Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Digital gaming again

So mmorpg.com this weekend gave me a nice trial of Tabula Rasa which I played for 3 days and enjoyed. Reminds me of some of the good days of Half-Life mixed with a little mmo level grind.

If I had time I might sub for a month or two, though I have no delusions about it staying interesting long term. I tried the beta a long time ago and it was too buggy to think about getting at release. Now I just find there weren't enough new people to do any instances and I only teamed twice in many hours of playing. Still it was a nice change of pace.

I also spent a good portion of my memorial weekend working on terrain, and a little bit of it doing painting and basing of Vor miniatures for a Golden Growler contest. The Golden Growler is a trophy that goes to the best figure painted. I look enviously at my wife's Growler Chieftain and I'm sure she must have a decent chance at winning. Myself I just love showing off and so I'll submit something anyways. I really wish doing a lot more social gaming like Arkham Horror or miniatures because the easiest way to game with others these days is definitely from my computer. It just lacks the comraderie and isn't nearly as fun as playing with others in person, but alas I won't fail my responsibilities as a parent.

On an amusing note my boss who just chewed me out for being unreliable didn't show up to work last week, and I guess isn't going to be in this week either. In fact I'm probably going to be temporarily reassigned to work under someone else. The next person I should report to is on the other coast of this continent and they don't want to manage my work remotely... I wouldn't want that job either! So it looks like the next couple weeks will be a little less stressed out for me. But I'll still be looking for new work. Maybe with a little pressure off I'll fit in a game somewhere this week of the face to face kind.

Ah, good old table top gaming. Nothing is a substitute for it!

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Seattle bound


Well changes at my place of employment are starting to suck. After being chewed out by a new manager for being too much of a family man despite getting all my assigned projects done [b]ahead[/b] of schedule. I'm "unreliable" by which my current manager means predictability and unambitious is better than an employee who gets results. I like to teams, efficiency and achievable goals, not just punch a clock for 40 hours a week so this is kind of tough for me. So since my wife and I have discussed moving to Seattle this has kind of clinched it and we're definitely planning on making the move back to my northern stomping ground.

So I guess this hopefully means I should have no excuse to miss PAX08 this year! Unfortunately it is too late for Vor 2.0 to be part of the PAX 10. I still look forward to meeting the Turbine crew again and razzing them, free stuff, new games to see, and most of all this year hopefully getting in a good tournament of Anima: Tactics and finding Vor players to play against.

In the meantime I'm hoping to get down and finish up some of the many terrain projects we have floating around. I've finished up most of my models but have way too much terrain in an incomplete state. I hope to get some of it down and have some pictures before my next post. Which is kind of easy since I decide when I will post. Mwa ha ha! Any bets on when?

Saturday, May 3, 2008

I need a babysitter

Because my wife and I just haven't had the time to play anything. Originally we said we'd try and get a game of Arkham in weekly, but it just hasn't happened. The problem with moving to our current city of residence to have kids is that we have no friends here and haven't had an opportunity to socialize and make more. With a good paying job we're not to eager to upset the balance right now (who wants to risk a good paying job in this economy?) and find a way to be more active gamers.

At least we find we can steal some time to paint. With the announcement that VOR is coming back (and hopefully it doesn't end up like the announcements after FASA closed in 2001/2002 I've felt inspired to try and paint some more. If nothing else I might hope to meet with someone and get some play time again. While we still love board games, RPGs computer games, etc all we have time to do is paint and rarely even play the miniatures we paint.

I promised some people pictures of my new shard. I removed the first picture to include a better one instead.