Hi Internet!

How's it going? Pretty good, you say? That's nice.

Oh? You want to know what I'm up to? Just working and waiting for my build to finish so I can see if I broke everything. Looking forward to lunch in half an hour, where we will continue our quest to save that Dyluck guy in Secret of Mana. Also, thinking about WoW and role-playing and listening to Jonathan Coulton.

Also, thinking that I should totally link to Scott Campbell again (despite him being linked on the side-bar) just because he has this picture on his blog:
How awesome is that? Very, that's how.

Where the Blog Got It's Name

Some of you may have been wondering why this little corner of the web is referred to as The Rising Force. Well, it's actually tied into the monikers that my wife and I use to mask our identities.

A few years ago, our friends and us got onto a little bit of a superhero kick, spurred on by watching the Teen Titans animated series. Now, this same group of friends are actually the ones we role-play with, so we ended up starting a game of Mutants and Masterminds where we all took on the roles of super-powered teenagers brought together to form a group. That group was eventually dubbed "the Rising Force", although it took us a damn long time to come up with that.

When I decided that I wanted to start a blog, I decided that I wanted to have it disconnected from other sites that I maintain, and so I borrowed elements from that game, including my character's moniker (Gauntlet) and the name of the group itself. My wife posts here under the name of her character (Goldfire) as well, and if any of my friends who were involved ever want to post here, you might hear from Sparkshot, the Flash, or the Runic Soldier. Although the most likely person to guest-post here didn't have a character, since he was the GM. Maybe he'd want to go by Ignition, one of the more sociable of the villains.

The Weekend Thus Far

...we slept until 1:30 pm, because we didn't get home until after 3 am.
Thus far we've done practically nothing :) We set up the guild bank, populated it, set up some auctions, and now we're having breakfast/lunch/dinner ("The Meal Du Jour") before we go to role-playing.

We also spent a little bit of time browsing Kaliban's Loot List and the WoW Armory, because my wife wants her resto-druid to have better gear. At 70 she's still wearing most of the Wild Draenish set that I made her so long ago. Unfortunately, the Armory suggested a bunch of non-resto junk from instances, and it doesn't look like there's a whole lot to choose from anyways.

Any druids out there who have any thoughts?

How's it going?

Since hitting 70, Coperiana and Laheth have gotten a bit less play-time, and we've been catching up on other things. Since I do so love lists and ramblings, I'll combine them now, for my pleasure:

• Sonnik is at a very respectable 66 now.
• I've been crunching for the last week, so I haven't played many games at home.
• We have our 360 now, and just rented Oblivion, which Goldfire is enjoying today.
• Halo 3 multiplayer has dominated my lunch hours since it came out (and a bit of at-work dinner breaks), and I finally have a copy to call my own.
• Our last session of Burning Wheel was... interesting. Almost a total party wipe (unconscious and not dead, fortunately). We'll see how things turn out later.
• I finished a couple of books. Re-read Soul Music and finished If I Pay Thee Not In Gold, which I was apparently borrowing for over two years. Fancy that.

Alright - the build is nearing completion, so it's back to work for me.

Burning the Bloody Hills... the begining

So we are starting another new game in Burning Wheel... Exciting times! It is a combination of generic B horror films, Castlevania, and classic Romanian culture surrounding the real Count. We are calling the area in game the Bloody Hills. All based on the in game local history of the Red King and the battles fought in the area to try and take over... However, the legend goes that if you conquer the castle, you claim the kingdom. Entire armies have gone in trying... None have been heard from again.

This is actually the first game where me and Gauntlet actually play husband and wife. We have always tried to keep the personal stuff out of games so we don't make our friends uncomfortable or change the feel of the game... Slightly different group of players and we stated upfront that this is what we wanted to do. I hope it works out well since we are hoping this will be a long running game.

This Blog Is My Blog, This Blog Ain't Your Blog...

Yeah, I said that I was going to probably talk about stuff other than WoW on this blog, and I haven't done it much. Know what? Too bad. I don't want to talk about my personal life (I had a LiveJournal account before (still do, but I don't update it)), and work is tightly under Non-Disclosure Agreements... pretty much all I can about that is where I work and what platforms we develop for (Foundation 9 Studios / Amaze Entertainment / Griptonite; Primarily Nintendo DS currently).

I guess I can give a tidbit of information regarding non WoW stuff though. I've been reading over The Princes Kingdom, and I plan on running a trial to learn the rules and then hopefully an actual game this weekend. We have a group of folks (all friends) who we play roleplaying games together with, but at some point it became a sole member's role to be the Game Master. Which is a shame. He's a great guy, and a great GM (he was my Best Man, and his speech at our wedding was about pen and paper games), but he's been wanting to play in something for a while. A few of our other friends ran games, but they've all had issues (Ah, Fallout. What an appropriate name for our group dynamic, as well as a witty pun about how to gain pertinent information: Drop out of the campaign for a bit).

So I'm taking it on myself to try running something. I'm fairly quick on my feet, I can be engaging enough in conversation, and I wouldn't mind being the leader sometimes. My only real fear is that it won't be fun, and it will be my fault. Which could be construed as being silly, but it's a big deal. Everybody will be there to have fun and hang out, and they are all really good friends who I hate to disappoint.

I had a talk with my friend about it (The Best Man, for lack of a better name that wouldn't link his online presence or mine to this blog), and I'm better mentally prepared for it... but now I'm in the middle of an alpha crunch, and am not sure if we can pull off the trial run before the main event. Maybe I'll try it the morning before the game, if I'm still working late by Thursday (Friday is always taken).