Author Archives: Vanguard

Demon Hunters Fillable PDF

Posted on by
1

So I saw one of the members of Dead Gentlemen asking about a fillable PDF for the Demon Hunters RPG sheet so I took some time and made one up.  It allows for writing in the info as well as check boxes for wounds/stuns and plot points/Die Steps.  The initial character sheet and design of course belongs to Dead Gentlemen.

The file can be found here,

Demon Hunters Fillable Char Sheet

and as the person that asked was Don Early (Silent Jim from the movie) here is a character sheet for Silent Jim based on the stats in the book.

DH Silent Jim

Enjoy

Onward to Waffles!

Posted on by
3

Greetings Folks, I know we have had a lull here at the site but with today being Labor Day, I figured I should put some labor into getting the site freshened up.  It will be a bit of a process as I gather our writers together and update the site but hey I am happy to start us back up.  Speaking of start up. I would like to bring your attention to a Kickstart campaign that is extremely close and I hope succeeds.

This year a few of us went to Gen Con and had a blast.  One of my favorite things was getting to meet a bunch of the cast of the Gamers: Dorkness Rising including Gamer’s Live an improv show. I was happy to say that I was killed on stage during the improv. ThankfullyI got better and was able to be in the audience for the filming of Dun Dun Dun!!! Gamers: Hand of Fate ,which was taking place at Gen Con.  They were able to film about 25% of the movie at Gen Con, however needed to finish funding the movie with Kickstarter in order to succeed.

This movie NEEDS to get made.  Not only is Dorkness Rising one of my favorite movies but also the plot for this continuation of the cast sounds great.  Don’t just take my word for it, check out the information here (Don’t worry I’ll wait) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zombieorpheus/the-gamers-hands-of-fate

After hearing about the game it also prompted me to try out the game Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) that is the muse for the in movie card game Romance of the Nine Kingdoms. This is a fun game and I look forward to seeing its version in the movie.

The community for Dead Gentlemen has been great and full of passion and I am glad to call myself a Kickstarter.  So please do what you can, and if you haven’t already check out their work at http://deadgentlemen.com/ and http://zombieorpheus.com/ and even find them on youtube.  There are a few days left and if they surpass their goal there will be even more rewards.  At least watch the movies, enjoy and laugh your d20’s off.  In closing I thought why not make a little meme and with some of the nail biting of the kickstarter campaign I thought this was appropriate.

 

Eggsterminate

Posted on by
Reply

So in the spirit of easter…. (and of course we wish you a happy one)

     Now, lest I be remise and be chastised for the true meaning of Easter this post is only in fun.  However I was curious so I looked up the origins of said Easter Eggs (well as much as wikipedia would give me) and I did learn something.  So my Easter gift to you is that same knowledge so you can perhaps impress someone with it as well.  So here goes…
     The Easter egg tradition seems to have started with Lent (in primarily Western Christianity).  Eggs were originally forbidden during Lent as both meat and dairy were forbidden during the Lenten fast and eggs were seen as a “dairy” (in that time meaning a foodstuff that could be taken from an animal without shedding its blood).  This in turn started another tradition being the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday when Lent begins.  On that last Tuesday they would eat a large amount of eggs, meat and dairy before the fast and so it became known as “Fat Tuesday” or Mardi Gras.
     With the coming of Easter, the eating of eggs resumed and since chickens did not stop laying eggs during that time there was a surplus for the feast.  In addition in Christianty the Easter Eggs were dyed red to represent the blood of Christ and the hard shell off the egg symbolized the sealed Tomb of Christ – the cracking of which symbolized his resurrection from the dead.  The decoration kind of grew from there to show tokens of friendship, love or good wishes.
     In legends apparently a sacred tradition among followers of Eastern Christianity state that Mary Magdalene was bringing cooked eggs to share with the other women at the tomb of Jesus, and the eggs in her basket miraculously turned brilliant red when she saw the risen Christ.  Similarly another legend goes that when Mary Magdalene told the Emperor of Rome that “Christ has risen”, he pointed to an egg on his table and stated, “Christ has no more risen than that egg is red” of course which after that statement the egg immediately turned blood red.
     Lest Christianity have all the eggciting fun many cultures you the egg as a symbol of the start of new life and is synonymous with spring and the Spring equinox.
     With Easter you can’t forget the Rabbit/Bunny/Hare.  The idea of an egg-laying bunny apparently came to the US in the 18th Century with German Immigrants and Protestants who wanted to retain the custom of colored eggs for Easter but did not want to include the Catholic rite of fasting.  So the legend grew of the “osterhase” (Easter Hare/rabbit/bunny) where good children received gifts of colored eggs in the nests that they made in their caps and bonnets before Easter.
     The hare is also a sign of spring which is likened to fertility and rebirth, and even religion.  Looks like in ancient times it was though that the hare was a hermaphodite (named after the offspring of hermes and aphrodite the goddess of fertility) and the (albeit faulty) idea that a hare could reproduce without the loss of virginity led to an association with the Virgin Mary and so was in many illuminated manuscripts.  Hares likened to fertility makes sense, given the rabbits propensity to…um make many many little bunnies.  Combine that with the egg as a sign of new life….boom you gots a egg laying bunny, or at the very least a bunny that associates with chicks.
     Whatever your religious beliefs, I hope you have a good weekend and perhaps time with friends and family.

