So, this Bat-weekend.

I spent quite a bit of time working on a writing project, though not as much as I might have.  I still ended up with what I regard as a fair sample of my work.  More on that later.

On Friday there was a huge birthday blowout for deirdremoon and tronpublic .  They always throw the best parties, and I had a fantastic time, even though I got roped into abject mojito-making slavery for a good part of the evening.  I wish both of my dear friends a wonderful upcoming year.

Saturday, I danced.  And danced, and DANCED.  I managed to miss all of Silicon except for a very special Bat-photo-op (ask racerxmachina ), the masquerade and the dance, but the dance itself was well worth the money we spent to get in.  the DJ spun really good 80s rock; not just the traditional hits, but some b-sides and other obscure yet really danceable stuff.  Fr instance, I had forgotten how good "Peekaboo" is to dance to, and there was that other punk song that made me want to mosh and...and...it was fun.

Sunday I thought I would be injured badly (My knee has been doing a crazy bad acting up), but I was fine, just very very tired.  And so we drove over to Santa Cruz for RxMs tattoo consultation, came back, and I struggled to stay awake enough to write.

Today for my birthday I had a special lunch-time meeting, about which I really don't want to give details about right now.  I'll just say that I got some much-needed encouragement toward a career I really want to do.

And now, This weekend's unofficial bat-artwork!

(no subject)

So there's been people complaining about the need for miniatures in D&D 4E. I don't think they're all that necessary (even if movement needs to be tracked, game tokens can be used), but hell, miniatures have always been more or less a part of gaming.

I admit this has always been a problem...at times.  Especially when you can't for the life of you find a figure that even remotely resembles your character image, most especially when its a not-elvin bishonen boy-toy mage. Or pretty much any female character not designed to have breasts larger than her head.  And of course there's the fun of going shopping for exactly the right figure ("Ewww, not that one- has the artist ever seen a woman in real life?") while the neckbeard running the game store starts making harrumping noises at your comments and criticisms. And D&D and fantasy games have it easy. Bear in mind that for the longest time superhero games like Champions had an even worse selection of miniatures. Even now, supers are so variable it's hard to find a figure that matches the character one carries around in one's head.

But now I have to wonder if technology may come to the rescue. Given that we have 3-D character generators (with sometimes amazing degrees of customization, like those for City of Heroes), and rapid prototyping and 3-D printing, it occurs to me that it should be possible, sometime not to far in the future to design your character on an online 3-D generator, then "print" it out as a miniature. We might even be able to make them pre-colored.

So, does anybody think there'd be a market for pre-colored, custom miniatures that match a player's character concept? How much would you be willing to pay for such a game aid?

The best birthday cards I ever received...

Were given to me tonight by Alice and Dorothy!



( This is the cover to Alice's card )

( This is the inside of Alice's card- isn't it cute? )

( This is Dorothy's card...she's a little different. )

The important thing though, is I love them both, VERY VERY MUCH!