.

Just a brief aside to whoever keeps ending up here by Googling to try to find out where LBRS (Lower Blackrock Spire) is in WoW.

First, here’s a map. The entrance to Blackrock Mountain is that little gate icon thingy in the lower-left corner.

Second, LBRS on WoWWiki.

Note that “LBRS” (acronym for Lower Blackrock Spire) is commonly pronounced “loobers.”

Heavens, but I had a good weekend for gaming. Saturday afternoon The Boyf and I rolled out to NC Pride on the campus of Duke U. and did a little shopping and a lot of running into people we know. Dinner followed, and after that I piled into a LBRS raid with several other members of City in Flames. About halfway through someone commented they were going to grab a beer, and then everyone was grabbing a beverage, and after two very full glasses (something like four normal glasses) of a delish Cotes du Rhone we picked up at A Southern Season a few months ago I was, frankly, plastered. It is a testament to how much World of Warcraft I have played that I am able to get just slap-hammered and still play fairly well. That Pants Wilder and I signed up for an Alterac Valley immediately afterwards and I managed more killing blows than deaths and nearly 80 honor kills is just pure luck. As far as I could tell, that AV was screaming and slightly blurry chaos. That we won literally cannot have had anything to do with my presence there. I remember greatly amusing one of my guildmates by saying someone - I don’t even remember who - was an asshole, but not “like, driving a Porsche and having a coke habit and voting for Reagan asshole, that would be meta-asshole.”

I think that I should never, ever drink and play WoW again. Or I should do it all the time. Oh, wait, that sort of mindset is one of the reasons it took me seven years to finish my bachelor’s. Ah, yes. That’s settled, then.

Then, Sunday we formally inaugurated our new Magepire (two Mages, one Vampire) game at Bascha’s place. Mages? Definitely fun. The system is still confusing to me in terms of the sheer versatility of the powers Mages have under the hood, but damn is it fun.

Then, Monday night we got to enjoy another round of WoW, this time in UBRS. No drinking that time, and it’s decidedly for the best.

So, here are some before and after screenshots of my User Interface for World of Warcraft.

Before: Setherax, my Dwarf Hunter.

After: Setherax, alone, in a small party and in a large party. And yes, he totally has a pet boar named BossHogg. Just try and tell me that isn’t awesome.

While I’m at it, here are Leeritan (Night Elf Druid) and Brawk (Human Warrior) after the switch.

The main point of this change, for me, was the ability to move and resize buttons in the interface, eliminate bars that were not entirely full, and (in the case of Setherax) create some white-space in the bars so that I could break apart various functions to some degree. Note that traps are at the far right, tracks slightly in from there, then the middle is occupied entirely by combat, spell and trade buttons. He’s a Hunter, so he has an ass-load of buttons. Note the pristine beauty of Leeritan’s tidy buttons in comparison, however - or Brawk, whose screen is practically naked.

Nice thing about Leeritan’s: the bottom row switches out to shapeshift-based abilities when he swaps forms.

Sweet.

Have you seen Bascha’s pictures of Dorian? Holy. Cow. My brain just blew a cuteness fuse.

Also, the whole Fortuny thing. That link goes to a Wired blog, from there you can get to the (ahem) raw data if you want. In other words, the link in this post, the one you’re reading right now, is work-safe, but anything past there is totally uncharted territory. My take? Fortuny’s a tool and I don’t wish actual physical retribution on him but I do expect he’ll spend a while hiding behind someone or another’s couch every time he happens to see some huge ‘roid-hound looking his direction at the mall, and he deserves every ounce of fear he suffers for it. I mean, seriously, pick a better target if you’re going to play stupid bullying pranks, kid. I thought RandroidsObjectivists were supposed to be all rational and shit, but he couldn’t work that one out for himself? Really? That maybe it wouldn’t be smart to piss off a couple hundred guys who derive sexual gratification from inflicting physical and verbal abuse? Oy! Ayn should have gotten a smarter batch of disciples.

Now, a few notes for people whose Google searches lead them here:

• Please, for fuck’s sake, I’ll say it again: Just buy The American Astronaut if you want to watch it, there’s even a “Buy Now!” link right there on the goddamn page, I cannot believe you would rip off an indie movie by trying to download it. Jerks.
• Are you ready for one giant skate for derbykind? This weekend sees The Carolina Rollergirls take on the Sin City Rollergirls (of Vegas, naturally) in their first ever bout at Dorton Arena.
• No, really, I have no idea what happens to you if you hide from a cop in Virginia. I’m betting it means eventual arrest, however!

In videogames news: LEGO Star Wars II. The original trilogy. Aw yeah!

I have also signed up for NetFlix recently, and so we’re working our way through a whole slew of noir mysteries and documentaries on a variety of topics. I’ve finally rated enough movies that NetFlix is starting to recommend things that might be to my liking - such as Depeche Mode concert DVDs - but it’s also making some surprising remarks on my entertainment tastes. I currently have Wigstock in my queue - I cannot watch that movie enough times, I should just buy the damn thing - and have highly rated a few other queer-themed films and chosen “Not Interested” for the plethora of Bible stories they wanted me to watch. This apparently means, in NetFlix’ opinion, that I should watch a saucy teen drama from France titled Come Together. Ahem. The cover has two teenage boys shirtlessly making eyes at you. I did not add it to my queue, because if I want porn there’s a whole internet of it out here, but I was amused by the user review that concluded the film, which offers a richly acted, tense and complicated drama, “sadly does not include as much nudity as the cover suggests.” Eek.

