BattleLore, Harry Dresden, and Catholics
October 19, 2007 in ANSWERING COMMENTS, BOARD GAMES, BOOKS, CATHOLICISM, THE SIMPSONS NEWS, Traditional Catholics
THE SIMPSONS NEWS
We didn’t meet our shipping dates and we still have a long way to go. We were suppose to ship Act III last Friday but it turns out we hadn’t even shipped all of Act II yet. I’ve been working twelve hour days all this week, trying to get as much done as possible. We are soooo behind.
BOARD GAMES
Wow! I actually got to play a board game last week. I asked my wife if she wanted to play a board game and she actually said yes. So I went to the game closet and after thinking about what I should get out, I thought maybe she might like BattleLore. BattleLore is a light fantasy wargame that comes with a bunch of miniatures. It uses a game system called the Command and Colors System. It’s a really simple two player game and it can be played in about an hour. If you want to know more about it, click below:
BattleLore review from Board Game Geek
Purchase BattleLore (if you buy it through this site, Amazon gives me a small percentage. That goes for all the other things bought through the site.)
My wife had never played before. I showed her how to play and set up the board to the first scenario (the board is modular so you don’t always play the same game everytime). She played the English and I played the French. In this scenario she was at a disadvantage because she had very few strong people in armor and a bunch of lightly armored archers while I had a bunch of heavily armored knights on horse back. The only advantage she had was that she got to have six command cards in her hand while I only got four. After about forty minutes of play it looked like the game was almost over and I was going to win. The winner of this scenario was the first person to destroy four of their opponents units. I had three points and my wife only had one. A turn later my wife tied the game by taking out two of my units after rolling two lucky rolls. In my next turn I attacked trying to win the game but the dice didn’t roll my way. My wife got to battle the unit I used to attack her and she took them out in another lucky roll and she won the game. I couldn’t believe it. I was sooo close to wining and I lost two turns later. Needless to say my wife had a good time and really liked the game. Looks like we’ll be playing it again sometime, which is good because it’s one of my favorite games.
BOOKS
Oh MAN, there’s nothing like reading a good book. I like to read but I often find myself getting bored with a lot of books I pick up. That’s why it’s great to find a book that I just can’t wait to get back to. I’ve been reading Jim Butcher’s Wizard for Hire and it’s just that type of book. Technically the book is a compilation of three of his Dresden novels, Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril. I’m reading Storm Front right now and I’m having a blast with it. The books are a cross between Sam Spade mysteries and Harry Potter. They’re about a private detective who happens to be a real Wizard and his job is to investigate supernatural mysteries. For example, one of the mysteries he has to deal with in Storm Front after the cops call him in for help is figuring out who used black magic to murder a mob boss’ bodyguard, and an expensive hired escort by making their hearts explode out of their chest while in the middle of sexual intercourse. (Yeah, this one isn’t for the kiddies). Problem is that the White council of Wizards thinks it was him. It’s really great. Mostly because of the character of Harry Dresden, the protagonist. He’s such a sarcastic and very humorous character. You just enjoy seeing the world through his eyes and his world is really interesting. I can’t recommend these books enough. I’ll let you know if I feel the same way after I’m done reading them all.
CATHOLICISM (Answering Comments)
Warning: The following is about Catholicism. If you could care less about this stuff, please feel free to skip it.
Before I even begin, a quick word about the Society of Pius X. I must retract my statement from “WHAT IN THE WORLD IS A ‘TRADITIONAL’ CATHOLIC?” where I wrote, “…this person is actually not a Roman Catholic at all but belongs to the schismatic sect of the Society of Pius X.” The truth is, he is. The ideas put forth by the Society of Pius X, in no way condemns them in the eyes of the Church. The Society of Pius X is an excommunicated (no longer in “communion” with the Church and no longer able to partake of the Sacraments) group of priests. This means the excommunication effects the priests and the priests alone and doesn’t effect the laity in their congregation. The reason the Society got excommunicated was not because of the beliefs they hold but because they began ordaining priests without permission of the Vatican (something that they are quick to admit to and defend in their site).
Bill asked me a question again under my post, “WHAT IN THE WORLD IS A ‘TRADITIONAL’ CATHOLIC?” It went like this:
Well I asked my co-worker what a traditional Catholic is and his answer matches with your first speculation. He believes that the Church has (and I’m only paraphrasing) has changed the dogma and that it no longer holds the true beliefs that it once has. Again I was curious…in what way has it changed where the meaning has been altered? It is true that mass is no longer conducted in Latin and the priest is not speaking with his back facing towards the people. And there are certain issues (which I can’t remember because I’m too tired and lazy) where the Church has redefined to reflect the changes of the times( or was it something else?).
