Red, White, and Tangerine

Well ... today had been the best day of the week up until half an hour ago. Bad news first, my laptop screen randomly went screwy on me. It didn't black out like last time, some of the colors were skewed. There were vertical lines on half the screen. I restarted it, no difference. It seemed more noticeable after that. So we messed with all the display settings, changing the screen resolution and the color resolution. Nothing. So I closed the lid, rubbed it a bit and the vertical lines seem to have faded a little. So I did it again and now it appears normal. I don't know if my laptop just wanted a pat on the back, or it just doesn't like spending long hours in my backpack.

***
Now that I have time to relax (no real homework), I can better describe Rules of the Game. Our teacher is the one and only Dave Arneson! I've seen a picture of him on the internet where he was doing an impression of Albert Einstein by sticking out his tongue. He looked fairly silly in the photo. Well on Wednesday, our first class with him, he looked like a cranky old man. In fact, he scared me. He made it quite clear that he doesn't want to see any of us again. This might just be because it's a really easy class, and/or that he has had a few real dumbasses before. He's found that 9am-5pm is bad for us gamers, so instead of lecture at 9, lab at 1, we have lab at 9, lecture at 1. In lab, we get to "analyze" popular games to figure out what makes them so good. Wednesday was Settlers of Catan and today was Munchkins. I got my ass beat both times on Wednesday, but won today. Well, Dave had managed to lock his keys in his car (with the motor running) on Wednesday because he had to chase down his dog which had been scared by a lawnmower. Dave decided to cancel class because the locksmith wasn't able to make it in time. He was actually able to make it back in time, but by then he had called the lab aide to tell us all to go home. So today we actually got to enjoy his lectures. And I think I can say he is a silly, cranky, crazy old guy. But he's cool. He said that the creator of Magic gave him a signed Black Lotus, and in return, Dave gave him a signed collectors' edition Player's Handbook. Which is pretty awesome. I was surprised that Dave is/was a programmer and has been since the dawn of computers. He was programming Fortran in '68. I think he's my hero again.

I wore my Adventure Hooks shirt on Wednesday and he noticed it. He said he'd never seen that shirt, and I told him that we had made it. It was pretty sweet. I'd totally give it to him if a) I thought he'd wear it and b) I thought he'd fit it. I'm pretty sure I can rule out both a & b. Regardless, it's pretty awesome to have him as a teacher. His lectures are mostly just story telling (all that dm'ing). If there were less students, he'd run D&D for us, but there's way too many. And I'm not sure if it'd really be worth it with respect to time, because it takes a while for some people to catch on. Most of us know about the online d20 system, but only a few of us have played. So even if I offered to dm the other half of the class, I don't think we'd want to go through character creation or even just explaining the rules for spellcasting.

The lab aide is pretty cool too. Our table played a few games with him on Wednesday. Flux and Lunch Money are some interesting card games. They both went by real quick, but I think the latter is boring.

Today's game started off kinda slow. The other guys kept backstabbing each other so it took us a while to get past level five. After that, it was a quick run to level nine (maybe because they were hungry). Level nine was tense though, everyone was making a run for it. Luckily, I was a half-elven, half-dwarven warrior. I totally forgot about the elven ability to gain a level for helping out a party member. So I negotiated a tie win with a friend, but the rest of the table knocked it down. I lost my class to a curse and picked up thief (not that it helped me), but luckily only one of my items was warrior only. The rest of my items were elf or dwarf only. So that was my buddy's turn. The next guy went for the win, but we expended the majority of the remaining curses/blocks on him. So on my turn, I unleashed hell. The dwarven hand limit is six, whereas the normal is five. So I had quite an advantage. Plus, I didn't really have any cards that could have helped block anyone, they could only help me. So I had Doppelganger (my complete clone helps me), a +5 potion, a counter curse (Limited Wish?), a Yuppie Water (all elves get +2), a card to get any card out of the discard pile(s), and a run away card (Invisible Wall?). With my weapons out, I was at an effective level 20, my enemy was effectively level 12. The thief backstabbed me, 18 to 12. Someone cursed me to remove my +4 armor, but I countered. Thief dropped two +3 potions on the monster, 18 to 18, losing. Man, I wished I was still a warrior at that point. So I dropped my +5 potion on myself, 23 to 18, lead. It ended there; they had ran out of their blocks. So after being declared victorious, I showed my hand. It was awesome. I could have dropped the +2 and doppelganger to get up to 50. It would have been tough for them to stop me. And even if they did manage to one up me, I would be able to run. Ah, that was great. I'm feeling much better. It might be the lack of homework though.

***
I'm taking a break from programming tonight. I might play Pokemon or CoH. I dunno, CoH is getting pretty boring. Most of my supergroup has hit fifty, so they're either on alts or they're on the CoV closed beta. I'm not sure if Mr. P will be getting CoV, and I don't know what time I'll have to play it. I'm told that SGP is the last hard class until Final Project, but SGP should be too bad to pass. I'm not just trying to pass, I'm trying to get an A. This month is all design, next month is code. So ... I should be happier next month. But our game has to follow the design.