Gaming. Part 1

So it has been quite some time since I made a point to write anything. This is not entirely due to laziness. In fact I've been quite busy. Between resuming my studies at a University, to being a full time dad. Life is fairly busy these days, but I still get the opportunity to indulge in my hobbies. My hobbies are numerous, ranging from reading and writing, to cooking. However, there is one hobby that I hold nearest and dearest to my heart, gaming.

Ever since I was a very young child, I've had a fascination with games. I enjoy a multitude of board games, and have spent more hours than I'd care to admit playing video games. Truly though, my true love when it comes to games would have to be table top role-playing games. I remember watching my dad play Dungeons and Dragons with his friends when I was just a kid. I pestered that group mercilessly, sometimes getting to throw dice for my dad, who was the dungeon master. Usually though, they'd start playing after I was sent to bed.

When I was a kid, I didn't know there were other games out there. D&D was the only game I saw my dad play. It was sort of our gateway "drug" to the card game Magic: The Gathering. While I was a child I asked for the various game core books for my birthday and for Christmas presents. Here I was, a seven and eight year old kid with the core rulebooks for 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and I ate them up. These days I struggle to find the time to read a sourcebook for a game from cover to cover. For AD&D, I probably would have been able to cite page numbers for rules. I could still do THAC0 right now if need be. For those of you who missed that reference... it's an obscure rule that many view as something from the dark ages of table top rpgs.

Fast forward to middle school. I wanted to play roleplaying games, but it just wasn't happening. I was that kid who'd sit at the lunch table at school and play Magic with a couple other kids. Besides my best friend Ben, I'm not sure I could tell you anyone else's name that sat at that table. I could describe to you their gaming behaviors, but not tell you their names. This collectible card gaming wasn't scratching my itch however. I wanted something different.

So I discussed it with my parents, and made arrangements to have some friends come over and play. None of them had played before, though most of them had heard of it. I took the time to create characters for everyone. It was middle school, so I left the roleplaying up to them and kind of vague. We all sat down to play one Saturday and I launched into a pre-written adventure called "House on Harrow Hill."

That was probably one of the most dismal failures of my entire life. For a long time I blamed the players, but... it was partly my fault as a brand new DM. I let things get under my skin I should have brushed off. I let a disruptive player take control of the table and drag the entire group into a plot vacuum. I think, given my experience now, I could have handled that differently. However it spelled doom for that group. Hardly anyone had fun, and it became a running gag whenever people didn't want to do something. Someone could suggest something and the reply would be "...or we could play D&D again."

I played a couple other games during High School, but not many. I got involved in a few electronic games while I was attending Job Corps and while I was in college. At that time e-games were a nightmare. Voice chat was garbage, so you mostly used instant messaging clients. They were fun times, and some stories that I can still remember but again... I was gaming with strangers, and wasn't establishing friendships.

So with all these failed attempts to play, many people in my life have asked why I love this hobby. Why is this something I'm so invested in? My wife was pretty stunned to hear me tell her the other day, that if I could get a core gaming group that was playing regularly I'd more than likely all but give up video games. How can I have this level of love for a game when I've had so many bad experiences?

The truth is, it's about the story and the interaction. In my heart, I'm a storyteller. Ask anyone I've gamed with, and they'll tell you I'm a very story driven gamer and game master. I'm not a huge fan of the combat simulation. It has it's place, sure. I know the thrill of a critical hit, and I know the bitter taste of a botch. Combat deserves it's place in a story, for sure. It needs to be cinematic and dynamic however. I don't want to spend hours doing it. I want to get in, mix it up, tell an awesome story about what happened in it... and then move on.

That being said, there was a time in my life when I'd given up on roleplaying games. It was after a miserably failed instant messenger based campaign.The guy who was the game master had brought his girlfriend in. She wasn't really very interested in playing, but wanted to spend time with him. One of the rules was, her brother got to play. Her brother was, to put it bluntly, a total tool. In just a few sessions, he torched an ancient forest that was home to the elves we were supposed to protect. He defiled the ancient burial ground of a sacred religious order, and he slaughtered a town because an innkeeper was rude to him. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, he turned on the party and killed us all. In our sleep!

