Thursday, December 3, 2015

Ask Jetpack Jack! - Dice Rolling With Authority!

Here at long last is our first installment of the Ask Jetpack Jack advice column on the CVG!

Remember, you can submit your own questions for the man by emailing brian@chippewavalleygeek.com with "Ask Jetpack Jack" in the subject line!

---


Welcome to the very first installment of Ask Jetpack Jack, where I will try to answer your questions about life, the universe, and everything. Except, you know, about games and the gamers who play them. I can already hear you, dear reader in the comments, saying “But JJ, why would we want to get advice from you? You can’t even stop yourself from singing about montages!” I’ll tell you why.

I have been an avid tabletop gamer for over a decade, a video game fan for over 25, and a Dungeon Master for almost 10 years. I have run dozens of games over the years and have done so with a very diverse group of people. During this time, I have found that some things just aren’t seen as good etiquette when it comes to gaming in general and tabletop gaming in particular.

One of these contentious things is at the core of most games – dice rolling. It’s almost as ubiquitous as books and pencils for games today, and so many people just seem to do it wrong. Whether it’s palming dice to try and get a higher number on the drop, or tossing dice like they’re at the craps table, there are a lot of wrong ways to roll these little polyhedrals. With my help, you will be gaming faster, more efficiently, and with less arguments at the table.

The #1 problem when it comes to dice rolling is taking forever with your dice rolls.  Combat in games is by far the slowest time for a game, taking up over half the time of every session. When it is your time to roll, try and do so quickly. You don’t need to shake your dice for a long time to get a result, and doing so will take up more time, making the combat drag on even longer, so keep it brief. For most people, the modifiers for their dice rolls do not change much from roll to roll, if at all. In order to make the game flow better, take the time beforehand to write down your total modifiers for your rolls. Your DM, and the other players, will thank you.

This does not mean, however, that you should roll your dice ahead of time. While you might be tempted to do so, rolling ahead of time does two things that will cause problems – it distracts the DM when he is trying to resolve actions made by the other players at the table, and it ends up interrupting the playtime of the other players. It’s as bad as interrupting the DM or players in the middle of describing a situation or location, and can be even more distracting.  Planning your move in advance, however, is a good idea. You show to the DM that you are engaged in the game, and it also keeps lag to a minimum.

Unfortunately, whenever you talk about gaming and rolling dice, you also have to talk about cheating. Some people (and you know who you are) will ‘fudge’ dice rolls, or obscure results in order to improve their roll. This not only makes the DM not trust you, but it also removes some of the fun of the game. Dice are supposed to introduce the effects of randomness to a game, and if your character never, ever fails, that randomless is lost. So, be the bigger gamer and let the dice fall where they may. This is Jetpack Jack, signing off.

Monday, November 16, 2015

The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast 008 - The One Ring: The Darkening of Mirkwood - Session 06: The Narrows of the Forest!



Episode 8 of The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast is up and in stores near you (i.e. iTunes)!  

Remember: it's on a different feed from The CVG Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue, so you will need to subscribe to this feed separately if you're into it!

The game is The One Ring, by Cubicle 7 Games!  The campaign is The Darkening of Mirkwood!


Don't remember much about The One Ring?  Check out the Geek's game review of it here!

Or check out the TOR community forums here!

Here is Tales from Wilderland!


Check out the campaign's Obsidian Portal page!

And now a quick breakdown of our characters:

PC:  Denethor Lightbow
Player:  Nick
Culture:    Elf of Mirkwood
Background:  Diligent Defender

Calling:  Scholar

PC:  The "Boarslayer"
Player:  Monster Mike
Culture:  Woodman of Mirkwood
Background:  The Hound

Calling:  Warden

PC:  Brand, son of Gorm
Player:  Jack

Culture:  Barding (Man of Dale)
Background:  Rediscovering the Past

Calling:  Treasure Hunter

Remember to show your love and support for the Geek out on Patreon!  Actual play episodes don't count for our Patreon contributions, so every time we play a game, you get a freebie!

Music:  "The Narrow Way, Part 1" by Pink Floyd

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

The CVG Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue - Episode #015: Mean Talkin' Blues!

You may have had to have been there...
Episode Fifteen of The Chippewa Valley Geek Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue is complete and can be found here or on iTunes and Stitcher.

We're talking about the Dark Side, and how you got to change your evil ways (baby)!


0:00:00 Intros
0:01:12 The Up Front: On Bulgakov and the Necessity of the Shadow
0:06:07 The Interview:  Our first return guest, Rev. Derek White, the Geek Preacher, comes back to tell us about the history of the dark side, opines on the nature of evil, and re-takes the Geek-del Test!

