30 August 2007
Off to Conquest San Francisco 2007
Well, I'm driving down early tomorrow. I plan to get on the road pretty early and avoid as much traffic as possible. I'll be demoing 2nd edition with a mobile infantry from Las Vegas who's driving out all day Friday. The Demos will be on Saturday morning and Sunday morning, 9am-1pm, though it appears my Sunday sessions got left off the schedule. I hope to see some new players there, and build up attendance for King of the Jumpgate IV next year at Kublacon 2008.
You'd have to be under a rock not to have heard the news about D&D 4.0, or just not a gamer. Well, the support for the current Living Greyhawk campaign will end next year and they're starting a new Living Forgotten Realms campaign next summer. Don't know if I'll make the switch, but I may. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm starting up a WFRP 2E campaign and a buddy is starting up a Pathfinder campaign (D&D 3.5) so the games go on, just in a different form. We'll see how the community at large supports the new 4th edition. I have to say, I was completely unimpressed by the online component displayed in the youtube videos. D&D is about face to face interaction. If you want to play online, go friggin' play World of Warcraft or something. Starting a subscription model income generator seems like an ugly move to me.
I've gotten a couple questions about the new cards for B5 ACTA 2E. I'm waiting on my fleet book which I'm told may be arriving as early as Sep 4th through the retail channels. I like to support my local stores that provide the great space to play all the games my friends and I play. So look for mid September or later for the third age cards. Til next month...
26 August 2007
Beautiful
I'm not much for art, but I love architecture. My brother and I went to the National Art Gallery back in 1999; he was amazed at the paintings, I was amazed by the building they were in. I'm weird that way, but there's something to be said for big arches, marble columns, old classical Greco-Roman structures. Its neat to see something built in modern times in the ancient methods and style. So when I saw this, I was suitably impressed. Check out the video.
19 August 2007
Update
I've added a couple links to the "links" page. Also, I thought it would be cool to provide you a preview of some of the WAV files I'm going to have on the new ACTA2E section of the site. Each fleet page will have one - so let me know what you think, are they appropriate or not?
5 August 2007
Been a long time
Sorry VAS gamers, I fell off the wagon, so to speak, last month and didn't finish the German fleet as I'd hoped. I've been doing more RPGA Living Greyhawk, our area's first table of Red Hand of Doom finished last month, and now two more have started up. They're being GM'd by players from the first table, and I'm playing in one of the games. Its a long campaign-type adventure we're wanting to finish by the end of the year. Palish Convictions, a local Living Greyhawk convention down in Tracy came and went around the middle of July. Back in May, after Kublacon, I thought I'd been conventioned out and was going to take this con "off" but darned if I didn't find myself sucked into getting in some slot zeros one weekend and then judging 3 mods at the convention. Mac Chambers and his crew put on a great event and had 90+ tables of gaming over 4 days. Great stuff Mac, see you next time.
My dad had his 67th birthday near the end of the month, they had a great time back home in Florida. I'm glad my sister and brother could visit him for a couple days - its the one thing I don't like about living in California (not actually true, but its the one that comes to mind the most!). The distance between here and home makes visits usually a once a year thing. Dad's had a tough time in the last year because of the long recovery period from his operation and subsequent chemotherapy. He's getting better every day though. He's been talking about going back to work. He works on parts that fly on the space shuttle, electronics, antennas and such. There's some things there that pretty much only he has done, as far as test procedures for some specialized equipment, and so they're wanting him back. I'm hoping he'll retire soon - he deserves a break.
A good friend in our gaming group moved "back east" to Connecticut last month. We had a good going away party fro him, playing some World of Warcraft CCG to see him off. He says he'll be around as his wife has family out here but usually visiting the in-laws doesn't entail getting in a game with your buds, so we'll see what happens. See you soon, Julio!
If you have visited this site before I'm sure you're aware that the 2nd edition of ACTA is soon to arrive on store shelves. I'm hoping to get a copy to demo at Conquest San Francisco at the end of the month. If you're in the area, stop in and say hi! Either way, I'm busing building the new web pages for the 2E ACTA cards. I've got an offer for some help from a great fellow gamer "Darknight" from the mongoose forums - he's going to be putting together some art for the new web pages.
If you haven't see, the Bourne Ultimatum yet, but plan to - go back and watch the Bourne Supremacy one more time. There's a big overlap between films, with the ending scenes from Supremacy occurring about 3/4 of the way through Ultimatum. Its a wild ride, and definately worth a see. I'm going to be getting the DVD on release day of course :)
Also, Babylon 5, the Lost Tales came out several days ago. I was finally able to get a copy, no local retailers had one. I was forced to drive down to Roseville and pick one up at Best Buy. All I can say is, I'm hoping that JMS can do more. There's no such thing as too much B5.