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| Lantz says: "Why yes, yes that is the greatest hat in the world. Be jealous" |
......and now for the results of the "Not at all shameless grab for filler content contest- what's your most embarrassing gaming story?" This week we're choosing two entries as winners.
First up is #2501 from Musings of a Metal Mind and creator of the Tyracrons, as seen at Forgeworld, whose ribald tale of being permanently ejected from a gaming group nearly brought tears to my eyes. It brought back fond memories of Lauby and I completely derailing some super hero RPG that neither of us were particularly interested in playing...or any time somebody thinks it's a good idea to not make me a GM....
I sat in on a session of Hackmaster that my friend was GM'ing, while they were playing the module "Against the Slave Lords." I decided my character's morals matched those of Bender (from Futurama) and, at a crucial moment, sold the entire party of 8 people down the river for 5,000 gold pieces, resulting in them getting captured, and my taking my pick of their stuff before the slavers got there. The slavers saluted my villainy by launching the party Cavalier's horse off a slave ship with a catapult.Last, but must assuredly not least, we have the one and only Loquacious of World of Wonder bringing us a tale that nearly almost managed to be close to being somewhat slightly on topic, with her recounting of getting so into a game of Operation: Wolf at an arcade that her date bailed on her. Being a huge fan of Operation: Wolf myself, I couldn't resist picking this as a winner, plus I know from first hand experience that Lauby (It's totally true. I've got... problems) is a proponent of shouting at his video games.
The GM could not stop laughing.
I was not allowed in that campaign again.
Mine is not specifically gaming related, but is so entrenched in our local group's lore that it doesn't really matter. It goes wherever I go, and I cannot escape it.But wait I'm going to throw a wrench in the system. This week's super secret grand prize winner didn't even participate in the contest at all and didn't abide by any of the rules- what a twist! One of today's applicants to the network submitted an amazing, rambling e-mail with more F-bombs than a Tarantino flick. Grumhelden of Lines on Maps has stolen the prize for this week. He has clearly defeated everyone in the universe in spite of being completely unaware that there was a fake contest that he wasn't entering. Congrats Grumhelden.
I'm not a very coordinated person- right up front. I have even worse hand-eye coordination when it comes to video games. Somehow, I can't make that aspect of my brain work.
I was out with the guy I dated previous to dating (and eventually marrying) The Dude. We were at a video arcade and the guy gave me a handful of quarters. Off I went to find the simplest, least obnoxious game to play.
I found Operation: Wolf (AKA "Uzi on a stick"). The cabinet was built for someone about 6-8 inches taller than me (I. AM. SHORT!), so I had a hard time seeing the screen. I'm firing away, but I can't hit anything.
I get really frustrated. I start yelling at the game. LOUDLY. As in:
"Get in my way! How can I shoot you if you don't get in my way! No- DIE! GET IN MY WAY!"
The guy was so embarrassed he snuck out of the arcade, and then decided to enact revenge on me by telling EVERYONE in our gaming group.
To this day (well over 20 years later) many times, I hear "get in my way" as I'm about to roll to hit.
Sigh.
This is what he submitted for his entrance essay:
Srsly? In this day of twitter, dropped vowels and netlists , we are to submit an essay, I think sir, that this is a litmus test! This is my submission.Now since we neglected to pick somebody to come up with the "Not at all shameful grab for filler content contest" rules for next week and because I'm kind of a big deal, I'm going to call the shots this week.
Contest
Please answer the following question:
You are stuck on a desert island without power, but with an endless supply of food and fresh water. Before your ship wrecked you had time to save one book and a board game of your choice from drowning. Sadly, you couldn't be bothered to save any of the ship's crew or your friends and family. You are also thinking about your future and want to start saving for your retirement 30 years from today. To live comfortably you figure that you will need the equivalent purchasing power of $100,000 today. The rate of inflation will hold steady at 3%. You are planning on buying a number of 30 year $1,000 par value bonds with a 10% coupon (paid semi-annually) at a 9% required rate of return. These bonds will be cashed out at maturity and placed into a retirement account paying 8% interest as an annuity due. You reckon that the retirement account will need to last 20 years. In addition to money from the bonds, you will be selling your current home the day you retire which is currently valued at $150,000 and expected to increase in value by 5% each year to downgrade to a condo which is currently valued at $75,000 and is expected to increase in value by 4% every year. Any remaining funds will be deposited into your retirement account. The water processing plant on your island will be powered by a fan (fueled by seawater). The fan is started from rest and after 5.0s has reached its maximum rotational velocity of 60 radians per second. While in exile, you also wish to plan your last meal on earth, assuming that you will be rescued at some point before death and will not have to worry about availability of your desired comestibles. What inspired you to start blogging?
9 comments:
I've had a blog for a while, but for the longest time it really didn't have any point and was rarely updated. I never really had any regular content. Then once I really started playing 40k frequently and was painting on a more regular basis, the blog gave me a way to record progress and just show off what I was doing. It became both a motivator and a reward. I was motivated to paint so I would have content for the blog.
