Below are the most recent 5 friends' journal entries.

Thursday, January 7th, 2010
crothian	1:38p	My changing in gaming outlook 4e and Pathfinder have had a large effect on the gaming community especially on line. People spend lots of energy talking about these games and playing them. To me they have caused a nice increase in my savings since I'm not buying them. In the days of d20 I bought and read therough many many books. We were using them and it was a great experience. But now I'm not playing or running 4e or Pathfinder, nor do I find that I want to. I'd have no problems playing or running either but there is nothing about those game that make them be must use games. I'm finding this is something true with almost all games. I'm not buying new things and I'm not really all that interested in them. I find that I am much more interested in some old books and I continue hunting for books to complete some product lines. Of the newly published games that only two that I actively have been getting are Star Wars and Serenity. Neither are game I';m playing or plan on playing. Neither is a great game and both have some mechanical flaws I'm not pleased with, but I'm a fanboy of each so I buy the books. Luckily they are published very often. I'm no longer an ENnie judge and I'm happy about that. Reading through the latest books was always fun and work, but now I'm positive I don't miss it. 90% of the books we would get were ones I would not be interested in using. I've kept some of them, but would trade them away for the right deal. I'm just running Freeport with d20 now and it's going pretty well. It's different but familiar and works. I'm just not having this great desire to expand to other games. Freeport has been going well and we've had 6 sessions. We went right from Death to Terror and they are still in that. We are interjecting a few more side things for the characters now but it the basic flow of the modules is still going on. I'm going from a wide range of gaming interests and loving the over all community to concentrating more on what I am specifically running and not paying a whole lot attention on what's going on elsewhere. Current Mood: thoughtful (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
crothian	8:18a	Last bit of 2009 School starts tomorrow and I'm not ready for it. I want a week break or something in between the Christmas chaos and school. Even though it has been about 7 weeks since last quarter ended it doesn't feel like I've had time. I'm not even fully signed up for classes. Freeport is still going great. We've played 5 sessions without missing a week or anything and that's never happened as far as I can recall. While the players might feel they are not getting anywhere in the investigation of the Cult and the Lighthouse they are moving along better then the modules expect. There are times in the modules when something has to happen for the players to get the next clue. I've not had to do that because they are deducing what they need to do to keep the module moving. They are not always right but never have been completely wrong (except when they are). They did spend a little too much time over planning getting to the lighthouse, but it was amusing. The big thing they did was kick off the second module before I was expecting them too. I was going to insert a one off adventure of something different to do in Freeport but before I could get there they basically planned out the opening scene in Terror in Freeport. It's been good so far. I've been up since 3:30am and I tried to get some sleep but it wasn't happening. I caught up on everything on the DVR including the new Doctor Who's. I know I've missed episodes here and there but each time I get back into the show I have a desire to watch it all including the spin off series. I watched some Torchwood but I never heard when things were on and missed most of it. The real purpose of the post is to catch up on the reading from 2009. I haven't posted for a while so this is a good among but covers I think the month of December. 228) Ill Wind: Leslie loaned me this the first book in yet another series. It is the Weather Warden series by Rachel Caine. It is modern day supernatural but no vampires or werewolves. I didn't know that was possible. It is elemental magic and genies, so something different. It was a fast and entertaining read. 229) Moonheart: Another Charles de Lint book and more classic fantasy mixed with the modern world. I like his stuff and wonder why I'd never heard of it till I started reading the Modern Library list of greatest books. 230) Frostbitten: This is Kelly Armstrong and her Otherworld series. It was nice that it went to Alaska and showed different creatures. I hadn't read one in a while by her so it was nice to get this one from the library. 231) Time Travelers Never Die: THe newest by Jack McDevitt who I really like. It was a good book but it accomplished the plot about half way through. It was more a good look at the idea of if you had time travel where would you go and how would you handle the difficulties of language and everything. From that aspect it might be the best Time Travel book, but as far a novel with plot and all it was not as good as he can do. 232) Pirate Latitudes: A lost book by Michael Crichton; it was entertaining but not great. I'm not sure if it was meant to be more historical fiction then just fiction as it had that historical research feel. It did not glamorizes pirates or make living then seem easy which I liked. 