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Monday, January 29, 2024

Meme Monday: Memes of Things That I've Actually Done

I figured that there have been enough memes that I've saved that reminded me of silly and/or stupid things I've actually done that I ought to share.

Why? Because I'm stupid that way, and I figure I really ought to laugh at myself.

Surely I'm not the first person to do this one.
From memebase.


Uh.... Not as a Bard, but you get the idea.
From Reddit.


I'm pretty sure I'm the reason why the D&D 3.0
concept of "Take 20" exists.
From Ranker.


NPC: "I see, Mr...."
Me: "Uh.... Bob! Bobby Blobbo the Healer!"
From wargamer.


And one bonus meme:

For the number of times it worked for Scooby
and the gang, it had never worked for me.
Which is why I'm so adamantly against it.
From ifunny.co.


Sunday, January 28, 2024

No, I Can't Get Used to That

Maybe it's because it's that part of Winter in the Midwest, where you might see the sun once every couple of weeks, that's got me feeling this way. Or maybe it was my little medical scare last November, which I can safely say has passed after my latest blood test. Or maybe it's because of all the layoffs that have been happening in IT, video games, and other portions of the tech industry for no real good reason other than making the profit line go up for faceless investors that never have to deal with the consequences of their rabid, insatiable demands for more more more. But yeah, this has been a gloomy kind of weekend.


This was on Mike Ybarra's LinkedIn page
as of this morning. I took the screencap just
in case this post gets deleted sometime later.

If you can guess, judging by my comment above, I was rather disgusted by the tone deafness inherent in the post. 1900 employees (at minimum) lost their jobs from the Microsoft Games division*, and that included ex-Blizzard President Mike Ybarra. In typical LinkedIn fashion, he posted a perpetual sales-type upbeat spin on his own departure; if he never worked another day in his life I'm sure he'll be perfectly well off. If he could handle living a middle class lifestyle, that is. 

I'm sure that Mike Ybarra will cope with using
Kroger brand peanut butter and coffee; just think
of all the money he could save!
From Boredpanda and Elon Musk's private
dick-measuring exercise with his billionaire buddies.


Still, that did get me to thinking about a variety of things, not the least of which is grappling with the concept baked into the American work ethic as defined by H.L. Mencken as "Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

***

Having done my share of genealogical research, I've seen a lot of census entries for my ancestors as variations on "laborer", "housewife", or "maid".  Sometimes you see them progress to "machinist" or "carpenter", but I've also seen pictures of the houses/apartments they rented --many of them merely rented rather than owned a home-- and I saw how they kinda sorta eked out a living over the past century and a half. 

And now there's me.

Where I am is the culmination of their work --and their luck or lack thereof-- and I've made a living in a field that has seen its share of ups and downs. I'm no Puritan by a long stretch --my kids will tell you that-- but that Puritan work ethic has manifested in me over the years to an uncomfortable degree. I simply can't seem to relax and enjoy myself.

Of course, what I find enjoyable is not what a lot of people do. 

A few months ago I had a conversation with a coworker about a variety of things, but he mentioned he was going to go on a cruise in a week or two, and that is one thing that I simply can't examine and find enjoyable.

No, this is not Bobby Kotick's yacht;
it's two of Royal Caribbean's cruise ships.
From cruisecritic.net.


Even before my dietary restrictions, being in an enclosed space around that many people --and the associated conspicuous consumption-- just made me shudder. Even if I did find being on an oceangoing vessel enjoyable in itself, I would know that the places these ships docked at were tourist traps that presented a false impression of the localities themselves. It's kind of like going on what is called "exotic travel" and ending up at a resort somewhere; I can't enjoy that at all because I feel like I'm participating in some holdover from nineteenth century colonialism.

It's not white guilt per se, but the feeling that I'm still taking advantage of a situation when I recognize that a past I never had any control over still influences things today. I could choose to be willfully blind and try to enjoy myself, but that's not me.

