Monkey's Musings, Sort of a blog, kinda, ish

[crazy_monkey1956]

Since these are my forums... ;)

This is my place to vent, blog, think out loud, etc, etc.

Feel free to comment, discuss, etc right here.

[crazy_monkey1956]

April 23rd, 2009
Why Monkey is Falling Behind...Again

As you may or may not have noticed, I've been falling behind on my play-by-posts...again.

The excuses are that I've been job hunting, planning for my trip at the end of May, and dealing with other real world issues.

The reason is that, yes, I have bitten off more than I can chew again, though I do have a plan to cull some stuff without just flaking out and ending stuff prematurely. ;)

The other reason is that I plan on eventually moving all of my play-by-post games here. Well, most, anyway.

Basically, I'm not going to be starting anything new on any other sites after the nWoD/Changeling PbP I promised KillerGM on the Haven. I'm going to be wrapping up a few of the games I have going on other sites once they reach good stopping points. Other games, like Azgundi Tournaments (and its sequels for as long as they last) will stay where they are for the duration as a service to the players who have stuck with them for so long.

[crazy_monkey1956]

April 23rd, 2009
What's Going On with Shadowstorm

For those waiting patiently for my Shadowstorm playtests, development stalled out when it came to working on all the fiddly bits (feats, powers, gear, etc).

During that time, I started reading Blue Rose for a PbP I'm going to run over on Blue Moon Aurora. The game system started to resonate with me quite a bit and I just recently purchased True20 to do some further research.

True20 has a system license available similar to the old D20 License and I may go that route with Shadowstorm if I find that True20 meets my needs. Such a move will save a great deal of time and creative energy that can be spent on developing the setting and the various "Before the Storm" prequel settings.

I'll post another update on Shadowstorm and this latest development when I've had time to thoroughly digest True20.

[crazy_monkey1956]

April 24th, 2009
Learning from my Mistakes

This is mainly a brainstorming post, illuminating the mistakes I've made in the PbP arena so I can avoid making them again. ;)

Starting a new game because I'm Bored - Paths of Madness is the current culprit in this category. I have a plan and I need to stick to it. If a weird idea pops into my head, I need to just jot it down to save for later.

Starting a game at higher than beginning level - Paths of Madness again. My game-fu starts to break down when I start a game at higher than 1st level or the equivalent there-of depending on the game system.

Including character creation in a tutorial game - Blood Dawn is the current culprit here. It ends up bogging the game down and delaying the actual playing part. This is partially dependent on the game system, however. Frontier, for example, uses a simple system so character creation isn't too cumbersome. Still, pregens is the wiser path.

Starting or hyping a game before its ready - The Before the Storm playtests are the major offenders here, though my Blue Rose game is another culprit. Definately need to plan before I start the ball rolling.

The New Plan

Actually, just a revision of the current plan. I'm planning on getting to the point where I'm running one or two game systems per day on my weekly schedule. The idea behind that is that I want to get some use out of all the various games on my shelf. ;)

So, again brainstorming, this is a list of the various game systems I currently have (not counting, for the moment, most of the things I have on PDF).

Blue Rose/True20

Palladium - Heroes Unlimited, Nightbane, Ninjas & Superspies, Rifts

Monte Cook's World of Darkness

Scion - Scion: Hero

(old) World of Darkness - Changeling, Mage, Vampire

(new) World of Darkness - Changeling

D&D 4E - Forgotten Realms

D&D 3.5 - Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk

D&D (BECMI)

D20 Modern

Star Wars Saga Edition

The following games are not quite playable right now, either because I have the game on PDF and dislike reading/using PDFs for anything other than reference or because I have supplements but don't have the core book(s).

AD&D 2nd Edition - Council of Wyrms, Forgotten Realms, Maztica, Spelljammer

Conan RPG

Pathfinder Beta

Xcrawl

Exalted

More brainstorming to come.

[crazy_monkey1956]

April 28th, 2009
New Acquisitions and Monkey's Reading Problems

Changeling: The Lost and True20 arrived today. :D The first will allow me to get a better feel for the game I'm playing in on Sunday nights and allow me to finally keep a promise to the long suffering KillerGM. The second will likely become the game system Shadowstorm uses. All sorts of yumminess.

Of course, I need to read them before any of that happens.

I used to be a fairly voracious reader, devouring game books and fantasy novels as soon as I got them. Then I got married, had kids and the internet came along. Now, I average, if I'm lucky, about a chapter a week, sometimes less. For game books, that's a positively glacial pace. As an example, I started reading Blue Rose a little over a month ago. I'm currently on chapter 6 out of 10 chapters (page 128 out of 224 pages).

