CatJuggling's Friends

11:58AM - New Music Review- The Swell Season: Strict Joy

Hey, the guy and girl from the movie Once have a band, and they're called The Swell Season. Their new album, their second, is a worthy follow-up to all the great songs they did in the movie. Even though the two of them got together in real life and broke up in the meantime, they're still making good music together.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/115570-the-swell-season-strict-joy/

7:10AM - Girlie Show: Day 1

Megan is an accomplished crafter and maker of cool things™. She recently had her first big showing of her work at the Girlie Show, a kind of alt-hip female artist showcase. These are pics from the first night. There was a live DJ, lots of drinking, all the free food you could want from the local gourmet taco stands, sushi restaurants, cupcake bakeries, and so on.

Pics!









It reminded me a LOT of the chaos on the GenCon exhibition floor. Much better food, though. Fewer costumes, but there were still some!

We're told the atmo today will be much more serious. Less drinky, more shoppy, which is fine by us!

3:08PM - What the hell happened?!

This is so sad looking.

9:00AM - Human Jumbotron - courtesy of succeedblog.org

Okay, wait; I love this too:



I would like to say something about the spirit of the group vs. the triumph of the individual, but I haven't had any coffee or food yet.

(Thank you, nihil_duce.)

12:22AM - apartment get, MOB life

So, I'm in my new apartment. The first couple of nights were kinda hard, but I'm getting to like it now. I got to stay down after rehearsal with the MOB tonight, and go out to chick-fil-a and get a tasty peppermint shake and hang out and talk about Tolkien until they kicked us out. It was a lot of fun. I love the MOB people, and the SAs are the best. This is definitely as much fun as anything I did in high school.

For the away game on Saturday I am Iran, desperately trying to hide my nuclear bomb baby from my USA boyfriend. My silly bomb baby will not stop jumping up and down and trying to get attention, unfortunately, and the USA leaves me in disillusioned tears. But he rebounds in the next song enough to have a fling with both Afghanistan and Iraq, (who subsequently realize they are being two-timed and both slap him before storming off of the field.)

I was complimented by Jamie, one of the drum majors, on how cute an Iran I was. It made me all warm and fuzzy.

I should now either write one of the various papers I should be doing, or study for the GRE some more. Curse you, fiendish geometry from Sophomore year! ::shakes fist::

Mental note: Ask Victorian Culture teacher if she knows anyone in the Architecture school. Repeat with Art History teacher next Tuesday.

11:29PM - And the masters of the universe

Shortpacked!: He-Man blah blah blah.

Hey, just got back from seeing Ok Go.  That's why we're a little late.

1) What the fuck.

2) Here is the first photo of our baby hams that we were able to take!  They're about a week old now, having been born the day after we realized the little slut was preggers.  

If you disturb her too much or cause her stress, she'll, well, eat the tiny purple turds.  So, yeah, we keep our distance.  But I had a moment of opportunity and took a photo today.  So we finally know there's at least three!  Three tiny purple turds.

They stay buried in the huge nest their mom made for them pretty much always.  The mom will leave to grab food and then disappear back into it. 

Man, how do these things work out?  I mean, she started building a nest a few days before these kids popped out.  How did she know?  No one ever told her how to care for babies, but then she totally does.  She even knows she has to build a nest for them.  

But then, hams tend to cannibalize their young, so it's not a foolproof thing.

7:41PM - New Music Review- Netherfriends: Calling You Out

It just sounds wrong for a band to be this jaded on their first EP. What also sounds wrong is decent songwriting with no originality to be found. It's not bad, it's just the latest in a long line of forgettable indie-pop.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/114937-netherfriends-calling-you-out/

11:00PM - He has a man-sized safe.

Shortpacked!: Underwearabouts.

I thought it would be funny if, while Shortpacked! was preoccupied with monster-fighting superheroics, Joyce and Walky! did Batman jokes.  A switcheroo, if you will, from the norm.  And so it was!  But then Eric Burns-White had a response to the strip, which I replied to at first with a snarky rebuttal in the form of a scripted story.  Well, screw that, I decided in an instant.  That could have been a Batman-themed Shortpacked! strip, wasted as mere prose!  So I deleted my post and basically drew my original script as today's strip.

