I just wanted to take a moment to let you know that I’ve uploaded some character sheets for Gateway Games. Working on this project is a lot slower than I had anticipated, but I hope that I’ll get some work done closer to finals. In the meantime, please take a look and tell me what you think.

GatewayGames

Yes, the only 2 things you can count on in your life.  Except that Taxes imply work.  So, if you want to avoid paying any taxes next year, (This year is a bit too late as they are due in less than a month) you should stop working.  If you don’t stop working, here is a nifty poster to show you where your federal income taxes go.  You can look at the poster if you stop working too, but you won’t have any money to buy it (for me)!

My presentation went fairly well.  I didn’t have an enormous audience like the presentation on ‘Chicago’ had, but I had enough people.  After I spoke for some time about games, we played them!  I introduced many students to D&D.  Now that I’m done with my presentation, I can return to my normal daily posting schedule and get some work done on gateway games, where all the simplified D&D materials I used in my presentation will be available to you!

Each teacher at the American Home must give a presentation on any aspect of American culture sometime during their employment.  My presentation is this weekend and will be on Gaming and American Culture.  This is my public cry for information and input.  Anything you think I should mention about table-top games, RPGs or computer/Internet gaming is potential presentation material.

I’m really looking for a vast source or two of gaming related information that people from mainstream culture would find interesting.  Especially links that are power point adaptable.  My audience will be English speaking Russians between 13 and 50 years old.  Example games that I will be mentioning are: Risk, Life, Clue, DnD, WoW, Counter-Strike, Monopoly, Scrabble, The Sims, Civilization, etc…

So without further ado, I await your comments!

As of this moment, I have graded exactly 1 midterm of the 40 some odd I need to have done by tomorrow. I might take some home, I might come in early tomorrow, or I might leave it until late tomorrow like I always do. It gets done, everyone is happy.

In the meantime, I’ve been stumbling across the internets and found 2 websites which I wanted to bring to your attention. The first is 245 countries in 10 minutes. It starts right when its done loading, so start typing right away, no abbreviations. I know they say most Americans don’t know jack about world geography, I tend to agree but I want to test this theory. Please comment on how many countries you got. Anything under 100 in ten minutes is shameful.

The other website is about the top 12 awesomest games of 2010. Yes, 2010 isn’t around yet, but the games and images shown here are amazing, and most of the game concepts are sound and I’d love to play almost all of them!

Update: For the curious, I got over 150 in ten minutes.

Every blog, website and company on the planet has to let people know about its products and services. Advertising is worth billions of dollars, internet advertising alone is in the 10s of billions. If I’m ever to make any money, I’m going to have to take some of yours.

Thats terrible, I know. I don’t want to do it. Well, I don’t want your money specifically. You understand I’m sure. In fact you’ve probably already realized the inevitability of the situation and already clicked on the google banners (and maybe even turned off adblock to do so) or even sent an e-mail request about website hosting to ME.

If you wanted yet another way to show your support for me travelling the globe you could buy something from my store or now, you could leave me a comment on my new website GatewayGames.net. The next big step for tabletop RPGs.

For some reason I like brackets at the end of articles. Makes it seem more official, no?

[Gateway Games]

The profession of Webmaster is dying. Everyday people now make websites and blogs with the help of websites like godaddy.com. Sure it costs money, but for most of us 10 dollars a year is negligible. I own several domain names, and as of today one more. I’m now in the habit of buying domains when I get a good idea as a way to financially motivate me to follow through with them.  Having a website also reminds me of my ideas. Besides, designing websites is my hobby.

My first website was hosted on brunslo.com my freshman year of high school. If you know how to use the wayback machine, you can find out what my first l33t coding skills were like. If something actually impresses you, its probably because I stole most of the code from elsewhere on the net. But who doesn’t do that now? (Creative Commons licensed of course!)

I wanted a website of my own, so I bought MastermindEnterprises.com. Now, it’s defunct because I have yet to start up my own business. Although when I do, I’m all set with a domain name, trademark and slogan. This kept me satiated for years, but my itch to have more websites to design got too strong and I bought MastermindIndustries.com. I’m not sure why, but its only use was to save information about a DnD game I played in college.

Now I had a theme, and shortly thereafter I got another reason to make a website. Worldsim.org was home to a diceless role playing game that simulated Earth and a thousand variants thereof. It was a place for me to get my players to check out information and appreciate my webskillz.

Skip foward a few years and you get omnifriend.net. A team effort by myself and the owner of 3dgo.net to make an RSS reader for all formats of personal weblog (LJ, Blogger, etc), with comments. Its dead/down now, but was a great exercise in open source development. Our project can be found on sourceforge under the name OmniFriend.

This month I’ll be giving a presentation on gaming life in the USA. I’m a gamer, and naturally gravitate towards chances to bring more people into the fold and show them how awesome and varied games are. So as part of my preparation I created ultra simple character sheets for the attendees. Some of whom only know survival English. Molly noted that my sheets looked like ‘gateway’ version of the game. Someone who plays this will probably go on to more ’serious’ D&D gaming. Enter gatewaygames.net There’s nothing there yet so I’m not linking you there, but when I do I’ll be sure to let you know.

Long live the webmaster!

