EMERALD CITY!

I'M (probably) GOING TO EMERALD CITY COMIC CON THIS YEAR!

I'M (almost definitely) DRESSING UP AS THE DEFENESTRATOR!

I'M (absolutely) GOING TO FINALLY MEET ONE OF MY LONGTIME FRIENDS IN THE REALLY REAL WORLD INSTEAD OF THE INTERNET!

...

ahem...

Excuse me, I got a bit excited.

To clarify a bit, Emerald City Comic Con is a convention in Seattle that I have wanted to go to for years now. And, with a good friend or two, I am most likely fling to attend this year, and will be cosplaying as well!

After D&D the other night, Steev and I were talking about the idea of him cosplaying as Dogwelder for ECCC, and I expressed my excitement and desire to join in as his Section 8 teammate, The Defenestrator. A little while later, and we decided to approach another D&D friend to be Jean de Baton-Baton, and are talking about how easy most of these costumes will be to get together.

In my excitement, I put out a tweet asking if any of my friends would be attending ECCC. "Maxii", from the 9thWonders days said that she would be, and she's one of the 9thers that I still talk to and haven't met in person.  So, on top of my understandable excitement over everything else, getting to finally meet someone I've known for years makes it even better!

2014, you might turn out alright after all. I was iffy after that crappy showing in your first week, but you're getting better.

Whispering Forest, part one: The Recruits

If you read last week's post, you might be wondering how D&D went this week. The real test would be to ask my friends that had to deal with my first attempt at DMing, but from the sounds of things, it went all right!

So far, I've successfully thrown in obvious Welcome to Night Vale references -- one of them being the theme of the first overall adventure (The Whispering Forest) -- and have plans to reference other things as well. It's fun learning to think on your feet when you're making things up as you go along with the input of crazy people.

Speaking of crazy, it has been brought to my attention that I didn't mention ALL OF THE THINGS of gray importance about Steev's character. Not only is he a minotaur named Dave, but he's a minotaur BARD named Dave... and he really loves killing Fey creatures.

It's beyond awesome having someone who actually plays music playing a bard character, because at one point, Steev was playing and singing "Lolth, I lift your name on high". Lolth is his character's goddess, who loves killing elves.

On top of that, we've got a Gnoll fighter (Gnoll are 7' tall and eat flesh), an Elf assassin with a mysterious secret, and a Warforged Swordmage (Warforged are sort of like constructs with a personality) just looking at them all like they're crazy.

I didn't even go the old route of having them all be friends. I just had them all recruited, so... maybe they'll go player-vs-player, and I'll get to moderate the Ultimate Showdown of D&D Destiny. :P

Anyway, less nerdy stuff is coming soon... Maybe.

I have become Death, destroyer of worlds

Greetings, adventurers! Welcome to another post of the Keeping The Bar Low blog.

Hopefully the folks over at Geekly Inc won't mind me blatantly ripping off the intro of their Drunks and Dragons podcast (which is awesome, as far as I'm concerned. You should really give it a listen), but it felt right! Yes, folks, it is finally happening... I'm about to become a Dungeon Master!

(Source)

I've got the start of a set-up going, for my first night behind the Dungeon Master screen: borrowing Steev's DM screen, and I've got a notebook with Super Secret stuff, as well as less Super Secret reference material (level goals, treasure parcel recommendations, etc). It's truly time to step in to a new level of geek... and that's coming from someone who listens to podcasts about Doctor Who and D&D, and writes a blog about an obscure comic book character from the 80s.

Monday night is going to be "kick-off" for my campaign, which is going to have all kinds of fun references for my players to figure out. Sounds like we'll be playing two days in a row, since Tony is leaving the state later this month. My hours after work until Monday are going to be spent working on new ideas, and prepping myself to be completely thrown off if my friends go completely off-the-rails on my story -- which would not be surprising, since most DMs seem to have that happen.

Still, if all else fails, this could happen....

(Source)

What will happen? Will I be an utter failure as a DM? Will the players follow the storyline? Will DAVE THE MINOTAUR start a bandcamp page? Find out next time on KEEPING THE BAR LOW!

When does "addiction" cross over in to "serious problem"?

Wherever that line is, there's a very good chance that my D&D habit is approaching it, if not leaving it choking on it's own dust miles ago. Here's a warning for you: this post will feature a lot of geekspeak. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here....

(Source)

For over a year now, I've been part of a D&D group with a mostly-continuous membership. We have Steev as the DM, and the only original players left are his fiancée Megan, and me. When we started, there was another guy, but his girlfriend's joining-and-then-getting-pissed-about-the-rules caused him to leave. Still, they have a statue of an auguste clown that kind of looks like him, so it's like he's still in the group!

I've mentioned them before, but our other two current players are Beau (someone I didn't know initially, but who joined at the same time as the departed player's girlfriend) and Daniel (an old friend who is probably a little more nerdy than me), and that's been our group for a while now. Close to half a year, I think. Our quest is going awesome, even if our players have been in the same area FOREVER -- part of that because we didn't play for a couple months.

