Catching Up With the Joneses*

I still remember the day we got our first color television. 

It wasn't all that long ago --okay, it was 44 years ago, so sue me-- but it was also long after most of my peers had a color television in their house.

We'd always had a television as long as I could remember, but they'd all been black and white. Given the lack of money my parents had, I understand the economics of the situation --black and white TVs were much cheaper than color televisions-- and I suspect my parents got a hand-me-down TV or two over the years. The television circuitry were vacuum tube based**, and looking back on it I wonder just what my parents were thinking when they left said TVs on rickety carts that looked like were going to collapse at any time. 

It looked a bit like this, although this TV cart
is a lot sturdier than ours was. From AtariAge.

I'm not sure when Mom and Dad decided to finally buy a color television set, but the day they did it was memorable for me because it was the day that the episode of The Incredible Hulk called Prometheus Part I aired. I remember that because when Dad was setting up the television that was the show he was using to check the color settings, and it's not every day that David Banner is there next to a big ol' meteor.

From hulk.fandom.wiki.

It feels very odd now, looking back at television sets from back then, and comparing it to the sort of television that we have in our houses now:

No, it's not our house. Do you know how hard
it is to find a "generic" looking house with a modern
television inside? So many of them look like
homes for people much wealthier than myself.
From Tom's Guide review for the Sony Bravia 3.

It's been 45 years for me from that first color television set to today, and it feels like I'm looking at a Sopwith Camel versus a Lockheed-Martin F-22. There are times when I wonder just what the next 45 years will bring, but I also wonder what will happen to us in the next 45 years. Okay, I'll likely have kicked the bucket, but I meant we as a species. If people tell you they know what will result from our impending singularity, they're likely incorrect. I don't think anybody really knows what will happen, and pretending they do is like putting lipstick on a pig. People may tell you what they want to happen, for good or ill, but that ain't worth crap. There's already speculation about what our current level of generative AI is (or isn't), but it isn't what I'd consider AI to be. It's just a better form of search with the "side benefit" of AI lying to us. 

Oh, I'm sorry, it's "hallucinating", which is a fancy way of saying you're making shit up because it might be what we want. So in that respect, generative AI is as good as the average politician. But let's hope that generative AI is at least as useful as that old color television set, whose analog reception was relevant up until 2009.

*Ironically enough, we did have a neighbor in our old neighborhood --prior to our move in 1976 to my parents' current home-- with a last name of Jones. Sometimes you can't make this stuff up.

**When I was little, I used to warm my hands on cold days in winter by putting them over the vents in the back of the set by bringing a chair over and standing on top of it to reach the back of the TV. If you've ever been in the vicinity of a vacuum tube radio or television, you know that they get pretty warm over time. 

#Blaugust2025

Giddyup

It's amazing how quickly you can rocket forward once you gain access to the Scarlet Monastery instances.

Yeah, I need to work on getting Cardwyn 
a Robe of Power. It should take me an evening
to accumulate the materials.
This is the status as of August 7, 2025.

Yes, I've gotten five toons to L40, and four of the five have mounts. My Questing Buddy was looking at the materials her guild would need for AQ40, and she figured that they'd need about 400 Nightfin for their use. To help her out, we worked out an arrangement where I'd fish for 20 stacks of 20 Nightfin, and she'd pay me 10 gold per stack. Right now, Nightfin is going for about 16-20 gold per stack, so I cut her a discount --she didn't know this until now, assuming she reads this post-- and provided her with all of the fish over the course of 3-4 weeks. However, I didn't take into account all of the training I'd have to do on 5 toons once I hit L40, so I had less gold at the end than I thought.

But that's not a big deal, since I've been fishing the past few nights to get my gold supply back up. 

I'm thinking that I'm going to stick with these 5 toons going forward, and if I get the chance I'll work on the Shadow Priest along the way. Once these toons start reaching 60 I'll double back and tinker with the rest, assuming there's time before the TBC pre-patch. 

I've discovered that I really enjoy more classes than strictly the Mage and Rogue, which surprised me a lot. I think that the lack of complexity in Vanilla Classic works in my favor, as I'm able to relax and enjoy things without stressing out so much or requiring the soon-to-appear single button attack in Retail WoW. 

So, I ain't dead in the water yet. 

Oh yeah, I suppose I ought to mention the elephant in the room: the WoW Classic Anniversary Servers allow a player to enable Dual Specification once they hit L40. That sounds great in theory, but I really don't have any desire to configure Dual Spec for any of my toons anytime soon. The DPS toons --Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Hunter-- don't really need it, and the Paladin I intend to keep as Retribution anyway. Plus, to me it's a gold sink right now, so I'd rather save my gold for training which is infinitely more useful. 

Onward and upward, I suppose...

#Blaugust2025

It's That Edgelord Thing

Something that's been bothering me about the "new" login screen for Retail are the faces that the Humans make when you select them. 

I honestly have no idea who approved those facial expressions, but compared to the "old" versions those facial expressions tend to be all angry for some reason or another.

For example, here's what Cardwyn looks like in Retail in the login screen:

But here's what she looks like when she's not selected:

Pretty much a normal facial expression.

And if you watch her cast in Retail, that "normal" expression is what you'll get:

Now Linna, on the other hand is not only angry in the selection screen, but also is angry when attacking:

But compared to Classic Era (I used Era because I wanted to quickly attack something near Stormwind without worrying about it dying instantly):

I simply don't get it. Why have your toons look all pissed off? Because Blizz wanted them to look edgy or something?

I mean, have they seen what Goldshire looks like on Moon Guard-US?

It's kind of hard to look edgy when you've got mounts and gear and whatnot like that around, and I'd bet that's what it's like (only 10x more so) at the endgame watering holes.

I just look at it as a pure miss on Blizzard's design part, changing how players look for no really good reason, especially when, say, the Blood Elves look much more pleasant:

It could be an Alliance vs. Horde thing, since Kaldorei look similar to Humans in the anger department:

As for me, I think I prefer the non-committal version found in Classic WoW. They're not as emotive as teenagers, and I prefer my MMO toons to look more adult and mature in nature. 

#Blaugust2025

When Life Hits you in the Head

Well, the news broke a couple of hours ago on Monday that one of my coworkers and acquaintances for a decade or more had passed away. I'd not heard much from him over the past decade or so, but he was always kind of private that way, so I never worried about him or anything.

But I wasn't expecting that I'd hear today that he'd passed away from advanced dementia at the age of 67. 

I never realized he was that much older than me; I always thought he was about 5 years or so older, but...

This is going to take some time to process. 

#Blaugust2025

Gen Con 2025: The Gamer Diaspora

When we first began attending Gen Con, some of the biggest booths were from companies such as Days of Wonder, Catan, Fantasy Flight, and Z-Man. Then, in the mid-2010s, that began to change as Asmodee went and bought up all of the companies listed above using investment firm money, and now all of said firms are but a subsidiary of the Embracer Group.

Yes, the same Embracer Group that has been taking a sledgehammer to the video game industry in its quest to make the quickest dollar. I've discussed this before, but one of the side effects of the Embracer Group ruining the quality of a bunch of popular board game companies is that all of those game designers dispersed into the gaming ecosphere and began putting out their own games under new companies. And other people looked at that vacuum created by Embracer and said "Hey, you know what, I bet I could design something new and cool!"

The net effect is that 2025's Gen Con looked far more diverse than what I'd seen in years.

Of course, you couldn't escape the gravitational pull of
Magic: the Gathering collectors, but that aside...

***

This was also the first Gen Con where most of the family got together to attend since 2015. Our youngest took a pass this year (she is also waist deep in her internship, so life, you know) but everybody else managed to make it to Indianapolis. Our oldest and her partner came down from Milwaukee on Saturday to meet up with friends, visit the Con, and go to Critical Role's live show, while the rest of us assembled early on Sunday and drove up from Cincinnati.

We got in early enough that we beat the crowds.

For the first time in forever, we got in early enough that we had no issues parking. If anything, the cars in front of us had more trouble navigating the digital parking lot system than actually fighting traffic itself. (Yes, we slew the Parking Lot Monster without much trouble.)

I realize that the Indianapolis Convention Center has big screens around by design, but I still am surprised by them when I see them in the main entrance:

Even if they're owned by Gen Con LLC, they're still quite impressive. They cycle with different games and other information every 10-15 seconds or so.

Once everybody arrived and the Exhibit Hall opened, we dispersed into the crowd. The idea was to loop back at noon and head out for lunch, so we had a bit less than 2 hours to wander the hall.

A few things stood out to me the moment I walked inside. The crowd was denser on this Sunday than they had been in the recent past --it felt more like a Saturday's crowd-- and that while some stalwarts still held court...

It was likely my son was in there somewhere.

There were a lot of newer booths in the crowd. Such as the invasion of the V-tubers:

And Brandon Sanderson made his presence felt:

One of the many displays around.

I've no idea if Brandon was here --and I just checked and it doesn't appear that he was-- but the Author Guest of Honor was Ohioan and frequenter of my local bookstore, John Scalzi, so if I'd have actually attended on Saturday I might have seen him out and about.

Okay, that's a very cagey "might" there, because I was aware of some RPG content creators who were there*, but damned if I ran into any of them while I fought my way through the crowds. Now, that's not quite fair, since Margaret Weis held court in her usual location in the middle of the Exhibit Hall, and I did briefly see Ed Greenwood at one of the booths over in the far left hand side of the Exhibit Hall --you can't miss that beard of his-- next to the... wait for it... MIT Press booth.

Yes, you read that right.

MIT Press had a booth there at the con, because they print Jon Peterson's Playing at the World 2E, a newer edition of Jon's original self-published work. My son and I got a chance to talk to the guy at the booth, and while they don't print games themselves, he was surprised to discover that there was a lot of interest in MIT Press' catalog of books at the con. (Oh, and Jon's book sold out.) He and I discussed another surprise con vendor, Central Michigan University, who actually do publish board games through their academic press. If you played the journaling RPG Five Hundred Year Old Vampire, then you ought to know that a multi-player version has been released as a CMU published game.

Anyway, we reconvened at noon with me texting out "Avengers Assemble" to the group chat when the time came, and we grabbed lunch at the nearby Old Spaghetti Factory. We didn't go to the nearby mall, because it appears the mall is being/has been sold to a development company and is shutting down. So... no more food court, I suppose. We got a chance to catch up over the hour plus we spent at OSF, and it was a pleasant way to geek out over things we saw at the Exhibit Hall.

There was someone selling "smelly dice" there at the con, for example.

"Want to smell my dice?" my oldest asked with a savage grin.

Uh, what?

She got the one named "Cemetery Soil", which smells like moss, although to me it smelled like allergies: pleasant but full of earthy overtones.

I tried to link to the pic from Studio Woe, but
it wouldn't take. So here it is.

My son has gone far enough down the rabbit hole of Warhammer 40K that he picked up an Eldar t-shirt. "Space Elves", I translated for my wife. 

Speaking of my wife, she discovered this game that is going up on Kickstarter soon, called Mystic Curling Club, which looks a bit like Sorry Sliders but with using dice:

I'd have gotten a pick of some people using it next to this
display, but I figured this photo would be enough.

My nephew is really into owls, and my wife also found a 100 piece puzzle this is about owl anatomy, or "owl-atomy"...

I mentioned the 4 person chess set that I discovered, and my son's partner just kind of gave me the "Okay, NOW I'm interested" look about it:

I looked and that and thought,
"My brain would hurt keeping track of that."

When we returned from lunch, I made sure to get a few extra photos...

The obligatory front view of the entrance.

For the record, not a Pandaren.

Gotta respect the classics...
Dungeon Crawl Classics, that is.

This was also the 50th anniversary of Chaosium, the creators of Call of Cthulhu, Runequest/Glorantha, and Pendragon. There were several glass displays out in the hallways celebrating the company's 50 years in business:

There was another display for Chaosium in general,
but it was taken down close to closing time on Sunday.
Given all of the rare items on display, I can totally 
understand why they made it a priority to make sure
the items were safe.

There's also the obligatory Dwarven Forge display pic:

That chimney in the bottom left was actually smoking.
And this year I actually signed up for their mailing list.

I told my wife the surest sign that we won the lottery is that I started buying Dwarven Forge items.

And oh yeah, here's the obligatory "gamer table" pic, although I could have chosen one of several companies to display:

Okay, they're two photos because I couldn't fit the entire thing into one pic, but you get the idea. The DM screen is wooden, like everything else, and it just screams luxury. And ambience. And "I'm an AI developer with money to spare."

At 3:30, we assembled, said our goodbyes to the family, and headed for home.

***

I really feel like what we're seeing in this Gen Con is the impact of Embracer's attempt to dominate the board game and RPG industry. As Princess Leia said in the original Star Wars...

From memegenerator and Reddit. (And Star Wars.)

That's what's happening in the industry right now. As people tried to dominate the industry by buying up all of the companies and intellectual property, developers have gone independent (by choice or layoff) and their separate companies are now bringing games to Gen Con. The ability of people to utilize better design and build techniques at home enable them to bring far more polished prototypes to places like Gen Con to generate interest. Crowdfunding enables small groups and companies to generate capital without relying upon venture capital firms who have proven to only have short term goals at heart.

There were a lot of people interested in supporting new designs and games, as well as a lot of people flocking to the Artists' Alley and Authors' Alley areas; it was so thick there I couldn't make it through and kind of gave up. Still, despite my disappointment, it shows that art in its various forms is still generating interest.

This atmosphere lent an air of a trade show to the con, something that you'd have seen in Origins in years past. 

And before you ask, there was an unsaid amount of concern about tariffs there, but given that nobody at the con had the least bit of control over said tariffs, it just kind of was just there as a dampening effect.

***

As for me, I didn't buy anything this year. A good part of that is due to finances: I'd already committed to Gen Con before some of our major car repair bills made their appearance, and I had a hard time buying anything with all of THAT hovering over my head like the Sword of Damocles. 

But even more than that, I wasn't feeling well. 

I believe I've mentioned before that on average of twice a month my digestive system reacts to my medications and kicks me in the ass for a day or two. Well, Sunday was one of those days. The moment I woke up I felt something was off, and sure enough before I could even eat and shower I began feeling like crap. Still, I soldiered on, hoping that the bout would pass and then I could get back on with enjoying things. That didn't exactly happen, but I concealed my issues as best I could** and tried to enjoy things at Gen Con. The crowd was energetic, people weren't assholes (not too much, anyway), and ordinarily I'd have had the time of my life. For this introvert, that's saying a lot. But I just couldn't get into the groove, and I decided to take some time off and stroll about the hallways to recharge my batteries.

There was still a large crowd out in the hallway
where the balloon sculpture was.

Here's a closeup of said sculpture, complete with
a sea monster attacking a ship.

The walk helped me feel a bit less stressed, but I just had to grit out my health issues for the rest of the day.

All in all, it was an okay Gen Con for 2025. On the plus side, most of the family was able to get together, and we enjoyed each other's company. On the minus side, health issues. But aside from that, it felt good to be away for a day. 

*Hi, Professor DM! Sorry I didn't run into you. I did keep an eye out, however.

**Apparently I did it well enough that when I finally got over this late Monday, my wife was surprised that I was feeling ill any part of Sunday.

#Blaugust2025

Meme Monday: Gen Con 2025 Memes

Again, I'm setting this up early because I'll be wiped out on Sunday and I'll be back to work early on Monday. Not a gigantic surprise, I suppose, but that doesn't stop the memes from coming.

It is Gen Con, after all...

People at BoardGameGeek got in on the act.
From bgg.com.

"How about wood for sheep?"
The Gen Con Instagram account was killing it
the past few weeks, although this originally came
from Imgflip.

If you've been to a convention of any sort
you've seen people not that into the con with
this expression. I could have used this
for the Dayton Hamvention or San Diego Comic Con
and nobody would have batted an eye.
From Gen Con's Instagram account (and The White Lotus).

I'm typically a very good boy, budget-wise.
I can still laugh at this one, however.
From Rollacrit's Instagram.

And finally, in case you never experienced it in your regular campaign before, you just might find this one in a one-shot RPG at a con such as Gen Con....

I've been there. Oh, I've SO been there.
From Gen Con's Facebook page.

#Blaugust2025

Dodging Potholes in Indiana (Again)

By the time you read this, we'll be on the road up I-74 toward Indianapolis and GenCon Indy 2025.

Yes, it was just announced that it's sold out.
From Gen Con's website.

Before you ask, no, my yellowjacket stings are not going to keep me from going. They're an itchy annoyance on Saturday, but still no swelling.

My oldest and her partner will already be there by the time we arrive, as they came down on Saturday. They were invited to go see Critical Role live during Gen Con, and that was a no brainer for them.

Even if you can't make it, celebrate gaming by just going and playing a game this weekend. It doesn't matter if it's a boardgame, a tabletop RPG, a card game, or a video game, just go play something and enjoy yourself.

Oh look! It's a little Genevieve!!
From Gen Con's Instagram account.

I'll provide a full report... probably Tuesday? Maybe Wednesday? Well, one of those two days...

#Blaugust2025