I watch my wife read a fantasy or romance novel in about a day, sometimes a day and a half and I find myself envious...and worried that I've lost something, somehow, though I don't know what that something is.

About ten years ago I underwent an extensive psychological assessment. At that time, in addition to being diagnosed with depression and anxiety, I was told that I'm above average, intellect wise, in every category except attention span. In other words, if I were "normal" I'd have Attention Deficit or something. And it is my attention span that frustrates me most often with reading. I just lose interest after a chapter (sometimes less).

I'm not sure what the solution is, or even if there is one.

[crazy_monkey1956]

April 30th, 2009
A Few of Monkey's Favorite Things

Believe it or not, Monkey enjoys things besides RPGs. Shocking, I know, but I figured I'd share and see if anyone else had similar interests.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Supers on the big and small screen

Star Trek - I am just shy of being a bonafide Trekkie (or Trekker if you prefer). I've seen almost all of the episodes (missed the last couple of seasons of Voyager and Enterprise, due to lack of opportunity rather than lack of interest). I don't, however, get in to the books and such.

Star Wars - I enjoy all six of the movies and enjoyed what I saw of the short animated Clone Wars bits they did a while back. I haven't seen the new Clone Wars stuff, though.

Babylon 5 - Woot. 'Nuff said.

Animated DC Universe - All kinds of good stuff here - Batman Animated, Batman Beyond, Justice League, woot!

Stargate - SG1 and Atlantis. Not sure about the new Universe series coming soon. Seems a bit too much like Lost in Space and/or ST: Voyager from what I've seen so far.

Beast Wars/Beast Machines - Transformers goes wild! Love it!

Transformers - Love everything Transformers up to the Robots in Disguise series and the Unicron Trilogy (Armada, Energon, Cybertron). Didn't like those. Love the movie and haven't seen TF: Animated though I'm not fond of the animation style I've seen for that one.

Music

Movie Soundtracks - Favorite genre of music, period. John Williams, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, yeehaw! Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, goodness gracious there's too many to list! ;)

Heavy Metal - Metallica, Linkin Park, Godsmack, quite a few others.

Girl Metal - Not the official name of the genre, but Monkey really digs bands with a heavy metal sound and a female lead singer. Evanescence, Lacuna Coil, and Kittie are the standouts.

New Age - Have to be in the right mood for this stuff. Enya, Yanni, and anything with the word Celtic in it.

Other Movies

Disney/Pixar - Every movie I've seen from the Disney/Pixar dynamic duo I've loved. Current favorite is The Incredibles.

Other Disney - 90s Disney mainly - The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, Lilo & Stitch (though that came out in 2000 I think) and a few others.

Horror - Mrs. Monkey doesn't like it, but Monkey is a big fan of horror movies. They have to be of a specific type though. Supernatural elements, an in-depth mythology, a certain mood...basically anything Clive Barker (Hellraiser, Nightbreed, Candyman...especially Candyman), though there's some other gems out there as well.

Video Games

LEGO!!!!!! - Lego Star Wars and Lego Star Wars II are the current favorites in the Monkey house. Lego Batman has its moments but it just doesn't measure up, unfortunately. We just got our hands on Lego Indiana Jones but haven't played it, yet. Here's hoping its as good as the Lego SW games.

Final Fantasy - Favorites here are 1 (via FF Origins) and 6 (via FF Anthology). Mrs. Monkey really enjoyed FF12.

Kingdom Hearts - FF + Disney would be mega awesome but the game play (button mashing) isn't my style. Still, the concept and the story are enough that I do want to finish this eventually.

Games (other than RPGs)

Monkey likes games with lots of fiddly bits to play with. Don't have much time to play them, though. :(

Wasting Time on the Internet

Monkey's guilty pleasure. Monkey is a fan of conspiracy theories and liberal skewing political news and commentary. The conspiracy theories are fun to mine for gaming plots. :D

Stuff Monkey doesn't like that a lot of other gamers seem to

Most Anime - Though I will confess to enjoying the Americanized version of Digimon, Vampire Princess Miyu, and Princess Mononoke.

British Comedy

Potty Humor - Southpark, Spongebob and their ilk can fall off the face of the planet as far as I'm concerned. Their obnoxious, crude and thoroughly unfunny. And Spongebob is targeted at kids for crying out loud. Pathetic.

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 5th, 2009
Opening the Gate

Monkey and the Mrs are currently geeking out over Stargate. We allowed ourselves a splurge with some of the tax return money and purchased...

Stargate (the original movie)
Stargate SG-1 seasons 1 - 10 (nice big box containing the complete series)
Stargate: The Ark of Truth (direct to DVD movie)
Stargate: Continuum (direct to DVD movie)

So far we've watched the movie and up to episode 5 of season 1. Lots more to go, but I really love this series...really, really, really love this series. :D

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 7th, 2009
Bored Monkey

In order to avoid one of my PbP traps (starting a new game when I'm bored), I'm just going to ramble here about the types of games I'd like to run but don't have time for and/or have never managed to find anyone else interested enough to play.

