Acid for Blood

There are plans for a Penny Arcade Expo on the East Coast in 2008. PAX05 drew over 9 000 Penny Arcade and gaming fans to Bellevue, Washington.

Last year, someone on Girl Gamers had posted to recruit convention staff volunteers to work at PAX05. He contacted me directly because he knew that I was a veteran staffer at (anime) conventions, and thus would be responsible and mature, and not a big freaking fangirl/flake if I worked at PAX. However, I had to tell him that I would not be going to PAX05 because I was (at the time) unemployed. Although I got a job in the spring, this Summer's plans did not include PAX. However, if they bring PAX to the East Coast in 2008, I'd probably have to go, either as a regular member or perhaps as a volunteer staffer.

Oh, and Otakon? Over 22 000 members (+~70 000 attendee-days). I find it hard to stop working for Otakon, though I've thought of quitting every so often. Even when I attend a different anime convention, I somehow end up working for it, either as Staff or a Gofer. And I don't even get paid for this! Sad!

[Slashdot]

Crap. Before I went on holiday, I checked the release date of Sigma Star Saga with the GameStop I shop from. The Manager told me that the release was 29th August. This meant that it would be in stores on 30th August. This was perfect, because I'd be home from holiday at that point. I had pre-ordered this game a couple of months ago, because I knew it would sell out. I just phoned the store, and they informed me that the game was released a couple weeks ago. What. The. Fuck. I didn't get an automated phone call about it. A couple of weeks ago, I was traveling. Maybe I was on the plane when the phone call came through. I remember that I gave my mobile number to the store for this particular game. However, if I did get the call on the plane, shouldn't my mobile tell me that I had a missed call? Oh well.

GameStop does not hold pre-ordered games for more than 48 hours, so naturally the copy of the game that should have been mine has been sold to some random asshat who didn't have the foresight pre-order it. Mother fucker! The guy on the phone, whom I do not know, said that they would be getting more copies in the coming weeks, but I know that this possibility is totally random. They have no way to predict what games will be shipped to their store.

I don't know if I feel like calling them every couple of days to see whether the game is there or not. *sigh* But my store credit is still sitting there, so I guess there is no choice but to visit the store at some point, and my visit might as well include the purchase of a game I want.

Not game-related (unless I put game music MP3s in this little beauty, which I will), but it's tech, so I will write about it. I ordered this on Thursday. Black with 1 GB of space.

I considered the blue one or the red one, too. It was hard making a decision on this point, because all of them look cool. It was easy to immediately rule out the pink one and the silver one. I don't like pink gadgets, and I didn't want a silver one. I could have gone for the orange one, because it stands out and looks interesting, but black is stealth and hardcore and it goes with everything.

I actually ordered the Cube after I read the blog post (and related article) on Popgadget. A pretty expensive impulse purchase, I know. However, I have actually been wanting to get an MP3 player for a while now. I don't need something with too many bells and whistles, and naturally I want something that looks nice. First MP3 player -- yay!

I read more articles that evening and they have all been pretty positive about this gadget. The only downside, according to the reviews, was that the small size might make it hard for people with large fingers to press the buttons. Not a problem for me at all.

I am a bit concerned about the battery. One can only recharge a battery so many times, and I'd like to be able to replace it. I didn't see anything on the mobiBLU website that indicated that they had either a battery replacement programme (send in your Cube and they replace the dead cell), or plans to sell replacement batteries.

Still, I'm really excited, and I can't wait to get it. I looked at the order tracking, and I'm supposed to get it today! W00t!

Thanks to pooling our resources, Dyannamika's hard work, and the generosity of her friends, the Callers of Cthulhu [Cthu] now have capes! Originally, we thought that the random squiggly thing would be an ideal emblem, because if you squint, it resembles a mass of tentacles. The emblem would have been silver on a black field, possibly with flames coming up from the bottom and the sides of the cape. However, in the end, we decided to forego an emblem altogether. There is no way that we could have a unique cape if others were using the same database of emblems. The Callers of Cthulhu have no symbol, because we are enigmatic like that. Our cape is black with blue flames, and it is tattered and torn, you know, because we have been in so many battles. :-P I suppose anyone could make the same cape as ours, but why would anyone make a cape without an emblem? I have no idea! I know I just contradicted myself right there, but I'm a Caller of Cthulhu, my motives cannot be comprehended by the uninitiated.



