![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hi. Yes, I'm alive. There's been a bit of things that happened since my last post.
1. The wonderful new health issue is my neck and left shoulder. Two weeks ago, my shoulders were pretty sore, which is honestly fairly normal for me. I decided to take a hot shower that night to loosen them up. Ten minutes after the shower, my entire neck and shoulders painfully sieze up such that I can't move my neck at all without screaming pain. As in, "need to stuff sheets in my mouth to keep from screaming when I try to move my head to go to sleep". After a week off work, two trips to Med, including one orthopedic surgeon, and a referral to a chiropractor, I can now move my head mostly without pain and have a pain-free functional right shoulder, although I wake up every morning with the left terribad.
2. PAX East! That was this weekend, and I really enjoyed,it, as always. Going with friends also exponentially increases the fun of going. I'm going to break this down further:
2a. Concerts: VGO (excellent as always), Those Who Fight (new Final Fantasy Rock Opera, who were pretty good), and the Protomen (they give a good concert. I have some Issues with their 2nd album, though) on Friday. Saturday was Sam Hart (new, but charmingly adorkable), MC Frontalot, JoCo, and Paul and Storm. I enjoyed them all, even though my neck started aching from staying in one position too long.
2b. Video Games: I mostly like seeing the indie and smaller games at PAXEast than the AAA titles. I can see videos and coverage of the latter on RPS or Siliconera or RPGamer. I won't see the former anywhere else. Got to play alphas of God Forge (3d space shooter, with 4-player 2 team multiplayer: defend your team's carrier in space) and Secret Ponchos (western top-down multiplayer shooter. It's highly fun.), both of which have excellent titles. Also got to play Two Brothers, which is a delightfully retro action RPG supposedly coming out this summer. There was also a tablet RTS that was fun (although the title escapes me at the moment), a tablet Usagi Yojimbo game, and the delightful tablet game Nun Attack, which is about nuns who fight zombies/vampires/something? In AAA land, Remember Me looks promising, as does WotC's new Magic game (albeit a bit slow). The next Civ pack supposedly might have some XCOM characters.
2c. Board Games: Played Sentinels of the Multiverse, which is a comic-book style cooperative card game. Each player has a deck of cards with abilities for a hero. They play them against a villain who has their own deck and in an environment which has a deck. We played it Friday. By 2pm on Saturday, the house owned the main game, all 3 full expansions, and all 6 single deck expansions, and had spent enough money/played enough games to earn the points to get all the limited special edition alternate hero cards. Because Link and I are crazy like that.
2d. Tabletop Games: Picked up a copy of Kuro, a tabletop system that's a cross between cyberpunk and Japanese horror. It reminds me of Shadowrun, and I'm probably going to try running something using it. The company that put it out, Cubicle 7, also has a system for The Laundry (as in the Stross novels) and Doctor Who.
2e. Panels: I actually went to a bunch this year.
i. Storytime with Cliff Belszinski and the Penny Arcade Q&A: I always enjoy the keynote speakers. This year was no exception. I'd say I'm not a huge fan of the amount of dick jokes in the Q&A panel (mostly prompted or by the questioners), but I know what I'm getting into. So that was the same as every year too, except the fact that Tycho was in a Fruit Fucker costume due to a Kickstarter goal added a certain amount of surreality.
ii. The Future of RPGs: painful. It was advertised to have 90% wrongness in their predictions, but the wrongness started from their first principles. I was slightly horrified, as the panelists were the designers of Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, and Dogs in the Vineyard. The fact that I could contradict their assertions of fact with actual experiences in the last 6 months didn't help. On the upside, it convinced me I want to give a talk at Ides in a few weeks.
iii. Mastering Game Mechanics: by the hosts of the Geek Nights podcast. Excellently panel, and gave a good rundown of common mechanics found in games. Gave me some ideas for my next game writing projects.
iv. Pitch Your Game Idea: goddamned hilarious, as always. The panelists mock the ideas, and there are always some really, really terrible ones.
v. You Game Like A Girl: Tales of Trolls & White Knights: one of the best panels I've ever been to at PAX, hands down. The panelists knew their shit, were thoughtful, and admitted that some issues like booth babes were actually complex! Full of truth bombs and some deliciously satisfying smackdowns of Twitter and comment bullshit happening live. (Such as "Why are there no men on this panel?" "Because they're on all the other ones." And "There's a lot of sand in your vagina." "It's not sand, it's the misogyny.") It was great and needed and the people in the audience were also fantastic. Every person who got up to ask a question was thoughtful and relevant.
