John Zeitler

So maybe you heard about this, but yesterday I was in a car accident. No injuries to me, but the car isn’t going anywhere for a while.

It came at a really inconvenient time, too, as I was supposed to drive to Cleveland today. Obviously that didn’t happen. I did, however, ride with some folks to West Virginia, which I suppose might possibly be considered almost equivalent, except not at all, really.

So that’s why I have to make this post after the fact, and say that on my agenda for Sunday is the write-up for the whole thing and just try to keep myself from genuine panic.

So, I know this is a little short notice, but one of the things I’m doing this weekend is helping out with the Kurokiiro Maid Cafe’s Child’s Play Gaming Marathon. Basically, starting in less than four hours, you can watch cute maids play video games for 25 hours straight, and if that sight moves you– which it should– we’d appreciate some donations to the annual charity fund.

And before anyone asks, no, I am not wearing a maid outfit. Yes, I know what that paragraph sounds like, but just trust me, petticoats aren’t my thing. Well, they are, just not wearing them. Not wearing them myself. This paragraph has just gone somewhere dark and horrible.

……y’know what, just go watch the maids, OK?

So one of the things I’ve been doing, as part of my ongoing efforts to ruthlessly exterminate any and all free time I might have, is working on the Anime Heroes delve for the Tekkoshocon RPG room. This is sort of a big deal for me, as I tend to not really focus on combat in my own campaigns, but rather prefer to keep things on a more intellectual and RP-centric level. That doesn’t work so much when your players’ characters are modeled on Ash Ketchum, Toph Bei Fong, and Ichigo Kurosaki, three characters not exactly known for their inclination towards talking things through. So they have to fight it out, and I need to give them a decent shot at doing so.

To this end, I’ve been elbow-deep in the Dungeons and Dragons Compendium, which is a great resource for the average DM. There’s just a few hiccups, and that’s that, for the most part, there aren’t really a whole hell of a lot of variety of monsters available to players at Level 1. More immediately, getting data out of the compendium and into a workable sheet for use at the table is not exactly the easiest thing in the world, particularly if you need to adjust a monster’s level down a notch or two in order to make it a fair fight. (And yeah, there’s gonna be one encounter that just plain won’t be a fair fight, because what’s life without a little risk?) To date, I tried setting up an OpenOffice template for that purpose, arranging the carefully-constructed stat blocks and going from there.

The Cheshire Cat, in American McGee’s Alice, said: “There’s a nasty name for people who insist on doing things the hard way.” To that end, I snagged a couple of utilities that make life much, much easier.

The first is a bookmarklet found via NewbieDM that turns on editable mode within the browser window. Basically, once you find the monster you want in the DDI Compendium, right click it and view the frame in a new window or tab. Then, click the bookmarklet and start editing. In Firefox 4.0 you don’t get to see the insertion marker, so be sure you click before you start typing– or better yet, highlight only what you want to edit. It’s nondestructive, so you’re not twiddling bits on WOTC’s servers or anything. The only downside is that it doesn’t play well with javascript-heavy pages, which is why you want the monster in its own, disposable tab. Great, so you can alter monsters, but what about copying them to an encounter sheet?

That’s where the Pixlr Grabber add-on comes into play. Pixlr can specify a region of the browser window, and either save it to disk as a PNG or copy it to your clipboard. From there, you can paste it into your favorite word processor or page layout tool and arrange it as needed or desired. Make sure you do a test run to see how big/small the text needs to be.

Those should cut down a TON of the manual labor needed for me to get the encounters ready. At this point the hardest part is figuring out how to avoid sending my players against yet another kobold horde.

So I’m all settled in and ready to get the Kurokiiro Festival underway. As such, we’re going to be a little quiet here on the blog. You could say that the blog is playing The Quiet Game so that I can play several dozen other, rather louder games.

Of course, that would be silly, but you could say it.

I managed to get most of the game systems binned up for the trip to Kurokiiro Festival tonight, and also got the metal DDR pad into the car early (as I wasn’t sure if it would fit– fortunately it does). Overall I’m really looking forward to the festival.

Then again, it is 11:30p and I am gibberingly tired, so, yeah.

So, in lieu of sticking to a coherent theme or narrative structure tonight, I’ll just run down some of what’s on my mind.

First, Kurokiiro Festival is coming up, and as I’m helping to staff the Video Game Room this year (read: The Collection serves one of its intended purposes), I needed to double-check some things. The big one was getting a replacement A/V cable for the Dreamcast. Shortly after I’d picked up Twinkle Star Sprites at Otakon, I accidentally ripped the old, flimsy A/V cable out of its socket. Anyway, I’d forgotten about that incident during the move, and when it came time to unbox the retros and get them ready for transport to the festival, I found that little hiccup. Anyway, I ordered a new cable on Saturday from eStarland, a place that Slipgate had recommended on many an occasion. I have no reason to doubt him further, as the cable arrived today, and for the money it’s perfect. It’s an S-Video cable as well, meaning a somewhat nicer picture (and it looks incredible on the big screen TV). So I got my Twinkle on, then set it aside.

