Gamer Presents!

This weekend was the occasion of my 37th trip around the sun, and we had a really good time.  I didn't get to role-play ALL DAY, which was what I used to do on my birthday when I was in High School, but I still had fun.

Among my presents were:  A new 25-inch monitor.  Torchlight 2, a This is How I Roll t-shirt and a bumper sticker for the new minivan - "Don't make me get out and roll initiative", which should go nicely with the firefighter licence plate!

Of course, the combination of the new monitor and Torchlight 2 made getting productive work on things like

Updated Chapter 2 of Blingdenstone Enhanced.

Secret Santacore Submission.

Or ANYTHING ELSE totally impossible.  This game is crack.  Explore.  Kill.  Loot.  Compare Numbers. Re-equip. Repeat ad infinitum.  I thought I had kicked this back in the Diablo 2 era.  I proudly didn't buy Diablo 3 because $60 + always-on-DRM = fuck NO!  I thought the monkey was off my back!  But it is on there firmly, clicking away.

My daughter even wanted to sit on my lap  and got excited when we found giant piles of gold or got into a big fight.  Although she did do a lot of  "what's happening?" when the action got too furious.  Of course - she's 3, so she ended up with nightmares last night.  Totally my bad, and I got up and cuddled her without complaint.  Guess I need to find a game that interests both of us and isn't that scary.

On a related note, I've had a bit of interest in the Dungeon Mapp Contest, but only a few people have entered the contest so far.  As a result, I'm going to extend it out to the end of this week to see if we can get some more people interested in a FREE TABLETOP GAMING APP!

Finally, Carl Bussler put up this interesting Cast Map over on G+ were there are a ton of interesting RPG conversations happening right now.  This is more designed for fiction - I'd modify it slightly to identify the party at the center and NPC's radiating outward.  The idea that the more removed an NPC is, the less characteristics they need to have is a good rule of thumb.  But a minimum of one is also a good rule.  Try to make all NPC's at least a tiny bit interesting.

As always, Happy Gaming.