One Lean, Mean, Typing Machine

I am the Warden!!

Notice anything different about how I'm typing? Perhaps not, but if you look closely - real close - you may just notice a bit of an eager step to these sentences, a sign of hope that all my problems from the past couple of years have melted away.

That's right, I've finally replaced my laptop.

It's the conclusion of a long overdue journey featuring my faithful and trusted iBook G4 purchased in 2006 and the start of a new fellowship with this gorgeous silver MacBook Pro. To be honest, I'm both incredibly excited and horribly nervous at the prospect because as much as I desperately needed this sucker as my new career is up and running, it's an awful lot of money to spend at the moment as my new career is just getting started.

As with many significant changes in life, this latest one came to be in light of a technical problem. On Tuesday morning, after spending the previous day talking about the risk of my iBook crapping out completely, she crapped out. Not completely, but enough that there was no ignoring the sign. After pressing the on button, it started to make a sudden chopping noise for close to 20 seconds before coming to an end on its own. Yep, it was time. It's also why I've been silent on this blog and the Broken Ruler's website as I couldn't risk starting up the old girl again until I had reliable access online.

Just Play, Dammit (or How I Finally Got To Be An Assassin)

I am the Warden!!

Friday night was a major event for two reasons. First, I was finally able to present my Development Team for Killshot with hardcover copies of the book as a token of appreciation for all of their hard work, time, and effort playing, critiquing, and improving this game of assassination. Second, I got to play an assassin.

That's right. I relinquished my Director's chair to my buddy, Nick (literally and figuratively - it's not a true director's chair, but it is larger, softer, and more impressive compared to the dining room chairs the players use), who volunteered to run a job for us last night. No pressure on creating, running, and ruling on a game; I could just play. Not that I didn't chime in character recommendations, quick rule references, and such because my instinct is to be the Director. As my fiancee put it, things sure did sound like I was still running a game from the adjoining living room. But once the action was rolling, I shut the fuck up.

For the evening's festivities, I rolled up an Enforcer/Hunter by the name of "Father" James Heathridge (yeah, I stole a name from another job), so nicknamed because he was once a man of the cloth who one day got his hands bloody and began walking down a dark path. While I had originally intended for the Father to be a fist fighter, I switched him out to a firearms expert with +1d6 towards unarmed attacks so there was always a back-up option (and it would allow me to use Dual Strike unarmed or with any weapons mastered through my Weapons Expert benefit).

I had a blast and not just because I was thrilled to finally play (something that never happens when you design your own independent RPG). Aside from offering me the standard fare I've been dishing out to them for months on end, we were tossed a bone. A Cthulhu bone, if you will. Released from our respective prison cells by a clandestine organization (assuming from the tremendous effort they went through to spring us from the slammer), we were charged with eliminating three kidnappers who had snatched an unidentified subject known only as the High Value Target (HVT). We had all the information we needed on the three kidnappers, other than where they currently resided, and were hired to dispose of all four targets.