TABLETOP TALES! FIASCO! EP. 1 DIRTY POLITICS PT. 1

TABLETOP TALES PRESENTS

FIASCO! EP. 1 DIRTY POLITICS PT.1

It all began in a strange place; the youtube channel GeeksandSundry. I've been watching the, Tabletop, hosted by Wil Wheaton, since its inception a few months ago. Every episodes begins with me being curious about the games they will play and ends with me wanting to buy/play said games as soon as possible. The show's presentation mixed with my love affair with board games and role-playing make it the perfect hobby program for a nerd like me. The nexus for today's subject and one of the best game nights I've ever had began in their Fiasco episode. Click to watch it below.

Fiasco: TableTop. Ep. 8

To quote Bully Pulpit Games website, "Fiasco is a game about ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It won’t go well for them, to put it mildly, and in the end it will probably all go south in a glorious heap of jealousy, murder, and recrimination. It’s designed to be played in a single session, usually around two and a half hours, with no prep." After you buy the main component to the game, either in soft cover book or pdf form, make sure to download some of the additional set-up available.

FIASCO DOWNLOADS

I knew I needed to have this game and when I found out you could download it in PDF format, and get the scenario will helped create for free, I downloaded it. Conveniently enough, about half of our friday night party for D & D / Pathfinder shenanigans were unable to make it and, with four people and simple enough rules, we were able to create a story using the rules set out by Fiasco.

So, now that you guys have got a general idea of what the game is about and how we winded up playing it, hit the link below to check out the breakdown of our first game, which I've given the title "Dirty Politics".

WORD OF THE DAY! 7/28/12.

dress-up [dres-uhp]
adjective
1. Being an occasion, situation, etc., for which someone must be formally dressed.
noun
2. Informal. A person's best clothing, accessories, or other added features.
3. A game in which the participants put on clothes or costumes to play out or role play a role.

EX. Playing dress-up with your Pokemon would be absurdly complicated in a world of Jigglypuffs, Muks, Diglets, and other formless/limbless/oblong Pokemon.

WORD OF THE DAY! 7/27/12.

mushmouth [muhsh-mouth]
noun
1. Someone who speaks indistinctly and/or incoherently.

EX. Am I the only one who is willing to accept the horrible ramifications of demanding voice acting in the next Zelda? I mean, keep Link as a mushmouth idiot, but there is no reason that the other characters can't have amazing voice acting. If Nintendo doesn't start taking more risks, I won't buy their next console... (unless it has Zelda and Mario titles on it because then I'm helpless).

WORD OF THE DAY! 7/26/12.

cataphract [kat-uh-frakt]
noun
1. A heavily armed war galley of ancient Greece.
2. A suit of Roman scale armor for a man or horse.
3. Biology. The bony plates or scales covering the body of certain fish and reptiles.

EX. A cataphract of cuckoos are more than sufficient to hold off the Moblin hordes.

WTF WEDNESDAY! THE INTERNET: IT'S MY LIFE!

WTF WEDNESDAY PRESENTS

THE INTERNET: IT'S MY LIFE!

Straight out of Freakazoid, this is pretty much the story of my life... But I do live in a world in which the internet isn't 99% porn and 1% everything else...we live in a world of like 98% porn and 2% everything else. Plus, this clip predates youtube, reddit, 4chan, netflix, facebook, etc. Anywho...back to watching someone else play video games on the youtubes...

WORD OF THE DAY! 7/25/12.

ancillary [an-suh-ler-ee]
adjective
1. Subordinate, subsidiary, etc.
2. Auxiliary, assisting,etc.
noun
3. Something that serves in an auxiliary position.

EX. Luigi is so ancillary that the only way he could beat Mario is that if Mario was playing as Luigi in a Super Smash Bros. and playing against Luigi playing as Mario. Poor weegee...

WEEKLY ROUND-UP! 7/16-7/22 2012! "KEEP CALM AND..." WEEK!

WEEKLY ROUND-UP PRESENTS

"KEEP CALM AND..." WEEK!

7. WORD OF THE DAY. 7/16/12. Free boat.

 Oddly enough, I never got to play the original Wind Waker and I kind wish I could've gotten the chance, way back win, to sail on a boat and kick butt in cel-shaded glory.

6. MUSICAL MONDAY! SKYRIM BARD RAPS!

I really loved the soundtrack of Skyrim, but I love fanmade stuff even more. This hilarious rap is just begging to be modded into the game and just adds another reason for me to cave in and get myself a PC copy of the game.

5. WORD OF THE DAY! 7/21/12. Evil twin.

Wario is one of my favorite characters in the Nintendo-verse because, not only is he pretty funny, but his games are also very well done and unique; whether its his platformers titles that are on par with any Mario game and, therefore, head and shoulders over most titles of the genre, and I enjoy Warioware titles far more than I ever enjoyed Mario Party.

4. WORD OF THE DAY! 7/16/12. Propane & Straight Man.

Hank Hill is a hero and his super power is dependability.

3. WORD OF THE DAY! 7/22/12. Journey.

I wanted to be the best, but it never was. Just to play the games, yeah that's my cause.

2. SCI-FI FANTASY SUNDAY! MY HORRIBLE STAR WARS! PT.1

 I dunno how I feel about The Old Republic; certainly it is a decent MMO, and the experience was more in-depth/exciting than WoW, but at the end of the day I just want more Star Wars: Battlefront.

