And one more that's a little more recent...

But the Famicom version takes the cake.

Our debate never actually came to a conclusion after an indefinite break was taken for eye bleach.

On Episode 53 of The Podgecast, the topic of the Farscape DVD boxed sets and their outrageous prices came up. When licensing changed hands, the season 1 boxed set fell out of print, which subsequently caused the price of the boxed set to skyrocket.

Since I couldn't get ahold of season 1, I never bothered with the others - I had seen them all as they debuted anyway.  But a few weeks ago I found out I'd have my chance to get my hands on the entire collection at a reasonable price.

While browsing Amazon I discovered that A&E is re-releasing the entire season in a single boxed set due out in November.  I know I'm probably about the last Farscape fan to know about this, but I had stopped following Farscape news after the Peacekeeper Wars was released.  Due to more dreaded licensing issues, The Peacekeeper Wars won't be included in the set, but that DVD will only cost another $10 on its own.

Now that I'll be able to get my hands on the entire collection at once without having to promise away my first born, come winter I'll definitely be picking it up.

I have added news feeds from Diminutive Denizens, my miniature gallery web sit, to try and make sure that I can keep producing some content, but when my camera got borrowed for a couple months even that slowed down.  I'm working on getting back into the swing of things... we'll just have to see what sort of progress I can make.

There are a couple of drafts that I have started in the back room here and there's the Deadlands write-ups that I'd really like to finish as well. Since I don't think Luke is going to be able to finish the Earthdawn write-ups I'd like to try and summarize that campaign as well as talk about what I learned from the grand experiment that was Earthdawn - Savaged and how I plan on going about changing things for the next time I run the game.

So check back soon - it's time to try and catch back up.

Baroness is a well behaved tailless calico who spends most of the day curled up either in her bed upstairs or on my fiancee's lap while she reads or watches TV. Puck is the anti-Baroness, who has made it his mission in life to cause whatever grief he can. Any bags of chips left unattended for longer than 30 seconds will be opened and scattered across the kitchen floor when you return. If the garbage disposal doesn't mince absolutely every bit of food we put down in it, Puck will jump in the sink and try to get food out of the drain. On more than one occasion Puck has knocked a full pan of chili cheese dip - bubbling hot hot mind you - off the stove and onto the kitchen floor. I guess he needed some dip for the chips or something.

Still that didn't compare to his antics yesterday.

This week the group had decided to hit Smokin' Al's for some barbecue before the group made their first excursion into the ruins of Parlainth. Puck loves barbecue. Not that that's different than any other food but the smells quickly drew him downstairs to the gaming table we were eating at.

To let everyone eat in peace, I decided to lock him into the other side of the basement where his litter box was. My fiancee took her barbecue upstairs to watch the Cards game, leaving the rest of us downstairs to talk gaming.

Before long we started to hear some thumping of some sorts above us. I dismissed it right away - I figured my fiancee was either getting something to drink or otherwise moving around in the living room which was right over where I was sitting.

I no sooner dismiss the noise as being my fiancee when one of the drop ceiling tiles in my basement tumbles to the ground, being ridden by a very scared cat. I don't know who was more surprised - the mischievous feline or the gamers who just got an surprise visit from ceiling cat. I do know that Puck recovered first, kicking up some pieces of fiberglass from the panel as he bolted for the stairs up to the first floor.

See, Puck knows when he does something he's not supposed to do - getting into foodstuffs or climbing onto the kitchen counters, for instance. He also knows he's safe as long as we don't catch him. And Puck just got caught.

As usual Puck led me on a merry little chase before I was able to corner him and lock him in the upstairs bathroom so we could be in peace. But before long his pathetic meows - you'd think he'd been shot or something - started to echo into the basement. Let me tell you it was the loveliest gaming soundtrack imaginable.

best.cat.evar.

sigh.

This year - especially toward the last few months - I've found myself committing to more "columns" than I can keep up with. The Ternon Crag Dispatch was originally intended to run weekly with our campaign night at the local gaming store. I've still been pretty good about getting out a monthly Painting WIP post, but I haven't been able to do any other painting articles lately. There's also the threads on my recent rpg campaigns, but doing one of those after every session has been taxing. And finally although it's not part of this blog I've been neglecting Diminutive Denizens in favor of writing things here.

