pwn3d?

2010-03-03T17:08:00.003-07:00

So my collaborator Mr. Wheeler and I are working hard at solidifying the rules to our RPG. Last night we had a "wizards duel." It was fairly humorous as neither of us took spells capable of directly destroying our opponent. However, I learned a lot about my rules system and realized that it needs a ton of work. Going to try and sit down tonight with the magic system and make some adjustments. Going to do another alpha test with a select few this coming Sunday afternoon.

Also received the preliminary cover art illustration contract from our artist. Going to look that over and review it. I am very excited for some art to visualize our world with.

Chrome OS

2009-11-23T11:29:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to make a post from my virtual Chrome OS in beta form, but it seems to be crashing every minute or so. I like what i see so far, but right now its very early in beta and very rough. There really is only a google chrome browser integrated into the OS and nothing else. I really hope they make it a full OS and not just a netbook type OS.

2009-11-15T11:30:00.004-07:00

So maybe its time to pick this back up again, school made it difficult for me to post here regularly, but school is over now and I have a full time job. So maybe its time to add a few mindless comments about whats going on in my life. Currently Josh Wheeler and I are working on a book, a RPG, (much like the ones you have probably heard of, Dungeons and Dragons etc etc) and its going pretty well. I have spent a lot of time in the past working on an RPG but I would always get slowed up and slowed down and loose motivation. Its been great having someone to collaborate with because it keeps me motivated when I see him complete something towards the end goal.

We should have a workable alpha version of the book/game in another couple weeks. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

2008-11-11T12:34:00.005-07:00

So I am sitting here staring at my homework and I realize that it has been so long since I posted anything here that if anyone actually read this they might think I had died. I think the summer break changed up my schedule enough that I forgot to post anything here and when school started I was out of the habit.

The current semester is rapidly coming to a close and things have been going well for me. The homework stack is always high this semester and we are covering topics at a pace that's difficult for me to digest. Yesterday in class we talked about server clusters and network load balancing and It was one of the few times I have felt completely lost and everything being said was flying over my head. We covered the entire chapter in one day and then moved on, which is common for the topics we have been covering this year so far.

On top of everything else I need to be finding an internship for next semester, I need 140 hours of internship next semester to graduate. I know there are a few places of last resort that I could do it at but most of them are not very enticing ("Yes sir, I can help you with that issue over the phone, are you at the computer now?"). Hopefully I will line up a place soon it will be a huge relief for me.

2008-06-18T17:00:00.003-06:00

Well our 1-1-1-1 Warmachine/Hordes tournament happened last Saturday and it was a great success. We got the vast majority of the people that signed up to show up and play. We had four 8'x4' tables going with two games a piece on most of them.

I have not participated in a tournament since last fall and I did horrible in that tourny. The tournament last fall was in Boise and I made a lot of mistakes loosing some ugly games, it left a strong impression on me and my play. I really wanted to do well in the 1-1-1-1 tournament and had been practicing and agonizing over my lists for weeks. I knew what some of the other players were going to take and I feared that I did not have the best tools to deal with those lists. However, I put together what I thought were playable lists that could deal with most opponents reasonably well and prepared myself mentally for the tournament.

In the week leading up to the tournament I played several games to prepare myself. During these aforementioned games leading up to the tournament I played fairly well, rarely making the mistakes that have become my trademark over the last couple months. I reacted well to my opponents strategies while facing some very difficult lists. So coming into the tournament I was going on something like a 5-0 record, having played some of the best games I had played in a while. I feared that my luck could not hold out and that my tournament play would become derailed at some point.

I did not sleep well the night before the tournament. I tried to go to bed at a reasonable hour to be rested but I tossed and turned and ran over different scenarios in my mind. What would I do if my opponent brought Sorscha and how was I going to stop the Stormlance blitz. I had already seen some very tough lists in my practice games and they had not been easy wins. I was more going over my own response to these threats as I feared that I would make a fatal mistake and put a knife in my own game. The morning of the tournament I stopped at a convenience store and picked up two 24 oz. cans of energy drink. I was already wired and frazzled from the prospect of playing in a competitive environment (which I don't normally do as the local Privateer Press representative, normally I run the tournaments) and then I added in some energy drink just to rile me up some more.

My stomach was topsy turvy as the first round began. I got matched up against one of the tournaments strongest players. He is always a possible tournament favorite. He won our first tournament of the year and has placed well in all the others including taking second at the ICON Warmachine tournament. Plus he had brought one of the two lists I had agonized facing. He had a full unit of Stormlance Cavalry and out of fear of his second list I had taken my Witch Coven list. The Witch Coven was a very unorthodox army for the tournament format. However they proved to be a good choice as I do not believe my opponent had ever seen them before and underestimated their ability to kill a warcaster all by their selves. On his first round he made his first mistake and moved his warcaster to far forward giving me a chance. I ran my arc-node across the board and fired two stygian abyss spells at him with the witch's in perfect conjunction. It was text book for the coven. My dice rolls betrayed me though; average rolls should have killed his warcaster. I left him with three wounds remaining and my most important model (my one and only warjack; a Nightwretch) sitting right in front of his entire force.

The one mistake I feared, I had not made, I had used the coven's feat on the round that it mattered. He would have a difficult time retaliating against my failed assassination attempt. He attempted to kill my little Nightwretch using Kathrine Laddermore and a Lancer. Here he made his second fatal mistake, he did significant damage with Laddermore then moved the Lancer up to finish the job. He decided to use the Lancer's shield in an attempt to remove my cortex. After two hits with the shield he left me with three damage boxes. Those three damage boxes were the only three damage boxes on the card that mattered: Hull, Movement, Arcnode. Had he used the Lancer's spear for those two attacks the little warjack would have been completely destroyed. He used his feat (Stryker; +5 armor) with his blinded (from one of the stygian hits) warcaster and finished his turn.

I had one chance and it wasnt a great one. His caster had +5 armor from his feat. I moved my arc node out of engagement with ghost walk then cast another stygian on Stryker. I hit and rolled 11 on my three dice for damage; Twenty-four damage. "Not enough, you needed one more to kill him" my opponent replied. I had puppet strings up allowing me to re-roll the damage roll so I rolled it again. Again my dice came up 2, 4, 5. I couldn't believe it, I had put all my eggs in one basket in the hopes of striking down my first opponent and I had come up short. I was horrified, once again I had pushed myself into a compromising situation with my warcaster (the Witch Coven) way to far forward and far to easy to kill. My chances at winning the tournament a failure at stared at my dice again and in one last futile attempt did the math again, this time when I added it up I came up with three wounds of damage! All of a sudden there was new hope, that I had succeeded. I double checked the math with my opponent. He looked down at his card and again at the dice and realized it was over, I had killed his warcaster.