Once again, definitely going back for PAXEast 2014.
1. The wonderful new health issue is my neck and left shoulder. Two weeks ago, my shoulders were pretty sore, which is honestly fairly normal for me. I decided to take a hot shower that night to loosen them up. Ten minutes after the shower, my entire neck and shoulders painfully sieze up such that I can't move my neck at all without screaming pain. As in, "need to stuff sheets in my mouth to keep from screaming when I try to move my head to go to sleep". After a week off work, two trips to Med, including one orthopedic surgeon, and a referral to a chiropractor, I can now move my head mostly without pain and have a pain-free functional right shoulder, although I wake up every morning with the left terribad.
2. PAX East! That was this weekend, and I really enjoyed,it, as always. Going with friends also exponentially increases the fun of going. I'm going to break this down further:
2a. Concerts: VGO (excellent as always), Those Who Fight (new Final Fantasy Rock Opera, who were pretty good), and the Protomen (they give a good concert. I have some Issues with their 2nd album, though) on Friday. Saturday was Sam Hart (new, but charmingly adorkable), MC Frontalot, JoCo, and Paul and Storm. I enjoyed them all, even though my neck started aching from staying in one position too long.
2b. Video Games: I mostly like seeing the indie and smaller games at PAXEast than the AAA titles. I can see videos and coverage of the latter on RPS or Siliconera or RPGamer. I won't see the former anywhere else. Got to play alphas of God Forge (3d space shooter, with 4-player 2 team multiplayer: defend your team's carrier in space) and Secret Ponchos (western top-down multiplayer shooter. It's highly fun.), both of which have excellent titles. Also got to play Two Brothers, which is a delightfully retro action RPG supposedly coming out this summer. There was also a tablet RTS that was fun (although the title escapes me at the moment), a tablet Usagi Yojimbo game, and the delightful tablet game Nun Attack, which is about nuns who fight zombies/vampires/something? In AAA land, Remember Me looks promising, as does WotC's new Magic game (albeit a bit slow). The next Civ pack supposedly might have some XCOM characters.
2c. Board Games: Played Sentinels of the Multiverse, which is a comic-book style cooperative card game. Each player has a deck of cards with abilities for a hero. They play them against a villain who has their own deck and in an environment which has a deck. We played it Friday. By 2pm on Saturday, the house owned the main game, all 3 full expansions, and all 6 single deck expansions, and had spent enough money/played enough games to earn the points to get all the limited special edition alternate hero cards. Because Link and I are crazy like that.
2d. Tabletop Games: Picked up a copy of Kuro, a tabletop system that's a cross between cyberpunk and Japanese horror. It reminds me of Shadowrun, and I'm probably going to try running something using it. The company that put it out, Cubicle 7, also has a system for The Laundry (as in the Stross novels) and Doctor Who.
2e. Panels: I actually went to a bunch this year.
i. Storytime with Cliff Belszinski and the Penny Arcade Q&A: I always enjoy the keynote speakers. This year was no exception. I'd say I'm not a huge fan of the amount of dick jokes in the Q&A panel (mostly prompted or by the questioners), but I know what I'm getting into. So that was the same as every year too, except the fact that Tycho was in a Fruit Fucker costume due to a Kickstarter goal added a certain amount of surreality.
ii. The Future of RPGs: painful. It was advertised to have 90% wrongness in their predictions, but the wrongness started from their first principles. I was slightly horrified, as the panelists were the designers of Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, and Dogs in the Vineyard. The fact that I could contradict their assertions of fact with actual experiences in the last 6 months didn't help. On the upside, it convinced me I want to give a talk at Ides in a few weeks.
iii. Mastering Game Mechanics: by the hosts of the Geek Nights podcast. Excellently panel, and gave a good rundown of common mechanics found in games. Gave me some ideas for my next game writing projects.
iv. Pitch Your Game Idea: goddamned hilarious, as always. The panelists mock the ideas, and there are always some really, really terrible ones.
v. You Game Like A Girl: Tales of Trolls & White Knights: one of the best panels I've ever been to at PAX, hands down. The panelists knew their shit, were thoughtful, and admitted that some issues like booth babes were actually complex! Full of truth bombs and some deliciously satisfying smackdowns of Twitter and comment bullshit happening live. (Such as "Why are there no men on this panel?" "Because they're on all the other ones." And "There's a lot of sand in your vagina." "It's not sand, it's the misogyny.") It was great and needed and the people in the audience were also fantastic. Every person who got up to ask a question was thoughtful and relevant.
Once again, definitely going back for PAXEast 2014.
