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I'm becoming a little disappointed in a couple of the comic books I'm following. Loveless has been going absolutely nowhere, and if it doesn't go somewhere in the next couple of issues, I'm just going to drop it as a title. The art has gone to hell, and the story is practically non-existent.

Unfortunately, The Walking Dead is also not going well. I haven't been collecting the monthly issues of this like I have of Loveless. Instead, I've been buying the trades. The fifth trade came out recently, and I bought a copy of it. Up until now, I've been content with the story. It's been moving too quick and glossing over a lot of interesting parts, but the characters all seem to be neat (even if they keep dropping like flies, only to be replaced by other characters).

With the fifth trade, though, I'm just about ready to stop reading. I swear the lead character needs to die. What happened to him in the fifth trade is a lot more than a temporary setback.

However, I find the Thunderdome nutballs to be kind of interesting, but I'm sure the story will end up with the main characters on the run through zombie-infested America once again. How many times will they have to pull up stakes and move again?

Oh well. I'm less tempted to drop The Walking Dead because there are some neat ideas about what happens after the zombie apocalypse, but I guess whether or not I continue reading will depend on what happens in the next couple of trades (number six is due out in February, I think).

Random thought of the day...

Will blogging still be popular in another twenty, thirty or even forty years? Will there be bloggers who started when they were young and continued until they were old and grey? Will we be able to see an entire person's life unravel simply by going back through their decades worth of archives?

Shit. Will I still be wasting bandwidth like this when I'm of retirement age?

On Sunday afternoon, I played in a game of Shadowrun 4E over at Worlds Collide that Jason was running. As I've written on here several times, I think the Shadowrun setting is pretty damn cool, but I despise the mechanics. The system makes for a very slow-paced game, which to me is a really dumb idea for a game that is so heavy on combat.

I think the designers may have finally made a version of Shadowrun that I can actually enjoy, though. While I still think the dice pools are a little too big (at one point, the one player tossed twenty-two six-sided dice for one task -- personally, I think anything over ten is too big), the system has been streamlined a bit to make things move quicker.

I'll more than likely go out to the next Shadowrun game Jason runs at Worlds Collide, and I might even eventually pick up a copy of the core book. I haven't bought any Shadowrun stuff since the tail end of the 2nd ed. days.

Delta Green has actually shipped. I'm giddy with excitement. I'll finally be able to get my hands on a copy of the damn game.

I've started my Christmas shopping. Last year, after many years of promising myself to do my shopping online (and early), I actually made a significant portion of my purchases online. This year, my goal is to do even more of my shopping online. So far, so good, but I know I'll still have to do some in-store shopping (which I'll probably try to get out of the way ASAP).

Check out Call Centre. It's about twelve minutes long, so consider yourself warned.

I've been watching Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex for what feels like several weeks now, but I finally sat down last night and watched the rest of it. By the time I finished, though, I almost felt like I needed to go back and re-watch everything from the beginning just to make sense of the ending. It really wasn't the direction I expected the anime to end.

Of course, that's anime for you. So many anime series end in ways the viewer simply couldn't expect.

Anyway, I'm happy I finally finished watching GITS: SAC. I can be a really bad anime watcher. I start watching a series and then I find excuses not to continue watching it. Too often, the series start far too slow and aren't all that interesting -- or they have characters that grate on my nerves, like GITS' damn Tachikomas.

Now that I'm in anime-watching mode, though, I'm going to try to get through the discs of Vampire Princess Miyu (the TV series) I picked up at Wal-Mart earlier in the year. When Wal-Mart tried to offload them, they only the third through to the last discs, so I'm missing the first two discs. However, I've seen the entire series before, so it's no big deal.

I watched an episode on the third disc last night, and I cringed. I seem to recall that the entire series was mediocre to poor, with a few good episodes (mostly the first ones and the very last ones) thrown in for good measure. And oh, the voice acting! Don't get me started.

