Literally the Last Roll

Started a D&D one-shot over the past couple of weeks and it's going well despite not being able to kill goblins. Oh and this:

Mesk broke rule 1 and tempted fate. I already used my inspire to avoid a trap sooooo now we're wandering around in a snowstorm. It was literally the last roll to get us back to town and end that day's quest. Now we're probably going to get eaten by wolves or something.

Been making a significant effort to get two projects that should have finished months ago uploaded and released. I'm also teasing a couple new series over the next couple weeks, including Diablo 3 and Divinity OS 2. LIS Before the Storm is fully uploaded (aside from the Farewell episode which I didn't get because apparently I didn't get the deluxe version of the game and you can't just buy the episode on its own...).

In addition I am one level away from completing Commander Keen 4 and having that ready for upload. I may be missing for a couple weeks at the beginning of May as I might not have access to computer/internet for awhile. I may schedule video for this time or just start up again when I return.

Dangerous Draft

Kind of a busy weekend for me again.

Spent most of the day on Saturday throwing a bunch of old broken/worn out furniture out, moving books and other items around, managing a puppy and ripping carpets/staples out of a house. There is this lovely 70's style linoleum that was hiding under the carpet. And by lovely I mean rather hideous. It's this green-yellow pattern of suns and diamonds. The other linoleum in the bedrooms was this yellowy-gold pattern that looked kind of like marble cheese.

I also ended up transferring files off my grandfather's old computer, which was old enough to still have XP running on it AND not understand what the external hard drive was when I plugged it in. Also had to make a quick trip to the walk-in medical clinic when the spring-loaded arm that typically holds up the table part of a drafting table was sprung and sliced Oliver's face open. Missed his eye by about 2 inches.

I'm still trying to get rid of my grandpa's organ (like musical instrument...not trying to pawn off his liver or anything). I still have hopes that some hipster out there will want it/come pick it up, since there is absolutely no way I'm going to be able to move that thing on my own. I was going to also try to sell this old stereo from the 50's which has a turn-table and everything (definitely hipsters would want this), but I was told that someone in the family might want it since everything still works (just needs an FM antennae).

Yesterday was spent mostly walking puppies, participating in family events and playing Horizon. I think I'm pretty close to finishing the game, but we'll see. It's essentially the reason beyond lack of motivation that I'm relying on my never-ending stash of Pillars of Eternity video as I haven't done any actual video editing in days. I think the meds I'm on have really screwed around with my mood and made it a lot worse than it would have been off them, which is ironic because theoretically, it's supposed to help. That said, the thing its supposed to be doing is not working anymore, which means the dose is too low again and I'm not going through another dose increase. That was awful. So, I don't know what I want to do. Either way, this has meant that if I don't need to go out of the house, I've either been working on D&D things, or hiding and playing Horizon.

Planning another D&D session next weekend. It may be split over two days since Mesk said there's a lot of content he's planning. I'll also make sure to start early so we don't get another late night. Mesk joked about how we should just play yesterday, half-prepared. He said we could just wing it and have me die a disgusting death in the first 15 mins.

Got no idea what's going on this week other than that. Last dodgeball games are this week and next week, then I have very little commitments for the summer other than getting my grandparent's old house habitable.

Touch ALL the Things

Had another session of 5e D&D with Mesk, this time playing with hks. I think this was hks' introduction to Mesk's Starsworn campaign in general, and like me, he hasn't really done too much of this before in the past. Both of us were a little unprepared for the session as we were a little busy during the week. I personally ended up putting all my character details together at the last second, but my liberal arts degree in BS came in handy as I pulled actions and dialogue out of my ass.

This session went way better for me in terms of engaging with the story and the events and taking more of a leading role in terms of exploration and interaction. One of my theories was just it was easier to work with a smaller group of people (i.e. what I'm more used to playing with just Shauna and Nick) and I didn't feel like I was interrupting other people's stories/dialogue. Another idea was that I was just more comfortable in general because I know Mesk and hks and have played other games with them in the past, vs the other group who are all essentially strangers to me. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't play with the other group in the future (cause that was fun too). I just don't know them as well.

