The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I am happy to report that The Hand of the Sacred Scroll Chronicles Chapter 1: In the Barn of Despair and Torment was a complete success! I’m making a note here, so to speak. (Man, it’s so fucking sad that Portal jokes are worn out now. That game was brilliant.) Everyone loved the combat, everyone leveled up and picked up some new abilities, and everyone wants to play again… it was pretty well best-case scenario. So now, I guess, I need to start brainstorming Chapter 2. Fun times! It does make me wish I could mix it up in combat with everyone else, but someone’s got to run it, and it’s not like I can say I wasn’t having fun as DM, cause I totally was.

In other news, um, I completed another ascension by accident yesterday. I was going to waste a day playing around in Hobopolis, but when I finally got to the main part, I couldn’t kill anything. So I decide “Well, okay, I’ll work on the rest of this run” which accidentally got me all the way to victory! I permed Powers of Observatiogn. And now, totally at random, I’m a Seal Clubber! And going for Gender Bender! This is going to be a long run that I set up without thinking about it… oh well!

And now I go to spend lots of money on Video games. Namely, Chocobo’s Dungeon and Civ:Rev. Yay? Yay!

So on Tuesday, CJ from Talking Time is apparently getting institutionalized. Which, I mean, that’s good. That he’s getting help. But it’s also kind of shocking to me how close we’ve gotten and how concerned I am. Not that that’s bad, just sort of… you know, you never realize you have some feelings until you have them? Before all this, I probably wouldn’t have been able to guess it would affect me this much, even though, you know, we’re friends. But then it happens and I realize, you know, we’re really good friends? I don’t know, I don’t think I’m summing up the situation well.
In any case, I wish I had something more helpful to offer him, and I hope things work out well for him, and that all this helps him turn things around. It also makes me think about my problems and how I’m not doing anything to take care of them… makes me feel like I should. I don’t know.
I really don’t know.
But again, super-best wishes his way. Yeah.

Anyway, you didn’t come here for that, you came here for a report of our first DnD game! Well, um, too bad. I’m all moody thinking about this. I’ll try to type that up tomorrow, but, short version: It went well, even if there were some minor issues, and everyone wants to play again, so that’s awesome.
But yeah, lighter post in the morning, hopefully.

So I don’t know if you’ve looked in the 4th Edition Monstrous Manual, but… well… Riding Horses are a level 1 monster. You know… domesticated horses you ride around on? So I’m hoping everyone is ready, because The Hand of the Sacred Scroll Chronicles, Chapter 1: In the Barn of Despair and Torment is coming this Sunday, to a gaming table near you. Many horses will be slaughtered! Experience will be had! Glory will be found! And hopefully everyone will have a good time.
And okay, so we won’t be fighting horses. But here’s some non-spoiler comments about my experience planning this thing so far.
First off, these manuals are very useful and have plenty of ideas, but what shocked me was how little I used what they gave me. Instead it was more “What does a level 1 monster have for AC?” and then looking one up and then just writing that down and creating my own little monstrous Frankenstein creations. I assume that’s how it is supposed to work, actually, since there is a chapter of the Dungeon Master’s Guide that pretty well tells you to go nuts with it. But it still kind of shocked me, especially how nervous I normally get with such things.
Also, the more I think about it, the more I know Jonathan is probably right. I should really say “Screw Experience!” and just have each session equal, shockingly enough, exactly enough XP to reach the next level. Everyone likes that character building aspect and doing badass things and getting new badass things. We’re all Final Fantasy Tactics fans. Hell, the combat has been compared to Tactics multiple times by my friends. I should give them a steady increase in abilities to let us all experience the game from a variety of points in that curve, and just see what happens. If I keep everyone hooked, we can try a slower campaign later.
Anyway, here’s to hoping for the best. Any last minute Dungeon Mastering tips? Let me know. Also, anyone who will play with me as a PC so I can try out how awesome Warlord is, also let me know. (How awesome is Warlord? Let me give you a hint: Awesome. Let me give you another hint: It seems to be pretty well made for me: Totally support-based, but still able to go kamakaze without dying immediately.)

