Tuesday, September 27, 2011

A Tale of Two Burritozilla's

How does your gaming crew end a campaign? Ours does it with booze, Epic Meal Time homage's, Huge Fuckin' Blades & Huge Fuckin' Burritos.

Birth is a beautiful, yet terrifying thing.

"Oh nos! We just fought a dragon shaman who may or may not have been epic level and NOW there's a size category HUGE green dragon barreling down on us as we sit like hors d'oeuvres on a plate on top of a temple." No, bitch! My group says BRING IT!!1! We're eating 17' death rolls of Mexican goodness then pouring poison into our gullet holes while we FUCK THAT DRAGON! No shit, the dwarf just made a grapple check, now he's rolling to control the pin.
"Let's go to Work."
Before we get (yes, I'm going to say it) ROLLIN' we have to divy up this mass of meat, beans, rice, awesome, sauce & tortilla so that all may partake of the madness. "But h4773r? Are you gonna use one of those little Bitch Kitchen knives? That would take forever." FUCK NO! I use Aniki, the beast from the far east, the edge from the edge of the world, my Kanetsune.
Luh-Ike! BUHTTUH! I came a little. I wont lie about that. And yes, that is a wooden battle board with scorch marks for the grid. Ti Slut did that up nice just for our group.
"But where will you cut it? That's not your table and you don't want to get 'zilla juices all over the floor? Are you going to go outside?" FUCK NO! This is D&D right? We use the fucking metal-ass battle board to slice these vessels of sustenance, then we use it for tactical visualization, like a Boss.
Aniki, Drippin', not ready to take his tip out of the battle board. Burritozilla, divided. Was it good for you?
And so, as the sounds of gnashing nerds and guzzling geeks echo against the walls of our dining area, shit is being bulled. My compatriots enjoy their last moments as living characters before I destroy them with emerald, winged, acid breathing death. On film, for your consideration.



Perhaps the camera man (RunningRyan) and myself will make a transcript and post it so you can hear my witty ass remarks. Probably not though, as you should just watch it 3 times like I did.
And guess what? We did it again last week, only it got crazyer, with more video, and hopefully better quality. Tune in!

Thursday, September 22, 2011

MemeOrable: "shuffle Meme!"

Like many nerds, my friends and I have ventured VERY far into the unique board game forest and have played and encountered amny crazy and odd games. Everything from the colossi like "Catan" and "Talisman," to the brand spankin' new "Orbit" and even, the ancient "Jurassic Park" & "Line in the Sand."
One of our most revisited and reverently spoken of games is . .  "Thousand Blank Cards."
I will admit that not only is this game great for its free form and potential for rampant shenanigans, it's one of my favorites because any time me and my smart ass friends want to show of our mental wangs, the cards provide a superb platform.
I was first introduced to it by my pal F33r3t (a proper Discordian) who showed me This Site, and ever since it's been a running gag/damn good time every time we've played.
A few excellent examples form one of my own collection/seed decks.
One of my favorite stories was back at an old Japan Town Anime Faire, a whole crew of us had got two rooms, one of our good friends and fellow SJSU alumna J.Rei had just won Anime Expo Idol and had been harangued into coming up to our rooms and playing a round of the game. A few hours had passed, (I think it was the next day by now) and Miss Rei had an even the next morning (that morning?). Of course she was going to attempt to bow out early, after one more turn. I believe she kept the card as I can't find it today, but I whipped one up right quick: "Attacked by Rabid Fanboys (the picture had a little dust cloud and some heads sticking out of it with a quote 'OMG ITS AX IDOL!!!') All voice actors must finish the game." This was greeted with hoots of joy, shouts of exultation and one good nature'd groan of defeat.



Tuesday, September 20, 2011

But Then I got High

Quite the opposite actually. More like "and then I got low."
I have a few things in the pipe to post (like-ya-do) but as of last night I did not have the UMPH to thump away at the keyboard until a semblance of a post appeared, I would rather write something I might actually want to read later.
(I have noticed that often, maybe it's just narcissism, but when I dig through back posts to find something to show off or whatever, I will find myself READING my own posts and thinking "wow, this is GOOD." But then of course, who else would I appreciate the writing style of more, than myself?)
I will do my best to throw a "real" post up before midnight tonight and I have a couple Meme-orables, so there will be that thurs/fri at the VERY least.

Thanks for hanging in there with me H47ites!

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The dungeon master & webseries.

The Golem, I think. (off their Myspace)
As I mentioned last week I had the good fortune of participating in a cool event at Strategicon Gateway called The Dungeon Master. It is a performance group that does live theatre where audience members are pulled up on stage to form the adventuring party that may or may not complete the quest presented to them for that show.

