Adventures in MineCraft

Nope, I'm not talking about other people playing Minecraft, or whatever... I'm talking about ME playing MineCraft! Yes, I brought a copy... and now a lot of time disappears while I am playing.

Following advice, I started in Creative in order to get a sense of the controls. Then switched to Survival - Peaceful, eventually moved to Easy, and now on Normal. And I've gotten to the Nether, but haven't tried the Ender Dragon (because, for a start, I can barely find any diamonds, and no sign of blaze creature things).

Still, I have a base:

And a place to grow wheat, and a start of a library / enchanting table.

Oh, and Minecraft water physics is weird.

So yeah, this is now a thing.

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RPing through the Ages

So, my physical RPing (as opposed to Skyping) is currently on hold. It's been a while so let's think back...

My renewed interesting in RPGing started when I felt like getting involved easily in sessions, and it occurred to me that on the internet, there must exist recorded sessions. And I was right, RPGMP3. From there, I went over to Heroic Cthulhu, and joined a Skype group.

I also started going to WARGS meetings, and doing the one off sessions of mainly Shadowrun there. Eventually I did find a local group that was starting up, that was basically at the bottom of my street.

And so, nearly seven years ago, I started in with Risan and a 4th Ed companion.

I spent a long time with him, going from one GM to another, to different houses, and some running myself. Eventually, he got up to 24th level... and that's it. However, I also went to other games, like Rogue Trader, and Dragon Lance, and Gamma World. With more GM and house changes.

Eventually, I moved to another group the GM was involved in, and started in on Space Marines. Then Hunter the Vigil. And moved around other game types with them.

Until eventually, back in the D&D world with Pathfinder, which is sort of edition 3.75, and there it is, seven years later. ... have I gone backwards? ...

That was a long time. Other live games might yet happened, but I think it's time for a break.

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Reign of Winter

[What's this? A day early? There's a reason!]

With the fortress army providing distraction, we went behind the siege lines and attacked the general dragonkin in charge. In which she could fly, and none of us could, so that failed hard. Mage died twice, and Hogan once, so that was fun. And I don't think I even got to hit it once? But eventually, we wore it down, and yay?

With that, we launched our next offensive, which was to get to the Ivory Glass tower and take out the leader Wrex, the white dragon (I do have the name somewhere, but I'm going with that). On the way, we saw a werewolf being attacked by two large creatures, so of course we attacked (on the side of the werewolf). After taking them out, she told us of a useful anti-dragon spear and a back way into the tower.

Going to the cave, we found figures trapped in ice, and I found a Roper. As in found it by having it attack me. It smacked me around a lot (strength damage - I went unconscious), but eventually we bet it up.

And after going through some random encounters we ignored, we finally went up against the dragon. We prepared ourselves... and only about half the spells were useful. The dragon was waiting for us (we weren't subtle), and so the battle was joined. Unfortunately, the spell casters couldn't get past the spell resistance, and the fire resistance, so it was up to us melee people. And generally only two of my attacks could hit. But I did manage to successfully sunder a fog cloud, so nyah sucks boo to you, dragon! And then dealt the killing blow! Go us!

We got the final key we needed for the cauldron, and although the army was having problems, we didn't stick around. Back at the hut, we put the keys in the cauldron, and...

[...and that's it. For now. The GM is a) moving away, and b) selling the house we met in. So no more of that. Technically, the game is 'parked' in case we can ever meet again, but... well... that was a long time I spent RPGing with that group in various forms.]

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Flash A-aah!

I think I saw this a while ago, certainly I’ve seen bits of it. As has Peter and Al and Paul, so read their thoughts.

A weirdo is picking on the earth, and only one mad scientist knows what to do! And that is kidnap two people and take them away to the planet Mongo!! Where they encounter Ming The Merciless!!! And a bunch of other strange characters. Fortunately, Flash Gordon makes all the ladies hot for him, so the princess helps him to escape and off they go to Timothy Dalton land where they play pickaboo with a scorpion creature thing (which is about the only scene I remember properly. Then off to Birdman island where they learn of the Power of Friendship, which is immediately forgotten when Dr Doom turns up (seriously Klytus is one Latveria away from being that villain), and Klytus immediately wins. Then Flash and Birdmen sacrifice themselves so that Flash can sacrifice himself to stop the wedding of the century. And defeat Ming in a rather pathetic way (yeah, that’s really dumb). Hurray!

