ChrisTalbot.com

Also posted to deviantART...

I uploaded a few photos I took with my Minolta DiMAGE S304 from our vacation last July up at Rice Lake to deviantART. I'll post them here, too:

I created a deviantART account months ago, but I only finally started using it. It can be found here.

Beware the Dark Side of the Farm, Cuke. ... Ah, hell, just click here. It's damned funny, but it hurts to watch, too.

At the end of our D&D session last night, someone asked me what my plans were for the campaign after the end of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I had mentioned to some people in the group that I wanted to put the campaign on hiatus for at least a year or two after the end of the module. I'm kind of D&Ded out, and I'm a little tired of dealing with the sheer crunchiness of the rules. I really want to get away from the style of gaming that D&D provides, as well.

By the end of RttToEE, the party should be around 14th level. When (or if) I start the campaign up again, I really don't know if I'd want to go back to the old party of adventurers again, anyway. Frankly, I don't really have much interest in high-level (post-14th level) gaming, even though one of my players said he'd be interested in playing up to 17th level.

I wouldn't know how to deal with such a high-level party. I don't see their modus operandi being that of crawling dungeons once they're at that point. They'd be powerful. They'd be wealthy. Why would they still be crawling dungeons and traveling from town to town fighting evil just like they were at 1st level?

When I think of high-level campaigns, I think of political intrigue and events of epic proportion (yes, even more epic than RttToEE), traveling the planes of existence, dealing with powerful planar entities and low-end deities -- that sort of thing. That sounds like a lot of work.

This is so true...

Mac attack #1

Mac attack #2

It seems I'm not the only one that thought Revenge of the Sith was far from spectacular. A member of the TRPA emailed me to say he didn't care much for it, and I just read Shanda Deziel's review of the flick in Maclean's (May 23rd issue -- I'm a little behind). While I don't always agree with Deziel's opinion, this one I do agree with. I think I'll be clipping the review out and pinning it to my corkboard.

After a few grueling hours of killing demons last night, I finally closed the lid on Doom 3. Unfortunately, the end boss killed me about six times before I realized that the arena was a lot bigger than it initially looked. Unfortunately, to figure out how to kill him, I had to turn to a strategy guide. After that, it only took a couple of tries to frag his sorry cyberdemon ass. I should've known the soul cube was the key.

A good game overall, Doom 3 would really have been spectacular if it had a multiplayer option that didn't require Xbox Live or a second Xbox. Now it'll just be relegated to the "collecting dust" area of my game collection ... after I write a review of it, that is.

...and to prove it, I'll give a big "woo hoo!" now that Project ALF is out on DVD.

Tom sent me this link to the New Yorker review of ROTS. Nicely put.

On the ride home after seeing Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, Jacquie actually got quite mad at me because I pointed out various problems in the latest (and thankfully last) of the Star Wars movies. She takes her Star Wars quite seriously.

Thankfully, I went into the film being cautiously optimistic. If I'd gone in as a fanboy, I would've been pretty pissed off. But being burned twice by George, I just couldn't bare the heartbreak again.

For the record, I liked Jar Jar. I hated the pod race, and I hated the cutesy little kid element. Also for the record, Anakin in Attack of the Clones was a whiny, little bitch. At least that got fixed in ROTS (yeah, what a great acronym there, Mr. Lucas -- it's fitting, though).

In the end, instead of sealing up all the plot holes created with the first two prequels, Lucas only created about a dozen more -- some of them so big I could fly the Death Star through them. I have many things to say on the subject, of course, but being the nice guy that I am, the following spoiler comments are invisible so as not to ruin the movie for others. Just highlight the following text to see my comments.

So Anakin turned to the Dark Side because he couldn't save Padme from death in child birth? Okay, I can live with that ... if it wasn't for the fact that Return of the Jedi made it quite clear that she died when Leia was a child. Leia has memories of her mother, although they are sketchy, while Luke has absolutely no memories of his mother.

While I can no longer remember the source of my information (and it may have been totally inaccurate), the story I'd always heard was that their mother went with Bail Organa to Alderaan, possibly married him and raised Leia. Meanwhile, Luke was taken by Obi-Wan to Tatooine and hidden from Anakin. That way, they were separated, and if Vader found one, he wouldn't find the other -- and the galaxy could still possibly be saved.

Also, how do you explain that "princess" title? Obviously, "queen" on Naboo is more akin to "president" or "prime minister." It's not a hereditary title, so why the hell is Leia a princess? It makes no sense. Perhaps children of past queens can call themselves princesses, but would Leia be given that moniker when her life is danger if her identity is exposed? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The explanation of the blue glowies was interesting. It was kind of lame, though. We'd all been led to believe that it was normal for those most powerful in the Force to come back as a spirit. Now it's shown that it's a new trick learned by Qui-Gonn (who doesn't make an appearance). However, if it's a trick that Qui-Gonn teaches Obi-Wan and Yoda, how the hell does Anakin come back as a blue glowie at the end of ROTJ?

The appearance of Chewbacca served no purpose whatsoever. It didn't drive the storyline. All it did was attach Chewbacca to the Clone Wars. His cameo could've been left out, and the movie would not have been any worse for it.

Why did it take the Galactic Empire twenty years to build the first Death Star and only three or four to build the second one?

