She’s green? That’ll do!

I’m wearing it right now, to get me into the gaming frame of mind.  But really, it’s just serving as a reminder to me that the Star Trek movie is out and I haven’t seen it yet!   It looks like I may have to wait a little bit, too.  Unless… oh!  Maybe I can convince my mom that she would really like to go see that with me for Mother’s Day! Yeah, I think I’ve got a shot at that.   She did take me to see every single Star Trek movie out there while I was growing up, and taught me that we were “Trekkies, honey, never Trekkers.”

Have a great weekend everyone, and please don’t forget your moms.  Live long and prosper!

Felicia has been here and there, most recognizably playing Vi on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I became really familiar with her through her online work, particularly Penny in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Dr. Horrible is Joss Whedon’s hilarious and wonderful online musical, created during the writer’s strike last year.  Did you ever see the Buffy musical episode?  Dr. Horrible is definitely a close relative.  It chronicles a young hopeful’s rise to stardom in the world of super villains.  It’s only 43 minutes all told. I was a  big evangelist when the episodes originally debuted.  I’ve memorized it by now, because I have watched it at least a dozen times.

As I began researching the actress who played the lovely Penny, I discovered that Felicia Day actually was brought to Dr. Horrible largely because of her experience with her own online project, The Guild. The first season of The Guild was very easy to find Youtube.  I immediately watched them all, enjoying the instant gratification. Before you click “play,” I should warn you there is some strong language.

There, the first one’s free. Actually all of them are. Just travel over to the Guild’s website.  There are only two seasons so far, so catching up won’t be hard.  It’s very different than Dr. Horrible, which created for mass appeal.  Obviously, it’s very much a niche oriented video, with jokes geared toward online gamers.  World of Warcraft players will especially enjoy it.

Felicia had tried to sell The Guild as a more traditional show, but it was too much of a niche market.  Too many people didn’t understand the jokes.  So she turned to where the audience that would appreciate her work hangs out all day every day, and began making Youtube shorts.  By the end of the first season, the donations that were pouring in actually made it possible to pay the actors.  For the second season, after much wooing from many angles, the perfect solution to return to her pet project and actually make money while retaining her creative autonomy.  From the Paste interview:

Then, Xbox and Microsoft came in and were like, “We love the show, we want you to do what you do with it, we just want to help you produce it and make it and roll it out really fast.” They created a revolutionary business model, because not only did they get a sponsor on board, but they distributed it over all the Microsoft platforms so you can download it for free off of Xbox live and HD which is basically like downloading a TV show. So our little independent, shot-in-my-shed show is essentially one click away from 30 Rock.

How cool is that?  She had the idea for a nifty show about gaming, got rejected everywhere, and decided to go ahead and do it.  And now she’s enjoying incredible success by turning a small independent venture into something that is reaching the whole world because niche marketing actually works so well on the internet.  Joss Whedon was right to seek her simply for her skills as an internet guru for Dr. Horrible.  The fact that she can actually sing and act was simply a bonus.

Killa Str25, you’re one of the good ones.   We hate that you’re going through this right now.   Knowing you has made my life better, even if it is just pixels in an online game where you pretend to be an adventurer.   You’ve always been positive and kind.  People can really be jerks when they have a computer screen to hide their real face.  But even when you were in a foul mood, and someone was trying to piss you off, you always seem to try your hardest to just turn around and walk away rather than be nasty.  You’ve got a lot of heart and I know your family loves you a lot.  The RuneScape community can’t do a whole lot for you right now, but at least we can send you some love.

My house brownies didn’t do their normal job of cleaning up the house over the weekend, but instead decided to throw an unchaperoned  party.  The house was finally in livable condition again this afternoon, but then I made a rookie mistake.  All the rain lately has made for some very cooped up kids, so I decided to let them run amok a little bit while I finished up the dishes and some odds and ends.  I should have gone outside and watched them, instead of leaving the door open and listening for their voices.  The boys decided that all the delicious mud was calling their names, and had themselves a good old time.  I discovered their guilty, satisfied, mud-caked faces about five minutes before I was supposed to walk out the door, of course.

I did manage to snatch a little chill time in, though.  RuneScape has a history of great April Fools’ Day pranks.  One year, every time the in-game decency censor starred out a word, asterisks were replaced with the word “cabbage.” In 2007, there was a news post all about how Jagex thought they had been neglecting the lowly cabbage, and how they were in process of developing cabbage related armor, beasties, and runes.  They even claimed that on April 31st (hint hint) all players would be turned to cabbage!  They had to actually explain that the news release was a joke later on in the day however.  Last year’s prank was fairly tame.  Dragon is the best metal in the game, so players naturally thought that the release of a “dragon kite” was a spiffy new shield.  Alas, it was a toy kite with the image of a dragon on it, buyable for a mere 100 gold pieces.

RuneScape is great for vegging mindlessly, and most especially today.  I logged in to see people hurling cabbages at each other, and wielding them like bowling balls.  I ran past a cabbage patch and picked one up.  Sure enough, I had the option to “Wield Cabbage.”  After wielding, I could then “Chuck Cabbage.”   I teleported to the world’s main cabbage patch, and saw that the cabbages were all animated!  They were hopping up and down, and when a player tries to pick one, it runs off!  If it escapes the cabbage patch, the options turn to “kick” and “tap” cabbage.  There’s an alleged prize (a cabbage) if I kick it all the way over White Wolf Mountain, down past Ardougne and Yanille, and into Oo’glog where the Ogress Spa is.  I’m estimating that it will take me about an hour of kicking and prodding this animated vegetable all that way.  Yes, that’s what doing with the rest of my evening.    No fooling.

