Gno Schitt

I intend to create a portfol..  oh fuck it, read the About This Blog page on RPG Dreamscapes if you want to know what the fuck the new blog is about.

So, I was jawin' with selbonaut recently about what to spend my lunch hour doing for the next couple months and the conversation bounced randomly between movies, reading, audio books and anime.  Not all of that was on topic obviously as my lunch hour consists of the same time restrictions as most lunch hours do. I'm making the point to say how happy I am to have people with my likes and interests with whom I can bounce this stuff off of and get quality feedback from people I trust.  Mostly. Ish ok?

This is a call to stop hiding your secret geek joys.  Yes, this request is completely self serving, as my session of "share your favorite geek culture" with selbonaut has given me a much reveled in first hit.  I know after a few short weeks, I'm going to be jonesin'.  And while I respect your opinions, I want to make it clear that a list of favorites won't stand up.  I ain't no sheep.  And I doubt that you, yourself, are willing to use up your quality free time without a good reason.  So, with that in mind, I'm hoping people will share recent experiences they have had with tech, shows, anime, comics, books etc and explain to me that my life will be worse without sharing in them.

This post also serves a secondary purpose of attempting to revive this blog, with an additional tertiary purpose of giving me another access point to the life of my good friend djaii.  Anyone with similar interests and purpose, please apply.

So I was cruising GameTrailers over my lunch hour and with about 5 minutes left I wanted to point out something and was hoping for some feedback.  http://www.gametrailers.com/next-gen-showdown/specs

Now, maybe I'm an idiot and/or a year and a half without following computer components makes me completely out of touch, or the PS4 has better hardware and zero need for a paid subscription to its online service for 100 dollars less.  Does this not make zero sense to everyone?

Anyway, the point is moot at the moment for me as I know at least two of my people have already pre-ordered/own a Xbone and I have no moniez that I can invest in my entertainment at this time.  But still, I find myself needing to know what the reason behind this is.  Can anyone assist me?  And also, damn I wish I hadn't watched Assassin's Creed 4's review.  Now, and extremely unexpectedly, I want to do AC again. Ah well.  Anyways, side note; kinda interested to see Metal Gear on Xbox.  When did that happen?

Also found a fun little 5 episode series called I Love Last Gen.  The first episode was great at putting the new gen stuff into perspective and covers some of the best highlights (good and bad) of last gen.

Alas, I can 100 percent no longer...

After Iron Man was released in 2008, I was super impressed with the look and feel of the suits heads up display when Tony was wearing the armor. It was even nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Achievement in Visual Effects although it did not win. I kept thinking through the film (and its sequel in 2010) now this production technique has got it right.

That same level of 'completely nailed it' is exactly how the animated television series (herein called A:EMH) feels. What I find really intriguing is that A:EMH was released before Joss Whedon's smash hit feature film for the Avengers and even though it does not follow the same chronology or universe (which is fine, I like that they each stand alone) there are very similar stylistic elements shared between the two (the most obvious being the previously mentioned HUD for Tony when in the armor, but the touches are numerous).

A:EMH currently has two seasons and they are both fantastic. The show excels at bringing the entire cast to life without dwelling for too long on one specific character (a problem with the Ultimate Avenger's films released in 2006). Those films are okay, but pale in comparison to this new serial. In A:EMH you get to see a ton of classic characters through both seasons and see some really interesting stuff not attempted in prior incarnations.


I'm particularly fond of the appearances by Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Fantastic Four (and Doctor Doom along with, of course) and Beta Ray Bill. There are also some great villain appearances but I won't spoil those for you.

If any two of the following are true for you:
* I like the Avengers
* I like high quality animation
* I like super-hero themes
* I like Iron Man
* I'm secretly a super villain and have plans to rule the world

... then you should definitely check this show out. Both seasons are available through NetFlix (even the paltry Canadian one, which is what I use). You won't have a single Ant-Man sized iota of regret.

An interesting problem has emerged for me recently with the ongoing nerd-raging controversy over D&D Next. Last year I made a commitment to myself to finish writing some formal gaming materials and look to getting them published (or at least made electronically available through DriveThru). Over the winter I tried to keep up with the D&D Next playtest packs, running a few sessions, thinking that the obvious choice would be to write my game materials for the upcoming release of WotC's new version, but feedback from several players and commentary across the Internet makes me feel like that isn't as automatic a choice as it first seemed.