Although the version I played in was a low rent/on the road/woo-this-space-allows-for-nothing sort of set up, the costumes they brought were excellent, the tech aspect served it's purpose and coming from a theatre background myself I applaud the final result, I would not dare to claim I could have done better under the same circumstances. And as far as content, the story, characters, and gags were all, at worst, amusing. Many of the jokes were clever and fun with many obvious nods to RPG and geek tropes, creating an overall sense that yes, you had played this campaign before and that was half the fun of it.
I never realized I need to buy a welding jacket for T1nk, it's kind of a good look for her. (Ty Rayne 4 pic)
Running for over a decade now this crew has been living nerdy and providing art and culture to southern California. Not content with ten years of longevity on stage they have also branched out by starting a web series.

Of the four episodes of Legends of Atoll there is a lot of fun. I'm not sure exactly how intertwined the two shows are as far as production but they are both chock full of the same humor, charm, and love of the genre.

 In having many friends who are also in the entertainment industry I usually give my honest opinions and critiques, and although it appears both products could use improvement and tweaking, I highly recommend this to all nerds. Question about your character? Ask, The Dungeon Master

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

A Gateway to Societal Paths

Just got back from Strategicon:Gateway, almost "today (as in we almost got home past midnight last night)" but in retrospect, I am so glad I decided to tag along with J.C..
First day we had not even asked ourselves what we wanted to play when a enthusiastic gentleman began to chat us up. apparently he was running a pathfinder game where the PC's play a band of goblins, a fantastic one shot. I agree to go play. (Apparently it was a one shot for Pathfinder Society, which I had toyed with signing up for in the past, but had not committed to, as I had not fully researched it.) We assemble and start picking pre-gen goblins, but there is a small army of us, grossly exceeding the encounter CR so we move to a different room and split into two groups as one of the players volunteers to DM. I opted to join the Last Second Group, where I meet "D.J?.", an older gentleman than myself with a goatee and a wicked glint in his eye who volunteered to DM and "H.Hazzard." a bespectabled, well built, prematurely-balding-batman-baseball cap wearing, crazy eyed glaring chap as well.
The goblin crew set out, I opted for the NE cleric of the Goblin God (we were all evil, and, like you do, hate dogs & horses and LOVE fire) and at the beginning of our first combat, before we were allowed to perform any actions, we had to sign our "goblin song (all the pregen's had a quaint little flavor text box)" in order to continue the session. An hour goes by as we get to the dungeon(read:combat grid map section) and barrel through it as H.Hazzard's goblin has a barbarian like rage whenever he smells dogs. Quote "Ah hayt dawgs. Aye smell'um." and as evidence from some of the other parties in character voices, these goblins have cajun accents as our speculated cooking also runs along that vein.
We barrel down into the boss fight as H.Hazzard busts through a floor to get to the dogs, wielding a "goblin sized great club" (a horse joint we hacked off our first major encounter "stompy") and the hilarity ensues. Our alchemist cant stay standing, our rogue, shy from one of the first fights, doesn't make come into the room till round 4, the fighter wont even consider the boss(an evil druid with a Med. Frog companion) until all dogs are rendered unidentifiable, and the bard is doing his/her best to be useful. Seeing as the rogue is wielding a gift from the chief (a +1 weapon) he has a n extra "dogslicer(knife)" and refusing to dual wield with his standard one, I, the cleric, Sleight of Hand it off of him while he's prone, 2 combats previously and am now a dual-wielding cleric.
I get a swarm dropped on me, there are three dogs up as well as the boss & her toad, so, I do what I think any self respecting NE goblin cleric who already blew his burning hands earlier that day would do! Channel negative energy, three consecutive rounds. Even until the last day of the con (four days total) the Goblin MVP's were myself for nearly dropping half of my own party as the CLERIC, and the alchemist from the OTHER group for playing sloppy with the AoE from his bombs. And so, just as I get swallowed by the toad, my group manages to finish off the toad & the druid, all wrapped up in less than 2&1/2 hours. A fantastic introduction to Pathfinder Society if I do say so myself. D.J?. granted us every bonus and accolade he could for that session on the Chronicle sheet.

Second day, I waited around for something, decided to opt out, then was dragged along to a live event called The Dungeon Master and since I had not yet done any RP that day, decided to sign up to play/perform.
This was a blast. Despite the fact some of our party members had not even hit puberty yet, they were enthusiastic and ready to solve every problem with whatever weapon they had at hand. I felt I presented a slightly better than mediocre display of my wit and wisdom as well as a one shot on the "boss" of the session. Apparently my snark, ability to combine rhymes for pun-tastic couplets, and willingness to contribute to the terrible pop-culture references and inside jokes made me the audience favorite for that session, gaining me free admission to their shows for their next season.