To put this in perspective, my family once went on a road trip vacation that ended at the Outer Banks, North Carolina.** One evening, my ever-budget conscious parents decided to go to a "family restaurant" on the strip near our motel. You could tell the restaurants there wanted tourists because a lot of them had "AAA Approved" signs***, and so did the one we chose. The place had late 70s/early 80s decor, and the food was good enough (think of a local version of Perkins or Denny's), but what made me profoundly uncomfortable was the fact that while the management was white all of the staff were black. Okay, it was more than just that: the mannerisms that the staff exuded were extremely formal in a "this is how the serving staff of a duchess/plantation owner would behave" sort of way. In one of those rare occasions where my brother and I saw eye-to-eye, we both commented on later when we were alone at how damned icky that made us feel.

Yes, it was the South and only 20 years removed from the Civil Rights Act, but still I was shocked that in the mid-80s this sort of thing still existed. At a "family restaurant" no less.

***

I guess you could say that I'm uncomfortable with what I consider to be ostentatious displays of wealth and privilege. 


I realize that Lexus as a car brand isn't truly a "luxury" car brand in the same vein as, say, Bentley is, but the "I could get used to this" tagline caught my attention when I first saw this commercial back in 2015 and I instinctively thought "No, I couldn't." For me, it's as if I'd gotten dropped into the middle of The Prince and the Pauper, and I know instinctively that I'd never feel at ease knowing what life is like for people who have less.

So, at this time of year, when you watch sports and there are tons of commercials for cruises, destination vacations, financial products, and luxury items**** and sporting events that the rich (or wannabe rich) go to, it really starts to affect me. (And that doesn't even touch on the fact that in the US there's now a ton of commercials for legalized betting.) I suppose it's a good thing that my social media imprint is minimal, given that I'd see a lot more of this stuff, and I'd really rather not be a party pooper.

Was there a point to this rant? Not really; I just have had it building inside me for a very long time now and I wanted to get it off of my chest. Well, that and that I'm tired --really really fucking tired-- of extremely rich people trying to proclaim how they're just "a regular guy" while hobnobbing with other extremely rich people, and trying to enact policies in business, politics and elsewhere that only favor themselves.




*Mostly ex-Activision-Blizzard employees, but also some from Zenimax (Bethesda) and other areas.

**Luckily for me we visited Kitty Hawk, the site of the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers. Yes, I'm an aviation nut.

***Now THAT is a blast from the past. I doubt businesses give a rat's ass about the American Automobile Association's seal of approval these days, but back in the 70s and 80s you were at least guaranteed a minimal amount of quality if that stamp of approval were given to a business.

****Given the price, I consider an iPhone or a top model Samsung Galaxy a luxury item, no matter if the wireless company gives it to you "for free", because you end up paying the $1400 cost for the phone. It's just hidden in the cost of the service itself, that's all.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

An RPG from the Past: RuneQuest

Back when I was in high school, my Geometry teacher ran a club called the Rail Baron Club. Until I actually had him for Geometry my sophomore year, I had absolutely no idea what the hell Rail Baron actually was, much less why a club existed for it. 

As it turns out, Rail Baron was a game produced by The Avalon Hill Game Company*, and since my Geometry teacher was a railroad fan, he'd fallen in love with the game and shared it with the students. A few of us bought our own copies of Rail Baron, and I joined their ranks sometime late in my sophomore year. 

Imagine Monopoly but using rail lines, although
that's a bit of an oversimplification. I'm nerdy enough
that I laminated the destination chart to protect it long term.
"I swear, Bill, if you buy Seaboard Air
Line AGAIN I'm gonna scream!" --Me

Inside the box for Rail Baron was a postcard you could send in to Avalon Hill, requesting a game catalog, and of course I did just that.

I couldn't find any of these old cards, where
the air of superiority was very strong, so
I had to go to the Internet Archive to find this one.
The cards I found from the late-80s onward were...
much more polite toward prospective players.

When the catalog arrived, I would spend hours perusing the various board game titles, imagining what it'd be like to play them. But in the back, there was an ad for this:

Something I did not know was that
SFF author Kate Elliot and her husband
were the models for this artwork by
Jody Lee. From Bill H from RPGGeek.