Next, in terms of anime, since I’ll be doing things that are not watching anime at the festival, I’ve been trying to get caught up a little more on some series that I’ve had on the stack. I mentioned to some friends that the current DVD set in the player is Slayers Next; this evening I reached the halfway point of the series. It still astonishes me to note the level of progress we’ve seen in made-for-TV animation in just fifteen years, after an equal period of stagnation. Anyway, Slayers Next is a hell of a lo of fun, even when the series is deliberately trying not to be funny. Incidentally, I can see (and hear) exactly why everyone was so happy to hear that Xellos’ voice changed in the dub for the new seasons (I’m on the English track because, quality or not, I can’t associate Lina’s character with any voice but Lisa Ortiz’s for some reason). He’s the most flaming not-really-bothering-to-hide-that-he’s-evil character ever.

Games… well, I ran across a couple of really good deals lately, including my third-ever Super Famicom cartridge. It’s bizarre that a city so far removed from any kind of an anime mecca could manage to be where I’ve collected two out of my three SF games (the third was Seiken 3, picked up at Otakon this past year). Anyway, straying from the beaten path has brought me a decent share of deals, including a game that, just going by its release date and meager print run, I should never have even seen (You Don’t Know Jack Mock 2). If this keeps up I may have to start a second row of PS1 discs. Which reminds me, as soon as I get a shelf or chest of drawers for the retros and the portables, I need to snap a photo of The Collection so you fine folks can see the glory of its new configuration.

As for yesterday’s post– yeah, the back pain is mostly due to my nocturnal contortionism, but the scientific process cannot be denied.

Finally, as it turns out, I picked up a cookbook that I wish I would have found three years ago. It’s entitled “Okay, So Now You’re A Vegetarian” and it details just what each of those scary-sounding things in the meatless section of the Market District really are, and how to use them effectively. With that in mind, I have a new mission: vegetarian gyudon (“beef bowl”), using seitan, sweet onions, and a few other ingredients. I’m sure it can be done; the question is: how? Actually, a better question is: how many fire extinguishers should I have on hand?

Night, all.

Today was simultaneously busy and relaxing. I knocked off two short story-mode clears this morning while waiting for a couple of phone calls, and handled a few minor little housekeeping things. Key among them, or at the very least key among them for our purposes, was finally getting around to modding my SNES to enable import games to be played without trouble. For those of you keeping score, this meant using the diagonal cutters to cut out two itty-bitty tabs on the machine. That’s it. The reason I did this was because I now own a copy of Seiken Densetsu 3 that I wanted to give a quick run through, with the ultimate result being that it works and I still have no idea what’s going on. But at least I’ll be able to snag a translated version somewhere and give that a play through without feeling guilty or violating my personal ethics. (This code of ethics is the same thing preventing me from really going through Mother 3, honestly, until I can grab a physical cartridge.)

On the recommendation of Kat and Andrew during the con, I’ve also started watching through Gakuen Alice. The short description of this series is “What if the Japanese had come up with the idea for X-Men, but decided not to play it in the slightest bit seriously?” Overall I’m really digging it, but I wish it would start coming to some semblance of a plot soon. It’s got some undercurrents that are showing through here and there but the characters aren’t strong enough after five episodes to really hold up that sort of minimalistic storytelling. Though I will admit that Hotaru’s “Idiot Gun” and “Idiot Cannon” are hilarious and I hope they’re not just one-episode gags.

Even though this year I spent the least amount of time at the convention out of any that I’ve attended, I still think it was a) worth the registration and b) a good time. I’m probably going to register next year as well, particularly because the location we’ve staked out makes travel between the con and the room a lot easier, and therefore ducking out for loot drops or quick breaks becomes a much more appealing option. I’ve also always come back from cons feeling exhausted but really, really happy. This year is no exception, on either front.

Catch you folks tomorrow.

I’m back from Otakon, and while it was a very fun experience, it was truncated due to the jackass who set off the fire alarm during the middle of Saturday– as in, the time when the con is usually in full swing. Oh, and it probably completely disrupted one of the highlights to the con (the Hetalia premiere).

I’m also ridiculously exhausted right now, so I’ll spare you the details until later. But let’s just say that it’s a good thing I don’t eat meat anymore or else Fail Pig would have been bacon. Oh wait– he was, AND IT STILL DIDN’T HELP ARGH

I’ve got a little bit to talk about, but the first thing of any real interest is that I’ve got to get a new suitcase. See, the last time I needed a big suitcase, around the size needed to check, was back in 2008. After I got home, I put it into the storage unit at my apartment, whereupon it was promptly stolen. So yeah, when I took my trip last year I thought, “Oh, I can make do with a duffel bag!” and almost broke my back hauling it around. Thus, hardshell case that is NOT going into storage kthx. I’ve found a couple likely candidates and will be picking it up this weekend.

Tomorrow I’ll give my thoughts on Deathsmiles.

So it’s time for me to start making preparations for a few big events… one later this week, and one closer to the end of next month.

This is going to be one busy summer, boys and girls.