Well, still looking for a new job.  Otherwise, not much new going on here.  I’ve been watching The Walking Dead again lately.  Yesterday I got to the episode What Happened and What’s Going On.  That’s the episode where Tyreese dies.  And I’ve been in an unusually receptive state lately, probably because I’ve been in bit of a down-swing the last few weeks.  I noticed some things about this episode that I hadn’t really focused on before.  It was always interesting to me how they used hallucinations of specific people to walk through his experiences, the ‘life flashing before the eyes’ thing.  I’ve thought a lot about death for most of my life.  Pretty much my whole existence I’ve had chronic and severe depression aside from a myriad of undiagnosed mental illness.  Among them, some obsessive compulsive and ADHD tendencies, like reliving events and conversations repeatedly.  I’ve relived countless lifetimes on an almost daily basis for decades.  Perhaps one could argue that my life has been flashing before my eyes over and over again just in case I ever manage to kill myself.  Oh yeah, that’s been another recurring theme for me.  I spent my teenage years trying to open my wrists every night.  It seems I could never find a blade sharp enough to break the skin.  Once or twice I tried to hang myself.  Full disclosure, that might have worked but there was no way in hell I’d be caught dead in utah.  Joe Hill was another smart man.  Back to my first thought on here.  This whole episode is something I’ve always related to.  I didn’t fully get why until this time but I think it’s because this portrayal of dying feels very close to my own experience.  I guess it makes sense a little bit.  The only times I got a break from life were when I was trying to die.  I think that may conclude the death talking portion of this post, let’s see.

     There are some interesting technical things done in this episode.  The lighting and cinematography kept oversaturating color and off-centering the image while gradually framing the next subject.  And then, the people he’s seeing.  All of them characters who had already died rather recent in the timeline but people who are significant to Tyreese.  Mostly people representing what he views to be personal failures.  The two girls he protected from the fall of the prison and then couldn’t protect them from themselves.  The kid he didn’t kill who came back later and was killed by Tyreese’s sister.  The leader he followed and turned out to be the villain.  And then his final failure of not following through, as he views it, following through on the final wish of someone he respects and honors.  Again, from my experience people like Tyreese and me, even when we’re not ‘depressed’.  Even when we’re finally getting that last break and finding any moment of genuine peace, we default to dwelling on our failures.

     See what I mean?  I was starting to discuss this from a technical perspective and then right back to the death talk.  Anyway, aside from looking for a job again, tomorrow I’m going to possibly live stream on twitch.  I have to get going with these things and I keep shitting the bed.  I’m working out scheduling these things so, the plan right now is that tomorrow I’m going to post something other than one of these things.

HUZZAHS! are in order.  Bottle Cap wrapped up his special training!  Now he’s four stars!  He only needs four more power ups to be completely topped up.  And he needs to mega evolve twenty-three more times and he’ll be maxed out with his mega evolution benefits.  And he’s already a five heart buddy.  To recap: we started this around June twenty-eighth and his stats were Attack thirteen, Defense zero, and HP nine.  And the training is one research task for each point in each stat.  So, we had two tasks to complete for Attack, fifteen for Defense, and six for HP.  You have one year or three-hundred and sixty-five days to complete the Hyper-training and when we finished it on November first, we had two-hundred and thirty-nine days left so it took us one-hundred and twenty-six days to finish this.  Not bad to get me a shiny, four star Charizard after nine years.  I have to say, this whole really is superbly well designed to in that it creates a pretty good real world equivalent of the pokémon games’ kind of ‘casual’ quest style and translate that into the AR game model.  And they started actively adding into the game the various features that drew in all of us to the original Game Boy games, it’s no surprise that Pokémon GO has lasted this whole time.  Seriously, next July sixth will be a full decade for this game.  Anyone else still playing consistently and enjoying it like me?  Feel free to share your stories here.  I can always use more material to keep this thing consistent.

In other gaming news, I finally finished updating the resources I’ve been making for the Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game.  You’ll find the resources in the page titled Tabletop Gaming Resources on this very website.  There’s a tab for this game specifically and within that tab you’ll find all the information to create new, original characters for this game and everything else you’ll need to run your own games using the d616 system.  Soon I’m going to put together another page on here for original material and other content for MMVRPG.  Some things I’m putting together are characters, ships, and such based on the Stargate franchise.  I’ve already run a game using henchmen based on Jaffa soldiers and one of the players even took on one of the symbiotes and melded with it.  A very ‘Tim’ thing to do in such a game and I’ll admit, I didn’t totally expect someone who isn’t me to have done it.  It was a fun game with all first-time players.  I’m going to making new material and if anyone has ideas and wants to workshop concepts and designs for this or other games, again, feel free to write me here and we can figure some things as a group.