The second round I faced a Legion of Everblight player who was using Thagrosh. I got the feeling that my first win had given me significant momentum, he and a few of the other players started to murmur that I would be difficult to stop. While this was somewhat flattering, I knew better. I knew that given the chance I could easily be my own worst enemy. In this game my opponent gave my army a wide berth, staying pretty far back on his side of the table. I set myself in the center of the table holding the scenario objective and feeling his force out as I worked on a way to win the scenario in the third round. At the end of the second round he ran some of his force into contested area in an attempt to keep me from winning by scenario(or at least thats what I thought). On my third turn he only had four models in the contested area and both within easy reach of my two hardest hitters, Goreshade and the Deathjack. He seemed somewhat surprised that I declared the game over after killing his models, he had made a serious mistake in forgetting to keep track of the rounds and the scenario objective.

The failure to observe the scenario objective was also my third opponents mistake. He also gave my models a lot of distance not wanting to become engaged, and moved to the side of the objective only putting one model into the contested zone. I used the terrain to stop charge lanes and ran my fodder to engage his cavalry before he could charge. At the end of his third turn he had two models in the contested zone of the scenario, Katherine Laddermore and a Lancer. At this point I was already sick of seeing these two models and Laddermore can avoid being killed in a single round by a model without reach because once she gets dismounted from her horse she can be placed outside of an opponents melee range. This was a serious issue because there were only two models in my army with enough hitting power to kill both the Lancer and Laddermore in one round and they were out of position. The Deathjack who doesn't have reach needed to be on the Lancer and Goreshade who did have reach needed to be on Laddermore, yet Laddermore had just charged the Deathjack and had him engaged and he was standing between Goreshade and Laddermore. I took a small chance and had the Deathjack leave melee with Laddermore to charge the lancer, killing it quickly, and then crossed with Goreshade to kill her. I had won again and now I was 3-0 with only one other player undefeated.

The final round was again against a player that had very limited experience with Cryx and had very little knowledge of my threat range and my abilities. He quickly made his first mistake. The first round he ran his Thunderhead up 10 inches and within range of a Goreshade charge plus feat. He really had no clue that I could get that far across the board on turn one. In my head I quickly did the math to make sure I would have the range. 28" apart at deployment, minus 10" for the Thunderhead's movement, minus 9" for Goreshades charge, minus 3" for the range I could place the Bane Thralls out in front of Goreshade, then a 8" charge from the Thralls. It was possible and my heart leapt. I was so close to finishing the tournament 4-0 and going home with the overall win. So I began activating models and moving up my unit then I looked down and realized I had not given the Deathjack a focus point. In my mind I saw the freight train flying off the tracks and the imminent crash coming as started making massive mistakes that would end my day. I stepped a half step back from the game board and took a deep breath. I was too close to allow myself to make a mistake here. After I got my wits back I realized it was not half as bad as it could have been, but I could not let that happen again, the next time it could be fatal. I sacrificed a mechanithrall to the Deathjack to keep him from trying to kill Goreshade and moved him up. Then I moved Goreshade, used his feat, cast mage blight and charged the Thunderhead with the Bane Thralls created from the feat. The Bane Thralls shredded the Thunderhead in 4 hits even with arcane shield on it (it didn't hurt that my third damage roll was 4, 5, 5, 6). My opponent was at a loss for words, he had not been prepared to loose a major portion of his army before his second turn. In his flustered state he attempted to move his warcaster (Haley) up and cast temporal barrier, unfortunately for him he had moved into range of mage blight and his spell failed. It only took a soul gated Deathjack to kill her on the subsequent round.

After all that agonizing I won the entire tournament and did so in fairly convincing fashion. It felt very good to have such a good showing. However, I feel that each of my opponents made some very critical mistakes and I'm not sure the outcome of the games would have been as clear had they avoided these mistakes. Yet I was able to capitalize on each mistake and avoid making game ending mistakes myself, and really thats what competition is all about isn't it?

2008-06-05T23:53:00.003-06:00

We finally mowed our lawn for the first time this year today. Its June, I know. Our lawn was replenishing the ozone layer all on its own. We had to get an international logging permit to cut down certified rain forest. It was tall enough that when my dog went outside you could barely see him in the grass. It was really ridiculous; I'm sure my neighbors didn't appreciate it either. But the spring has been unusually wet this year and when we did have a clear day three weeks ago I got out the lawnmower to find that the fuel line had broken over the winter and the mower was inoperable. I ordered a bunch of parts on-line because it hadn't been serviced in a few years and needed several parts that probably would have to be ordered by the local store anyway.

The place I purchased the parts from took plenty of time to fill the order; about a week and a half. When they finally did ship it it took another week to get here because they are in Maryland. When it got here today, at about the point that my lawn had been declared a national disaster, the package was lighter then it was suppose to be. They had mispacked one of the items and so I had to run to a local store and pick it up anyway.

At least my front lawn is mowed now. Tomorrow I will break out the GPS and my hiking gear and venture into the back yard with hopes that I will return safely.

Our 1-1-1-1 tournament for Warmachine/Hordes is just over a week away and I am not prepared. I volunteered to help one of the local players by putting together his models but I am so swamped with other things that I am not sure when I am going to finish them. Plus I have models of my own that need to be finished before the tournament. So I have my little assembly line set up. I have my hobby knife and my metal files on the table to clean up the casting flash, my sink and drying area to wash them and my assembly area with my green modeling putty and my super glue. I plan on spending a ton of time tomorrow and Saturday until all the models are finished.

I have been agonizing over my army composition for this tournament since the first day I knew we would be doing it and I still haven't found a good list that will fight combat lists with Haley, Sorscha, or Kreoss in them. My first list would have done decent against a lot of warcasters but the power choices for each faction all have ways around my gimmicky idea. I think the thing that bothers me more then having a sub-par list is my mental breakdown when under even minor stress. I really foresee myself loosing on dumb mistakes more then my army composition will loose me anything. But really thats why I like warmachine so much, your army list will only get you so far. To really play well and be able to win against a skilled opponent you need to be practiced, you need to make very few mistakes, and you need to be able to take full advantage of any missteps they might make.