To throw fuel on the flame of my confusion, I started running a 1st edition AD&D game this April (mostly due to the immense sense of nostalgia the arrival of my reprints from Amazon evoked from me), and I was shocked to discover the large community of support that still exists around the original juggernaut. OSRIC, Lamentations of the Flame Princess (which loftily claims old-school games are: "vibrant and alive and continue to provide true gaming excitement") and many others that reach even further back to "basic" D&D such as Basic Fantasy Roleplaying, etc... are still widely played with supplements and settings still seeing release and moderate success in the market.

So, while preparing to draft a manuscript with an eye for release, a terrible question about what version would provide the most traction crept into my mind, took hold and would not let go. In today's market and diverse gaming landscape, I see two factors which must be carefully weighed to determine the correct system to draft a manuscript against:
1) Which game system best captures the specific flavour that I'm after?
2) Which community would be most receptive to the world/concept to ensure it's success?

Focusing too much on system/version will yield a well written properly impedance matched game + world that no community is interested in. By placing too much concern on the search for the right community to release for, I will certainly face mechanical headaches and low acceptance of new rules/design during writing and increased work to make the concept match the system.

I believe these are the options, with their respective strengths and weaknesses:

D&D Next (5.0)
Stick with designing for D&D Next. This means that I'll have the easiest mechanical implementation using a new, slick, version of D&D that advertises that it will be modular enough to accommodate a number of different campaign styles. There is also something very attractive about being on the leading edge of THE premier gaming system. The problem, is that the initial community response is pretty mixed which might mean that my milieu will not reach the right target audience. I'm also not certain that the current generation of gamers who are going to be buying all of the 'next stuff are going to be looking for the slightly more serious, horror inspired elements of my world concept. Also, since I'm not running anymore playtests for this edition (mainly because my players didn't really dig it, also a bad sign) I'm not super confident in creating something with this set of rules as its foundation.

SRD (3.915)
Using the OGL v 1.0a, draft the entire game as a standalone gaming product, much like Iron Heroes (which formed a large part of the basis for the setting, which would make re-writing easier). For better or worse 3rd edition games are still the most prolific out there, mainly because of Paizo's Pathfinder, but also because many smaller (or entirely independent) shops continue to use the system to create great games. From a mechanical standpoint I think this would be a good option but the OGL has created a very crowded market and getting my game seen and/or heard in this space may be next to impossible even though there are probably many players and DMs who know the general mechanics and would enjoy it.

AD&D / OSRIC (1.5)
The last good option is to go back to AD&D as Gary wrote it, take the best parts of it and move it forward using my world-concept and release it as an adaptation for AD&D 1st edition (which would also make it compatible with all OSRIC materials). The community of players still using this game system are typically the mature type who I think would find my horror-fantasy world most enjoyable. The problems here would be purely mechanical, as so much would have to be tweaked to get the gritty emerging magic flavour correct. This presents another potential problem: many (some?) OSRIC gamers do NOT like the appearance of more modern game concepts in a tweaked version of their sacred cow. I witnessed this first hand with my Revised 1st Edition Fighter write up (and the only response I received).

I haven't quite come to a conclusion yet about system support but it may not be a pressing concern since there is so much other material to assemble when writing a game-world. I'm currently just putting finishing touches on maps and major (human) societies of the world and adding the rich details to the world's backstory for why things are so horrific. That will keep me busy for a while yet while I continue to weigh the options here. I would happily receive any input or thoughts you might have about this predicament or how you have approached this in your own designs.

What's in a name?

As my Iron Heroes game continued to expand into a long running full fledged campaign (3 years now) I was occasionally inclined to invent new areas fairly spontaneously. I would sometimes scan my library of resources and pull something off the shelf and tweak it a little or inclusion. Also I would be influenced by cool things that had recently crossed my path. This created a problem - names of things, people and places in this world I had created were drawn from other game designers source material.

It started with my decision to have magic reborn into the world, and I selected Arcana Unearthed for this. Inside it had a few non-human races which I thought I would modify slightly and implement, thus my world had Sibeccai (and later Mojh, although mine work slightly differently). I've also subsequently imported the various kinds of Faen, although they are simply called faeries in Anthemios.

This continued... I have a city called Port Melnibone and an island nation called Pan Tang. Also a Witch King named Zhengyi, which I now recall comes from an old AD&D module series called The Bloodstone Wars. It's been 20+ years since I played that module series and it still stuck with me and got re-used.

As I continue to formalize the setting - and look at what system to implement the game with - I'm forced to decide how to proceed here. Should I start renaming places, race and people to remove these references or should I leave them in place for the most part? I'm not sure how seriously I want to pursue publishing yet, but if I did want to I would almost certainly have to remove these references.. or would I?