BTW, I do host websites for a very small fee. I’ll setup your hosting, get you a domain name, and setup a website/blog. If you are looking for a way to get a small internet presence and don’t like the big faceless companies, I can do business anywhere in the world. Please get in touch.

Sure, it looks the same as our pool, or billiards if you will, but its played entirely differently. Most of the skill set involved in American pool revolves around strategically placing your balls in front of the pockets so your opponent can’t get his in. In Russian billiards, all that is thrown out the window. Anyone can hit any ball into any pocket at anytime. There is no ‘cue’ ball except for breaking, one ball is red. The numbered balls only are numbered as a courtesy for you to talk about hitting them. The rule is simple. The first person to sink 8 balls is the winner.

If only it were that easy. If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see something off about the dimensions. The balls are significantly larger (as is the table) and the holes are significantly smaller. In fact, they are less than half a centimeter wider than the balls.

If you goof your shot and leave a ball almost in a pocket, on your opponents turn he will sink it. Russian billiards is a game of attrition, whoever doesn’t screw up first, wins. Maybe it reflects Russian culture a bit?

When I get back to the US, I will find a proper Russian pool table and show all of you what a difficult game it is.

BTW, You should check out my shiny redone resume at the top of the page. Now in PDF format. I’m applying for jobs now, so feedback would be great! Just leave a comment here or e-mail me. You know where. (hint, see ‘contact’)

[Wikipedia article]

I was introduced to chess at a young age. The earliest I would guess being about 5 years old. I had little patience for it then and getting down all the pieces and how they moved was a real pain. Once I mastered the basics, everything else came much easier. I’m no grand master, or even master, but I can beat almost everyone my age or younger and most adults.

I organized a chess tournament at the American Home and went on to win it. Since then, the other teachers have been playing fairly regularly. I know that chess has helped me become more analytical and ordered in my problem solving. I just didn’t have any way to explain it. I found the following on the internets while looking up some Benjamin Franklin quotes for coworker.

The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action … 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: – the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; … 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily…

- Benjamin Franklin “The Morals of Chess” (article) (1750)

I always thought of chess as Russia’s game. All the famous chess players I know of are Russian. Turns out the Russians thought it was America’s game! Oh well, I hope to keep playing and I hope the teachers get better so I can play them and get a real challenge! I posted this in my LJ. If you don’t play chess at all, you might still find this funny.

[The Immortal Game is the name given to a game played in 1851 by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky. It is one of the most famous chess games of all time]

Last Friday a bunch of Russians, Amanda and I hung out in an 8th century bar, outfitted ourselves for many nights in the forest, and proceeded to capture and torture some simple hell guards that stood between us and our goal of entering a cave. We weren’t in it for the spelunking adventures, we were after ancient scrolls of great wisdom and power. The kind of things that most people consider junk, until they realize that the junk has the power to destroy worlds.

Where can you find an 8th century bar still intact in Russia? Hell if I know. We weren’t there, it was probably one of the very few and rare times the game of DnD has ever been played in Russia. I had the advantage of having been a GM in the past, and also knowing the most basic and simple plot lines ever to grace the tables of DnD games. Powerful old wizard finds group in bar, forces them to get item that he himself for unknown reasons cannot get (he *is* a powerful wizard, but who are the Russians to question authority?). They oblige and thus begins their adventures into the realms of Magic and Orcs and other such nonsense that most Americans label as nerdy, dangerous, near devil worshiping gaming.

If you like Lord of the Rings, DnD is a game where you can do all that cool shit, fight legions of undead and save the world from certain destruction, and look cool as you slide down some staircase shooting arrows as you do.

Russia is a DnD virgin, and I hope to make a shit ton of money pimping her out (i.e. helping them cope with the monotony of Russian life and their daily struggle to make ends meet). I mean, thats why DnD was invented, thats why World of Warcraft is one of the most popular games ever made. Because people don’t want to work in an office all day, and this is one of the best ways to exercise your mind and your creativity without needing more than some paper, a pencil and some dice.

We are playing again tonight, I might post some pictures if I take any.

Missing out on national holidays isn’t so bad when you’re a Cornell graduate. There aren’t many Russian national holiday’s that people take off, but working in the AH I’m guaranteed to get them off.

I spent Sunday in Оргтруд (Orgtrud), a small community of individual houses. From first glance it looks like a neighborhood that was probably rich a century or so ago, but has since gone abandoned and then re-inhabited by vagrants. That’s actually how a lot of Russia looks, in passing, to the uncaring. The houses and people who live in Оргтруд are actually in good repair and have all the ameneities of home. Most yards are fenced off and every square meter of land is covered with rows of vegetables and fruits. They are by no means self sufficent, but most of their diet consists of all natural food from their own backyard. Add to that, the gardens are all worked by those who live there, its a very healthy lifestyle.
That evening my host father, Yuri, and I played cards with some guys at his garage. He parks his car about 10 minutes from the apartment in parking lot of garages. Underneath his, the ground has been dug out for food storage and so working under a car is easy. He dug it out himself, very cool. The game we played was дурак (Durak -> Fool) the idea being, the last guy with cards is the Дурак. Needless to say, I’ve played before and not once was I the дурак despite several rounds of all 3 other guys trying to make me lose.

I promised a photo from Moscow. Now I deliver: