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Weekend: Games; Art; and Media
Aug. 30th, 2004 11:48 amAnother weekend come and gone.
Games
Saturday was, as usual, gaming, fortunately at Donald's house this week, which meant it was close. I brought along a couple of recent Cthulhu strategy game review copies to play, but much to my shock and amazement everyone showed up pretty much on time, so we got straight to Erzo.
Erzo, unfortunately, hasn't quite found its stride since we entered the second half of the game. Our character/group dynamic has become splintered, with too many individual goals, and thus gameplay is more often fractured as well. I'm waiting for things to gel in the new world order, but they haven't yet. I'm not entirely sure if they will.
Still, it was fun. Dave P. was around for the first time since we got part two started, and he drew up a beautiful map of his fire temple. Eric's now got a really nice set of player-created maps of our city, which is pretty cool. Other than that, there was an ongoing series of minor annoyances for each of us to resolve.
Art
On Sunday Kimberly & I finally did the last step in the creation of our Ticket to Lyon map: the glossing. We put two coats of a gel medium on the board to protect it against UV, water, and chemicals. (I suppose we should now put our Ticket to Lyon board in our window in case of chemical attack, as opposed to the garbage bags, aluminum foil, and whatever else the Bush regime was suggesting when they began their campaign of terror against the American people a few years ago now.)
The board was still a little gritty last night, but seems to have dried to a very nice gloss today. The gloss has also really punched up the colors, which is nice.
The project took a lot of time and too much money, but if anything I'm more enthusiastic about doing this type of project in the future, because I now know that it can be successfully completed.
Which is good because I've been working on a Ticket to the 1908 London Underground map on my computer. It's getting close to the point where I can print out a copy of the board, color it in, then try it out for test play.
As you may see, I've also decided to adopt a Ticket to Lyon user pic for my 'gaming' posts. Unfortunately I couldn't get the pic to look actually crisp at 100x100 (though it seemed OK on my mac when I did it). I need to redo it at some time.
Media
Other than that, I mostly vegged on the weekend.
Picked up Captain America & The Falcon, Volume 1 because it's by Christopher Priest, who has written a lot of comics I adored. It was OK, though not great. I'm going to pick up the next volume mainly because Priest says (in his blog) that the comic really hits its stride in the next set of issues.
Picked up Powers, Volume 6, by Brian Michael Bendis. I actually haven't read it yet, because I decided to reread the first five volumes, which I finished last night. I continue to be impressed by how readable and rereadable Bendis' work is. Reading all of the volumes again (which I probably hadn't done in about a year) was a total pleasure, and I'm looking forward to the new one.
Also watched a number of episodes of our current TV-show-on-DVD, Roswell. I was ready to give up after the first couple of episodes, which were badly plotted and badly dialogued, but then the fourth episode won me over a bit. I've stayed with and the last couple of episodes we saw (bringing us close to the middle of season 1) were actually good.
The strengths of the show thus far are great characterization and good arc plotting. The individual episode plotting and dialoguing continue to be weaknesses, though not as bad as those first several episodes. Hopefully this is a trend. I don't expect it ever to be a great show, and I actually do have some doubts about it remaining a good show past the first season, but for now I'm happy to keep watching.
(Though next up we either have Alias season 3 or The Shield season 2, both of which enthuse me much more.)
Looks like our nasty late summer heat wave has ended. It's still only 66 today, with forecasts for the next couple of days including dropping temperatures.
Games
Saturday was, as usual, gaming, fortunately at Donald's house this week, which meant it was close. I brought along a couple of recent Cthulhu strategy game review copies to play, but much to my shock and amazement everyone showed up pretty much on time, so we got straight to Erzo.
Erzo, unfortunately, hasn't quite found its stride since we entered the second half of the game. Our character/group dynamic has become splintered, with too many individual goals, and thus gameplay is more often fractured as well. I'm waiting for things to gel in the new world order, but they haven't yet. I'm not entirely sure if they will.
Still, it was fun. Dave P. was around for the first time since we got part two started, and he drew up a beautiful map of his fire temple. Eric's now got a really nice set of player-created maps of our city, which is pretty cool. Other than that, there was an ongoing series of minor annoyances for each of us to resolve.
Art
On Sunday Kimberly & I finally did the last step in the creation of our Ticket to Lyon map: the glossing. We put two coats of a gel medium on the board to protect it against UV, water, and chemicals. (I suppose we should now put our Ticket to Lyon board in our window in case of chemical attack, as opposed to the garbage bags, aluminum foil, and whatever else the Bush regime was suggesting when they began their campaign of terror against the American people a few years ago now.)
The board was still a little gritty last night, but seems to have dried to a very nice gloss today. The gloss has also really punched up the colors, which is nice.
The project took a lot of time and too much money, but if anything I'm more enthusiastic about doing this type of project in the future, because I now know that it can be successfully completed.
Which is good because I've been working on a Ticket to the 1908 London Underground map on my computer. It's getting close to the point where I can print out a copy of the board, color it in, then try it out for test play.
As you may see, I've also decided to adopt a Ticket to Lyon user pic for my 'gaming' posts. Unfortunately I couldn't get the pic to look actually crisp at 100x100 (though it seemed OK on my mac when I did it). I need to redo it at some time.
Media
Other than that, I mostly vegged on the weekend.
Picked up Captain America & The Falcon, Volume 1 because it's by Christopher Priest, who has written a lot of comics I adored. It was OK, though not great. I'm going to pick up the next volume mainly because Priest says (in his blog) that the comic really hits its stride in the next set of issues.
Picked up Powers, Volume 6, by Brian Michael Bendis. I actually haven't read it yet, because I decided to reread the first five volumes, which I finished last night. I continue to be impressed by how readable and rereadable Bendis' work is. Reading all of the volumes again (which I probably hadn't done in about a year) was a total pleasure, and I'm looking forward to the new one.
Also watched a number of episodes of our current TV-show-on-DVD, Roswell. I was ready to give up after the first couple of episodes, which were badly plotted and badly dialogued, but then the fourth episode won me over a bit. I've stayed with and the last couple of episodes we saw (bringing us close to the middle of season 1) were actually good.
The strengths of the show thus far are great characterization and good arc plotting. The individual episode plotting and dialoguing continue to be weaknesses, though not as bad as those first several episodes. Hopefully this is a trend. I don't expect it ever to be a great show, and I actually do have some doubts about it remaining a good show past the first season, but for now I'm happy to keep watching.
(Though next up we either have Alias season 3 or The Shield season 2, both of which enthuse me much more.)
Looks like our nasty late summer heat wave has ended. It's still only 66 today, with forecasts for the next couple of days including dropping temperatures.