Anyway, the campaign took longer than expected because hks and I pretty much went everywhere and touched all the things. We also did it in an order that didn't railroad the plot as much as Mesk anticipated. I became the official door opener somehow and kept exploring and investigating EVERYTHING. Poor Mesk had to make up some things as he went because of it.

I actually got to test out the combat which was fun as well. It's a lot more simplified from 4e D&D in that the abilities and skills are much more limited. In 4e you get a wide array of powers and feats to mix and match for combat. My other D&D campaigns have been mostly focused on the combat vs the storytelling, which is fair considering one group really loves fighting and loot, and the other group was brand new to D&D and hadn't had as much of the experience with the roleplaying aspect. That said, both groups had enough of it to balance. There is definitely more roleplaying in Mesk's campaigns vs combat, which I think is fine when you have that level of content to go through and flesh out. If we spent hours on combat, these sessions would never end (or would need to be paced much differently). An example would be a major fight Nick set up for Shauna and I which took about 4 hours to complete, and included ballistae, giant crocodile god monsters, a group of NPCS (who all uh...died heh) and about 3 or 4 types of lizardmen. In game time was likely about 10-15minutes. Nick gives out a crap ton of experience for these though, which gets us levelling up faster. We're between levels 10 and 12 in the three campaigns we cycle through.

(Nothing was as great as the time we recruited a bunch of giant purple vagina rocks to fight a succubus on a mountain and stop it from opening some sort of portal. We got the dude down to like 5hp left and he tried to escape by shape-shifting into a bat. One of the rocks got an attack of opportunity as he left and it miraculously hit, essentially back-handing the bat and killing the succubus. Nick placed a tiny little blood smear on the rock for our amusement. What made it even better was Nick tried to make him act all cool and dramatic and he got killed for his efforts.)

Mesk's other action that made it take a lot longer was that he made the session a kind of mystery and I'm kind of a sucker for mysteries and problem solving. I play too much Fire Emblem too, so I like the high-level planning and strategy, while trying to think of creative ways to accomplish goals or fights. This is part appealing to my interests and part experience as Nick often rewards us for thinking out situations or battles creatively.

So we opened all the doors, investigated all the things, and touched EVERYTHING. Then I misunderstood some of the backstory and confused both of them by constantly trying to blow up the station when I thought it was compromised. Oops. I'll just write it off as a quirk of the character I was playing.

Anyway, I tried a little harder at the roleplay aspect this time and Mesk seems to think it went well, so hopefully that's a good sign for future sessions. I unfortunately had to quiet down at the end of the session because my voice was starting to go again and it was like...4am when we finished, so the video again will be of varying quality. If Mesk wants me to revoice some things later, I'm totally fine with that.

Again, if I get permission, I will share links to the videos on the blog when they are complete.

Suicidal Pedestrians and Interesting Names

There was a man walking against traffic, on the Calf's Robe bridge this morning, on Deerfoot. ON THE BRIDGE AGAINST TRAFFIC. I kept seeing all these people ahead of me slamming on the brakes out of surprise, and I get there and there's a dude carrying a trash bag, walking in the shoulder on the god damned bridge where you drive 100km/hr and is the most dangerous section of the most dangerous road in our city. That was about as good as the people riding bicycles on that road last year.

Then I get into work where my coworker was waiting to hear about the birth of her nephew. She got the news a few minutes ago and they named him "Ansible." Okay then. I fail to see how a baby translates to "faster than light messaging," but maybe it's a magic baby. Either way, we've been trying to figure out what his nick-names would be. Maybe he'll just go by his middle name...


While I wait for the world to inevitably come to an explosive end, I've been working a lot on writing and the RPG. I got an extended session in to work on the RPG last Saturday and I got A LOT done. I'm actually almost done the functional bits of the "Tutorial area" (the Office). And I know that sounds like tutorial as in showing you how to play, but really I mean tutorial in that I'm learning how to work with RPG maker and making things as silly as possible. Functionally, it's playable. There's a few elements that lead to dead ends or incomplete segments though, which is next on the list. I've also started to map out the next two level sections.

One thing I've learned is that all the dialogue and text I have pre-written ends up changing when I translate it to the screen.

