By Brent on 29 July 2010
I’ve been eating a lot of Domino’s pizza lately. I’ve been busy, watching a lot of movies and TV shows, reading, and writing. I realized that I need to focus on chewing through all that material, so I simply don’t have time to make meals from scratch. But I want to. More importantly, my stomach wants to. Processed foods typically upset my stomach, like drunk tourists messing up the place. Once […]
Posted in Cooking |
By Brent on 26 July 2010
My Mom was never much of a soup person. She’s always liked soups, but in the same way that people like cocktail peanuts or turf grass. When I think of my Mom’s cooking, I remember her chicken cordon bleu, her strawberry whipped cream cake, her divine chocolate fudge cake, her crusty French bread, her unimaginably soft homemade pasta. I don’t remember any soups. I’m sure she […]
Posted in Cooking |
By Brent on 23 July 2010
I first stumbled on iFanboy when I bought my Roku a few months back. I was skimming through Revision3’s offerings, saw a show on American comics, and watched an episode. I found a show that combines intelligence, experience, and passion. These guys know their comics, they know how to talk about comics in a way that’s helpful for any reader, and they know the limits of their knowledge. They understand that passion can be a highly […]
Posted in Reviews |
By Brent on 20 July 2010
When the iPad was first released, early adopters rushed to post their initial impressions. Now that I’ve been using an iPad for a few months, I think it’s important to come back and provide some more experienced impressions. Here are the apps I use: Daily WSJ (Wall Street Journal). I even bought the subscription, so I don’t have to lug my Kindle around with me. GoodReader, a fantastic PDF viewer that […]
Posted in Technology |
By Brent on 20 July 2010
Check in on my Google Wave RPG game, The Legacy of the Lines, a D&D 4E game: [wave id=”googlewave.com! w+Ov21ogmKA”]
Posted in Role-playing |
By Brent on 16 July 2010
I’ve been thinking lately about the best way to give feedback to players in my role-playing games. By “feedback,” I mean pointing out particularly effective and particularly ineffective behavior, like creative problem-solving, forgetting to update a marker, effective teamwork, or aggressive interpersonal behavior. I used to essentially ignore this. I’d occasionally reward a creative solution with a quick “Great thinking!” I essentially ignored bad behavior. This, of course, is ineffective. I then picked […]
Posted in Role-playing |
By Brent on 13 July 2010
I’m having a difficult time figuring out how to describe Dhoom 2. I have such a disparate readership that I feel I’m constantly explaining or defending my hobbies and interests. If I want to describe a Hong Kong action flick or amazing anime series, I feel a need to lay the groundwork necessary for a non-fan to understand what I’m talking about. Applying standard Western movie values to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Indian films results in a fractured […]
Posted in Reviews |
By Brent on 12 July 2010
Last week, I finally finished and published a D&D 4E adventure, The Goblins of Summerkeep, to DriveThruRPG.com. It took a while. There are all sorts of little finishing steps, such as checking for errors, verifying that the generated PDF looks good, uploading to DriveThruRPG, etc. I’m also working to make it available in multiple formats, and that’s a classic time suck. DriveThruRPG provides a print-on-demand service, but that requires its own PDFs. […]
Posted in Role-playing |
By Brent on 9 July 2010
In the previous posts in this series, I laid some groundwork for adapting D&D 4E to a mecha universe, establishing some basic stats and skills. Let’s create some sample mecha units, using the stats we’ve defined so far. The Stats We Need If you recall, each mecha has the following stats: Manufacturer, which corresponds to race Class Size Speed Initiative AC Fortitude Reflex Strength Constitution Dexterity HP […]
Posted in Role-playing |
By Brent on 9 July 2010
This month’s RPG Blog Carnival over at Mad Brew Labs is on Growing the Hobby. I quote: While I don’t think the hobby is disappearing, by any means, I don’t see it expanding by leaps & bounds either. I’d personally like to see it grow, and I would like to hear what the RPG Blogosphere has to say. “Blogosphere.” :shudder: I so hate that word. Ah well; not their fault. Can […]
Posted in Role-playing |