0:53:31 The Roundtable:  Now with improved Monster Mike and Jetpack Jack!  Ethics!  Matchups!  Dark secrets revealed!  And more!
1:45:58 The Community Calendar and
 The Monthly Marathon: I'm still stuck in Season Two of Twin Peaks

1:50:09 Outro & Credits
1:51:32 Bonus Track:    Roll It!


Some Show Notes and Links!


The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn


Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin


(The opera is pretty good too...)



The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov


Incidentally, you can get your own awesome Behemoth Tshirts here!






Meet Rev. Derek W. White the Geek Preacher!


Roger Zelzany's Princes of Amber series

Elric of Melnibone


Get your own 14-sided Virtue & Vice die here!

How about some Green Ronin books?

A Search for Evil

It holds the universe together!



FEAR is the path to the dark side...


Time Bandits!

The Shadow!

Highlander!

Mystery Men!


Peter Pan with Christopher Walken!





Jack Thompson

Support the Goldman Piracy Career Academy!


Side Jobs by Jim Butcher


This episode's cover art is an impression of Satan's grand ball in The Master and Margarita by MadLittleClown on deviantart.  Check out the original here!

The backing sound effects used in this episode included:
-  "atrium loop" by leswagcupcakes, obtained from Freesound.org via a Creative Commons Attribution license.  The original file can be found here.

More Behemoth!


Tuesday, October 13, 2015

The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast 007 - The One Ring: The Darkening of Mirkwood - Session 05: The Haunting of East Bight!





Episode 7 of The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast is up and in stores near you (i.e. iTunes)!  

Remember: it's on a different feed from The CVG Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue, so you will need to subscribe to this feed separately if you're into it!

The game is The One Ring, by Cubicle 7 Games!  The campaign is The Darkening of Mirkwood!


Don't remember much about The One Ring?  Check out the Geek's game review of it here!

Or check out the TOR community forums here!

Here is Tales from Wilderland!


Check out the campaign's Obsidian Portal page!
And now a quick breakdown of our characters:
PC:  Carl Huffingtoe
Player:  Andrew

Culture:  Hobbit of the Shire
Background:  Too Many Paths To Tread

Calling:  Wanderer

PC:  Denethor Lightbow
Player:  Nick
Culture:    Elf of Mirkwood
Background:  Diligent Defender

Calling:  Scholar

PC:  The "Boarslayer"
Player:  Monster Mike
Culture:  Woodman of Mirkwood
Background:  The Hound

Calling:  Warden

PC:  Brand, son of Gorm
Player:  Jack

Culture:  Barding (Man of Dale)
Background:  Rediscovering the Past

Calling:  Treasure Hunter

Remember to show your love and support for the Geek out on Patreon!  Actual play episodes don't count for our Patreon contributions, so every time we play a game, you get a freebie!

Art:  "Ghost" by Jan Pospíšil
Music:  "The Outlandish Knight" by Kate Rusby

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

The CVG Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue - Episode #014: Let The Good Guys Roll!

A recent artist's rendition of the CVG staff in repose...

Episode Fourteen of The Chippewa Valley Geek Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue is complete and can be found here or on iTunes and Stitcher!

We're talking about capital G-Good and the light side of the Force this time out!



0:00:00  Intros
0:01:05  The Up Front:  On ethical consistency and WWCAD!
0:05:34  The Interview:  Original Gamerati Ed Healy talks about ethics and community, opines on internet karma, and takes on the Geek-del Test!

0:56:25 The Roundtable:  Wherein Mike and Jack get good for once!
1:46:08  Announcements et al
1:47:51  Outro & Credits
1:49:08  Bonus Track:    Browncoat Blues

This episode is dedicated to the memory of the late B.B. King, who particularly kicked ass on that song I like....

Remember to support the CVG on PATREON!

Hey, how about some show notes?




(No really, it's a Larry Elmore.)

The backing sound effects (piano) used in this episode included:

-  "Etude.mp3", obtained via Freesound.org via a Creative Commons Attribution license.  The original file can be found here.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Monster Mike's Geek Reads: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Time is an illusion.  
Lunchtime doubly so.
--
Once in a while, this Geek Who Reads feels the need to wander again the Elysian fields of the misty past and re-read a much-loved work to see if it still holds all the wonder and beauty that it did for me in childhood.  Back in high school, I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, the Universe and Everything.  This was, of course, back in the halcyon days of about 1983 when men were men, women were women, and trilogies had three books.  Then 1984 came and So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish came out, heralded breathlessly as "The astonishing fourth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy!!"  Well, pedantic me had had enough.  Every right-thinking person knows that trilogies can't have four books, so I abandoned my pursuit of the series and never even noticed when Mostly Harmless was published in 1992.