On Saturday, I helped move Rawl and Linda into their new apartment in Scarborough. It had to be the easiest overall move I've participated in for quite some time. Or maybe I've simply done too many hell moves over the last few years to really look at Rawl's move objectively. It was really simple, but a good part of that is because he already had his stuff packed in the truck before I even arrived.

Leviride has a new album out. This is a co-worker's rock band, but I don't think I'm biased in saying their music is damn good. I listen to Leviride's first album a fair bit, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the second album very soon.

If you're a fan of alt-rock kind of music, check out the link. There's an auto-play preview of the album available there.

I have been cataloguing my RPG collection. The number of books I own is scary. It's actually a little more than I thought. Not counting my Dungeon or Dragon issues, nor the RPG books in my brother's possession (that will likely one day fall into my hands), I have 342 books and magazines (mostly books).

Hey, Logan, why don't you catalogue your collection and we can compare ... uh ... sizes? ;)

While going through my bookshelves and trying to clear up some space (many books will be heading to the bookstore or elsewhere soon), I found something I'd been looking for -- the copy of The Arduin Grimoire, Volume 1 that a person in my old writers' circle gave me years ago when I joined the SCA (Arduin isn't actually connected to the SCA in any way; it just happened to be with a bunch of old SCAdian newsletters and such).

My understanding of Arduin is that it was the precursor to Rifts. It was the "do anything you want" game. I don't really know how true that is, but maybe I'll give it a flip through to see what's actually here. I've had this book (book, ha! It's a stack of folded paper stapled together) for years, but I haven't actually read it.

It turns out that Kermit the Frog book turns into a self-help book after about eighty pages. I'm not taking self-help advice from a Muppet. :P

I watched the first two episodes of Canada: A People's History last night. That took nearly four hours out of my night, but it was interesting. Some of what I learned in my Grade 7 and 8 history classes started coming back to me, but it was clear I'd lost a lot of that knowledge I'd gained back then. Of course, I found Grade 7/8 history classes to be intensely boring at the time, and it didn't make it any easier to learn when I couldn't see the board very well (I got glasses between Grade 8 and high school).

I'm going to have to swing by the public library later in this week and get the next volume or two.

After my evening of DVD viewing was over, I turned to one of the books I'd taken out from the library -- Before You Leap, a Kermit the Frog autobiography. Although it's a silly idea, it's a fun, light read. I should be able to get through with another couple of hours of reading, I think.

My civic duty is done, and now I'm back at my desk trying to get any little bit of work done (it's such a quiet day) and scanning through some books and Websites.

On Sunday night, most of the RPG group (except Rawl, the sick guy) dropped by my place to try to hammer out some details about the supers RPG. I got my way in terms of game system, so we're going to be playing Hearts & Souls. Rich and I were talking this morning about how we could take away some of the open-endedness of the chargen system and put a bit more structure around it. While I was whipping up my crazy Ajax municipal election post, he came up with a good idea. After a quick test by creating an Aquaman rip-off, it was clear it would work. Yay!

The game itself will be set in and around Toronto. I suggested maybe New York or even Los Angeles, but everyone wanted to do a Canadian superhero story. That works for me. Although I offered the players some input on why superpowers started to emerge, they decided to leave the decision to me. It'll be a mystery at first, but possibly as we play out the campaign they'll find out why they got powers.

The time period will be within the last several years. The two best ideas were right before Y2K and right after Sept. 11, 2001. I'm starting to lean towards the post-9/11 world. I think it will add a certain intensity to the game. Security issues and terrorist scares could easily factor into the story.

I also already know the first villain I want to put them up against. I figured out the basic details about the character's history on the weekend. Now that we've settled on a game system, I just need to figure out his stats, flesh out his background and write him into the ever-evolving campaign story arc.

I got a library card at the main branch of the Ajax Public Library on Saturday. While not really a big deal, as getting a library card is a fairly mundane event, I was kind of excited about it. I haven't had a library card since I was about sixteen years old, so I have, in fact, spent nearly half my life without a library card.

Libraries have changed since I was a teen. The video collections have grown enormously, and there are even a lot of DVDs available. I ended up taking out a couple of documentaries I'd been wanting to see -- Grizzly Man (watched it on Sunday; great documentary) and Canada: A People History, Vol. 1 (which I started watching at lunch).

However, libraries have also added graphic novels and even video games to the items they keep on hand and loan out to those with library cards. I never thought I'd see video games available in a library. While I can understand graphic novels because they're still books, video games strike me as going against the concept of learning and knowledge that a library has always stood for (at least to me). Not that I'm going to complain, of course. I'm sure I'll eventually take advantage of the ability to check out games with my library card.

I've been reading over the various candidates' Websites I have to decide between in Ajax, and I'm very tempted to simply vote for the candidate in each area who most looks like a video game character. After all, Mayor Steve Parish kind of sets the bar in that way. Tell me he doesn't look like Super Mario.

The Mayoral Candidates

Steve Parish
Looking at the long-standing mayor's Website, I'm dismayed. What kind of person posts a text-based letter as a JPEG? If I remember my graphics manipulation classes properly, GIF is the preferred format for text in an image. It doesn't mess up the text so much as JPEG does. Or maybe I'm full of it.

Still, what kind of person posts text as an image? Still, the good mayor has been at this a long time. I haven't really had any complaints about living in Ajax over the last four years, so I wonder if there's a reason to beg for a change.

Lidia Kuleshnyk
The challenger's site makes me cringe. What's with all the pink? What's with the sound file playing when you go to the site?

I suppose I can't blame her for trying to do something a little different, but most of the site is based on images. Again I ask: Why post an image if you're really just posting text?

I also don't really see much difference between Kuleshnyk's platform and the incumbent mayor's, leading me to believe there is absolutely no reason to change.

And to make matters worse, she doesn't even look like a video game character. How can she expect to defeat Bowser?

Okay, now that I've made a mockery of the election and the mayoral candidates, I'll throw my support behind Mayor Steve Parish.

Ward 4 Councillor Candidates
I live in Ward 4, just barely out of the ward where Joanne DIES is running. So I guess I can't vote for the candidate with the most unfortunate last name. So here are my choices...

Pat Brown
Who? I see a phone number. I don't see an email address. I don't see a Website. I have found this on the Town of Ajax Website, though. While there actually is an email address listed for this current councillor, I'm concerned about someone who can't even throw up a crappy Blogger site to tell me her platform.

I'm of the new age. I need my information via the Intarweb, dammit!

Leslie Davies
The Town of Ajax site lists a phone number and email address, but no Website. Since she (he? damn unisex names) is not the incumbent, Davies doesn't even have any information listed on the Town of Ajax site. With no platform to speak of, I vote you off the island.

Lisa Patel
Hey, check this shit out! Someone actually has a simple, functional Website. There's, like, real information here. She doesn't really have much of a platform listed, which is unfortunate, but being the only one of the three candidates to give a damn about the Intarweb, I think we have a winner.

And her site is in green. I like green.

Wards 3 & 4 Regional Councillor Candidates

Colleen Jordan
The incumbent has been in her role for three years, as you can read on her Website. It looks like she's been busy. She's anti-developers but pro-green belt. Works for me. Her site kind of has a blue-green colour scheme, too. Yay!

Lynn McGurk-Weil
And the challenger's Website is here. Text in images! Booooo! Of course, it looks more professionally done than the text in the mayoral candidates' images, so maybe I can't complain too much. I'm not sure if I see much of a difference in platforms between Jordan and McGurk-Weil, so I'm not sensing a great need for change here.

I think Jordan is the winner here for simply being the incumbent. She's already doing the job. Why make her stop?

Durham District School Board Wards 3 & 4 Candidates

Lisa Hill
This is the big "who gives a flying fuck?" position. I don't have kids. I don't want kids. Jacquie doesn't even teach in Ajax. I don't care who's the frickin' school board trustee. But let's take a look-see, anyway. Lisa Hill seems to be using her husband's email address or something, and while there's a phone number listed, there's no Website listed. Strike one. She is the incumbent, even though I can't seem to find any information about her on the town's Website. Bizarre.

Gregory Ansley
Here's a dude with balls. Not much else going for him, but balls of concrete.

He's a third-year university student working on a bachelor of arts with a major in criminology. I suppose I could insert the obligatory snarky comment about how politics and crime are a perfect mix, but I won't. Oh wait, I think I just did. Never mind.

Ansley's site is basic and straightforward, but his platform makes me howl with laughter. He doesn't have one. Check this quote out:

As a newcomer to the field of politics and the administrative side of the Durham District School Board, I am completely open to any suggestions and recommendations parents may have regarding the system.
-Gregory Ansley

So his platform is that he doesn't have one. This strikes me as an attempt to jump into a position of power only to hope that someone tells him what he needs to do. That's bloody amateurish. It sounds reactive rather than proactive, and that's not what we need in a politician.

In this case, I have to go with the person who couldn't be bothered to make a Website. Or maybe I'll just leave this area blank on my voting form. Or maybe I could flip a coin. Again, I don't give a rat's ass who's the trustee.

Alright. I'm done. For all those candidates who I've poked fun at, my apologies. For writing that the mayor looks like Super Mario, I'm sorry. I'm really not trying to be mean. I was just born that way. ;)

It's municipal election day, and as usual, I haven't been reading up on the candidates. I don't even know if I'll care enough to get up off my ass and go vote tonight. I'm looking over candidates in Ajax now, and as always, I wonder if it really matters who fills any of the roles.

Apathetic? Me? Nah!

The hunt for an ideal superhero RPG continues. Many games have been vetoed outright because they're too complicated (Hero and GURPS Supers) or not complex enough (Wushu), but I think we've managed to narrow it down to a handful of potential games:

BASH (Basic Action Super Heroes) -- I looked over the demo PDF and the play examples available on the Website, and the game looks to have everything I'm looking for. Character creation looks to be quick and simple while still having the chargen options we're looking for. Play is based around rolling 2D6 and multiplaying it by a stat or power (numbered between one and five). I've been having a little discussion with the designer on RPG.net, and when I said the amount of multiplication concerned me, he gave me a couple of suggestions for speeding up play (one of which was having a basic multiplication table sitting next to me). I've purchased the PDF from RPGNow, but I haven't yet read it over.

Villains & Vigilantes -- This classic still has a bit of a following, from what I've been led to believe. When I mentioned it to Logan, he ordered a couple of copies of it. Hopefully it turns out to be worth it. Although V&V's default play style is "play yourself as a superhero," I'm told it's easy to modify that by creating PCs as if they were NPCs. Logan told me he took a quick look through V&V and saw numbers with decimal points; then Lawrence confirmed this morning that V&V is math-intensive. Depending on how math-intensive it is, it still might very well be a good option for the supers campaign.

Hearts & Souls -- I don't know much about this one, but when I looked at the official Website, one thing really stood out. According to the site, success and failure are based on the motivations of the characters. It focuses on why the characters do what they do. I don't know how it works, but I like the sound of that. I bought the PDF along with BASH from RPGNow today, but again, I haven't had a chance to read it over yet.

Mutants & Masterminds -- The Law's short-lived Freedom City campaign is the only thing I miss about the d20 System. M&M is the only d20-based game I still wish I was playing, and I miss my Dr. Strong character. Although creating characters was a pain in the ass and not all that fun, the gameplay was solid. I'm sure my fun playing Dr. Strong was largely due to the story and subplots The Law was crafting, but I could definitely see myself playing in another M&M game. While I don't actually own a copy of M&M, I'm currently borrowing Logan's copy to look through it. If not for how complex and time-consuming character creation is, I'd jump at running M&M. I don't enjoy the thought of having to do supervillain creation over and over and over again with M&M, though. That said, it's not out of the running yet. After all, I may not actually need many villains for the campaign.

The campaign itself will begin in our world -- where supers are nothing more than fictional characters. The first session will see the once-normal player characters gain superpowers. The entire story arc will be no more than twelve sessions long, but over that time, they'll have to deal with a very real-world perception of supers and their actions. At the same time, though, the game is meant to eventually turn into a more four-colour supers campaign with super brawls and the emergence of even more super-powered individuals.

I'll be running a fine line between realistic and four-colour, and it's already giving me problems. When it finally gets going, though, I think it's going to kick some serious ass.

It took me a couple of years of blogging, but I finally had to upgrade my Web hosting account to double the amount of space available. I know what the problem is, too, but since I like the site the way it is, the problem isn't going to go away. The problem is what Rich referred to as "directory clutter" on his own blog today. For every single blog entry, I have an HTML page with whatever comments people have made. I like it that way, though, so even though I could have reduced the amount of space I need simply by wiping my storage space and changing some publishing configurations in Blogger (and then re-publishing everything), I dropped another $60 for more storage space.

Someone posted this pic to an RPG.net thread. I had to share. It's now my new desktop wallpaper.

And no, I don't actually believe in this style of GMing (well, not anymore). I just find it damn funny.

I ran Call of Cthulhu last night, and while I had a lot of fun and will almost certainly remember a couple of neat moments, the investigation was sadly not a success and ended with the death of two of the investigators. The surviving investigator ran for his bloody life, leaving the Boston police to clean up the mess.

Taking on CoC baddies in a toe-to-toe fight usually doesn't work out very well, and poor Mr. Howe and Mr. Doyle found out the hard way. Dr. Jones, however, played the role of coward and high-tailed it back to Miskatonic University when things went to hell (not that I can blame him, of course).

I don't know if everyone had fun, but I did get the impression that everyone had had enough of CoC after the session was over with.

There seems to be a consensus amongst the Sunday night RPG group about what to play next. I'm a bit surprised, but they all went for the superheroes idea.

Now I just need to find a system that will do four-colour superheroes fairly well without having an overly complicated or long character creation system. It should also be fairly easy to learn and teach.

So far, a lot of ideas have come up, but I haven't settled on anything yet. If I can find a way to speed chargen up, Mutants & Masterminds would certainly be an option. I think games like Godlike, GURPS Supers and Champions are out, and I don't care much for the idea of breaking out the old TSR Marvel Superheroes RPG, either.

I've posted a thread on RPG.net in the hopes people will have good suggestions. Maybe someone will mention a game I hadn't thought of yet that would be perfect for the game.

I'll be running Call of Cthulhu this Sunday. I'll be using the classic The Haunted House scenario (called The Haunting these days), which Logan has played through once but Rawl and Rich are completely in the dark about. As far as I know, out of the four of us, only Logan and I have played CoC before. Thankfully, the rules aren't too complicated -- and I handled the generation of characters on my own. I gave everyone the ability to choose what type of character they wanted to play, and then I did the rest (including stats, names and even short backgrounds).

We'll see how this goes. If everyone has fun, perhaps we can play again in two weeks. If nobody wants to continue, though, I think I'm going to start looking into something a bit more longer-term. I've had the ability to run some of the games I was dying to run as one-shots, so it's probably about time to get going something that will last a few months.

Sadly, I'm far from being ready to run Blue Planet; otherwise I'd go with that. There's just so much in Blue Planet that it's difficult to focus. Also, I haven't read through all the books yet. I should at least get through the Haven sourcebook ... and maybe through Frontier Justice, as well.

How about cutting loose and doing something with a superhero theme? I haven't run a supers game in years. I'll have to think about this a bit. I only have a small number of supers games -- Marvel Basic Set, GURPS Supers and Godlike -- and I don't know if any of them fit with the type of game I'd like to run. Besides, the others may not be interested in a supers game.