Spelljammer

One of AD&D 2nd Edition's kookier settings, with magical space travel based on a sort 18th-19th century view of how physics and the universe worked with liberal additions thrown in. I find it all terribly intriguing but have never been able to run it as written as a lot of folks (my wife included) can't get past the altered physics (objects creating their own gravity planes and air bubbles when they leave an atmosphere, solar systems contained within massive crystal spheres floating around in rivers of fire called phlogiston, and other nifty stuff).

In Depth Race/Culture Immersion

A D&D campaign where all the players are restricted to one race, such as all elves or all dwarves. It'd work better with AD&D 2nd Edition's Complete Splat series, specifically the race oriented ones, as the kits would allow everyone to have abilities flavored toward the campaign's focus race. One thing I've learned though...players like variety and choices. Limiting choices generally doesn't go over very well.

Multi-Genre, Multi-System Epic

I managed to pull this off once via Play by E-Mail back in the mid-90s. Characters from Palladium, AD&D 2nd Edition, and old World of Darkness all mixed up together in one crazy mega-multi-verse. It worked because I handled all of the rules stuff on my end. A Crinos form Werewolf just clawed a Rifts Juicer for 4 wound levels? Well, that Juicer just took roughly 40 points of SDC damage then. I don't think it would work so nowadays because a lot of players don't want to give up that much control over the nitty gritty stuff.

So, that's just some of the weirdness floating around in Monkey's head when he's bored.

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 12th, 2009
More Bored Monkey Game Ideas

Freeform, Sandbox D&D

Something like a Living campaign, or a PbP MMORPG. Player characters could interact in town, basically freeform style, and go on adventures as they become available. DMing an adventure would get a player XP for his character. I tried something like this with the Free Trader's League, but it didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to, so I handed it over to the players.

Deities

Using the 3.5 Divine SRD (and the rest of the SRD), let players create and play fledgling deities, starting at 20 HD of Outsider and Divine Rank 0, and gaining a Divine Rank every four character levels after that. Dark Horizon is a modified version of this, but has a bit more plot than this idea would have.

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 19th, 2009
Monkey's Health

Monkey is on the slow road to improving his health. I'm currently overweight (though not obese...I suppose I could be described as pudgy) and run out of steam pretty quickly, not to mention dizzy spells.

So, we've cut most of the sugar out of our diets and just recently cut out the caffeine. Now comes the exercise. Walking to the store almost every day helps, but its not a "get in shape" kind of workout. Not sure what will work for us, yet. Still need to do some research on that score.

A little history - Monkey used to run track and cross-country in high school and was slim and trim when I joined the Air Force (back in 1994). Junk food and sympathy weight from four kids caught up to me, though. :P

I'll post more updates as things improve. Wish me luck. :D

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 20th, 2009
Finding New Ways to Celebrate Mediocrity

The title is a quote from The Incredibles when the super parents are arguing about their son's "Graduation" from 4th grade to 5th grade.

Now, what we went to tonight is a bit more credible than that as it was a ceremony for moving from elementary school to middle school for our 6th grader. However...

I am officially ashamed to be a member of my generation.

This was supposed to be a ceremony to celebrate the children's success in elementary school. What we got was people gabbing, wandering around, children running and people moving around trying to get the best camera angle. And, when certain kids names were called for something it ceased to be a school gymnasium and apparently became a professional sports arena, pro wrestling specifically. Whistling, hooting and hollering for the kids and cat calls (I kid you not) for the handsome male teacher. The noise would often completely drown out the name of the next student being called for an award.

Not to mention that 80% of the adults there were dressed like gang members and trailer trash. I don't usually get that vulgar online, but, yeesh, this was downright embarassing.

Is it too much to ask for a litte dignity, respect and courtesy? Apparently so.

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 23rd, 2009
Blast from the Past

In a few days I will be going back to Maine by myself for the first time since early 1996. I've been back with my wife and kids a couple of times since then, but not a solo trip.

I was born and grew up in Maine but I haven't lived there since I was 18. I joined the Air Force and have been all over the country in my adult life. I've been looking for "home" all that time because Maine really ceased to be home when I left and got married. Northwest is looking better and better for the designation of "home," if we can ever afford to get back there.

But, back on topic, I'm a little anxious about this trip to Maine. It'll be the first "real" wedding I've ever been to (my wife and I eloped) and I'm the best man. It also happens to my dad's third wedding, to a woman I've never met.