At any rate, if you want to “Friends” me on NetFlix - which I take is all the rage on these webbertron things - then email me and I’ll let you know the address by which I signed up.

Finally, I’ve spent much of this week playing with my User Interface in World of Warcraft. My new flavor is Insomniax, a combination of Discord Unit Frames, BibBars and CT_Mod. Bottom line: I’ve totally smashed my old UI to pieces and rearranged it to buy back a lot of real estate on the screen. Tasty. I’ll have some before-and-after screenshots up sometime, probably tomorrow.

This week has marked my first foray into Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft - specifically, Alterac Valley. The setup of this particular BG is that the two sides - the Alliance and the Horde - are in a race to destroy one another’s strongholds and defeat one another’s non-player, computer-controlled leaders. You start at one end of an enormously long map and basically run straight at - and hopefully through - one another and try to complete your objectives before the other side.

I’ve been playing WoW for over a year at this point, and I had never tried Battlegrounds because, frankly, I had a prejudice against it. It seemed to me like it would appeal to a certain type of player I’d simply rather avoid: the power-gaming, twitch-centric FPS fiend accustomed to deathmatches and approaching it with the attitude that all the fun to be had consists of pwning n00bs. What drew me in, finally, was the fact that there’s some damned good gear to be gotten from PvPing, and I needed to gear up my Hunter alt if he was ever going to be worth taking to a real instance.

I would like to say that I was, with qualifications, very wrong about PvP.

I think it’s important to note those qualifications, though: there is definitely a “gankster” attitude present in BG. It is deeply chaotic. It is all about killing each other just as much as it’s about killing NPC objectives. That said, for the most part it surprised me with how much strategy and tactics could be found there.

• There is one particular set of small outcrops over the valley, at one point of the map, where it is always useful to stand and rain death from above. The fact that people cannot see you on their screens, or don’t angle the game-camera such that they can see you, is an absurdly good tactical advantage.
• A well-used pet can create tremendous chaos in a given exchange.
• Everyone, on both sides, always ignores pets. This only adds to the chaos they can create.
• Besides the real presence of n00b-pwning - and I am the n00best of the n00bs in battlegrounds, I assure you - there is also some genuine teamwork that happens. It’s largely spontaneous, because the chaos of BG does not lend itself to organized efforts, but in a way that makes the teamwork all that more satisfying when it does happen. The presence of a healer who actually heals is a pleasant surprise. The presence of a healer who will heal a pet? That’s like shitting a diamond the size of your fist: it hurts when your pet pulls enough aggro to start taking damage, but heavens, that healing is nice to see.
• Almost everyone from Medivh I’ve seen in BGs has been a complete cock. Yes, yes, they were the first ones to open the gates. They are also pushy assholes.

Cutting to the chase, a discussion on the mailing list for my guild eventually included Pants Wilder joking that what might turn us away from wanting to ally with another guild for the purpose of doing big raids would be if a guild were to, for example, say grace before every pull (a “pull” being when the group positions itself and then attacks a specific target creature, or “mob”). It led me to write this, which non-WoW-nerds will probably find unintelligible, and which has been lightly edited from the original:

THE SCENE: A ten-man group hides around a corner in UBRS, waiting for Jed to approach.

Raid Leader: Oh Lord, we thank you for your generosity in providing this rare spawn elite, and we ask that you shield our tank -

Priest: Wait, I thought I was shielding the rogue so he could sap…

Raid Leader: (It’s metaphor, shut up) (cough) We ask that you shield our tank and guide the poisoned daggers of our rogue, claws of our druid and spells of our casters -

Warlock: Actually, according to the backstory of the world I’m probably not hip with The Light, or vice versa, FYI.

Paladin: Wait, shouldn’t I be the one leading us in prayer if the priest isn’t? Or if they’re in, you know, Shadow Form. (pause) Cuz that’s almost certainly sacrilegious. (pause) If you think about it.

Raid Leader: SHUT UP WE ARE NOT AN RP GUILD - spellsofourcasters (waits for objection) sothattheymayDPSthefuckoutofthismobENDOFDISCUSSIONamen.

Druid: Cat durid don’t talk about fite

(silence)

Druid: Also, eqwul time 4 Cenarius plzkthx

Another awesome week at The Lake has passed, and I feel much refreshed.  My laptop died on Friday, with a series of grinds and screeches coming from the hard drive and the CD drive refusing to shut properly then refusing to open properly.  One sale item at Best Buy later, I am writing this on a new laptop that is scaled to my mobile needs - it can play games if it has to, but it would rather write.  This is a good thing.

Speaking of writing, the sad news from my laptop woes is that I lost a great character background I’d written for a new World of Darkness game and I lost the 2nd zombie story, which I worked on while at the lake but didn’t have a chance to offload anywhere given the lack of interwebs.  Ah, well, you win some, you lose some.  This just gives me a chance to rewrite it, after all.