Category: Otaku

Millenium

December 20, 2011

What did you do on June 22, 2006? Don’t remember, do you? I know what I did, I played World of Warcraft. I know this because on that day I made the very first entry on this blog. And that’s special because today is the day I make the 1000th entry 🙂

1000 entries in five and a half years! That’s almost exactly one every two days. It’s been going so long now that even I can’t remember most of what I have put on it. So I’m going to take today as a sort of ‘best of’ of my blog. After all, aren’t the nostalgic posts the best ones?

A few facts and figures first. There are 1000 posts in 14 categories that include a total of 3064 images. 705 comments have been made by a scant few 8 commentators. Since it has been impossible to create accounts for 5+ years this number is not likely to change soon. However there are three commentators out there that have never added a comment…

Here’s the timeline of significant blog events:

Sep 30, 2006: This nostalgic post about old homes, opened my eyes to using the blog as a sort of nostalgia tool and is what I consider to be a turning point. The post is worth clicking through today, not just for a re-read but also to see how much Google Earth imagery has improved in five years (compare to yesterday’s entry for instance).

Nov 18, 2006: It’s almost hard to believe now, but Yossi was once small.

Feb 14, 2007: An unspectacular post about a blizzard, and my pains (manually) clearing away the snow. Why do I cite this? It was clear by now the blog had become a part of my life: why else would I have taken such pains to document such a task, especially getting KLS to come outside as well just to take photos of me?!

May 12, 2007: First post dedicated to a movie review (Ultraman: The Next). Even today such dedicated posts are rare, but they’re usually good 🙂

May 21, 2007: First post from a phone. Ignore the title, I was testing the functionality so I could blog from Hawaii.

July 16, 2007: Still one of my all-time favourite posts about a specific game. This tale is 100% true. What a great day that was!

August 27, 2007: Great post about Dragon mag and an old RPG for two reasons. 1) My first ‘retro RPG post’, 2) AW’s comment 🙂

Pixels In My Eyes: This post, made in late August 2007, is, in my opinion, the best I’ve ever written for the blog. I don’t remember much about the creation of this post, but given that I very rarely plan any post beyond an idea, I expect I just wrote it all down as I thought of it with little revision. This is one of a very few incredibly personal posts about my thoughts that I’ve put out here for all to see, and even today when I read it it makes me powerfully nostalgic. This also happens to be the most-commented entry in the entire life of this blog.

Dec 31, 2007: First ever post from Australia. This was during the first of my (soon to be four) solo Australia vacations.

The Ten Worst Photos Of Me Ever Taken: What a post! This one will never go out of style. I love that I did this and it was well received. By the way, don’t I look a little like the Ancient Aliens guy in #8?

June 25, 2008: I wrote this post about cockfighting when I was in Puerto Rico, as a laugh. I later found out more than a few people actually believed it. I was surprised. I guess I can be convincing 🙂

Dec 12, 2008: Funny cellphone entry made during the ice storm that killed out power for a few days. I don’t think I was faking that facial expression…

Jan 10, 2009: There have been many World of Warcraft posts on the blog (including, as I said, the very first one) but this one, describing a 54 minute long fight between me and a single raid boss, is my favourite. I can’t wait to start playing WoW again in the new year!

Jan 31, 2009: Read the text, look at the picture, read the comments 🙂

Feb 8, 2009: I’m citing this because it is a very, very fond memory – the first time I got to meet a Doctor Who. He was a truly gracious person and I remember this fondly.

May 30, 2009: This is the most controversially titled blog post ever. Happily it is not without factual basis, and that’s not the only thing in this particular entry that demonstrates why we love Japan so much. We need to return…

June 6, 2009: This post can claim a lot. Not only is it full of Rilakkuma, but it also introduces my most-watched youtube video (over 45,000 views to date) and includes a now-legendary photo of me and Emi at the very end.

Doctor Who Video Games: Still my most-viewed post, and the number one source of redirects to this blog from Google. This was heavily researched when I wrote it, since I could find no such list online. Today this actual post is linked from a Wikipedia article 🙂

Dec 22, 2009: The infamous ‘trojan cake‘ event. Still a good and funny story 🙂

April 3, 2010: Hyperbolic post made from my cellphone when I was in line to buy an iPad on launch day.

