Header pic has nothing to do with this comic. Header pic was based off an old John Varley story. My sister had gone to Germany, and she brought me back a German Monopoly set, so it was always going to eventually show up here. The German set didn’t have metal playing pieces. The German dialog is from Young Frankenstein. I’m pretty sure it should be “Lass ihn” instead of “Lass im”. The Latin bit is the Dies irae, and I probably used it because of Mozart writing music for it in “Amadeus”. This comic is just a bunch of stuff I had lying around the house and in my head :-) ...

Queen Antoinette, one of the famed Maids of France, was no longer able to hold back the tides of populism in Revolutionary France. While Pauline Bonaparte, with the help of her brother Napoleon, struggled to free Italy from the horrors of an Austrian invasion, things were falling apart back home. Welcome to the post-Revolutionary world. The Monarchist faction, led by the remaining nobles in exile and General Rose, have taken to the hills and have formed an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” relationship with the Austrian invaders. Pauline’s war has expanded now to two fronts. ...

Since school has started up, we’ve been hesitant to continue with the family game night. But you just can’t keep us down. We’ve decided to alternate Jaws of the Lion, a campaign game, with other games. Last time we met it was for mahjong. Tonight, we’re back in Gloomhaven. My goal with Jaws of the Lion was to completely 3D print the terrain, the miniatures, the furniture – everything. Unfortunately, I’ve been having a lot of trouble with the 3D printer, but that’s really a story for another post. Because of the problems, I haven’t been able to finish printing the wooden floors for this scenario, or the stone floors for the next one. I have a barrel full of failed prints. Something about the floor tiles for wood and stone really seems to kill my printer. ...

My opinion of this French Revolution-themed visual novel/tactical strategy game keeps rising as I work my way through the campaign. Once you get past the fact that the main army commanders are all teenage girls, there’s a decent story there, and the battles are just over the top. The current campaign has us coming to the rescue of one of our artillery generals who found herself surrounded behind enemy lines. The smart thing to do would have been to withdraw and cut our losses; instead, our protagonist, headstrong Pauline Bonaparte, chose to perform a daring rescue. ...

Yesterday, “Kingdoms of Amalur: The Re-Reckoning”, an update of 2012’s “Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning” was released. It’s a refresh of a game that seemed groundbreaking at the time, being a single-player experience that would familiarize its players with the world of the MMO at that time known as Project Copernicus. The story of Project Copernicus and its developers, 38 Studios, would fill books. Its failure left Kingdoms of Amalur in a weird spot: An MMO-ish single player RPG set in an MMO world that would never exist. While playing KoA, it’s easy to imagine other people crafting at the quest hubs, teaming up for the dungeons, and bringing the world to life. As a single player game, it plays like an MMO just after the servers come up. ...

My next birthday is a “5” year – a year evenly divisible by five. I’m not going to tell you how many times that five can fit in the year, but it’s more than five. So on my next birthday, I’ve decided that I’m going to do a “bucket list” activity and climb Mount Washington, the highest mountain in the northeast. I’m not in terrible shape, but I’m not in great shape either. Before the pandemic, I’d been training to run a series of 5Ks through the spring and summer, culminating in the internationally famous (for real) Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving, which I ran a few years back. ...

The first part to the comic in the header image was over here, and the second part was right over there. In this comic, I’d finally realized that poor lighting wasn’t something I could fix in Picasa, and what I really needed was just a lot of lights. I’d started buying custom fonts to give the comic a better feel and to make it legible at different resolutions. The font of the words “Adventures in” in the first panel was the font I bought to do Wizard101 comics, as that’s the font that game uses. ...

The more I play Banner of the Maid, the more I’m enjoying it. The plot is picking up, with plenty of side quests that lean more into the Visual Novel side of the game. As an example: One side quest involved raising money by going to an auction house, buying items cheap, then selling them for a huge profit. Problem with that strategy is arranging with other bidders for them to bid low or abstain entirely to get the best price. Taking what you’ve learned about the various factions in the journey so far, you have to find allies who will help you – and avoid those who see through your scheme and plan to only give you the worst deals imaginable. ...

If you’ve ever played a mobile app, sooner or later you’re going to see a very particular ad. There’s a fish that needs to be saved – from sharks, poison, lava for some reason, dehydration – and all you need to do is pull a pin to let good stuff happen. But the finger on the screen is doing it ALL WRONG! And NOW THE FISH IS DEAD! Obviously you want to help. But there are so MANY fish saving games in the App Store! You just want to save one silly fish, but which should you choose? ...

I’m not really sure how interested people will be, but I took some pictures and want to write about them and I have a blog and… well… here we go. My sister sent me an empty envelope to show her support for the US Post Service, which our government is trying to kill, for some reason, ahead of the elections in November. The envelope wasn’t actually as empty as I’d thought… it was full of glitter… that got all over my kalimba. I had to dump it all into the sink, and now it’s all over the sink and I can’t get it all in the trash. It just… sticks there… ...