1. WORD OF THE DAY! 7/18/12. TOTORO: GOD OF DEATH THEORY

Not much to say about this one. Read it yourself, consider the facts and the film, and just remember, the film is still an amazing thing.

WORD OF THE DAY. 7/24/12.

utility [yoo-til-i-tee]
noun
1. The state or quality of being useful; usefulness.
2. Something useful; a useful thing, a tool, etc.
3. A service or system provided by the local infrastructure for public use.
4. A useful feature or factor.
5. Economics. The capacity of a service or commodity to satisfy a person's wants/needs.
6. Anything that contributes to the well-being of the community; the greater good.
adjective
7. Used to describe animals kept for a purpose rather than kept as pets.
8. Having or made for a number of useful purposes, rather than a single, specific one.
9. Useful as opposed to simply enjoyable or attractive.

EX. I keep wishing Batman would use his utility belt more in Arkham City. I have literally been playing the game for like twenty hours and it blows my mind (and this is a small complaint since the game is truly amazing) is that I can't do simple things like use smoke bombs whenever I please, knock someone out with a batarang, or crouch while using certain tools.

MUSICAL MONDAY! BABY CAKES: ROLE PLAY TOURNAMENT (BE AGGRESSIVE)

MUSICAL MONDAY PRESENTS

BABY CAKES: ROLE PLAY TOURNAMENT (BE AGGRESSIVE)

How do I sell you Brad Neely's Baby Cakes, History Brothers, and most importantly China, IL. First, I'll give you one of the best and most accessible of Baby Cakes videos; in which we get to see our thirty year-old hero ruin everyone's day by being a role play tournament champion. The animation in these early videos is pretty much non-existent, but the images are awesome, the humor makes me smile every time, and I could watch this playlist forever because it is made of the things that make me happy.

My taste reflects me here; first, Baby Cakes represents the man-child nerd side of me that wants nothing more than fantasize and be angry about the world that doesn't fit into my naive/weird perspective. Then, we got the History Brothers who represent my interest in story-telling and history, while also perhaps inspiring my dream to become a professor just so I can give lectures (though its questionable whether I will have that much fun). And then China, IL, is a show that literally takes all the components from the last two things and just blows them up on a huge scale.

The Adultswim show was awesome. Check out another awesome Baby Cakes beat from the show. Check it out on youtube and adultswim.

CHINA IL: BABY DREAM WARRIOR

WORD OF THE DAY! 7/23/12.

status quo [stat-uhs-kwoh}
noun
1. The existing state or condition.

EX. This post helps return me within the status quo held by the blog for months.

SCI-FI FANTASY SUNDAY! MY HORRIBLE STAR WARS!

SCI-FI FANTASY SATURDAY PRESENTS

MY HORRIBLE STAR WARS FAN FICTION THING PT. 1

Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG went free-to-play....sorta/maybe/partially-- you can now make a free account and play through the first fifteen levels of all the character classes/alignments with some limitations. I plan to do a full review based on this experience, but so far the only thing I care about is my character, Tubb Ramkin. He is a fat, beligerent, anti-hero combination of John Candy and Harrison Ford. He is also handsome, dashing, and a total bad***!

I enjoy mocking the game so much to get through it that I feel that Tubb deserves his story to be told, sorta. Enjoy.

WORD OF THE DAY! 7/22/12.

journey [jur-nee]
noun
1. A traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time.
2. A distance, course, or area traveled or suitable for traveling.
3. A period of travel.
4. Passage or progress from one stage to another.

EX. Its time to talk about one of the easiest traps and biggest misconceptions in the history of video games revolving around one of my favorite series. Pokemon's motto or catch phrase is "Gotta catch 'em all," and this is both deceptive and incorrect for several reasons; besides the grammatical wonkyness of the sentence, it is also wrong because it implies that the entire point of Pokemon is collecting Pokemon. Now, that is certainly the genesis or nexus from which the entire franchise originates; after all, the game is an adaptation of the popular Japanese childhood pass-time of collecting bugs (sometimes for fighting). The truth is that this is a trap because, like many things in life, Pokemon isn't about reaching the end of a quest, it is about enjoying the journey.

At this point, without emulators, outside assistance, and luck, the quest to "catch 'em all" is as unreachable a goal as finding the Holy Grail and I think it would be as unsatisfying as the end result of our fantasies of another Star Wars movie. Right now, as I sit here typing, there are 649 pokemon, and that doesn't include unique trade-only specialty pokemon like "Surfing Pikachu". I have played pokemon for over 15 years, pouring literally hundreds, nay a couple thousands of hours into around a dozen titles, and I caught Mewtwo for the very first time in my life this year. I don't think I'll ever catch all the Pokemon, unless Nintendo basically gives me a single title or two to achieve it, and I've accepted that I will never be a Pokemon master.

But that's okay. Pokemon has never really been about catching them all; if you think it has been, I think you fell into the trap, and I wouldn't be surprised if you quit playing in second generation (trust me, the games have gotten better and more sophisticated in strategy with each game). I play Pokemon and will continue to play Pokemon because I love the world, I love the escape, I love the thrill of the fight, the puzzle-solving, the mysteries, and at the end of the day, the journey is what keeps calling me back.