Alignment. I think the word delights some roleplayers and sends others running for the door. I think that one stat may single-handedly be responsible for causing some roleplayers to decide that D&D is overly simplistic or immature in nature. While it’s true that it’s an overly simplistic view of morality, as a mechanic for certain in-game effects, simple is better. Unfortunately, it’s really the manner in which it’s been portrayed and used that has caused so much trouble, rather than the mechanic itself.

Technorati Tags: D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, alignment, roleplaying, rpgs

(more…)

I tend to be a bit behind the times, but hey, I did finally watch an “ask a ninja” video, of his first live appearance. (I originally embedded the video but I hate autoplay and for some reason couldn’t get it to shut off, and am not in the frame of mind for extended debugging.)

Now I’ll have to go find more. Which is probably why I resisted so long, of course; I didn’t want to have yet another time sink on my hands!

I haven’t been playing much Warcraft lately at least; I can’t get into much of the endgame stuff and I’ve gotten a tad bored of the leveling. Not to mention so many other people have dropped off lately due to boredom as well. If the expansion had come out at its original release date it probably would have been perfect; as it is it seems to be a bit late to avoid the boredom creep. Anyway, I’ve finally redone the rest of the level 70 dark shirt designs:

I also stumbled on an absolutely gorgeous piece of Warcraft fanart called The Winterspring Assault. Frankly it’s better than any official art out there!

Technorati Tags: cafe press, cafepress.com, ask a ninja, t-shirts, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

Today I reviewed The Chocolate Deck, by Lori Longbotham. If you see anything weird in the review do tell me; I’m a tad feverish today.

Also, since I was up at 2 am sniffling and waiting for the tylenol to kick in, I’ve been working on upgrading the level 70 designs now that I have GIMP to work with. Here are samples of the first few; more will come soon:

In some cases I’m changing the designs themselves, and in others I’m just creating dark-shirt versions that incorporate the designs now that I can do more with transparency.

Well the vet said Selene was looking a lot better last night; of course that was before she somehow managed to slip her collar this morning and start pulling her scabs off. (Sigh.) They estimate another two weeks before we can take it off of her; I figure in another week or so she’ll try to murder us in our sleep.

Thanks to a combination of reward cards from our credit card company and a wonderful holiday gift from my mother we got a new fridge! It’s ostensibly the same size as the old one, but it’s laid out so much better that it fits a lot more, and of course it doesn’t have the problem of going warm/cold/warm/cold since the compressor isn’t ailing.

We’re also getting a handful of books, including another core D&D set so my husband and I don’t have to keep trading them back and forth while we game. Of course in the middle of all of this we’ve both come down sick; hopefully I’ll still get some work done today.

Legendary Coffee Mug of Restoration!

I rather enjoy the regular “Carnival of Gamers” roundup of articles; take a look at the December feast over at MMOG nation. To quote Foton over at AFK Gamer (always a good read),

This Carnival is set at a holiday dinner with 27 different morsels for you to taste. Put those in your mouth, they’re delicious.

MMoGs, single player, Guild! Drama!, consoles, reviews, and advice — all available for free. We’re only missing your disgruntled relatives for the annual Airing of Grievances. Well, we’re not exactly missing them, are we?

The Carnival of Gamers is a nomadic monthly showcase of articles by gamers, for gamers and about gamers.

Well that’ll keep me busy until dinner time, so have a great weekend!

Epic Raiment of Holiday Cheer Dark T-Shirt

Technorati Tags: mmorpg, World of Warcraft

Somehow I managed to type up a review around Selene, despite the collar still getting in the way. I won’t say she’s happy with me over it, but at least there’s now a review of Everyday Celebrations by Donata Maggipinto.

Selene is doing much better so far. At some point Wednesday night she seemed to suddenly decide that, damn it, she wasn’t going to let that collar stop her from living her life. She still hates it, but now she isn’t constantly freaked out and unwilling (or unable) to do most normal things with it on. In fact, our clever little munchkin has learned to use the thing as a weapon. When she’s peeved she will now stand on my lap and butt my chin and arms with the collar. Heaven save us from clever, annoyed cats! (Just try helping a friend through Uldaman with a cat constantly trying to shove your hands away from your keyboard with a stiff piece of plastic. Sigh. Durn tool-using creature.)

Word Nerd Women’s Dark T-Shirt
Shirts, mugs, prints, more!

Technorati Tags: cats, cookbook reviews, cookbooks

Okay, must-see movie. Ready to see this now. The visuals make me hungry they’re so beautiful. Have to wait three months…

This version of the trailer is twice as long, with much more detail, but kind of fuzzy in both visuals and audio.

Technorati Tags: movies

Honestly, I might not always agree with Foton over at AFK Gamer on specific opinions, but I like reading his arguments. After all the whining I see about every little thing whenever I log on to the game or read the official forums (”how dare Blizz change this tiny thing I liked even though it makes most of their players happier!” “how dare they make this tiny thing slightly less convenient for meeeeeee just because it balances play better!” “how dare they not fix MY list of pet peeves first!”) it’s just really nice to see someone who, sure, gets pissed at some of the changes, but who also has some perspective that not everything that bothers him is the end of the world. From Foton’s latest (NSFW language if you click through, depending on where you work),

White Text for Enchantments - annoying and momentarily panic-inducing, but shit happens. No biggie.

Arena Battlemasters Temporarily Unavailable - again, a nuisance but we’ll deal.

Honor System Revisions - there’s some creative spin going on in that thread. No great shakes.

Display / User Interface Issues - here we go. And where to start? Meh, I’ll get back to this.

Missing Bank Bag Slots or Items - this seems kind of huge. Hotfix incoming though, which is nice. Maybe if they weren’t trying to shove the square Beta code peg into the round Live code hole this wouldn’t be an issue, but what do I know about coding? Nothing, that’s what.

Level 60 XP to Gold Conversion, Display Issue - nuisance.

He gets the difference between things that are nuisances and things that really impact his gameplay. And he goes on to do a good job of explaining not only which certain things have had a large negative impact–and why, with examples–but provides a few sketchy ideas for how Blizz might minimize such problems.

See, now that’s constructive while still being a fun and entertaining rant to read.

Since I don’t raid, the whole thing has been a lot easier for me. I think my game has crashed once since the patch, but that’s it. I love that the rendering is smoother; now when there’s serious lag I still have a chance of moving through, say, the crowd out front of the IF bank. I also rather like some of the talent changes. I’m using the excuse to play around with some new UI mods to replace some of my old ones that hadn’t been maintained in a while.

Gotta say, though, my rogue waddles like a duck when stealthed now…

Crystal Water
Shirts, mugs, prints, ornaments, more!

Technorati Tags: Burning Crusade, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

Just a brief grats to FARK for being a finalist in the “best online community” category of the 2006 Weblog Awards!

Technorati Tags: blogging, fark

I wanted to apologize in advance for how little stuff is likely to go up this week, in terms of reviews and such. This weekend Selene reacted to one of the meds the vets gave her for her dental work, and she developed lesions all up and down her furry little abdomen. We spent Sunday evening at the emergency vet’s, and I didn’t sleep much that night as I tried to keep her from grooming her belly.

Last night we took her to our vet. Now she has a collar to keep her from grooming, but it completely freaks her out, so she pretty much just hides under the couch while she has it on. When she does move around she tries to scrape it off on everything, and she’s taken a couple of spills when trying to get up onto or down off of places, so I’m mostly trying to keep an eye on her and keep her from hurting herself.

Technorati Tags: cat health, cats