Let’s see, what else is going on… well, in IoTM news, we have the little box of fireworks in KoL, which… well, if I didn’t love my Mayflower Bouquet and have been shunning that one for the… ease and enjoyment of the origami “gentlemen’s” magazine, I’d probably pick it up. If you don’t have a Mayflower or a Plastic Pumpkin Bucket, I’d think it would be an easy sell. But I really can’t see me using it all that much. The effects are nice, but the Mayflower potatoes and gives me buffs. I love potatoing and buffs.
The Twilight Heroes IoTM, though, is fucking awesome. It’s a plaid couch. It’s so new it doesn’t have a wiki entry as of this writing (edit: But now it does! Whee!), but it dispenses items as per the Pouch of Many Lost Things, only these items summon sidekicks instead of give you buffs. I am pumped, and I’m pretty sure it will rock my world, not to mention that if rumors are to be believed, there’s a sidekick that will up my item drops, which will help me right now in my farming, so it’ll even actually be useful to me now, instead of in the vague future. Neat.

Has anything else been going on since I last posted? Not… really. Um, the parents are gone for the weekend… it’s the fourth of july and people who aren’t me are shooting fireworks… and… I dunno. I’m slowly working through FFTA2… I’m also sad that Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon is not budget-priced at 30 dollars, because then I would have bought it, since it seems to mix the ease of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon’s lack of level loss with the Final Fantasy Job system… also, what’s up with all the games I want coming out this summer? Summer’s supposed to be a slow time where I can justify things like buying Chocobo’s Dungeon. Heh. I mean, hell, maybe I will anyway, I dunno. But next week I’m buying Civilization: Revolution on DS, so… Eh, who knows.

Anyway, I think I’m going to get some food. THIS HAS BEEN A BLOG UPDATE.

Making a quest is hard.
Well, maybe not. But I don’t know, I’m just sort of paralyzed while thinking about it. I feel like I’m in this really weird position, where I need to put in some love, and effort, and really make an interesting little slice of something, but at the same time I know my friends are going to dick around in it, and I’ll have more fun if it’s somewhere I don’t mind dicking around with too. So I just keep trying to think of that middle of the road sort of idea… I don’t know. I suppose I could just use the little thing in the back of the DMG, or Keep on the Shadowfell, in parts or as a whole… but again, I don’t know. Also, I still have no fucking idea what I’m going to do about mapping. Bleh.

I did, however, see Wall-E last night, and dammit, Pixar is just great, you know? Essner and I talked about it today, and I can tell he’s still down on it. I’m not saying it doesn’t help if I can let your childish side out and just be charmed by all the cute robots doing cute things, but it’s a great movie besides, and a surprisingly dark one. But yeah. You all should see it. It’s pretty awesome. Pretty awesome yes. Also, you get bonus Fred Willard. There’s no downside!
Or something. I don’t feel like I can say anything to really do the film justice.

In other news, everyone is playing FFTA2! Even me, though apparently in smaller chunks than they are! And I got Ticket to Ride on XBLA, which is fantastic, but I don’t think Spaeth and Jonathan got into it too much when I made them play it. So that’s unfortunate, but at least I can still play with the Talking Tyrants.

Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.

Did you know it was Spend Lots of Money Day? Cause it is! Here’s what I spent!

All of the DnD 4th Edition core rulebooks: $65 – I had on order the 7 dollars cheaper boxed gift set, which game in a nice case, but it got delayed so that I wouldn’t get my books until like… August. That’s kinda shitty. I tried to get them to switch over my order and keep my 7 bucks, but they wouldn’t, so… I just ordered them all individually, and then signed up for that Amazon Prime trial for free 2-day shipping. I assume if I order another thing (Which I will, Brer’s birthday present) during this month, using that free trial was worth it. I also went ahead and pre-ordered Freakazoid on DVD, hoping it would lock in that free shipping action. Let’s hope! And if you need anything from Amazon, I’m the person to come to for the next month.
A new network card: $17 – I’m tired of all the BSODs when I torrent things, and some internet research determined that it was due to the network card I was using being shitty. So I bought a new cheap one. I’m testing if it’s fixed the problem now… if I complete this episode of Doctor Who without resetting three times, the cost will be worth it.
Microsoft points: $20 – Ticket to Ride comes out on XBLA tomorrow, and I must be prepared. Also, I’m sort of hoping the fucked up named Roogoo is addictive, but I haven’t tried the demo yet.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Grimoire of the Rift: $40 – Thanks, Squeenix tax, for making this expensive! But it’ll be totally worth it. After I finish this blogging, I’m totally going to try it. I’m sure I’ll enjoy.
Gasoline: $30 – Yay for a little over half a tank of gas!

Total Expenditure today: $172 Whoo! Money spent, baybee! Fun times! I didn’t need all that money anyway, and I certainly don’t need to work to replace it. Thanks, Kohl’s, for scheduling me so much, by the way!