When I am on top of my game I play well, but when I see my opponents make a mistake I get excited and forget what I was doing and attempt to do things too fast and end up handing my opponent the win. I plan on trying to get as many practice games in as I can between now and next Saturday. I don't think I can prepare for all the lists I will see at the tournament but I think if I at least know my army well I have a decent chance of finishing higher than mid-pack. I guess I am looking at the whole thing wrong, I should be just looking for a good time, an enjoyable experience. Normally I am in charge of the tournaments, I am the local "Press Ganger" and this is one of the rare opportunities I have to actually compete with the rest of the guys. I should take a deep breath and try to enjoy not having to organize and run the event.

...but dang would I really like to win it.

2008-05-27T23:54:00.004-06:00

I'm falling behind on keeping this blog up to date. I said when I started it that I wanted to post three times a week. I'm falling down to the one and a half range, but posting that much is an improvement to my previous attempts at doing this. Sometimes I sit down and stare at the computer screen and think "I should really put something on the blog... but what would I write?" and I end up not writing anything.

*5 minutes pass*

Ok so I have typed about ten different sentences then removed them. Apparently talking about writers block creates writers block, much like yawning causes more yawning.

I have been up to a lot of things lately. I have been running a campaign for the local Warmachine/Hordes guys which entails creating scenarios to play, writing the plot line, and playing in it myself. I have been playing lots of other games just to get practiced up for the tournament on June 14th. Tonight I played two games and gave a demo of the game to two kids. As I lamented earlier on this blog I was having a serious loosing streak and that streak did not end after my personal pity party. I went 0-4 last week giving me seven straight losses and making me wonder why I even play the game. Fortunately for my bruised ego I won the two games I played today. It's a good thing too, I was about to break out the balloons and confetti and have an uber pity party.

My Wednesday night gaming group has finished all of our current campaigns and we are going to be playing a Savage Worlds game so that I can better learn the rules for the gaming convention in July. I have decided, and my players agreed, that the game should be set in the Thundarr the Barbarian setting. This is really only a temporary campaign until we move on to the game I had originally planned, but the concept of a post-apocalyptic earth with some weird science, mutants and magic is pretty darn cool. It's a complete wonder to me that the cartoon ever got canceled! It was only on for a couple years but it was easily my favorite Saturday morning cartoon while it was on. Anyway, we are suppose to be making characters for this short campaign tomorrow and I haven't even started figuring out the special rules for the playable character races in the setting. Who knows when I'm going to get around to doing that, but I better start soon considering I need to have it done by tomorrow evening.

My Saturday night group has completed Something Rotten in Kislev of The Enemy Within campaign and are now moving on to Empire at War (a fan made replacement for Empire in Flames). So sometime between now and then I need to read a quite a bit of back story and plot and prepare for four hours of gaming for Saturday night. This is coming on such a crappy week I have no clue when I am going to do this prep work. However, it's somewhat comforting to see a light at the end of the tunnel and know that the campaign will be coming to a close soon. It feels really good to finish a long term campaign and have it feel like it was a success and the players who played through it all enjoyed it. So while I will miss the campaign, when its finished and we have moved on to the next game, it will still feel pretty good to have completed it.

In my spare time I have been working on a gunstock for a Ruger 77/17 that I purchased from my dad probably two years ago. I rebarreled it with a Clark Customs barrel and then purchased an unfinished stock from Richard's Microfit Gunstocks. The stock is made of grade A claro walnut with a rosewood tip and cap; its a pretty piece of wood. Anyway it's been a labor of love for a long time and if I had known how much work it was going to be to fix the inletting, sand it, and finish the stock I probably would have skipped the whole deal. Yet it's strangely satisfying to creating something with your own hands out of wood that is so beautiful you just enjoy looking at it. So as soon as I have completed it I will definitely be posting some pictures of the gun here. Maybe you won't feel it's as neat as I do, but to me its pretty spiffy.

2008-05-23T01:19:00.004-06:00

I have two computers sitting within reach of me at this desk. My wife's computer is at another desk just behind me. The one I use the most is a liquid cooled beast of a machine that runs all my games and that does most of my work as well. Next to that machine I have my wife's old computer that we replaced about six months ago with the one she uses now. I have been using it to test Linux distributions and help me with my Linux homework for school. I had Gentoo on it for some time but for some reason it started doing some funny things that I couldn't seem to remedy.

The power likes to shut off here during the middle of the day; I come home and my computers have been zapped and rebooted to the login screens (I really need to get a UPS). Anyway, this repeated reset without proper shutdown caused my Gentoo Linux computer to act strangely; it would not start programs and would need me to issue the command 2 or 3 times before it would start the program, and it would not come out of sleep mode. It was set to start the screen saver at ten minutes then after two hours it would shut the monitor off and once it did that I couldn't get it to return. Nothing would bring back my desktop short of a reset. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to try a new flavor of Linux, so I decided to install openSUSE. Also, I wanted to try to get compiz-fusion working on it, I never could get compiz working on the Gentoo one because of driver issues with my ATI card.

So I installed openSUSE and started working with it and let me tell you its like Linux for dummies compared to Gentoo. Gentoo is powerful but it certainly isn't new Linux user friendly in comparison. I have had Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandrake (now Mandriva) on computers in the past and have Sabayon dual booting on my Windows gaming computer so I have had the opportunity to see a lot of different Linux distributions even though, to be honest, I don't use them much because my main use for a computer, gaming, is sort of tedious and difficult on Linux. But my point is, I have tried several different versions of Linux and out of all of them openSUSE seems like the most oriented towards new and non-UNIX/Linux users of any of the ones I have tried, and that's really saying something because Ubuntu prides itself on being user-friendly. I have only had it installed for a day now but it's been frustrating so far because of how dumbed down it is. Maybe I just need some more time using it to learn how to customize it for my preferences.

I mentioned compiz-fusion and for you non-Linux or even non-computer readers compiz-fusion is a window manager for Linux that has some REALLY neat effects associated with it. My favorite part of all the effects you can do with it is the desktop cube. Most Linux versions, with KDE or Gnome installed, allow for multiple desktops to separate your work on, but with compiz-fusion installed you can have those desktops placed on a three dimensional cube that you can spin with the flick of your mouse. It has a bunch of other effects as well but rather then bore you to death with a lengthy description I will just provide a video that shows what I am talking about.

I tried to get compiz-fusion working on Gentoo and could never do it. My first attempt on openSUSE was successful, however, I had problems with my ATI card again, but I think it was my fault for accidentally skipping a few steps and not having the proper packages installed. It worked, it just rendered all of the effects slowly and it was fairly unimpressive. I am going to get it fixed and running properly over the next few days. Its mostly just eye candy and not overly useful, especially for the things I do on it, but dang its awesome eye candy!