RuneQuest? I'd never heard of it before. Given that I was a couple of years into the RPG ban in my household, I just didn't draw any sort of attention to the fact that an RPG was right in a board game catalog. Still, the image that Avalon Hill tried to project --they were a "thinking man's company"-- meant that their Mensa-esque "superior" image rubbed off onto RuneQuest. I kind of knew about the game, but never played it, and I figured it was pretty highbrow as far as it went.

Oh, I had no idea just how bonkers the game could be.

***

Okay, let me back up a bit. 

As I have since learned over the decades, RuneQuest was created in 1978 as an RPG for the world of Glorantha, a setting created by the late Greg Stafford back when he was in college in the 60s. Greg co-founded Chaosium to publish his first game based on Glorantha, a board game titled White Bear and Red Moon, and RuneQuest came along a few years later. D&D was experiencing its first huge burst of growth, and people who liked the Glorantha setting in White Bear and Red Moon wanted an RPG for that setting. 

Hence, RuneQuest.

The initial two editions of RuneQuest, published by Chaosium, were integrated with the Glorantha setting, but by the time the third edition was published, publishing had since been picked up by Avalon Hill.*** The biggest change from the previous editions of RuneQuest was that the third edition became divorced from the Glorantha setting; sure, there were plenty of Glorantha supplements published for RQ 3rd edition, but the "official" setting was Fantasy Europe****, which is just as it sounds.

Avalon Hill published RuneQuest up until the company imploded and was sold to Hasbro*****, and when the rights to RuneQuest became available once more, Greg Stafford grabbed it and got Mongoose Publishing to create a version of RuneQuest. 

In typical Mongoose fashion, they ended up with two versions of the RPG. And let's just say that Mongoose's version of RQ had.... issues. Unlike Mongoose Traveller which continues to be well received, there were a ton of issues with RQ, and in the end a RuneQuest 6th Edition was created by The Design Mechanism. 

Fast forward to 2015 and Chaosium was on the verge of collapse, and the founder, Greg Stafford, was brought in to save the company. (Apple fans, tell me if you've heard this scenario before.) When Greg came back, he helped to get Chaosium on good financial footing, and began work on a new version of RuneQuest. The Design Mechanism's version of RuneQuest was no longer needed per se, so that 6th Edition morphed into a setting-agnostic version of the game called Mythras. (Which still exists to this day.)

Greg passed away in 2018, but his vision for the current version of the RPG was realized with the publication of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, in 2018. 

Got all that?

Oh, and I haven't even mentioned Greg Stafford creating HeroQuest, which also uses the Glorantha setting in a rules-lite fashion.

No, not this HeroQuest:

This is the current version of the
Milton Bradley game, published by
Hasbro. Pic is from all over the net.

But THIS HeroQuest:

Yeah, it's complicated, and I'm not done yet!
From Moon Design Publications.

And back in 2020, the trademark for HeroQuest moved back to Hasbro so they could republish that first HQ game, and THIS HeroQuest is now known as QuestWorlds.

Whew!

In a bizarre sort of way, the history of RPGs based on Glorantha is as complex as the Glorantha setting itself is.

***

Remember when I mentioned that RuneQuest was a bit bonkers? The RuneQuest system itself isn't bonkers per se, because it is a skill based RPG with a lot of crunch to it; if you think Pathfinder has crunch, let me introduce you to my little friend here. 

No, it's the Glorantha setting itself that is bonkers.

When you first hear Glorantha and "Bronze Age Setting", your mind immediately leaps to, well, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Or maybe Ramses II of Egypt, or Hammurabi. Or maybe even the Hittite city of Watusa, the Nubian city of MeroĆ«, the Elamites of Anshan, or the Indus Valley and Harappa.

Somebody should have told the Hollywood
execs that these should have been bronze weapons.
But The Rock's gonna Rock...

But Glorantha is... Well, it's kind of not what you might be used to.

For starters, the world of Glorantha is known by its inhabitants be a gigantic disk, with an underworld and a sky above:

I should mention that the artwork and the rules
themselves do have an adult approach toward
sexuality. I mean, I'm an adult so it's no big deal,
but be aware of it in case you don't want kids asking
uncomfortable questions of you.
This is from writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com

There are also a veritable ton of gods out there in Glorantha, and none of them really fit into the standard Greco-Roman --or even Egyptian-- Pantheons. The gods aren't good or evil either in the standard Fantasy sense either, despite what the Chaosium rep tried to explain to me at Gen Con back in 2023. There are gods and goddesses of Nature, the Sky, the Underworld, etc., but whether they are good or evil is purely dependent upon the point of view of your cult.