Who ordered that clone army? Siphidious was named, and the guess is that it was probably Darth Sidious. Funny how the names are so close. My guess is Siphidious was probably killed by Palpatine, who then used his name to order the clone army. But still, why would the Republic not be at least a little concerned about this army? In AOTC, they question it once and then take possession of it. Laaaaaame.

Mace Windu's death kicked ass.

The battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin kicked ass.

The dialogue throughout the movie did not kick ass.

Count Dooku's death was rather anti-climactic ... and far too early in the film.

Yoda fighting Sidious kicked ass.

Why would Padme be so surprised that Anakin killed all the younglings when he slaughtered the men, women and children of a Sand People village? Hello! What the fuck?

EDIT: Oh yeah, and someone should really buy George Lucas a dictionary so he can look up the definition of "balance." The explanation for the prophey was utterly fucking retarded.



I'll probably have more thoughts later.

Somewhere, there are some very tired people. They stayed up late and caught a midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith. And then they slept for a couple of hours and went to work. I am not one of these people. I went to bed at a decent hour, and I'll see the movie tonight at 7:00.

Even though I'm cautiously optimistic, I just can't get excited about the last of the Star Wars prequels. Although there were scenes and elements of the first two prequels that I enjoyed, the movies overall were pretty bad. Even if ROTS is spectacular, I don't know if Georgie-boy can pull the prequels as a whole out of the crapper.

Dammit. I'm getting sick. And just before a long weekend, too. :(

This is definitely a fraud. No way in hell would a teacher give a passing mark on an essay where the author just made shit up. But then again, this is from the public education system...

Yeah, I know my alliteration isn't funny. I don't care. It amused me for about three seconds, and that's all that matters.

However, as my unfunny subject line suggests, I finished Knights of the Old Republic last night. It's only took a couple of weeks. Most of it was way too easy, but the Starforge bumped up the difficulty level a fair bit. The big bad Sith lord guy was a tough fight at the end. It took me three tries to hand him his lungs.

BTW, I played total Light Side the whole way through. I was so Light by the end, I was all shiny. :P

Early reports on Revenge Of The Sith say that Lucas has saved the prequels with this last of the trilogy. I just have to hold out until Thursday night, and then all will be revealed.

I was quite pleased with the D&D session last night. The group (well, Rich, anyway, but probably the rest, too) figured out what's going on and what the module is really about.

"As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

Funniest line ever uttered in the history of television? Yes. Gordon Jump was damn hilarious.

One week until the Sith get their revenge. Have you got your ticket yet?

I just returned from a showing of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. I'm not sure if it's the fanboy in me being annoyed at the changes they made to the story (half the script was written for the movie -- I couldn't believe it) or if it was really as bad as I thought. I found myself forcing myself to laugh at the jokes. I know they're funny, dammit! Was it the delivery? Were the jokes not set up properly? I really don't know.

Some goods things came out of the movie, though. Some highlights:

A really great theme song.

The cameo of the BBC version of Marvin.

...

Nope, can't think of anymore. I gotta get a copy of that theme song, though.

Check out the rules for Assassins. Doesn't this sound like fun?

It's too bad the movie Rounders missed the Texas Hold 'Em Poker phase. It would probably be quite a popular movie if it was being released into theatres now instead of seven years ago. It's an excellent movie -- and not one people know of. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for any movie John Malkovich is in.

It seems Steve has created a blog of his own.

...and he skewers RPGs in this tract.

EDIT: Just found out this was actually a White Wolf promo site for Demon: The Fallen. Cute.

I think the Ninja Burger PBeM I was involved in has crashed. The YahooGroup has up and vanished. Damn ninja YahooGroups. It must've rolled a 20 on its hide check.

Cleaned up some of the bookmarks on the right. I've stopped visiting some of them, so I took them down.

Doug Brunell's Excess Hollywood column at Film Threat is always kind of funny. This week he takes on the terrorists' threat to kidnap Russell Crowe. When you get to the end of the column and see Brunell's suggested replacement kidnappee, just smile.

On Sunday, we completed our fourth weekly session in a row of D&D. Now we'll be taking a week off (can't play on Mother's Day). After four weeks in a row, I was kind of pleased with the amount of space we'd covered, and I was also quite happy with the way things went during three of the four sessions (the first of the batch was a big loser, but shit happens).

However, the biggest challenge was that the party was split up. At one point, it was split three ways (but thankfully not for long). By the end of the session, we still hadn't quite re-formed the party into a cohesive whole. That will definitely happen right at the beginning of the next session.

The drama of the last session was absolutely brilliant. All of my players should be commended for their efforts, but Logan and Rawl are really responsible for kicking things off and getting everyone into the mood. And the best thing was none of the other players realized what was going on. They didn't realize that Damoth was being written out. Heheh. Brilliant, I say!

And with such a kickass session behind me, I can't wait for the next session. I've even gone so far as to suggest to the group that we start playing weekly ... although I'm not sure if that will actually happen.

There's a documentary out on DVD about RPGs and roleplayers. It's called Life With The Dice Bag. Unfortunately, the Film Threat review is fairly negative.

I made up my mind on Sunday and opted to pick up a copy of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for Xbox. Prior to the D&D game last night, I put almost two hours of playtime into it, and then I played for another hour or so after the D&D session ended.

So far, so good. The only problem I have is the same problem I have with all RPGs. There's generally only one way to solve a problem, and most of the quests are of the "go here, do this" variety. Right now, I'm in the undercity sewers.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I finished Fable on Friday night. Kind of an unimpressive turn of events prior to fighting Jack.