My main one word review: Cartoony. Certainly fitting considering that this was indeed a comic strip originally, but with the bright colours, overly done sets, and over the top performances, the cartoony nature influences everything. Which rather makes it hard to take seriously. Fine, this isn’t something that is trying to be a philosophical treatise, but still it needs some gravitas to pull this off, and doesn’t come anywhere near it. Some of the effects are good… but most, to me, are a failure. Maybe too early to meet production’s vision?

Topol has the best role as mad Zarkov, and looks to be having the most fun. On the other hand, while Melody Anderson has the leading role as Dale, the character goes from nearly a strong woman to simpering helpless creature in a matter of minutes. And she, of course, has a cat fight with Ornelia Muti as Princess Aura. Keeping to the original subject matter and its treatment of women, eh? And there are some other well known people in this as well.

Basically, this was best left as nostalgia memories rather than as something to be viewed again.

And because one must:


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Agey Ultrony

Hey, another movie that's out before the US releases it... just like the last Avengers actually, if I recall. But this is the second one!

We definitely start with an action beat... and then the plot goes into quiet moments and then action moments, back and forth. The overall plot won't surprise most people, but the actual beats aren't what you might expect from the trailer, which didn't give everything away for a change... but I'm not going to say what because you're already decided if you are going to see this, or already have seen this, so there's not much point.

Anyhoo, there's decent performances, although there are a lot of characters packed in, with some cameos and some just getting name referenced. This is one of them problems with people being actors needing to have contracts and so some of them just aren't economical to get in for a quick moment, and some just don't want to be involved with the movies if they can help it (Hello Natalie Portman). New characters wise, I didn't think much was really done of note with Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Elizabeth Olsen gets more meat, and they're layering in future relationships. James Spader is clearly having fun, but then he's mainly audio (unless he pulled an Andy Sirkis (who's also in this, briefly) and stood in for Ultron for all scenes).

Final important note, there is a mid credits (as such) tease, but no post all credits tease (at least on the version I saw, which would be the international one), so if you need to run off to a small room, you don't need to hang around.

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Spwnd

There can't be that many superhero based movies I haven't seen. But there was at least one, so now I've seen it. Yep... that's a movie I've seen.

In an incredibly stupid plot, the devil wants someone to lead his armies and kick off armageddon on earth. So he gets a clown demon to get a bad guy to get another guy to do nasty things, and eventually that latter dude is killed off. The devil says 'come back and your wife will be safe', so he does, of course, but comes back with lots of bad CGI based powers (really, was this an Asylum film?). The clown convinced bad guy to wire himself up with bombs, then tries to get Spawn to kill him... so that's where the movie completely falls apart. Why doesn't clown kill bad guy to set off the bombs? Why didn't the clown just set off the bombs directly? There might be reasons for this in the comic (assuming this is an actual plot from the comic), but they aren't explained here. And then Spawn is good, and doesn't kill anyone, and is cool with his ex-wife's new life, and everyone gets puppies and rainbows and whatever.

Let's talk about the clown, played by John Leguizamo... no-one is coming off with any dignity here, not John, not the actors acting with him, not the character. Was he from the comic? In some way I hope so, because he might be better fleshed out there. In some way I hope not, because not even the comic deserves that. (I haven't read the comic.) And there's a lot of other good actors in this who also get terrible roles, Michael Jai White, Martin Sheen, D. B. Sweeny... I doubt any of them signed up because this was a 'classic' script.

So yeah... as I said, that's a movie I saw. And don't feel like you need to.

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Wonder Woman?????

Oh gods... look at what we could have had in 1967.


What the hell was that? What we have here is the worse depiction of Wonder Woman that we are lucky to have evidence that we dodged. What's up with that timing of lines? ("All that... (leave space for lightning strike that doesn't happen) noise.") And Diana is a clutz? And has a harridan mother?

And that costume? The hell? And what's with all the "she thinks she has the beauty of Aphrodite"? And then the actors can't even do the mirror scene properly. That's acting 101! Was this the first take with no rehearsals?

Still, I will give them they did the wire work nicely, with her climbing out first. (Although the quality helps there... although that sound effect doesn't.)

Come back Adrianne Palicki, all is forgiven!

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