Now, if you grew up on a steady diet of Arthur C. Clark, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gordon R. Dickson, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, and Roger Zelazny, then you have a pretty good idea of what science fiction is all about.  Mostly, it's about putting people in novel futuristic hypothetical situations that couldn't possibly happen today and watching how they respond.  Science fiction is truly a laboratory for exploring human values, where you alter the social construct by making a few key technological changes, and protagonists with fantastic skills and amazing knowledge navigate the perils put before them.  Then Douglas Adams came along and said, "F**k that!  You chumps have the imaginative breadth of a sack of stale peanuts," and proceeded to gleefully thumb his nose at everything that classic sci-fi has held to be holy.  In this far flung sci-fi world, no one understands how their technology works and the characters are just as cluelessly incompetent as average mouth-breathing citizen of today is.  Mostly, they seem to muddle through on dumb luck alone.

Arthur Dent is the primary un-hero of this extended story.  Just a normal British bloke, trying to stop his house from being demolished by uncaring government officials to make way for a traffic bypass at the opening of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  But along comes Ford Prefect, Arthur's unusual friend who warns him that the Earth is about to be destroyed by uncaring Vogons to make way for an intergalactic bypass.  The duo manages to get aboard the Vogon vessel just before the Earth is destroyed, but are soon captured and thrown out the airlock for failing to appreciate Vogon poetry.  Moments before death, they are picked up by The Heart of Gold, a ship powered by the infinite improbability drive and commanded by Zaphod Beeblebrox who is Ford's cousin and also the President of the Galaxy.  Accompanied by Trillian, a former earthwoman, and Marvin the Paranoid Android, they journey to the world of Magrathea where they learn the story about the supercomputer Deep Thought and the Ultimate Answer - 42.  They also learn that Earth was built as an even more super super-computer to come up with the Ultimate Question.

That's Hitchhiker's Guide.  The following four books make even less sense, and defy summarization.  In fact, the whole extended story is just flaming nonsense that gets weirder and jumpier as it bounces across the span of time and throughout the infinity of space.  But, and it's a big but, along the way Adams drops all these brilliant little bits that have become iconic.

Let's just list a few:

42 - Every geek knows this one, even if you've never read the books or seen a movie.  42 is THE ANSWER TO LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING.
A whale and a bowl of petunias falling through the atmosphere and having a few fleeting thoughts before splattering across the landscape below.  If you see someone wearing a variant of this on a t-shirt, they are signaling to you that they are on the inside of geek culture.











Marvin the Paranoid Android.



DON'T PANIC.  The reassuring words emblazoned across The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by which I mean the book that Ford Prefect lends to Arthur Dent which is a sort of encyclopedia of everything.





Towels.  This is another leitmotif of the series.  Always carry a towel.  Useful for so many things.

You get the idea.  It just goes on and on.  Like a mushroom hallucination, it makes no sense at all but it has left these images burned into our collective subconscious.

One of the other repeating themes of the book is probability as a fifth dimension.  The characters' travels take them through the depth and breadth of space-time, from the very beginning of time to the very end and all throughout the unimaginable vastness of space.  And a point that is often demonstrated is that through all that time and all that space, which is so unimaginably vast, everything you can conceive of is likely to have happened somewhere, somewhen, no matter how improbable.  The Infinite Improbability drive actually works on this principle, powered by a cup of tea, and is what allows the characters to bounce around the universe so.

Adam's writing is clever and witty, filled with twisted logic and turns of phrase that simply sparkle.  He is a master of great sentences.  But even though his short game is fantastic, his long game leaves something to be desired.  The overall plot of the series is wandering and ultimately rather unsatisfying, in spite of the fact that every page is a pleasure to read.  However, no one can deny what an impact these books have had.  Reading this series will forever change your outlook, even if it leaves you unsure as to why.  And that is the ultimate hallmark of a great work of literature.

Overall, I rate it at 42.

Monday, September 21, 2015

The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast 006 - Celebrity Fiasco #1: "The Zoo" w/ Ed Healy!

What could possibly go wrong?



Episode 6 of The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast is up and in stores near you (i.e. iTunes)!  

Remember: it's on a different feed from The CVG Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue, so you will need to subscribe to this feed separately if you're into it!


