THE SIMPSONS NEWS
Nothing much to report, except that we seem to be doing well for once. We might actually ship the show on time. I’ve worked on a few scenes this week and last week that have been a combination of 2D art with 3D elements. Besides that, there hasn’t been as much drama at the studio as there was a few weeks back.

FAMILY
Yay, my sister (who was pregnant all this time. Something I’ve forgotten to mention) had her baby last week. She gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. I was sooo excited and got all choked up when I saw the pictures. I want to meet the little munchkin. It’s too bad we can’t afford to fly over and see them right now.

My sister is doing well. She had to get a C-section because of some issues that turned up but she sounds very happy.

The baby girl has been given the unusual name of Hunter Rose Miyan. It’s unusual but it’s pretty. My sister, has all the symbolism behind it all worked out. The funny thing is, when I first heard the name, after my dad told what it was, my first question was, “Hunter Rose? Like the comic book character?!” Yes, I’m a comic geek and yes, one of my favorite comic book characters is called Hunter Rose. It’s a comic originally written and drawn by an artist by the name of Matt Wagner (who owns the character). Hunter Rose is a character who is a thief, wares a mask and goes by the name Grendel.

In any case, I just thought it was funny. To me, it’s as if she would have named the kid: Clack Kent (aka. Superman, or Kara Zor-El (aka. Supergirl), or Barbara Gordon (aka. Batgirl/Oracle). My sister had no clue Hunter Rose was the name of a comic character.

Well, now I have a niece, and she’s a Grendel and I think that’s cool, so I’m very happy.

ROLE PLAYING GAMES

I’ve recently been reading the rule book of a Roleplaying game that I think has a fantastic setting. In fact, not only is it a fantastic setting, it’s a fantastic game as well. It’s called Houses of the Blooded by John Wick *edit: I forgot to credit John  originally*. This game describes itself as the anti-D&D game. What does it mean by that? Well, this game is to D&D what Micheal Moorcock’s character Elric, is to Robert E. Howard’s Conan. D&D is all about being a nomad adventurer going around exploring, having adventures and killing monsters for fame and glory. Houses of the Blooded is all about, being a person who is settled, has all the fame and glory and is trying to keep it and gain more power. Houses of the Blooded makes use of all the things that are completely useless in a D&D game. Things like, land you own, vassals, personal fashion, status, intrigue, spouses, children, retainers, etiquette, style…etc. Everything you’d never think would be useful in an RPG is really useful in this one. You can even use the property you own to develop resources that can allow you make things that could give you advantages in the game, like in a game of Civilizations or Settlers of Catan. That is just really great.

The mechanics are really cool and unique. I won’t go into it too much here but let me just say that there is an element in the game that is called a “wager”. What you are basically doing is wagering dice from the pool of dice you use to try to overcome a conflict, by putting the aside and not rolling them. These dice then come into play if your roll succeeds by allowing you to embellish the circumstances that occur. For every dice you wager, you can add one new circumstance. If the conflict was a contest between two players, this becomes a bit of a game of wits where each player is trying to one up the other trying to find creative ways to add to the circumstances to benefit their side of the story. Trust me, when you actually see an example of how this works, it’s just really neat.

The setting, in this game totally ROCKS. I will be as brief as I can be since the background history and flavor text was 70 pages long. In a nutshell, you play a character of a race called the Ven, who were created by the Sorcerer-Kings to be their servants. The Sorcerer-Kings fought for thousand of years and finally ended up destroying each other and the world. Out of the rubble the surviving Ven slowly rebuilt civilization by taming some of the crazy chaotic world that was left. After taming as much of the land as they could, they fought each other for dominance. Some found some ancient relics or sorcery left behind by the Sorcerer-Kings. Out of the this came fourth those who called themselves The Blooded. They split off into Noble Houses and little by little, “The Great Game” or “The game of Houses” began. I would love to tell you the whole history because it’s fantastic but it’s waaay to long so I can’t. You can download the first 40 pages of the 436 page book with all the history for free from the website if you want to read more. All you need know is that, the game is all about intrigue, backstabbing, out witting and out maneuvering your opponents, rituals and playing with outlawed sorcery without getting caught while all the time attempting to get more statues, more lands and generally more power over everyone else. For some reason, this sounds like so much fun to me. It would be interesting to see what a crazy mess you can get your imaginary character into, living out a machiavellian life.

You can buy the book in Pdf form for 5$ at Indie Press Revolution or you can buy the actual book for 45$ there also.

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