I was fed up. Too many failures, too many disappointments. Maybe role playing games weren't for me. I was convinced there wasn't a group out there I could make it work with. That all changed though, when I became close friends with a man named Shriane Dream Phoenixx. Here was a man who was every bit the storyteller I was. Here was a man who ate, drank, slept and breathed this stuff. This man helped to rekindle my love for roleplaying games. He also helped me see there were games outside of Dungeons and Dragons.

Someone once told me that a blog should be just a quick "scoop" of info. So, loyal readers, we'll continue this in part 2. Until then, goodnight, and good luck.

The Gamers 3: Hands of Fate

I'm going to be perfectly blunt with you, dear reader. If you haven't had the opportunity to watch Zombie Orpheus Entertainment's cult classics "The Gamers," "The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising" or their phenomenal partner web series "JourneyQuest" (now in it's second season!) then you're missing out.

I have personally been playing games since I was a kid. One of my earliest memories is sitting on my father's lap and tossing the dice for his various monsters as they attacked his party of friends in a Dungeons and Dragons game. I have played hundreds of sessions of D&D in my life, have delved into Whitewolf games and puttered around with the Cortex system and Pathfinder. Some of my best memories are sitting around a gaming table weaving a story and throwing dice with a group of friends. I've got back stories filling my brain for the countless characters, and still smile as I think back to various gaming experiences. 

How many of you remember a moment when your rogue snuck off down the wall of the keep and attempted to scale it, only to fall and get himself tangled in a tree? Or perhaps your shaman used his spiritual magic to outwit a tribe of kobolds? Then there was that time that your friend decided to try and fuse his spirit with the mystical portal energies and ended up some weird spirit world hybrid thing? 

Sure, the above are my experiences, but that doesn't make them unique. Just about anyone who has sat around a table and played a table top rpg has a story to tell. The video below is just an example of the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Listen as renknowned fantasy author RA Salvatore tells one of his favorite gaming memories.

Dear reader,I love gaming, just as Salvatore says above. Gaming is one of my favorite activities, and it's the love of gaming that has led me to my appreciation for the works of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment and their partners Dead Gentlemen Productions. So sit back and allow me to craft for you the tale of how I discovered one of the most entertaining films I've ever had the pleasure to watch.

A few years ago, while attending Skagit Valley College in Washington, my friends and I had an every other week "heckle night." Similar to how Scott Johnson and company do on the Film Sack podcast, we picked a movie on Netflix, streamed it and then heckled the hell out of it. So, when I sat down to initially watch "Dorkness Rising" I was expecting a campy and incredibly lame experience. My every intention was to heckle it to death. What resulted was all of us laughing, but not heckling. We all truly enjoyed the film. A majority of the people watching the film that evening, were involved in a Whitewolf game that met on the off week for our film group. This was the first movie that really spoke to us as table top gamers. 

Most of the time when anything in pop culture speaks of table top gaming it's with derision. You see a bunch of pimply faced kids living in their mom's basement, swilling down Mountain Dew, chomping on Cheetos and never every seeing a girl. As a long time gamer I can tell you this is an absolute fallacy, that angers me in every instance. I was pleasantly surprised to see how "Dorkness Rising" presented gaming.

Dorkness Rising, and it's predecessor, present a real to life version of what gaming is to a lot of people. The conflicts, the excitement and the enjoyment are all there. The thrill of accomplishment and the sting of defeat. The real life "gameplay" scenes are interwoven with "Lord of the Rings-esque" scenes in the fantasy world. These scenes are overlain with commentary from the players, the occasional sound of a dice being thrown. It was hilarious. Sure, these guys and even the girl who join them, (that's right! A girl! gasp... TROPE DESTROYED!) are nerds. However they are nerds presented in a positive light, for the most part. There are a few scenes that are ultra-nerd moments. For example the scene where the "Power Gamer" is sitting in a meditative pose spouting stats of monsters.