I'm not sure what this trip is going to be like. Awkward most likely.

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 26th, 2009
Leaving on a Jet Plane

The last time I faced the perils of aerial travel, I at least had the anticipation of going to GenCon to offset the anxiety. This time around, I'm ambivalent about the trip itself, so I'm not really looking forward to the flight, either.

Still, last time wasn't too bad on my ears (which have air pressure issues due to a horrible ear infection back in the Navy) so I'm hoping I'll be ok this time around.

For those reading this who don't give a monkey's back end about this Monkey's ears and would rather hear about gaming stuff (;)) I'll be taking Wraith: The Oblivion 2nd Edition on the plane with me for reading material.

To which some of you will say, "What?!?! You're supposed to be reading Blue Rose/Changeling/Nightbane for a PbP you said you'd run!"

To which I say, "True, true. But, my Sunday night tabletop group is expecting me to run Wraith when I get back, so the need to familiarize myself with that book is a little more immediate. Sorry." ;)

Besides, if I'm going to freak the normals on the plane, I might as well go all out with one of the darkest, creepiest RPGs ever made. :D

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 29th, 2009
Musings from Maine

I was born and grew up in Maine, but since I left home for the Air Force in 1994 I've only been back to visit a handful of times.

I find myself more than a little melancholy this time around as I am surrounded by reminders of the past without the anchor of the present, my wife and kids, to keep me grounded.

What I really miss the most, though, is green. The trees and the grass and just the general natural feel of this place. Colorado is so brown and ugly. I once got the feeling in Colorado that the shear dreariness of it was sucking the soul out of me bit by bit.

I have a great longing to return to Maine on a more permanent basis, or at least some place equally green. Perhaps Maine isn't the best choice because of the lingering memories but definately somewhere that has real trees.

[crazy_monkey1956]

May 30th, 2009
The Wedding

First, please pardon any typos that creep into this. I'm quite exhausted, but I wanted to write all this down before I forgot.

Rather than give you a blow by blow I'll just go over the funny, ironic and amusing bits. ;)

First, there was the ceremony itself and those damnable dress shoes that were killing my feet. And of course, being one of the best men, I had to stick around longer and be present for all of the pictures and such. My dad's side of the party, so to speak, was exceedingly amusing in appearance alone as you had my dad at about 5'5", then me at 5'7", then my (ex) step-brother (ex, because he's actually the son of my dad's second ex-wife...part of why this whole thing was awkward) at 5'9" or so...then the groomsmen, one standing at 6'5" and the last at 7' and some change. So, we formed a perfect little height line during the ceremony which everyone found quite entertaining.

I was the one doing the ring hand-off and, of course, there had to be a picture for that, so me and the maid of honor (the bride's daughter) are standing there holding these rings up for a couple of minutes, first for the picture and then for the prayer over the rings. You wouldn't think a ring could be heavy, but holding your arm in one place is definately annoying. Add to that that my knee was acting up and I darn near toppled over.

And now a confession. Monkey is a crier. I cry at movies, I cry at TV shows, I cry at songs; if its the least bit touching in some way, I'll be crying. So, I definately cried at several points of the wedding, mostly in reaction to my dad and his new wife and how happy they were and how happy everyone was for them and all of that good stuff. I also choked up when I did something I'd never done before (and its bringing tears to my eyes now just thinking about it). I told him I was proud of him.

At the reception, I had to do a toast. I kept it short and sweet and got a few laughs. I mingled a bit. Hell, I even managed to dance, even though Shadowmask wasn't there. One of my dad's friends and classmates from high school was there and dragged me out to the dance floor for a dance.

There a few kids in the 3 to 5 range and they were having a grand old time. The bride danced with one of them and it was exceedingly cute.

Then they did the garter and bouquet tosses. My dad made a big show of the garter toss of course. All of the single guys were up there, which were only four or so...and the 7' tall groomsman. The garter sails through the air and all you see is this ginormous arm just casually reach up and yoink! before the other guys even had a chance to jump for it.

Eventually, my aunt (my dad's sister) and my ride home was ready to go and we proceeded to get lost. She tried asking for directions...and got lost again following those. She tried calling my dad...no cell phone signal (this is the middle of Nowhere, Maine after all). Luckily, a nice guy stopped and gave us better directions and we were on our way.

So, I'm back at my Dad's house, worn out but happy. I could've done without the heavy Christian nature of the ceremony, but it wasn't my wedding so I lived with it.

I now have two new step-siblings and a new step-mom. They are all pretty darn groovy and their whole family are a rambunctious and rowdy lot. Unlike the last step-mom and her family, I'm actually looking forward to spending time with these folks as opportunity allows. They actually feel like family and that's an awesome thing for me. :D