As I mentioned previously, faithful reader feywulf shipped me a Penguin along with my Joker.  Penguin is from all the way back in the very first wave of DC Universe Classics, so I'm pretty grateful!  He's as short and pudgy as you'd expect, and he comes with a metal-plated machine gun umbrella.  Due to his gut, he doesn't have the standard mid-torso articulation, and his girth deprives him of the standard hip articulation as well.  He can raise his legs forward, but not out to the sides.  

Oh, and he's got kind of an ugly face.

My bestest man Graham and I were talking just the other day about how Penguin is generally kind of an uncompelling villain.  He's just not very interesting.   He's a short ugly dude in a tuxedo who likes umbrellas.  This material could be implemented well, but rarely is.  He's not depicted as a good fighter, nor does he have a compelling backstory.   Heck, in the old Animated Series, he and his thugs were beaten by a pair of of nerdy preteens.  His other chance to shine was the episode where Batman was rendered temporarily blind.  He's just not very threatening.  You have to weaken Batman considerably to make him a credible opponent.

But for some reason he's a very very important villain.  It's always him, Joker, and Catwoman as the Big Three.  Why?  (Probably the 60s show.)

One Penguin that I think got it right was The Penguin from The Batman.  He was more agile and more threatening, but more importantly he was funny and he had a backstory that mingled with Bruce Wayne's.  Character connections can be important.  It also didn't hurt that he was Spongebob.  Future Penguins should take a serious cue from that version.

Hey, those of you who ordered the Amber statue, there's further news.  Patch Together told me yesterday that the statues are on the boat from China and they should be here in the States in a few weeks ready for shipping.  I can't wait!

7:48PM - Concert Review- Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers w/Telegraph Canyon, Friday, October 30, Houston, TX@ The House of Blues

The evening started over at Cactus Records, where the Drive-By Truckers' ostensible frontman Patterson Hood was doing an in-store performance. Hood also performed a year ago when the Truckers were in town, bringing the band's drummer Brad Morgan along with him. Today he was alone, though, and his acoustic set was heavy on songs from his solo album from earlier this year, Murdering Oscar and Other Love Songs. You hate to pick on an independent record store for its sound mix, but Cactus hosts these in-stores all the time. Somehow, despite it being just Patterson and his guitar, the mix was way off in favor of the guitar. At times we could barely hear Hood's voice and it was tough to make out lyrics throughout. Still, Hood was entertaining, telling several stories about how songs came about and generally being good-natured. It was clear he really likes supporting a store like Cactus, when there are so few of them left around the country. Some of the songs he played included "Murdering Oscar", "Pollyanna", "Momma Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)", "Grandaddy", and "Back of a Bible."

Then, after a nice dinner, it was off to Houston's House of Blues for the main show. Telegraph Canyon was onstage when we arrived, a 7-piece band that sort of floats between country and psychedelic pop. They had a nice full sound and pretty solid songs, but nothing that made me go over and pick up an album. When we showed up, there was plenty of space available in the venue's raised standing-room area with many bar tables open. And yet, in keeping with the House of Blues' strategy of charging for everything possible, those tables were not available to everyday concertgoers. No, you had to pay extra for the right to sit at a bar table. Ugh. After going over to buy a $4.50 bottle of water, we were ready for DBT to take the stage.

The last time I really saw a Drive-By Truckers show, it was 2004, the band was a 5-piece, and guitarist/songwriter Jason Isbell was still in the group. The band's 2008 set at the Austin City Limits festival doesn't really count, as we sat on a blanket hundreds of yards from the stage and didn't really watch the band play much at all. Now the group has six members, with John Neff on pedal steel guitar most of the time and Jay Gonzalez on keyboards. They started out with "George Jones Talkin' Cell Phone Blues" off of The Fine Print, the band's odds-and-ends album that came out a couple months ago. It was a pretty easygoing start to the show, and Mike Cooley's poppy "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" followed soon after, giving things a laid-back vibe to start off. The set was wide-ranging, reaching as far back as "Steve McQueen" from their debut album and as recent as "Play it All Night Long", the band's Warren Zevon cover from "The Fine Print."