Well he did answer my question regarding to that, but I forgot what it was…DUH! I’ll ask him again and bring a notepad…
By “…his answer matches with your first speculation.” I take you to mean that he is from the Society of Pius X.
Okay, so the answer to your question about what meanings in the dogmas have been altered is, “none”. Of course, the Society of Pius X doesn’t see it that way. I’ve decided that the best way to show what they believe is to link you to their FAQs pages. It’ll basically tell you what you wanted to know. The FAQs page is full of accusations mostly against Vatican II. Just as a disclaimer though, after having read through some of the things written there, I noticed that Vatican II teaching is grossly misrepresented and therefore sounds like the worst thing in the universe. I don’t think this is a deliberate misrepresentation. I think they honestly see Vatican II this way. It looks to me that they hate Vatican II so much, their willing to find nothing good in it at all and in so doing, will always go out of their way to find something wrong out of sheer prejudice.
I also noticed that the language they use to represent themselves is political in nature. The term conservative is used in a few places. It’s been my experience that when you read or hear a Catholic use terms like conservative or liberal to represent themselves it usually means that they are coming from a political place first and a religious place second. Usually this means that what they say doesn’t actually represent the faith they hold so much as the system of thought they use to interpret it. Catholicism is neither conservative nor liberal it’s Catholic. I hope I’m misunderstanding the way they’re using the term.
I also find it odd that they are so anti-protestant. This coming from a group of priests who refuse to humble themselves to Church discipline (no matter how unjust). Saint Padre Pio went through something similarly unjust but was humble and obedient enough to endure it in spite of the souls that would suffer for it and now he’s a Canonized Saint. It saddens me to see people who obviously love their Catholicism, willfully refusing Church discipline and by doing so separating themselves from the Church. Then turning around and proclaiming themselves the only holders of the True Faith. Ironically these actions call to mind a famous person who did the same thing five hundred years ago, namely Martin Luther. I can see the good they’re trying to do but, in trying to fight what they perceive is protestantism in the Church, have they become yet another type of neo-protestant?
I hope this makes some sense to you Bill because it sure as heck makes no sense to me. This stuff is just way to confusing. I personally have very mixed feeling about the Society. I see a lot of good in them as well as bad. Let me know what you get out of it.
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Vatican, The board game!
October 25, 2007 in ANSWERING COMMENTS, BOARD GAMES, MY WEB COMIC, MY WEEK, THE SIMPSONS NEWS, Traditional Catholics
THE SIMPSONS NEWS
Looks like we’re beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel on show 8. All the scenes have been handed out and everyone that finished the scenes they are working on, help others finish the scenes that they haven’t got to yet. I ended up doing exactly that this week. The scene I got is really fun and very funny (or at least I hope it will be after I’m done with it). It’s one of the last scenes of the show and I’m having a good time being silly with Bart and Homer in the kitchen.
MY WEEK
So I spent the beginning of the week working on my web comic (more on that below) and before I knew it, it was almost time to post my blog and I hadn’t even started writing or drawing anything for it. I’m almost always thinking about what I should write on it and always trying to find something worth writing about. That way whoever reads it will at least, hopefully, be entertained. I know sometimes I fail miserably but I try. Well this time I procrastinated a bit too long because I got so caught up in the story I’m trying to write.
The thing that takes the most time about my blog is the drawing part. The drawings I post every week take, at the very least, an hour to do and that is mostly because of the coloring process. The more characters in the drawing, the longer it takes to color. Once I have a drawing done though, the rest is pretty easy. I just type.
Sometimes I get an idea for the drawing before I start typing and sometimes after. Well this time I knew what I was going to write about. This weekend my cousin, my wife, my wife’s best friend and I played a game of Nexus Ops. Nexus Ops is a light science fiction wargame that plays a little like Axis and Allies, a little like The Settlers of Catan and a little like Starcraft the video game. I lost the game miserably and my wife didn’t like it much. Although my cousin loved it but that’s only because he won.
Well, anyway, I was going to write about that and then draw a picture of my cousin on top of the table, kicking board games pieces everywhere, rubbing it in our faces that he won (which he practically did) while we sit by and look stupidly up at him. Well, the thing is, lately I’ve just been drawing the blog drawings on a piece of paper, I scan them in, and I then color and letter them. It’s faster for me that way. If I use the Wacom tablet to draw directly on the computer I find it takes me longer to do. Usually I scan the drawing in at work. This time I didn’t get a chance to draw anything anywhere. My scanner at home is still packed up somewhere, my desktop isn’t working correctly and I just don’t have the time to take care of all these things right now. I was able to go home at a normal time this week. I thought I’d take advantage of the situation and draw the blog drawing at home but since I wasn’t going to be able to scan it in at home, that presented a problem. I didn’t want to stick around at work because I wanted to go home so badly so I thought I’d try drawing directly into the computer again. This time, though, I was going to try something new. I was going to paint the drawing. I thought that maybe, if I used shapes of color instead of lines I could actually get a more accurate and controlled drawing. Since it usually takes me a long time to color the drawings anyway I’d be losing a step of the process.
So I set out to execute my plan once I got home and low and behold it seemed to be working. I was trying to invent for myself the process as I went so it was taking me a bit longer to do it but I was doing it. I was getting really into it. While I was doing this, my wife called on the phone (she hadn’t come home yet) and I spoke to her for a bit. Afterwards I went back to the computer and began working on the drawing again.
Then, that’s when it happened… Photoshop froze on me a second and then crashed. This usually isn’t a big deal except that I had been so caught up in trying to invent for myself a new method of working on Photoshop that I hadn’t even saved the drawing I was working on at all. Not even once. In other words. I lost all my work. I was crushed. I didn’t want to start over. Emotionally I didn’t have it in me anymore. I went on Facebook and put a sad face “how I’m feeling” icon there and sat there staring at the computer. I didn’t do anything else on my blog for the rest of the day.
Next day, when I got into work, I used pencil and paper and drew this instead:
At least I got a drawing done.
MY WEB COMIC
So the story I was trying to write went bye bye. No matter what I did I couldn’t make it work. It was mostly because the story lost focus. It didn’t have a central theme. It didn’t have a point. Every time I tried to give it a point, it became something else. It just wasn’t the story I set out to write. So instead of fighting with the story and trying to force it to go where I wanted it to go, I thought that maybe I’ll go in the direction that these themes took the story. This actually worked a lot better. I’ve actually got a beginning, middle and end to the thing written out in a rough outline. I told the story to my wife and she really likes it, except for the final act climax which I fully admit is really cheesy and it needs work. That’s okay because what I have of this story is a whole lot more than I had with the other story.
I’m actually very excited about it now, even though it wasn’t what I wanted to write. I was trying to write a story about a fourteen year old boy named Joseph before. Now I’m writing about a man named Guy. The stories have the same “inciting incident”, namely the inheritance of money, both stories take place in the modern world and both stories even have a dragon in them yet they couldn’t be more different. If I can make the other story work I’ll still do it but for now I’ll stick to the one that’s working for me.
As soon as I can figure out a really good non cheesy climax to the story, I’ll be ready to start writing.
BOARD GAMES
So I’m not going to write about the game of Nexus Ops I played this weekend because I’ve already mentioned it above. Instead I’m going to call attention to a comment that was left under my About Me page. Imagine my surprise when I read this:
First I’d like to thank Stephen Haliczer Ph.D. for bringing the game to my attention. I appreciate it greatly.
So I checked out the game’s site and read about the game. I also tried reading about it on Board Game Geek (BGG) to see if I could learn a bit more. I found a small forum about the game there where people got a chance to ask Dr. Haliczer questions about the game. When asked how the game is played and how competitive it was Dr. Haliczer answered this:
This sounds really interesting. Unfortunately, when asked about the “roll and move” mechanic (roll the dice, move the number of spaces on the dice) of the game Dr. Haliczer was silent. The game sounds great but I’m iffy about the game being a “roll and move game.” Paul Sauberer asked exactly the question I wanted answered at BGG:
I wish there were more reviews of this game at the official site (there are only two). BGG has no reviews of the game at all. I’m very cautious of the board games I buy and I like to read as much about the game as I can before I spend any money on them to make sure I would really like them. Sometimes I even find free digital versions of games online and decide from playing them, if I want to buy them.
I’d be more likely to buy this game if I could read the rules for it or at least see a sample of play. Never the less I’ve put it on my BGG Wishlist. If “roll and move” mechanics are not a big deal to you, then maybe you ought to get it. If you do, tell me what you think of it. I’m really interested.
ANSWERING COMMENTS
T Melnick, thank you for sharing your position on the comments section of “What in the world is a ‘traditional Catholic’?“. I just wish to clarify something you said. In the post you wrote:
What you wrote above is basically what the Society of St. Pius X also says on their site. So my question is, what do you think of the Society?
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