Archive for Featured

Daikaijuu Sentai Uchuujin Shinkou (Alien Invasion Attack of the Giant Monsters)

November 15, 2012 Downloadable Adventures, Featured
Monster battle carnage

Here is the second installment of our on going It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show our GM provided us with a longer game, I believe it took us 3 sessions to finish the storyline and that included staying up a bit later on the last night.

This adventure was a two part story line, in the beginning section we were humans discovering the monsters and bringing them back to our research lab to study them.  The trip back was one of the two most memorable sections as we got attacked by modern day “pirates”.  It was an attack by hippies on a Greenpeace ship who simply would not believe that we were not whalers.  Of course the fact that we had to use an old whaling ship to bring the creatures back to the lab and that we tried to keep them from going below deck certainly wasn’t helping our cause any.  Eventually we drove them off but not without a struggle.

Then we switch to the awakening of the monsters and us taking them over as our new roles for our actors.  This is where our GM really got the chance to break out his homemade hex map, terrain and miniatures.  He is really into Lego’s and so that is what we use for mini-figs when he runs.  Of course we collect them too which makes them super easy to locate and use.

So as the ubur monsters (think Godzilla style) we were bent on destroying the town, as well as our arch enemy.  Turns out that, at least for us and our dice, the hard part would be the electric lines they had laid down in our path.  We came far too close to dying out over them before we even got into the real battle.

These images are from the end of game and give you an idea of the carnage as well as our GM’s homemade battle map.

Battlemap carnage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the write up of the movie poster, the characters and rule summary, as well as the entire adventure.  Hope you enjoy.  If you end up playing or running it I would love to hear how your adventure went.

Sentai_Daikaijuuu

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Why I Love Guild Wars 2

August 8, 2012 Computer Games, Featured

Buy Guild Wars 2


So, as many of you likely know, Guild Wars 2 will be releasing on Aug 28, 2012.  At our house this is exciting news, as I trust it is at many of yours as well. My husband and I pre-bought the game for both of us as our anniversary present this year back in April when the option became available.  We intend to each dedicate a character slot to our joint play time, kind of a gamer date time when the kids are at their dad’s house.  Any way that works is a good way to keep the spark alive.

I never played the first Guild Wars, and haven’t been very big into the whole multi-mass player online game thing.  Mostly I don’t like to team up with others, partly because as a mom my attention can rarely be devoted fully to the game and partly because I am not super good at them and feel self-conscience around others.

Thankfully Guild Wars 2 has proven to be the game I was waiting for, I just didn’t know it.  A big thank you to my husband for knowing it for me.

When I play rpg style games it is all about the character and the development of the character.  I will choose things based off what the character would choose not always what is the best from a number-crunch perspective.  This often makes my characters ineffective but very real; so far I have had enough choices to implement style without sacrificing ability which is great.  I love how the items have really out there names sometimes which feeds my character personality need quite well.

I also have enjoyed the immersion of the character background into their personal story line.  This allows me to focus on doing things and generally staying away from the tedium of grinding.  Any game that makes me grind will quickly be left behind, I don’t find it engaging to endlessly run areas to kill monsters just to get experience to level to do the next real thing.  With Guild Wars I can collect hearts or way point or views and just go to a whole new area if I need to level for my story line.  It keeps me engaged which means I keep playing.

My family budget loves the idea that I buy the game and then get to play it, no deciding what we are going to give up each month to afford the dues for four of us to play.  Or splitting accounts so that we can all take turns playing just to afford to play at all.  Thank you AreaNet for going “old school” on this and dumping the monthly fees!

All in all I am excited for go-live to get here so I can play, play, play!

 

 

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Cheap Sci-Fi Costume Ideas

July 29, 2012 Costuming, Featured

While most of my costuming tends towards the elaborate and rather expensive, I also have made some pretty low-budget costumes as well.  Here are a few ideas for cheap Sci-Fi themed costumes.  I hope you find something here that you can use.