I recently decided that I would formalize my d20 FRPG setting with an eye toward using the up and coming D&D Next (5th edition) rule set. I had always thought that the first steps would involve codification of the races, classes or organization of skills and feats. Instead I found myself interested in reviewing what I had written for cultural notes, languages and race histories.

My setting currently consists of a main continent area with some interesting areas to the west and an Australia like continent to the south. There is a dominant Human strain on the main continent and two smaller sub-groups. One of those sub-groups, a culture in the north east has a separate faction that split away from them centuries ago, and relocated to the mountainous island chain along the west edge of my Australia-like land mass.

This created some great opportunities to have similar languages that had evolved separately with different pressures and influences. As I sprinkled ruins throughout both land masses, I also realized what ancient languages would exist and as I developed the arcane back story it became obvious what mystic languages would have to exist. From here, I was able to extrapolate what supernatural creatures and alternative (aka "demi" human) races might exist in the world using bits from the source books I had selected during the campaigns nascent stages for inspiration.

About those sources of inspiration; an interesting problem has emerged... As I said, I'm committed to making an attempt to formalize the setting, maybe in preparation for presentation to a game shop or an independent publishing run. Unfortunately I've used some tropes, races, magic styles and other articles of interest from many different source books: Iron Heroes, Arcana Unearthed, d20 Call of Cthulhu, the Conan Role-Playing Game, Oriental Adventures and of course the d20 3.5 SRD which is freely available online. All of this has been mixed, stirred and kneaded into something of my own, but the inspirations are plainly visible.

How to approach getting permission to use the ideas and frankly, the names of those things that I added to my world? I guess the first step is to finish the outline and then fire off a few emails to the right people at Malhavoc Press ;) So, I'll keep poking away at my campaign setting, called "Anthemios" and it's main city-state: Akkadar.

Stay tuned.

Joystick [UK Hard House, 2003] by Kyro on Mixcloud

Been far too long since a post.
Reasons for that? Legion... (but they are just excuses).

Anyway, I want to start pooling the resources of the crew to see if we can orgnanize some attendance at a handful of the game cons in 2013. I know it wasn't something you were thining about already, but I have been for years and I bet by the time you're done this article you'll be in.

Mega Con
RUNS: Mar 15th to 17th, 2013
LOCATION: Orange County Convention Center, Hall D
9800 International Drive, Orlando, FL 32819

Let's hit the highlights:

• It's a mega gaming convention with all of the things we love: RPGs, Boardgames, Videogames, fantasy and sci-fi art and writing, comics and people wearing strange costumes.
• It's held in Convention Center area on International Dr in Orlando FL, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen to hold an event.
• There are so many other attractions in Orlando worth checking out, I think we extend the CON by a day or three and check a few things out.

There might even be some way to arrange really low cost affordable accommodations.


But What Next Howie?
I'm glad you asked, but please don't call me Howie.

On the back of this con, there are a few other dates in 2013 worth checking out and I don't know how hard it would be to plan, but it would be amazing to hit 3 conventions in the same year. These are all looking good as 2nd or 3rd stops:

Temple Con (Roanoke)
Technically, this one is BEFORE MegaCon (running from Feb 1 to Feb 3), but hell the name of the post of "Year of The Con" right? So if we have a pre-Mega event planned that works to? This con is held in Roanoke, VI a place that HP Lovecraft used to frequently write about, also featured in several episodes of X-File (that were actually shot in BC, but I digress). The con has games, RPGs and special guests, and who WOULDN"T want to see Roanoke in February?

Origins Game Fair (Columbus)
One of the preimiere conventions of the industry, Origins is always held in lovely Ohio at the beginning of summer, June 12th through 16th, 2013. A con with great depth and history, origins normally draw in 10,000 conventioners or so, and is a short (read: hopefully inexpensive) flight from here.


Gen Con (Indianapolis)
This con runs from Aug 15th to Aug 18th in 2013, and is the premiere RPG convention. Really a no-brainer that we should have made it a goal to get here in previous years, but it just never happened. This is the grand-daddy of all game conventions, being started by E. Gary Gygax himself.