     I’m working on some employment issues right now and then I’m going to finish up some podcast things and post content from LA Comic Con.  I can’t wait for LACC next year!  It’s going to be so much fun!

Here I am, behind schedule still and/or again.  It was a long week being in Lancaster but I’m home again, had a day of lounging and laundry before work today and here I am.  I have nothing in particular to write about today.  Bottle Cap is still moving right along.  We’re up to 1,253 Pokémon caught which means just 247 more and Bottle Cap is 4*!  I can’t wait!  But until then, I’ll write a little more about the Avengers Expansion for the Marvel Multiverse RPG.  A part of the Iconic Item update in this book is the Battlesuit supplement.

     Battlesuits like Iron Man’s various armors are treated much like Iconic Items in their creation and use in this game.  For good measure they even made a character sheet for Tony Stark without any armor so, you can more efficiently use that character between armors.  The math is the same as for Iconic Items, number of powers minus restrictions and that’s the Power Value of the armor.  Also, if you try to integrate an Iconic Item into the battlesuit, the Power Value of the item is added to that of the battlesuit.  Likely increasing the Power Value of the battlesuit.  And again, the Power Value of such items represent the power picks available to the character to take that item at character creation.  After character creation, using these items requires the selection of powers to which the character loses access in exchange for the powers of the items.  It’s suggested to create the character sheet for the normal character without the items.  I’ll touch on that more next time.  I’ll write up something on the Alternate Forms section of the Avengers Expansion.  That section uses the Hulks principally for example of the redesign for alternate forms but the whole section is equally useful for characters like Spirits of Vengeance, second-stage mutants, and magic beings who maybe take on the spirit of a mythical or divine being.  Even if perhaps, two players want to create a gestalt character like…well, I can think of nor find an appropriate example so, looking to the Distinguished Competition, F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M is the best example of a gestalt character.  Two distinct being who fuse together to forge a new, third individual.  So, next time.

     One last thing.  I’m working to do a quick little video.  I’m thinking now that it’ll be of a first date of two individuals.  Ya know, my style of absurd and/or dark humor but the characters will be represented by pipe cleaner people.  I have some idea of what it’ll be but I need to script it out and then record a few different things for it.  When I pull it off it’ll be fun…at least for a few people.  Beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see.

BAH!  Still having car trouble.  I installed a new alternator and then my jump starter wont jump nor start the damn car.  Story of my life.  Anyhow, some good news on Pokémon GO!  they just reset player levels for everyone!  I didn’t read up on all the specifics and criteria for the adjustments so, I don’t know exactly how the math works out.  What I do know is that the start of yesterday I was level 44 with three tasks to complete for level 45 and then in the afternoon I was level 65 and receiving hundreds of items.  Seriously, my inventory is about one thousand items over max.  And that’s after burning, throwing away, and using a few hundred items and buying a couple storage upgrades.  It’s kind of a pain and the majority of the items are useful and I was short on them before so, I can’t so much just throw away greater quantities to clear space.  So, that’s what’s going on there, no, wait, there’s MORE!  I just remembered that’s it’s been awhile since I’ve updated you on Bottle Cap’s success and progress to perfection.  I can’t recall what I said last when I filled you in but right now Bottle Cap has one task left.  He completed two Attack tasks, six HP tasks, and fourteen Defense tasks.  Still working on the last Defense task of ‘Catch 1500 pokémon with your trainee as your buddy’.  As of typing this we’re up to 1096 caught so just 404 more to catch and complete this task 255 days left to do it.  I was going to post some photos but I don’t have them ready right now.