The hard-hitting "Sinkhole" showed up about halfway through the set and was a big-time crowd-pleaser. Other highlights included the duo of marriage songs from Decoration Day, "My Sweet Annette" and "Marry Me." Bassist Shonna Tucker's "Home Field Advantage" popped up mid-set and provided a nice change of pace from the Hood and Cooley show. The band returned for an encore with a trio of new songs from the forthcoming album The Big To-Do, and the most interesting was Tucker's song. It once again sounded quite different from the stuff Hood and Cooley have been writing for the past decade, and the band, as good as they are, sorely needs some songs at this point that break from their standard pattern. Isbell used to fill that need, and Tucker seems to be filling that hole admirably. The encore also included Southern Rock Opera's celebratory "Let There Be Rock" from Hood, as well as Cooley's "Shut Up and Get on the Plane." The show ended with the band's cover of The Jim Carroll Band's "People Who Died", back in the set after Carroll's recent death. They came back onstage for a second encore and finished with the slow-burn of "Angels and Fuselage."

As great as the Drive-By Truckers are as a live band, they seem to past their apex. John Neff is a really good guitarist, but has virtually no personality onstage. Hood, Tucker, and Cooley all play off of each other to some extent, but even when Neff is playing a regular electric guitar, he's all on his own over at stage right. Compared to their three-guitar attack of old, the band is missing something, performance-wise, with Isbell gone. Hood is still excellent as a frontman, though, and Cooley is a striking presence on stage, too. The band can still tear it up and it's great that the setlist can change drastically from night to night. The Truckers are absolutely worth seeing, but I'm happy that I got to see them twice while Jason Isbell was part of the band.

11:00PM - Dresstro for Successtro.

Shortpacked!: He probably wants the store across the street.


Now this is the Destro Combat Heroes figure I was wanting!  The first "Movie" figurine of him was actually his Resolute design.  But this is the real deal, pimp suit and everything!  He's carrying a nanotech-firing gun, I guess. 

He comes with Cover Girl, who has an unfortunately small amount of time on the screen.  Poor Cover Girl.  Didn't even get to shoot nobody!  

Anyway, Destro totally had this mask on in the movie for more than thirty seconds. 

Sequel can't come soon enough.

Also, maybe I should have gotten one of those Batman: Brave and the Bold mini-figurine thingies so he could punch this guy.  Ah well. 

12:26PM - [Do] 1 in 100.

In a further attempt to make Ryan's job as hard as possible, I'm spending this month adding the long-delayed examples of play throughout the live doc of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. I'm following a vaguely NaNoWriMo daily schedule of 1500 words a day. Without the examples, the doc is about 55,000 words. I plan to add about 40,000 to that, entirely focused on examples of play.

In all likelihood, with some final fleshing out in December, the doc could be around the 100k mark by the time it falls in Ryan's lap. Yeah, it's a lot, probably too much, but I'm following a 50 pounds of clay philosophy here: Quality emerges from quantity. Or, in other terms, if the final book has one good word, there's probably 100 words that got edited out in an earlier draft.

You can keep up to date with the word factory here.

10:55PM - Halloween Hit us Hard

I was going to only show my monster table when I was working on something interesting, but, in the interest of full disclosure, here is what my table looks like today. It's desperately in need of a clearing off, especially since I have some things I want to get done before Windycon.

Steamcon was absolutely fantastic, and I'm thrilled to hear they're planning to do it again next year. I've got the first day we can apply for dealer's space marked on my calendar. The art guests were Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, whose long-awaited book Boilerplate is finally out. As soon as I can pry it away from Phil, I look forward to reading it. He keeps going on about how amazing it is. I can't wait to find out for myself!

Halloween was madness. Experiment #1 wanted to be Death. But not just ANY death, he wanted to be Death from the Discworld. So I made a little Death of Rats to go along with him. Unfortunately, the Death of Rats isn't quite finished, because while I was working on him, three pallets of books arrived unexpectedly in our driveway, and no help was nigh. (We expected them early this week, and they really ARE supposed to call first...) So Phil and I moved the whole mess ourselves. Fortunately, the rain had stopped, and it was a gorgeous, cool autumn day. The wonderful truck driver actually backed into our driveway and helped us drop the pallets right where we needed them, so at least we didn't have the usual "fun" of carrying the books up the driveway. So, yes, the new reprints are in. Now to get volumes one, two and three reprinted, and nine in print. Gah. It never ends!

Anyway, the Death of Rats was finished enough to thrill the kid and be adorable for trick-or-treating, but I want to finish him properly before I post pictures.

Experiment #2 was a pirate queen, because she's ALWAYS a pirate queen. So her outfit only needed minor repairs and tweaks. Whew. This year, I got her a little Folkmanis parrot puppet. So cute!

