Subject line and meme gakked from a locked post, else I'd give credit where credit is due.

In memory of Gary Gygax, who on my flist would I never have known if not for gaming?

aliwings, arcaedia, dracian, empress_schwa, garrity, head58, ivan23, kevin_mowery, kit_kindred, krf13, lintra, mekkasimian, porphyrin, space_mice, tryslora, wistling.

After some thought, this doesn't include those of you from the crazy old days of Forces of the Empire, since it was at least as much fandom as gaming. The list would be nearly twice as long if it did. It also leaves out at least one person I met in a gaming milieu first and reconnected with in fandom later on (waves at splash_the_cat).

And I'm only a social gamer.

ETA: Also of note? The list above is exactly 50/50 genderwise. :-)

First seen with joncwriter. Full article here.

When President Bush ordered troops to Iraq, he probably never imagined that he would be ultimately be responsible for what very well could be the very first D&D convention/game day ever held in a war zone. Ziggurat Con, being held June 9 from 1200 to 2100 hours at Camp Adder/Tallil Airbase, is open to all allied military personnel and civilian contractors in Iraq.

KBR and MWR (the army’s Morale Welfare & Recreation Department) have graciously allowed service members to use part of the Community Activity Center to hold the Game Day. The Ping Pong room will be set up for RPGs (Role-Playing Games, not to be confused with the rocket propelled grenades which share the same acronym), and the DVD Movie room will be playing Anime Movies all day in support of the event.

The largest problem with running a Con in Iraq, of course, is that there are no local stores or game publishers, and few game books on the post. Even dice are in short supply, with many soldiers breaking the unwritten taboo held by many gamers and sharing dice. Thankfully, many game publishers have also lent their support, and have agreed to supply game products to help the Con along. aethereal FORGE, Sovereign Press, Final Redoubt Press, Goodman Games, Paizo Publishing and Steve Jackson Games are among those that have thrown in their support for the convention. But Amberson indicated that the soldiers could definitely use more.

"This convention is currently in drastic need of prizes and giveaways for the troops," he said. "Everything donated will go directly to the troops, or to MWR to use as loaner books for the soldiers."

For more information, contact SPC David Amberson at the following address: david.amberson (at) iraq.centcom.mil

Donations can also be sent to SPC Amberson directly at the following address:

SPC David Amberson
A Co 86th Sig Bn
APO, AE 09331

They’re planning to run the following games (and will be happy to get additional games):
Babylon 5 RPG, Cyberpunk 2020, D&D, D&D RPGA, GURPS, Historic Miniatures Battles, Magic Tournament, MechWarrior Miniatures, Rifts, Shadowrun, Starship Troopers, White Wolf System-Vampire, White Wolf System-Werewolf, XCrawl

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=209823

Link gakked from coltsbane. Lots of yeah-whatever, but a few real gems. My favorite, for personal reasons, is #100. ;-D

In an unrelated note, Cretin Creation might consider listing the address of the con hotel, not just the name and the 800 reservation line. *rolls eyes*

Holiday catchup post forthcoming. Suffice it for the moment to say I did a whole lotta nothin'.

Meanwhile, my hubby forwarded me this, I believe from RPG.net. I figured I wouldn't be the only one I know to get a kick out of it. We're thinking we may actually have to buy this just for the sheer insanity factor...

( Diana, Warrior Princess! )

The updates to the website are still a bit behind, due to concentrating on getting books out on time, but after a couple requests from forum members, Rob gave us the green light to post the first SG-17 story in the forum in the interim.

This story has been finished for months, and I am pathetically eager for people to read and tell me what they think. I'm so hopelessly spoiled by the near-instant gratification of fic feedback. *wry g*

I'm tempted to ask the AEG guys to credit me as Continuity Goddess in upcoming SG-1 RPG books. Or possibly Nitpicky Bitch from Netu. Probably more honest. ;-) At least nobody's told me to go away, although I suspect some folks may have been tempted on occasion. I would probably be annoyed by me if I were them. Fortunately, everyone actually does want it to be right just as much as I do. They're just not necessarily as, y'know, insane. *wry g* Or as prone to poking holes in everything in sight. Also fortunately, thus far the consensus appears to be that it is in fact a useful trait, and not just an annoying one. The collaboration of about 7 or 8 authors on the System Lords book actually has been pretty darn impressive, and way less circus-like than it could have been.