233) Blind Side Evolution of a Game: The book the very good movie Blind Side is based on. I'm a football fan so I wanted to read the book. If you are not a football fan and expecting this to be more like the movie then don't read this. As a football fan it has a lot of information in it and really does a great job of showing how the game has evolved. The Michael Ohr story is just a nice story that fits in with the evolution but is not the primary focus of the book. The mixing of the personal story and the way the game has changed didn't work so well and seemed the book was two melded together. 234) Bro on the Go: Cute little book from the TV Show How I Met Your Mother. It is like the Bro Code and written by Barney and so it has his style in there. It is short and no depth as one would expect. 235) HP Lovecraft's Favorite Weird Tales: This was my Christmas book, I read from it Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I like the idea; it reprints stories the Lovecraft stated he liked in letters he wrote. Each story is given a little introduction and of course all of them are from the late 19th Century or early 20th Century. Horror and I imagine what scares people in writing has changed. Not all of these stories has really stood the test of time. But what I liked is that aside from the Poe story in here I'd read none of them. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, January 1st, 2010
nitessine	8:46p	Briefly On New Year's Eve, the Drama Llama rose up from the pumpkin patch and brought drama to all the little boys and girls. Current Music: Northern Kings - Kiss for a Rose (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
nitessine	6:16a	lol what happen It seems like we're running out of 2009. Really, it's pretty much done, except for the party bit at the end and the explosions and the alcohol abuse. It was a very good year, all things considered. My first year as Ropecon's RPG admin went off without any major disasters and I like to think I did pretty well. I got on a roleplaying studies course - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - and aced it. I even got myself a regular column on Roolipelaaja, which was awesome for that one single issue before the magazine folded. That kinda sucked, actually. It was a big loss to the gaming community, and I was growing rather fond of the rag. While there still are magazines that will print pretty much anything that I write for them, Roolipelaaja was the only one with something approaching production values and a circulation to speak of - though not, apparently, sufficient. It was important to me personally and to the Finnish gaming community in general. Still, it has been a very good year. Studies progressing, gaming happening. Made new friends, saw excellent movies, read great books, had fun parties. Managed to avoid the drama, and didn't die of swine flu. Yeah. 2010 has some big boots to fill. Here's hoping. Current Music: Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 27th, 2009
nitessine	3:48p	Overfed to Bursting One of the tragedies of being Finnish is that exotic, expensive and foreign chocolates don't do anything to us. The stuff that Fazer churns out and can be bought for a few euros anywhere in here is simply better. However, there is such a thing as too much, as I've had ample chance to find out over the past few days. Chocolate is also one of those things that people buy when they can't think up any better gifts. Since my hobbies and areas of interest are often rather esoteric and I have a strong collector's urge, it's hard for most people to find stuff that I'm interested in and for some reason don't already have. So, I now have more chocolate than Switzerland. Better, too. I also got a new computer. A nifty quad-core desktop array, optimised for gaming. The only shortcoming is the lack of a wireless LAN card, which is why I'm currently located in the library at home, since we don't have a cable long enough to get from my room to the router. Predictably, the first game I installed on this new high-end gaming rig was Planescape: Torment, released in 1999. Even more predictably, the second game I installed was World of Warcraft, along with its expansion sets. What nobody could predict was that my mother wanted to play and got hooked on WoW. I think her blood elf warlock is around level 14 right now. Apart from the computer and the chocolate, I also got some Sharpe DVDs, Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, some money, some gift cards, some movie tickets, some socks, Eoin Colfer's ...And Another Thing, and a big, heavy American English dictionary. And a bottle of Famous Grouse. Since one of my holiday projects is watching all the stuff from my parents' DVD library that I haven't yet gotten around to watching and this includes films like Catwoman and Jumper, it may really come in handy. State of Play rocked, incidentally. BBC's political thrillers are quality stuff. Current Music: Tanz der Vampire - Fühl die Nacht (Comment on this)