Yes, we still only have two members in our guild. No, we aren't recruiting yet (not that anyone at all has actually expressed interest in joining). Yes, I know there's little point in a two-person guild. Yes, we are playing it relatively slowly.

Last night we had a good session, the first proper one since before my holiday. Loads of fun.

We had henchmen in our party, and it definitely makes battles a lot easier, especially since we had a tank. We both play spell casters (I am a Necromancer/Mesmer, she is an Elementalist/Monk) as our primary Profession, so having a tank at the front to absorb damage is key. Before henchmen, I had been using my Bone Minions to tank for us. It wasn't always successful, since certain foes (such as rock-based monsters) don't leave corpses, and because my Bone Minions have a limited life span. Having a Warrior around who is stronger than my undead servants, and who lives longer is nice.

Our other henchman was a Monk. I actually didn't much notice her contribution to the party, but it could just be because I was preoccupied with fighting baddies. Still, it's always good to have a Monk in the party.

A few weeks ago, I started a new character, a Ranger primary. Up to now, I still haven't chosen a second profession. I honestly don't know what to choose. I'm leaning towards Necromancer or Warrior, but I can't decide.

I also started a Mesmer primary, a week after I started my Ranger. No clue as to what second profession to take for her, either. She is a low priority, since I'd rather focus on the other two. It's hard to split my time amongst three characters.

The Mesmer character design is easily the weakest of all the Professions (in my personal opinion), yet the Mesmer has some of the best Skills in the game. I tried to make my Mesmer as pretty as I could, but the hairstyles that I had to work with were not the most eye-pleasing. What were they thinking? This is what they were thinking:

Let's make a Profession that has the awesome ability to manipulate magic itself, but how about we make them look like poncy, arrogant drama rejects? Oh, and let's make their dance really sucky, too.

I am back from holiday and from working at Otakon. I guess I missed gaming blog reading. I did manage to check blogs at least once whilst I was away, but I don't think I will have time to backtrack and catch up on every little thing.

People seem to think I'm some sort of uber hardcore gamer, and I guess I am more hardcore than others, but I actually do have other hobbies besides gaming. I just choose to write about gaming because it's interesting.

I've already written about some gaming that transpired on my holiday, but I'll write about Otakon now.

Otakon was fun, but I didn't even get to set foot in the Video Game Room, because by the time I got around to even thinking about video games after my duties, the room had closed for the night (midnight on Friday and Saturday), or I had to do something else (e.g. on Sunday I just had to spend quality time in the Dealer Room to scope out bargains).

However, at the Otakon Staff Party, I played some games. I played Street Fighter Third Strike (PS2), and did reasonably well against one of the Video Game Staffers, better than the other girl who was playing. I also played Guilty Gear X2 on the Xbox, and for a time, I had the Xbox to myself. That's a fun game.

I haven't played it much in the past. The character designs are so outrageous and cool. They are more interesting than Street Fighter, although I have a special place in my heart for Street Fighter characters. In Guilty Gear I like Testament, Baiken, Eddie, and that guy who walks backwards and is possessed. I forgot the last guy's name. He's like some twisted zombie, because he seems to be controlled by someone else. He's a bit disturbing, which is part of the reason why I like him. There are other characters I think I would find cool, but I didn't have a long time to play it, since Dyannamika phoned and then after I was talking to her, everyone started hogging the machine. I want to get this game for my PS2.

They also had a GameCube with the Naruto fighting game on it, though I think it was newer or older game than the one I have played before. I played that many times at one of the other Otakon Staff parties, and so I didn't play it the other night. It gets a little old after a while, even though I haven't seen any Naruto. I guess if I knew the anime better, I would have played it more.

