Monthly Update: July 2016

This article should have gone up last Friday, but July sort of snuck up on me, although I was aware that it was no longer June for a good portion of the day.

So June was quite a full month.  I finished (in mostly practical terms) my accounting classes and have only an internship to find and complete by August if I want to be fully completed by the end of the summer, otherwise into Fall Quarter it is.

Our Dungeons & Dragons group lost Chreekat (while he Summers in Finaland), but gained four more people, all of which are new to D&D on some level, and all are new to 5th Edition.  DMing for seven people was definitely interesting as the largest group that I had done previously had been five (with six PC's).  Keeping track of all the players, especially during the one combat encounter was a mentally exhausting and I now know that I've definitely grown as a DM since I am pretty certain that I would have been able to handle a group this large last year when our group was just starting out and me with my DMing dry spell of close to 10 years.  Probably also having played Mansions of Madness which has, more or less, the role of DM as a part of that game helped a bit; speaking of which, I bought the Forbidden Alchemy expansion last year and I have yet to actually play it, so maybe tonight (being Friday) if Conklederp's up for it.

And we did play the first story from Forbidden Alchemy, being the one that was like a sequel to Lovecraft's "Herbert West - The Reanimator."  As it turned out, I didn't play the role of the Keeper quite right in that I read one of my enemy movement cards wrong and moved them only one space when I should have moved them three.  Plus with the choices I went with, about a quarter of the board/mansion/former medical school didn't need to be explored and the group we played with [Conklederp, D, and M.(Don't have schnazzy nicknames for them yet, but I will).] were too smart for their own good and they B-lined it to the rooms with the clues and were able to beat the game before I was able to turn over the fourth time card.  The way I equated it to Conklederp was like going through Eternal Darkness and barely experiencing any of the sanity effects.  But the group came away having a great experience, so I can't really complain.

In the video gaming front, GOG's summer sale happened, during which I was able to restrain myself and only bought System Shock: Enhanced Edition since I already have System Shock 2 over on Steam and I was holding off until I played the first game.  And speaking of System Shock, Night Dive Studios is developing and releasing a remastered/updated version of the game and a "Pre-Alpha Demo" is available to download and play through either Steam or GOG.

Speaking of demos, I picked up the demo for id's new Doom and I can tell you that I will sadly not be buying the game on my current computer.  My computer maxed out at about 15 fps, which any member of the PC Master Race (which is a moniker that I actually really don't like for a number of reasons that I won't get into right now) means that I shouldn't even bother trying to play anything if it's less than 60 fps, it's just broken and not playable.  I will admit that it was very sluggish, but somewhat playable and it took a bit to get used to, but since it's only the first stage, I ended up quitting after dying, but damn is that a good looking game.

On the non-demo gaming front, since I wasn't going to fork over money to play the new Doom, I decided to re-install Doom 3 and play that then have a go at the Resurrection of Evil expansion since I never played that after completing the main campaign (with Vorlynx's help in one of the boss stages in Hell).  I'm also on my third or fourth character in Fallout 2, but I've already covered that game quite a bit over the last week so I'll leave it at that.  I also started Telltale Games' The Wolf Among Us while patiently waiting for The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series Season 3, and Game of Thrones: A Telltale Game Series Season 2.  I needed my Telltale fix and I had already purchased TWAU a few Steam sales ago.

And speaking of Steam sales, their Summer Sale was in full swing (as of this writing) and I'm being very diligent in not buying anything by reminding me that I still have a colon-full of games that I've bought and haven't even installed yet. . .but SOMA, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, The Evil Within, Tales from the Boarderlands, and Darkest Dungeon are all quietly whispering to me when I think I'm not paying attention.  Not to mention 105 other games that I have sitting in my wishlist just hanging out.  And since the sale ended this morning at 10am, I can say that I was able to control a number of urges and actually didn't spend any money.  The fact that I was playing games that I had previously bought and hand't played before (with the exception of Doom 3) helped to reinforce the fact that I still have a number of unplayed games.

I did however buy a Steam Controller through Gamestop (with some Gamestop giftcards) since it was at the sale price that Steam had set for their summer sale and my decision for that stemmed from being intrigued with the controller, the fact that it was both a wireless and wired controller, that I frequently will hook up my computer to the TV so Conklederp can watch me play (or vice versa in the case of Skyrim),  and any other of the titles in the Telltale Games series.  I also thought that the joystick on my 360 controller was starting to feel a little wobbly (but not post 1080 wobbliness of the N64 controller).

Alright, I've got to wrap this up as we're heading out to do some semi-'Murican stuff that doesn't actually involve BBQing anything or blowing anything up. . .so I guess it's not very 'Murican, but whatever.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
As I Drank From A Cup. . .