Showing posts with label Dodgeball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dodgeball. Show all posts

Monday, June 12, 2017

Over-Thinking Schwas with Doors

Doors. Doors are my bane. I swear to god it's always the doors.

Busy weekend with a dodgeball tournament and a D&D session. My body is letting me know what it thinks about that today. Our team came in 5th in the tournament, which is fine cause it's for fun/charity anyway (though some teams take it a little more seriously) though I'm a little sad I wasn't really playing all that well. I think a few of the players' extremely fast throws + small gym + memories of whiplash cowed me a little.

My favourite part of tournaments. Quick Draw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylKS84hQzKg

I've officially joined the Starsworn campaign as a regular player. I ended up making an Earthborn Trickery Domain cleric with a disadvantage on stealth. Figure that one out.

Mesk was kind enough to set up a 1-shot, especially since I ended up joining a little late (the full campaign is likely close to starting and Mesk probably would have already if schedules lined up a bit better). I feel a little bad too because I was unable to join until about 5:30pm because my dog wasn't feeling super good, but he still needed a walk, meaning I took him out later than I intended. Then I had to change and wash up a bit after because there was water and mud everywhere and half the park ended up on my shirt (and arms and feet and pants and...somehow...on my forehead). As a result, the 1-shot ran for 10 hours and we finished at like...4 in the morning. Poor Mesk.

To his credit though, he did a good job stamina-wise DMing that long. And he CONTINUED to challenge my decision making and creativity the whole time. By 4am though I was really stretching to recall details and think of useful dialogue for extra information. That was my fault though so...

This 1-shot was hilariously ridiculous. It started off with the most nat 20s I've ever seen so close together (unless you count the time Nick crit me 3 times in a fight and Jayde nearly died...and one was on the reroll I FORCED him to do). Anyway, we were way stealthier that we had any reason being and managed to sneak all the way into the ruins and a Starborn camp. Thank god Mesk was feeding me subtle (and not so subtle hints) through the NPC Darian as I think he saved me from a lot of catastrophic actions. Either way, I disguised myself and ended up playing the most dramatic chess game I've ever seen (which included a nat 20 and a 1 from me).

After the chess game of destiny I spent like...20-30 minutes over-thinking what I was going to do about a giant undead golem before I walked into the thing Mesk was probably screaming at me to just walk into and I managed to convince a super giddy Fireborn to roast the undead for me. That said, Darian dealt a pretty devastating blow to the golem and launched it halfway across the map taking two or three buildings with it.

After, I got to explore an underground facility, which had its own points of hilarity. The gimmick with a barrier/shield went right over my head as apparently, according to Mesk, all I needed to do was back into it. This is where the over-thinking issue comes up for me. I do this in video games too (especially puzzle games) where I'll think it's more complicated than it actually is (ex. just...closing a door re. Riven). So again, I think I wasted...A LOT of time, especially when the pressure was on to try and get into the centre. I could have shaved off an hour at least if I had been a little more observant...or thought to investigate it more (for once, throwing a rock at it led me astray).

Long story short, a lot of exploration happened, I climbed onto and knocked over a dresser onto a bug and squashed it, started stealing from statues, opened ALL the doors, avoided a golem drinking Mountain Dew, slammed the door in a bug's face and then touched things I probably shouldn't have touched. Then we squashed two bugs, talked the gentleman in the centre out of trying to kill us and then got him a new body. After some dramatics and a fight where I couldn't get up the stupid stairs and failed all but 1 of the blink actions (which was useless anyway because we just got telepooted up to the top on that turn), we ran outside to catch Mr. Chess Master Bonestaff and turned him into tomato sauce (to Mesk's dismay as he apparently had a bunch of chess-related moves and lines to use).

Aside from my occasional stupidity, the session seemed to go fairly smooth. I liked the premise and the setting, and Mesk found interesting ways to tie my character into the story. The music choices were really good, but the battle music was the best, as I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. It managed to distract from the fact that I was being nibbled on by bugs, rolling around in a sea of broken glass and smashing my face into cliffs.

