now with moving visuals: 50 dkp minus

in case you need to use some of the wonderful clips, this site has already sliced and diced them for you.

world of warcraft and myspace: two great tastes that taste great together

how to win the internet

Princess Huhuran is serious business

i do not get tired of people freaking out about WoW.

pvp freakout!

so yeah, i did finally get around to setting up a warhorn blog.

jwz's idea for celebrity D&D - a step beyond, or maybe to the side of, Dungeon Majesty.

there is a distressing amount of gray hair in my beard.

Greg came over last night and taught me how to play backgammon. we drank vodka out of huge goblets, smoked profusely, and listened to Pharaoh Overlord and As I Lay Daying. a wonderful distraction from the absurdity on CNN. we should do it weekly. anybody interested?

Sun Aug 21: Gedran removes his Dwarven Hand Cannon and begins to stroke the barrel ever so slowly.

i think i've finally burnt out on World of Warcraft. my paladin is level 50, but i'm not fired up to make that last push to 60. i foresee nothing fun in a future of grinding and all-day instance runs. the story is what kept me going for months, not killing snickertooth hyenas to collect their jowls and turn them in for ROIDS, but that's what the game seems to be at this level. yawn.

the story may have petered out over the last several levels, but my chair ass and wombat have ballooned, and i feel a lot dumber. so instead of playing the game i'm going to get back into the gym and start hiking on the weekends again. see a few movies, catch up on that neglected stack of books from the comfort of my front stoop and/or the nearby park. maybe even do some work on Warhorn.

i'm listening to the new Pharaoh Overlord album, and i keep hearing things reminiscent of World of Warcraft sound effects. like the whistle you hear when your hunter summons his pet, or the undescribable noise of jumping off the gryphon/wyvern/bat after you just flew from one zone to another. i'm not sure what to think about that.

i spent yesterday afternoon adding RSS feeds to warhorn.net 1.5.0 (hopefully releasing by the end of May). there are feeds for upcoming conventions, recurring game days, past conventions (cos i'm a completist), and for each event. now it's easy to tell when a new event is scheduled or when somebody signs up for a game. awesome. i don't know why i didn't get around to this before now.

i'd also like to add iCal integration like that of upcoming.org - when on an event site, click a button to add a calendar to iCal. i need to be able to generate an iCalendar view of a game, though, and i can't find any PHP iCalendar utilities. the closest thing i could find was PHP iCalendar, but its iCalendar parser/generator code doesn't appear to be easily extractable. lame. you'd think something like this would be in PEAR already. and in fact it seems like they talked about it a couple years ago on the PEAR dev mailing list, but nothing seems to have come of it.

anybody going to Gen Con Indy this year? event registration opens tomorrow. always have to work out the schedule in advance and buy tickets as soon as reg opens, cos the most popular events sell out in hours. so, here's mine.

should you be so inclined, Wizards of the Coast are running a contest for community design of one of the rooms in Undermountain. the winner gets $140, a copy of the new Waterdeep supplement, and publication on the Wizards web site. i'm sure you'll all be leaping at this wonderful opportunity!

according to GamingReport.com, Green Ronin will be publishing Thieves' World products for d20!

i grew up reading fantasy and sci fi, and the Thieves' World series was one of my very favorites, among the few that i read more than once. if i recall correctly, it was one of the first (if not the OG itself) multiple-author shared-world anthology series. dark, amoral, with almost no traditional heroes. those of you who loved Sin City in either form should check out this series. the first two volumes were recently re-released in a single edition.

i wonder if i'll be able to talk my regular gaming group into giving this system a try. might have to buy them all the first book to sell them!

courtesy of McSweeneys, by way of Laurel: live-action role-playing spells i could really use, right now. to that list i'd like to add Summon Housekeeper, Protection from Precipitation, Speed Read, and Resist Sleep.

har - Warren Ellis refers to tribe.net as "Craigslist for the polyfucker/playa-crustie Bay Area community". the only person i've heard talk about tribe runs an astrology community there. go figure.

i have been quiet lately, both here and in meatspace, because i've been playing World of Warcraft like it's my second job. 6-8 hrs a night for over a week now. have a good group of friends there, some of whom live out of town and whom i consequently never see. if you are a WoW player, i'm on windrunner (alliance: angormor, ferguson) and hyjal (horde: grazztt) - say hi and we will destroy troggs and vile familiars together.

remember the ridiculous larp video with the guy running around yelling "lightning bolt! lightning bolt! sleep!"? well, somebody replaced the audio track with Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory". the absurd-o-meter hits 11. i thought i was over being embarrassed by gamer antics, but i guess not.

update: somebody else did it better, with a slayer soundtrack and some awesome special effects as well. keep em coming!

i don't think ghosts in D&D could possibly be more complicated. of course i have to run one sometime in the next few weeks. maybe i can have it try to disarm somebody's ghost touch weapon.

soooo busy. between the day job, the club, unpacking, and running the occasional game at Endgame on Monday nights, i've had almost no time to get together with friends. i've scaled my nights at the club back to 3/wk, but i still never seem to find space in the day to relax or see people. Creighton, Rebbie and Becky are in town this week too...

last night Finn reminded me of Grontar: the Frutang, possibly the most brilliant game ever devised. have a read of this play log - i think you'll agree.