June 22, 2010: This recipe post has my favourite opening line of any post I’ve ever made. I wonder if I should do more recipe entries?

July 28, 2010: My favourite post from England. Lovely Blackpool, in the rain. I’ll be back there one day.

October 21, 2010: A ghost story. Although my language may be flowery, you’d be surprised by how little I embellish the stories I post on this blog (and believe me, there are many others to come).

The Wish: A disturbing post, strangely real and incredibly melancholic. I was clearly in a funk that day, and this was the result. I’ll be honest and say I am proud of it, and I think it’s a powerful piece. But as with Pixels In My Eyes, these sorts of entries will probably come along only once ever 4 or 5 years.

April 25, 2011: For those that doubt my game-otaku-dom has reached the highest level! Going through the blog like I have, it’s remarkable how many game-related posts about truly arcane topics there are here. Even I’m impressed by my gaming knowledge and enthusiasm!

Tales From Green Hell (Part 1 & Part 2): I was so proud of these posts! To show off some spectacular photos supplied by my parents was a thrill. You can expect more like these in the future.

November 22, 2011: My other source of great pride this year.

Over five years is a long to time to keep this up, and 1000 posts is a lot of words. At times – including very recently – I have debated stopping and closing it once and for all, but it’s become a part of my life I feel I’d miss were it to end.

Given that I’m not close to running out of ideas, I don’t really see Robot Claw closing up shop any time soon 🙂

Game Books

December 18, 2011

Some years ago I bought a read a book called Dungeons & Desktops, which is a history of computer RPGs.

Although the writing is a bit dry, the book is comprehensive and intelligently written and I highly recommended if you’re interested in the topic. Since I’d played almost all of the games mentioned, it read almost like a diary and I still remember the book fondly.

So when I recently discovered a book about the history of (pencil & paper) Role Playing Games, I had to get it.

Published back in 1991 this is an old book and obviously somewhat out of date. It is, however, a staggeringly comprehensive history of RPGs and related products up until that date. The book is over 400 pages long, small print, and is about 95% lists of RPG products categorized by type or genre (‘Fantasy: Arthurian’, ‘Science Fiction: Dark Future’ and ‘Pirates and Swashbucklers’ for example). In addition the relevant game details, the author has provided a sentence or two (or many, in the case of the more famous games) describing the game.

Some examples…

“The rules are of moderate complexity; this is a skill-based system similar to the 2nd edition of Star Trek, not an introductory system” (Doctor Who RPG, FASA, 1985)

“Scenario in which Indy goes after one of the holy nails used in Christ’s crucifixion, an adventure that leads from Australia to Barcelona. Can be played solo or in a group.” (The Fourth Nail [Indiana Jones RPG module], TSR, 1985)

The last sentence in that second description caught my eye. “Can be played solo”? It’s interesting, skimming through the book (when I return from Australia I’m reading this cover to cover) how many modules for many different RPG systems can be played solo. I’ve made a note of that…

Happily the book includes a dedicated (23 page) section for ‘Solo Gamebooks’. In addition to the usual suspects, I discovered a few new series reading through this chapter. A quick click over to Amazon allowed me to already acquire a few books from these series:

Ye gods! Compelling name aside, this looks to be a shockingly complex, high entry (674 in total) gamebook based around solving crimes with the somewhat-assistance of the famous detective. Looking forward to reading through this one when I get the time, since it’s highly reviewed on the gamebook sites (and in Heroic Worlds). I actually got the first two of the 9 total books in this series.

Iron Crown, in the 1980s, turned their pens to licensed Gamebooks. Their initial success was with the Lord Of The Rings books, and this led to the Sherlock Holmes and Narnia series. This is the first book in the latter, a lengthy (450 entry) telling an original story in a part of Narnia not discussed in the novels. It looks to be a complex system, but lacking combat. Should be an interesting read.