If you're a D&D player, especially if you know much about 4e (fourth edition), here is our character layout:

• Megan: Githzerai Psion, Time Bender paragon path. Her whole idea behind the character was wanting to go all "timey-wimey". She's sort of become an adoptive mother to what might be a five-headed killer dragon goddess.
• Me: Longtooth Shifter Avenger, Hammer of Judgment paragon path. I've always liked wolves/werewolves in fiction, and longtooth shifters are descended from them. Plus, Avengers are like a (more) violent version of paladins. They exist to smite their god's enemies. My character worships Bahamut, but Bahamut might have died during our adventure so far. I'm not 100% sure.
• Conrad (the lost player): Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut. Our DM threw in a variant of his character as an NPC since we all miss him, but he's been gone for a while now.
• Beau: Tiefling Swordmage, and I don't remember what he went for with his paragon. Tieflings are descended from demons, and so Beau's character is similar to mine: high HP, and some pretty significant damage potential. We refer to ourselves as the tanks of the group.
• Daniel: Razorclaw Shifter Monk, hasn't hit paragon yet. His kind of shifter is descended from werecats, so we have some fun like throwing him in to large bodies of water. And while his monk is very much of the "must be up close" type, he still gets some pretty decent damage in. Plus, he forces enemies to move a lot.

That's what is in store for me tonight. We are working our way through the Pyramid of Shadows adventure that Wizards of the Coast put out, and having a lot of fun on a regular basis. We always keep in mind the essentials for a fun D&D session: we bring/make food and snacks, we keep it light between players and serious between characters, and Steev makes sure to remind everyone of the most basic rule of D&D: "You can always kill Justin."

Oooh, shiny!

Hello, internet. It's been a while since we talked, you know?

Trust me, it's not you. It's all on me, and the fact that I've been slacking on the blogging front. Between the lack of home internet, a data cap on my phone, and the fact that my brain kind of goes THPPPPPPPP (the "raspberry" sound, if we're not on the same wavelength) after work and on my days off... it's completely on me.

I have been having some fun, though! It's not all work and work and work and wo -- you get the point. Once a week, most weeks, I've still been having D&D sessions with Steev and Megan (and Beau and old-friend-also-new-recruit Daniel), which are going awesome. There'll be a post on that soon, but let's just say... my character is awesome. And he might smite you.

This past few days have been the best in a while. I took my vacation time and got a pair of Greyhound tickets to come and visit Jynni, which was amazing after a long time apart. So amazing, in fact, that I took the opportunity to do something that I've been thinking about -- I'll let her explain it with this picture from Facebook:

Yeah, it's official: I found her. The one that makes every day better, even from a few hundred miles away. As the saying has gone for a very long time, I liked it, so I put a ring on it. Her family has welcomed me with open arms, pretty similarly to how the other side of her family (Jim and Wendy) has treated me. That's not the best picture of the ring, though... here's another one:

She thinks diamonds are lifeless, and sapphires are her favorite gemstone. She doesn't like how yellow gold looks against her skin, and loves sterling silver. Between this and the decorative false stargazer lilies (her favorite) I brought her... she was a happy camper. With the distance, it's not every day that I get to spoil her, so I wanted to make the visit special.

So that's how this last few days have been: Proposing on Thursday, date night on Friday to see Star Trek Into Darkness and grab some grub at Sonic, I cooked dinner for her and her family (daughter, mom, stepdad, sister, brother-in-law) on Saturday, and then we went to a wedding on Sunday.

Now, it's time to call it a night. I'm going to try and suck at this blogging thing less, especially while I have Hens McCluckin with me. But, you know, more on him later.

Free Comic Book Day!

(... was last week. And I wrote this then, but this is the first chance I've gotten to put it up. So, enjoy!)

This was the first year since I started reading comics that I went out for FCBD! My friends Megan and Steev were planning a morning trip to Olympia for Free Comic Book Day and invited me along. On top of that, it was a gorgeous 80° day... so I spent most of it inside like a good nerd should.

We went to the two comic book stores in Oly: Danger Room and Olympic Cards and Comics. Danger Room is my preferred shop, I have a file there full of Image titles, and they have been a HUUUGE help with my Blue Devil blog, but Olympic Cards and Comics is a gigantic store by comparison -- I couldn't not go there, too.

They were having three events in one: FCBD, storewide sale, and a signing with four big names in comics. Since there were so many things at 20% off, I picked up the 13-issue hardcover of Invincible (vol. 1) for almost $5 off the price, after taxes and everything. We had to be back in town by a certain time, or we'd have stayed for the signing and gotten Greg Rucka to sign something. Oh, well. Another time -- maybe when I actually own some of Rucka's work. That'd probably be a good idea for a signing.

All in all, it was a great day. We got a ton of free comics, and then Steev and I came back and laughed our asses off to some Brian Posehn stand-up. Did any of you got out for FCBD? Let's hear some stories!

Megan: "I wanted to give the nerds something to look at!"
Steev: "There will be so many awkward boners at the comic book shop."