On another note, all this talking with Brer has made me feel all guilty again, and I’m trying his books. I’m keeping notes! I might type up my impressions at some point, but not right now, cause, you know, Tactics. But I’m going to be doing that in bed for the next couple of days. I don’t have high hopes. I’m sorry, love. They just don’t seem fun… but we’ll see what happens.

So I saw they had the entire Orange Island series of Pokemon in a little DVD set for 27 dollars at Best Buy today, and I was like… it took all kinds of restraint not to buy it. But the whole “not working” thing combined with the whole “Still have half of Sam and Max on DVD that I haven’t watched” thing made me balk on it. Oh well. The last thing I need is Pokemon on DVD, but I wants it.

So last night, after so much searching for a clan with, like, people in it, random conversations with Cristiona (Twilight Heroes chat moderator who has quickly become a really good friend, for those who don’t know) have caused me to join her softcore character’s clan, the Ernest Borg Nine. I don’t think there are nine members, though. Anyway, so I look forward to seeing if her’s is more happening than my old furry clan with seemingly nobody in it. Worst Case Scenario: I get meat instead of snack machine chips. Best Case Scenario: I get to be part of an awesome clan. She also invited me in so that I could give their instance of Hobopolis a try. I probably will, though I will wait until the end of this run. I’m perming Tao, so I need to level anyway, and I can dive in with my extra turns and see what hobos I can kill. Maybe I’ll get so addicted I’ll see it till the end! Or maybe not. Who knows?
The important thing is, though, that I am making a lot of in-game money. With my recent switch to actually using fortune cookies to control semi-rares (thanks, once again, to Cris for hooking me up with a Greasemonkey Script to make it possible) I’ve been farming Lunchboxen to sell. Those things sell for 50,000 meat, which is just… insane. That’s a lot of meat. So I’ve been getting one of those every other day (The way semi-rares work, I can’t get two of the same one in a row) to sell, and then some distilled fortified wines for myself. I’ve also been selling all the feathers I’ve been making in Form of… Bird!, which is nice, since the way I get them, it doesn’t really affect what I do, so it’s kinda free money… that added to my pepsi point funds… well, I’ve got a lot of meat again! Unfortunately, I think I’ve got basically everything in the past that’s in my price range. Heh. So I’ll just be saving it for a rainy day, I suppose.

Spaeth is over here, and we were talking DnD! We were even going to make characters, (Jonathan was thinking of naming his character “Loinrender”) but got distracted by Star Trek movies. Oh well, so it goes.

I also learned that Tactics Advance 2 comes out next week. Dammit. I’m not going to have near enough time with Etrian 2…

I have Etrian Odyssey 2. I’ve been grinding, and my party just hit level 10, and I still don’t think I can take on the first F.O.E. Grindgrindgrind!
Oh, whooo! I beat one! Only after throwing every single one of my character’s desperation limit-breaky moves at it, though. Which I only had up because I had done grinding for like 20 minutes before hand. Man, I make this game sound so appealing, don’t I?

Well, it is. Why? Because it’s a very customizable experience. Most people don’t think it strange to get joy out of grinding in FFT or FFV for hours to get their own special weird combinations of powers, right? That’s just fun. This is the same way. I can hire anyone I want, and mix up any weird party I’d like, and have at it. See what happens. See if I can survive a very harsh and hardcore game with that group. Etc. It is fun. It’s a neat game. But if you don’t find those sorts of aspects appealing and hate dungeon crawling, stay far, far away.

Still, I went with a Protector and War Magus for my front line. I’m learning Protectors suck balls, though. I hope I can make it work out. My back line is a Troubadour, Gunner, and Medic. I’m sad they took away the Troubadour’s TP regen song, but he’s still pretty nice. He’s also the only male in my party. Heh. Anyway, I’m going to keep rambling about it and asking for advice on Talking Time and seeming like a complete n00b, even though I’ve played the first one. Fun times!

Anyway, I gotta see how far I can get before Civilization Revolution came out, as that’s next on the game-buying agenda. CivRev team? Your demo completely sold me this game, by the way. Totally off my radar, then, bored, I played your demo? And now I literally cannot wait. I hope your claims that the DS version’s gameplay is exactly the same as the 360 version besides interface tweaks holds true, because that is exactly, exactly what I want.

I am a special, special snowflake.