Oh yes, the cults of Glorantha.

No, not this Cult...

but these types of Cults. Have I mentioned
the adult themes? From Chaosium.

A Cult in Glorantha isn't what it means in our own terminology, but is closer to an extended tribe that embraces a god or goddess. If you roll with that, you're about 90% of the way to understanding cults. Your cult gives you identity and camaraderie, and a ready made community to fall back on for support throughout the game. You betray your cult at your own risk.

The player characters in Glorantha embrace their position as heroes by going on what is in-game referred to as Hero Quests# --if you think of the Hero's Journey as a template, you've got the right idea-- for the glory of your cult and your chosen deity. If you complete your Hero Quest successfully, you may take your place in the upcoming Hero Wars, where the great heroes across Glorantha gather to fight for the future of the world.

The traditional starting location for a RuneQuest game is Dragon Pass, where there's a ton of action and activity, and there's clearly defined "Good Guys" (Kingdom of Sartar) and "Bad Guys" (The Lunar Empire). Like I mentioned above, they're not "good" and "evil" in the traditional sense, but the Lunar Empire is definitely the aggressors as an occupying empire that the Kingdom of Satar has recently ejected from the area; like the Galactic Empire in Star Wars, the Lunar Empire is plotting to return to power in Dragon Pass, so they're not going away any time soon.

***

Okay, one thing I do have to address about Glorantha is that while humans are the current dominant race, there are lesser races that had their time in the sun. Such as the Elder Races. 

Elves are not like what you typically find in RPG fare, but are akin to that found in Guild Wars 2: they are sapient plants.##

There are also spirits that reside within everything, which is very much an ancient way of looking at the world:

From RuneQuest: The Coloring Book,
available for Print and PDF from Chaosium, page 15.
If you buy the POD version, the PDF is free.
Again, yes, adult themes, but the art is really fantastic.

And I suppose I need to mention the Ducks.

Again, Glorantha is a bit bonkers.
From Runeblog's Creating a Duck
Character for RuneQuest Glorantha
.

They're formally known as the Durulz, and kinda-sorta fill the spot in a Fantasy RPG normally populated by Halflings or Gnomes. As for their creation, the most common explanation is that they were created by a curse, but I've also seen goofier creation stories. Still, they're a part of what makes Glorantha a bit nutty.

***

Okay, nuttiness aside, why am I so fascinated with Glorantha and RuneQuest?

Because it's a classless, skill based system that acknowledges that combat is dangerous.

Unlike MERP or D&D 3e or other skill based hybrid systems, RuneQuest has abandoned the level concept and gone full tilt into skills. If you want to 'get gud' at something, you have to actually do it. You know, like real life. 

But RuneQuest has also abandoned the class structure as well, basically allowing you to do whatever you want as long as you actually work at it. It's like an Elder Scrolls game without even the pretense of a class structure.

There is magic, performed through the use of Runes that grant you access to spells. Runes are also intrinsic to Glorantha, and their in-game use is that they also allow you to augment your skill checks and your resistance rolls.

Combat is, well, not something you enter into lightly. You can quite easily be maimed or die. It's not quite the "you die on character creation" that Traveller has, but it's not the handwaving of the danger that you find in a lot of other RPGs. There are real consequences to combat, and even the best battle plan and warriors can be laid low if the gods do not favor you. True to the ancient world, you want to attack when the gods favor your success. 

Yes, RuneQuest is crunchy; there's no denying that. But it also provides you with extraordinary freedom within all that crunch. 

And yet...

RuneQuest can be dense. The reason why it never took off the same way D&D did is due to the denseness of the rules and the zaniness of the game world. You kind of need a RuneQuest evangelist to help you embrace the game and overcome it's quirks. For some, that's the video game The King of Dragon Pass that is set in Glorantha. For others, YouTube can come in handy, although I've found the official Chaosium videos on Glorantha to be somewhat lacking. If you've lived through a class at a university given by a boring professor who obviously knew his stuff but couldn't communicate effectively, you'll understand what I mean. 

