Doc Says Rawr!

June 12, 2009

Torg update – session of 11 June 2009 (part 1)

Well, crap. I’m in the process of updating Ren’s journal after last night’s session and several weeks of not having between-game journal time (because all of our previous cut points had zero downtime involved–and I do mean zero downtime; we’ve been cutting in the middle of combat scenes, or right between combat scenes that were blending together with scant amount of time between to do anything other than patch up wounds). It’s going to be a huge entry, because lots happened.

Aysle, when we got there, was in a state that can only be described as “totally screwed.” London was beseiged by the Armies of Dark and the seals on Draconis were breaking down. Oh, and the fey had all disappeared. None of this was a happy thing at all.

So guess who drew the suicide mission to find Queen Mab, leader of the fey, and talk her into fixing the seals on Draconis? That’s right, us. So off we go to find our way to the Realm of Magic. Adventures in fey lines ensue (walking through walls what?) until we come to Ys, where I banished an evil frog god back to whence it came (it’s still angry about that, by the way, and wants to eat my soul). There were zombies there, wandering around half underwater. So we fight zombies to get to a place where Tyche can open a doorway into the Realm of Magic. Except there’s a problem. Tyche screws something up and can’t open the door. So Albert opens it.

Albert is never allowed to do that again ever. Ever. And I mean that.

We wander aimlessly through dark parts of unseen areas of cosms until Nicodemus finds us (he’s a half-pint of a fey that’s quite literally on speed) and leads us through the Wasteland into Queen Mab’s realm. At which point she tells us that she can’t help us and sends us on a suicide mission to help her so she can be freed up to see what she can do about our problem. Caught between a rock and a hard place, we head out to Avalon to fight some demons who are trying to break through into the Realm of Magic.

Demons. I hate demons. Mei hates them more, I think–no, I know. Grace gets more pwned. I get pwned. Explosions ensue, but not before I scare myself doing some sort of crazy gun move that belongs in a Wachowski Brothers film (note to self, talk to Grant about that later). So we manage to stop the demons from breaking into the Realm of Magic. Great! Three Sisters of Avalon send us back to the outskirts of London.

The seige is not going well. The bad guys have breached the outer city and are now beseiging the keep.

For the first time since he got the damn thing, Amarant’s plasma rifle became a good plan. Imagine Mike’s excitement.

We cut our way through the city and three of us make it to the walls and get hauled up by Tolwyn, who’s directing the seige…who falls on her head in the middle of a rainstorm when bad things are trying to eat our faces. Of course. It’s been raining since we left Avalon, by the way. Lovely English weather. We get her up on the wall and then I spot smudges on the horizon. More bad things incoming.

Good thing I have a skill for shouting orders and making people listen to me.

We manage to wake up Tolwyn, who agreed that they were bad things. And it only got worse from there before it got barely a little bit better.

And I do mean barely better.

June 10, 2009

Adventures in French Hoods – part 1

So, I’ve gotten everything I need for this French Hood. Yay! And I’m ready to start my adventure.

I’ve gotten a pattern from Drea Leed’s wonderful Elizabethan Costuming site for a French hood dating circa 1535-1540, traced it out onto my interfacing. Time to cut, and then bind the wire to it.

After tracing out the pattern onto my buckram and cutting it out, I proceeded to start binding wire to the buckram–I used a heavyweight embroidery thread to do this, which other than being a bitch to thread onto my needle was actually very easy to work with and did very well.

All told, it only took about an hour and a half or so for this stage. I think I may try it with stiffer wire — I’m not sure if the wire I’m using holds its shape well enough; but time will tell. I’ve got enough jacquard to do this at least twice. So we’ll see what happens. I may ask Trish about it tomorrow at game — she may have a tip or three about it.

June 1, 2009

Because I hate myself…

Because I hate myself, I’m going to try my hand at making a French Hood. And…well…because I think it’d be fun to make one, and if I can make one, that means I can make more. It should also keep my hands busy during Thursday gaming when I don’t need to be rolling dice, which is even better (making jewelery during game doesn’t work as well because I actually count beads as I work, which distracts me from contributing to game).

I’ve got the wire I need and some bridal jacquard I picked up on a whim and I’ve got stuff for veils and the billements coming out my ears (I make jewelery, too, duh), I just need to go get some buckram for the base of the mess. Maybe I’ll see if I can do that on Wednesday after work.

I’m also going to try my hand at making some masks, because no one sells masks. Or nice hats. I should do both, I think, as long as it doesn’t make me crazy (which it invariably will, but it’s a nice thing to try at least once, I think). There’s a lot of stuff I think I’m going to try. It’s a question of whether or not I actually get to it.

May 29, 2009

One of those days…

It’s just one of those days. Have to work at 5pm (which means I head to the mall sometime between 3:30 and 4 so I can grab some dinner at the food court), which means I really don’t want to settle in to anything that involved. I almost feel like playing a console game (Assassin’s Creed) but that falls into the category of “something involved”…and the basement is a mess. At least, that section of the basement is a mess, and I don’t feel like cleaning up after the little brother, who created the mess. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not. Who knows.

I should really probably be writing, or doing some serious thesis research, but I’m in one of those “meh” kind of moods to both–the muse just isn’t making noises at me right now, even though I wish it would. And then there’s Aurora Force stuff that I should be doing, but again…the meh.