11:08PM - The first Ravage that can actually contain the soundtrack to "Cats."

Shortpacked!: And get your damn fool hands out of your pockets!

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra comes out on DVD/Blue-Ray today (Tuesday), and I'm actually pretty excited!  Rise of Cobra was surprisingly a fun, tolerable movie.  And since it didn't go on and on and on and on forever, punctuated with robot-on-chick's-leg action, I'm probably looking forward to watching it more than my copy of Revenge of the Fallen!   I was really looking forward to owning Revenge of the Fallen, sure, but that was to help fill out our beloved Transformers Wiki.  But I'm looking forward to watching Rise of Cobra.  

To celebrate this glorious day, enjoy a photo of Batman punching Rex "The Doctor" Lewis.  (Microman Batman donated by The Last Gamestore.)  I've actually been searching for the white-coated version of Rex so I can steal his labcoat for my Dr. Biggles-Jones kitbash, but he's been mighty scarce.  I saw him for the first time with a batch of the new jungle/arctic/desert-themed guys.  Is that who he's shipping with?  Should I expect to see more of him?  Because if I shouldn't, I'm painting this guy's coat white and ganking it.  

(Man, that's a pretty good likeness on him.)

Anyway, Rex is just a sidebar.  Because of today's strip, as the main event I thought I'd throw in some photos of the actual Device Label Ravage toy, rather than just screenshots of his computer program like I did on Saturday.  He's a pretty big guy!  He's about twice the size of most actual thumb drives, which makes some amount of sense.  Real thumb drives don't have to accommodate an assortment of limbs.  And if you want to carry him around in your pocket without fear of damaging the USB connector, you can slide it right inside.  Thoughtful!  And you could probably get a key ring through the holes in either of his shoulders, but I haven't tried that for myself to confirm.

The working part of the thumb drive is at the back of Ravage's neck, and it hides away inside the torso while in jaguar mode.  The hind legs sort of clasp around it, protecting its tip, and also locking it from accidental movement.  During transformation to jaguar, the head and neck flip around, and the legs unstraighten.  The end!  The jaw is articulated, as are all the limb joints, so you can get him into a number of poses. 

And his head is proportionally larger than most Ravages, so he's kinda adorable.

My Ravage has spent pretty much the entire weekend plugged into one of my USB ports so that his computer program was activated.  I foresee him plugging back in soon, now that I'm done photographing him.  Too bad!  It's a pretty nice Ravage toy.  But it keeps being used on my dumb computer, like some sort of functioning technological device.  What mockery is this?

Eh, I have plenty of Ravage toys.  I guess I can spare one to stick out the front of my desktop machine so a digital kitty can jump around.  (I like seeing him occasionally stalk just outside the borders of my program windows, sometimes only through Vista's transparent title bars.)

11:00PM

Shortpacked!@TNI: The pony boards are not pleased.
Shortpacked!@CrossedGenres: Because when it's LGBTQ month at a sci-fi magazine, of course they think of me.
Shortpacked!: And we're back!

So this guy on the Internet named Feywulf is a pretty nice guy.  He had located both DCUC Joker and the Penguin in his area and wondered if I wanted them.  Well, since Joker's currently more rare than Congressional bipartisanship and Penguin's from ten waves ago, my answer was HELL YEAH.

I'll start with Joker, if only because I needed to make sure I get pictures of him before I start losing his accessories.  I almost lost one of them this afternoon!  The best one, even!  His little laughing fish.  Yeah, he comes with a damn laughing fish.  That's awesome.  But I accidentally knocked him off my desk when I was putting today's strip into the scanner, and it took me about an hour to locate the damn tiny fish on my floor.  The other three accessories aren't bad either.  He's got a deck of playing cards, a big green mallet, and a walking stick with a golden jester head.  

Joker himself is straight-up "classic" Joker.  Golden to silver age, I'd say.  Joker basically still dresses like this, but it's his head's sculpt that makes me think of the older, more neutrally-rendered Joker.  There's no slicked-back hair, for example.  No reinterpretations.  He's just the Joker.

I do wish he held his mallet more securely.  Did it belong to a previous Joker?  Maybe the DC Superheroes one?   'Cuz it doesn't feel like it was sculpted to be held by him, it's so loose.  You can wedge the cards and the fish in his hands okay, though, and the jester stick fits in his palms fine.  