However, Chaosium has put out a truly high quality starter set for RuneQuest that is worth checking out. The Starter Set has premade characters --and the set doesn't teach you how to create characters, strangely enough-- but they stuffed just so much material into the box that it's frankly amazing how they were able to pull it off.

From Chaosium. You can find it at their
website
or at your local game store (which
is where I bought my copy).

I've often wondered how RuneQuest would work in a rules-lite system. I've never played HeroQuest so I couldn't comment there, but adapting RuneQuest and the Glorantha setting to the FATE or, say, Burning Wheel systems would definitely pique my interest.  

Still, if you're up for something definitely different, RuneQuest is a rabbit hole worth going down. I mean, where else can you create a character who is a Bison Rider?

This is Vasana, Farnan's Daughter,
one of the iconic characters of Glorantha.
From Book 3 of the RuneQuest Starter Set.



*3M --yes, that 3M that created sticky notes and various forms of adhesive tape-- was publisher of Rail Baron before Avalon Hill bought all of their board game assets, including Acquire and Facts in Five. The original Facts in Five (which is what we have) is kind of dated these days as far as trivia goes, although there was a reworking of the trivia part back in 2007 or so when University Games put out a version. As is usual, my wife tended to win those games we played in the 90s and 00s.

**Now most well known for the Call of Cthulhu RPG.

***Hence its presence in the 1985 Avalon Hill catalog.

****Not to be confused with the Mythic Europe setting for Ars Magica.

*****Now THAT is quite a tale by itself.

#Hence the name of the rules-lite RPG HeroQuest.

##From the Glorantha Tumblr on the subject of Elves.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

What Goes on in my Head, Part Whatever Plus One

Last Thursday, I got pinged at work by my a coworker who'd I'd worked with for the past several years. He was alternately a friend and mentor, and was my boss for about 3-4 years.

"Hey Red, when you get out of that meeting you're in, call me."

"Sure," I replied.

"Good. If I'm in a call, ping me. We need to talk."

I began to get an uneasy feeling about the directness of his words. I knew that one of his grandkids had childhood cancer but had finally beat it after a few years' worth of chemo, and the first thing I thought of was that her cancer had returned. Then I thought that he'd been canned, but I figured that he'd just retire at that point.

My meeting ended, and I pinged him. 

He called me immediately.

"Hey buddy," he said. "Kristy* died yesterday."

I believe I blurted out a "What??!!"

"Yeah, I said the same thing when I heard the news. Since you and her had been really close over the years, I wanted to make sure you heard it from me."

You see, Kristy had been my boss for a decade, and before that we were coworkers on different teams and frequently worked together when there were security related issues. Even after she'd moved on to another position, we'd chat every three to six months just to catch up on how we were doing. 

I'd known her for close to 20 years.

My friend informed me what had happened. She'd been in a Teams call when she suddenly became unresponsive**. At times like that, my company has procedures if people think there's an emergency, so her boss called for a life squad and tried to reach her husband directly. By the time the life squad had arrived and gotten into the house, however, they found her slumped at her desk by her laptop.

She'd suffered a massive heart attack. The life squad had attempted to revive her without success.

My friend was going to reach out to some of our other old coworkers, but the emails had started making the rounds already. I reached several of my old teammates --some had heard and some hadn't-- and some of them were really torn up over it. I had to just console them as best I could, on a Teams call with some of them a half a world away. As of now, there's still one member of our old gang that I've not been able to get a hold of, but that's because he's apparently out of town.

***

As for me, I'm just numb.

I kind of just unplugged this past weekend and crawled up inside my head for a while. Kristy was nine years older than me, and was already looking forward to retiring after a couple of more years. 

I've already buried a parent, and I know that other parents will be following soon due to their age, but this is different. She was a friend and coworker, a contemporary of mine. We both grew up in the same part of town, so we had similar experiences, albeit hers were in the middle of the Disco era and mine was Hair Metal. Working for global teams like we did, it was like we were the only people who got our jokes. She was also good at giving me advice, and if you were ever in trouble or something, she had your back.