If I could work regularly at the rate I worked last Saturday, I could be done a lot of this by the end of the year. That said, motivation, life circumstances and difficulty barriers will likely crop up. I want to see if I can have something playable for Extra Life this year so I can offer it as an incentive for Kathleen raising money. This game is intended to be for a small audience (mostly private), as there are a lot of assets like music that I wouldn't be allowed to use. That said, if I could create most of the assets myself, which is difficult, but I have the ability to do, AND could come up with a solution to the music, I could make this available to more people. I never intend to sell or market it though.

As for the writing...I've actually got a lot done there in that department. I've cranked out a lot of pages over the past two months, spending a lot of time downstairs on the couch keeping an eye on my puppy.

The downside to this productivity is video production has been reduced to a couple hours a week. In the past two weeks I've done little more than edit a little bit of Dishonored 2. I still have a massive repository of videos in the form of Pillars of Eternity, but even that will run out eventually and I will need to finish the game. The good news is a lot of the footage is there to work with, so now that I've set up my remote desktop, I can realistically work on this.

Lastly, in the past week we had the second session of Mesk's D&D campaign, in which I participated as an NPC character from the previous session. It again, went for a good 8+ hours, but I was able to stay to its conclusion (well mostly, I think Mesk did something extra with one of the characters afterwards). I also managed to voice (very terribly) all the lines as I played. I often neglected to voice my own lines though, mostly because I was focused on what I was typing. I think it went really well.

The session was as interesting and entertaining as the last, with more focus on plot advancement and character interaction than anything else. There were only a few opportunities for battle, some of which were talked their way out of...or escalated to the point where one of the characters tried to solo a boss (and then got interrupted when I sent a gundam in there cause I'd been waiting for that freaking robot to skewer someone all game). Speaking of robots, there was definitely some softcore robot love going on in this past session.

As for my first "real" roleplay (in that Nick and Shauna aren't around to forgive my terrible interactions with other characters and that it was not verbal), I think I did okay. I already know I wasn't GREAT and there was an incident where I had to move locations and it happened to be at the worst possible time (as my character was required for information), but I was WAYYYYY out of my comfort zone. This isn't something I've ever really done before, and a lot of these roleplaying or tabletop games have been forcing me to learn and try to get better at this.

It's definitely a rediscovery/retraining. It's something I think I had when I was kid when an old friend of mine and I would make up our own games and fantasy worlds. Then he left without notice and my new "crew" swiftly crushed those fantasies as they weren't too interested in those sorts of things. They also weren't afraid of voicing those opinions to my face. Since then I've been hardcoded to think things like roleplaying, writing and world building need to be kept a secret, and any failure to do so results in ridicule and embarrassment. So in my head I'm like, "yeah, this is cool and engaging" but you go deeper and all I hear is "you're making a fool of yourself." It's also an issue of "if you aren't good at it, or taken the time to get good at it privately, then don't even bother," which is a whole other clusterfuck that's built up over the span of a decade and only started to get broken down and rebuilt about 5 years ago. I care a lot less now about what people think, but it's the reason I get scared away from some things still. An example is when "you know *insert famous person here* has already done it right?" ended up translating to "someone better than you did it already so why bother trying?" in my head and I completely abandoned multiple hours of work on a project and never returned.

At least I'm learning a lot about myself. I guess that's why I have a lot of respect for these other players and the ease in which they jump into their roles. I enjoy watching them interact with the world and develop their characters/story. I know the campaign has been a lot of work for Mesk to run, but it's paid off in my opinion. Apparently there's a lot of people interested in joining, so I'll likely take on the role of various NPCs, which will probably be good training for me. Either way, I'm in for the other sessions, whether I'm watching/commentating or playing.

When I find out what Mesk wants to do with the D&D videos and what he wants to share of it, I'll likely post links to them in the blog.



PS - To my old friend, I doubt you're reading this, or ever will, but if you are, know I still have that house you built for my favourite toy. It's on display in my sitting area. I lost all the monster cards and that stick figure book though and that kills me a little.

One-Shot Marathon

I started this blog on Monday, got busy, went to dinner and passed out on my couch so I never finished it. It's Tuesday now, but pretend that this was all written yesterday mmk?