     Another fun update because this just popped into my head.  Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game!  The Avengers Expansion finally came out a few weeks ago and I picked it up first day…and huh, I just realized that I did that when we working in Lancaster and this week we’re back in Lancaster for work.  Some of the bigger points with this new expansion for anyone who hasn’t gotten the book yet.  The one thing that the majority of people are most excited for in this new book is a HUUUUGE update for items and subsequently battle suits.  Like the Iron Man’s various armors for example.  Some broad strokes real quick.  The Iconic Weapon power first introduced in the Core Rulebook has been updated to the Iconic Item power.  This change opens the perspective of it include things beyond less common versions of typical weapons.  Allowing more versatility in characters possessing magic relics as they’re described in the first Doctor Strange movie.  Items channeling and granting certain powers to their wielders without taking up a hand in combat by being represented by something like a pair of boots for example.  This is something I was experimenting in some of the NPCs I’ve been creating.  I really appreciate the new rules and structure they worked out for these items.  A very clear and well designed system for creating such items.  I’m working on building the resources for Item Creation and will ideally update my resources on here soon.  The process differs only slightly from that for character creation.  In short, an item will have an Origin, Powers, and Restrictions.  When creating the item, the number of Powers minus the number of restrictions determines the Power Value of the item or, for you maths nerds, P-R=V.  This number then is how many Power Picks the item takes when creating the item as part of Character Creation.  Now, “What powers can an item have?” I hear you cry.  To start, an item can have any of the established powers we’ve seen in previous books.  Like Strange’s Cloak of Levitation allowing its wearer to defy gravity.  Or a Hydra blaster giving its wielder Elemental Blast(Energy).  More than that, we got a list of new powers specifically for items.  I imagine a lenient Narrator allowing such powers to be picked for a character’s own powers, to that point I’d recommend counting Item Powers as a set for purposes of thematic bonus and such.  I’m putting together a generator to create items like this randomly.  I haven’t thought it much the last few days but I’ll get back on that soon.

     There’s plenty more to talk about on this book and perhaps I will soon but in summation, they gave us quite a bit to work with in this new book and so far it’s been a lot of fun.  I can’t wait to start using all this in games.  I have a lot of fun ideas I’m excited to implement…but until then, Face Front, True Believers!

Now that the heavy shit is out of the way, let’s talk about some fun stuff.  LA Comic Con was last week and was fantastic!  I’m going to look up numbers for this show and line them up with numbers from other shows and see how things breakdown but I can tell you this much.  I seem to fucking love this convention!  I mean, being home in LA is first of all among the greatest feelings I’ve experienced since artie finally died.  But then, to have a comic con, more or less, down the street.  Sure, FanX was literally down the street from my old apartment in Salt Lake but still.  Being here, back home, and having this great convention here!  Could it have been better?  It was!  I got to be a part of this one!  I finally had my first panel at a convention!  I know I wrote about it before but now it has happened!  If someone wants to undo it they’ll need a time machine and then inevitably, undeniably, I’ll get their time machine and then I’m telling this timeline to fuck off…point is, I got a panel approved by programming at LACC, I executed my panel at LACC, I didn’t get the crowd I wanted but I did get more of an audience than I expected.  We had a good conversation and I got some good laughs.  I’m thinking a couple people got some information they didn’t have before.  All in all, it’s a great experience!  Obviously I’m already thinking about applying for a panel next year.  Some things I need to work out for that, though.  Do I expand on the concept of Podcasting for Beginners?  A more generalized ‘How to’ format for podcasting in general and open up the conversation to all things podcasting?  Clearly I’m going to need a few naps before I get that all worked out.  Maybe I’ll actually get some of my own podcasting shit done instead of just telling other people what to do and how to do it.  At any rate, I’ve got scores of other things to get going.

     I did manage to record and photograph a little bit this time.  I was going to make a photo postage to post with this but I was trying to transfer things among devices whilst at work and I wanted to make sure I posted this today.  I’ll figure out what best to do with the material I recorded later this week.  At the very least I’ll record something in the next couple days and upload a new episode to the RSD feed.  Maybe I’ll sit down and work out some of the Twitch shit and finally do a few things I’ve been intending for the last couple years.  I still have a bunch of those Loot Crates to tear open.  I still have a bunch of Lego and model kits to build.  AND I’m pretty sure those are all in my apartment and not storage sooo, I need to sit down, stop watching TV, and start getting shit done.

     I’m starting to seriously organize my thoughts and making real plans to accomplish these things.  This week I start making it happen…after a nap.  I mean, come on!  I got about seven hours of sleep over the last week and a half and not all at once.  I’m following up on some connections I made at the convention and then I when I finally get home tonight I’m taking a little bit of a snooze…AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME!!!  Sweet dreams, friends.