Dorkness Rising is pure fun. There are random scenes of ridiculousness, but they don't detract from the story. They add to it by showing a bit more about the characters that you grow to care about during the course of the film.

All of this has been a lead up to the introduction of The Gamers 3 - Hands of Fate. Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, in company with Dead Gentlemen Productions is looking to make another feature length film. But they need the help of the community, they've placed a campaign on Kickstarter.

In an interview with writer Matt Vancil, of Dead Gentlemen Productions, he makes mention to amazing shows such as Firefly that were cancelled due to network politics. ZOE and DGP are small studios that produce fan supported content. Their motto is "no networks, no cancellations." This film won't get made without the support of the community, and so as a fan and member of that community I put this out to another amazing community with similar values. Please take a look at their Kickstarter Page. I am not here to beg for donations, I'm simply here to spread the word!

In other news: Because of their model of entertainment, all of ZOE's stuff is up on YouTube or their website. The original low-budget "The Gamers," the feature length "The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising," and their awesome collection of web series (including Journey Quest and Rude Mechanical.) I encourage you to take a look, you won't be disappointed. 

A brief but important message

It's been a while since I've written, and there have been any number of reasons for that. I'm going to endeavor to write more as the coming months allow. This is a good outlet for me, and writing is a perfect way for me to unwind.

Today, however, is not going to be a long winded rant, or anything like that. It's a simple announcement. For the past month I have been holding on to a secret that's been tearing me up inside. Now, I've been holding on to this secret because I wanted to reveal it to my family at Christmas, as sort of a gift. Now that Christmas is past, I'm able to more widely publicize it.


However, it's my feeling that it can be better summed up with a picture. For those of you who don't know, the individuals in this picture are my father and brothers. This is how we broke the secret to my extended family on my side. For a bit of further information, I'm the oldest, and the only one who is married in my family.

Now, loyal readers, I trust you will be able to do the simple deduction.

I look forward to continuing to write to you over the course of the coming year. I am making it a goal to write at least once a week. I will have a great deal to write about, that's for certain.

Just a note: Comments fuel the fire. Knowing that someone is reading what you've taken the time to put down is very important to a writer, and in my opinion anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. I write this blog as an effort to express things in the manner I best know how. I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings on my thoughts and feelings.

A final statement: At this time of year it is my prayer that you have been found healthy and at peace with the world. My thoughts and prayers go out at this time of year, that each person may find some semblance of peace and joy. Regardless of your affiliation, regardless of if you celebrate Christmas, Kwanza, Channukah, Solstice, Festivus or anything else, may the twilight of 2011 be filled with bright and happy memories. May peace and love find its way to your life, and may 2012 dawn with a renewed sense of hope, and of faith. May you all be blessed, this loyal readers is my prayer, and until next time... Good night, and good luck.

Pure Frustration

Greeting loyal readers. Today’s blogcast is a return to normalcy. I’m going to lay something down right now, and it’s nothing but pure ranting. Today at work was a truly bad day. Now let’s face it… My job is cake. Nothing has ever been easier than this job. To be honest… a trained monkey could do my job. However, I feel that I make a strong effort to step out above and beyond the bare bones responsibilities of the job and try and be a valuable employee. I’ve made an effort to learn the job, beyond just the requirements. I have been told by numerous of the Team Leads that I am an asset to the company. However despite these facts… I’ve grown frustrated, and I’m going to explain why.