Now we are the cool ones.

Posted on by
1

Saw this today a fun music video from the cast of the Guild Web series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFhgupR565Q&feature=player_embedded

also on a more horrific note, Apparently George Lucas in his “wisdom” decided that the for the Kinect Star Wars game (which I wasn’t going to get anyway) includes something that is popular in other kinect games…. a dance section a la Dance Central.  You can dance as characters from star wars, where once you had to worry about being frozen in carbonite, now you have to worry about being served.  Just behold our scruffy looking nerf herder dancing in a rendition of Ridin’ Solo as I’m Han Solo….The force have mercy on our souls…

oh and here is another one with some poor guy in the player cam playing as a twi’lek dancer… I got nothin…

Prepare Yourselves….

Posted on by
Reply

I uploaded some new gameplay footage for Planetside2 in the game section of the website, which can be found here.  This footage is from the Game Developers Conference this week.  It looks awesome, I can’t wait for beta.  By the way, Beta will be most likely in waves but for those that have played Planetside before you will be given priority over those that haven’t.  You just need to go to www.planetside2.com and sign up for the beta (you may need to sign up for a Sony Station ID), and after you do that just log back in and verify your email address again.

If you have never played Planetside before you can also get a priority chance at Beta by purchasing the April issue of PC Gamer, which is on sale now.  You need to buy it at the store (Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble and the like should have it) and it will come with a beta key code which you can redeem and they will advise you when you are selected.  The cover looks like this.

We are the loyal Terran Republic, the military responsible for keep peace for a thousand years and now we face the mercenary New Conglomerate, self proclaimed freedom fighters but are actually the fodder of the private companies who want to do as they wish and the cult-like Vanu Supremacy who view strange new technology as the answer to everything.  If you choose to play the VS or NC, that is your right, but just realize that in that game you may see yourself on the other side of many of member of Guild1042.  Hope to see you online.
As PS2 comes closer to being released, or at least beta we will provide more info.

Do not shorten Valentine’s Day to VD…

Posted on by
1

So if you have been living under a rock or knee’s deep in Skyrim I should inform you that today is Valentine’s Day or as the hipster’s like to call it Single’s Awarness Day, or some call it Obligation Day.  Any way, In the spirit of selling out I thought I would share with you some fun geeky valentine’s.  Remember while for adults Valentine’s day is all about love, diamonds and mushy stuff think back to being a kid when you would give Valentine’s to all your class mates, friendship’s were made by what kind of valentine you brought, if you were a girl and brought Batman or Star War’s valentines you instantly became cool regardless of the cooties.  So I share will all of you some valentine’s that I found online to celebrate our geekiness.  If you like them share them with friends, loved ones, heck if it’s a good one maybe your DM will give you a +1 on your next roll.

Enjoy,

Another site celebrating Valentines and 42 can be found here

From a favorite webcomic of mine some Dork Tower Valentines

and I totally should have given this in school, but for all you Instructors out there…
and if you have some more awesome ones, share them below.

Roll for Initiative….

Posted on by
Reply

So this is my next entry in my quest for self improvement in a living Role Playing Game, and it turns out to be quite like an actual role playing game.  By that I mean I crit failed, rolled a natural one, a fumble, a botch.  Really I made no real progress my initiative check was not so good .  So I guess this is a learning experience for those out there, resolutions or goals are nice, but if you don’t act on them your lameness gets spread on the internet…or some such.  Well here is to next week may that bring me some better luck.

Again I will try to post my progress on twitter as @vanguard1042 or on twitter.com/vanguard1042.  Also I am looking into an app for helping me with my travel rations if you will, although we never did that much in our actual games.  In any case, I think one that I found to try is MyFitnessPal on the apple store and android market.  I’ll try it out and let you know how I like it.

So see you next week, wish me luck.

