Random Factors

   Sometimes the random factors align in a positive permutation. For the longest time, I've been wanting to acquire a Dragonbone Dice Wand. The Dragonbone was one of the first electronic dice devices that first appeared in the early to mid 1980's. It was available for a period of time but eventually they discontinued it. Periodically, I'd due a Google search to see if any were up for sale only to come up empty. That changed early this month. Noble Knight Games had a near mint white Dragonbone up for sale. It came with the instruction sheet and original mailing box. It was tested and is fully functional. The price was $575.00 plus tax ($606.62). It took a bit to get the money together, but I pulled it off. It's now a part of my RPG and dice collection. 

  Sometime in the past, I was doing Windows update on my desktop computer, and I thought that I had accidentally scrambled my system. The computer sat idle for some time. I purchased a Windows 10 recovery disk on eBay and got it back online. I'm not certain if I was mistaken about scrambling my computer or if the disk restored it. Either way, my system is back online.

  Here's a video of an interview with the creators of the Dragonbone.

Mental Defectives in Government

   We're a little over 100 days into Trump's second term and Dipshit Diaper Donnie has been fucking things up right and left. He's managed to put together biggest batch of lickspittles, incompetents and racist fuckwads in all of history. His tariff policies change with every mood swing. First, they're on, then they're paused. He sets them at this level then raises or lowers them in a thoroughly haphazard manner. He keeps claiming that all these countries are calling him trying to make deals, but nothing is happening. China has started buying soybeans from Brazil, so American soybean farmers have lost a major market. The information I've seen regarding the US-China tariff negotiations would have us believe that both sides are winning and both sides are getting their asses handed to them. The problem is both the CCP, and the Trump Administration are filled with pathological liars that always try to make themselves look good. 

  On the immigration front, ICE has been rounding up people and shipping them off to places like El Salvador without Due Process and some of these people aren't criminals. Kristi "Dog Killer" Noem has spent much of her time running around playing dress up in various parts of the country. She has no idea what Habeas Corpus is. She's the Secretary of Homeland Security and she doesn't have an understanding of the Constitution or of law in general. 

  Trump's corruption is out in the open. He's begged the Qatari government for a $400 million plane to replace Air Force 1 despite the fact that this violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. His shitty meme coin is being bought up by people looking to buy influence with Trump. The top 25 buyers got to have a personal meeting with Trump at Mar-A-Lago. How many foreign governments are laundering money via this meme coin?

  Pete Hegseth has proven to be fucking incompetent at his job. His screwups are numerous yet this asshole still has his government job. Why? How far did Hegseth bury his head up Trump's ass?

  And let's not forget about Trump's obsession with Canada and Greenland. Our narcissistic maggot of a president wants to take over both of them and make them US states or territories. This has nothing to do with national security. It has everything to do with natural resources. He wants the minerals and other resources these countries possess so he can suck up even more money. Exploitation is the name of the game here. Canada, Greenland and Denmark have made it clear that they aren't interested in being annexed. A recent deal was struck with a French investment group regarding the mining of anorthosite in Greenland. This might be their way of sticking it Trump.

  Trump is living in his own reality. He sincerely believes that some 200 nations are all lining up to strike deals with him because of the tariffs. He believes that a clearly doctored photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's hand proves he's an MS-13 member and nothing anyone says can convince him otherwise. On the other hand, Trump has been saying that whites are being targeted in genocide attacks in South Africa despite being told otherwise. It has been made clear that Trump suffers from vascular dementia. Combine that with narcissistic personality disorder and you have a deadly combination. Trump genuinely believes that he knows more about everything than everyone else. He never accepts blame for his mistakes and takes credit for things he didn't do. We can only hope that Trump suffers some serious mental and/or physical condition that takes his sorry ass out. 

Still Alive and Kicking

   I recently had a stress test performed on my heart due to the fact that my calcium level was over 400. This test was done to determine if the arteries supplying blood to my heart were clogged up with cholesterol. I'm happy to say that my heart is normal. The cost for this test was a little over $1,300 after insurance.

  In other news, many of the Kickstarters I'm involved with are progressing slowly. I'm still gaming with the group at The Sanctum. We just finished a Harlem based 1920's Call of Cthulhu campaign and are switching over to a game called Business Wizards on June 7th. I've put forward a few RPGs that I'd like to run in the future.

Still Plodding Along

   Life's been fairly boring of late. Summer has come and gone. I didn't go to Gen Con or the Ren Faire. The Slot Dice and Goblin Dice Kickstarters have turned out to be rip-offs. They simply took the money and ran. I'm fucking pissed. The Gamer's Bag Kickstarter is starting to look like another rip-off. They haven't posted an update in quite some time. Their last update was May 16th, 2024, where they claimed that they were almost ready to start shipping. There's been no updates since then. The Crossroads Inn people have finally posted an update after a long period of silence. It looks like they're making a sincere effort to bring their project to completion.