Dragon Con (Atlanta)
Another huge convention of epic gaming proportions, held in beautiful Atlanta at the end of August. This year it runs from Aug 30th to Sep 2nd and always has a great line up of special guests. Atlanta in the end of summer would be hot, but imagine all of the fun? The bummer though, is that this event kinda overlaps with:

Pax Prime (Seattle)
And really who DOESN'T want to get to a PAX? Even if I only made two conventions as my "year of the convention", my first picks would be MegaCon and PAX (sorry Gen Con). Prime in 2013 will be FOUR day event, and I've got a google alert setup to tell me as soon as the weekend passes go on sale. You think you're excited? FEEL THESE NIPPLES!
The date is not fixed yet, but it will almost certainly be the Sept long weekend (hopefully starting on Thursday the week before, not running long after, to squeeze in that extra day).


Okay, how about a table of data?
Right, of course. How impolite of me NOT to have already drafted the critical con names, links, locations and dates in a nice easy to reference table. I should probably mark the premiere events with a star so that they can't be missed. Try this on for size:

Temple Con	Roanoke, VI	Feb 1st - 3rd
Mega Con  *	Orlando, FL	Mar 15th - 17th
Origins Game Fair	Columbus, OH	Jun 12th - 16th
Gen Con *	Indianapolis, IN	Aug 15th - 18th
Dragon Con	Atlanta, GA	Aug 30th - Sep 2nd
Pax Prime *	Seattle, WA	Aug 29th - Sep 2nd

Well? I'm looking for some game con worthy traveling companions to make this happen. As you may (or may NOT have noticed) we're not getting any younger, so we better do that before we look like grandfathers and grandmothers compared to the new generation of gamers.

Well, I haven't published here in awhile, but I wanted to start a conversation about Kickstarter and Board Games, and thought this crowd would be a good one for the conversation.

I've noticed (and supported) that Kickstarter is doing VERY well in the gaming categories. A decent portion of these games are board games. Have other Schitters been paying attention to anything on Kickstarter? Do people like this model for things like board games. I've noticed quality of pitch to be largely relevant. My most recent project I supported (The Perfect Heist: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1231159621/the-perfect-heist-a-board-game-for-3-to-6-friends) has the rules posted, a video showing the most recent prototype, is only asking for $12k, and looks like a pretty decent game. The stretch rewards include getting yourself in the game artwork, a character based off you, so forth, which is pretty cool. I have seen pitches where they have a name, and something along the lines of "It's a game about zombies". No meat.

What I'm looking for is some sort of helper network, friends or electronic, to help me keep track of what games are coming on kickstarter I should be contributing towards. I love smaller indie style board games, and I'd hate to miss on a brilliant game just because I wasn't paying attention, and it only had one run. At the same time, it is a gamble, so I'd like to minimize too many duplicate buys amongst my crew of friends. (ie: I have a copy of Heist coming, I will totally lend it out to others to try, so we don't all have to risk money on it)

Anyone have any suggestions to help me / us track who is interested in what games / kickstarter purchases? It would be nice to have an updated Board Game Geek group (I need to update) with what people own as well, so we can share games more often?

End of important conversation:

My board game update: I've been playing lots of Descent 2nd edition, and Risk: Legacy. I'm really enjoying both. What games have people been playing lately, and enjoying?

First off, Paul Reubens is AWESOME. No, seriously.

Secondly if you're not following him on Twitter you're really missing out, he's a pretty funny guy that often finds great tid-bits like recipies for wicked awesome strange stuff you wouldn't think to make, like this:

http://www.bitememore.com/drinkme/30/rice-krispie-square-milkshake

Yum!

Hola, I've been a fan of pvponline for a good long while. Maybe 5 years or so. I am continually impressed by Scott Kurtz's art. See the few which I thought I would share amongst you.  If you like the artist support them I say.  www.pvponline.com  I am heading over there to buy these prints.

B

Let me try this again. I'm writing this blogpost as a public submission to use my well known moniker for my Google+ account.

I perform under the name "Djaii" and I produce digital audio and materials under this name for short films and other kinds of alternative work. Lots of it OFFLINE.

My friends know I use this legitimate performance alias, my email has this name in it. My SoundCloud page features it, it is a phonetic re-spelling of one of my actual birth certificate names. In all ways it is an appropriate NAME. No, it is not my birth name. If your Google+ policy is that every user must use their birth name, you have some cleaning up to do.

I DO NOT WANT just anybody who feels like poking into my life looking me up on Google+. I don't trust that your policies for privacy will not change substantially opening me up to marketing based on where I graduated or when to grade school at some point in the future after some business intelligence data miner extracts all of the data.