Had my first taste of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition last night as I watched a campaign run by Mesk. It was drastically different than the other experiences with Dungeons and Dragons I've had in the past. I was introduced to the game on version 3.5 and I've played with two groups of people on 4th edition. In both cases, I've played with/know the people in person (in addition to playing with one group occasionally online when we can't get together). This was an incredible learning experience for me because I had a chance to really pay attention to text-based interaction and roleplay. I've seen some of Mesk's videos, but I must admit I wasn't so concerned with the mechanics until this.

I notice that the players have a lot more time to think about their actions, roleplaying and conversation vs when it's voiced, which is a lot more awkward when you have long pauses to figure out whether a) it's really what you want to say/do and b) whether it's actually in character. Writing it lets a person say exactly what they want in a relatively orderly sequence and have time to think through it. This is a level of interaction and roleplaying I was not prepared to experience because I REALLY suck at roleplaying at the best of times (that said I've never really done...text based roleplay before so...). Seeing these players do it with such ease was a little intimidating, but impressive. I can tell there's a lot of anime influences in these people's lives though with how many references were made. I got like...1/3 of them (and the only reason I got the DBZ ones is cause Shauna introduced me to DBZ Abridged).

I recorded the game and ended up voice acting a lot of the spoken lines (very poorly). Was more for practice and fun than anything else since I haven't been doing much LP work lately. I made it through about three of the eight hours before my voice completely gave out and I had to resort to just commenting occasionally, or when I was really tired late-game, simply giggling. Some of the rolls were really hilarious. One of the things the players tried I'm like, there is no way this isn't going to end in tears. It actually didn't, but man that whole end boss sequence escalated quickly.

One thing I didn't expect was the length of the one-shot. I expected it to be 3-4 hours tops. It went for 8 hours and I ended up delivering a 10GB recording to Mesk. I actually didn't know how it fully ended (there was a lot of character building stuff going down) so I peaced out at 3:30am to be unconscious for three hours (work in the morning).

Personally I think the campaign went really well. There's a lot of weird things in 5e I'm not used to, but Nick made the comment that it was really plug-and-play vs 4e, so I can see why that edition appeals to custom campaigns. I saw a couple players min/maxing their characters, though when two of them were actually hit, they were almost one-shotted, so I can see that a lot of it went into maximizing damage. The test seemed to give Mesk a lot of experience and information, so that was good to see. I'd definitely watch again or even join in the future, but I don't know how my experience would play into the group dynamic. My campaigns have made me very cynical in terms of events and characters - see Boats of Doom and Undead Campaigns when I finally get the videos done for them. Basically the former had us enslaved at the beginning and we got all our items constantly stolen and the latter has been never-ending harassment from the undead and assassin HANDS.


So after my nap I attempted to vote in the morning. I packed up a puppy and drove over to a church nearby to vote (by-elections cause Harper took his ball and went home). I walked in and made it pretty far before I realized that it was the advanced polling station and actually had to go to a school to vote. A school that's like...a block away from where I live. I debated going back and realized that it was the start of school (was about 745 and the school starts at 759), so I decided it wasn't worth dealing with the kids and the buses and cars and parents and general chaos that I typically avoid the area for. The people I knew would win, won anyway so meh (my area is full of of new families and old white conservative people...the latter being the majority that votes). Then I facerolled a few spreadsheets at work, ate a lot of Brazilian food (BUT NO BBQ PINEAPPLE!!1!!!1!) and made it through watching two cat videos before I was suddenly unconscious on the couch.


I think the short-term solution to needing to supervise a puppy a lot on the main level would be to set up a remote desktop on the laptop for my main computer and just work on things downstairs. I would get so much more done for RPG making, sprite creation, video editing and going through some old files/videos. This will likely be implemented Thursday or Friday though as tonight I work and will definitely be passing out immediately when I get home and Wednesday I'm TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS. Don't know why I capitalized that to be honest, but now I have BTO stuck in my head.

RIP Sir Charles, The Red Civic

Well a lot has happened since last Thursday, especially in terms of my mobility. Thankfully all this started on a Friday so I had the weekend to work some of it out.

So the short version is I'm out of a car. The long version is I left the house Friday morning, put my car into reverse and then into drive to go forward, pressed the gas and all that happened was the engine revved. So I tried again, thinking my tires were slipping (winter is upon us and I still have my summer tires on) and the engine revved again. Thinking I was insane and accidentally put the car in neutral, I double checked and pressed one last time. The car moved. That was mildly concerning until I got off the back alley to the road where I would press the gas and it would accelerate to a certain point and then just start revving. I tested it a bit longer to see if I needed to go home, but it got "better" so I drove to work on a less busy road (taking it on Deerfoot would have been catastrophic, so good call me).