  Petersen Games has teamed up with Quimbley's Games in regard to Cthulhu Wars. Petersen Games designs the games and Quimbley's manufactures and sells them. This pairing has finally allowed me to get the Invasion Faction completed. I now have all 12 factions for Cthulhu Wars. The status of the Misprint Corrections is still pretty much unknown. Quimbley's has received the Azathoth dice that were missing from the Daemon Sultan faction and, I believe, they also have the correction stickers for Bubastis and Sleeper. Why they haven't mailed out the corrections is unknown to me. From what I've seen in photos, the Azathoth die looks to be the same die that I got with that custom Cthulhu Wars dice set I bought a while back. The spellbook corrections for Bubastis and Sleeper are minimal. Both factions are playable as they are right now.

  A pair of great concerts are in my future. Gwar is returning to The Rave Oct. 31st and King Diamond will be at the Riverside Theater on Nov. 8th. Tickets have already been purchased. 

It's Been a While

   It's been quite some time since I've last posted. A little over a year in fact. I went to Gen Con 2023. Despite doing everything correctly, I still wound up over 8,700th in line. All my initial event picks except for Cthulhu Wars and the Fate Core event filled up. I got both those events plus a Never Going Home and Cypher system event. I've decided not to go to Gen Con 2024. Money's been tight and I need to straighten my financial situation out.

  On the Cthulhu Wars front, I got tired of waiting for the Misprint corrections for Daemon Sultan and Bubastis to be mailed and decided to have the Game Steward ship both factions to me and send the corrections when they arrive. It turns out that I waited for no real reason. The Daemon Sultan's faction card had three of their spell book slots labeled Awaken Thesis. A sticker was included that corrected the faction card. The only error for Bubastis was the Ailurophobia spell book. The correct version was posted on the Petersen Games website. It's a minor correction. Both factions are useable as they stand. I bought the Ultimate Errata pack for Cthulhu Wars in order to make sure that my game is the most up to date version. I'm slowly gathering the pieces needed for the Invasion faction. I've purchased the Baphomet mini, 8 Larvae, 4 Gryllus, a Fiend and the Neutral Unit Identifiers. All I need to get is the Invasion Faction (no minis), 1 Fiend, 2 Gryllus and a set of Battle Dice. This could take quite a while because I have to wait for the Cthulhu Wars Kickstarters to complete shipping and the Planet Apocalypse Kickstarter to complete. 

  I saw Gwar again last October. Another great concert. My Kickstarters are proceeding slowly. The Orbidice Kickstarter is proceeding at a decent pace as is the dUltimate. Crossroads Inn has had some changes made but it does appear to be heading towards completion. Wasteland Sagas and When the Wolf Comes are having their books printed. The Game Space Kickstarter is starting to concern me. There have been no updates since Sept. 9th, 2023. They say that the Game Space units have been packed and are ready to ship but nothing's happened since. The Gamer's Bags are being made. Hopefully, they'll start shipping them soon. 

  I had to drop the Quartz insurance plan. They said that the monthly premium would be going up and I figured it wouldn't increase by much. The premium went from $170.79 to over $442.00 a month. What the fuck? Why the massive increase? 

Hasbro/WoTC are trying to screw over the gaming community.

   Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) is trying to revoke the OGL 1.0a and institute the OGL 1.1 and it's pissing off roleplaying gamers. This has led to a lot of people cancelling their D&D Beyond subscriptions. Because of the cancellations, WoTC and Hasbro have backpedaled claiming the OGL 1.1 was just a draft and that they would rollout a revised OGL 2.0 sometime in the future. Rather than try to go into detail about the ongoing saga, I'm going to embed some YouTube videos laying out the details. 

    

  That's just a brief summary of the situation at the moment. WoTC and Hasbro have gotten greedy and are trying to alter the OGL in order to squeeze out the competition and bleed the gamer community for more cash. We're regarded as "obstacles to their money". This isn't the view of most of the employees at WoTC and Hasbro. It's primarily the view of the high up execs at WoTC and Hasbro. Paizo are creating their own open gaming license, the Open RPG Creative License (ORC). This license will not be owned by any TTRPG company and will be permanent and irrevocable (as people have said the OGL 1.0a is). Kobold Press has started Project Black Flag in response to WoTC and Hasbro. Here's a video about that. 

  The gamer community must come together with Paizo and Kobold Press. It's time to hoist the Black Flag and join the ORC Horde!! Despite WoTC and Hasbro stating that they're going to address our grievances, they're just going to modify OGL 1.1, and hope things will blow over and we'll forget. Then they'll sneakily modify the OGL adding back everything that angered us in the first place. They only way they could possibly regain our trust is to either make the OGL 1.0a permanent and irrevocable or sign the ORC License.

Start of a New Year

   I'm due to have the cataract in my right eye removed Jan. 9th. Because I won't be allowed to lift more than 10 lbs. or engage in any strenuous activity for one week after the surgery, I decided to take a week's paid vacation. I'll use that time to take it easy and chill out.

  New Year's Eve and New Year's Day didn't amount to much. I was hoping to ring in the New Year playing board games with my friends, but that didn't work out. My main computer is currently out of commission. Apparently, Windows got scrambled during an update and now the computer won't boot up.

  I've picked up the core rules for Cortex Prime and Fate. I've also purchased the Fate System Toolkit. I've downloaded .PDF files for these games as well as a bunch of files for the Cypher System. I'll buy the revised Cypher System core book some time in the future. Other than that, there isn't much going on in my life. Same boring shit every damn day.