With Joker, Penguin, and also Two-Face in my possession, my Batman Villains are rounding out pretty nicely!  I have a Harley Quinn ordered through eBay set to arrive at some point, and I still need to hunt down a black Catwoman...  Oh, right, and the elusive Walmart Man-Bat.  Is that it?  It's easy to lose track.

Thanks to everyone who's been helping me out!  You are all kings among men.

And don't forget to click the Crossed Genres link above.  Exclusive Shortpacked! comic, for serious!

4:43PM - Movie Review- Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are

I've been putting this review off for a week trying to decide how I feel and what to say about Where the Wild Things Are. Usually I'm full of things to say about nearly every movie I see, but this one has been a challenge. Let's start off by asserting that Spike Jonze is a marvelous director. A master of tone and feel, his take on Maurice Sendak's classic children's book expands on that very short story while still retaining the spirit and mood of its source material. The original story had a boy, Max, getting sent to his room without supper for acting wild in the house. The film version gives Max (Max Records) reasons to act out. His father is absent and his mother (Catherine Keener) doesn't seem to have much time for him. She virtually ignores him whenever her new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) comes over to visit. His teenage sister has no patience or interest in giving Max the attention he needs, either, and Max doesn't have any friends at school or in the neighborhood. He's not a bad kid, but he's clearly very lonely.

All of this comes in the first 15-20 minutes of the movie. Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers don't take too much time getting Max to the Wild Things, but these early scenes are crucial in setting the mood for the rest of the film. Max's attempt to have fun in the snow with the neighborhood kids starts off exciting, but quickly ends in disaster for him. Max's attempt to act out in front of his mom and her boyfriend finds him escalating things too far too quick and instantly regretting it. Before you know it, Max is out the door, down the street, and into the woods. He finds some water and a small sailboat on the shore, gets in, and journeys for days until he comes to an island.

Once he arrives, he has to climb up a rocky cliff to get to the only light source he sees. It turns out to be a campfire with the Wild Things scattered around it, as Wild Thing Carol (the voice of James Gandolfini) is busy destroying the creatures' huts. Max sees an opportunity and joins in the destruction, which endears him to Carol. He quickly wins over the rest of the monsters and proceeds to have a series of adventures with them. The bulk of the film is concerned with these adventures, which include everything from building a massive fort to trudging through the desert to sleeping in a pile with all of the creatures together. It's the stuff of young boys' wildest dreams come true, but Max's real life experience keeps interfering with his fun. The Wild Things all have their own issues, particularly Carol, and they're far from a happy family together. Carol's friend KW (Lauren Ambrose) has left the group because Carol can't deal with her hanging out with her new friends, Bob and Terry, who aren't part of the main group. Carol is generally a nice guy, but he's prone to fits of rage where he destroys things. What initially seems like paradise to Max quickly becomes just as messy as his real life.

Where the Wild Things Are is a tough movie to like for anyone who goes in expecting a traditional 90-minute family-friendly flick. Jonze is much more interested in getting at the real emotions children experience than providing a simple, fun thrill ride. The result is a raw, intentionally messy film that will resonate with some people and completely turn off others. While there is a certain framework of a story in the movie, Jonze focuses on the emotional state of Max and his relationships more than anything else. The decision to go with real, giant monster suits instead of making them wholly CGI is a shrewd one, as was the decision to film on location in Australia. Max Records' interactions with the creatures feels authentic and visceral. The only computer help here was on the monsters' faces, and it's seamless. It should also be mentioned that Catherine Keener does a lot with a little as Max's mother. She doesn't get a lot of screen time, but she feels just as real as Max, as does their contentious relationship. It seems like Keener has been trapped in a decade's worth of "bitch" roles ever since she played the part so marvelously back in Jonze's 1999 film debut, Being John Malkovich. So it's nice that Jonze has given her something that is very, very different here, because she is tremendously talented. Where the Wild Things Are is a tougher, more deeply felt movie for children than most of what is out there these days. Which means it probably won't be a huge box office success, but it seems destined to grow into an all-time classic. It's not a perfect movie, but it's one of the best of the year. 5/5

3:49PM - Relaxing Sunday

It's 10 to 4 on Sunday, November 1 and I'm sitting quietly at home watching last night's Austin City Limits with M. Ward (he's pleasant but I'm not feeling the need to go out and buy/download any albums). Today's plan involved grocery shopping, pet store shopping, and a stop at the comic book store for the big Halloween sale. I did the latter two, but grocery shopping has yet to happen. Sometime along the way, I was in the process of getting roped in to help Jenn move to her new apartment just off-campus at Rice university.