I need to clean my room, but there’s not enough time to dive into that task and then get ready for work, and I don’t really want to leave it half finished. That may end up being a Saturday project–I need to look over the books on my shelf. I’m thinking about ordering Timothy Zahn’s Conquerors trilogy–I have book one, but not the other two. Of course, I could just go to Borders today before work and see if they’ve got anything shiny. I heard that Ashbringer comes out as a graphic novel next week. That could be very cool. Too bad it didn’t come out this week.

I should get around to finishing Arthas–I’m getting very close to the end. Might as well just finish it off. Probably going to do that now.

Yup. Think I will.

May 19, 2009

Musings about Christie Golden and WoW

So, I’ve been reading one of the more recent World of Warcraft novels, Arthas, by Christie Golden, and I happened to skim over her biography at the back of the book (while I was looking at the notes on further reading–I love lore, and I need to learn more and more of it as I keep playing WoW) to see that she is an “avid player” of WoW.

So that got me musing (and I really shouldn’t muse before I check WoWInsider for the information, but I digress). If I was the author of World of Warcraft novels (amongst others–Golden writes Star Wars and Star Trek novels; I may have to pick up Omen (Fate of the Jedi — she’s working on the series with Aaron Allston and another author whose name escapes me at this time) at some point…..what sort of gameplay aspect would I be focusing on? Good question, right?

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, WoW has about three main foci for gameplay: Roleplaying (my personal favorite), raiding (the pennultimate goal of PvE, largely), and PvP (in all its varied forms). Personally, I’m discounting PvP entirely–most people just don’t play WoW for the PvP, most have moved on to Warhammer because of the “superior system” of PvP to be had there. That leaves Raiding and RP. As much as I love RP…I’m thinking that she may well be a raider. And here’s why.

Both of these aspects of gameplay are total–and I do mean total–time sucks, but one can be less all-consuming than the other, and that’s raiding. Raiding is scheduled, rigid. You set a timetable because you have to get 10-25 people in the same place at the same time and get them all working toward the same goal–all at once. This definately requires a certain degree of scheduling and organization. This makes it less of a time dump than the more organic time-sucking of roleplaying.

I call roleplaying organic because it is. I’m guild lead for one of the oldest (and larger) RP guilds on the Sentinels (US) server–a roleplaying server, not as old as most, but still older than the two most recently opened (and personally hated by me) RP servers (these would be Moonguard (US) and Wyrmrest Accord (US) — I’ve lost too many people to these so-called “meccas” of RP to have much respect for them or much love. Quality over quantity has been my mantra for a long time, and from what I understand, there may be RP everywhere on these servers…but it’s not the quality that I’ve been accustomed to). I know how random RP is, and how rarely scheduled events seem to do well (though I’m hoping that the most recently scheduled events on the server — Miko’s For the Herd! event and RoA’s own Round Table of Azeroth tournament will have good turn-outs) and that’s because people do it at random. It’s just what happens. And when RP starts…unless you put a hard-stop time on it (which most people don’t) it goes on for hours. And hours. And hours. That’s just how it is. It’s what happens. It’s a bigger time sink than raiding ever is and ever can be because it’s not scheduled.

Don’t let anyone tell you that a successful writer’s life isn’t scheduled, because most successful writers have a strict schedule of when they work and when they do everything else (which is probably why I’m not very successful, largely because I fail very hard at doing this at this time). Therefore, raiding is more conducive to a writer’s life.

Of course, maybe WoWInsider will tell me I’m wrong. I have to check up on that. Until I do, though…this is my story, and I’m sticking to it.

May 12, 2009

Star Trek! And other such fun things

Big update this time, since it’s been a while since I updated (I know, I shouldn’t have fallen behind).

So, saw Star Trek on Friday morning with a few friends. And let me tell you, this movie was more than squee-worthy. It was fantastic, and I’d go see it again. Repeatedly. A few minor gripes, but all told, I cannot wait for the next one, and there’d better be a next one. This film was amazing, and JJ Abrams scored as near a perfect 10 as anyone not Gene Roddenbury could–and I know that he’s not spinning in his tin can somewhere floating above us in space. Go and see the flick if you haven’t yet, even if you never liked Star Trek. This film was simply amazing.

On another note, second 80 in WoW — finally, says my guild (again). Once again, got the screenshot:

It’s very exciting–and apparently, I don’t suck at healing as much as I thought I did (I’ve been assured that raid healing is easy–we shall see).

But wait, there’s more! Even though I haven’t been writing as much as I should (and I really do mean that, I’ve got a lot of writing I should be about; maybe I’ll do some of that after I’m done with this), there is some good news beyond gaming and social life. I got a new job! Though I’ll be keeping my old job. I’ve been offered the graduate assistant position for Oakland University’s history department and I’ve accepted. Huzzah!

So much to do. Must work on jewelry…and sewing…and thesis….and other writing….so much to do, so little time to do it in!

April 8, 2009

Ding! First 80

So, much to my guild’s cheering, I’ve finally gotten my mage to 80 (as Steelweaver said: “About damn time!” Then, of course, I was told to get my arse to Naxx. Which isn’t happening just yet, and not just because my gear is crap).

What’s even better? I got the screenshot!

On a note of Torg — got a profile of my character, Dr. Amaeren Colby, up here, as well as her journal, which is a living document (it’s updated as her journal is).