We hosted the Gamerati's Ed Healy for Clearwater Con a couple of months ago, and had the opportunity to christen a series I've had rolling around in my brainpain for a while.  It's Celebrity Fiasco!

The playset of choice was "The Zoo"! 

Fiasco is published by Bully Pulpit Games!

Also there's this:
Remember to send your student ID images of choice to brian@chippewavalleygeek.com to share in the pain.  There's no Google Hangout Fiasco planned, but we'll come up with some other no-prize for the winner...

Remember to show your love and support for the Geek out on Patreon!  Actual play episodes don't count for our Patreon contributions, so every time we play a game, you get a freebie!

Music:  "Everything's Ruined" by Faith No More

Saturday, September 19, 2015

"That gum you like is going to come back in style" - Discussion Thread for the September/October 2015 Monthly Marathon

In a town like Twin Peaks, rock it 'til you grok it.
We're back marathoning and rockin' the Twin Peaks like we've been stuck in the Black Lodge for the last 25 years!

Between now and the end of October, the curriculum consists of:

Haiku Movie Review! Pixels

Could have been worse - if
Peter Jackson directed.

(Dinklage saves it.)  D


Haiku Movie Review! Ant-Man

This clever heist flick
did capture my heart and mind.
Another!  B+




Friday, September 4, 2015

The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast 005 - The One Ring: The Darkening of Mirkwood - Session 04: The Well In The Wood!




Episode 5 of The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast is up and in stores near you (i.e. iTunes)!  

Remember: it's on a different feed from The CVG Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue, so you will need to subscribe to this feed separately if you're into it!

The game is The One Ring, by Cubicle 7 Games!  The campaign is The Darkening of Mirkwood!


Don't remember much about The One Ring?  Check out the Geek's game review of it here!

Or check out the TOR community forums here!

Here is Tales from Wilderland!


Check out the campaign's Obsidian Portal page!

And now a quick breakdown of our characters:
PC:  Carl Huffingtoe
Player:  Andrew

Culture:  Hobbit of the Shire
Background:  Too Many Paths To Tread

Calling:  Wanderer

PC:  Denethor Lightbow
Player:  Nick
Culture:    Elf of Mirkwood
Background:  Diligent Defender

Calling:  Scholar

PC:  The "Boarslayer"
Player:  Monster Mike
Culture:  Woodman of Mirkwood
Background:  The Hound

Calling:  Warden

PC:  Brand, son of Gorm
Player:  Jack

Culture:  Barding (Man of Dale)
Background:  Rediscovering the Past

Calling:  Treasure Hunter

Remember to show your love and support for the Geek out on Patreon!  Actual play episodes don't count for our Patreon contributions, so every time we play a game, you get a freebie!

Music:  "Down In A Hole" by Alice In Chains

Monday, August 17, 2015

The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast 004 - The One Ring: The Darkening of Mirkwood - Session 03: Don't Leave The Path!

The fellowship's caravan gets underway at dawn


Episode 3 of The CVG Actual Play & Community Theater Podcast is up and in stores near you (i.e. iTunes)!  

Remember: it's on a different feed from The CVG Podcast and Rhythm & Blues Revue, so you will need to subscribe to this feed separately if you're into it!

The game is The One Ring, by Cubicle 7 Games!  The campaign is The Darkening of Mirkwood!


Don't remember much about The One Ring?  Check out the Geek's game review of it here!

Or check out the TOR community forums here!

Here is Tales from Wilderland!


Check out the campaign's Obsidian Portal page!

And now a quick breakdown of our characters:

PC:  Carl Huffingtoe
Player:  Andrew

Culture:  Hobbit of the Shire
Background:  Too Many Paths To Tread

Calling:  Wanderer

PC:  Denethor Lightbow
Player:  Nick
Culture:    Elf of Mirkwood
Background:  Diligent Defender

Calling:  Scholar

PC:  Draveon Silverwing
Player:  Bill

Culture:  Elf of Mirkwood
Background:  A Muscial Legacy

Calling:  Warden

PC:  The "Boarslayer"
Player:  Monster Mike
Culture:  Woodman of Mirkwood
Background:  The Hound

Calling:  Warden

PC:  Brand, son of Gorm
Player:  Jack

Culture:  Barding (Man of Dale)
Background:  Rediscovering the Past

Calling:  Treasure Hunter


Remember to show your love and support for the Geek out on Patreon!  Actual play episodes don't count for our Patreon contributions, so every time we play a game, you get a freebie!

Art:  "Loading the Rafts" by Jon Hodgson
Music:  "Separate Ways" by Journey