What an evocative cover! Sadly, it won’t arrive until after Christmas so I haven’t seen I inside yet, but this is one from a large format solo play gamebook series set in the Forgotten Realms TSR published in the late 1980s. If you’re keeping score, I think there are three different TSR gamebook series in total now! At any rate I’m looking forward to getting this one because what little I’ve read about it makes it sound a tad… unusual… 🙂

Next week I’m off to Australia. Every year I think to myself I couldn’t possibly find any new Gamebooks not yet in my collection, but then I do just that! I wonder if my luck will continue?

There Is No Hope When Commanders Go To War

December 15, 2011

In the tradition of the last two years, I am bringing Magic decks with me to Australia. And to continue the trend, this year the number ups by 60 once again to an impressive 600 cards!

The theme this year is Commander (aka. ‘EDH’), a special ‘casual’ MTG format based around 100 card singleton (only one of each card) decks. Each card contains and is defined by a ‘General’, which must be a legendary creature card. The colours permitted in the deck are restricted to those used to cast the general, and the basic idea is to build decks based around the abilities of the General. Players start with 40 life, and the games tend to be longer both because of and to enable the inclusion of high CMC cards. In other words, the games are varied, flashy, and fun 🙂

Here are the six decks in no particular order. For each deck I show the General and one of the “I win” cards that players would hope to cast…

Infinite Soldiers

A monowhite deck based exclusively around generating large (in some cases *vast*) amounts of soldier tokens and pumping them up to be monsters. There’s a lot of nice cards in here that combo well with each other. Mana is barely an issue, and the deck has some nice removal as well. While it is (theoretically) vulnerable to some weenie-killing effects in the other decks, my (2-v-2) playtests have shown me that this one wins more often than it loses. Lots of fun to play!

Bigger Than Big

This single-minded deck doesn’t really care what the opponents are doing, it just focuses on getting some really, really big monsters out as quickly as possible. Who cares about ridiculous mana costs when you have Mayael in play? And if all else fails, reset the board. This is the gambler’s deck – finicky and mana-sensitive (it’s the only tricolour I made) and slow – but almost impossible to beat when it gets one or more of the truly, truly massive beasties on the board. I expect some laughs when this one goes off 🙂

I Think Not

I’ve barely played any Commander, but I know enough that one basic rule is ‘keep a low profile’. We may be playing 4 player games in Australia (Me, BS, AW, PB), and if any 3 gang up on the 4th they’ll die very quickly. So a strategy is to seem to be not much of a threat, and bide your time. Good luck doing that with this deck, which is designed to stop the opponents from doing anything. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (the General) has a massive target drawn right on his face from the word go, so you better bet this deck has some strong defenses to stay alive once it makes life difficult for all it’s opponents. A cold, calculating and controlling deck. Intellectual and evil. I love it!

Vampires

Look at that – two Innistrad cards! I saw them and loved them both and just wanted to use each so built a deck using Olivia as the Commander. Think ‘Vampires & direct damage’ and it’s not much more complex than that. Testing has shown that Olivia is a maddeningly frustrating card to play against, so I think this deck will be a favourite target of all opponents. Good thing it’s got a few tricks up it’s sleeve…

Token Apocalypse

Almost every card in this deck allows the player to put one or more tokens into play. The idea is to get a bunch of stuff out, and use Kamahl’s second ability to overwhelm the opponent. What raises the deck to the next (or perhaps even next-squared) level is Doubling Season, which has the honor of being the most expensive MTG card I ever bought. With the help of Doubling Season and another card, during one test play this deck put 44 tokens into play in one turn and each of them was a 55/55 creature! Of course the chance of having Doubling Season and Parallel Lives out at the same time is tiny, but we can all dream to be playing the deck when it happens 🙂

What’s Yours Is Mine

Does it even matter what’s in your own deck when you have the opponents cards to play with? Wrexial thinks not, and when he mills fifty of your cards and then casts your own supercreature then you’ll see the meaning of traumatize. Another not-so-high concept deck that works best when it stops the opponent from working, which suffers from the drawback that it seems very strong in 2-v-2 but possibly much weaker in multiplayer. We shall see…

On and off, these decks have been a few months in the making. I can’t wait to try them out against each other.