That's it really.
Back in my forum whoring days I'd spent a fair amount of time posting up what I thought was well thought out posts, be it a tactica, general strategy, list ideas, etc. Naturally my posts were ignored or got the cursory response. A few days later all my time and effort was relegated to nowhere land, buried under useless shit and the same questions that got asked 10 times a week. I was running a blog already but it was for commission work, promoting and showing the work to the customers. Slowly I began moving over my posts from the forum I frequented to my blog. After that I began posting up that sort of insightful stuff on my blog instead of the forum.
I suppose that's more of an explanation and less of an inspiration story. I bounce a ton of stuff around in my head but unless I put it out there in some form then it fizzles and I forget about it. By taking the time to post an article and really think it through, I retain the information and often find some insights I had not even considered. Sometimes the insights were there all along and in posting the article they floated to the surface. It helps me become a better player and in turn I hope others find the information just as useful.
Ahh the story of the birth of CSNS, let me recite the epic yarn for thee my humble friends. Twas four score and...well....two months ago and in all honest...I was wasted. Like really wasted. Too many Mojitos and I was game for anything. So me and some of the boys came back to mine to crash out after an excelent evening and I read through some of the bigger blogs and discovered something! Seriousness about a game you love could be combined with humour to make something worth reading!
"Jings," I thought to myself, "I should give this a bash." So an hour on the graphics tablet and a Cornoa later CSNS was born, an avenue to let out my gamer-rage on the interwebs and to try to get some cocktails down your faces.
And I've loved every second of it =]
Dave: Sounds like a familiar story. A large chunk of the genesis for the HoP came up over a few too many cask beers between Lauby and I at the Blind Pig in Champaign,Il a few months ago.
I think I was better off on the sinking ship.
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It began with getting a Deviant Art account and posting some of my works, which then snowballed from there. I wanted to start posting tutorials and musings but it sucks making ginormous image tutorials and their journals are ugly to index through. I started craving a better outlet to gather my knowledge, but didn't really know how, so it got put on the back burner for a while.
Skip ahead some time later and I'd started posting on an incredible forum that isn't full of douchebaggery (MiniWarGaming) from time to time because they had a great community. (I was introduced to it by by buddy Mega because of a painting competition) Then I ran across a couple blogs and started reading them - who knew blogs had useful information? Fawcett Avenue Conscripts was the first, then FTW and Massive Voodoo.
I found myself reading a bunch of people's blogs and it stirred up my previous want to give back to this awesome community that I really wish had existed way back when I first started painting during the low-res dialup days of the internet and Windows 3.1 / Compuserve.
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Oh, and near as I can tell: (but I could be completely wrong)
equiv of $100,000 in 30 years = $235,656.55
you can't buy bonds stranded on an island
Current home in 30 years = $617,420.34
Condo in 30 years = $233,898.86
After buying the Condo, you'll have $383,521.48
Leaving you with a surplus of $147,864.93 above the $100,000 equiv purchasing power.
Assuming:
You get full value for your house
Commission on the transaction is low
You're rescued
Hookers and Booze does not end up on your island
You don't blow your money on bottles and paper to write with - wish you remembered a writing implement.
You don't go crazy and drown while attempting to marry a manatee
You're not picked up by pirates and sold into slavery
No Zombiepocalypse
Money...well I'm married with kids so the amount of money I'll control no matter what's in the back will be 0.
I started the blog because I had a real interest in trying to keep the local hobby community alive. We in SE michigan have lost too many of our stores in a short period of time 2 GWS(ok not a big loss) and 2 LFGS so I try to promote local stores, local painters, basically local anything I can.
We run tournaments with ad revenue, and the prizes are always gift cards for local stores.
Frickin rodents. Frickin rodents inspired me.
I started my blog because my website, which chronicled my toy collection. Sucked. I had a friend who (still) runs a fairly famous toy blog, and one day, after spending three hours trying to recover lost data (screw you very much google labs), he suggested that I try blogger instead, since it worked much better. He was right, I was much happier updating a blog than a website.
After two months, I made a New Years Resolution. No more toys. So I had a Toy blog documenting...nothing. I broke down eventually of course, but in the meantime, I started blogging about my other hobbies, which mostly consisted of games, video games, and sci fi books.
No one has yet bothered giving me any death threats or tried to burn me out of my residence, so I suppose that I'm doing a good enough job. I even have followers. Less than half of them are people I have bribed to make myself feel more important, and some apparently even read it.
A few years after college, my best wargaming buddy moved back to his home town located a few hours away. He's always been a big fan of my painting so I started e-mailing him pictures of my mini's. After awhile, I figured I might as well post em on the interwebs for all to enjoy. With a little encouragement (from dethtron, of all internet-people) I started a blog.
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