Mech Pilot: Decorate a helmet with a number or logo of your choice.  Find a tight fitting shirt and pants and decorate the shirt with a matching logo.

Homemade mummy costume

Halloween mummy

Mummy: Buy a white sheet at the second hand store and tear it into strips.  You can either sew or hot glue the strips to some old clothes you don’t care about anymore.  Put them on and wrap a few around your head as a mask.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mech Mechanic: Find a pair of overhaul and smear them with grease.  If you want to make sure it won’t rub off an anything then use a black sharpie to create the look of grease.  Use some black face make up or the black stuff that football players use to dirty up your face and hands.  Carry a wrench around with you.

Zombie: This is pretty easy to do, it just requires a bit of make-up and staining up an outfit you don’t care about anymore.  My favorite zombie I have done was wearing a girls dress from Value Village, had my hair up in pig tails and carried around a teddy bear I had used a red sharpie on and half removed its head.  Guess I should mention I am only 4’10″ so could really pull off the young girl thing.

Cat Girl: Any cute outfit can go sci-fi/anime with the simple addition of cat ears and a cat tail.  No back story or justification required.

Mad Scientist: A white lab coat that has been stained up with a number of different colors.  To that blacken up your face and use copious amounts of hair spray to make your hair fly back, in that my experiment just exploded in my face sort of way.

I would love to hear your ideas.  Please share them in the comments section.

 

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The Ghost Returns for High Adventure on the Coast of Crusade

June 24, 2012 Downloadable Adventures, Featured, Roleplaying Games

A few months ago our Call of Cthulhu DM ran a one night game of It Came from the Late, Late, Late Show.  I had never played the game before, though I had read through the rules a while ago.  For a long time now I have had a love for what I call the one-book-wonder role playing games.  My preference is for games that are low in rules as I find they are more fun to play.  When you have multiple rule books, like in Shadowrun for example, it is easy to get caught up in the myriad of rules and forget that the joy of the adventure and the interaction of the characters is what makes a really good story and therefore a really good game.

In this case the game was epic in nature and well worth writing about.  Our DM got his inspiration from the Grave Robbers from Outerspace card game, which is another great card game I will need to write more about someday.  He used the cards to help generate the plot locations and encounters, which I thought was a terribly novel approach to getting ideas; a really great way to get the creative juices flowing.  Even the name of the adventure came from the cards, which is a part of the rules of the card game but I will cover that in another post.  As per the name of the post, the adventure name was The Ghost Returns for High Adventure on the Coast of Crusade.

If you have never played It Came from the Late, Late, Late Show I would recommend it.  In it you are playing an actor that gets cast into various roles to be in a late night movie.  Needless to say, these shows are low budget so a bit of cheesiness is in order.  For example the major bad-guy in our adventure was this horrible tentacled creature, with several arms that waved about seemingly at random.  We found this large creature was only affected by sharp objects and the more that we punctured it the more that it let out a hissing sound until it eventually deflated and laid flat across the ground.

In case you are looking for more details on our adventure, or need a one night run for your group.  My DM has blessed me with his notes from our High Crusade, and allowed me to post them on my blog.

High_Crusade

I hope you enjoy it, I know we did!

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Brief Review of We Didn’t Playtest This at All

June 18, 2012 Board Games, Featured


Last week, we started our regular Friday gaming night session out by playing a few games of We Didn’t Playtest This at All while we waited for everyone to arrive. It is a neat little card game, rather humorous and a very quick play. I think we played four or five games in about 30 minutes. The rules are super simple; basically take once card, play one card.
I think my favorite thing about the game is how cut-throat the game itself is to the players. Sure there is some player to player smack down that goes on, but mostly the game itself is rather ruthless. The only way to win is to be the last player not to lose, and the cards make losing a very easy thing to do.
One of our games even included a player being saved by a dragon showing up in game, just in time. How often can a person be happy to see a dragon, or have it save your butt rather than eating it?
If you ever get a chance to play We Didn’t Playtest This at All I would really recommend you take 10 minutes out of your life and do it. I promise you won’t regret it!