Still haven't managed to get on top of the audition thing, and now there's more writing being offered sooner than I expected. I'd be tempted to say no, except that it's season 2, and I (selfishly, I freely admit) want to set those ground-floor precedents for how various Tok'ra stuff gets handled and expanded upon. But I'm also having guilt and restlessness over having done exactly zip about the reason I came to Chicago. I have to decide whether it's workable to do both in the immediate future. If it's not, I think I'd better make my peace with adapting my ideas to someone else's precedents. *shrug*

Not quite enough sleep last night, but SL stuff is basically done. Jack did some tweakage to the Nirrti entry late last night that I need to look at when I get home, and may have to adjust some things for new mechanics that have yet to completely settle into place, but for the most part, we're there. Whoo-hoo!

I will get to sleep at a decent hour tonight. This I swear. In spite of the ongoing process of indoctrinating amilyn into the ways of Stargate. *eg* Haven't watched most of these first season eps in ages. Too fun. My goal is to get her caught up by the time new eps start back up in January. She is not at all resistant to this, which is the fun part. New fandom for her, new person to bounce stuff off for me. Yay!

Headed to Columbus this weekend to see the hubby for belated anniversaryness (since anniversary is Wednesday). Going to bring back lots of warm clothes -- you can tell my brain was still in August gear when I packed to come here!

Need to get some photo paper for the laser printer and do up some resumes, and start finally hitting the audition circuit now that the writing is done. A little nervous about splashing into a much bigger pond than I've gotten used to, but still can't wait. :-D

Still tweaking System Lords stuff. Harder for Jack than for me, as most of the tweakage is due to not-quite-set-in-stone game mechanics, but still mildly irritated to have it eating my life several days post-deadline. On the upside, the book is going to be Really Damned Cool. Even for people not playing the game, the sourcebooks are going to be nifty resources for SG-1 in general, due to the mandate to develop new stuff beyond aired canon. The ideas some of these people are coming up with! Shiny.

Must find a Hot Topic and buy more over-the-knee socks. Warm legs are happy legs.

Kinda wondering why I was not introduced to the Pile O' Attorney Correspondence, oh, say, a week ago, when the person who used to handle it left. (I'm not inheriting all of her job along with Jan's, but I am inheriting that part of it.) The last week and a half has been "Okay, all the custom corr is caught up, help catch up the skiptracing." Now there's a whole new pile of stuff to catch up on, and learn new stuff for. Which is really cool and all (and keeps me from skiptracing, which I'm all over), but a little head-scratchy that it hasn't come up before today, when Jan is leaving Tuesday. Guess I'll be asking the general manager a lot more questions in coming weeks than I thought. Which is fine. *shrug*

Dreamed all last night about trying to build a database of System Lord history for the various writers on the RPG project, using the Access setup at work.

I assigned them all case numbers starting with 0-, so I guess they were all referred to Brennan & Clark for collections in 2000.

Oy.

Breather after this one, tho -- I think AEG is going to take a little bit of a break to regroup after the herculean effort of getting so many books out in such an insanely short time.

Or we could just find ourselves being asked to do stuff for the next one on insanely short notice. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I think the Morrigan entry for the System Lords sourcebook is going to sprain my Anglicizer. (Ultimately less painful than spraining the tongues of legions of GMs on the Gaelic...)

Thank all the gods that ever were for deadline extensions. I haven't been procrastinating. I haven't! Stuff just kept coming up and coming up and...

Anyhoo, thought I'd take a second to share my Momentous Discovery of the Day: Baal apparently has his fingers in Microsoft, because he's the only System Lord in Word's dictionary.

*pause* On second thought, maybe that's not really news...

Good news: "Broca Divide" all done (crunchy bits and all, 'cause, hee, d20-based system...or, for the layperson, "Holy Hannah, could we cram any MORE rules into this game???") and turned in.

So-so news: Still work to do on "Cor-ai" and "Bloodlines," but definitely light at the end of the tunnel.