Day Three, I am on a mission to play another game with D.J?. as the DM if he runs one and I have also resolved to join the Pathfinder Society in full and roll up a character. I have done a bit of research and am learning about the world of Golarion so I begin trolling the corner/hole the society had been regulated to. I find D.J?. and he is sitting, eyes closed and chiming in to a game he seemed to be helping with. I tried to chat him up a bit and after hearing simply that he would be running other games, wandered off to begin rolling up a Pathfinder legit toon. I find some amiable gents who've been playing Society for some time, as well as H.Hazzard, and the BSing ensues while I choose what type of ridiculousness Golarion is about to defile its universe.
I opted to join in to a tier 1 game and so my reign of silly has begun. After gaining the approval of 1 and 2 1/2 ninja's (i would say only half approval from two of the three) oh, I'm sorry, "merchants," and noobing it up/messing with our cleric (who was being RPed excellently) I had completed my first real Society mission.
I tracked down D.J?. again, this time he was MUCH chipper (apparently a 6 hour nap has that effect) and agreed to let me jump into a game with a pregen he was running later that eve.
And so, at 8pm we assembled, H.Hazzad was running his crazy high AC warrior (33 AC before buffs), I snagged the Rogue from the core book as my other choice was the warrior, and we already had one. The gal RUNNING a few things at the con decided to jump in as our healer, the Cleric from the core as well. AND to round out our crew we had a fantastic battle-buff-bard/savage skald of serious Nordic flavor. APPARENTLY, this tier was 8-9, the "real" characters were level 8 and the cleric & I were level 7, so we we're technically UNDERpowered for the session. so, about 2/3rd through the first encounter we almost KILLED, like, dead dead, more than -10 plus -your con score, but thankfully, D.M?. re-did some math and realized he was using the higher level stats for the encounter so re-dialed the damage. We were then offered the opportunity to restart the session for a more appropriate adventure, but we opted to be badass, and managed to plow through and complete the task, we might have had SOME help from the DM, but even with some junk rolls and maybe some meta-gaming from the DM and the cleric, we had some great moments. Even so, I think we earned those points.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

3rd 4 T3h Nrrd: Sep. '11

Are you ready for an audio assault from the nerdy north west!? Like numerous fantastic geeky things, this cat is from Seattle and he goes by the awesome moniker Klopfenpop!Mr. Fenpop, Mr. Pop? Whatever. This dude is what most NEED to be to be anything on the internet as anartist, a jack of all trades. He mixes, spits, produces and collabs. You can hear him and his works all over the intarwebs. He VERY recently performed along side 1st Gen nerdcore Methuselah MC Frontalot & Mega-Ran. Check the Collab below . . .

Every single beat I've heard him lay down, I could bob my head to, in all of his live performances I've watched on Youtube, his flow is constant and his rhymes are clean and if he continues to put out content like he has been so far, he will maintain a spot in my top 20 nerdcore artists.
I know, I know, I use the Nerdcore Now Vol. 1 songs a lot on these, but lets be honest, they are good. Besides, this one is a short version and live. Enjoy!

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Memeorable: "Meme memee me"

This weeks MemeOrable is a 1 & 1/3 deal. Lets jump in, shall we?

An internet phenomenon from the ancient days of Flash, HOMESTAR RUNNER!!!!

My fiance loves it and used to follow it much more back in college. I like it but some of the humor falls short for me. I do love certain selections though, like . . .
Speaking of Trogdors, I used to know one in WoW, I know there is an actual mob named Trogdor, but this was a RL guy we would run dungeons with on occasion. (back in my day before them new fangled randoms) and I'm sad I no longer remember exactly what race or class he was as it was THAT LONG AGO (old timey wow player is old).

Another amusing anecdote is when I was playing some PvP in wow, and there was a player with a character named "Thecheat." I took note, was vaguely amused and went along trying to defend the farm (Arathi Basin). He helped save the zone a few times, but then, he did something infuriating, started fighting enemies out in the middle of the battleground as far away from any flag as you could possibly be. So, I called him on it:
"No thecheat, we had these flags installed so you can fight on and off the node, not so you can honor farm." And he replied: "meh mehh mememe meh." I then offered: "Come on, lets pour that into homestar's mt dew. I hear they have to pump your stomach if you drink that stuff." And several OTHER people in the raid were amused by the exchange.