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Crappy Birthday – The Game

May 18, 2012 Board Games, Featured

Crappy Birthday


Here is a new game we played last week at our weekly gaming session, Crappy Birthday. It is a card game which is similar in play style to Apples to Apples. As the name of the game implies you are trying to give someone the worst present you can for their birthday.

Each player has a hand of 5 cards, each of which is a different gift. A person is selected to have the first “birthday” and everyone else at the table pulls the worst gift they can from their hand and places it face down in front of the “birthday” person. Then the birthday person flips over the cards and determines which of the presents given they think is the worst. So, when giving gifts you really need to consider the person you are giving them to and what their tastes are like.  Who knows they may actually think a family room wallpapered in old newspaper (yes that really is from the game) is a neat historical thing. Once a crappy gift has been selected the gift-giver gets the card back to place in front of them on the table as a token of having won that round. Then the “birthday” person rotates to the next in the table and the gift giving starts all over again. [See how it has that Apples to Apples feel]. The first person to have given three crappy gifts wins the game.

We did find the game to be fun and a fairly quick play with very simple rules. The only challenge we had was that there are a number of gifts that our gaming group does not consider crappy at all, such as a tank in your front yard for decoration. This meant you could end up with a hand of cards that you simply couldn’t win with due to their being too cool to be crappy.

I would like to see them come up with some expansion card sets, I am sure they could do at least one or two to really round out the cards. But even without that it is a fun little game and being low cost it is worth it. Additionally, this would work as a good cross-over game, you just have to remember who you are playing with.

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Gamestorm 14

March 29, 2012 Conventions and Events, Featured

Last weekend was another exciting gaming convention, sure wish I could go to more of them.  As it is nearly bedtime for me this will be short and sweet.

For those that don’t know, Gamestorm is a gaming convention held each year in the Portland/Vancouver area of the PNW.  The last few years it has been at the Hilton in Vancouver, WA.  For 3-1/2 days we take over the entire convention space and fill it with RPG, RPGA, Miniature, Indie, Board/Card Games, LARPs, LAN, CCG, and console gaming.  There is something for everyone and all have a great time.

This year I ran one session of Horror Rules, and played in a number of RPGs.  I played Faery’s Tale, Monsters and Other Childish Things
, Zombie Cinema, Teenagers from Outer Space, and a d20 modern set in the old west.  My weekend was full of all sorts of great stories and I plan to share them over the coming days.

But for now I will end with one of the many great quotes from my gaming weekend.

“I’ve been snasquatched by the hideunder!”

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Geek or Nerd

February 7, 2012 Featured

A couple of months ago I got into a discussion with a friend who was trying to determine the difference between a geek and a nerd.  So while I proudly claim both monikers as my own, here is my description of both and how they pertain to me.

Geek – A geek is someone who is passionate about something to the point that they study it intensely.  For these people there is simply no end to the amount of knowledge they can have on their subject(s) of passion.  Do you know someone who could quote the all the Star Wars movies in their sleep?  How about someone that lives and breaths D&D and can provide any given rule at a moment’s notice.  Or even someone who knows every stat on their favorite sports players.  All of these people are geeks!!

Nerd – A nerd is someone who has a general thirst for knowledge.  They want to learn and do so at any given opportunity.  They enjoy the random article feature on Wikipedia just for the sake of new knowledge.  They not only ask questions but go and read until they find the answer.  Documentaries and history shows are their favorite programs.  Hermione is the epitome of a nerd, her thirst for knowledge knows no bounds.  Do you know someone that reads text books for fun?  Someone who reads everything they can get their hands on?  Who assigns themselves subjects to do reports on?  All of these people are nerds!!

So the main difference is that a Geek focuses on a subject or handful of subjects, while a nerd simply wants to learn everything they can about everything.  The other difference is that a nerd is more likely to only pull out their knowledge as needed, while a geek will happily jump up on their chosen soap box and pontificate on their given subject(s) for hours on end.

I am a geek when it comes to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.  We are heading there again this December and I can’t wait to make my 8th visit there.  I could go on and on about everything there, but I will save that for another post.  There are plenty of gamer type things to write about, probably more than you guessed.

I am also a nerd.  I used the cash my grandma gave me for my 18th birthday to buy my own copy of the Calculus text book we used in high school such it was so well written.  When I was a kid I would assign myself subjects to study over the summer, such as owl pellets, Norway, or ice skating.  In fact I taught myself Calculus I the summer before my senior year in college.  I have tutored several people in math because I enjoy algebra the way people do crossword puzzles (which I also enjoy).   This is a lot of why I could be successful getting my bachelors degree through Portland State’s online program.

Hopefully this helps some to clear up any confusion you might have on the words nerd and geek.  It should also put me clearly in the nerd category with a touch of geek, a position I have learned to be proud of over the years.  So where do you fall on the spectrum, and if you are a geek what are your topics, if you are a nerd what proves that?

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We are back

January 18, 2012 Featured

Hello readers!  After striking for a day in protest of the SOPA and PIPA Bills going through the US Government right now, we are back on line.  If you are in the US and you haven’t already made your feeling know about SOPA and PIPA I strongly suggest you contact your representatives and let them know how you feel, after all they work for us!

I know that I have been fairly quiet through the bustle of the holidays, but now that we are into cold, rainy winter nights I am back to blogging so expect to hear a lot more from me in the coming months.

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6 Reasons to Switch to Streaming

January 16, 2012 Featured

Our Switch

About 1-1/2 years ago we realized that we were wasting money every month paying a cable bill just for fun.  The realization came on night when we looked around and discovered that no one had turned the cable on in a whole month.  What a waste of our money!

At that point we were already Netflix members as I had signed up when I took a Film and Politics class at Portland State University.  Since we were watching a movie a week and they had almost all the movies in their collection it was a good investment.  When we gave up cable we switched to Netflix for our TV viewing entertainment.

In all honesty we have not missed out cable at all.  I should share that we are not a sports watching family so there were no games for us to miss out on, and even for you sports people out there I hear that this year the Superbowl will be live streamed online so there are really no excuses anymore.

6 Benefits to Streaming

Since we gave up cable we have noted some benefits to our lives that had both been expected and unexpected.  Here is our list:

1) No more cable bill.  Even with the changes to subscriptions that Netflix has undergone the savings is considerable, especially as we dropped the DVD portion when they split them (we weren’t watching them anyways).

2) No more advertisements at Christmas time.  I have two school aged kids and while they hear about stuff from their friends they are shielded from the onslaught of commercials for the latest chunk of plastic or useless electronic that barrage our favorite shows come fall.

3) No more political ads.  For us this has been a great and unexpected benefit, especially heading into an election year like this one.  Right now we are having a special election for a new Senator and since we haven’t seen adds our decisions are based on what is on the ballot, their websites and our voter’s guide.  This allows us to make a decision without hating the idea of voting due to negative ads before out ballot even shows up.  For us this is a good thing.

4) No more missing the show.  This is great for all of us, if you doze off or have to run a kid to an event before the show is over there are no issues, just watch it later.  Sure you get this with DVR but then you probably have a higher bill than I do.

5) I know what the kids have been watching.  They have the chance to cruise the available shows and movies on Netflix and there are some that they are simply too young to watch.  Since everything you watch kicks over to a “Recently Watched” section we all know what each other is watching.  A much easier way to keep tabs on things, though my kids haven’t tried watching anything they shouldn’t.

6) Exposure to new shows.  I have found that documentaries that interest me are far easier to come by then they used to be with my cable provider.  This also means my kids have gotten into “How It’s Made” that they would have been unlikely to run across before our switch.

Do you stream?

While it is not the best answer for everyone, the switch to streaming TV has been great for us.  So tell me, have to switched to streaming and if you have what benefits have you seen, if not, why not?

 

 

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