Red Octane had a booth in the Dealer Room and they had some metal pads there. They were demo-ing In the Groove, which I suppose I must play, since I like dance games.

So that was gaming at Otakon. For me, at least.

One of my friends just typed this to me:

It's amazing. I have no idea when your birthday is, but I know you play Nina Williams. What the fuck?

LOL.

(FYI, I have known him for several years.)

Here's some information on my character for that one-off game of Dungeons & Dragons I mentioned previously:

Name: Morag Kincade
Class: Barbarian
Race: Human
Level: 5
Hit Points: 90 (We were allowed full Hit Points.)

I totally rolled these stats (I have an eye witness!):

Strength: 18
Dexterity: 16
Constitution: 18 (I bumped this one up to 19 because you can increase a Stat by 1 when you reach a certain Level. 4? 5? I'm no good at remembering these things.)
Intelligence: 16
Wisdom: 16
Charisma: 15

So far, I have been fairly lucky in rolling my D&D character stats. I've had the best luck with Morag as compared to the others. Maybe I will get to use her again. One day. Shite, with stats like these, I wish I could use her again at some point!

I based Morag's concept on the Barbarians of the Tribes of the Dragon found in my first D&D campaign, which I played years ago in London. The Barbarian that traveled with our party in that game was so bad-ass. I was really impressed with him, because he was such an awesome warrior. Sadly, he is now dead. He died honourably, though.

Morag Kincade stands at about 5 foot, 11 inches tall, and weighs about 155 pounds. Her build is quite athletic and fairly toned. The most immediately striking aspect of her are her intricate tribal tattoos (in blue ink), which cover every visble part of her body, including her face. She has wild, white-blonde hair decorated with bits of feather and bone. Her hair is always unruly, and hangs just to the base of her neck. She has a confident, but crazy look to her eyes, and when she speaks to you her gaze is intense. Her eyes seem to be almost white, but you can see a bit of blue in them if you look hard enough. Her skin is oddly pale, for a Barbarian, making her tattoos stand out all the more. Morag definitely appears intimidating.

Morag carries a finely-made and wicked-looking Claymore (Great Sword +1, I believe) strapped to her back. She has a very nice, deep crimson cloak (Cloak of Resistance), and when she moves about perhaps you can catch a glimpse of a shiny shirt (Mithril) underneath her top layer of clothing.

Maybe I will draw a picture of her at some point, although designing the tattoos would take a bit of effort. :-P

Here's a quick rundown of the battles:

The first fight was against a powerful magic user, a Half Dragon, and an Ogre (might have been a Half Ogre). Anyway, they were really strong and stuff. They did quite a lot of damage to everyone. I was on 15 HP by the end of the battle, which was cutting it very close, since Barbarians lose a bunch of HP (10?) after their Rage runs out.

The circumstances of the final fight was very Aliens-eqsue. Except the baddies had four arms, poisonous bites, and were resistant to fire and all sorts of shit. Oh, and they don't drag you off to become gestators for their broodlings; they just eat you. Forgot what those creatures were called... Anyway, Morag did quite a lot of damage to one of them, but she eventually got munched, like the others.

I had fun that evening. One of Dyannamika's friends made curry, which was very nice. They also had music playing, some of which had been created by a couple of them for a Ravenloft campaign. There was a lot of reminiscing about past campaigns, characters, and events. It made me nostalgic for playing with the London D&D group, because I really liked the whole experience, the people, my character, and the DMing.

Damn, D&D is fun.

I'm stuck in Atlanta on a layover which was originally supposed to be just a little over an hour long, but my connecting flight got cancelled due to shite weather. I was re-booked on another flight, and now the wait is about five hours long in total. I killed some time by talking to Dyannamika on the phone, and then I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age for a long while. Now it's nearly time for me to buy some food and I am paying for over-priced Internet access because I am bored.

