PeterAmthor

Lately I've been posting a lot of movie news (at least for movies that interst me) over on my Myspace blog. http://www.myspace.com/trulyrural for those who don't know it.

Other than that I've been playing World of Warcraft and working on some minor table top gaming stuff for the D6 system.

Haven't hardly done any table top stuff in months. Funny thing is I don't miss it at all. The last few months I ran a game I had so much frustration that it just made it not worth it. From players bitching about every little thing, to people just not showing up without notice who swore they would be there and so much more.

Y'know I like constructive criticism but things like "man that just stupid" aren't constructive. People who complain every single time something bad happens to their characer. God forbid their character actually die in combat. This is from folks who charge into every battle also, who make stupid decision and absolutely believe everything is fight to the death. "My character would never retreat"

Errr.....

So yeah I'm enjoying World of Warcraft a hell of a lot better than all that bullshit. I may run another game again in a few months, but most likely it will be with some of the local folks that play WoW also.

Yeah I've been sucked into World of Warcraft quite a bit. But hell I have no time to do any actual gaming so it's the easiest way to get some sense of accomplishment.

Anyways I've been thinking of how folks are always talking about learning things from video games and such and relating them back to table top games in hopes of bring more folks over. Or just to make something that can appeal a bit to both audiences.

First off is a misconception that most seem to have. "They want fast and simple". No they want fast but they don't want simple, they just don't want to have to deal with all the complex crap. Most engines for MMORPGs are really damn complex, more complex than most table top games. Hell in WoW alone you have to worry about multiple buffs, weapon bonuses, attribute bonuses and more. It's a hell of a lot of math... that you don't have to do. The computer does it for you. So in this aspect I don't think table tops stand much of a chance.

Now I did notice a lot of small off to the side quests and chain quests. Some would chain into much bigger things why others wouldn't. You can also take multiple quests and get them done along the way while doing a bigger one. This I plan on using in the future. It makes since. Nothing complex just a couple of stats for encounters and maybe a map or two. But have several of them. So why you are on your way to explore an abandoned mine for a Lord you can also harvest some herbs for a healer back in town, collect five Ratling ears for a local guard leader and maybe grab some various components for a wizard.

Level based. As much as I railed against it in the past I have to say it works. Gives you a gauge of accomplishment. So this is something a lot of games already have in place. Not a lot to do there except make them work right for the game you want to run. My kind of stuff will give minimal exp for kills and more for finishing quests. A lot of influence from the Palladium exp scale that Max Hattuer and I always liked (about the only thing from the Palladium system we liked).

Crank out that character. Fast ass character creation. I'm thinking a base set of stats for the race, another base set for the class and maybe a few freebie points tossed in. Templates would also be another way to go, again with a few freebies tossed in to add variation.

Well that's enough useless rattling on from me for now. Probably more later. I really do need to start posting again.

Next time somebody asks what some of the MMORPG anacronyms mean give them this list.



ADD: This is short for 'additional monsters needed' and is used when the monster you are fighting is an easy kill and the priest feels the team can handle more. When you hear this, run into ajoining rooms and pull more monsters into the fight.

AFK: This common term stands for "Attack, Fight, Kill" and is the priest's way of telling you to go pull mobs.

BRB: An acronym, this is short for "Boss Room Battle," and is a priest's way of telling the team it's time to fight the instance boss. Note that you will also sometimes see "afk brb," meaning the same thing.

Puller: The team's puller has the important job of "pulling" the party into fights. Usually this is accomplished by having an mage with no armor blast a large group of monsters or by having a similarily HP gimped teammate run into a room and fire off at least three special attacks, thereby pulling the rest of the team into the room to save him. Note that the puller does not have to be the same person every time and it is often best if different people pull as to keep the priest guessing who will drop to 1/3 their life and make her try to figure out what room they are in.

Wait: "wait" is a bit tricky. While it sounds like the word "wait," as in 'stop,' what the priest is really saying is a shortened version of "waste it all." meaning destroy everything in the area. Priests will use this if they want you to start charging through the instance.

OOM: This is short for Out Of Mobs, meaning it's time to pull the next group of monsters standing idly around.

Dumbest thread I've seen in a long, long time.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=389066

Been a while since I updated here.

Today I had a tooth pulled. It was absessed a few weeks ago and has been a problem for a long time. So today it is now out of my misery. On top of that they perscribed me vicoden for the pain. Not liking the side affects of it to much though, makes me feel like crawling out of my own skin for a bit there.

Also been playing World of Warcraft for a few weeks also. Got sucked into it finally. Hell it's a lot easier than trying to get an actual game together anymore. A LOT less frustration than dealing with some of the local gamers around here. Plus I can jump on and play at any given time. It's well worth the fifteen bucks a month in my eyes.

Starting work on Dark West some more. I stopped when my tooth pains really kicked in. Cancelled the playtest and all that. Now that I can talk without agony it's time to work on scheduling that playtest soon. Really need to get some results back on what I have so far with the system before doing any more to it.

This last week was hell. Both kids got sick, Lenore got sick and I had a cold that wouldn't go away. Kayster threw up on me more times than I care to remember. Had to enlist some help from my brother and mother to watch the kids since I've already missed to many days as it is. Really glad they could lend a hand right when I needed it.

Tomorrow it's Ghosthunters night. Saturday is World of Warcraft with wiseyoda as we are keeping two characters around the same level as each other.

There's a lot more I could talk about but it's late already.

Lots and lots of water. The rain really flooded out a lot places around here. Thankfully nobody I know was severely affected by any of it though. One of my alternative routes to work was closed by high water but I rarely go that route.

The ground is so saturated from the endless winter mix of sleet, snow and ice already that this stuff is going anywhere but into the rivers and streams. Some places are really a damn mess.

snow snow and more snow....


Just made it in from work finally. What normally takes thirty minutes took me over an hour. Man I am so ready for winter to be over with. Who's with me?

Originally found it on Flames Rising LJ. It's a neat fan put together trailer using clips from various movies. A fan trailer for Twisted Metal!

Here's the blah blah blah of my life currently.

Dark West. The first playtest will be on March 8th. For more info on this check out the Dark West community, you can find it listed in my livejournal info. It's mainly going to be for testing out the base rules.

The kids are doing good as usual. Kayster and Con-man getting bigger and bigger everyday. Con-man is potty trained completely now, only accident in the last few days was when he fell asleep in the car on the way home.

12 Sky. Found a hotspot for drops in Berim Forest. Been mining it a little bit lately. Not getting much exp out of it but I need the cash. Got a set of rare armor finally, cost me less than I thought it would. Also I did manage to hit level 97.

Work. Sucks. Overtime. Sucks. Need I say more on this?

I will be attending Archon this year. We just got our room reserved tonight, at the Holiday Inn. Funny, actually, since a few folks told me they were all out for those dates.

Next I'll contact them to see where I send the money for the memberships to. Normally I would do this online with a credit card but since they don't seem to have that option up and running yet it's time to do it the old fashioned way. Also not going to wait for the rate increase either.

Now I may also contact Archon about running a free to play Doomtown tournament that weekend also. Plus I will be running some Dark West games for some friends also. Maybe for folks that I don't know as well.

So this year it will be my five day vacation time again.

The Dark West community has two new posts to it. One is the first chapter of the never complete Dark West: Shiboleth short novel that I was working on. The second is about Skill Specialization. Give them a read and let me know what you think.

12 Sky. Got my character up to level 96 now. Finally got 100 cps so I can upgrade my items. Which I did immediately to my rare 85 sword, it's now a rare 95 and I'm happy. They also introduced a new pill in the item mall, the 2X drop pill. Basically it doubles the drop rate for thirty minutes. First time I used it I got two Sirangs, two uniques and six commons.

Family. Same ole same ole. Nothing new to report there.

Weather. We keep getting more 'wintery mix' here. A little snow, ice, freezing rain, etc. Gotta love it. Luckily I didn't miss any work this week somehow.

http://slave-state.org/

Slave State is open for bussiness. The Tyrant has returned.

Won't be using my facebook, myspace or 360 very much anymore, if at all. Just to many sites to keep track of. Most of my posting will be done here, over at my sites forums or on Slave State (gotta support the dictator).

More Dark West posting this weekend over on the community journal for it. Will have a chapter of fiction and talk about specialization of the main skills.

Getting craptacular winter weather here. A sludge mix of ice, sleet, some snow and freezing rain. Gotta love it.

Well I've been thinking about what games to keep buying or to drop.

Sla Industries. Dropping it. Tired of it being back and gone again and back again wash rinse repeat. This last time it actually looked really good, some interesting books announced and folks around here were really looking forward to them. Then Dave Allsop comes back and says no. Now we are back in limbo with no updates except Hunter Sheets 2 will be coming soon (like there was a need for a second one already), all the fan material plans are canned, many of the announced books are canned. Guess it doesn't matter what the folks buying the books actually want but what one (apparently from his actions here) ego drivin person wants. So I'm not going to bother anymore neither are many other folks that I know.

KULT. If it comes out from 7th Circle they can kiss my ass. Never will buy anything from that company. After the way the bitch in charge treated me a few years back. Basically she used me just to try and get ownership of the kult-rpg.com domain. Sorry piss off. I'll continue to support fan efforts and material. Now if another company gets the rights then maybe we'll see.

Cyberpunk 3rd edition. Sorry not buying it. Has some neat ideas but overall it is crap. Now there are rumors of some 2020 edition support coming. I'll take a look at that... before I buy it. I would buy some Fuzion support material if R. Tal. would put it out.

Coming out that I plan on buying. Little Fears Nightmare Edition, hell yeah. You know I can't think of anything else that I'm looking forward to enought to drop cash on it.

Ah well. Guess my days as a gaming consumer are coming to a slow end.

Haven't been up to much here lately. Just working and spending time with the family here lately. No big updates to mention really.

Added a couple of fiction pieces up over on my Dark West community. http://community.livejournal.com/dark_west/

Haven't written much at all, nor played much 12 sky either.

Hopefully I'll have something worth writing about soon.

I continue with the work on my Western game that I want to run called 'Dark West'. For all that info check out the community I set up for it at: http://community.livejournal.com/dark_west/

Stayed at home today due to all the ice and a little snow. It's pretty solid also. Lenore made it out to get some stuff today and where she backed out her car didn't sink into the iced over snow and sleet. It's about two to three inches thick at that. Tomorrow I'm actually gonna try and make it to work.

Lenore also bought me Simcity Societies. Messed with it a little tonight. Gonna have to adjust some setting on it and my computer to make it run a little better. Right now I'm getting some lag when trying to do things. But it looks really cool so far.

On 12 Sky Tetsaki is now up to level 94. I stopped grinding and start catching up on the backlog of quests that I have. Got a big one next so I'll probably tackle it this weekend when I have a straight hour or two to do it in.

SPOILERS AHEAD. Stop reading if you don't want to know them.


Last nights Terminator:SCC was pretty decent. Learning more about the new probable birth of Skynet coming from the Turk. Not to mention the death of the guy who designed it.

The big thing was that the resistance fighter that had been running around is finally revealed. Not to mention that it's Kyle Reese's brother, thus giving John Connor and uncle. Sarah realized she never thought about John having other family members through Kyle. They had to break him out of jail and fight off a T-888. However Derek (I think that was the name they gave him) got shot in the process, so bad even the HCT couldn't do anything for him. When John found out who he was he took off, later showing up with the paramedic that Sarah used to live with. End of episode.

Guess next week we find out if he lives or not. Plus the previews looked like it had more future scenes in the next episode. Finally a few more shots of the war.

Well this is an interesting article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean30jul30,0,952130.story

Stash that one away for the next time I run a near future cyberpunkish type game. Probably work it into some stories for Rogue Television one of these days also.

Watched Sweeny Todd tonight. I found myself rather liking it. Although normally I almost want to hate anything that Burton does anymore, but this one makes up for his Planet of the Apes hack job.

Although nothing will ever make up for that pile of shit Batman Returns.

Anyways back on track here. The movie was very well done, it got nominations for awards for a reason and you can tell. The sets and costumes were stunning. Pacing kept your attention going and there wasn't much 'boring' time in there. Story is pretty straight forward and doesn't require a lot of thought. There was a twist that I should have seen coming down broadway but I was paying to much attention to the look of the film instead. Ah well.

So I give it two thumbs up.