On Sunday night I tried logging into WoW for a while, but I just wasn't feeling it so I logged off and curled up on the couch until I finally drifted off to sleep. Last night I logged in, found my Questing Buddy, and we had a long chat. She was patient and read my messages, and was simply there for me. 

***

I found Kristy's obituary, and the family isn't having a service, so I'm using this as an attempt to say goodbye. I'll miss you, kiddo.




*Not her real name.

**No, we don't put our cameras on for almost all of those meetings. I'd rather not end up on the wrong end of a viral video clip.

Monday, January 22, 2024

Meme Monday: Warlock Memes

This is my Questing Buddy's warlock, Zargala:

I need to find a better screencap. Really.

In my mind's eye, I see her in the same vein as how Henrik Stavnem drew this warlock:

Only with dark hair, of course.

Maybe she needs a slightly more insane look to her face, but still, it'll do.

That graphic inspired me to pull together some disparate Warlock memes --from both MMOs and tabletop RPGs-- and create today's Meme Monday...
In World of Warcraft, Warlocks use
Lifetap to replenish mana at the expense
of their health. And then they expect that
healers will heal them back to max health.
HA! I say...  From Pinterest.


Speaking of using Lifetap, I'm pretty sure
Amidala is supposed to be a healer.
From imgflip.


Although this references D&D's version of
Wizard/Mage vs. the Sorcerer and Warlock,
it fits Zarg to a tee. From iFunny.co.


The lure of power is strong in Warlocks.
From owlturd. (Yes that is a thing.)


And finally, one bonus meme:

Yeah, I'm like that Paladin. A lot.
(Honestly, I feel like I should know where
this graphic came from. Can't place it for
the life of me, however, but the "Warlock"
is a dead ringer for a girl I knew in grade school.
Which is kinda awkward, seeing someone you
had a crush on appear here.) From feedthejar.


Saturday, January 20, 2024

What Drives You?

People play games for different reasons, and even those reasons may change over the course of your lifetime. 

When I was growing up, my family would have regular game nights. Those included some of the classics, such as Waterworks,

This was the version at our home,
which dates to 1972. I believe Mom still
has the game around somewhere. From eBay.

or Authors,

I should have this version around the
house somewhere. From eBay (again).

or Clue,

While I was unsuccessfully trying
to find my copy of Authors, I found
my circa 1980 version of Clue.

but they also included games that are no longer published, such as Scan.

This is circa 1970 or so.
From Rahmiano Anderson via
BoardGameGeek.

We also played card games such as UNO, Hearts, or Michigan Rummy, the former two of which received new life when I went away to college. However, those days of my youth were fueled by the desire to beat my dad at these games. It was partly a competitive streak in me, but Dad was easily the best player in the house, and so if I wanted to finally prove my worth (in my own mind) I had to beat him. 

As for chess... Let's not talk about chess. I only beat my dad once in chess despite years of trying, and my brother was on the chess team at his high school, so I kind of got used to losing at chess.

But still, it all fed into my primary motivation: Beat Dad.

The simple straightforward concept of "beat the other player" is not exactly new, and this is the basis of a lot of PvP video games today.*

It was only when I was a teen that I began to break out of the 'beat Dad' mentality and understand that there were other reasons for playing games. I wasn't giving up my quest to win, but that drive to win doesn't necessarily fit well into other types of games.

Some of that comes from learning RPGs. Sure, there's a "beat the Big Bad" component to RPGs, there's also the social element to those sorts of games. 

Back when I was a kid, we approached playing AD&D as if it was The Party versus The DM. Who became the DM in our campaigns rotated, but the resulting competition was always the same. The DM tried to kill us, and we tried to outwit the DM. 

The high point of any Party vs. DM competition was
ALWAYS The Tomb of Horrors. Let me just say that
of the two options above, there are no right answers.
IIRC, one will destroy you utterly, and the other
one will merely strip you of all your gear and clothing.
From TSR Hobbies via The Alexandrian.