Gaining Levels and Losing Weight

Posted on by
Reply

Well, this is my first actual article on this site and I was back and forth on what I wanted to write about.  Now I am sure I will post many different things, but for this first outing I wanted to create something worthwhile, or at least intriguing if nothing else. While I know that all geeks and gamers are unique, I am a semi-stereotypical in some respects.  I definitely have the mindset of “IT MUST BE MINE!!!” when it comes to new merchandise involving my hobbies.  Yet it is one of the “larger” stereotypes that I am sadly a victim of and have been for years.  I am the dreaded Fat Fanboy.  I wasn’t always this way…as a young chap I was a skinny kid but then Middle School hit and I became more sedentary, liking games and TV a tad too much.  Fast-Forward to during High School when after two years as an underclassmen I grew sick of how I looked (at 240lbs) and the jokes here and there and I decided to do something about it.  Then SHAZAM! Through eating better and working my butt off I dropped 60 lbs (down to 180lbs) and joined the Track Team.  It was nuts, life in High School became a lot easier when you weren’t the fat kid and also stopped caring about what other’s thought.

Then college hit and the dreaded Freshman 15 came, and then 15 more and then 15 more and then 15 more and I was back to where I was.  But it didn’t stop there.  After college I had a relatively sedentary job, that was at times stressful and gained another 15 then another 15, then another 15 and another 15 (not quite so regular but you get the point).  I doubled what I lost going backwards.  It was like a critical failure to the gut.  I even gained about another 15 – 30 more, however I did manage to scale that back down over this last year even lost more but then gained it back.  So here I sit, for those of you counting, I am now at about 300 lbs.  While I may not be the heaviest geek you see at a convention, I am still way way way above what I want to be.

I will be the first to admit that when it comes to weight loss I talk a good game, but I have shown time and time again over the last few years that I am like the DND campaign that only lasts one session, or even worse never makes it past character creation.  Best of intentions and all that.  So I thought here was a chance to put myself out there for the world to watch, hopefully this way I will be even more encouraged, scared, shamed, ridiculed and lambasted into losing the weight.  After all, the Internet can be a cruel and harsh mistress.

But not only did I want to loose weight and get in better shape, I also want to be a better person, more well rounded, as I became less, well uh, round.  Add to that the fact that this is a geek and gamer site, not just a self help place so how to make it geeky.  Then I thought why not take what I have a passion for, and combine it with what I would like to do.  In all the games I enjoy playing, my character grows more powerful.  What if I wanted to do that?  What if I wanted to be someone who is leveling up in life?

So I decided to connect my changes with a type of game I am fond of, that of DND or Dungeons and Dragons (but really any role playing game would work).  Part of this will be to create my own chart for leveling up.  Now the chart isn’t finalized yet but I believe I will start out with the DND famous Ability Scores as a way to categorize the things I want to change.

Strength (STR):  Self explanatory and pretty standard with the DND version.  I hope to increase my Strength through weight-lifting and working out.

Constitution (CON): I thought for this possibly my long distance endurance through things like running and swimming.

Dexterity (DEX): Flexibility and Balance through stretching and yoga among other things.  I am very not flexible and could use all the help I can get.

Intelligence (INT): Here I thought I should expand my mind and try to take time to study and learn things that will help me in my jobs and hobbies and to learn new skills.

Wisdom (WIS): Chores, because I know it’s not a wise thing to not do my chores.  But in addition to that I will try to be more organized and financially responsible.  This is the toughest to measure but I will try to elaborate in the future.

Charisma (CHA): Now I can actually measure this by weight loss or body measurements, but I was also thinking the old school Perform Skill for DND and incorporate skills I would like to improve such as Music, Art and Writing.

My next thing was how do I level up?  Well I think it would be fair to get 1 Experience (XP) Point for every hour I do something that would fit in one of the categories.  For starters, I believe Level 2 will be at 100 XP and one item of treasure, to be determined (maybe something on the random dice roll chart…).  I may modify this as I go and flesh out the rest of my Gaming for Losing system but I wanted somewhere to start.  If you have any ideas, suggestions, or would like to join in your self please leave a comment.  Maybe eventually I will create some character sheets!

I will try and check back each week for Weigh-In Wednesday’s and let you know how my progress is going.  If you are looking for a more day to day happenstance you can also follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/vanguard1042  and there will soon to be a twitter feed you can follow on this website to keep up with all the Guild 1042 twitter users.

Lastly in order to fully lay it out there and prepare for my next step in this adventure I need to be able to look back as a commoner to see where I have been and where I need to go.  Thus, a picture of my ogre-like physique at Level 1.

 

In the interest of full disclosure these pictures are a little old, but sadly I haven’t really lost any weight since they were taken.  If I get a chance to get some new photographs I may swap them out, but I wanted to get something started on this Wednesday February 1, 2012.  Let the adventure begin…