something stirs and something tries and starts to climb toward the light

Posted on By Wil

I worked on [REDACTED] today, and had more fun than I thought possible. I can't say anything more until July.

Tomorrow, I work on [REDACTED], which is different from [REDACTED], but should be really awesome, too. I can't believe I get to spend two days working with [ACTORS].

(It was a lot easier to talk about my job before the studios became obsessed with secrecy.)

So a couple of quick things before I get back to preparing for [REDACTED]:

  • I'm going to the Phoenix Comicon this weekend. I'll be on a few panels, and I'm doing a special show on Saturday night.
  • Next week, Felicia and I are going to Origins in Columbus, to play games and talk about Tabletop.
  • My testing of the theory that it is not possible to have too many gaming dice continues, so if you're coming to either one of these cons and want to give me dice that I can add to my ever-growing collection, I'd love to have them.
  • Today, the comic I wrote with Felicia for The Guild comes out. It's called FAWKES, and it is about what happens between the end of Season 4 and [SPOILER] in Season 5. It's getting generally good reviews, which delights me. The only negative is that I didn't spend several pages filling in people who don't watch The Guild why they should care about the story and who everyone is, which is a little silly, because I didn't write it for those people (who aren't going to buy it, anyway.)I'm especially happy with the artwork and both covers, and super-grateful to Dark Horse for supporting it.

Finally, my beloved Los Angeles Kings are in the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1993. This is what I looked like last night after they won in overtime:

 

Kings WIN! KINGS WIN!

Not actually taken last night, but I do this whenever the Kings win.

 

This is how I know #Tabletop has arrived.

Posted on By Wil

Tabletop Trophy in Draw SomethingI keep hearing from gameshops that people are coming in and buying the games we play on Tabletop, and from people who tell me that they're using Tabletop to show their non-gaming partners why we love to geek out over games all the time… but someone choosing to use our super lame totally awesome trophy that Lindsey got from eBay for 3 bucks we spent an unfathomable amount of money on making as the trophy for "award"? That's amazing.

I do not always make a meme reference to my own show, but when I do, I choose this one.

in which diablo 3 is played with my son

Posted on By Wil

Today, I'll wrap production on the latest series of audio books I've been doing. It's been ten long days, and though I genuinely adore the people I'm working with, I'll be happy when I get to the last word on the last page, because…

I'm going to start work on a different and awesome project on Thursday, before I head to Phoenix for Comicon late Friday night, and I have a crapton of homework and research to do before that gets started. 

Because I've been so busy with the audio books and a few secret things, I didn't have any real time to play Diablo 3 until this weekend. I put in 12 hours in three days (guess how I know I'm an adult? That felt a little excessive to me.) and though I'm only in the beginning of the second act, I really like it. The art direction is beautiful, the music and story are fantastic, and the gameplay is exactly what I want and expect. I think it also helps that I played cooperative with Ryan, who is on the other side of the country, and it felt like some good father/son bonding time, mostly because of the silly chat.

I'm playing a monk I named Alikka. She's so bad ass, when she punches people, they explode. Last night, Ryan and I took two monks on a couple quests, and we destroyed the bad guys.

"You know how I know these cultists are crazy?" I said in chat.

"How?" He said.

"Because they just saw us beat the shit out of this giant demon thing, and they still came running at us with their little knives."

"LOL. Stupid cultists," he said.

We were in some village, doing this quest where we had to free a bunch of prisoners from cells that were scattered all over the place. It wasn't a simple matter of walking up and unlocking the doors, though, on account of all the demons everywhere. So we're fighting the demons and the prisoners are all, "Save us! Save us!" so I typed, "Hey! We're a little busy right now FIGHTING THE FUCKING DEMONS." 

I almost wiped, but the resulting laughs were worth it.

Then, later, he used this skill where the monk summons a giant bell, kicks it, and wastes whatever happens to be in the path of the resulting soundwave (it's a cool looking effect that I'm not doing justice in the description.) I said, "It looks like you just … [puts on sunglasses] … rang his bell. YYYEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHH!!!"

It went on and on like that until it was time to go to bed. We got some nice gear, and it was really fun to play this character who feels like a super bad ass (I love this thing she does where she punches like seven enemies in a row and they're all "Hey what just happened? Oh we're dead.") even though she's only level 17.

It's not the deepest game in the world, and it isn't going to replace the experience I have when I play a tabletop RPG with my friends, but as a social experience with my son that was pretty easy to play for a little bit and then walk away from, it gives me exactly what I need.

I probably won't pick it up again for… gosh, probably not until I get back from Origins in two weeks, but I'm glad I spent some time playing it this weekend, even if I'm paying for it this morning because I stayed up too late playing it with my son, who I miss more than anything.

… god damn do I need another cup of coffee.

I really miss this place

Posted on By Wil

 

image from i.imgur.com

I took this picture on one of the last days of production.

Whenever I watch Eureka this season, and I see an advert on the network formerly known as Sci-Fi for one of their stupid goddamn are-you-serious-with-this-bullshit reality shows, I get angry and then sad. Eureka was and is such a great show, and it deserved better than it got from the network. I guess if we knew then what we know now, we would have put in more ghosts and wrestling.

 

Colin, Jaime, and Neil came over for boardgames and homebrew last weekend. We had so much fun, what was intended to be a few hours of goofing off turned into an entire day and most of the evening. 

 

image from i.imgur.com

Neil Grayston, Colin Ferguson, some nerd, Jaime Paglia

I love the stories and characters on Eureka, and I am really proud of the work I did as Doctor Parrish… but what I miss most about Eureka is getting to see these people (and others who are not pictured) every day.

Afterthought – In comments, Jeff L. makes a point that I agree with:

To a point, I recognize the reality shows as a necessary evil in the current cable marketplace. The much higher margin on shows like that is what enables the channel to put on the more expensive scripted stuff. And you can make the case that a lot of the reality stuff is at least tangentally related to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Genres (wrestling, on the other hand, pure money grab).

Based on the ratings for its scripted shows, if SyFy tried to run on a schedule of mostly original programming, it would probably be off the air in 6 months. So I've chosen to just watch what I like through the miracle of Tivo (and I try to do it within one day for max ratings bump) and I just ignore the ads for the shows I don't like.

Syfy may not be the destination channel it once was, but they still put out some quality programming, and as noted, they are a business so they can't really be blamed for making business decisions, as much as we personally may disagree with the whys and hows of them.

When I talk about how much I miss Eureka, and how much I want to kick certain NBC/Universal executives in the nuts for cancelling it, I readily admit that I'm not coming from a rational place. I am coming from an emotional place, because something that meant a lot to me was taken away.

I get it, it's business, and I'm not going to pretend that it's anything different… but I'm also not going to pretend that, for me, it isn't personal on some irrational level.