One thing I'm really going to have to watch out for in the regular campaign is my tendency to comment and joke about what's going on in-game. I know some of the other players (especially when there's more than just one or two) find the chatter really distracting and feel it clutters up the chat. I'll have to 'hold my tongue' a little more. In addition, off-hand comments got me into trouble a couple of times (see: Dresser Incident). I figure if I say something, I have to own it, even if it has unfortunate consequences. I also forgot about a few mechanics (I forgot about the bonus to the dex mod at one time, thought one spell was 8 hours when it was 1 hour, got confused with concentration spells and then screwed up and didn't use Hold Creature when I should have). Roll20 didn't help a few times either when I got confused about who rolled what a couple times. I think I'm going to make a spreadsheet since the word doc is just not cutting it (less scrolling and more windows). I also want to review movement actions, as my character is likely going to rely on being able to move around a lot.

Lots of things to review (including spells), but I'm glad to have had this session to get used to these specific mechanics. I was also super smart and picked a spellcaster to get myself into 5e. I haven't really played a spellcaster before, so apparently I like to make things difficult for myself.

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Biased Age

I aged another year this week. If I were even a mildly successful musician, I would have celebrated a bit more as I got past year 27. But I have no skills remotely resembling anything musical, so I think I was safe anyway. Shauna asked if I felt any older and I told her I was a bit biased because I played dodgeball for the first time in two weeks the night before and got smoked in the face during the second game.

Both of the teams and many players in that game are fairly new, and therefore had TONS of high throws, so I should know better. I saw three balls coming towards me and one was a bit higher so I'm like "I can totally catch that." As it got closer I realized a little too late how high it was and didn't have time to move my hands up to stop it. So I just took it straight to the right side of my face. My first thought was "ow". My second thought was "man am I glad my glasses didn't shatter." And then I panicked and looked for my glasses cause I was worried they DID break. They didn't, but they were about 6 feet behind me on the floor. I tried to get up to play again, but the GC told me to sit down. Probably good that he did cause I felt a little dazed afterwards. I...probably got a minor concussion cause I was a little nauseous and spaced out for the rest of the evening. Fairly certain I got whiplash too since my neck is killing me.

My body kind of hates me now. Hopefully with rest everything will heal on its own, but I'm hoping my neck isn't really screwed up because whiplash injuries can get worse/not improve over time. Either way, number 28 is off to a good start.

Got Horizon Zero Dawn to try as well as the new Fire Emblem for DS. I'm still not done playing through FE Fates though because I'm an idiot and played on Hard to start and the later levels of Conquest are just brutal. Tried Horizon Zero Dawn last night though and it's a fairly pretty looking game. I still managed to do something silly early on though by seeing if the player character would slide gracefully down the side of a mildly inclined slope. Suffice to say, she did not. I think I will gleefully enjoy the slide-squat for the rest of the game. The collision in this game looks like it will be hilarious. The voice acting quality is a little mixed so far too, which is fine cause either it's good or I get a chuckle out of it.

Still waiting to see what's happening with the Starsworn campaign, but I've got some stuff prepared (or at least partially prepared) just in case.

May try to get another Outlast 2 session in this weekend. It will either be that or FINALLY continuing one of the three D&D campaigns I'm in with Shauna and Nick. I haven't done much in the way of editing video, but I got some RPG stuff done as well as played through a bit more of PoE. I got wrecked by the Master Below. Many times. I tried like 7 times each time to get through the fight but the one ability is absolute bullshit. You can't really spread out because of the adds either. So I'll have to rethink strategy on that one I think. Maybe come back when I have one more level and some more appropriate weapons.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

8am Parade of Cars

I guess they all start work at 8:30-9am cause every single day there seems to be a coordinated exodus from the houses along the back alleyway. I swear there aren't that many properties along the alley though, so I have no idea where they're all coming from, whether they're taking shortcuts of if there's a secret Stepford-esque society I don't know about lurking somewhere in the maze of houses that is my neighbourhood. I'd believe it too. If you walk down one of the centre walkways in that area it's this eerie line of identically built, but slightly different coloured houses and it's quiet aside from the occasional child or dog in the backyards staring out at you with beady little eyes. Whatever it is, it's unsettling.

Anyway I'm like the antithesis of this orderly manifestation. Aside from the off-chance I'm up in time to witness the Parade of Cars, I'm usually the one who's running out of the house late with their hands full pulling on a jacket and trying to juggle my pack, keys and coffee, leaving laundry on the roof of my car, using the air conditioning/heat to dry my hair and eating week-old cookies from the package I left in my car on the way to work.

And these are on the days where I'm not carrying electronics out to the car, or having birds fly into my vehicle, or carting puppies around, or learning that someone took a dump in one of the cars.

I'm super healthy and organized.

While it's still Calgary's rainy, cool months, the season is fast approaching where I'll need to keep the windows open overnight. It'll be too hot in the house otherwise and we all know what that means: Shit that Happens in the Park is about to begin. It is with mixed feelings that I announce this will be the last summer witnessing the events in the park as I am moving again around September. I'll be taking up residence in my grandparent's old house as they have moved to a senior's assisted living home. The neighbourhood is almost deafening in it's quietness every time I've visited and is on a tiny side-road vs at the end of a major roadway. This means no more nights of people screaming about Pokemon in the sound-dish of a park outside, no more creepy singing swing lady, no more people turning around on a narrow one way street and bursting their tires on the curb, and no more street racers turning the greenspace in front of the house into a crash-test course. There is promise of trolling an overly nosey neighbour on the horizon though. This also may mean the return of the Crows as I think that the new neighbourhood is infested with them. Maybe I'll make friends with them this time and have a legion of birds at my commend.

So what does the rest of the spring and summer look like for me?

Well, I may be officially joining Mesk's Starsworn campaign with a regular character vs playing as an array of NPCs. This depends on the availability of the others joining, but either way, I need to seriously think about a character in any case.

Speaking of D&D, going to try to set up a session every other Sunday with Nick and Shauna to get through our own campaigns and make a bit of progress. I still need to produce the videos for these.

I'm going to try and make the RPG playable as one of my top priorities. I have a massive backlog of video, so I don't need to worry about not having any videos to release. The problem is a lot of this video is un-edited, so I really need to get working on the backlog. Top priorities for editing/recording right now are Resident Evil 7, Sonic 2006 and Outlast 2. I still have another special video I'm trying to produce, but, I need the Deletion Ceremony for Evil Within to happen first, which requires Shauna and I to finish re-watching the series (there are reasons).

I've made a lot of progress on writing this year, so that will likely continue. I have identified a number of issues with the narrative that I will go back to fix in the coming weeks. Really, what I need to do is get my documents organized because all of the work is spilt into about 10 pieces over a number of files in about 3 places.

As for current releases, Pillars of Eternity and Dishonored 2 should remain pretty regular. RE7 and Sonic 2006 will be the other ones posted as I finish them. Other than that, I have made it this week's project to get the rest of the Riven videos on YouTube with timestamps as I have left that project stagnant for too long.

Middle of August I'm checking out and disappearing for two weeks. Going to keep contact down to a small group of people and actually take some time to relax for once (I'll likely prep videos to release for two weeks and just press the "publish" button periodically...but it's not like I've been super regular with releases lately anyway).

What does right now look like?

Chaos mostly. Sitting back and watching the fallout of some of the events at work, because there's a lot of things I simply can't do anything about at the moment. One is just watching a person who has been cheating/boosting their work get caught and burned...the other is a little more disheartening. The latter is hard because I want to see these project succeed so badly, but things have been difficult, through no real fault of the particular person I'm working with on the client side. Also saying goodbye (hopefully temporarily) to a friend at work as she leaves to have her baby, but, with a company this small, anyone leaving at this point is kind of sad. I'm lucky I work with some great people.

As for what else is going on...dodgeball has a couple weeks left and then I'm joining in the Teddy for a Toonie tournament. I've checked out of my one job for the summer (aside from one final random shift...but meh). I have yet to decide if I will return in September (probably will just for Tuesday nights). Took a first aid and CPR course over this past weekend, which is probably why I have no idea what day it is most of the time this week. Now I have Stayin' Alive perpetually stuck in my head and know what happens when your eyeball falls out and is still attached by the optic nerve (you can totally still see out of it). Uhhhh all caught up on Game of Thrones, much to Shauna's delight. Carlo intends to do a final session playtest for his Fickle RPG, but not this week cause he's sick. Friday might get more recording done, Saturday is fooooood, Sunday is fooooood and also HKS' final session of pre-campaign Starsworn stuff and then Monday going to be playing Outlast 2 with Shauna in afternoon and evening.