This ended up not happening because Jenn (as is typical) didn't get up until 11am (even though she got the extra hour of sleep!). Then there was a trip that needed to be made to Target to get more things for the apartment, while her dad was supposed to go out to Best Buy to purchase a printer and camera for her. This was all supposed to happen while Judy, Evelyn, and I were out at the pet store and comic store. But dad didn't leave for Best Buy until after Jenn and her mom got back from Target and it was getting to be after 2:30. The end result of all these delays is that I didn't feel particularly comfortable heading downtown after 3pm on a Sunday to help move, because I needed to be back home by about 7pm to do the work I need to get ready for school for the week. So instead I'm getting a relaxing afternoon to myself, the first in what seems like a very long time.

I really should clean up my apartment and vacuum because there are cardboard fragments all over the place from my cats' scratching posts. But I think this may be a job that is big enough for Judy to bring the Dyson over from her place.

I finally broke down and bought Rock Band 2 about a month ago. It is a great, great practice tool for the drums, let me tell you. I haven't really done anything else with it, but it's nice to have a game (besides Facebook Farmville) that I can sit down and play for 45 minutes or an hour and not get stuck in a huge level or something like that.

Judy and I have been debating for the past two weeks about our Christmas break plans, but it looks like we maybe (finally) have it figured out. Looks like I'll come up a couple of days before Christmas while Judy and Evelyn will follow on the 26th, and we'll all go back on the 30th. It should be a lot of fun and it will make my mom very happy.

Sorry I don't do real life updates much anymore. Things are generally really good for me, which is great. But it doesn't always make for interesting writing.

11:02PM - Meow.

Joyce and Walky!: Laugh it up, you little twerp.  That was my last Reese's Cup.


I wasn't really planning on getting USB Ravage.  I know I have a buttload of Ravages and he'd be a conspicuous absence, but look, he's a $40 2-gig flash drive.  $50 with shipping!  That's kind of retarded. 

I would sort of passive-aggressively explain this to the billion people who email me every week telling me they just found out this thing existed and contacted me right away.  "No, no, I'm not that excited.  It's neat, though!"

But then I found it had a little installable program on it.  Plug in Ravage (or Tigatron) and he'll roam the screen!  Adjust his speed and personality!  Change his name!  Click on him and watch him pounce! 

So,  yeah, I ordered one that day.  I am a fickle creature.  My Ravage arrived this afternoon.  The program will display either Tigatron or Ravage, which is nice.  You don't gotta order the other one to have him jump around your screen.  Switch back and forth to your heart's content!   It's a cheap thrill. 

No, no, wait, it isn't.

4:53PM - [Do] 道.com?

With international domain names being fast tracked for 2010, should I register 道.com if possible? :P

1:45PM - Now updating on Windows 7

That's right, I am now runnig on Windows 7. HAve been since Wednesday. Still a few things to do (Install KotOR 1 & 2, HMP, MechWarrior, and a few helper programs.) But I like that there's less tweaking that needs to be done. Most of the powertoys were integrated into Win 7, so no need for that. Only problem is that there are no drivers for my scanner. And I still need some for this Epson printer, if I ever use it again. And, it can't see the HD on the IDE chain, because it's after the optical drives (Which I will fix this weekend or next week.)

But the future is here!

9:30AM - Penny Arcade Lookouts: Peaks and Valleys

Had one of those moments where mechanic bubbled up in my brain without a theme or metaphor in it. I imagined players rolling a dice pool and calling the highest die result a Peak and the lowest die result a Valley. If several dice matched the Peak, that was a Plateau. If several matched the Valley, that was a Canyon.

I didn't know what any of those dice results actually meant, though. Talked it over with Megan and we thought it would be an interesting random patrol generator for a game adaptation of Penny Arcade's Lookouts.



A session of play follows a full patrol through the forest. Each leg of the patrol goes from a literal peak to a valley, to another peak, to another valley. The peaks and valleys in the dice roll represent the actual peaks and valleys of the patrol.

At the beginning of each leg, a different player rolls their dice pool to generate the terrain and encounters they will find along the journey. This way, you also have to note the dice results between the Peak and the Valley as well.

Furthermore, it would almost require some kind of table like this Wondermark diagram: