So, I went to a mini-gaming convention run by some employees of Wizards of the Coast last weekend. I haven’t been surrounded by so many nerds since I was at Reed. Robin and our friend Ari went with me on Friday, I went alone on Saturday, and then Ari joined me on Sunday.

Anyway, some of the gaming sessions I was in were sort of okay, others were awesome. Of the okay ones, they were mostly combat oriented role-playing sessions using the d20 rules. Here’s a break-down.

Friday
1. Pirates Cove! — Amazingly fun and simple board game. It’s got pirates, how could it be bad? This is definitely on my to-buy list maybe a couple of months from now in time for the holiday season to play with family and friends.
2. Homestarrunnerball Rally 2000 — the characters from Homestarrunner.com are detailed using d20 rules, get in pairs, and race to Vegas from Strongbadia. I was playing Homestar Runner and I got paired with Coach Z. First we had to make cars out of playdough; then it just sort of turned into a genre mixing, time traveling race against other pairs like Strong Bad/Strong Sad and Strong Mad/the Cheat, ending in a climactic finish racing along side the original Cannonball racers from the movie of the 1980s. Anyway, this was pretty fun when I think about it, but while I was playing it it was a little tedious.
3. Royal Turf — This is a relatively quick horse racing/betting game that lasted about 45 min. It was fun, but I think I wasn’t into the theme as much as the other players.

driving home that night was insane; rain was coming down in sheets.

Saturday
4. D&D Maxitures — this was a live action interpretation of the relatively new D&D Miniatures game. It was fun in a novel way, and we got to go outside and play in the backyard, but the game itself didn’t work so well since the teams lost their balance in such a small space. Any ranged units were at a distinct disadvantage. Of the two rounds I participated, I was on ranged teams and we got wiped pretty quickly. I was supposed to play two more hours of this (about two more rounds) but I decided to check out other stuff.
5. Gloria Mundi — this game is coming out next year some time. Did I mention that almost everyone in the house was either a game designer from Wizards or had been one at some point or was an independent game designer. Because of that, Robin got to play some word games that are in development on Friday and I got to play Gloria Mundi. (Coincidentally, the word games and this game were all designed by the guy who played my partner Coach Z.) Anyway, this game is very hard to describe and it took maybe a couple of rounds to fully comprehend the rules, but once underway, it really picked up and was quite fun.
6. D&D Miniatures sealed box tournament — I joined a tournament in which the boxes were supplied by the hosts who got to keep them afterwards. I gotta say, this game is tremendous fun. George and his friends Johnny and Claire, et. al. would love this game. It’s sort of like HeroClix but a little more like D&D and a little more like a regular miniature war game like Warhammer. What makes it really fun is the way all the special abilities and spells from different units combine with each other to make really interesting mixes. It has a very rich background, too. Maybe it also helped that I came in 2nd in the tourney (of 8 ). The only guy who beat me was one of the lead designers. 🙂 As a prize I got a rare huge model, the Storm Giant. Nice. I found all the stats of all the minis online and I have a ton of miniatures which I finally brought up from the Bay Area earlier this summer, so I figure if I could find some people to play with, I have all the stuff. Come visit George!
7. Return, etc., to Elemental Evil — this was pretty fun, though there wasn’t much role-playing involved. We played a special FBI unit created with the d20 Modern rules who were sent through a portal to the Temple of Elemental Evil. It turns out that this was one of the recurring events at the mini-con and we were the 3rd group sent through the portal, this being the 3rd annual time this event was run. It was basically one huge fight as soon as we got there. I was the only one role-playing, saying things like “What the hell is that?!?” when any sort of monstrous creature appeared. It might have helped that I truly didn’t know what some of the creatures were and that of the ones I did know I didn’t know their stats. The other guys were all Wizards guys and were saying things like “Oh don’t worry about that; it’s just s Shambling Mound, not that powerful.” !!!
8. Who’s the Werewolf — this is like the party game you have at sleep-overs called Mafia or Assassin, and it was really fun.

Sunday
9. Rise of the Legobots — bring a whole bunch of characters from TV shows and movies, stick them all in an old western, send some robots from the future to kill them, and make all these characters, robots, and buildings, terrain out of Legos. Basically, I was the Highlander (from the TV show) and had crazy insane stats (d20 rules). It was pretty fun, though early on, at one point I looked up and saw myself surrounded by middle-aged men and women arguing about if Xena was this way or if Dumbledore was that way… I was surrounded by nerds! 🙂 But it picked up really well mid-way through, and I embraced my own nerdiness.
10. Vampire: the Requiem — this was totally a role-play session rather than being so combat or roll-play oriented. I joined in really late with only an hour or so left in the session since the Legobots one ended early. This would be great if I had a group of friends who wanted to role-play for hours like every weekend.

Between sessions, I was able to check out many games including the Game of Thrones boardgame, Risk: Godstorm (also by Coach Z), and Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The latter two come out later this month. The Game of Thrones game looks like a mix between Diplomacy and Risk/Cosmic Encounter. Might be worth getting, if only I had more hardcore gamer friends living near me. Risk: Godstorm adds a lot of interesting things to the game like artifacts, spells, and gods. The House on the Hill game looks really promising as a tongue-in-cheek horror themed tile/map building rpg-lite. What makes it cool is that you don’t know what the objective is until about half-way through the game, and then you find out that one of the players will turn traitor and it turns into a player and monsters vs. players game. I think I’ll try to get it before Halloween and play at a Halloween party this year.