When I got hired at AMP, I made sure that the employer’s knew that my background, and indeed my strength and comfort zone was customer service. I was informed that if a customer service position opened up (customer service is a promotion from data entry) I would be getting an interview. Guaranteed. Today I learned that 5 data entry agents have recently been moved to Customer Service. Receiving a promotion and significantly more human hours. (Monday through Friday 9-5). Now… If I had been interviewed and they’d been hired over me, I can handle that. But the fact of the matter is, despite those promises… I DIDN’T GET A FRELLING INTERVIEW!



Now, I would be able to overlook this normally, however this is the third time this has happened since I started working at this company. I was APPROACHED about two other jobs in the company, and was told they’d contact me for interviews, and contact was never made. For either job.



This particular turn of events has left me feeling very defeated and unhappy. This job was originally a “seasonal” position, with some of the staff being retained for the off season. I felt confident due to my performance of being retained. However when I can’t even get interviewed for a friggin’ lateral move… I don’t see how that’s going to happen. I guess I had better start hunting much harder for jobs. I may be leaving my current one much earlier than I’d expected to.



That’s all for now, ranting isn’t decreasing my frustration, so I’m going to cut it short. As always loyal readers, this has been another blogcast of The Rogue Signal. Until next time… goodnight, and good luck.

The Adventures Continue

Hail and well met loyal readers! Today is going to be another step out of my usual ranting, and just going to be more of a journal. So... Indulge me.

Last night after work Alicia and I headed out to Men's Wearhouse, where a couple of week's ago we had gone in and gotten a "Tuxedo Consultation" with the "Tuxedo Specialist." Tuesday evening is our "pre-wedding" photo shoot and Alicia will be in her wedding dress. (Not going to lie, I'm excited!) Because Alicia is going to be spiffied up to her uptmost spiffiness I am going to be as well. I'm going to be in a tuxedo. That's right loyal readers, I... The Rogue Signal am going to be classing it up in a penguin suit. We picked it up yesterday, and it isn't perfect. My shoulders are a bit broad for the jacket, but the alterations would have put it past the date we need it, so we're going to just roll with it. Wearing this tux has definitely affirmed for me that I need to lose some weight. Alicia has stated that I'm quite handsome in my tuxedo (we did a trial run of it today, so she could see everything all put together, and so she could say "darling, that is definitely not how that works." I'm not super comfortable in it, but Alicia likes it so I'll go with it.

Following our trial run with the tuxedo Alicia and I sat down to bust out our invitations. We spent time organizing lists, making piles, adding stamps, printing labels, placing labels on envelopes. We spent quite a chunk of time doing this and we've only dented the list of invites that we need to send out. All in all it's been fun though. It's meant a lot of time side by side with my girl, and that makes me happier than anything in the world.

We've also been having discussions regarding wedding cakes. I'm not sure we're any closer to the decision. To put it mildly... neither of us really like cake all that much. The exception for me is german chocolate cake, but that's not a thing Alicia really likes. So we're continuing our discussions.

We're taking a brief break from invitation work, so I decided to blog about our current adventures. We're both excited for the upcoming week. It entails photo shoots, and my mom and brother will be here! Alicia gets to meet some of her future family-in-law for the first time in person. She says she's nervous, but I am hoping she is excited as well.

The time has come to get back to work. As always, dear readers, this has been a blogcast of The Rogue Signal. Until next time, goodnight, and good luck.

The Joy of Discovery

The Joys of Discovery

I will state first, before all the rest of this gets started, that moving to Provo was likely the best decision I’ve ever made. Not because it’s Provo, but rather because it places me five minutes away from my fiancé. It’s my feeling that my relationship with her has improved beyond anything I thought was possible.

Something we’ve dedicated ourselves to doing since I moved down to Provo, is finding activities we can do together. Alicia and I have started playing Halo: Reach over XBOX Live with my little brothers. This has been one of our greatest adventures. Strictly speaking… we’re… well we aren’t good. My brothers on the other hand, are good. So we usually end up playing team games, where my little brothers are all on 1 man teams, and then Alicia and I are a twosome. The thing about this is… we still lose. Badly. We’re talking like abysmal style losses. This is in no way Alicia’s fault! We just… are bad at the game. It’s not a style of game play that either of us excel at, however it’s the experience of playing with our family members that makes it fun. We don’t mind dying, we don’t mind losing. Because we sit and laugh at the whole event. It’s a lot of fun and I’m really happy that Alicia has chosen to participate in it with me.