Understanding the concept of a shared story or a shared plot with the DM not as an antagonist but rather a facilitator came about much later, but old habits do die hard. It was then, when I was an adult, that I finally realized that merely killing things and beating the DM wasn't nearly as much fun as a well crafted story that both we as players and the DM participated in. 

Sometimes it's part of a big story arc like what you'd find in a premade module, or sometimes it's something we purely make up as we go along. Or maybe it's something that we work on in creating a world together, but what I found to be the most fun is the story and my participation in it. Perhaps I'll never write a novel, but this is the closest I can come to actually doing just that.

Sure, I love puzzles, but I recognize that they're just that. The long term enjoyment, however, comes from the stories I participate in. Given my love of reading, I guess that's not that much of a surprise.

So... What drives you? What do you play for? 



*Despite complaints from players otherwise, I sure as hell go into Alterac Valley in WoW Classic wanting to win, and the constant losing in Battlegrounds by the Alliance during the Mists of Pandaria expansion just wore me down to where all I was feeling was anger. That was when I knew it was time to leave WoW.


Monday, January 15, 2024

Meme Monday: Miscellaneous Memes, Part... eh, whatever

Time for a bunch of miscellaneous memes once more!

That's... A scary thought. From Pinterest.


Although the ones that get pissed
off the most are the Rogues. Just sayin'.
From Reddit.


This actually happened in our last
AD&D game, although it was a percentile
roll and our Illusionist/Thief rolled a 100.
From Pinterest (again).



Somewhere, Richard Pryor is
smiling
. From Pinterest (once more).


Sunday, January 14, 2024

A Collection of Guild Names, Season of Discovery Edition Part 2

The variety of guild names that I've found on WoW Classic Season of Discovery servers is quite impressive. I wasn't joking when I mentioned in a comment somewhere that I had enough for another post on guild names, and that was a few days ago.

Hey, look who I found (and targeted for visibility) hanging
around the Stormwind mailbox! Harpy Riot! Don't know
whose toon this is, but it's someone in Wilhelm's guild.

Anyway, here's a bunch more guilds that I found in Season of Discovery (and Classic Era)...

Figured I'd start here, since it was just in the
above screencap.

Yeah, that's me. I have to be picky about
my burritos these days, however.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of
this particular guild name.

Kinda-sorta yeah, I guess....

Hmm... If you say so...


Okay... Was this a take on "I didn't inhale"?

At first I thought this was a reference
to the old NBC show Wings, but that's 
not the case. 

I ran Deadmines with Mythenis here, so
I ought to have asked about the guild name
when I had a chance.

There are days when I deny it too!

I like banana bread as much as the next
person, but you know, it doesn't really
work all that much.

This sounds like a riff on the glasses
from that old 1980s movie They Live!, 
but I'm not sure.

This is a pretty popular guild, given all the
toons running around, and there's even a
guild for alts called "Great Alts of Nazarick".

Shouldn't this have been an all elf guild?

If you've got emotional damage, do you need
someone to come to your Emotional Rescue?

Oh, I bet you're sweet...

"Get out or I'll call the Goon Squad!"
"I'm on the Goon Squad."
"You're on the Goon Squad, you ARE the Good Squad!"

Oh, this could go in quite a few ways...

Why do I get the feeling that they like
cooking in that guild?

I really like this one. It's as clear as mud.

Or as a riff on the very first Scooby Doo
episode, What a Night for a Knight!

This is my oldest's favorite guild name.
In WoW, that is. She prefers "Gloin's Loins"
from LOTRO overall, however.

At first I thought this was AKS
--as in American Kennel Society-- but I
kind of prefer this as-is.

Finally, a guild I'm actually in. This is
my Questing Buddy on her Mage alt in the
all-gnome guild that a mutual friend put together.

Good thing that, because have you seen
some of the LFG stuff lately?

Only somewhat? You need to try more!

Was kind of disappointed that this was attached
to a Dwarf, because I figured a Druid in 
bear form would be perfect here.

Damn. Now I want a cinnamon roll from
Cinnabon...

Ow, that hurts.

This is probably my favorite name on the list.

Zug zug!!!