Anyway, had a fun weekend, and I hope to be playing games with you all again some day… 🙂

that’s interesting that we’re talking about dental insurance. diana and i just saw the dentist yesterday. it’s the first time for me in 2 years which is not good. turns out though, our new dental plan covers 100% of most routine work, ie. cleaning, cavities, etc. my problem is finding a reputable dentist. the last guy i saw said i had 10 cavities..i think i got 3 ‘fixed’ before i thought it was ridiculous. i didn’t follow up with a second opinion and now 2 years later my new dentist is saying i only have 3! did a check on the old dentist and turns out he’s out of business and had his license revoked..hmm.
same thing happened to diana in san diego..the guy told her she had a whole bunch on cavities, he probably drilled out good teeth and patched them up. she did as much as she could afford and then yesterday our new dentist said her teeth are fine..no cavities. i just hope that our new office isn’t screwing us…but i guess so far so good.
my philosophy is to avoid any medical attention if possible. even with insurance…i think healthcare is incrediby expensive. i just had a wort removed on my palm…several appointments over 2wk periods…$400! if i didn’t have insurance…$1,000,000,000 dollars

Remember a year ago when I was wondering if health insurance was worth it? Well, it is worth it if you have injuries like Robin’s back thing last year which is still bothering her and if you have to get a root canal.

Only, our insurance didn’t cover as much as I thought it would and it didn’t cover my friggin root canal last April… I put off getting a crown for the tooth for 5 months and now it seems I must otherwise I may lose the tooth. What’s more, I have another fracture on another tooth, so now I need TWO! I put it off cuz I figure we’d relook at our plans and get better insurance this year, but as it turns out, dental insurance for individuals really sucks like crazy.

We’re talking, the best I could find was they would cover 20%. What the fuck is that?? The best health insurance covers 80% after deductible. Man, I miss the good ole days of being an employee where the insurance would cover 100% after copayments! Boohoo!

September already? Insane how fast this year is going. Things have been crazy out here in Boston. I applied for and got a full-time position at the hospital where I’ve been doing my research (as an Associate Medical Physicist). It will be great for me financially and professionally (board certification, clinical experience, etc.), but it’s been a ton of work so far. The amount of time that I have to spend on research has dropped from 95% to 5%. If I’m ever going to finish my PhD, I’ll have to push that number up quite a bit… The good news is that an increase in research time will be possible, as I’ve been investing extra time learning the ropes and one of our staff physicists is currently out on leave. Things should get better.

Football starts tomorrow. Happy days.

you guys should check out will ferrell if you haven’t already at www.whitehousewest.com

Hey,

Thought I’d start a new topic since this could get a little involved…

Basically, the rim of the discs can be angled or formed differently to give them different flying characteristics. A driver has a really wide slightly angled rim so that the profile looks more like an airplane wing. Putter discs are made for lift rather than speed, so they don’t go as far but are basically easier to throw and are way more accurate. Their rims look more like a traditional frisbee, almost semi-circular. Not sure if this written description is good enough, so here’s a quick image of what I mean…

As you can tell, the putters are a lot more like the regular ultimate frisbee discs we’re all used to seeing. One big difference, however, is that all of these discs are about 8.5″ diameter rather than 11″ diameter. Aerobies, one would think would be great, but since courses tend to be frought with trees, I think the aerobies would get stuck up trees often. Also, the discs we are using fall within some sort of standard which disc golf pros use…

The two I own are actually mid-range discs which are in between the two illustrated. I find I don’t have good enough control for a long range driver yet, and I’m pretty good at putting with the mid-range guys, so I haven’t bothered to get one yet.

So, here are a couple of hilarious sites…

http://www.jibjab.com

http://spamusement.com/

Congratulations on another year older and still managing to game. I am envious! All I get to play is freecell
and the occasional game of starcraft. I miss Stars!

Hope you are enjoying the remenants of summer and still having fun with your program. Is it a full two years?

(To everyone, sorry I haven’t been too active on the blog. It’s been a busy summer. Seems like everyone is
pretty busy.)

Hey, going down to Portland this weekend for a wedding. We’re staying with Colin and Diana and hopefully we’ll be hanging out with George a bit, too. I’ll try to take photos.

Also, as Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force says, I put one and one together and decided this site is starting to piss me off. It seems to be down half the time. The web hosting company says it was some domain routing things which they claim to have resolved. We’ll see…

According to Mike Imrem, carrying a football makes an athlete great. (I found this trail of links in Kaufman’s daily sports piece on Salon.com.) It’s hard to fathom Imrem’s argument that Lance Armstrong should not even be considered a great athlete. In fact, it is downright asinine. Fortunately, there are people out there like Patrick O’Grady who aren’t afraid to put out a “big dirty, personal foaming rant.” God bless him. There’s no doubt that Ricky Williams is a fine football player, but he would be an embarrassment at basketball, baseball, soccer, golf, and -yes- cycling. While Williams in certainly strong, Armstrong has endurance and a tolerance for pain that most football players only dream about. Never mind the fact that Armstrong has the discipline to stay in shape and avoid illicit drug use… It’s amazing the Imrem is published regularly; he should be out there pedaling [sic] his work…