So, please, take note that this "alias" is a completely legitimate way to interact with people who KNOW me and those who want to find me know this is way they can, to interact with me publicly. Make an exception to your name policy and I'll use (even advocate) for your service.

Don't and I won't. I'll just abandon it.
I know it doesn't matter to whoever your are, but those are my terms, take it or leave it. If I was you, I would approve it because it's completely reasonable.

Cool Obama

The important take away is actually from a comment:

"...the Democratic party is now America's conservative party, fighting more often than not to defend a status quo against the radical, perhaps revolutionary, changes proposed/enacted by the Republican party, which has ceased to be 'conservative' in any meaningful sense of the word and must now be considered the party of fundamentalist Friedmanite corporatism and reactionary Robertsonian theocracy. We have reached the point in our political culture at which liberals are the true conservatives and many who call themselves 'conservatives' can probably best be described as 'Right Leninists,' a vanguard party of reactionary revolutionary change."

So really, what the person is saying is that black is the new white or maybe that black is the new black. I couldn't have said that better myself.

So some of you may or may not know that lately I've been super busy. So when I've had the opportunity to try to relax with my family or friends, the topic always boils down to this "Well what do you want to do?"

Since moving back to Saskatoon, I have had the pleasure of meeting many people. Most of you reading this are those people. First let me say Kudos :) As without you life would be boring.

What I've been able to take away has been a renewed passion for games of sorts. People do not realize nowadays with all the technology we have at our fingertips what they are missing with the interaction of just sitting and playing a game with those around you.

With the power going out on the Westside a few times the past week, and while waiting for it come back on, I have had the opportunity to play a few games with my family whilst waiting.

SO far the games of choice we have been playing are:
Apples to Apples as our social game
Pandemic as our group objective game
Monopoly as our classic game
and recently I picked up 7 wonders as our card based game.

I subjected my family to learning to play 7 wonders the other week. They were not so enthused as it seemed daunting to learn the game. After a few rounds the game started to go smoother as we learnt it. And after we finished the first game my sister-in-law immediately demanded a rematch.

I've since just picked up the expansion for it called leaders, and for my brother's birthday I bought him "The Manhattan Project" which was originally a Kickstarter. I'm hoping that we get as much enjoyment out of it as all the others we have learnt.

What this boils down to is:

Thanks for reintroducing me to board games again. And if I can make a suggesttion, get a few people together to have a round or two of a new game, you never know what will happen.

Bairen

As most people here have an interest in copyrights I thought you would all love this TED Talk. Its a short 5 minute one so it won't take long to watch, the link also has a blog post that goes with it for a bit more detail. To sum it up, if I did math like that in school I would have failed.

Click here to see the true power of the force!* 


* or in this case, the real order you should watch the StarWars films, I plan to try this on Morgan when she finally capitulates and agrees to watch these culturally significant films (I expect that will be when she is like 28 or something)

For reasons that don't matter to anybody but me, the moniker "Kyro" is headed for an end. It was a fine alias for 10 years, but I'm ready to switch to something a little closer to the vest, namely Djaii which is phonically identical to my actual name, but employs a silent 'D' like in Djinni and implies 'DJ' which I (used to) do.

Right, so, what about that music stuff? What about the film work?

Well, there are two aliases that I'll be using for music, one that will follow my new primary moniker "Djaii" and one that is... well even more unconventional.

The Kyro identities on SoundCloud and CCMixter are gone, in favor of this identity on SoundCloud:

Latest tracks by Djaii

Also on SoundCloud, I'll maintain a new Möbius Entendre identity which is for the weird stuff, like Exploration #4 and my newer ambient productions. When doing sound for video (other than actual sound foley work for my film group HALF DAMAGE) I'll post it here also:

Latest tracks by möbius entendre

You will also notice that my email address is going to change. You'll still be able to email me at my kyro address, but replies will start coming from 23 djaii (again a gmail addy). Finally, I'll have a unified identity across SoundCloud, Twitter and our Blog. Email me if you've got questions, the old email address will work for a while yet).

Don't go to the Grand Sirenis in the Riviera Maya.

Please read the post here.

... and then go vote on TripAdvisor here.

(just please click the YES button beside the "was this helpful?" indicator)

Two things about this situation really piss me off:
1 - I don't care what country it is, you don't treat women like this, and you fucking follow up with major repercussions if it does. Like jail for the asshole, let alone the fact he should be fired on the spot.
2 - Shit like this makes those of us that had a good time in Mexico question our experience and wonder if we can go back. We had a great time there, could this have happened to my daughter?