2008-05-18T14:38:00.004-06:00

So I spent the morning working on our current Warmachine/Hordes campaign, and planning for the next 6 months of events. I am really surprised at how well things have gone for the Warmachine and Hordes scene here locally. Last year at this time it was just a scant handful of players with most of them not playing very often. This year we have fourteen participating in the campaign and eighteen signed up for our next tournament (two are on a waiting list because we only have table space for sixteen players!). It certainly helps that Privateer Press provides so much support for organized play.

My campaign games this week were horrible, and then I topped it off with a stinker of a game on Friday, to make my record for the week 0-3. I get so frustrated with my play sometimes. Warmachine/Hordes is deep with tactics and strategy and can be very unforgiving to mistakes. When I am at the table my mind gets scrambled or something and I just don't seem to see the correct choices. I consider myself an intelligent person (maybe somewhat arrogantly) but at the table I feel like a bumbling idiot. I guess thats really the core of my anguish, my failure to play to my ability. Maybe I need to write up a short list of things I need to thoroughly think through on my turn, a checklist of priorities. On Tuesday I played a game where I forgot to allocate focus one round and in another round I placed one of my own guys right in front of my own charge lane, and not just any ol' charge lane, the charge lane that my entire plan for that round hinged upon. I tried to recover by killing my own model but by accident (with the same attack) I killed the model I was planning on charging, compounding my mistake. These are such easily avoided mental errors that I want to pull my hair out in shear anger at myself.

I would feel a bit better at my mistakes if I could blame them on my misunderstanding of my opponents force but unfortunately in almost every case my mistakes stem from getting ahead of myself, failing to know the limitations my own force, or just plain handing the game to my opponent. On Monday I played with my Trollbloods horde. I had my opponent on the run and felt like I was in a really good position to win the game. On the round I lost, I moved my warlock (Borka) up to try and threaten my opponents warcaster (Siege). I could have (and should have) sat on four fury to keep Borka difficult to kill (allowing me to transfer damage done to Borka to my Warbeasts). I had already slammed his cavalry with my Troll Impaler and had him basically against the ropes. But in a mad fit of complete insanity I spent all four fury on a spell that had less then a 30% chance of doing what I wanted and it failed. Even if it had succeeded my opponent probably could have still brought enough of his force to bear on my warlock to kill him because I had wasted my fury and would not be able to transfer the damage. My actions were completely foolish and equated to throwing the game into the open arms of my opponent. I look at it now and its perfectly clear how poor my decision was, but at the time it seemed like a great idea!

I did have one good thing happen this week; I got my report card from school. I got straight A's again and have maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA since returning to school. It feels good to have my hard work rewarded with great grades. I still have a lot of work to do to finish my schooling and I have a lot of school related goals that I have not completed, but it is encouraging to be on my way towards completing all of them.

2008-05-09T00:17:00.002-06:00

So at work I am currently working with a Mazak CNC lathe (similar to the quick-turn model in the link but older by about 8 years or so) basically it does all the work I just have to change out the part and push the cycle start button. The parts go for a project out at the INEL and I have no clue what they are, or what they do, nor are we told what they are, or what they do.

Anyway I have a lot of spare time while the machine runs through its cycle and so I have been bouncing back and forth between reading George Orwell's 1984 and studying time travel on the internet, both theoretical and fictional. I came across a very interesting series of videos on youtube.com that come from TLC or Discovery Channel about Dr. Ronald Mallett a professor of physics at the University of Connecticut. He is building a machine that might be able to accelerate small particles faster then the speed of light to sort of break the laws of physics and actually send a sub-atomic particle back in time. This is amazing stuff as prior to his work most physicists believed that time travel was theoretically possible but only in the forward direction. Basically as you approach the speed of light time slows down for you but continues on at the same speed for everyone else, launching you into the future. (I'm sure I am totally butchering the explanation as I'm nothing more then a very amateur fan of physics.)

So I am watching these videos on his work and his hope to someday create an actual time machine when I come across this completely wacky video of this complete loony talking about time travel, the Philadelphia Experiment, and Nikola Tesla. (Tesla an absolutely amazing man, if you ever get the chance to spend some time learning about Mr. Tesla you should take it. Obviously a man born way before his time.) If you enjoy watching complete crazies like I do here is the link. I laughed so hard my chest hurt, I absolutely love listening to people like this guy. Conspiracy theorists that don't need a single shred of fact to base their wild crazy beliefs on. If you have ever listened to Coast to Coast AM you know the type of people I'm talking about. They play that show late at night on the local AM station here and I absolutely love listening to these people, it helps me remember that no matter how crazy I am or how kooky my ideas are, there is always someone out there that is ten times worse then me.

2008-05-07T22:04:00.003-06:00

My wife is awesome. Last night we played Battletech. I can't think of another woman that I have ever met that would play Battletech, let alone enjoy it. We had a lot of fun but the game went a bit longer then I think she expected. This was our first game using the complete rules, prior we had used introductory rules that only taught the turn order, the basics of movement, and attacks. Also our previous games had been single 'mech engagements but this game was a lance on lance (4 'mechs each, totaling 185 tons per side). We didn't start until about 11 o'clock and finished at about 2 in the morning. Which for a game of Battletech is pretty reasonable, at least in my opinion.

However the game took a turn for the worse at around 1:50 AM when I moved my panther (a 35 ton scout type 'mech with a Particle Projector Cannon) directly behind her dragon (a 60 ton medium general duty type 'mech) and hit her, with the previously mentioned PPC, and luckily rolled her right torso which didn't have enough armor from the rear to stop a PPC shot from penetrating and possibly causing a critical hit. I rolled a critical on the crit table, then proceeded to roll her autocannon ammo slot in her right torso for the location of the critical causing 90+ damage and destroying her best 'mech in one single shot. Amazingly she took it pretty well. Although neither of us had much heart left in the game after that turn of events.

But in my opinion it was reasonable payback for the first game we played when on the very first turn we both ran towards the center of the map, she shot her AutoCannon 20 at me from long range rolled a 12 to hit (on 2d6; which was what she needed to even hit) then a 12 on location (head) completely decapitating my 'mech and ending the game in under 60 seconds!

2008-05-04T14:57:00.005-06:00

Today is my daughter's birthday, she is now two years old. I was looking through the pictures of last years birthday party and came across a bunch of pictures of my grandmother holding her. My grandmother loved Cassidy a lot and was very proud of her. It tears me apart to look at those pictures. Cassidy had a great time though and dove into her first birthday cake and enjoyed ripping the wrapping paper off her first birthday presents. She was so cute.