I made it to work all right and spent the entire day worrying about it. Gave my mechanic a call and he said he could look at it on Monday. I go to drive my car home for the day and it starts up and accelerates all right. I get about 2/3 of the way home when the car suddenly decides it doesn't want to shift into 3rd gear (it's a little hard to tell on an automatic, but I made an educated guess based on the fact that it would rev if I tried to go faster than 40 or 50km/h).

So I'm driving down Anderson screaming encouragement at my car and begging other drivers (not that they could hear me) to not stop so I could keep speed. Turn the corner onto another road and I'm like OKAY I'VE GOT A DOWNHILL SLOPE TO WORK WITH. So I coast down and get more mad than usual when people don't know how to merge, and keep speed all the way until I have to cross the train tracks...and make it up a hill.

It's not a steep hill. It's a long hill. I could only drive about 30-40km/h all the way up, no matter what I did. I got about halfway up when the engine light came on. So I put on my hazard lights and drove to the nearest residential street I could find and called someone to come get me. Managed to get the car home in low gear once I knew I wasn't going to get stuck in the middle of a busy road. Granted, I was close enough to my house to walk back if needed.

I spent the whole weekend worrying about a verdict I already knew I was going to get, cleaned out my whole car (there was a lot of random crap in there) and got someone to help me drive it to the mechanic late Sunday evening. Monday I got the call that my car's transmission was toast. Thankfully my mechanic only charged for 30 mins even though he could have charged the full hour.

At this point I have to say that hail damage was the best thing to happen to my car as I already wrote it off and got the money for it. Was about to give it away for parts when I got another call from my mechanic. He tells me he has a guy whose son totalled his car in an accident. Turns out it's the same make and model as mine. He says the guy is willing to buy my car for a few hundred because he wants to put the brand new transmission from the wrecked car into my car so that this guy's son can drive it. Been negotiating over the past few days, but, looks like I'm going to get some money and Frankencar Sir Charles will live to drive again.

However, I'm still out of a car. LPs with Shauna are currently on hold because it would literally take me 2+ hours to get to her house from my house on transit. I have a car I can occasionally borrow and I'm carpooling to work, but I'm going to need a new ride asap. I suppose I also have the option of a Car2Go, but there's a limited number in my area. Also going to have to find a ride of some sort to Kathleen's for Extra Life as I don't know if I can find a car and buy it in a week and a half.

In other news, the headphone jack on my work computer (mac ugh) is hosed. Not sure what happened there cause it was fine yesterday and it doesn't look like anything's jammed in there. Yet, the headphones won't fit in there. Guess my computer got the memo and is trying to be courageous. I'll try to investigate in detail when I'm not at work.

Also my phone is still chain crashing and resetting. It's also insisting that I have voicemail when I do not, in fact, have any messages. It seems to think I'm more popular than I actually am. GOD DAMN IT. IT HAS RESTARTED 5 TIMES IN THE LAST 10 MINUTES.

Pillars of Eternity continues, but I'm concerned about this weird static and interference I'm getting occasionally from the mic. Shauna is now way ahead of me cause I haven't played since like...Saturday and she keeps eluding to things that haven't happened for me yet. Shadow of Mordor is still going up and I'm eagerly awaiting Dishonored 2. Apparently the remastered (lol I typed remasted at first) Skyrim is out this week, which I'd likely be interested in seeing more about, but won't be playing yet. Um...Halloween dodgeball tournament all day Saturday so I'll likely be ded that day and actually ded the next day (though I'm trying to set up a D&D session with Shauna and Nick). Got a week of car hunting and then Extra Life November 5, which I still haven't recorded a video for ajsdahjksasjdaksbgsjdsal

Anyway, TL;DR - Car ded but will be resurrected for someone else, computer headphone jack ded because it gained sentience and figured out its an apple product, phone is almost ded and is taunting me, haven't made any progress on LPs since last Saturday, and rubber balls thrown at my face all day Saturday.