A Crisis of Faith

Life moves on in Babylon, with or without me.

I've found myself experiencing a crisis of either confidence or faith as the days move on.  Personal dramas are high and I often mope to no good purpose.  It attacks my resolve on every front.  And the blog languishes in idleness because I don't want to spread my disease among the community, as it is the only community up to this point that has welcomed me.

But I'm here, alive and un-incarcerated, for the moment.  I am still working hard to improve myself-to get my own life together so I can possibly think about helping others.  My goals are not impossible, merely insane.

You will see more of me in the future.  But if you've been wondering where I was, that's it.

And I ain't licked yet.

The Perils of Pathfinder: World Creation Process

So I'm finally getting things going on my Pathfinder game.  Basically I'm set up with 2 different player groups on different days, once per month on each.  Player level 4, mostly human party, a lot of first timers, nothing groundbreaking.

Most of my previous campaigns have not strictly even had a setting; it was just my bastard psychopath PC's wandering from one burning town to the next.  So this was really my first time creating my own setting that would have a persistent state beyond the current adventure.  So I was basically starting from zero, but there is a surprising amount of good information in the DMG on the mechanics involved and I haven't had any major problems so far.

The first image that came to mind for me was the skyline.  I could see a big lighthouse on the southern end of some little island on a wide river, with a big arched bridge connecting it to a little rural hamlet and palisade fort.  It developed a little further when I realized that the palisades were made of petrified trees, far stronger than they should be, and thus the region was named the "Stonetree River Delta."  It is a vast swampy area based off of turn of the century New Orleans, dotted with rivers and lakes and mysterious islands and some buried sins.

Anyway, I more or less built it from there, adding bits of libertarian propaganda (Oh yeah, the PC's are going to have to pay taxes and HOW THEY WILL HATE IT BWAHAHA) and background story until I had it ready for what amounts to my final test.  I looked over the info I had at the time and wrote down 99 adventure hooks as fast as I could.  It must be a pretty good setting because I had all 99 in less than 45 minutes.

Anyway, that's the muthafuckin' happenings on my Pathfinder game.  We go live with the tutorial dungeon in about a week.  I'll let you know how it goes as time progresses.

Lessons Learned: Vacation

#1: Melon balls are delicious, even with tangerine pulp.
#2: Melon balls are dangerous.  You can't even taste the alcohol.
#3: There is some debate over using Red Dragon Inn as a drinking game.  Apparently demanding that players chug Salt Water when they draw the Troll Swill drink card is "an excessive vomit risk."
#4: Talking down the guy who is tweaking in the hot tub and thrashing about like a harpooned whale is a communal effort-no one can stand to do it for more than a few hours.
#5: Damage to the orifices is cumulative.
#6: Depending on your rum and coke level, a guacamole and steak sandwich on potato bread is quite delicious.
#8: Stoned Hippie vs. Tweaking Marine in an impromptu wrestling match ends exactly how you expect it to. Even if the hippie gets surprise.  But the hippie is the only one that gets any sleep that day.
#9: Being snowed in is a blessing and a curse, but the curse part mostly manifests to the single guys (and my lovely wife) mildly put out by a general lack of pussy. Still, if we'd have been inviting people. the famously picturesque hills of Brown county would be littered with frozen sexy corpses.
#10: If you think you are going to get any blogging, roleplaying, book editing or work on your Pathfinder game done, you are out of your fucking mind.

Don't Mind the Dust

Just doing a little housecleaning in Scumfucktopia.  Added Linoge to the blogroll with the basic reasoning of "What was this guy doing not on my blogroll?!?!?"  Removed a couple of dead blog links. *Moment of silence*  Added a link to my tag guide on the sidebar in case you missed the post, and made it so you can access each tag from that particular part of the page.  Added the litany against fear, just because.

I'm going on my well deserved vacation and may be sporadic or prolific depending on my drug and vagina intake.

WE RIDE.

Hey, I haven't blogged about cartoons lately...

You know why the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie was panned so bad by fans of the show?  It isn't necessarily because Aqua Teen Hunger Force fans are a bunch of douchebag hipsters.  Mostly, it was because Mastodon appeared at the beginning, blew everyone's face away, and then did not appear in the rest of the film.  They set the bar too high in the first minutes and then gave you what was basically a long episode of the show.  

That whole movie should have been about Snack Food Mastodon showing up in places from the show and ruining everyone's shit.  The main cast shouldn't even have been in it until the very end, whereupon Snack Food Mastodon ruins their shit and closes out the movie with another song.  THAT would have been a movie to remember.  Instead we all sat in the theatre with our buzz slowly wearing off going "Man...should have gotten the DVD so we could get high again."  

It isn't too late, Adult Swim.  Snack Food Mastodon: The Series would do pretty well.  Why?  Because there is nothing more awesome than Mastodon.

A Curious Question

Has anyone else noticed a number of preppers coming out of the woodwork lately?  I've been asked for prep advice by people who less than a year ago would have scoffed at the very idea.  What's more-because anyone can BS around the water cooler-I've gotten wind of some pretty serious purchases and training lately from folks that I always thought were on the poseur list.

What has people scared?  It isn't me; I've been preaching the same Doom and Hellfire on the streets of Btown the whole damn time.  My message hasn't changed but somehow the response to that message has changed.  Is it the news?  Maybe, but all of these have been fairly sensible people and sensible people should damn well know the news thrives on a state of perpetual panic that doesn't necessarily translate to blood in the streets.

I've gotten not one but two independent cases of my liberal friends freaking out about a possible civil war, one of which actually mentioned the Threepers by name.

I've gotten enrolees in my karate class who have an eye for prepping rather than hobbyism.  Not strictly bitching about this because it has really made class a lot better, but it is unusual to see multiple cases crop up at once, and openly.

Every gun show, every online vendor, every brick and mortar and army surplus store is paying hard cash for magazines and still struggling to keep stock on the shelves.  Every.  Fucking.  One.  This one I am complaining about, make no mistake.

What everybody asks me, as if a scumfuck who has been preaching the exact same message for ten years with no apocalypse has any answers, is "When is it going to go off the tracks?"  And I always have to say "I have no fucking idea.  Not now, and not then."  The writing on the walls-the signs of a society that is not sustainable-has been freely available to anyone who can do basic math for a long time now.  But a timetable was not included with my apocalypse manual.  Still, it has been interesting steering people onto what I hope is the right path.

Besides, I can always use more zombie bait.

Femslash Friday: Aurora X Snow White

No matter how weird and offsetting your perversion is, someone out there is willing to put in more effort than you in realizing it.

I hope this gives you comfort, you sick bastads.