Time seems to be moving so fast, I can hardly believe she is another year older. I look at the pictures from last year and today and it blows me away how much she has changed. I am absolutely amazed at how fast she learns and how quickly she picks up on things. She has not yet seen her birthday cake for this year but something tells me it will probably end up a big mess (just like last year).

I miss my grandmother a lot and it's days like today when my thoughts return to her and her influence on all of the family. Even with the reduced memory she had in her final few years she never missed a birthday. Going to my grandparent's house is just not the same any more without her.

2008-05-02T10:11:00.004-06:00

So yesterday it came out in Privateer Press's release schedule that Hordes would be getting epic warlocks. Trolls will be getting an epic Madrak. I am pretty excited about this, but I am not sure why. Epic warlocks and warcasters must be fielded in 750 point games and I can count the number of 750 point games we have played here locally on my one hand. It is my goal to get more players playing 750 point games because I think it opens up a whole new world of warmachine (and soon, hordes). Anyway hopefully by this August, when Epic Madrak will be released, we will be playing a lot more 750 point games.

Also No Quarter #18 was released yesterday and I have to say that the rules for the new Cryx dragoon are simply awesome. He gives all soulhunters (Cryx cavalry) similar abilities to the Hordes light cavalry: they can't make ride-by attacks but they can move their speed in inches after making a combat action and cannot be targeted by free strikes. This actually makes them playable with casters other then Terminus and Epic Skarre, however I would have preferred to just see them errata'ed to this instead of having to take another model to get them to work. I really like the Cryx cavalry in theory. In theory they should be able to get soul tokens then use them to become more deadly but in practice they charge in and get soul tokens then die the next round before they can use them. With Darragh Wrathe on the field they can get back out of combat and hide from retribution, which makes them much more useful. I foresee me playing a lot more soulhunters after his release.

2008-04-30T14:17:00.004-06:00

Today was my last test for finals week at school. I have one more test to take but its taken online and I can take it at my leisure. It feels good to be finished with this year of school and only have one more to go. Hopefully next year will be as good scholastically as this year has been.

I would like to thank everyone who has expressed concern and sympathy for my dog. Its been a few days now and other then his eating habits not being back to normal he is very active and quickly returning to full health. He is obviously still sore and we have to be careful with his wounds but his attitude and personality have returned. For the first couple of days if we put him in the back yard for him to relieve himself he would just stare at us like he was being punished so he had to be taken to the front yard. Now he has become more comfortable with the back yard again and is willing to walk around and explore.

Tonight is my Wednesday night gaming group and we are going to be starting something new. We finished our World of Darkness campaign a couple weeks ago and it will be missed a little. I think my players will miss it more then I will, but regardless it was a lot of fun. We played the game for several years and it covered a very broad range of events and the players went from being highly secretive government employees to highly sought after fugitives. In the player characters travels they covered most of the United States then went to places like Copenhagen, Moscow, Ulan Bator, Lhasa and finally the Himalayan mountains. The characters personalities developed significantly in that time and I think we all enjoyed the story immensely.

But now that the campaign is complete we are going to play a short campaign using the Savage Worlds game rules. It will probably only be one or two adventures long and will be centered on time travel. As I have said before in this blog I want to eventually make a time travel RPG, and this foray into the genre will give me a lot of insight into possible problems and issues I might face. In this short campaign the players will be forced to travel through time and I'm starting to wonder if that's not a better solution for a game overall. Motivation in a role playing game can make player characters do some odd things and the problem I keep returning to in a time travel sense is: If you could travel through time, would you? Ethically it brings a lot to the table. Just attempting it could destroy the universe as we know it. Would knowing that your current lives and world around you might not ever be the same again stop you from attempting to travel back in time? You may never see your loved ones again. Your interference with the past might change the course of humanity forever. (see Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder)

However if the player characters are shoved back in time without any understanding of how long they will be there or even why they are there it provides them a situation that they must deal with. It's unfortunately a bit of what some gamers like to call "railroading". However it makes for a great storytelling device and a great television show. So I am going to try it and see how it goes. If the players are trapped in the past leaping from time to time solving problems I think it will solve all of the moral issues with time travel and why in so many time travel settings there is a need for time police (although players being time travel police is also a great option for a time travel game).

2008-04-26T23:55:00.003-06:00

It's been a rough day. My dog was attacked tonight by a pair of dogs, one of them looked like a red husky and the other an Alaskan malamute.

This isn't the first time my dog has been attacked. The first time was a few years ago. We were living in an apartment in another part of this town and our neighbor had a pit bull that he kept in the back yard. This particular day I came home from work and the pit bull was roaming around free in their front yard. I take my dog with me to work and had him in the car; seeing the pit bull made me nervous so I picked up Demitri (my black pug) and headed towards the house with him in my arms. As soon as I stepped out of the car the pit bull approached me. I have spent a lot of time around dogs and thought myself a decent judge of dog character. It did not seem as though the pit bull was approaching with any intent other then to see what was going on and say "hi." That could not have been further from the truth. When the bull got close enough he jumped up grabbed Demitri by the rear leg and ripped him out of my arms. Demitri tried to defend himself from the bigger dog by biting him back. The pit bull let go of the rear leg and bit Demitri on the lower jaw then began to whip his body around like he was flinging a rag doll. I quickly attempted to wrench the pit bull's jaws apart while screaming for help from the owner, but as anyone who has attempted this can attest, trying to open a pit bull's jaw can be a difficult task. I gave up on that and attempted to punch the pit bull's head and force him to release my dog. About that time the owner of the pit bull came to my aid and the two of us forced the pit bull to release Demitri. The owner apologized repeatedly and offered to pay any vet bills. Luckily it hurt Demitri's pride more then it injured him, he had a small puncture wound near the base of his tail and was very shy, refusing to let anyone but me get near him.