Despite having only 5 months to plan, the staff at Imagicon pulled off an event that I highly enjoyed.  The first thing Friday, I saw one of my old gaming buddies heading in the front door.  We hugged and headed in and were greeted by an impressive Captain Jack Sparrow, who invited us to give blood.  Our first order of business was to find out when Chris would be DMing.  The gaming room was empty, so we wandered around, getting a feel for the layout.  I was thrilled to see an old friend, J.F. Lewis, in the main hall.  He was eating Subway and preparing to sell his newly published vampire novels, Staked and Revamped.  Soon thereafter, Shadowhelm also found me.  I was thrilled, and immediately comfortable, being amongst my people.

There were movies being shown on two screens all day and night.  There were showings of Serenity, Dr. Horrible’s Sing A Long Blog, some MST3K, individual favorite episodes of shows, some horror movies, and some anime.   It was nice to go and just relax in the quiet rooms after running around in circles.  There was 24 hour gaming, too, in theory at least.  The poor turnout meant that the real gaming actually didn’t get going until around noon on Saturday. The dealer’s room was also a bit of a disappointment to me.  I had expectations of anything I could possibly want for a gamer, a SciFi geek, or an anime addict, but mostly there were tee shirts and Star Wars toys. I had been planning on supporting my dice habit, but no dice vendors were to be found. Alas, no cool new dice bag for the hubby, or nifty glittery new GameScience dice for me.

On Saturday, Chris finally did get his game up and running  and settled into some hours of gaming, even introducing a newby to GURPS.  Most of the tables in the gaming room that were filled had people playing 4.0 D&D.  Meanwhile, there were panels on multiple geeky issues, including writing, publishing, paranormal activity, costuming, and hard science.  This is where I personally had the most fun, and I intend to write later on about some of what I learned in various panels.  I won’t overdo my thoughts on those mini-seminars, but they made the whole convention in my opinion.  I definitely remembered how much I enjoy soaking up new information.  Armed with my pretty green journal, I flew from class to class, stopping only to make sure the kids (large and small) were having fun.

Actually, the children’s track was the most sorely lacking area.  My children had a lot of fun, but mostly because they made their own, and I had thought to pack them goody bags to entertain them.  The gaming room being half-populated was a blessing for us, as my two boys were set up in a table by themselves beside Daddy’s GURPS game.  The kids’ track wasn’t entirely neglected, but there were some glaring omissions.  In Atlanta, DragonCon offers daycare for the price of an extra ticket.  That would have been ideal. The McWane Center, just down the street, always makes a presence at any event there might be children in Birmingham, but had no representation at this convention. They would have fit in perfectly, too.  There was a magician who put on a few acts and strolled around the grounds handing out balloon hats and animals, but that was about it, except for a room filled with coloring books and a few tired looking teenagers trying to think of ways to entertain children by themselves.  Sunday was actually the best day for the kid’s track, with a Jedi Academy and jiu jitzu demonstrations, which were incorrectly labeled ninjitzu in the program.  Unfortunately, by Sunday, all the adult attractions had dried up, and only the vendors remained, trying to squeeze the dwindling crowds for every shiny penny they were worth.

All in all, this convention virgin had a wonderful time.  There were definite areas that needed improvements, but I’m willing to cut the staff of ImagiCon some slack.  They only had 5 months to prepare, and apparently a shoe-string budget.  Next year, they have so much to build on and learn from, that I would wholeheartedly recommend people look into attending next year’s ImagiCon.  I already have been brainstorming for ways they could improve, which shows that they sparked some passion in me. I saw so much potential that a little creativity, discipline and organization could have helped, that I’m seriously already looking into ways to participate myself next year.

RuneScape is my online game fix. It’s the internet’s biggest free MMO, but amazingly few people have heard of my main time drain, so I thought I’d introduce it.  I play for $5 a month, which is a grandfathered rate from when I started my membership. The monthly subscription has now risen to $5.95 a month.  That price is nice, but free is even cheaper, and Jagex wisely offers a free version of the game.  People can easily try the game out with no obligation. There are an estimated 2000 hours of game play on the free game alone, so it’s not like the typical demo game where you play until you hit a time limit scenario and the marketing for the paid version pops up.  Running around on a Runescape free server is fun, but is admittedly frustrating, as of course much of the expansion of the members world makes the game infinitely more enjoyable.  I became a member within a month after I was introduced to the game in November 2006.

The game is Java based, and runs right from your internet browser.  There is an option to download a client if you are having issues with either your computer or your internet connection slowing you down or lagging you out of the game. Character creation is simple and quick, teaching you the basics of interacting with the world. Characters learn to smith their own weapons and armor, how to fish and chop trees, and other fundamentals of the game. Even having played for this long, I  have yet to run out of goals in any skill.  If I’m in the mood to bash something, I can suit up and go fight monsters, or even go into a PvP world and get my butt handed to me in short order.  I can pit myself against other players in versions of capture the flag, or plant a magic tree.  If I’m bored, there is something new to do.  There are areas of the world I still haven’t explored, and mini-games (games within the game) I haven’t played more than once or twice.

This week Jagex released the 150th quest, and the storyline was entertaining and tied up loose ends in the story of the underground goblins and their struggles against the Humans Against Monsters movement.  In fact, I often wish I had a notebook with the details of the many quests I’ve completed.  There’s an extensive Lores and Histories section on the website where I can read about the rich backstory to the game world.  With a new CEO for Jagex, the direction of the game is more positive by the day.  The Jagex teams are constantly adding new content, and tweaking what already exists.

LadyGlutter is my “main” character, even though I also have a free-to-play platinum blonde that I neglect.  LadyGlutter has red hair and I’ve created her to be an explorer.  Her main achievement is a quest cape, which symbolizes my completion of every quest.  If you ever make a character, look me up.