Friday, June 22, 2007

Currently...

This has been a busy week at work...

What I'm Watching: Not much since the end of The Sopranos. I will say that HBO's ploy worked: my fiance and I were planning on cancelling HBO, but then we watched the first episode of Flight of the Conchords and not only was it very funny but Eugene Mirman was in it!!! So, now we have to watch the whole thing - damn you HBO! Damn you Eugene!

What I'm Reading: Lots of RPG rules and (relatedly) I'm re-reading Roger Zelazny's Amber novels. I loved these books when I read them in high school - they might be my all-time favorite fantasy series - and, so far, I'm enjoying revisiting them. What's interesting is that since then I've read some other Zelazny books that have been "farther out" - like Lord of Light and The Immortal - and now I'm seeing some of that "farther out"-ness in the Amber books. I'm not sure if I didn't notice it the first time around because I wasn't looking for it or because now that I'm older and have read a lot more books, I'm able to recognize it.

Also - I'll be going to the MoCCA Art Fest on Sunday and I hope to catch up with the indie comics scene a little bit.

What I'm Listening to: I'm a complete sheep: ever since the end of The Sopranos I've been listening to lots and lots of Journey. Hey - I was one of those kids who listened to Top 40, but never paid attention to the names of the bands (I didn't start paying attention to that stuff until my last few years in high school when I started to become a punk rock/indie rock snob and stopped listening to Top 40). So, I know and like all these Journey songs from growing up, but I've always thought that they were done by other bands. Anyway, they're now at the top of my workout playlist.

I'm continuing to listen to a bunch of interesting gaming podcasts on my commute. I've put up links to some of them in the sidebar and I mean to put up a few more links this weekend. My recent posts about story-gaming have been mostly inspired my response to some of the stuff that these guys have been saying.

What I'm Playing: Sorcerer: Dictionary of Mu, of course. Our sessions of this game just keep getting better. I'd also 100% recommend the Dictionary of Mu to anyone (not just Sorcerer players) who's interested in post-Apocalyptic sword & sorcery fiction. In terms of video games: lots of Fire Emblem 2 for the Game Boy. Unfortunately, I did not use the three "save" slots strategically and now I am faced with having to repeat a huge chunk of the game in order to be able to face the final boss with a hope of winning. I had wanted to beat the game before I moved onto Fire Emblem on the Game Cube, but now I think I might just give up on it for the time being.

I'm seriously thinking of ordering my own Jungle Speed set.

What I'm Working On: So, getting back into regularly playing story-games means that I've also gotten back into reading about story-games which means that I've once again started thinking about designing my own. Right now, I'm looking to incorporate some of the ideas from this post (and in the comments) in terms of aiming for something a bit more muted than I'm used to.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So Journey is fucking awesome (Separate Ways is my personal favorite), but I'd be embarrassed to have, or reveal I have, a workout playlist. That's just me, though, and I'm expanding.

Jon Hastings said...

No joke:

Music makes a big difference in my workouts. I'm much more active if I'm listening to loud, rockin' stuff.

When I just want to half-ass it, I'll listen to a podcast.