Ahhh, The Possibilities...

It is currently 4:15AM on Saturday as I write this. What is pictured above is what I wore all day Friday from about 10AM until just before now. It was a long night at the store. The day before (Thursday) was one of the slowest we've had in recent history. Tonight (Friday) was good. It wasn't as stellar as we could have made it due to an absolutely *BONKERS* new Magic: the Gathering set dropping today, but we will definitely take it.

The set is called Modern Masters and it is an *EXTREMELY* limited set of cards in terms of print run. The packs MSRP for $3 more than a normal pack ($6.99, as opposed to $3.99), but the set has *SEVERAL* $10+ value cards in it. As it goes, we, as a store decided not to sell any full boxes, nor make any individual pack sales of it. The set is meant to be drafted, so we decided that we would hold back our allotment from sale and break it out for events, prizes, and other big draws. While I know we've upset some people, I believe we've made the right long-term call. A number of places I know are selling full boxes (24 packs) of this set for $225 a box and higher. That's great if you want to make a quick short-term buck, but this set has the potential to draw so much more business than that if a store can market it creatively. We've already got a couple of ideas in mind... stay tuned for those.

I have to be back at the store in about six hours. I will be there, once again, all day. The only part that is even a the slightest bit mitigating is that the last half of the day/evening, I will be playing in Shady's Terracide game. I will also be more than half loopy when I do so. Currently, I'm not entirely certain where we can go in the game. There are some situations that we could clean up, but every time we try to fix something, three other things draw us away from it all. Ehhh... We'll see how it goes. If necessary, I will talk to Shady about it. I really do get the feeling that the game is one the downward spiral in terms of wrap-up, but I've been wrong about these things before. Perhaps it's the fatigue talking... who knows?

-- GopherDave

Not Even Trying....

Today at the store was... slow. Agonizingly slow. So slow that I felt guilty not doing any real work, but given how "GO-GO-GO-GO-GO-GO" I have been the last couple of months, slow was kind of what I needed.

"Planning" for the upcoming game is going. As I've said in earlier posts, I am trying to not pre-plan anything, as I want this game/comic to be about the PCs, and not the cool villains I can make or the neat plots I can spin that keeps the players going in circles. Yes, there will be plots, but (if I can keep my own tendencies in check) they will be centered around things I get from the players. I will add my own spices to the stew, of course, but I am looking for this game to be as player-centric as possible.

With that said, ideas for the game are starting to tumble into my head from a number of different sources. I have a player who, despite my saying do not cement any concepts down, has already handed me a back story for a character idea. I have been trying to not think about it as I did not want to cement anything in my head. Today at the store, in my very idle time, I came up with ideas for play off of said background. In addition to this, I was listening to some music last night (Planet P Project's "Pink World") and ideas were germinating from that.

As it goes, I cannot wait to get this game started. I haven't felt that in a long time. It feels good...

-- GopherDave

The Wellspring Has Sprung A Leak...

Another day in paradise... I am writing this from my laptop and all seems good. Looks like Cowboy did a fine job of fixing things up. However, a small part of me in the back of my mind is wondering when the next virus will hit.

"Lack of Work" continues on the Champions game. I find it frustrating because I actually have ideas of what I want to do and want to get them down on paper, but all of that runs completely counter to how I wanted to set this game up. As it goes, I have begun working on the ideas which are fairly generic and can be dropped into whatever the setting happens to be. Things like one-shot bad guys and plots like "Bank Robbery of the Week". It's all part and parcel of the genre. I just wish I had had this many ideas when I was running my last two Champions campaigns. It would have made keeping those games fresh a LOT easier.

Well, off to go do store stuff... I am hoping to get back tonight and make a more substantive post, but you never know what will happen here...

-- GopherDave

Checkin In...

Okay... the world can stop dropping rocks on my head anytime now. The lumps are beginning to show...

It's been a bit longer than I have wanted since I posted last. Part of that has been because of time, and part of it has been due to some wonky, new computer virus that my personal laptop picked up. I do not know what the issues are, but that machine seems to attract them. Anyhoo, my buddy Marko (the redneck computer technician) went and ran the machine through its paces and a couple of scans I didn't try, and we *THINK* we have the problem licked. I won't know until tomorrow though as I will not be needing the laptop until then.

Last post I spoke of my son moving out of the house, but his friend ("LittleTinyBabyMan") still being here. Well, LTBM has bolted as well. His promotion at work came through and LTBM got an offer from one of our employees ("DoubleL") to room together. Thus, we have an empty room. The boys have a limited time to gather what they want out of it, and then the great clean-up and switch-over begins. Pumpkin will grab Skribl's old room, and we will turn Pumpkin's old room into a home office/hiding place for me. As much as I need a quiet place of my own, I'll miss the boys. Dinero (the dog) already misses Skribl something fierce, and has become a little bit of a whining machine. He hurts, and there is no way I can explain to Dinero why Skribl no longer wants to be pack. Dinero will eventually get used to the "new normal", but it will take a bit for him (and me) to do so...

The upcoming Champions campaign is coming along nicely with six interested players (and one waiting in the wings in case there is an opening). The first meeting is on the 15th, and that is where we will have a "team-building" exercise to try and put together an intrepid group of heroes and do-gooders. Signed up for the occasion are... MapGuy, Rabbi, SquareHead, Ginger, Grumpy, and PapaJ... I'm not really into using the real names of my friends in my blog posts. Those who hang out at the store and read this know who those folks are. That's all that matters.

Just to get back into the swing of making characters for this game, I started playing around with some concepts. I know I said I wanted very little "pre-planned" for this game, but as I stated in an earlier post, what I am working on are "throw-away" bad guys. None of them will be very deep or memorable, but that is sort of the idea. It's not the bad guy's comic-book, it's the PCs/Heroes, and they shouldn't get upstaged in their own story...

peace... GopherDave