My opinion, as an amazingly special snowflake, is that every online shooter should have Mercenary Team Deathmatch. I mean, the ability to make a party of friends and have them follow you around and always be on your team? It’s a damn amazing, feature, and any game that doesn’t have it and expects to have people playing it online? They’re fools. But by creating this party system, you create another problem for casual players like me who just want to shoot people for a few rounds every week or so. These parties of clan members who play nothing but these games roam around, and the chances of you not getting in a game with them are slim. If you are lucky enough to be on their team, you’re useless but win. If you’re not, you’re useless and lose. The ability gap is too big most of the time. Call of Duty 4’s solution is this Mercenary Team Deathmatch. It’s just Team Deathmatch, but you can’t bring parties into it. The change is immediately felt. I can get a 1 to 1 kill to death ratio in this hopper, which is all I want, really. I am so rarely overwhelmed. The power-players stay out of this hopper, because the power-players are playing with their power-playing team against other power-playing teams. It is just the perfect mode for me, and I think anyone who casually wants to play online shooters alone. Every game should have this, just like every game should have a party system.

Then again, maybe CoD4 is just so awesome in multiplayer that it’s keeping my interest no matter what. CoD4 multiplayer is currently my podcast game of choice. As in, you know, game I play while listening to podcasts. That’ll probably change Tuesday when I pick up Etrian 2, though. That’s a pretty good podcast-listening game. All nice and grindy and stuff.

Anyway, the important part is, you know, that I’m a special, special snowflake. Whoooo!

So I think I have a gong strategy. Start my day by summoning “tasteful” gifts and hearts until I’m low on MP, then gong for Shape Of… Mole! Get the stats, the Morlock’s Mark Bourbon, (because I don’t have cocktailcrafting but I can’t make lots of Boring Spaghetti, making it a better choice than the mole molé… to me, anyway.) and the Liquid Courage buff, then immediately gong again, get Form of… Bird! and farm for lucre, getting the benefit of the extra stats from Liquid Courage and likely getting a glimmering roc feather out of the deal. (unless I decide I want another and have enough bugs to make it happen) Of course, that leaves… 3 unused gongs a day I have no idea what to do with. Besides, I guess, if I need a cockroach buff or Bureaucratized for the tower familiars…
Anyway, I’m sure it’s not optimal, but that’s what I’m going to try this 100% Llama run. If you have a better idea, tell me.

Off to more Father’s Day stuff, I guess. Happy Day of the Fathers, by the way.

I’m a pleasure-seeker, looking for some platinum action.
I’m a pleasure-seeker, moving to the music!
I’m a pleasure-seeker, looking for the real thing!

Yep.

Llama Lama First Impressions OMG!
Man, it takes a lot of MP for the neat rewards for Form of… Bird!
Like, I healed MP at Doc Galaktik’s, something I never do, because it was my first time and I wanted the reward I picked, which was the glimmering raven feather. But man. At level 4, using a 20 MP attack 5 times is expensive and difficult. Heh. I wasted more meat that I should have. But I had fun, so I suppose that’s fine. I think that getting a glimmering penguin feather will probably be the easiest, since the move I have to use, Antarctic Flap, refills MP. But you never know, I guess. It’s also one of the lamer buffs… Phoenix, Right? and Melancholy Burden are more what you want to go for. You know, if you aren’t just getting the glimmering roc feather for spleen turns. Which is what everyone got the thing for. Mostly.
I also did the Cockroach, which was much more straightforward. I thought the Cockroach would be all about the stat gains, but apparently it’s about a stat gain, a little MP or a stat gain, and then a nice little buff. Ack! Barred! is a pretty horrible but funny name for a buff, though.
Anyway, I’m sure the Llama Lama is going to end up being worth it. I’ve just never had anything like these gongs to attempt to work into my runs. I suppose I’ll figure something out, even if I just Cockroach for buffs when I need it. Also, I guess I need to try out Shape of… Mole! still. Heh.

So here’s my impression of my job. “Hey, why don’t you train person after person after person, and some are decent but a lot kinda incompetent and slow learners, and do that forever and ever and then we’ll make you work only 1 day a week! Yaaaaaay!” So I don’t have anything to do next week, and it’s really looking like, this time, I won’t be lucky enough to pick up more hours. Sigh. So I need something to do to keep me occupied… any ideas? I’m vaguely debating trying to get that DnD 4th Ed starter preview campaign thing, Keep on the Shadowfell or whatever, and trying to get everyone to try to it to see if they’d like it. But I dunno. There’s more money spent in a week where I’m already buying Etrian 2 and such. Bleh, I’ll think of something, I guess.

Oh, also, Jonathan’s new nickname is “Sweet Beef.” So call him that as often as possible.

I’m going to go shoot people and listen to podcasts now. I’ve been playing a lot of CoD4 Multiplayer recently, of all things.