Last month I decided to try to re-work my schedule a bit to open it up. First thing is that I'm going to to is drop to a RPG session write-up after every 2 sessions or so. Since we're gaming about every other week this means once a month. That combined with my monthly Painting WIP posts puts me at about 2 posts per month. That should leave me time to do the occasional write up on RPG theory or miniature painting techniques as well as get back to battle reports. We'll just have to wait and see if practice matches up with theory...

Planning out our Sci-Fi game we missed a number of sessions between my getting sick and a couple players having other events planned they couldn't miss. Suddenly two months worth of missed sessions had come and gone since we had generated characters and one of our players had to bow out simply because the season was far to busy for him with personal and professional obligations. With our motivation drained by two months of missed games we realized that we were going to have to dump the baggage of the game-that-would-never-start and try to start up something new. However lately we've spent the scheduled sessions with what started as side diversions - like playing a little Warmachine - intended to just de-funkify our geeky gatherings but these diversions have become the regularly scheduled event instead.

On top of that the group I was going to gamemaster Shadowrun for had been lax in getting back to me on organizing a game so my working on the campaign has fallen by the wayside. I've lost a lot of momentum on this one and since then my gamer ADD has drawn my attention in other directions. Unfortunately for readers (all myself of you), most of my work on the Shadowrun was scattered - rough ideas how to do most of the conversion but nothing really written down and finalized - meaning I don't really have articles to post on the topic here.

Sigh.

It's like our little group is cursed and now we're in a rut that we can't manage to get ourselves out of.

On the up side one player has been putting together an idea for a game he wants to run on Halloween, so at the very least we should have something by the end of the month. My guess is we'll probably procrastinate until the holiday one-shot and use that as our jump-start back into regular gaming. So hopefully I'll soon have more gaming related topics to ramble about.

I've also been working on some new posts behind the scenes and hope to get those out soon.  In addition I've joined a new gaming group and have some more experiences and observations to inspire more blargs, so stay tuned.

As for blarging and the campaign, I've been rather unhappy with how this campaign went. I made what I think was a major mistake early and wasn't able to repair it quick enough to get the campaign back on track and it's suffered for it. I've decided to wrap the game up after the next session and after that I'll come back here and write more about where I went wrong with this game.

I really want to maintain a blarg per week but I have enough going on that it might be difficulty to maintain that pace. However I will be cheating and calling this post this week's contribution - that should help me stay on schedule. I've got a few topics laying around I want to write about but a vast majority of them are RPG related and that category is already out pacing the others. I don't see my running Earthdawn as likely to change that, either. Then again the other topics don't get quite the comments that role-playing so maybe that's not a bad thing.

I'm a software analyst living and working in the shadow of the world's largest croquette wicket, also known as the St. Louis metro area.

For those of you looking for profound exposition on the nature of life or witty political commentary, this isn't the blog you're looking for. Dankelblarg is primarily a place for me to vent and talk about my gaming-related hobbies. I might occasionally throw something out that's non-gaming related, but be prepared to see more gaming or painting related updates than anything else.

While I don't yet qualify for gamer grognard status, I have been gaming since around 1991. I played in the typical junior high school type of campaign; we would build the best character we could and go out to kill some monsters and take their stuff. Gaming took place almost every weekend through high school, sometimes even more often through the summer. Since those days a lot has changed. Now gaming is every other weekend if I'm lucky (not counting some weekly Warmachine). While I'm not the hack-and-slasher I once was, I would still call myself a Dramatic Gamist.

I suppose the Dramatic Gamist label may need a little explaining. I very much want to create an interesting story with interesting character, but for me stories aren't interesting without conflict and challenges. As much as I enjoy playing a deep character, role-playing in a campaign where character development takes place in a sterile environment where nothing dramatic ever happens simply isn't satisfying. I need something going on to provide context to the interactions.

I'll provide an example. Revealing my character is recently divorced and is somewhat angered he doesn't see his kids enough is certainly an interesting development. But doing so in the middle of a zombie invasion where he realizes he's never gong to see his daughters again had a much greater emotional impact.

This certainly doesn't mean I want combat after combat - the challenges I look for can just as easily be the negotiation of a peace agreement or convincing an NPC to provide my character with the information I need. Completing either of these can result in just as strong of a sense of accomplishment as whacking some ork over the head with a sword.

Hopefully this will give a little insight as to me as a gamer, so as to provide a reference point for the opinions and views I express in future blargs.