Guilty news: I ended up carrying less than my weight on this whole schmear, and Jack has had to pick up the slack.

Not-thinking-about-it-right-now news: Have barely even thought about packing, never mind starting. Still hoping to head up to Chi tomorrow and spend a night at amilyn's before moving in with tinagilman Sunday. No idea how realistic that hope is. Will cross that bridge when I come to it. (And yes, Master Bra'tac, I know the bridge is too well guarded.)

Forwarded by our friend Chris, who used to run a DC Heroes campaign in Columbus before moving to New Hampshire, under the subject line "Games I wish I were running..."

Somebody posted the following on rpg.net. Damn. There's also a very funny bit by the same fellow below. Damn.

( CODENAME: ARCHANGEL )

Two down, one ("Cor-ai") to go. Then the supplementary material for each ep. Busy weekend ahead for Val and Jack. :-)

Eventually I'll get the swing of this writing-to-spec thing. Was hit today by the realization that it's not something I've done in any way, shape or form (barring letter composition and some minor pitching in on grant writing at BalletMet) since college. Too spoiled by being able to write whatever I want, whenever I want.

And while I'm enjoying this (even not counting the prospect of getting paid for it), I'm kinda looking forward to being in that place again sometime. God/dess only knows when my poor neglected fics will get picked up again. I want them to get finished -- I've invested a lot of time and emotion in them, and really, really don't want them withering on the vine. :-/ We'll see what happens after this stuff and the stuff for the System Lords sourcebook gets done.

Okay, promised myself it was beddy-bye time when I got the "Bloodlines" summary done. 'Night, all!

...certain things just don't lend themselves well to concise synopsis. Like, say, SG-1's introduction to Bra'tac.

I'm just sayin'.

"Broca Divide" summary: exactly 1000 words. {buffs nails on shirt}

Now I just have to do that twice more. Well, and some other stuff...

Chiming in with congrats to the SG-1 Fanfiction Awards winners. {{{pouncehugs suzvoy, seldear, josephides, allisnow and probably several others I'm forgetting}}} Much coolness!

Also, virtual chockie to my fellow also-rans. The real honor, yadda yadda... ;-)

36 minutes to interview. {fidgetfidgetfidget}

So, tinagilman was shocked that I hadn't squee'd vociferously yet about ( Space Race (here there be [minor] spoilers) )

Still playing schedule tag with photog to get the CD-ROM with the shots we did...jeez, a couple months ago now. Need them so I can do new resumes, certainly before I go to Chi. Which I'm having real hope at this point will happen by the beginning of September. If they want me SOON soon, I'm going to have to ask them if I can hold off until 8/27, because one of the doctor's appointments last week was a head-to-toe exam with a dermatologist, and that's when my appointment is for her to remove a couple of moderately suspicious moles. So I'd really like to still be covered by my health insurance at that point!

RPG stuff is continuing apace; currently I have the second SG-17 story still in the works, along with collaborating with Jack on three entries for the Season One sourcebook and three for the System Lords sourcebook. It's very cool to be involved in something actually, y'know, official, but I do find myself missing getting to work on my own fic. *crooked g* Grass is always greener.

Speaking of grass ('cause, y'know, it's in our backyard), my quads, upper back and arms are upset with me this morning, but not nearly as badly as I was afraid they would be. Hands are a little raw as my leather work gloves were wet through pretty early on, so I've been going through a lot of lotion, but other than that, feeling pretty good. I am Val the Mighty, Vanquisher of Cottonwoods. Ha-HAH!! {flourishes and lunges deep with imaginary rapier} {winces}

Jack got a look at the proof copy of the SG-1 RPG corebook that they have at AEG's booth at Gen Con, and I got an actual editing credit! I never discussed with Rob what kind of credit I'd get for proofing the first four chapters, if any -- my concern was just that the quality be as high as possible, because I knew who'd be reading this stuff! -- but I gave them a very fine-tooth-comb copy-editing job, including catching a couple of canon glitches that, while not universe-shattering, could have netted them some negative feedback from serious fans. Apparently they decided the work was worth recognizing. Jack didn't tell me the exact wording of the credit, but I honestly didn't expect to be listed as any kind of editor, so 'tis very cool. Even something to put on a RL resume! *bounce*

Mind you, this also means it's quite publicly on my head if I missed anything, and/or if any of my suggestions weren't followed and should have been. It should be out well before Gatecon, so I guess I'd better be prepared! ;-) And hasten to point out that I only proofed the first four chapters.

