The "N" Word: A Nerdy Night of Theatre

So, as some of you might know, I am a substitute teacher, I am a Fight Director, I am a writer, and I am a HUGE nerd. SO what does one do with this. He has high schoolers perform his works in a geeky variety show.

https://www.facebook.com/events/228582910626680/

That's right, Sept, friday & saturday 6th & 7th, at Leigh High School, San Jose. 7pm preshow, there will be live gaming until start @ 8pm, and it is a fantastically quick show even with almost a dozen "peices" total.

We hope to have special guest fan groups attend, as well as some world renowned cosplayers. Oh yeah, This is a cosplay friendly event as there will be a cosplay contest!
So come in costume and get your nerd on!

Voyeurism

Well, sort of. I have been doing a lot of watching lately.
Anime:
-FLCL again for myself, first time for Theatreg33k
-Escaflowne the Movie (still only half way through. Writting this instead of finishing it, don't you feel special). So then I can watch "Nescaflowne" and then put up a meme-Orable

Movies:
-Wreck it Ralph which was awesome, and I will repeat what I've heard before, that Disney made a Pixar movie after Pixar made a Disney Movie. Also, the soundtrack has been playing in my shop ever since Calamity Jane will sing "Sugar Rush" on her own if something else isn't playing it.

I also beat Sugar Rush and Hero's Duty. Hero's duty was a bit of a grind, but then so was Sugar Rush. Man, I really wish they would release a full version of Sugar Rush, it would be a great Mario Kart alternative.
- Rise of the Guardians which was THE BEST! I enjoyed it thoroughly and will watch it again and again if the opportunity arises. I feel that I am most like the elves since someone else I know has claimed the Yeti's as their new spirit creature and apparently will "speak yeti" at home now. For more of my thoughts and feelings on the subject I will defer to . . .
Vlogs:
-Andre: The Black Nerd:

I have watched almost  the last half year of his catalog and would love to hang with him. Just maybe not barefoot anywhere . . .
-my last post
-Keeping up with other web series and Apparently there's some collab going on between Standard Action and the Zombie Orpheus crew on GAMERS THREE!!! OMG! SQUEE!!


 watching things change, and watching out for things to happen as well as reactions to them.
 . . . and now that I've gotten his far into the post I realized it's not just some filler post but several half posts rolled into one larger post so that it is superior to the inital "imma blather about things until a post appears" even though that's exactly what happened. SUCCESS!. I feel that is good. Enjoy.
-Later Space Cowboys

Gamer Specifics

So, all love, we all get things confused and mix things up or have heard of things and associate them incorrectly. In an attempt to make some nerdy sense of unarguably nerdy visual media, I present a couple properties and hope to establish some new mental associations.

Gamers (sometimes -> ) The Movie
A movie from '06, this particular film revolves around a group attempting to break a world record for length of time playing a table top RPG.
This one is fun as the production value is quite clean. I recall it receiving mediocre-to-decent press and there is a good amount of resources to be found concerning the movie. Behind the scenes stuff and production clips around the net. For further resources, have their site, as well as IMDB, and of course WIKI, and . . . .



The Gamers
and of course,
The Gamers: Dorkness Rising
And AND
Journey Quest
I will admit, I still need to watch the original movie, The Gamers, but I have consumed, with great relish, the sequel, as well as their current web series, as you may already be familiar with it.
Dorkness Rising, last I checked was available on Netflix, and crazy entertaining as it somewhat just dives right into the culture without trying to explain too much, which I appreciate.
And of course, Journey Quest goes even farther by setting the whole thing IN a fantasy setting, no "RL" players, just ridiculous fantasy characters doing things you might guess they would get up to. As I've linked to JQ a couple times and you can already read a review, have some Dorkness . . . The Magical Quote is at 3:50

It would also seem Dead Gentleman/Zombie Oprheus/Epic Level have formatted the Movie into a Web series and left the last few episodes offline, or have not finished posting them in their entirety.


In any event, GO! ENJOY!
Oh yeah, there was a movie called Gamer, it was kinda big, mostly what I'm sure FPS's will become in the future, Running Man already did it though, and I find it more likely to come true than the FPS one, or at least before the other.

Game-con-on

This weekend M'Lady & I will be in SoCal attending Strategicon's Gateway gaming convention. She will be helping keep the con looking good with the D20 Girls and I will be riding along for shiggles.
Although I don't normally attend gaming cons I do hope to change that. I'm looking forward to trying some different systems. My coworker "RunningRyan" recommended I try Arkham Horror, as I've never actually played it and maybe even put my acting chops to good use in a LARP, as there seems to be a cool Eberron session set on the lightning rail and of course a steampunk game also.

To add some vaguely relevant personal insight to this post I might discuss the new Campaign that just started with Eric the Blave as DM.

As a flavor/powering component he has had us roll up lvl 1 NPC class characters, and then when we level we will take the first level of a core class. However, instead of having us play a short prologue like he has done once previously, we rolled straight into the first session of the game.

It has been interesting so far, I like the idea in general as a neat quirk but even up against po-dunk peasants it was a challenge.

I don't mind low powered survival scenarios and if I know that's the kind of game we're going into I know to enjoy it. However, I don't know why I never learn with this DM, I expected something more epic, initially.

So, the idea is that magic is returning to the world after thousands of years and our characters are inheritors of this concept (i.e. sorcerers are unheard of, there is no "live" pantheon, everyone worships the elements, but we are the rare few to bring about change in the world). Being that our group would be (after our first "real" level) fairly unique and definitely more powerful than the average citizen of the world I anticipated some fun derring-do our first session.

I was wrong, as I so often am in Eric's games. Brad_again(rejoining our group once more after a 3+ year hiatus) and I would joke about making a kill order list of every named NPC we met and general taking a KoS view of the world if anyone was a jerk or TOO helpful. The joking was about 60% joke and 40% serious as intelligent, articulate, polite and EVIL JERKS seem to infest The Blave's worlds.

Although, even with a mob of peasants vs 3 level 1 npc's I am learning the power of a reliable strength score as well as controller characters. Even as an expert, which gets no BAB, built to level into bard, I was able to make excellent use of trips and grapples.
As much as I want to gripe, perhaps I will have enough time to see how effective I can be "dual wielding" a quarterstaff with a -2/-4 attack. For some inexplicable reason I seem to be terribly adept when my characters have absolutely no business doing a certain thing, and then does them. (My full progression Wizard who had a Bastard Sword for looks and ended up one shoting a peasant and some utiugs on separate occasions.)

The Quest is The Journey

Journey Quest

So it appears, the more I watch these web series, the more they become attracted to me, and I keep doing these little reviews and posting them. I could get into this.

My aggressively nerdy homeboy, "RunningRyan" who is in my "store D&D" group, told me about this one after I showed him a couple other web series I reviewed and stressed the fact that the crew who made this was the same guys who made "The Gamers" & "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising" and also that he laughed so hard he cried. And, a bit to my chagrin as DM of the group, seeks to emulate the fighter from this series. We shall see if he is as fortunate with my traps, MUAWHAHAH!!!, I mean, I hope they have fun in my game.

But enough about my attempts to TPK, this series is superb. It has touches of all sorts of cliches yet several nice deviations from stereotypes that enrich the world, and of course, a few nods towards the fourth wall as some vaguely meta-aware characters quip here and there.


That thar is the Trailer, apparently all the episodes are up on hulu and youtube and stuff. Something about being open source and free so, I'm sure that's awesome.