Tonight was far worse. I was preparing for my saturday night Warhammer Fantasy RPG game when my wife called in near hysterics. Demitri had been attacked by two dogs who had slipped under our rear fence. She had been downstairs and did not realize immediately what was transpiring. When she realized what was happening and rushed to his aid she chased the two dogs away and found Demitri lying on the ground not moving, with labored breathing. I rushed home to find him still lying not moving at all. One of his eyes was significantly bloodshot and his fur was all matted with saliva and blood. I did my best to lay a towel next to him and gently slide him onto it. His leg was bleeding profusely and he did not respond at all to me moving him. When I put him in the car I got the first positive response from him. No longer was he in the environment of the attack; he turned and looked up at me breathing very heavily like he does when he is very nervous or upset. He did not move again until we arrived at the vet. I took him inside and laid him on the table where he showed more signs of life. As the vet looked him over and inspected his wounds he began to come out of the shock and stood up, this was absolutely wonderful for me. I had gone from the depths of despair worrying that I might loose one of the best friends I have ever had to thinking he might be alright. The vet took him in the back shaved off all of his wounds looking for particularly nasty punctures and tears. He needed four sutures on his rectum which was torn badly (which the vet told me was a sign of a particularly violent dog attack) and had numerous puncture wounds on his neck, rear leg, and rectum/tail area. He will be quite swollen and sore tomorrow but he will survive.

This sort of thing is difficult for me to deal with. When my first wife left me I spiraled into a deep depression, loosing my job and twenty five to thirty pounds. Demitri was really the one bright point in my life. He would comfort me by sitting in my lap when I cried and he slept on my chest each night while replayed the last few years of my life over and over in my mind. To say this dog is important to me is a serious understatement. I will not sleep well tonight worrying about his wounds and his pain.

2008-04-26T10:25:00.004-06:00

My Hordes Trollblood models arrived Thursday and I played my first "painted" game with them yesterday. It was a lot of fun having painted models; I must say they look great on the table. When they arrived almost everything looked great, except for the fire on my pyre troll and my kriel warrior standard bearer. The fire on both of them looked retarded, and that's after I asked them to change the fire from the original that you can see in the links.
It sort of boggles my mind how everything else in the force can look so great yet the fire looks like they got jiggy with the finger paints. So I got some paints out and did my best to fix the fire problem. Now I'm certainly not the best painter in the world but I think what I have done with the fire is far superior to what they did. However, overall I'm very happy with the finished product and it's going to be a lot of fun playing with them over the summer.

As far as yesterdays game went, I lost, but thats not uncommon for me. I seem to overextend myself frequently and put key pieces to my army in compromising positions. I was playing with Chief Madrak Ironhide one of the most durable trollblood warlocks and still managed to put him in a such a horrible position that I think it would have been difficult for my opponent to not win. For some reason I do not see the options on the table and do not pick my order of operations well when playing with a new force. I have helped others play new forces quite well but it's as though my powers of observation are ten fold better when I'm not actually involved in the game. I guess thats why I play the game, to learn and get better.

Speaking of Warmachine and Hordes, we are starting the final chapter to our campaign tomorrow and I'm very excited to get a chance to play my forces against a wide array of players here locally. The campaign has had an overarching story that has developed in the last couple of five week chapters. I wrote all of it myself and while I think generally the plot is fairly poor, as stories go, it has still been a lot of fun. Currently I only have five people committed to playing in the spring campaign but I know a lot of them are procrastinating to the last minute before giving me the lists they will be playing in our campaign (for the campaigns we are using static lists that can't be changed for the duration of the campaign). The fall and winter versions of this campaign had six and twelve players respectively and I believe we will have a similar number to the winter campaign this time around. It should be a lot of fun and you can look forward to hearing more stories of me overextending my force and getting crushed beneath the heals of my opponents'.

2008-04-20T01:26:00.003-06:00

So about two months ago I decided I really wanted to have my Hordes Trollblood army painted. I have artistic talent, but my desire to go cross-eyed attempting to paint miniature models is not very high. I love having painted models as opposed to bare metal miniatures it just looks and feels so much better. I truly believe that having painted models on the table brings a certain intimidation factor against an opponent without painted models. I also think having painted models helps improve the players confidence while using them.

With this desire in mind I began looking for various artists or studios that might be willing to paint my models. I had a few of people show interest and a lot more flat out scoff at my request. I wanted the trolls painted orange and I had a significant number of models I wanted done. I didn't have that many to start with but I figured if I was going to get them painted I might as well get enough painted that I wont need any additional models for a while. So I picked up probably another 20-30 models to round out my force. The combination of orange (a difficult color to paint miniatures with) and the shear number of large models involved (hey they are trolls! what can I say) were the main reasons most people didn't want to touch the commission.

In the end I decided to go with Blue Table Painting. I have used Blue Table in the past with mixed results. I had a Necromunda gang painted through them that didn't exactly turn out how I wanted, but it was certainly reasonable. Blue Table gave me a reasonable price and a turn around time that frankly I don't think anyone else in the world could have matched. I don't have the models back yet but they have been completed and if they weren't shipped out yesterday they will probably be shipped out Monday. Thats less then a three week turnaround on sixty-six models! I was honestly quite amazed at how quickly my project was finished.

The models can be viewed on Blue Table's web site. From what I can see in the pictures I really like what they have done; however, pictures can be deceiving, especially when you're dealing with small models. So I will withhold final judgment until the models arrive and I can personally inspect them. But I am really excited to get these back.

2008-04-18T16:18:00.002-06:00

Last year I started writing my own RPG. I had been toying with the idea for a while and had found myself with a lot of extra time on my hands. Since that time I have returned to school, added three additional game nights, and my wife gave birth to our second child. Because of those changes I haven't done a single thing with my RPG for a considerable amount of time. However, recently I have been listening to a new podcast called Master Plan. The podcast is centered on game design and its given me a new desire to start working on my game again.

I think part of the reason I stopped working on my game before was I really wanted to create a western RPG that dealt with the moral issue of actually killing a person. I had a lot of ideas that I had never seen used in prior western RPGs that I thought would be a really neat. Last June Kenzer and Co. released Aces and Eights. The game was a major blow to my desire to create a western and it took a lot of wind out of my sails. They had incorporated a lot of ideas that I thought were pretty original, yet my ideas were not original enough that someone else couldn't also think of them. Obviously many of the mechanics I had chosen were completely different from Aces and Eights and nothing was exactly the same idea, but a lot of ideas I wanted to put in my game were similar to game concepts in that game. No longer were my ideas novel and new, instead they were copies with a twist even though when I came up with them they were original ideas.

Fast forward a year; I find myself returning to the dice mechanics and core rules I was planning on using for my western now being transformed into another genre. Unfortunately my core theme of moral issues does not translate to the other settings/genres I'm interested in recreating in an RPG. In fact one of the settings I would like to create as an RPG doesn't even fit well with my core dice mechanic and would require a complete retooling from the ground up with absolutely nothing I used previously translating to the new setting.