Last week, I played some Dungeons & Dragons with Dyannamika and her friends. It was great to be able to finally play D&D with her in real life. She helped me roll up my character (I'm still kind of a D&D n00b, and it's been like two years since I have played table-top), a Barbarian called 'Morag Kincade'. I rolled some pretty awesome stats, which I will post here later because the character sheet is in my checked luggage (I hope it doesn't get lost).

The game was loads of fun. Nearly everyone died, but it was only a one-off game anyway. Morag kicked some serious arse. She pretty much killed a half (red) dragon by herself (the were-rat PC hit him a few times), which was pretty sweet. I had a loads of fun playing a melee character. Barbarians are pretty cool.

I got Dyannamika hooked on Katamari Damacy, and we played some Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly. Fatal Frame II is a bit scary, but so far it was good. We didn't finish it because there wasn't enough time, and there were other things to do besides gaming.

Anyway, my visit there was a lot of fun, and Thursday I am off to Otakon. I have a lot of peope to make social calls with this weekend, since most of them live far away. Apart from my staffing duties, it will be an even busier weekend than previous Otakons. Hopefully I will be able to meet up with everyone that wants to see me.

To the ten or eleven of you who read my blog regularly:

I will be away, visiting a friend in a distant land (two time zones to the West). After that, I will work at my 7th Otakon. In all, I will be out of town for a little over a fortnight. This means I will most likely not be blogging. I will definitely be doing some gaming where I am going, however finding time to blog about it (should anything interesting occur) is another story.

Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and hopefully I won't lose any of you whilst I am away. Cheers!

This week's Economist (August 6th - 12th) features video games in their Special Report. "Chasing the Dream" is a great article that summarises current political climate in the industry and discusses the debate over its social impacts. It highlights three key "overlooked factors":

That attitudes to gaming are marked by a generational divide; that there is no convincing evidence that games make people violent; and that games have great potential in education.

Much of it is not new to us gamers, however for most Economist readers, I think it is a very enlightening piece, and I'm glad to see it in an intelligent, mainstream publication. The cover, though, is a bit sensationalistic...

I don't know if this will be any good, but I will go to the VGXPO 2005. Looks like the Philadelphia and Dallas line-ups are more interesting than the DC list. I hope they get some more exhibitors.

I am extremely bummed that I will miss Video Games Live when it comes to my area. I will be working at Otakon that entire weekend. :-(

Apparently I've been banned from the Luminoth Temple, the "exclusive" Nintendo forum for "mature" gamers. My sin was allegedly "revealing information about the Luminoth Temple" on my blog. My excommunication is likely due to this post I made back in June. I never logged back in after that. My opinion of the admins and moderators in that post still stands. I believe it was in poor taste for the admins to create a forum to rate the attractiveness of booth babes. And I believe that the comments and behaviour of the forum members were incredibly immature, and not at all in the spirit of the Luminoth Temple's ideals.



I am not upset about the banning. I am surprised, however, that they didn't warn me about my "infraction". Nor did they have, at least when I first joined, any specific rules on what one could and could not say outside of the Temple. I was not an active participant, anyway. I think I made less than 30 posts since I joined in March. If I had cared more, I might have filed a complaint with the admins, however the groupthink mindset of the people participating in the booth babes rating forum was fairly intimidating. I am not impressed that an official Nintendo BBS would allow its admins (Nintendo employees) to create this forum, and equally unimpressed that no one questioned its creation.

Hey, so I must really be a blogger now. Something I wrote has got me in trouble.

EDIT: I should probably say how I found out I was banned, since I just stated that I had not been to the BBS since I made that post in June. I discovered that someone had found my blog via my Luminoth Temple profile. Later during the day, someone from the Nintendo of America domain also visited my blog, specifically my blog entry about booth babes. Suspiscious activity indeed. This prompted me to attempt to login to the Luminoth Temple, at which point I found I could not login, and the reason why. Moderators did not attempt to contact me about the banning via email.