One of the things that we are trying to get better at, is using our Kinect. We have one for our XBOX and it has Kinect Adventures and EA Sports Active 2 on it. I think part of our issue has to do with timing. Because of our weird work schedules it’s tough to find a time that working out together works. When I get off work at night it’s usually time to make dinner and then we just want to relax. I am willing to take the blame fully on this one. We continue to look for ways to make “Kinecting” (clever that one) a feasible option. It may come down to pure motivation. Actually, let’s be honest, that’s exactly what it comes down to, is just making the time.

We’ve also been exploring television programs we can watch together. Something we learned a long time ago is that our movie taste is very different. So we have made great efforts to find middle ground when it comes to television shows. One of our big discoveries has been The Voice. We have had a lot of fun watching this show, though I think we have been less than impressed with the Battle Rounds. We did however really enjoy the blind auditions, it’s so much better than American Idol’s ridiculousness. Luckily we’ve found some serious common ground on Food Network. Alicia states that she loves Chopped, and she will watch Iron Chef America with me. We’ve really had fun watching Best in Smoke together, and we’re excited for June when Next Food Network Star premieres. I think this summer we’re going to have Netflix send us the disks for Castle, and see if we both can get into that show. And I have promised that I will give Bones a try.

Something that we’ve been spending a lot of time doing lately, which is honestly a huge surprise to me, is playing World of Warcraft. I sent Alicia a ten day free trial, and she had a great time. We got Christian, my younger brother, to come and play with us and we’ve had a lot of fun leveling toons (that’s game speak for characters) together. Alicia really likes her mage… and has created quite a few of them to try the different races. She seems to have decided she’s a big fan of her Dranei. She really likes how pretty the starting area was, and I think she likes being a tall blue woman who can hurl icy death from her hands. At least that’s my suspicion. She seems to really be enjoying it, and a lot of nights it’s either Alicia or Christian saying “are we playing tonight?” We’re going to get Alicia to try some Player vs Player combat, because that is Christian and I’s favorite haunt. We’ll see if she likes it.

We’ve been exploring various foods as well. We’ve kept our eyes out for things on sale at Sam’s Club, and in the past while Alicia has tried leg of lamb, and corned beef. She didn’t particular like either of them. At all. But she was brave enough to try.

That really sums up the majority of our explorations recently. The rest of our time is consumed with working, and with wedding plans. Tonight after work I have to go over and have adjustments made to my tux. Next Tuesday is our pre-wedding photos, and we’re praying the weather will be better than this rain it’s been lately. I’m excited to see Alicia in her wedding get-up, I’ve even been practicing pulling my jaw up off the floor. I know she’s going to be beautiful.

For now, that’s my life. I am enjoying it, and look forward to the next several weeks. As always, loyal readers, this has been another blogcast of The Rogue Signal. Until next time, goodnight, and good luck.

The Most Devastating Weapon of All

The past several weeks have been eventful to say the very least. Following a long discussion with Alicia, it was determined that we'd most likely end up living in Utah Valley following our wedding. specifically in and around Provo itself. Something that I've noticed with several of my friends is that they spend a great deal of time right before their wedding searching for a place to live, and it adds a great deal of undue stress into their lives. I resolved to prevent that from happening, and began to look for employment and living quarters in the Provo region.

As it turns out, I got an interview for a job two days after I began this search. The interview was on a Monday, I started work on a Wednesday, and I'd signed the papers for an apartment, and moved into it on Saturday. In my mind that's a clear sign that I was where I was supposed to be.