Honestly I'm not sure any of these games are going to get made. I'm terribly busy as it is and creating a quality RPG is hardly an easy task. However it is a personal goal of mine and I plan on pursuing it this summer while I'm out of school.

I guess if anyone actually reads this blog they might wonder what my ideas are so at the risk of giving someone an "Aces and Eights" head start on my game and ruining my dream I will share those ideas with you. The first idea is a time travel game, I really like science fiction involving time travel. The paradoxes involved with time travel can be mind boggling but in all honesty thats what makes the whole time travel genre interesting. Its a perfect setting for amazing adventures and varied stories that can span huge arcs of situations. Plus its way easy to find campaign/adventure material for the game. There is oodles and oodles of history available to anyone willing to spend some time investigating our past. The biggest obstacle to the game can be summed up by Jeff Goldblum's character from Jurassic Park:

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

I believe I will need to give the players incentive or empowerment to change the past, if I fail to do this one simple thing I fear that prudence will win out over curiosity with many gaming groups. They will be too afraid of causing the butterfly effect and will avoid confrontation or change. However maybe the game also needs some sort of mechanic to keep them from totally attempting the opposite which is complete change (ie going back and killing Hitler or saving Jesus from crucifixion). I will contemplate on this idea some more, obviously the rules need a framework that the players can freely adventure within.

My second idea is based on Under the Bed a small press game written by Joshua Newman. I absolutely love the idea/concept behind this game. I purchased the game and thought it was interesting. While I love the idea for the game, the execution used by Mr. Newman is a bit too abstract for me. Its very similar to a lot of story centered games that have become so chic in the independent/small press scene over the last few years. While some people enjoy this type of game I personally do not. I don't like GM-less* games, I don't like dice-less games. They are not my cup of tea.

But I love the concept of Under the Bed. So I would really like to put a more traditional set of rules and character creation to a similar setting. It would be a lot like playing Toy Story the RPG. This is the game I was referring to when I said none of the previous rules I had put to paper would fit the genre. I would have to start from scratch to make a game based on this concept. Again, I don't necessarily like rehashing a game that has already been done but with Under the Bed I feel more like I am expounding upon not competing against, and I don't think Joshua would mind me using his idea and running with it.

Anyway, I hope that some day these games might reach at least a playable state, but unless I put aside a lot of extra time, and find a lot more inner motivation then I currently have, I doubt these ideas will ever see the light of day.

(*GM-less games are roleplaying games in which all the players share equal authority over the fiction/story. With no central driving force or overarching plot but instead is a collaborative effort to create a story, plot, and conflicts.)

2008-04-13T11:11:00.002-06:00

There is nothing quite like the sound of a toddler giggling in the morning. My two year old is playing with my wife and her little squeals and giggles fill me with joy and happiness the likes of which are difficult to explain.

ICON finished last night and it was two days of tons of board games and a lot of warmachine for me. My wife got the opportunity to play a lot more games then I did, she won one of the raffles for a board game (it was one we already had so we traded it for Micro-Mutants, which is a blast by the way) and she won the Nexus-ops tournament! The prize for the nexus ops tournament was Conquest of Pangea which I personally really liked although I have only played it once.

The warmachine tournament was still a bit disappointing in the end. I really wanted a better turnout and I held out for people to show up that I desperately wanted to show. In the end no one showed that didn't explicitly say they would. However I cannot be too disappointed with nine players and some very intense games. One game came down to a d3 roll for the number of attacks Vilmon would get on Caine. The roll came up a 1 and then Vilmon needing a 6 on two dice to hit (and with the charge attack roll four dice damage) and most likely kill, the already injured, Caine. However he rolled a 4 and failed to hit ending the game in the most exciting tie I have ever seen. If Vilmon had rolled more then one attack or hit with his attack the game would have most likely gone to the Menoth player.

We used chess timers for these games and overall I really thought they were a great addition to the tournament format we used. I was very happy with how they worked out. I think in time as the players get used to using them it will be a much better solution to the time issues and victory point issues we have had in previous tournaments. It certainly didn't solve all the problems but I think it was a much needed improvement.

2008-04-11T07:56:00.004-06:00

I have been incredibly busy this week with school, with the board gaming convention that starts today and with the RPG convention I am helping organize for this summer. I wanted to sit down and write something but things have just been too crazy.

The Idaho convention for board gamers starts today and I am running a Warmachine event at the convention. Its been completely frustrating. When we first started planning the event I really wanted to see a lot of the local people participate and wanted some out of town people to participate as well. I planned for sixteen players which is more players then we have here locally but not by much. I keep a database of all the local players, what faction they play, and their contact information. I have seventeen players on that list; granted some of those players are not very active, but my goal was to get ten to twelve local players and then get the rest from out of town. In order to get people interested from out of town we decided to provide a 50$ gift certificate to the overall winner. Its been almost two months now since I began advertising for this tournament and I have a grand total of seven people signed up. ARGGGHHHH! I have gotten absolutely zero interest from out of town and several of the people I expected to support me in making this tournament a success are refusing to participate. So what this boils down to is we spent over a hundred dollars on prize support and I don't think we are even coming close to covering our costs.

I am helping organize a Role Playing Game convention this summer as well and we wanted to have fliers and tickets for iCon (the board gaming convention). So I have been swamped the last two weeks with finding some graphic artists willing to help, delegating tasks to others, dealing with logistical issues and even creating some of the graphics myself. The gaming community here in Idaho Falls is absolutely great. People have jumped at the opportunity to help with this convention and without them it would just not be unfolding like it is. As of right now the venue is secured, the tickets are printed, the fliers have been printed, and I have a dozen events committed and being created for the con. Its been a hectic week but seeing this develop has been amazing and I am very excited to see how well the convention goes.

Even though I have been busy, things overall (other then the lack of committal warmachine players) have been great. Yesterday in the mail I received notices from my college letting me know that I have been awarded two scholarships, a total of 1500$! This was absolutely great news as I have been leaning heavily on my dad to help me with tuition costs and I feel somewhat guilty about it. I wouldn't have felt guilty ten years ago but I'm thirty now, own my own home, and have two kids; I feel as though I should be self sufficient at this point, but obviously if I was self sufficient at this point I wouldn't need more schooling. Cyclical I know, but regardless of the argument for not feeling guilty, I still do.

