Unhappy endings.

Finished Neverwinter Nights 2 (original campaign) late late last night. After a fairly decent climactic battle, they deliver an epilogue via still pictures and narration. A really unsatisfying ending, but mostly because of the choice of narrator... one of those situations in which it sounds like they got some guy from the office to read off something. The massive amount of voice acting throughout the game is fantastic, then they end it with this sudden ending and epilogue that just sounds ridiculous.

Gah. Well, on to the first expansion, Mask of the Betrayer. It's supposed to be betterer than the decent OC, but it starts you out at epic levels (18, or if you import your existing character, as high up as he is). I always prefer lower level play, personally. I wonder if the second expansion is also epicky.

Umber Hulks Lub Korn.

Here's my latest goofy pic illustrating that I have too much time on my hands.

It's a (modified) screen grab from Neverwinter Nights 2, the main D&D computer RPG (besides the MMO D&D game, that is). I'm more than half-way through the game, and was psyched to discover that my guy got to take over a keep, and be involved with re-building broken structures, raising and improving a militia, dealing with various problems, etc. The pic here is just some farmland outside the place, though. Click the pic for full size, of course.

From gallery

OMFG, I might just vote for McCain!

He done ascended....

While this news below - fuck yeah! - dwarfs this completely, I imagine most readers of this blog (all three of you) know that E. Gary Gygax died yesterday. I'll have more to say on this great man in the near future, and I was surprised to see that I felt more about him than I thought I would.

It's odd... I wouldn't have been surprised if Gygax had actually died long ago, and I'd just never heard about it. I can't say that I'll "miss" him, since I never followed his life and doings, really. Instead, however, I've suddenly felt a great, thankful acknowledgment of what he had done, and how powerful he affected my life, as well as the lives of countless others. In terms of role-playing games, and so many games that in some way have an ancient, distant distant or relationship to them, his impact has been massive.

This is corny, but I'll say it anyway:

Gygax has found the Amulet of Yendor, and ascended to godhood.

I'm such a geek. And proud of it.

"Now THAT was a shopping experience." - The Bots

(This entry is actually two days old.)

I just returned from That's Entertainment (thatse.com), my favorite store in like, the world, which is New England's largest comic store. It sells a myriad of other things geek-related. Anyway, by using credit (for comics I'd traded in), a holiday coupon, and an employee buddy discounting some old D&D figs (for the uninitiated: diminutive metal figurines one paints and uses in playing Dungeons & Dragons, and other related games), I got a shiteload of merchandise for cheap. All in all, I gots:

1. three new funnybooks (Incredible Hulk, Mighty Avengers, and my favorite, Captain America)
2. a new X-Factor hardcover
3. NINE blister packs of figs

:for only $30 cash. Fuck yeah. Geekasm. I love a bargain.

I walked through the cold snowiness, but had to because I needed to deposit rent $ in the bank across the street from That'sE. I wasn't cold, except for my neck, which made me think that, since I was sick, I should have worn a scarf. But, I then realized that since I already had a sore throat and coughing nastiness, well, it didn't really matter, right?

Eulogy for Spot

I recently had to fill in my friend JennyLisa about my previous kitty, Spot. I did so w/these words, elsewhere:

Poor little sweet Spot never returned one day. I stalked the neighborhood for a number of days, did the whole poster thing, but nothing. I'm hoping that he got lost and someone took him in, rather than getting run over. Such is the risk of having an outdoor kitty.

I really miss the guy, he was such a riot. I like to imagine him traveling around the world: dining fine dining in Paris, prowling castle ruins in England, investigating Berlin's catacombs, finding secret passages (yay D'n'D!) in Egyptian pyramids, warning children away from IEDs in Iraq, carrying medical supplies to inaccessible areas in Malawi, searching for woolly mammoths in Russia, fighting for workers' rights in China, hunting giant rats in Indonesia, going on a vision quest with the Kiwis, guest-illustrating a manga graphic novel in Tokyo, climbing to the edge of volcanoes in Hawaii, advising Chavez in Venezuela, leading Mexicans across the border, trying his hand at goalie in Canada, and maybe, just maybe, visiting me before he makes a full frontal assault on the White House.

In any event, to me, Spot is a martyr in the struggle for fun and the absurd.

BTW - anyone that likes to look at pictures of precious little kittens can do so in my new photo album, yawp.