These last weeks have been filled with adjusting to my new living situation. I'm currently living in a fairly large apartment by myself, Alicia will of course not be moving in till after our wedding in June. However the apartment is unfurnished, so my sweetie and I have been slowly acquiring furniture. We now have a couch, a tv, and an entertainment center! I'm currently sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, but that's likely to be remedied soon. Alicia's parents are giving her the bed she used when she was in high school, so at least we will have one. It will be small, but it's better than an air mattress!

I'm going to return, dear readers, to my usual style of writing. Which is to say, I'm asking that you brace yourself for a controlled rant of my emotions. Situations lately have truly had me frustrated, and I have tried my best to just brush them aside or keep them bottled up. I've determined, however, that this particular group of actions is one I'm bad at. I don't bottle up very well. I don't do a very good job of keeping things buried. The fact of the matter is, while some can bottle it up, and then healthily dispose of it, I seem to be incapable of doing that. As you read through the rest of this little tirade, I'm sure you'll be able to understand why it is that I feel this way

So my friends, I'm going to discuss the prospect of war. Now when I'm speaking of war I'm not discussing one in Iraq, I'm not discussing the fabled battles of Humans and Orcs in numerous fantasy genres. Hell, this isn't even a discussion regarding The Galactic Empire and the friggin' Rebel Alliance. I'm speaking of a war that strikes much closer to home. I've seen this war tear apart friendships, tear apart families, and decimate friendships. I'm discussing an interpersonal war.

It's a widely accepted fact that every person in the world is in some sort of conflict with another person. This isn't to say that everyone hates someone, but there are people that we disagree with, don't get along with, etc. For one reason or another, the human race is incapable of just simply getting along. Most of us can't even truly agree to disagree. How many times has someone said that to you, or have you said that to someone? How many of those times have you walked away muttering under your breath, or feeling in your heart that you're absolutely right? How often are you belittling the intelligence of the other person in your brain, even after having just offered the diplomatic solution?

This war is waged on so many different levels, and with a variety of weapons. A friend of mine described her favorite weapon as the "french pout." The French pout is a classic French facial gesture which expresses discontent, disdain or disgust. Others, such as myself, usually choose all out confrontation. Then there are those that choose to utilize a weapon that is the equivalent of using biological warfare. They deploy this underhanded technique and lay waste to those with whom they are quarreling. This all too common weapon is used to breed complacency in the target, and then when the quarry least expects it, the party who is wielding this tool will suddenly NINJA SLASH THEIR HEART, BRAIN, AND SOUL!

As you can see, I have very strong feelings on this, and perhaps that's why I choose to write about it. The weapon I speak of, that weapon which is all to frequently utilized in interpersonal relationships, is passive agression. Wikipedia defines this as follows:

[b]Passive–aggressive behavior, a personality trait, is passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. It is a personality trait marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.[/b]

Disavowed! That is one of the key words of this damnable behavior! People choose to simply deny that they are still feeling upset or negative about a situation. The person they are quarreling with will accept this at face value. This regularly happens because the conflicted parties often care deeply about each other, which in my mind makes this crime all the more heinous. The damage that passive aggressive behavior can wreak [b]cannot[/b] be understated. Passive aggressive behavior can cause a butterfly effect within a relationship that may not be felt for days, weeks, or even years.

I choose not to point fingers, or make examples in this particular blog. This isn't intended to put anyone on blast. Perhaps this makes me passive aggressive as well, or at least so many of you may think. However, the difference is I intend to talk to these people about the issue, but I needed a cooler head before I did it. Taking the time to put these words into the nether space that is the internet has provided me with a bit of perspective. I've made my opinions broadly known, and soon the specifics will be discussed with those whom I've deemed as in violation of the code of relationship behavior.

I apologize for this unfocused and angry rant, thanks for reading. As always, dear readers, this has been a blogcast of The Rogue Signal. Until next time, goodnight, and good luck.