2008-04-06T11:53:00.007-06:00

I run a Warhammer Fantasy RPG on Saturday nights, its been a lot of fun but sometimes its too much work for the constant complaining and criticism I get in return. I believe that constructive criticism is an important part of any group function. Any time you have a group working together to accomplish something (in our case, fun) everyones input is important. However, this group is very different from all of the other groups of gamers I play with. The other groups generally consist of a group of friends who do other things together besides playing an RPG together. The Saturday night group while made up of some of the same people also has members who do nothing with the group other then play on with us on Saturday night. This inconsistency creates a different group vision of how the game should be played making the criticism of my game mastering style varied and the complaining varied. This is quite literally a case of not being able to please all of the people all of the time.

This whole feeling of not being able to make everyone happy is quite foreign to me in the context of game mastering. I realize its unrealistic to please everyone all of the time but within a smaller group of 5-8 people I believe it's attainable. I have ran this exact same campaign for a previous group and failed to please everyone in that group as well. A wife of one of my friends quit coming to our gaming group; she never said anything, just quit showing interest. I believe that her lack of interest was largely my fault because I imposed some relatively harsh rules about character creation making it difficult for her to get a character that she was happy with. I used the same rules for this new group that plays on Saturday nights and it was not an issue with any of them and we have been playing for probably six or seven months now.

I guess my point is that oddly, in many years of running games for friends, these are the only two instances that immediately come to mind that I have had disgruntled players. (I guess there were some disgruntled players when I was a teenager but my games have matured a lot since then.) I want the players to be enjoying the game; I want them to be having fun. I probably should not try to carry the full weight of that responsibility on my shoulders. I regularly listen to the Sons of Kryos a podcast about role playing, and they spend a significant amount of time discussing the various ways to create an enjoyable experience at the gaming table. One of the things they strongly condemn is a game master taking the entertainment of the entire group solely on his own shoulders. I agree with there assessment of how the gaming table should work, however I find that in reality thats not how it works; especially in my Saturday night group. They are gamers, of various stages and various dispositions, that cannot come to a consensus of what they want from the game (and to be blatantly honest, I'm not sure if they did come to a consensus, that the consensus would be the type of game I want to run).

The easy answer would be to walk away from the group, find a different group that can come to an agreement of how they want the game to be played and relieve my stress with some great games (or just enjoy my Saturday night with my wife instead of trying to entertain them). But the fact is: I want the game to go well, I want to complete this campaign, and I do have fun when people aren't complaining that something isn't fair or the game is going slowly. I don't think I could walk away without completing the campaign.

2008-04-02T21:47:00.003-06:00

On Wednesday nights I run a world of darkness game that has a healthy dose of call of cthulhu in it. I have been running this current campaign for I believe close to two years. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm running out of steam. Unfortunately I have two personal pet peeves in table top role playing, the first pet peeve is campaigns that don't last very long, and the second pet peeve is lack of diversity in my gaming. I know... I know... it's a horrible combination, just when the gaming group has some stability in it and things are going great my mind starts to wander to a new system or a new plot line. However I have been able to stomach running the same plot lines, characters and system now for what I consider a sizable amount of time for me. The plot lines are all coming to an end the game is closing and we are reaching the climax. Its energizing me to continue and finish this campaign with a bang.

So what do I have planned for my next campaign/game? A epic storyline that takes the player characters from the age of five to the age of fifty! I seriously love the epic stories, I love the games where players get plenty of time to develop their characters personalities and build up a serious repertoire of stories. I don't know how I am going to keep my energy going for the long epic type of campaign I have planned and the type I love while suppressing the desire to switch to something else and start something new. I am going to be running this new campaign using the silhouette core rules from dream pod 9 because it fits the setting I want to run the game in and I really like the core mechanics of the silhouette rules.

I think part of my problem is my Wednesday night gaming group gets sidetracked easily, they get on conversational tangents, and we don't get a lot of role playing done. I think we all have a lot of fun, but sitting behind the game masters screen puts a different perspective on the game. I know what the plot is, I know what the clues mean, and I have a decent idea of where the game is probably going to be heading. Honestly the part that makes the game fun for me is the pace of the story and the action. Sure many times my players will do unexpected things and the story will be derailed for several hours and I enjoy those times more then the more mundane adventures, but when I'm really having the greatest fun is when the pace is moving at a good clip and the story is feeling very cinematic. However my players are generally the reason we slow down, I give them a great deal of freedom and sometimes they cannot come to a consensus decision or they start talking about other things while I'm trying make them decide what their next move is. I'm not sure how to rid them of these habits short of constantly interrupting their off topic discussion. Somehow I must figure out a way to keep them focused so that over the long haul I will remain interested and focused.

2008-03-31T22:58:00.005-06:00

I played Lord of the Rings RPG (by decipher) tonight with friends. I play a hobbit and have a lot of fun doing so. He is a warrior, and is constantly having to prove his worth because he draws little respect from those around him. Amazingly he is an excellent fighter, easily the best in the group, but his lack of stature causes everyone to misjudge him.

Tonight while the group was crossing through the Gap of Rohan we ran into a large group of goblins. Milo the warrior hobbit dispatched nine of them by himself including the goblin leader. The game master called my character a "rabid wolverine on meth." There are several running gags at the table about warrior hobbits (or should I say the lack of warrior hobbits in middle earth). Its fun to play a character that does not fit the norm and is surprising in his ability and demeanor. Everyone seems to have an idea of what hobbits are suppose to be and when one does not fit perfectly within the mold there is consternation. He does fit the hobbit mold in many ways though... his day simply is not complete without five or six meals.

I also sent off a bunch of announcements for the Warmachine tournament I will be running in a few weeks at the iCon board gaming convention. I had a goal of 16 players for the tournament, but its just a little over a week and a half away and I only have 7 players signed up. Its a bit frustrating when I started working on people over a month ago and still I'm not even half way to my goal. I want this tournament to be a success and I want to see the player base for Warmachine/Hordes in this area grow.

2008-03-31T09:08:00.002-06:00

So I have tried doing this whole blog thing several times and it just hasn't happened. I think I need to set aside a certain time every day that I sit down and write my thoughts and stuff. Hopefully this will be the time I actually do it. My goal is to sit down 3 times a week and write here...

I guess I should introduce myself for those of you who might read this and have no clue who I am. My name is Trevor Christensen and I live in Idaho, have two kids and am currently going to school. I like heavy metal, video games, table top roll playing games, and miniatures games (specifically Warmachine/Hordes).

I have a test today in my advanced Linux class but I'm not too worried as it is one of my strongest subjects. However it amazes me that some of my classmates are still in the class as they seem totally lost and the semester is almost over. At some point you would hope they would learn something, but maybe thats too much to ask.