On the downside, Rob's original proposal was to credit both of us as "Web Writers" for the support material we've been doing for the website, and somehow that turned into Jack being listed in "Special Thanks." :-/ As long as he gets proper credit for his modules when they're published (especially the one that's going in a print magazine!), it's okay, but I think he's a bit disappointed.

ETA: Guess I don't need to worry about how "real" SG-17 is in my head. Swung through the toy department at Wal-Mart today, and the thought unbidden... Well, let's just say that I hope for Gallegos' sake his CO doesn't find out he's taken to calling her "Kim Possible" behind her back. Laurel puts up with a fair amount of ribbing from her team for being the only ex-cheerleader currently in command of an SG team, but that one might warrant revenge. Too bad (or maybe fortuantely) the "official" nature of this stuff means I couldn't get away with actually putting it in a story. Oz references may be de rigueur, but Disney is undoubtedly a big no-no.

English is linear. People's thought processes are not. This can be very aggravating.

If only I could write in ASL...

You know what's almost worse than when characters clam up? When they're being perfectly forthcoming, and the issue is wrestling what they're giving me into making some kind of sense on the page. :-P

And lo and behold, just as I'm starting to get a wee bit of momentum, it's time to brush my teeth, pack my lunch, and head for work. Argh!

ETA: Very light traffic. Don't have to clock in for a few more minutes. Kitri still chattering away. Think I figured out how to make it lead into the plot. Story will still be later than I'd like, but that's life. Especially because I realized yesterday that the AEG guys' decision to make our team SG-17 requires some finessing due to the fact that SG-17 is mentioned as the team Elliot got assigned to at the end of "Proving Ground", and who subsequently got wiped out in "Summit." *sigh* Jack came up with a good basic solution, and we're still working out the details, but of course it would be pointless to take it up with the game guys right now since they're undoubtedly up to their eyebrows in getting ready for Origins this weekend. Which is here in Columbus, and at which Jack will be running Buffy and Angel demos, so hopefully we can get a minute to bend their ears about it there.

In the meantime, be advised that some of the team background details as currently described on the website will probably be slightly altered soo.

It amuses me to be sitting in my living room making final corrections to SG-17 intro story while giving half an ear to the Buffy RPG session. Which I can get away with (since this is my only day off for a while, and I need to get this done) because my character is busy in the attic repairing a robot body for her dead twin sister (my original character in the campaign) to inhabit when the deal one of the other characters cut with Death lets her come back to visit and help us out with averting apocalypses.

Also, a couple of the players brought life-altering apple pie. Yum.

Okay, just had to make note of that. Back to productivity.

Even though it's going to be one of those one-day weekends.

Actors will continue to be weird people after work tonight. ;-) In the meantime, I would like to note that delinquent credit card holders are MUCH weirder.

Previous note on one account I worked yesterday: "woman said customer is in afghanistan call back in 200 years! hung up" *shakes head* The X-fangirl in me, however, got a giggle from a customer named Logan who lived on Jackman Lane. (And now my brain is singing "Oh, do you know the Wolverine?" instead of "muffin man?" I fear my brain at 0700.)

Last but certainly not least, the Stargate SG-1 RPG site is live, and Jack and I are officially the proud parents of SG-17. Spoiler Warning: Of necessity, and because I didn't realize they would be released first, a couple of the bios reference a major plot point in "Tightrope," the 'pilot' of the series of fics I'm writing for the website.

Game stats are going to be added later, hopefully along with quotes for the folks for whom I couldn't think of one before I turned them in. *wry g* Also, the two I turned in this week (for Lt. Col. McAllister and Sholred) will go up once they've passed muster with MGM.

I actually expected Jack's first game module to see the light of day first; it's going to be in Campaign magazine before they put it up on the site. I'll keep you lot posted.