So I'm busy and stressed, but still going. Really looking forward to those August weeks out in the boonies.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Patience Test

Well, on the driving related topic of last week, I got my class 5 GDL license...but at a hefty price. Yeah sure, I passed, but it was expensive both for my wallet and for my patience. The person who tested me was confusing, took me on the wrong route, pointed out random things that had nothing to do with the test CONSTANTLY so I was distracted, then would announce when I missed the important things to the point where I was so confused and flustered and made more mistakes because I had no idea what the hell she wanted. It's taken me a full week to get over this. Whatever. I passed. It's done. I don't need to do another test until I'm old and probably shouldn't be driving anyway. By then we'll likely have all self-driving cars anyway.

So this week I've been working on some side projects including writing, some Left4Dead2 with friends, working on that RPG I started weeks ago and re-editing some stuff for Mesk. Pro tip. Don't edit a document across 3 computers under two different formats. Apparently you lose half of what you've done. I still don't know how this happened. Also participated in a dodgeball tournament and came second. I have some lovely trophy bruises on my legs, so I've been wearing pants all week to work despite the heat. I actually participated in the Quick Draw as well this year so, you should see me losing horribly in that video.

Update on that RPG: Mesk sent me a bunch of the scripts he used for his Captain Planet RPG and I'm slowly beginning to plug those in and test them. There are a couple that work independently and a couple that need a few of the other scripts to work, so I'm going through them, figuring out what I'd like to use, and testing them out. Nothing too complicated has been added...yet, but I expect everything to snap in half at the slightest provocation. I'll make the second dev video of this soon. First can be found here if anyone's curious. It's mostly just me getting confused and laughing at my own oversights/stupidity.


Uncharted 4 - Not quite done this yet, but I don't see much harm in listening to the soundtrack. I can imagine what's in store for me. It's a really good game so far though. I've been enjoying a lot of the random little dialogue bits and just the detail put into the different environments and the way you interact with them. Simply fantastic.

Tomb Raider (2013) - I plan on playing this series sometime in the future. I have a collection of the games on Steam, so I just need to find the time to play them (hah).

Thief (2014) - Oliver is still afraid to play this because he's worried it'll taint his perspective of the original 3 games (which I also still need to play).

Oh man where am I at right now? Currently finishing Uncharted 4, continuing VTM with Shauna, occasionally making more Saints Row 4 (will be posting those soon), haven't touched Shadow of Mordor or Planet Alcatraz in awhile, need to continue Myst 4 and...I think I have some outstanding projects with Delta.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Soundtrack Thursday 18 RETRO

As I mentioned last week, I planned on having a retro games soundtrack Thursday. These are all nostalgic games I never got to play unless I went to a friend's house and convince them to play! Then we'd just make forts and crafts, and play elaborate outdoor games instead. We nearly killed us all in Kelowna when we dug a big hole in the backyard, found the gas line, and proceeded to continue digging around it. We got in trouble for that one naturally.

Three hours of Street Fighter - I'm not sure if I'll listen to all of this as I want to get to other tracks, but it's good background music for work.

Three hours later:

Okayyy Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is up next. One of my favourite all time games. Used to always ask my uncle if I could play this whenever I was at his house.

Okay last track before the internet dies again is Super Mario World. Another game I would always try to convince others to play with me at their house. I was always Luigi, but that's fine. Turns out he's the cool one.

So, Half Life 2 is completely uploaded now. The other Half Life games I have not LPed will be up...sometime...soon...ish.

Meanwhile, Dishonored will begin uploading on Saturday. I will be using the rest of May and beginning of June to get some other projects out of the way and FINALLY do something with the skiing and dodgeball video I've had sitting around for a year. Yes Mini, I am finally going to make the TfaT 2013 Top Ten video. This year I promise I will not take so long.

=)